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Local Actions

Local Actions

Village of Rhinebeck, Rhinebeck, New York

Mayors, Supervisors, local Board members and other municipal staff have many competing priorities to manage. However, we can all agree on basic principles. We all want safe, thriving communities that welcome and provide space for everyone. Ask yourself the questions below and think about your community. Maybe you can’t address all of these issues; that’s okay. Pick a few that speak to your community’s needs and dive into the recommendations and resources. And let us know what else you need – we’re happy to help.

Questions to Consider

Best Practices

Develop plans and policies to support safe access for walking:

  • Consider adopting a local Complete Streets policy and incorporating Complete Streets principles and practices into decision-making processes. This formalizes your community’s intent to consider access for people of all ages and abilities, using all forms of transportation, in your decisions.
  • Adopt walkable community design guidelines. Consider trees, benches, lighting, and other elements that make streets more comfortable and inviting for walking.
  • Develop and implement a local Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) transition plan.
  • Work with the DCTC on a local pedestrian plan to identify barriers to walking and prioritize improvements. These plans give you specific, attainable goals and can help you attain funding for improvements.
  • Create a map showing where sidewalks are desired (possibly as part of an Official Map) and adopt it as an addendum to your comprehensive plan. NYSDOT and other agencies often refer to your comprehensive plan when deciding whether to include sidewalks in a project. Remember: building a better sidewalk network doesn’t happen all at once. Sidewalk fragments are okay if they are part of a long-term plan!

Incorporate access management and connected street designs:

  • Require connected street networks for new developments. A traditional street grid provides more route choices, including for people walking.
  • Minimize driveways on major streets and consolidate existing commercial driveways where possible.
  • Provide on-street parking in centers to calm traffic, shrink large parking lots, and promote a ‘park once and walk’ environment.

Best Practices

Develop plans and policies that support safe access for bicycling:

  • Consider adopting a local Complete Streets policy and incorporating Complete Streets principles and practices into decision-making processes. This formalizes your community’s intent to consider access for people of all ages and abilities, using all forms of transportation, in your decisions.
  • Identify bicycle networks that allow riders to access a variety of destinations, and look for infrastructure improvements you can make along those streets.
  • Look for opportunities to develop rail trails and other shared-use paths. Think big picture and long-term – these projects take time!
  • When making bicycle improvements, make sure to design for all ages and abilities.

Incorporate access management & connected street designs:

  • Require connected street networks for all new developments. A traditional street grid creates more route choices, including for people bicycling.
  • Minimize driveways on major streets and consolidate existing commercial driveways where possible.
  • Where possible, make connections to nearby rail trails or other shared-use paths.

Provide bicycle parking:

  • Learn where there is bicycle parking in your community, and where it might be missing. Our Bike Dutchess app (see sidebar) is a good place to start.
  • If there’s a train station in your community, work with Metro-North (or Amtrak, for Rhinecliff) to add long-term bicycle storage options at the station.
  • Update your zoning code to require bicycle parking (both short-term and long-term) where appropriate as part of site plan applications. It’s a low-cost improvement that makes bicycling a more feasible option.

Best Practices

  • Evaluate the signed bus stops in your community.
    • Work with County Public Transit to consider moving or adding stops to better serve riders.
    • Work with the road owner and County Public Transit to provide or improve sidewalks and ramps at signed stops.
    • Work with the County Public Transit to add shelters and other amenities at major stops.
  • Provide connections to bus routes when designing sidewalk and bicycle networks.

Best Practices

Revise your subdivision codes to promote safe access for walking and bicycling:

a. Capital Program – Refine our project selection framework:

  • Provide flexible design standards based on land use context, allowing narrower street widths, travel lanes, driveways, and curb radii in centers and neighborhoods.
  • Require sidewalks as part of new development, based on the location and density.
  • Require walking/bicycling connections to adjacent parcels.

Revise your street design standards to promote safe access for walking and bicycling:

  • Provide flexible street standards based on land use context, allowing narrower street widths, travel lanes, driveways, and curb radii in centers and neighborhoods.
  • Require that sidewalks and bicycle facilities be considered in all street and bridge redesign and reconstruction projects, and other major street projects. A complete streets checklist can help with this.

