Release History & Roadmap

#How versioning works

The Commonway System uses CalVer, a version number built from the date rather than an arbitrary sequence: year, month, day (for example, 2026.08.28). The version shown in the publication's header is always the date of the most recent publish, and the most recently published version is the official current version of the guidebook. There is no separate "stable" or "beta" release; whatever is live is the current one.

This publication is statically generated. Publishing happens by pushing to GitHub, which triggers an automatic build. There's no manual deploy step and no delay between a push landing and the publication reflecting it, so the version number in the header updates the moment a change goes live.

The web version at commonwaysystem.org is canonical. Print editions of the Commonway System Guidebook are dated snapshots: each print copy carries the CalVer date it was produced under, and reflects the guidebook as it existed on that date. If something in a print copy conflicts with the current web version, the web version is the more current source.

If more than one push happens on the same calendar day, they share a single version number and a single changelog entry below. The changelog entry for that date covers everything that shipped that day, not just the first or last push.

#Current version

2026.09.26

The guidebook currently documents 112 Street Typology pattern pages across Local, Collector, Arterial, Freeway, and Intersections & Crossings. None are content stubs, every published pattern page carries real modal-hierarchy, density-applicability, and design-notes content, and every one now carries real citations rather than the "Unsourced claim" flag. Find Your Pattern is still the one remaining placeholder page in the Guide, pending its own diagnostic sequence. It is actively expanding, not a finished publication.

#Changelog

Entries run newest to oldest. Each entry covers everything published under that date, even if it shipped across more than one push.

