The Pedestrian Master Plan is a tool to coordinate resources and provide information about pedestrian-related projects, pedestrian concerns, neighborhood resources, and important tools to get more people walking in Seattle. The plan is Web-based, reflecting the increasing use of online services. While this is a new approach for a transportation plan in Seattle, it gives you direct access to policies, programs, and project information that influence the pedestrian environment. And, it makes the plan more accessible to people who use assistive technology or translation services.

Seattle voters approval of the Bridging the Gap funding levy in 2006 suggested that residents wanted improved sidewalks, safer routes to school, pedestrian-friendly corridors, and better transit-all of which increase walkability. In addition to improving infrastructure and relieving the City's maintenance backlog, Bridging the Gap also provided funding to develop the Pedestrian Master Plan.

The vision of the plan is to make Seattle the most walkable city in the nation by increasing pedestrian safety, assuring equity, creating vibrancy, and improving health. Creating a walkable city involves many people and decisions over a long period of time-having a plan supports the coordination of actions by communities, organizations, individuals, and public agencies to create a walkable environment that meets everyone's needs.

The City created a Pedestrian Master Plan Advisory Group to actively shape and guide development of the plan. The group met regularly over 20 months, working with the project team to create a framework for the plan and to review plan development. The Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board also engaged in the work, along with community members from across Seattle. Because the pedestrian realm touches everyone and everything, the City of Seattle assembled both inter-departmental and inter-agency teams to participate in developing the plan.

The plan covers a wide range of topics related to walking in Seattle. The Pedestrian Toolbox includes hundreds of techniques and strategies that can be used to address common pedestrian issues; Pedestrian Policies and Programs includes links to issue papers about construction/work zones, intersection design, lighting, maintenance, speed and signage, and streetscape elements; Implementation provides recommendations relevant to nearly all City departments as well as information about funding; and Performance Monitoring offers guidelines for measuring the progress of the plan. In short, if you want it, the plan's got it!

The Executive Summary provides an overview of the information in the plan, and it can be viewed as a PDF for easy reference when you're looking at the rest of the plan. Moving down the left menu bar will walk you through the plan in a logical order as well. Many pages have links or a right menu bar that provide additional information. And finally, you can use the site map and the search function to locate specific parts of the plan.

Now that the draft plan is available, the City would like to hear your thoughts on the Pedestrian Master Plan and its recommendations and actions. These were developed through coordination with the Pedestrian Master Plan Advisory Group and the Inter-Agency Team.

To make a comment on the draft plan, use the link on the left menu bar to send an email to mostwalkablecity@seattle.gov. You can also call 206-733-9970, or send mail to: Pedestrian Master Plan Comments, Seattle Department of Transportation, P.O. Box 34996, Seattle, WA 98124-4996.