Context Sensitive Solutions

Creating transportation facilities that serve the appropriate users and fit the surrounding environment is critical to making communities that function and are livable. Context Sensitive Solutions is a philosophy in which planners and designers first learn what is important to people living nearby and using the facility as well as what is important to preserve the built and natural environment. They then use that information to design highways, sidewalks, trails, transit, streetscapes, buildings and other amenities to address the transportation need in a way that is in harmony with the environment and community values. CSS is not just an approach to aesthetics but an approach that builds solutions of lasting value that can often be less costly for construction and maintenance.

References

FHWA CSS
The Federal Highway Administration is committed to the advancement of CSS nationwide as one of the objectives of its Vital Few Goal on Environmental Stewardship and Streamlining. The objective is to improve the environmental quality of transportation decision making by incorporating context sensitive solutions principles in all aspects of planning and the project development process.
FHWA CSS

Context Sensitive Solutions.org
These core CSS principles apply to transportation processes, outcomes, and decision-making: (1) Strive towards a shared stakeholder vision to provide a basis for decisions; (2) Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of contexts; (3) Foster continuing communication and collaboration to achieve consensus; (4) Exercise flexibility and creativity to shape effective transportation solutions, while preserving and enhancing community and natural environments.
Context Sensitive Solutions

FHWA Flexibility in Highway Design
A guide about designing highways that incorporate community values and are safe, efficient, and effective. It is written for highway engineers and project managers who want to learn more about flexibility available to them when designing roads and illustrates successful approaches used in other highway projects. The guide aims also at provoking innovative thinking for fully considering the scenic, historic, aesthetic, and other cultural values of communities, along with safety and mobility needs.
FHWA Flexibility in Highway Design

ITE Context Sensitive Solutions
This Web site has been developed to help practitioners with tools and information that are easily available for download.
ITE Context Sensitive Solutions

ITE Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities
This report advances the successful use of context sensitive solutions (CSS) in the planning and design of major urban thoroughfares for walkable communities. It provides guidance and demonstrates for practitioners how CSS concepts and principles may be applied in roadway improvement projects that are consistent with their physical settings.

ITE Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities

Building Projects that Build Communities
Real partnerships start with ongoing relationships of trust and collaboration. The concept of true community partnerships is good in theory, but can be difficult to put into practice - not only because of things such as local land use decisions which can enhance or negatively impact the transportation system - but also because it requires tremendous teamwork between agencies and organizations.
Building Projects that Build Communities

AASHTO Center for Environmental Excellence
This section explains and defines context sensitive solutions (CSS), provides a brief history of events, explains why CSS is important to transportation agencies, discusses efforts to institutionalize CSS, and describes how CSS applies to all areas of transportation program delivery.
AASHTO Center for Environmental Excellence

Georgia DOT CSD Online Manual
Context-Sensitive Design (CSD) is a process for achieving design excellence by developing transportation solutions that require continuous, collaborative communication and consensus between transportation agencies, professionals, and any and all stakeholders. A common goal of CSD projects is to develop a facility that is harmonious with the community, and preserves aesthetics, history and the environmental resources, while integrating these innovative approaches with traditional transportation goals for safety and performance.

Georgia DOT CSD Online Manual

Minnesota CSS
Context sensitive solutions (CSS) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach that involves all stakeholders in providing a transportation facility that fits its setting. It is an approach that leads to preserving and enhancing scenic, aesthetic, historic, community, and environmental resources, while improving or maintaining safety, mobility, and infrastructure conditions.

Minnesota CSS