(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 546: Designing and Delivering Bike Networks

This week we’re joined by Ryan Russo, Executive Director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). Ryan shares with us more wisdom from the revised Urban Bikeway Design Guide and discusses the transformation of street systems and managing space for people and deliveries.

NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide Online | Physical Book

Urban Delivery by Bike Practitioner Paper

To listen to this episode, check out Streetsblog USA! or find it in our archive.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript of the episode:

Jeff Wood: Ryan Russo, welcome to the Talking Headways podcast.

Ryan Russo: Oh, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me and for having nato.

Jeff Wood: Yeah, thanks for being here. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Ryan Russo: I’m currently executive director of nato, the National Association of City Transportation Officials, but going backwards and getting here, I’m a urban planner by background. And have done most of my work in local government at ndo Member Cities. So I worked at the New York City Department of Transportation for almost 14 years during an era of significant transformation in the agency’s priorities.

So I joined, uh, around 2003. And was there working on livability, bicycle, pedestrian type work, and had a wonderful journey, including when kind of [00:03:00] NATO came to champion the work of prioritizing walking, biking transit, and was involved in the first Designing Cities conference in our first publications.

And after that period of time at New York City, DOTI was there also through the transition from Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Mayor Bill de Blassio and the amazing Commissioners. Jeanette Cytocon and Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, and then pivoting to the world of Vision Zero. But after that period, I moved.

To the other coast, to Oakland, California, where I became the first permanent director of the Oakland Department of Transportation, which was formed under the leadership of Mayor Libby Schaff. And the idea was to have Oakland also embrace what NATO is championing, using its right of way for walking, biking, prioritizing public transit affordability.

And so I did that for five years and then had a little bit of a transition since June of last year.

Jeff Wood: So what did you learn from your time on both [00:04:00] coasts and they must be very different experiences.

Ryan Russo: Yeah, I feel incredibly lucky for having been able to practice in very different contexts and we could spend the whole podcast on the learnings there.

There’s similarities and differences I think in all places. I think we’re all in this work to make positive change, and I think I learned in both places is that you need. A strong strategy for the fear and potential resistance to change, and that you need to be able to have open and deep conversations, not just with the people who believe in what you’re trying to achieve, but the people who are most skeptical.

So in a place like New York when we were doing something very high profile like closing Broadway at. Times Square and Herald Square and providing more public space for walking and biking. We also had a very solid mobility plan for all kinds of mobility, including traffic, a great traffic management plan, and in fact, that [00:05:00] program was called Green Light for Midtown out in Oakland on the west coast, where we’re working to prioritize communities that had been historically overlooked.

It was really important that we build trust and have deep conversation for people for whom a bike network. Or walkability might not be their first priority, even though that was sort of what the department was charged with. So having that broader conversation and you know, being willing to talk about broader topics and be listening and, and open-minded, empathetic and humble in the approach, we’re sort of keys to success in both places.

What are the skeptics often

Jeff Wood: saying?

Ryan Russo: Oh, well there’s, there’s a wide variety of skeptics and I think part of my advice is to actually listen more closely. ’cause they can be kind of typecast, there can be sort of like the stereotypical skeptic and yeah, sure. There’s. Similarities in the conversations in cities around the country.

So, you know, concerns about parking, [00:06:00] concerns about traffic congestion are sort of the, the typical, and you often hear that, but like at the root of it, you can have a diverse set of concerns that you want to incorporate into your work. It might be concern about their travel time and their ability to get to work or school.

There could be concerns around displacement and change in housing costs. From the resulting investments that you’re working to plan with, so it runs the whole gamut.

Jeff Wood: One of the things I wanted to chat with you about is how streets are just getting more complicated. They’re for transportation of many things, rainwater, electricity, telecommunications, fresh air freight, not least people and most places active modes are last on the list for space designation, and we’re gaining ground, but we have a long way to go.

And I wanna get your thoughts on the streets as a place where people exist and what are places in them.

