Written by and for cities, NACTO’s street design guides are an authoritative technical resource for transportation engineers, planners, and city leaders.

Written by and for cities, NACTO’s street design guides are an authoritative technical resource for transportation engineers, planners, and city leaders. 

Widely recognized and endorsed by cities, state Departments of Transportation, and the U.S. Department of Transportation, our guides broaden and advance the practice of street design in North America.

Our street design guides are the only national-level guidance focused on the unique needs of cities. They feature city-approved, evidence-based design approaches to safe, multimodal streets and intersections. These approaches prioritize the movement of people and the creation of public space. They emphasize contextual and flexible design standards, allowing cities to adapt best practices to the local environment.

U.S. law explicitly allows cities to apply the Urban Street Design Guide and Urban Bikeway Design Guide to federally-funded projects on city streets. In addition, federal law requires the U.S. Department of Transportation to use the Urban Street Design Guide in developing design standards for the National Highway System, which includes many urban arterials in cities and towns.

Since the Urban Bikeway Design Guide was first published in 2011, NACTO and our member cities have set the bar for urban streets. Hundreds of cities across North America rely on NACTO’s street design guidance to plan and design safe, efficient, accessible, multimodal streets.