Best Practices

Improve maintenance practices:

  • Create long-term Capital Improvement Plans that include ongoing sidewalk maintenance costs. Sidewalks are shared public infrastructure, just like streets, and should be budgeted for (see Denver’s sidewalk maintenance program for example).
  • Consider transferring responsibility for sidewalk plowing to your municipality. This ensures consistent plowing and repairs, helps older adults and others for whom shoveling is difficult, and can ease some of the resistance to building new sidewalks. Several of our municipalities are already doing this, at least in core downtown areas.
  • If you have a walkable downtown or town/village center, consider a sidewalk improvement district to finance improvements.

Best Practices

Best Practices

Update your Comprehensive Plan and other policies to prioritize investments in existing centers and neighborhoods.

  • Use County Planning’s Centers & Greenspaces strategy to focus development in centers and protect open space.
  • Upgrade existing infrastructure before building new.

Upgrade water & sewer systems to support development in centers.

Address congestion hot spots.

  • Work with DCTC, road owners, and other partners to manage traffic and parking, particularly in centers (see our Congestion Management Process for reference).

Best Practices

Invest in your existing town/village centers.

  • Pursue infill development to capitalize on existing transportation infrastructure and services and support walking, bicycling, and transit.

Revise zoning to support walkability, bikeability, & transit in centers:

Best Practices

  • Improve your walking and bicycling networks (sidewalks, rail trail connections, on-street bicycle infrastructure) to serve basic needs destinations.
  • Add bicycle racks at basic needs destinations.
  • In coordination with County Public Transit, add transit amenities (shelters, benches, lighting) where basic needs locations are served by bus transit.

Best Practices

Best Practices

  • Update your land use regulations to incorporate climate change considerations. Climate-smart land use practices are consistent with other best practices: prioritize development in existing centers, preserve green space, and limit impervious surfaces. Climate change is another big reason to prioritize these actions.
  • Incorporate the analyses and recommendations of DCTC’s Climate Vulnerability Study, Resilient Ways Forward.
  • Consider climate change in bridge and culvert replacement projects.
  • Prohibit dead-end roads in flood-prone areas and look for opportunities to provide connections for existing roads with single access points.

Best Practices

  • Consider EV infrastructure (especially charging stations) when looking at site plans and making planning decisions. Consider requiring charging station infrastructure for multifamily housing or large commercial projects.
  • Lay electrical conduit during parking lot resurfacing projects, to allow for future charging station installation.
  • Incorporate EVs in your municipal fleets.
  • Learn more: find details in our municipal guide to getting EV ready.

Best Practices

Improve your maintenance practices:

Right size your transportation infrastructure (roads, bridges, sidewalks, etc.):

  • Maintain existing infrastructure before building new.
  • Maximize the efficiency of existing infrastructure before adding capacity.
  • Reduce unneeded capacity or remove unnecessary infrastructure.

Best Practices

  • Consider adopting a local Complete Streets policy and incorporating Complete Streets principles and practices into decision-making processes. This formalizes your community’s intent to consider access for people of all ages and abilities, using all forms of transportation, in your decisions.
  • Develop and implement a local ADA transition plan.
  • Coordinate with human service agencies to provide transportation options for vulnerable populations and communities.
  • Prioritize projects that improve access for residents in identified focus areas, places with high shares of focus populations, and in places with high housing cost burdens.
  • Encourage a range of housing types in locations with walking, bicycling, and/or transit access to jobs and other basic needs.

SIDEWALK BEST PRACTICES

Do you want a more walkable community? Here are some best practices for maintaining and paying for sidewalks.

DCTC’s BIKE DUTCHESS APPLICATION

DCTC maintains a map of bicycle routes, bike parking, and sites of interest around the county. The map is a good starting place for determining where your community has and could add bike facilities, including bike parking. But it’s far from perfect—we rely on community members to let us know of locations. If you know of additional bicycle facilities, please contact us so we can add them to our map!

WHY ARE LAND USE POLICIES CRITICAL TO MEETING OUR TRANSPORTATION GOALS?

Transportation infrastructure exists to connect us to the places we need to go: work, school, the doctors’ office, the grocery store, parks, and other destinations. When these destinations are close together, we can often walk, bike, or take a bus between them. But when they are spread out, often our only option is to drive – if we have access to a vehicle.

Local land use policies, embodied in comprehensive plans and enforced through zoning codes, are the first step in creating more accessible places. They determine how much and what types of housing, office, retail, and other uses can go where. Allowing compact, mixed-use development makes it much more cost-effective to connect destinations with sidewalks, bicycle paths, and bus routes—not to mention the savings in infrastructure like streets, sewer and water lines. Compact, mixed-use places also tend to be safer, more comfortable, and more interesting places.

County Actions
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