Salt Lake City Neighborhood Byways

What is a Neighborhood Byway?

Neighborhood Byways create pleasant and convenient routes for people using active modes of transportation by encouraging safe travel speeds, discouraging cut-through vehicle traffic, providing safe crossings of busy streets, and connecting people to destinations.

Few changes are needed on the quiet streets themselves; the network is realized by providing for safe, often signalized crossings at the major barrier streets, and reducing traffic volumes to make walking safer and more enjoyable. “Neighborhood byways” is a term recognizing that these corridors create a network for both pedestrians and bicyclists.

Street characteristics that make an ideal neighborhood byway:

Low traffic volumes

Low speeds – narrow streets and other characteristics that make driving fast in a vehicle feel uncomfortable

Direct connections between neighborhood destinations

Greening along the route – for example, street trees that provide shade

Improvements that make a street a neighborhood byway include bicycle and pedestrian crossing improvements (signals, crosswalks, curb extensions aka bulb-outs, curb ramps, signage, street markings, and other traffic calming techniques), way-finding signage, and connectivity enhancements to existing bicycle and pedestrian routes.