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Streetsblog wishes its readers a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday. We’ll be back on Monday with updated headlines and all the latest from the livable streets movement.

Get state headlines at Streetsblog CA, national headlines at Streetsblog USA

It is a time of year for reflection and we at Streetsblog SF can’t help feeling concerned but hopeful as we move into 2018. We are now nearly a year into the Trump Administration, and while there are a great many causes for worry about the future of our country and our planet, 2017 gave us more than a few reasons for cautious optimism at the local level.

The Bay Area is replete with tightly knit, walkable, bikeable neighborhoods. But we stroll like nervous cats, always on the alert for a speeding car that can kill or severely injure us whenever we step off the curb, as advocates remind us every year during the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.

Urban planners, at least when it comes to bikeway design, are still trying to undo the damage caused by vehicular cyclists in the 1970s and 80s, explained Bill Schultheiss, a traffic engineer who specializes in bike design and a member of the Bicycle Technical Committee and the Pedestrian Task Force of the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (NCUTCD), with the Toole Design Group. "There was a fear that cyclists would no longer be able to ride in the streets and would be relegated to sidewalks," he added. "To this day, that has discouraged protected bike lanes in the [road engineering] guidance."

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Streetsblog San Francisco will be off on July 3 and 4, returning to our normal publishing schedule on July 5.

This week Corinne Kisner and Matthew Roe of NACTO tell us about their influential series of street design guides that give transportation engineers "permission" to put walking, biking, and transit first. Learn how the guides are put together and how cities are using them to prioritize people instead of cars.