Ryan Russo: Yeah. So I mean, that’s really what this work. NATO is championing is all about and sort of the through line of my career that I’ve been fortunate to work [00:07:00] on. And I think the focus that NATO brings is that people come first in that and that people can often be forgotten in the allocation of the public right of way.

But that does go hand in hand with, there’s a lot of things that our right of way needs to accomplish and you know, we often forget that it’s carrying our water and our wastewater. Underneath. It’s often carrying, you know, our electricity. It’s doing lots of different things. It’s the front door for our businesses and communities and our commerce, but it’s also, you know, a place where movement has to take place.

So it’s both the place where people need access and a place that needs to help. Get people from A to B. So the quote unquote balancing act needs to happen, but there’s clearly a need for a rebalancing and a reprioritization, and I think that’s what we’ve seen Our member cities do well and often have very difficult conversations about the resistance because of, for a long time we’ve sort [00:08:00] of put on top the single occupant vehicle and its ability to go from A to B and forgotten about that, need that role about place and about people.

Jeff Wood: What’s different now than, you know, maybe when you first started and maybe even well, from the first Nectar Bike Guide to today’s Nectar bike guide, there must be like a sea change in terms of how you’re dealing with that combination of factors.

Ryan Russo: Yeah, absolutely. I think like one having examples in the original bike guide era, it was, you know, pilots and having these examples were great kind of inspiration.

And we’ve evolved from, we’re seeing the evolution in our cities from pilots to programs and that’s what you know as we’ll get into in the Urban Bikeway design guide, a lot of what. We’re sort of advising on and providing guidance and expertise on is that our member communities have been evolving from, trying something out to integrating it into how they work as an agency.

And we’ve seen as the more examples and projects have been delivered. More and [00:09:00] more buy-in from communities in particular. You know, the pandemic of course played a huge role in helping the small business and local business community be more bought in to streets as places and the inefficiency of the park single occupant vehicle there for a long duration, that having restaurant seating, public space activation that can really support small businesses.

So that’s been a big change.

Jeff Wood: We recently had Bill Hilta on to talk about the Aashto bike guide and the NATO bike guide and the improvements to both. But I’m wondering from your perspective as one of the technical consultants on the project before coming, director of NATO, on how people are responding to the new guide, how you are feeling about the completion of the guide and how people are using it now, as you mentioned in, in your previous answer.

Ryan Russo: Yeah. Well first I’m glad you mentioned Bill. I was just at the ITE annual meeting with Bill, and I’ve known Bill a long time and we’re so lucky to have him in the field and to be one of the authors of the ASTO Bike design Guide. Bill’s been just an amazing champion and designer and [00:10:00] one of the foremost protected bike lane and bikeway designers in the country.

My role as an advisor in the Urban Bikeway Design Guide was more on the sort of the front matter of the guide, which is sort of the how to and the big picture planning and organizational development that’s in the guide, and that’s something I’d love to highlight a little bit, which is, broadly.

This guide compared to prior additions has gone from sort of a, a kit of parts, you know, the ingredients in the recipe of your design to the how to guide. It’s sort of the steps in the recipe to actually put those ingredients together to end up with the outcome that we want, which is, you know, a safe, accessible, equitable.

Bike networks for your entire community. So the guide does start with, you know, significant, detailed advice on not just how kind of the project planner can move forward on, say, community [00:11:00] engagement, then planning, design and delivery. But how a city and community. As a whole can do that. And so, there’s really great content.

You know, I would love your listeners to sort of share this guide with their city council people and with their mayors. ’cause there’s incredible guidance on how to build a team and an organization that can move from. The pilot project, like let’s do one of these things in an area where it might be acceptable and might be well received and have one ribbon cutting to building that network.

’cause we’re not gonna get the ridership and the usage from. That pilot project. So what you see in that sort of first section of the guide is how to build a fully successful bike program. There’s one page that’s one of my favorites in section 2.3. It’s called From Projects to Networks Building a [00:12:00] Successful Bike Program.

But it covers, you know, in two pages, one, spread what your organization needs to have from a human resources, a people perspective, a policy perspective, the engagement skills, the planning skills, the design and delivery capacity that you need to have, and the ability to evaluate your projects so you can be a learning organization.

