These days, people crave the ability to walk and bike places. They don’t want to get in their cars every time they need to go somewhere.

During the development of the county’s new comprehensive plan, Landscapes3, Chester County residents identified the need for more bicycle and pedestrian facilities in their communities. These facilities provide residents with greater mobility, multimodal transportation options, and additional recreational options all leading to the development of healthier communities.

To address this issue, the Chester County Planning Commission staff is working on an Active Transportation Municipal Ordinance Inventory and Outreach project. As part of the project, the Planning Commission will inventory all 73 Chester County municipalities, and the results will be used to target locations where active transportation facilities and the municipal ordinances that require and standardize such facilities are most needed. The Planning Commission’s efforts will be aided by ongoing Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission projects such as its sidewalk inventory and bicycle level-of-stress mapping.

The primary benefit to municipalities from this project and the technical assistance it provides will be the codification of active transportation elements into ordinance documents. The inclusion of active transportation elements within municipal ordinances will allow for this critical element of public infrastructure to be completed as part of the land development process. This inventory project is scheduled to be complete by the end of June 2020.