2026.09.26

New Accessibility Policy page (About, under Terms and Policies; also linked from the footer): the WCAG 2.2 Level AA goal, what has and hasn't been tested, every display setting, the text-only pages, external-content limits, and how to report a barrier. The footer gained a distinct row with the copyright line (© current year Commonway System) and links to Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, AI Policy, and Accessibility Policy.
Full-site automated audit with axe-core across all 165 pages (desktop dark, desktop light, and 375px phone), and every issue it found was fixed: a <main> landmark on every page; names for the sidebar and "On this page" landmarks; Pattern ID and Retrofit Strategy card titles are no longer headings that skipped a level (Media Gallery cards are now proper h2s); the light-mode "Tip" and "Correct" label colors and the "Compact" density chip now meet the 4.5:1 contrast minimum; citation badges have a 24px tap target with no visual change; the Who/How/Why table has real header cells; and stray empty images in this changelog are gone (backtick spans now render as code). A later pass also fixed the muted note color inside expanded Layered guidance cells.
Skip link ("Skip to main content") as the first Tab stop on every page, and a compact sticky "On this page" bar on tablets and phones (below 1180px, where the right-hand rail is hidden): shows the current section, opens a list of headings with the on-screen ones emphasized, closes on selection, Escape, or an outside tap, and moves focus to the heading you jump to. Anchor jumps and keyboard focus now clear the sticky navbar and bar.
Homepage hero animation now has a Pause/Play button (WCAG 2.2.2). It freezes both the dot-halftone canvas and the glow, remembers the choice, and is hidden when the device is set to reduce motion.
New Display settings panel (an "Aa" button in the header, and a section in the mobile menu): text size in four steps up to 150% (scaled from the reader's own browser setting), high-contrast mode (also follows the device's "more contrast" setting when nothing is saved; pure black and white, solid borders, underlined links, and a text label for every classification color on index cards), simplified view (one column, plain font, no decoration or animation, all collapsed sections expanded), enhanced keyboard focus outline, large mouse pointer, and a translucent yellow pointer highlight. Choices are saved in the browser only and applied before first paint. The panel scrolls inside itself so it stays reachable at the largest text size or on a short screen.
Text-only version of every page: pnpm run build now runs scripts/generate-text-pages.mjs after the site build, writing a plain, unstyled version of each page to /text/… (165 pages plus an index at /text/all-pages/), built from the rendered page so components' content survives. No images, scripts, or animation; marked noindex with the full page as canonical. Linked as "Text-only version" under every page and from the Display settings panel. Adds one dev dependency (node-html-parser) and a prerender exception for /text/ links in svelte.config.js.
Navbar now wraps onto a second row instead of overflowing the page when text is enlarged or the window is narrow (this also fixes an existing sideways overflow between 941px and about 1000px wide); its measured height feeds the sticky sidebar, "On this page" bar, and anchor clearance. The "Version" label shortens to "V." below 1100px to make room for the new button.
New pattern, INT-RGC-15 Railroad Grade Crossing (Intersections and Crossings, Situational), covering an at-grade crossing where a street meets an active rail line: its own geometry standard, warning devices, sight-distance rules, and low-clearance-vehicle risk. Industrial Collector gained a "Layered guidance across sources" table (several deliberate "Not researched" gaps). Curb Cut / Driveway Apron, Roundabout, Signal, and Protected Intersection each gained a truck-oriented section with citations: forward entry with no public backing, freight-priority roundabout sizing, and turning-truck risk to people walking and biking. The Pattern Index and sidebar list the new page (112 pattern pages). Every page touched in this release, including these, was scanned with axe in light and dark mode at desktop and 375px width with no violations.
Markdown version of every page for AI and LLM readers: each page's content is also written as a clean .md file at the same path (/patterns/foo/ becomes /patterns/foo.md; the homepage is /index.md), generated after the build by the same script as the text-only pages, with a small header (title, URL, Pattern ID, last updated). Citation badges become [N] pointing at the numbered References list, and the Layered guidance table is flattened into headings since markdown tables can't hold its expandable cells. Every page advertises its markdown version with <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown">, llms.txt now links to the .md versions, and a new _headers file serves them as text/markdown with noindex so search engines keep to the HTML pages. There is also an llms-full.txt at the site root with every page's markdown in one file, linked from llms.txt. Not built: serving markdown from the normal page URL via an Accept: text/markdown header (that needs an edge function or Worker).
Site search: a Search button in the header (and in the mobile menu, and Ctrl/Cmd+K anywhere) opens a search dialog covering every Pattern, Retrofit Strategy, Guide, About, Blog and Reference page and every Media Gallery item as its own result. Filter by section and by Pattern type, search a Pattern ID directly (LOC-DEF-01), and see the headings on a page that also match. The same search is also a full page at /search/, where a search can be linked (/search/?q=roundabout). It is built with Pagefind, indexed at build time and run entirely in the browser: nothing typed is sent anywhere, and the index only downloads the first time someone searches. A media result opens the Media Gallery filtered to that item. There is deliberately no single-key shortcut such as "/", since those need a way to be turned off. Not yet tested with a screen reader; see the Accessibility Policy.
Removed the italic "Working assessment: this pattern's status reflects a preliminary Commonway System judgment call, pending final review" note from the 69 pattern pages that carried it (the Network, Corridor, Facility, and Element pages plus a few later additions). Their statuses are unchanged; only the note came off.
New Site Map page (About, right after Overview; also linked from the footer, the search dialog and the search page): every page in the publication in one list, grouped and ordered exactly like the navigation, with Pattern and Retrofit Strategy IDs beside their links, plus an "Other ways to browse" section (search, the text-only pages, the XML sitemap, llms.txt and llms-full.txt). It is generated at build time from the sidebar and every page's own title, so a new page appears on its own; a page missing from the sidebar is listed under "Other pages" and logged in the build output instead of going missing.
Search results now show a thumbnail for Patterns, Retrofit Strategies, Blog posts and Media items (any other page, such as a Guide or About page, gets one only when it sets its own image: in its front matter; otherwise it shows none). Pages get their image from a new optional image: field in their own frontmatter, which also now supplies the social-share preview image (og:image and twitter:image) and the page's structured data; the Pattern and Retrofit index cards read the same field instead of a hand-typed value on each card, and pages without an image still show the placeholder. Small copies of every content image are pre-made (160px and 480px WebP, pnpm run thumbs) and committed, so search results and the index and gallery cards no longer load 1 MB originals. The 21 Media Gallery preview images are now hosted on this site rather than loaded from YouTube and Strong Towns, so search shows them without contacting a third party. In the search dialog the filters now fold into a "Filters" disclosure so results stay in view.
Display settings gained three more options. Reading font: Lexend, Atkinson Hyperlegible Next, or OpenDyslexic replace the publication's fonts (all three self-hosted, never loaded from an outside font service, and only downloaded once chosen; the panel and policy say plainly that research has not shown dyslexia-specific fonts read faster, so it is offered as a preference). Color symbols: a small cream tab with ColorSym symbols (the free color-identification system by Chris Eastridge and Luis Francisco, CC BY-SA 4.0, used unmodified) in the bottom-left of colored index cards and of the Pattern ID and Retrofit ID cards, so hues are not the only cue; each of the nine Scale hues has its own symbol or a two-symbol pair joined by a slash (dominant hue first) where ColorSym has no matching color, and a key is on the Brand Guide under "Color symbols". Reading ruler: shades the page except a clear window of one to three lines that follows the mouse, a finger or keyboard focus (Alt plus Up or Down also moves it), with adjustable window height and shading; it does nothing in forced-colors mode or print and turns off Pointer highlight.
Display settings panel: it now shows a scrollbar, edge shadows, and a "Scroll for more" arrow at the bottom while there are more options below (the arrow disappears once you scroll). Fixed a bug where the visible radio buttons (text size, and the new reading font) could show as unchecked because the panel exists twice on the page and both copies shared radio names. Large pointer now really is large everywhere: a large arrow, a large hand over anything clickable, and a large text cursor over text and text boxes (it previously fell back to the small native pointer over form controls and the search button).
Two new npm dependencies for the reading fonts (@fontsource-variable/lexend, @fontsource-variable/atkinson-hyperlegible-next, @fontsource/opendyslexic, all SIL Open Font License) and the ColorSym symbols in static/color-symbols/, both credited in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES. The Accessibility Policy page lists all three new settings. Axe-core was clean on the Pattern Index, a pattern page, the Retrofit index and a Retrofit Strategy page, the Brand Guide and the policy page, in both themes at desktop and 375px, with the new settings switched on. Not tested: screen readers, real touch devices, forced-colors mode, or how the two-symbol Color symbols pairs read to someone with color vision deficiency; the ShareAlike term on the ColorSym symbols is flagged for the attorney review.
Known incomplete: no full keyboard-only, screen reader (NVDA, VoiceOver, JAWS), 200/400% zoom, or forced-colors testing has been done, so the policy page does not claim conformance. At the largest text size the header is about 180px tall on wide screens (and taller when wrapped on phones), which leaves less room for content. Text-only pages exist only in built output, so their links 404 under pnpm run dev. Contrast and pointer settings were verified with axe and measured values, not a full manual review. The new search dialog, Search page and Site Map have been scanned with axe (both themes, phone and desktop, and the Display settings modes) but not tested with a screen reader. The rule that serves the markdown versions as text/markdown and keeps them out of search engines (static/_headers) can only be confirmed once deployed. The Media Gallery cards still load channel logos from another website. Retrofit Strategies and the blog post have no featured image yet, so they show the placeholder.

