In an effort to make Madison more bike- and pedestrian friendly, the Ad-Hoc Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee has been working for months on a multifaceted plan to give residents and visitors more safe ways to move around town without the use of a car.

Representatives of the committee came before the Board of Selectmen (BOS) on April 24 to give an update on their progress and a schedule for action moving forward. The nine-member committee started work early this calendar year under the charge of developing a bike and pedestrian master plan.

According to the charge of the committee, “the primary emphasis of the plan shall be to improve the town’s facilities and infrastructure that are critical to making participation in these activities safer and easier, and to promote public participation in the bicycle and pedestrian planning process. In addition to development of a bicycle and pedestrian master plan, [the committee] shall also advise the Board of Selectmen on funding, projects, programs, and policies [that] help promote bicycling and walking as a means of transportation, recreation, and fitness.”

Director of Planning and Economic Development Dave Anderson, who serves as a town staff liaison to the committee, said the committee is getting ready to present the BOS with a document known as a Complete Streets plan. Complete Streets is a movement across the nation designed to support integrated transportation networks that support, “all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, persons with disabilities, motorists, transit vehicles, emergency responders, users and operators of public transportation, seniors, children, youth ,and families” according to the policy.

“Our timeline was to come back to you in June with a policy that we are going to ask you to consider,” he said. “We do have a draft of it today. It is a complete streets policy and what a complete streets policy does is it has the town take a critical look at, when we do transportation improvement projects, if there is any way we can accommodate other users such a cyclists and pedestrians and so this underlines the mechanisms that would be taken in town.”

Anderson said residents have expressed a need for Madison to be more bike- and pedestrian friendly. He said this policy will be a key tool when the town considers any sort of infrastructure upgrade in the coming years. If, for example, the town plans to rebuild a road, this policy will guide the town to possibly widen the road or include sidewalks in that construction.

The plan would apply to “any project where it is reasonable of financially feasible to include pedestrian or cyclist improvements,” Anderson said. “That could mean simply widening the shoulder by about a foot, it could mean a sign, or it could mean a sidewalk. There are potential expenditures, but that is a part of the potential project scope.”

Anderson said he has been in conversation with other town departments to get their input. Additionally, Anderson said this policy also falls under some of the work the town is trying to do as a member of Sustainable CT, a statewide program that encourages individual municipalities to take actions to make their towns more sustainable.

Committee member Virginia Raff said the committee has been hard at work these past few months and is in the process of establishing a website to let residents look at and comment on the Complete Streets plan.

“We really want as much public input as we can get,” she said.

The committee plans to bring the final policy to the BOS this June. Anderson said he hopes the BOS will review the policy and then consider approval by August. Anderson said for now he would like to see the policy adopted as a resolution for now, giving the committee a bit more time to tweak things in the policy if needed before the BOS decides to make it an ordinance.