And for each of those areas, it describes sort of the beginner. Intermediate and advanced level, what level you could be at. And so it’s almost like a board game where you can assess your city and be like, are we at level one, two, or three in this area? And how do we get to the next level in each of those areas?

And if you do get yourself to level three in all of those areas, you get to the advanced, you’re really gonna be cooking. And in 10 years you’re gonna have that. Complete bike network for all ages and abilities that so many of us would love to see and that we think would really benefit entire communities.[00:13:00]

Jeff Wood: I wanna chat about a couple things, including that, all ages and abilities, and I think that that’s an important part of this discussion. You know, bill and I talked a little bit about the past and the history of bike design and the movements that have happened before the current one, but I’m also interested because it’s kind of changed.

It feels like because of the introduction of new modes, the introduction of faster modes, the introduction of different size of vehicles that can possibly be included in this all ages and ability. And so I wanna talk with you about that, the evolution of that idea from something that. I feel like is just making sure that everybody has access to the bike lanes and safely, like where our kids can ride in the bike lanes and stuff like that, to this whole kind of new thing that’s been evolving with all of the delivery systems and everything else.

And so that evolution is really fascinating. I think it’s really important to have that discussion.

Ryan Russo: Yeah, so the guide has a number of areas where it provides key advice in this. First is, you know, it’s not just about markings and wits, it’s about, you know, designing for a diversity of speeds of the [00:14:00] users.

So there’s strong encouragement around wider facilities. The ability to do side by side riding, the ability to do passing and making it sort of inclusive from a vehicle mix type. And then there’s the need to be more inclusive from just a ages, abilities, backgrounds, feelings of safety, and approaches around community engagement.

That can really, again, get you building the network. In every part of your city as opposed to sort of the place where maybe some select bike advocates live. So there’s guidance there, and I would be remiss not to mention that so much of this comes from, you know, the process that Nado used to develop this.

This comes from the leading edge cities around the country who are doing this. You know, we have a working group of practitioners around the country. So you’ve seen wider bike lanes happen in New York City. You’ve seen these innovations around planning that [00:15:00] are profiled, you know, in Seattle. So those best practices sort of come together and they get in our guide.

And then, you know, to your point around adoption, our guide came out in January. We’ve trying to get it as much attention and fanfare as possible, but I travel around the country to transportation events and I constantly hear from. Consultants, academics, sort of non-members of the NATO community, how important this resource is for them, and how excited they are that it has been updated and refreshed and that they’re putting it to use.

And you know, we’re very proud that. The book itself is beautiful and it’s very affordable. It’s just, uh, $50. So strongly encourage more physical books, but we also have all of the content available on our [email protected] that you can access because we want this to be adopted. So we are seeing that. And then NATO is building training and [00:16:00] best practices for our membership.

So we just announced that we’re gonna have a fall training series. With case studies from our member cities and going through the content of the guide to really help sort of again, put accelerant on these best practices that came from our member cities, and then go back to them with our members and spread to, you know, our now over 100 member agencies throughout North America.

Jeff Wood: There’s a lot of great design advice in there in the guide, and as you mentioned, there’s a lot of stuff online as well, so people don’t need to own the book to go and check it out. And I’ll have some of the links to the stuff that we’re talking about specifically in the show notes, but there’s stuff like the width and the speed and the turning radius, the different types of new vehicles and old vehicles.

But one of the best discussions about kind of this design specs for platooning and riding side by side, as you mentioned, because I feel like biking’s to be social and a lot of the times if we’re riding with friends, especially in cities that only have like the one lane bike lane or the. Thin bike lane.

Yeah, you’re usually like talking over your shoulder or trying to yell into the wind, and that’s really frustrating. So can you talk a little bit about this social [00:17:00] aspect of cycling together and designing streets for that aspect of it?

Ryan Russo: Yeah, I am a regular rider and I’m very familiar with that dynamic when you’re excited to be with someone and connect with someone, and one of the beautiful things about walking and cycling is the sort of, you’re not encased and isolated in steel and glass and you can interact with the streetscape.

