This section provides an overview of CSS. What it is and how it can help to shape transportation projects around the country. Feel free to browse through the topics below or search for a particular page by entering a keyword in the search box below or clicking on "Advanced Search."
"Context sensitive solutions (CSS) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach that involves all stakeholders to develop a transportation facility that fits its physical setting and preserves scenic, aesthetic, historic and environmental resources, while maintaining safety and mobility. CSS is an approach that considers the total context within which a transportation improvement project will exist."
Beginning with the Thinking Beyond the Pavement conference in Maryland in 1998, CSS practitioners have identified core principles about CSS product and process that can be applied to both project implementation and evaluation.
Congress, the Federal Highway Administration, governors, state legislatures, professional organizations, and state and local transportation agencies have all played an important part in the development of CSS, including addressing tort liability issues. Meanwhile, public interest groups have made developing better methods of road design a major part of their agendas.
As an approach to transportation, CSS has spread rapidly since 1998. In large
part this is because CSS practitioners and advocates understand and embrace its many important benefits.
View a list of CSS training programs available around the country, both at the state and national level.
Book
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.
NCHRP Report 480: A Guide to Best Practices for Achieving Context Sensitive Solutions
This guide demonstrates how state departments of transportation (DOTs) and other transportation agencies can incorporate context sensitivity into their transportation project development. This guide is applicable to a wide variety of projects that transportation agencies routinely encounter. While the guide is primarily written for transportation agency personnel who develop transportation projects, other stakeholders may find it useful in better understanding the project development process.
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Transportation Research Board (TRB)
Website
FHWA CSS National Website (opens in a new window)
This web site provides information on Context Sensitive Design/Thinking Beyond the Pavement efforts throughout the United States. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) are working in cooperation with a group of partners to maintain and update the site.
