Pinellas County will have a safe, connected and comfortable active transportation network, which is community fostered and in harmony with all travel modes, and that advances an efficient, productive, and healthy mobility system for all users.
Pinellas County is home to many eclectic neighborhoods, thriving downtown, sugar sand beaches, pristine natural habitats, and has a strong economic base of manufacturing and corporate headquarters. Our residents and visitors expect robust, efficient, and cost-effective multimodal transportation facilities and services that are connected to various destinations.
By 2040, Pinellas County is projected to add over 63,000 new people and over 49,000 new jobs. That is a significant amount of growth given the changing landscape of development and redevelopment activity in a largely built-out county. Part of the mobility strategy for accommodating this growth is to plan for more strategic investments in pedestrian and bicycle networks to serve a wide variety of trip purposes.
As part of the Advantage Pinellas effort, Forward Pinellas developed a new countywide Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan branded as Advantage Pinellas: Active Transportation Plan. This plan offers actionable, multimodal strategies to achieve improved bicycle and pedestrian mobility in Pinellas County.
The planning effort was undertaken to identify current conditions, gaps, and opportunities for increasing active transportation options throughout the county. The new plan was developed in partnership with local agencies to create a safer and more accessible bicycle and pedestrian network.
Pinellas County desires a Regional Active Transportation Network that:
To assist with the development of a community supported vision, goals, and performance measures, development of the Active Transportation Plan relied on a variety of public engagement tools. This included online mapping, interactive polling, and three in-person work sessions to gain a better understanding of the community’s priorities regarding the current and future active transportation network.
Local government and other project stakeholders gathered at the Forward Pinellas Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) and Technical Coordinating Committee (TCC) meetings in 2019 to discuss bicycle and pedestrian concerns and opportunities within their respective communities.
Development of the Active Transportation Plan included a review of the bicycle and pedestrian improvement projects proposed in the Forward Pinellas Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan (adopted in December 2013 and last updated in May 2017).
Based on local government feedback on the status of the projects, the list of Master Plan projects was updated and condensed. The revised list of projects, which represents the countywide long-range vision plan, will continue to be maintained as part of the Active Transportation Plan.
The data analysis approach involved a synthesizing of several GIS datasets to identify focus areas and potential corridors. This included review and analysis of:
The planning analysis looked at network connectivity to identify the location of gaps in terms of connecting activity centers, communities, and destinations. For example, several stakeholders expressed a need to better connect certain communities such as Dunedin and Clearwater. Although completion of the Pinellas Trail Loop has been a top priority in the trail plans of Forward Pinellas and Pinellas County over the years, project stakeholders also expressed a need for more cross county facilities extending north-to-south and east-to-west.
Stakeholder feedback was received from the Forward Pinellas Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) and Technical Coordinating Committee (TCC), and face-to-face meetings with local officials.
In addition, various plans were reviewed to ascertain local government priorities in terms of bicycle and pedestrian needs.