You can easily stop at a business and why. You know, studies have shown bike networks are great for local businesses, and so. In this era of more isolation and loneliness, like connection is very important and we do strongly encourage. Not just wider bike lanes, which can allow for that. We, you know, we wanna see side by side cycling, but there’s a lot in the guide around sort of slower speed facilities and encouraging in all the design tools to get speeds down so that you can have what some cities call bike boulevards or neighborhood greenways that we can have slower streets where you don’t [00:18:00] necessarily need a dedicated facility for those lower volume, those neighborhood connectors.

So that again, that side by side riding. Becomes not just feasible but accepted so that we can have enough design cues out there, whether that’s diagonal, diverters, or neighborhood traffic circles that make it so that the motorist sort of comes up behind you and is designed to a speed that it accepts that there’s two people biking side by side.

So you see it both in the sort of. Bigger streets, designs that we’re suggesting in the guide, but also in those neighborhood greenways and bike boulevards.

Jeff Wood: And how does that kind of reconcile with this inclusion of also the vehicles that are accelerating faster these days? The overall speed might not be the biggest thing, but the acceleration of electric scooters and electric bikes might be a different aspect to that because the regular bikes versus the E-bikes and the e scooters is a little bit different.

And to contain those into the system overall.

Ryan Russo: Yeah, I think the guide. Just stepping [00:19:00] back a little bit, like the guide provides a lot of good decision making frameworks, but you know, we have to remember, I think like prior design guides sort of imagined a world of tabular rasa where you’re designing sim cities and you know, building highways, you know, you get to have your minimum lane widths, et cetera.

Like our members, you know, cities are built places in which they’re making lots of trade offs. And so what we’re providing is guidance on helping them make those trade-offs and those decisions, and that there’s probably, you know, a lot of times where you’re not gonna be able to make things kind of perfect and exactly to the width you want.

So we do kind of counsel to understand the difference in speed and understand that in the design, I will say, you know, a lot of our cities are struggling with the higher speeds of delivery and e-bikes and the prevalence of, you know, app-based. Delivery. And you know, at some point there’s this threshold where a e-bike becomes the equivalent of a motorcycle or a moped, and those really need to [00:20:00] be in the general traffic lanes.

And we should have complete street designs in which the general traffic lanes are sort of safe enough and managed enough so that the mopeds and motorcycles of the world, however that’s defined, feel comfortable in the general traffic lanes and aren’t ultimately in the bike lanes.

Jeff Wood: It’s interesting split.

We had Lee Waters and, and Jennifer Ken on it a little while ago to talk about Wales’ move towards 20 mile per hour speed limits and the safety that comes from that. And I’m wondering if it would just be easier to design streets for those safer modes if the speed limits just came down or we fixed it in that type of fashion.

Ryan Russo: Yeah, I mean, I think outside of the bike guide, you know, NATO’s been a leader around safe speed limits and appropriate speed limits, and we’ve seen, again, NATO members take the lead in getting speed limits down in urban context, which I think will, will do more for getting the motorcycles and mopeds in general traffic lanes.

You can think of it as even a, a hierarchy too. Back to bike boulevards and there’s [00:21:00] sort of steps that you’re making in which it’s really important when, at the moment on a lot of bigger streets to have that protected space for cycling. But as the vehicle mix changes, right, and if you get speeds down and you have a real downtown context, there’s a time when the mix becomes, the cyclists are kind of part of the whole street and are safe and comfortable in all ages and abilities on a street without having sort of the.

The separation. Right? And that’s something for kind of the desire to choose in every single context, but also like a vision we can have.

Jeff Wood: What’s interesting to me to think about is also you have a lot of good plans for thinking about networks, right? And the guide discusses that, but then this new idea of e-commerce and you know, delivery systems that are coming on bikes more often than maybe they were before, it makes that discussion of a network more interesting or at least more difficult because.

