Designing Streets in Practice, Insights from the NACTO Designing Cities Conference

New York and Washington, D.C., are well-known for being bikeable cities, with New York in particular acting as a kind of giant urban sandbox to try new things in the form of pilot projects. In May 2025, Khal Joyce went to both of these cities in conjunction with attending the NACTO Designing Cities Conference. This offered a chance to observe how leading U.S. cities are reimagining their streets through fast, low-cost, and adaptive design, and to connect those observations with broader conversations shaping transportation best practices across North America.

Small Design Moves Can Meaningfully Change Behaviour

Smaller interventions, such as centreline hardening, further reinforce slower vehicle speeds and safer turning behaviour. In one observed case, a driver maneuvered awkwardly through a crossing to avoid speed bumps, unintentionally slowing down in the process. While this was not the intended driving path, it serves as a reminder that designs should anticipate these edge cases and ensure they do not introduce new safety risks.

Maintaining Connectivity, Even During Construction

Temporary infrastructure is used extensively to maintain connectively across bike networks, even during construction. Detours are common, sometimes elegant and sometimes improvised, but generally designed to keep people walking and biking moving through disrupted corridors rather than deprioritizing them.

Reclaiming Spaces

Adaptive reallocation of space is most visible along Broadway Street in New York, where entire corridors have been converted into bike boulevards. Painted curb extensions, plazas, and street furniture reclaim large amounts of space for people, and vehicle access is heavily restricted to one way access or removed altogether. Quick build plazas appear throughout the city, often using simple materials such as paint, planters, and seating, yet they are vibrant and well used, demonstrating that impactful public spaces do not always require large budgets.

Quick Build Transit Infrastructure is Evolving

In both cities, quick-build island platform bus stops are also becoming increasingly more common. NACTO conference sessions highlighted the importance of accessibility at these stops, while also acknowledged that there is still work to be done. The platforms themselves are highly adaptable, with gutter sections that can be lifted to allow for maintenance and debris removal.

New York’s approach to quick build infrastructure often relies on materials readily available, including planters, orange barriers, concrete blocks and flex posts. While the results are not always elegant, the approach is fast, cheap, and effective at changing behaviour. At the same time, not every intervention is perfect. Some bike facilities abruptly end or blend into pedestrian zones, reinforcing the idea that quick-build programs are iterative and require ongoing monitoring and adjustment.

Tradeoffs in Quick Builds

In some cases, speed of implementation comes with tradeoffs, such as delivery vehicles blocking bike lanes or lane widths that seem uncomfortably narrow. These challenges require active management over time. Both cities have upgraded some corridors with more permanent infrastructure, presumably timed with major road and utility projects or as part of development frontages. Even so, the sheer volume of quick build projects is striking, and the impact is clear: bikes are everywhere.

Small Meaningful Observations

Beyond formal infrastructure, several small observations stood out. New York lacks curbside bins, resulting in garbage piling up along sidewalks on collection day, a notable contrast to many Canadian cities. Despite otherwise progressive street designs, some curb ramps remain inaccessible, introducing barriers for people with mobility challenges. Contraflow bike lanes on one-way streets are common. While they are not always designed for riders of all ages and abilities and often serve as informal waiting areas for vehicles, they are generally functional within the broader network.

In addition, the use of flashing amber arrows for permissive turning movements stood out. Unlike static yield signage, they actively signal caution, and drivers at one observed intersection appeared noticeably more attentive when turning. It’s a small detail that could be worth exploring in Canadian cities.

Conference Takeaways

The NACTO Designing Cities Conference in Washington, D.C. reinforced many of the themes observed on the ground.

The Designing Bikeable Intersections workshop discussed highlighted guidance from the from the Urban Bikeway Design Guide on when protected signal phasing is appropriate. They also emphasized the importance of turn calming treatments when movements are not protected, particularly for increasingly common bi-directional bike facilities on constrained streets as well as the importance of turn calming treatments when movements are not protected.

Discussions also explored the concept of designing for “managed vehicle”, focusing on the most common larger vehicles, such as garbage or delivery trucks, rather than infrequent control vehicles. NACTO encourages the use of mountable elements, excluding buses, to allow for more flexible curb and intersection geometry while keeping turning speeds low.

Accessibility was another topic explored throughout the conference, with meaningful discussion around tactile warning delineators and the design of floating bus stops. Municipal perspectives shared during theses sessions offered valuable insights into what is working, where challenges remain, and how best practices continue to evolve.

A separate session focused on recent federal level changes in the U.S., including mass layoffs during the Department of Government Efficiency period, and how these decisions can ripple down to municipalities, particularly through grant funding. While the context differs in Canada, the discussion highlighted how cities are responding, including the importance of moving quickly to use available funding and capitalizing on opportunities to recruit experienced public sector staff.

Together, these conversations provided a clearer picture of how cities are experimenting with fast, adaptable approaches to street design and how applying lessons from both implementation and policy to improve the streetscape.