Creating a Forward Thinking Plan
In partnership with the Village of Wilmette and the Active Transportation Alliance, Civiltech led the creation of a community-wide Master Bike and Active Transportation Plan in 2018-2019. This forward-thinking document serves as the Village of Wilmette’s bike and pedestrian facility playbook, outlining the roadmap for transportation funding and grant applications in the Village. Built on a foundation of community engagement and vetted by a mix of planners, engineers, landscape architects, and urban designers, the Plan recommends improvements for walking, bicycling, transit access, and other connectivity goals throughout the Village. The end product was an action-focused guidebook with planning visions and engineering insights.
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Building on Assets
The project team leveraged the planning process to build upon the existing transportation assets in the community, such as regional trails, the CTA Purple Line, and Metra rail commuter line. The team also conducted a literature review of past projects and documents in order to consider the historical significance of transportation in Wilmette. The Plan contains recommendations that fill in the gaps and create solid last-mile connections for all roadway users.
This Project Incorporates the Following:
- Last-mile connections analysis
- Community-wide bike network development
- Key intersection improvements
- Program and policy recommendations
- Bicycle parking siting and guidelines
- Wayfinding signage updates
- Interactive online mapping
- Plan view, cross sections, and 3D graphic renderings
- Funding strategies
- Prioritization and implementation recommendations
Scope of Services
- Transportation Planning
- Landscape Architecture
- Traffic Analysis
- Bikeway and Pedestrian Facility Design
- Community Engagement
- Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
- Policy and Programming Recommendations
Creative Outreach
The project team utilized a creative and flexible approach to meet the changing needs of the project and to gain valuable community input. This included numerous methods to reach a wide range of voices and increase knowledge of the project, such as an interactive online mapping application, focus groups, and tabling events, to name a few. By creating a uniquely tailored approach to outreach in Wilmette, the project team was able to expand the reach beyond advocates and also talk to those who are unable to attend traditional public workshops.
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A Multi-disciplinary and Distinctive Planning Process
Civiltech uses a distinctive methodology for creating implementable transportation plans by involving planners, architects, and engineers from the first stages of the planning process. This multi-disciplinary approach avoids pitfalls and utilizes tools like 3D graphic renderings to illustrate how planning recommendations will look on the roadways. For Wilmette, the planners and engineers collaborated to provide planning-level and engineering-vetted cost estimates to further guide implementation. The team also devised a robust impact matrix for each design and used Geographic Information Systems to identify challenges and opportunities and prioritize recommendations.
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