You also have to have this discussion of where is like the freight network, right? So there’s a bike network for individuals, but then there’s the packages and the deliveries and [00:22:00] the things like that. And so how does that change the discussion of bike networks from your perspective and from the perspective of the guide?

Ryan Russo: So something important to note that the bike network planners in our cities have known, you know, since I was one of them years ago, is that these corridor redesign projects often were curb management. Projects as well, and that they involved door-to-door outreach with local businesses around their delivery and access needs.

And what you often found was that excess space you needed to sort of create something like a protected bike lane was currently used by a double parked vehicle or a delivery truck because the curb wasn’t very well managed and there was sort of long-term parking at the curb and then the second lane of parking.

Where the deliveries and drop offs took place, and this is, you know, pre Uber and Lyft and DoorDash, et cetera. So often the projects needed to come with a curb [00:23:00] management plan to add parking meters or loading zones, and to better manage the curb to make sure that businesses needs were met with the newly reallocated space.

So NATO really has recognized this and our planners and, and project managers have recognized this, but this work needs to kind of continually be updated for everything that’s happening. And so, you know, we’ve got the work going on with our curb management working group in which we’re updating and highlighting the best practices around.

Better managed curbs and integrating freight and mobility hubs. And again, our, our members are leading the way with things like mobility hubs. We’re seeing more partnership with sort of the freight industry around, you know, using e cargo bikes or quad cycles, if you will, for that last mile. So it’s getting more complicated and more intense as we all become much more reliant on delivery.

But we have a foundation that we’re [00:24:00] building on.

Jeff Wood: I was looking through the Urban delivery by bike practitioner paper, which is another interesting edition that’s not in the guide, but it’s on your website. I found the delivery stages instructive and useful, not only to think about like, curb and loading of transportation facilities, but also just thinking about kind of the mixture of the two.

The delivery and loading part of it is still really hard to reconcile because like you said, like you wanna put the bike lane in that curb space, but then you also have all these deliveries happening. You have loading zones, you have deliver zones, you have different types of parcels and packages. You have the individuals who want their food delivered.

Yeah. Versus like the business who needs, all of their, their stuff from the warehouse to get to their, their store. So all of this stuff just adds more complexity to the street. The street is everything for everyone. And so, yeah, we need to organize it in a way that works for people. And so some of that frustration during the design process probably comes from that, the needs of all the people on the street.

Ryan Russo: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think. Urban streets have always been, you know, at their best a ballet [00:25:00] of many different activities. And this is just a new, a new type of dancer being introduced. But I think like when we keep in mind that need for just diversity from the outset. As opposed to homogeneity, which was like what we kind of moved to in a North American street design, where it’s like everything’s in a car and everything’s at a high speed.

When we get those speeds down, even though it can kind of look quite scary to have all of those uses happening in a place when we keep the speeds down of the motor vehicles of the cyclists. Pedestrians are inherently lower speed. If we keep the speeds all closer to one another, we find that more uses can be accommodated.

The diversity of uses can be accommodated that city streets really need to achieve both local business access, economic activity, and movement. It’s when we emphasize higher speed and motor vehicles in a more homogeneous way, that kind of activity becomes quite hard to accommodate. [00:26:00]

Jeff Wood: It also brings a new importance to like bike parking too, or parking the vehicles because you know, there’s a lot of need.

If you have a lot more bikes, you have a lot more need to put them places on the street or on the sidewalk or in, off street facilities.

Ryan Russo: Yeah, and that’s sort of the, the challenge of the moment is the fact that we can articulate the benefits and there’s lots of demand now for the urban curb and there can be great technical tools and great ideas for how to use that space, but there’s something that’s using that space.

Now and is how do we sort of have the conversation about successfully making that shift from what it’s being used for now to what we think will be beneficial to all, to what we want to see it used for in the future.

Jeff Wood: What are cities telling you now that they’re frustrated by, in terms of bikes, in terms of deliveries, in terms of all the things that are happening in the streets?

Ryan Russo: Well, I think that people are, people in cities throughout the country are quite stressed, right? There’s just a [00:27:00] lot. We have an affordability crisis that transportation is part of. You know, auto dependence is expensive. Housing’s gotten quite expensive, so people are, are frustrated and they’re quite concerned with any changes, how they might be kind of the straw that breaks the camels back.

