copyright 1996, Tracy-Williams Consulting
Figuring out where to go and how to get there is the main point of planning. But doing so means creating some level of agreement on a common overall vision and specific goals and objectives within the community.

Creating the ideas behind the vision and goals, the specific "reachable" targets, and the consensus about their importance is best done through a continuance of the public involvement processes described under Community needs and concerns. Just as a community's needs must reflect the problems of its residents, so must the vision and goals represent "marching orders" acceptable to the majority.

Here are some of the areas in which a community's vision and goals may be expressed. They are based, in part, on those identified in the National Bicycling and Walking Study. Naturally, specific community visions and goals may vary widely.

Beyond the warm fuzzies

Turning vague statements about improving a community's "bicycle-friendliness" into concrete steps often means defining terms and setting targets that, in some ways may seem arbitrary. For example, if a community's bicycling vision requires increasing bicycling by 10 percent, who's to say that 15 percent wouldn't be better?

The point of setting such targets, however, isn't whether they are 10 or 15, but, rather, that they are acceptable, identifiable, and achievable. If, through a public process, the community agrees to increase the overall number of miles bicycled by 10 percent by the year 2005, that is a clear statement of intent. By setting such an explicit goal, the community can then focus on the "how," that is, the objectives. Consider the following example:

Sample Goal: To increase the percentage of commuters who live within the community and who bicycle to work by 10% by the year 2005.

With such a target set, it's time to get serious about reaching it. Clearly, a vaguely defined and randomly applied program is not the way to get there! Here are a few examples of objectives that could help a community meet such a goal: Each of these objectives can (and should) be further refined to give more specific direction. And, by carefully crafting such objectives, it becomes easier to create clear measures of success. For instance, the objectives imply the need for data on the numbers of commuters who travel certain distances, the number who currently ride, etc. By gathering such data before starting and periodically checking on any changes, it becomes possible to both measure success and adjust one's efforts along the way to better reach the goal.

References:

Topics for further study:


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