At the 2025 National Bike Summit March 11-13 in Washington, D.C., hosted by the League of American Bicyclists, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation provided a deep dive into the practical aspects of its new “Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities, 5th Edition,” know colloquially as the “AASHTO Bike Guide,” released in December 2024.
[Above photo by AASHTO]
Kevin Marshia, director of engineering for AASHTO, offered an overview of the AASHTO Bike Guide while Bill Schultheiss of the Toole Design Group – AASHTO’s consultant for the development of the Bike Guide – and Megan McCarty Graham from Arlington county, VA, provided insights into the practical applications of the new guide.
Concurrently, Josh Naramore from the National Association of City Transportation Officials and Anne Welch from the District of Columbia Department of Transportation, provided insights from NACTO’s “Urban Bikeway Design Guide, Third Edition.”
Developed by AASHTO’s Committee on Design and the Technical Committee on Non-motorized Transportation, the AASHTO Bike Guide provides preeminent engineering design guidance on the physical infrastructure needed to support bicycling for travel and recreation in the United States.
AASHTO’s Marshia noted that the publication is designed as a “comprehensive” manual for planning, designing, building, and maintaining bicycle facilities across a wide range of modal environments – from heavily urbanized metropolitan locales to the vast rural areas of the country.
He also noted that the AASHTO Bike Guide encourages a flexible approach to bikeway design and emphasizes the role of the planner, designer, and engineer in determining appropriate bikeway types and design dimensions based on project-specific conditions and existing and future performance.
“This is a very user-friendly guide; ease-of-use is key because AASHTO’s bike guide is not just for engineers,” Marshia stressed. “It also has been developed though the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, with several AASHTO committees and councils providing an intensive review by subject matter experts to validate that research. That’s how we also ensured this guide would be for everybody, whether you are developing bike facilities in and around transit facilities in Washington, D.C., or out in the rural Vermont.”
To order a copy of the AASHTO Bike Guide, click here or visit the online AASHTO Store and search via the guide’s item code: GBF-5.
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