College Station Planning and Zoning Commission recommends new Active Transportation Master Plan

The College Station Planning and Zoning Commission recommended that City Council consider adopting a new Active Transportation Master Plan, which would repeal the city’s 2010 bicycle, pedestrian and greenways master plan and establish updated priorities for bike, pedestrian and micromobility facilities.

Jesse Dimolo, with the city’s Transportation and Mobility team in Planning and Development Services, presented the 156‑page plan and told commissioners the planning effort began in fall 2024 and included corridor feasibility studies, an open house and more than 550 community touchpoints through surveys, public meetings and digital outreach. “Attendees have been very engaged and provided lots of feedback,” Dimolo said.

The plan is organized into six chapters that lay out the plan foundation, people‑movement analysis, needs assessment, system design, policy and programs, and implementation. Staff highlighted four areas of change since the draft: clarifying the active transportation definition, adding shared micromobility guidance and geofence mapping, improving crash‑data tables, and adding NACTO to the design guidance list. The plan identifies roughly six priority mode corridors around campus, including Welsh, Rock Prairie, Texas Avenue and others, and lists more than a dozen crossing and intersection improvements such as refuge islands, curb extensions, raised crosswalks and protected intersections.

Commissioners pressed staff on how projects would be prioritized and funded. Dimolo said project prioritization uses a weighting system in which safety is a key factor and that projects scoring high on crash maps and on prioritized corridors would rank higher. He said preliminary cost estimates for typical sidewalk segments and shared‑use paths had been developed, but detailed intersection improvement costs would be produced as part of the action‑item analysis after project identification.

Questions about right‑of‑way constraints prompted staff to describe typical remedies such as road diets and curb reconfiguration to create space for bike and pedestrian facilities. On enforcement and micromobility, Dimolo noted the police department has provided citation data and that a micromobility workshop item is scheduled before City Council on June 11. He said chapter 6 of the plan includes education programs and speed‑management actions to accompany physical improvements.

The item was scheduled for public hearing and no members of the public signed up to speak. The commission closed the hearing, moved to recommend approval and approved the recommendation by voice vote. Dimolo said the BPG advisory board recommended approval on May 11 and that City Council is scheduled to consider final adoption next week.

The commission’s recommendation forwards the plan to City Council for final action; staff said further cost estimates, project‑level engineering and funding strategies will follow project identification and public review.