Pedestrian Master Plan
The Pedestrian Master Plan is Montgomery Planning’s first comprehensive vision to create safer, more comfortable experiences walking or rolling around the county, and to make getting around more convenient and accessible for every pedestrian.
The Pedestrian Master Plan provides detailed, actionable recommendations in line with national and international best practices to improve the pedestrian experience, from more and better places to cross the street to a data-driven, equity-focused approach for the county’s future pedestrian/bicycle capital investments.
Public Hearing draft of the plan Appendices
Download the plan explainer: English | 汉语 | Español
To address the issues identified through the community engagement and data collection effort, the Pedestrian Master Plan’s detailed recommendations focus on how the county can systemically improve the pedestrian experience in several key ways.
- Design, Policy, and Programming recommendations will change how pedestrian amenities are designed and constructed, update the policies that guide transportation engineering in the county, and leverage opportunities for more robust traffic safety education and policy change at the state level. Examples include longer crosswalk times and more accessible sidewalks, updated lighting standards, assuming county control of certain state highways, and reimagining Safe Routes to School programming.
- Pedestrian and Bicycle Project Prioritization recommendations identify where pedestrian and bicycle capital improvement projects should be prioritized countywide, based on equity, comfortable access, safety, and other metrics.
- Pedestrian Shortcut Identification recommendations identify locations where public or private investment could shorten pedestrian trips and make the overall pedestrian network more accessible by improving dirt paths and other informal connections that have developed over time.
- Country Sidepath Identification recommendations indicate where sidepaths—shared pedestrian and bicycle pathways—should be built along roadways in the more rural parts of the county, in line with guidance in the Complete Streets Design Guide.
- Complete Streets Design Guide Area Type Classification recommendations advance the transition to
new road classifications to ensure that as streets are reconstructed in the years ahead, they will be more
pedestrian-friendly.
View the draft design, policy, and programming recommendations