So it’s been hard for leaders to get the buy-in to the vision of. Kind of multimodal systems that would ultimately prove to be save people time and save people money. I think as people are focused on making ends meet, it’s hardest sort of to get this vision and these steps prioritized at this moment.

So both at a kind of a federal level and a local level, I think it’s been, it’s been more challenging to make the case for this kind of work.

Jeff Wood: The federal level is kind of a tough spot right now, so I, I think the state and local levels are kind of where the action’s at, I’d imagine.

Ryan Russo: Yeah, and you [00:28:00] know, as much as there are challenges when we talk to our members, you know, something super interesting we’ve heard is that cities are often in a bit of a, a.

Minor position relative to like regions and states, their NPOs and the state dots. But some of the challenges that are being experienced at the federal level are putting cities, NPOs, and states in the same boat and they’re sort of finding common cause to solve problems together. So that might be one of the silver linings of the current moment that again, we see in, in certain cases that we’d like to see happen in a lot more cases.

Jeff Wood: Are there any places that you take inspiration from inside of the United States or, or even around the world? I know for myself, I was in China in early 2024 and it’s crazy how much bike infrastructure they have, and it’s not just bike infrastructure. It’s wide space is almost like the size of a car lane, maybe even bigger for.

Three wheel electrics, two wheel electrics, bikes, everything. And so, you know, there’s a lot of auto dependence there in terms of like, there’s a lot of car growth [00:29:00] and stuff. Yeah. And you can see this from the electric vehicle discussions we’re having at the national level. But there was just so much attention to these modes and deliveries specifically.

I mean, there are delivery people everywhere. Mm-hmm. On the sidewalks, on they, they had bridges and Shenzhen that were just for electric bikes and things like that. And so I’m wondering if you take. Uh, you know, interest in places around the world that are doing really interesting things.

Ryan Russo: Yeah, I think this is maybe where I would give a bit of a disappointing answer in that like, I’m inspired by our North American cities and members who are, you know, working in challenging context.

And I, I think you can find inspiration in so many of our different contexts, whether big cities, small cities, and red states, blue states, purple states. There’s really a lot. Happening, you know, maybe they don’t have the complete network and it’s not, you know, the picture perfect Parisian transformation yet.

But, you know, I, I’m inspired by the work Columbus Ohio’s doing, and Chicago, Illinois. You know, we’ve got [00:30:00] Anchorage as a NCO member figuring out protected bike lanes and how to keep them plowed. So we go from Anchorage to Atlanta. You know, we go from Milwaukee to Mesa, Arizona all came to our Designing Cities conference in May in Washington DC and had just, lots of inspirational successes that they’re looking again to do more of, to share with the NDO network and to get more cities on board doing this work.

Jeff Wood: There’s a benefit to that too, right? Because I mentioned China, but I also am interested to hear the ones in, in North America, there’s a benefit to having the smaller cities talk with the other smaller cities. I know in planning generally, you know when people would talk about, like Portland, there’s a lot of cities that are like, well, we’re not Portland or Austin even.

We’re not Austin, we’re not this, we’re not that. But then. If you have so many cities doing things, the smaller cities, midsize cities, larger cities, then they can look at their peers and if Anchorage, Alaska is someone that people look up to, then that’s even better because you have so many opportunities to share best practices with folks around the country.

Ryan Russo: Absolutely. And you know, something that people might not realize [00:31:00] is there is a significant number of NTO members, people really believing in this vision in the state of Florida. Um, it’s one of our biggest states and I just came back from the ITE annual meeting in Orlando and you know, got a bike tour of the Baldwin Park, new urbanist neighborhood that has matured into an incredible.

Walking, biking neighborhood with very little vehicle miles traveled in which there was the story of one of the engineers who worked on the development of the neighborhood decided to live in the neighborhood and then raised his son in the neighborhood. And he was on the tour with us because growing up in a neighborhood where he had that independence inspired him to become.

