The District 8 Active Transportation Plan (ATP) is the first comprehensive evaluation of active transportation needs across the Ohio Department of Transportation’s (ODOT) District 8, covering Hamilton, Butler, Clermont, Warren, Clinton, Greene, and Preble counties. The plan identifies barriers and opportunities for walking and biking on the State Highway System (SHS) and provides a framework for improving safety, connectivity, and accessibility for all users.

The plan was created in partnership with a Steering Committee which ensured that it represented a variety of interests and stakeholders across the district.  Previously produced plans, which included their own engagement efforts, were key inputs to understand local desires. 132 members of the public also participated in the process via a webmap.

This plan assessed the current active transportation environment on ODOT District 8’s State Highway System, including infrastructure, safety, demand, and unmet needs that informed the subsequent project prioritization analysis. District 8 manages 1,053 centerlane miles of State and US Routes across Butler, Clermont, Clinton, Greene, Hamilton, Preble, and Warren counties. More than half of these traverse rural (55 percent) or natural (20 percent) settings; 23 percent lie in suburban and urban areas, affecting appropriate facility types and design. Key findings from the analysis include:

• History of fatal crashes: From 2018 to 2022, there were 190 pedestrian crashes on state highways, 28 percent resulting in serious injury or fatality. There were 47 bicyclist crashes on state highways, 19 percent serious.
• District-wide lack of sidewalks: Only seven percent of state highway miles have sidewalks on one or both sides; 93 percent lack sidewalks entirely.
• Stressful crossings: 94 percent of intersections on state routes lack marked pedestrian crossings, and 91 percent of crossing legs are rated high stress, limiting safe highway permeability.
• Sparse existing bicycle network: Dedicated bicycle lanes and shared‑use paths are sparse and fragmented; only 15 percent of the SHS have facilities for bicyclists (including paved shoulders).
• High bicycle stress levels: 99.7 percent of roadway miles exhibit high Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress; only 0.2 percent qualify as low stress, largely within village limits. Of the 35 miles of state highways designated as part of State or US Bicycle Routes, 97 percent remain high stress.
• Active Transportation Demand: Active transportation demand was assessed in Walk.Bike.Ohio (ODOT’s statewide bike and pedestrian plan), and is influenced by where people live, work, shop, access parks or trails, access college education, and walk or bike as a commute mode. Nine percent of the SHS miles are located in areas with high active‑transportation demand.
• Active Transportation Need: Active transportation need was also assessed in Walk.Bike.Ohio, identifying concentrations of Ohio residents that have been historically disadvantaged or are otherwise considered vulnerable to unsafe, disconnected, or incomplete active transportation networks. Vulnerable populations in District 8 are concentrated in villages and urbanized corridors, with 26 percent of state highway miles located in high‑need tracts.

Building upon this analysis, a prioritization process helped identify locations where projects would be most supportive of active transportation. Scoring considered crash history, demand and need analyses, connections to regional trails, and public input.

From the highest ranked locations, a small subset of roadways was selected to further assess to identify potential future projects to develop. These locations were:

District 8 can advance projects in these locations by coordinating with local jurisdictions to seek funding, performing feasibility studies, and develop conceptual facility designs. ODOT’s Multimodal Design Guide can guide the selection of the appropriate facility to match the context.