A new project delivery model designed for U.S. cities

Boulder, Colo. (April 11, 2016)— PeopleForBikes releases its latest report today, titled Quick Builds for Better Streets: A New Project Delivery Model for U.S. Cities. The report examines how new project delivery models are making are making it cheaper and faster for cities to improve their public space. Drawing on experiences from Austin, Chicago, Denver, Memphis, New York, Pittsburgh and San Francisco, the report serves as a practical guide for city governments that want to make fast, flexible changes to streets.

The report's lead author is Jon Orcutt, Policy Director for the New York City Department of Transportation from 2007 to 2014 and an architect of the NYC program that brought low-cost, high-benefit redesigns to urban spaces like Times Square. The 22-page report breaks down the process into nine essential requirements for every quick-build street project and gives real world examples from cities like Seattle’s Second Avenue and Denver’s parking protected lanes on Lawrence and Arapahoe streets.

Quick-build project delivery, sometimes referred to as “tactical urbanism”, employs new techniques that realign and reassign space on streets using paint and simple physical objects that can be cheaply purchased and quickly installed. Like larger capital projects (which are mostly asphalt and concrete), quick-build projects are meant to be used by the public for years, however many other things about them—materials, process, funding—are new and developing rapidly.

“Our new Quick Build Report offers fast, cost effective and attainable solutions for U.S.  cities,” said Martha Roskowski, PeopleForBikes’ VP of Local Innovation. “For local governments, creating a new process or procedure may seem daunting. The Quick Build method works. We’re helping cities learn from one another.”

Using quick build methods over the last several years, cities have created heavily used bike networks, popular new public spaces and demonstrably safer streets for walking, biking and driving.

PDF download is available at http://bit.ly/QuickBuildsReport; hard copies available upon request to Aisling O’Suilleabhain, aisling@peopleforbikes.org.

About PeopleForBikes:

The Green Lane Project is a program of PeopleForBikes, a movement uniting millions of individuals, thousands of businesses andhundreds of communities to make better bike riding for everyone. Because whenpeople ride bikes, great things happen. Join us at PeopleForBikes.org.