An engineer and a bike network planner to try to make sure more people have access to these kinds of communities and ways of living.

Jeff Wood: Last question for you. I know there’s just so much stuff in the book and we’re not gonna be able to cover all of it ’cause there’s just so much, but what’s something [00:32:00] that surprised you about the process going around and talking about the book, talking with different folks about it, talking with folks about bike networks, about bikes and infrastructure in that way.

I’m curious what’s been interesting or what’s been maybe surprising about the discussions that you’ve had?

Ryan Russo: I think there’s real excitement about the ability of these sort of techniques and approaches to do more than just facilitate. Trips on bicycle, right. I think that if you go through our guide, and it’s called the Urban Bikeway Design Guide, but it’s really, I think now the preeminent sort of planning textbook, if you will, around transforming your entire street system in partnership with community.

Making sure you’re having those difficult conversations with historically underserved communities and that ultimately developing the bike network is not just about the bike. It’s about sort of this holistic vision for economically vibrant, connected, [00:33:00] diverse. Places that can meet their needs, whether that’s, you know, saving money, getting to school, getting to a job.

And I think that I’m seeing more and more recognition about that bigger picture that this works towards. And, what makes me really excited about this, in essence textbook, is that it just achieves. A lot of technical details that an engineer will love to see around signal timing, intersection design and control, and turning radius as you mentioned, but also very high level visionary inspiring.

You know, it’s a beautiful book and has that, again, those leadership traits and community planning principles and approaches that you need to kind of get there so that. That engineer can then draw and design and send to a, a striping truck to implement on your street.

Jeff Wood: Where can folks find the NATO Urban Bikeway Design Guide?

Ryan Russo: We have a really clean, beautiful, [00:34:00] redesigned website. It’s just nato.org and our publications are easy to find right there. You can get links to purchasing the physical copy of the book. It’s published by Island Press if you use code. UBDG three at the Island Press website, you can still get 20% off that already affordable, 50% price.

You know, the physical copy is the Zoom background of 2025 and 2026. So, you know, you can show your credentials having that physical book on your bookshelf behind you. I have all my DTO guides right there. There it is. There it is. All right. You’re, you’re in the club. The content of the Guide is available on our website in sort of web friendly format, [email protected].

So it’s available there as a resource. And we know so many practitioners all over the world come to our website to access it. But we do strongly encourage the purchase of the physical book. Barnes and Noble is thriving. People are [00:35:00] buying books, and we think the physical book will probably serve you best in this case as well.

Jeff Wood: Awesome. And where can folks find you if you wish to be found?

Ryan Russo: [email protected] is uh, an email address to connect with us. If you go to ndo.org, I think every page of our website has the ability to subscribe to our email list in which we share monthly updates on what’s happening in the NATO community, and also strongly encourage people to connect.

On LinkedIn, following NATO on LinkedIn and following myself. I’m often posting kind of updates as I go around the country to places like the ITE annual meeting. I would love to be connected on LinkedIn as well. Awesome.

Jeff Wood: Well, Ryan, thanks for joining us. We really appreciate your time.

Ryan Russo: Thanks so much for having me.

It was great being here and keep up the great work

Hey everybody. Thanks for listening this far past the credits. If you’re here, I just wanna say thank you to all of our generous Patreon supporters, especially those in our $10 Dallas tier and above. I just want to share their names, first names only, of course. But I figured this is long overdue that I, that I let folks, uh, know that their, support is much appreciative.

Obviously all the tiers are very appreciative, but, uh, this group has gone, uh, above and beyond over the years and I really appreciate that. Andrew, Ben, Derek. Gabrielle, Glenn, Greg, James, Jeremy, [00:37:00] Jim, Joseph, Katherine, Mao, Marcus, Matthew, Mike, Nicholas, Oliver, Steve, Abraham, Abby, ed, and Matthew. We really appreciate you and just can’t say enough about how much the support from you all and everybody else on Patreon has really helped us out.

So I just wanted to say a quick thank you to everybody and yeah, so we’ll see you next time.