Bicycle & Pedestrian Master Plan

Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan

Master Plan
Appendix 1 - Project List
Appendix 2 - Design Criteria (file size too large to attach)
Appendix 3 - Community Profiles
Appendix 4 - Existing Conditions/Needs Assessment

Alta Planning + Design completed the first City of Cape Coral Bike-Ped Master Plan, which provides City leaders and staff with a Complete Streets Implementation Strategy.  This plan was funded with a $150,000 grant provided by the Florida Department of Transportation through the Metropolitan Planning Organization.

The Bike-Ped Master Plan outlines a comprehensive strategy to improve the safety, convenience, and enjoyment of walking and biking in Cape Coral.  Specific goals within the plan:

• Achieve the Silver or Gold “Bicycle Friendly Community” designation from the League of American Bicyclists
• Achieve “Walk Friendly Community” designation by the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center
• Reduce the number of bicycle and pedestrian crashes by half within five years
• Reduce the share of all bicycle and pedestrian crashes in Cape Coral that occur along Del Prado Boulevard, Cape Coral Parkway, Santa Barbara Boulevard, and Pine Island Road from 50 percent to 25 percent within 10 years
• Double the combined walking, biking, and transit commute mode share to 3 percent within five years
• Create a 228-mile walkway network within 20 years
• Create 202-mile, on-street bikeway network within 20 years
• Create a 31-mile multi-use path network within 20 years

Based on these goals, the plan determined that Cape Coral needed an additional 93 centerline miles of sidewalks, 138 centerline miles of bike lanes, and 22 centerline miles of multi-use paths.  The total cost to accomplish these tasks is estimated at $63 million. 

Obviously, this would be a significant investment of funds. The City has been extremely successful in securing state and federal grants to improve its inventory of bike-ped facilities, averaging $2 million a year in the past five years.  For the next five-year period, the City has been awarded about $12 million in grants to build new sidewalks and a multi-use path.  

The City will continue pursuing grants, using the prioritized list of projects provided in the Master Plan as a guideline.  Concurrent with the grant-based bike-ped construction program, opportunities to expand our bike-ped inventory as recommended by the Master Plan will be evaluated during other City projects such as road resurfacing and utility extension.  The Parks and Recreation Master Plan also includes funding to provide bike-ped connections to the City’s parks and recreation system as part of the implementation strategy.