National Association of City Transportation Officials

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "National Association of City Transportation Officials" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "National Association of City Transportation Officials" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

National Association of City Transportation Officials

Abbreviation	NACTO
Formation	1996; 28 years ago (1996)
Founder	Elliot Sander
Type	Non-profit association
Purpose	Transportation engineering
Headquarters	New York City, New York (State)
Location	120 Park Avenue 21st Floor New York, NY 10017
Region	United States, Canada and Mexico
Membership (2019)	82 Total 25 Member cities 41 Affiliate member cities 11 Transit agency members 5 International members
Chair	Janette Sadik-Khan, Principal, Bloomberg Associates
President	Seleta Reynolds, General Manager, Los Angeles Department of Transportation
Affiliations	Member Cities
Website	nacto.org

The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) is a coalition of the Departments of Transportation in North American cities.

Founded in 1996, NACTO has participated in a number of research initiatives dealing with surface transportation in urban areas. Past campaigns have focused on bicycling, bus rapid transit, light rail, bike share, and freight. Its design guides have gained the endorsement of numerous cities, states, and other organizations, in addition to gaining FHWA acceptance for use in conjunction with other mandated guidance and resources.^[1] NACTO is headquartered in New York City.

Since 2012, NACTO has held an annual Designing Cities Conference, convening hundreds of "transportation leaders and practitioners from across the country to discuss key trends in urban street design and transportation policy."

Conference sites

• 2012: New York City
• 2013: Phoenix
• 2014: San Francisco
• 2015: Austin
• 2016: Seattle
• 2017: Chicago
• 2018: Los Angeles
• 2019: Toronto
• 2022: Boston (postponed from 2020)
• 2023: Denver

In October 2014, the Global Designing Cities Initiative was launched as a subsidiary of NACTO to bring guidance for safe streets to an international audience. It focuses on the critical role of streets within urban environments in cities around the world. The Initiative was announced at NACTO's 2014 Designing Cities Conference in San Francisco.^[2]

The initiative will work especially close with the 10 cities chosen to be a focus of the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety: Accra, Addis Ababa, Bandung, Bangkok, Bogotá, Fortaleza, Ho Chi Minh City, Mumbai, São Paulo, and Shanghai.

The NACTO Bike Share initiative aims to strengthen bike sharing programs in its member cities, with a focus on improving social equity impact and reaching underrepresented groups. The Bike Share initiative provides bike share program managers and cities with best-practices research as well as a forum to exchange knowledge.

NACTO's Design Guides provide innovative street design guidelines, made specifically for urban settings.

In March 2011 the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide, part of the Cities for Cycling initiative, was officially released. Janette Sadik-Khan, the New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner, announced the release at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C.^[3] The Bikeway Design Guide provides technical guidance on over twenty different bicycle infrastructure designs. These include buffered bike lanes, cycle tracks, advanced stop line (bike boxes), and several other treatments which have not been officially adopted into AASHTO or MUTCD manuals. Many of these designs have already been implemented in cities across the United States and are widely used in Europe and Canada. Bicycle facilities from New York City and Portland, Oregon, are heavily featured in the guide, though case studies from cities all throughout the United States are represented as well. A second edition was released in 2014.

The NACTO Transit Street Design Guide, showcasing how to improve transit using innovative street design, was published in April 2015.^[4]

Membership is open to cities in the US, Canada, and Mexico. Full member cities must have more than 400,000 residents or be the core city in a metropolitan statistical area with at least 2 million people. Affiliate membership is offered to cities with fewer than 400,000 residents.

In 2013, NACTO began an international membership, which five cities are members of as of 2019. This uses slightly different metrics: A minimum of 900,000 city population or metropolitan area of at least 2 million for full membership; and a minimum of requiring a minimum of 300,000 for affiliate membership.^[5]

NACTO bylaws also offer affiliate membership to cities with more than 300,000 residents that are secondary cities in an MSA with a larger core city (e.g. Oakland, where San Francisco is the core city in its MSA).^[6]

In 2015, NACTO began offering affiliate membership for transit agencies.^[7] As of May 2019, there are 25 member cities, 41 Affiliate member cities, 11 transit agency members and 5 international members.^[8]

Affiliate member cities

Transit Agency Members

International Members

NACTO's executive board is made up of four elected full Member representatives, one Affiliate Member representative, and the Chair of the Strategic Advisory Board. The executive board is elected by NACTO member city representatives.

• American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials
• Adventure Cycling Association
• Bikeway safety
• Cycling infrastructure
• History of cycling infrastructure
• National cycling route network
• United States Bicycle Route System