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  • Running a Pop-up Demonstration Project

Running a Pop-up Demonstration Project

Pop-ups and pilots are all ways of temporarily demonstrating the value of a walk-bike project in your community without having to commit to it long term. Pilots typically last for at least one year and pop-ups for a shorter amount of time, typically a week or less. Both use low cost, non-permanent materials such as planters, flexible bollards, spray chalk and cones to temporarily reconfigure the street. Survey and observational data can be collected before and after the demonstration to help decision-makers understand project benefits and impacts.

Typical projects where pilots or pop-ups are used are:

  • Curb extensions
  • Traffic calming
  • 4-to-3 lane reconfiguration (aka "road diet")
  • Pedestrian refuges/crossings
  • Bike lanes (protected, buffered, conventional)
  • Bike boxes

Here are some National models to check out! 

- Temporary Roundabout in Laprairie

- Protected Bike Lane in Minneapolis

- Pop-Up in the Rock in Park Hill


Pop-up & Demonstration Projects Toolkit

Pop-up demonstration projects are a citizen-led approach to neighborhood-level change using short-term, low-cost, and scalable interventions to show how streets can be made safer and more inviting for people on foot and on a bike.

In 2016, Local Motion and the City of Burlington collaborated to create a "Community-Led Demonstration Project Policy and Guide." This hands-on guide lays out everything you need to make your pop-up project a success! AARP also published a great toolkit for community pop-up demonstration projects, below. 


Borrow Our Pop-Up Project Mobile Support Unit

Local Motion has a 12-foot trailer filled with all of the supplies needed to run a successful pop-up demonstration project in your town. Whether it's traffic calming, crosswalks, bike lanes, bump-outs, a pedestrian refuge or a plaza, our trailer can help build support for permanent safety and speed management improvements. 

Click here to borrow our mobile support unit!


Burlington Open Streets

Open Streets BTV is an opportunity to experience our public streetscape in an entirely different way. For one day every summer about 3 miles of Burlington streets are closed to everything but pedestrian access for a day of biking, walking, dancing, and whatever else you can imagine!

Last year's event was hugely successful thanks to a groundswell of community support. Check out pictures from last year on the Open Streets Facebook page!


VIVIDMidd: Pop-Up Projects in Middlebury

Near the end of summer 2017, the Town of Middlebury, Local Motion, Better MiddleburyPartnership, Middlebury Safe Routes, and Addison County Regional Planning Commission embarked on a collaboration to create safer and slower streets throughout town.

What was it?  Volunteers set up a series of pop-up demonstration projects in Downtown Middlebury designed to test strategies for improving bike and pedestrian safety in some core areas, as well as enhancing the aesthetic appeal of the Downtown, particularly for people outside of their cars. These pop-ups were not permanent and were meant to serve merely as a demonstration project for us to collect input and observe what works and what does not, should the town consider more permanent strategies for street improvements in the future.  

Click here to learn more about the project!


Pop-Ups Offer Proof of Concept in Downtown Vergennes

As part of the Downtown-Basin Master Plan public input process, the City of Vergennes and its community partners held a series of pop-up demonstration projects to illustrate how the streets connecting Downtown and the Basin could be made safer and more walk and bike-friendly.

Click here to learn more! 

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