2026.09.25

New Retrofit Strategy, RFT-CDR-11 ("2+1 road with cable median barrier"), the 18th entry and 11th Corridor strategy: converts an undivided rural two-lane road into a continuous three-lane cross section with an alternating passing lane and a cable median barrier. Cited to Swedish (VTI), FHWA, Kentucky, Missouri, and Colorado sources, including Colorado's own caveat that the crash-reduction estimate is uncertain and a limited pilot is advised. Added to the Retrofit Index and sidebar.
New "Layered guidance across sources" section on Default (Standard Collector) and Rural Collector / Farm-to-Market Road: an expandable table comparing federal/state baseline, NACTO, Complete Streets, and Dutch practice against the Commonway System answer, one row per design element (nine rows on each). Each cell shows a short summary and expands to the full text with citations. Default (Standard Collector) gained references 2 through 19; Rural Collector now has 16.
Rural Collector / Farm-to-Market Road: speed rule changed from 30 to 35 mph, with a terrain-by-volume design-speed table (level, rolling, mountainous by traffic volume) in the speed box; cells above 45 mph link to the new 2+1 retrofit. Bicycle, pedestrian, separation, lane-width, and intersection guidance now split at 45 mph (shoulder below, separated path above; mini-roundabout below, roundabout or enhanced stop control above), and intersection treatment is broken out by what the road meets (Local, Collector, Arterial, Freeway).
Default (Standard Collector): separation/buffer guidance corrected so the 3 ft parking-adjacent minimum applies only where no rigid crash-protective barrier separates bicycles from the car lanes, and a Property access row added.
New GuidanceTable component (expandable cells, row and expand-all controls, labeled tiers, a Commonway System column twice the width of the others, built-in default columns) and SpeedTerrainTable. Intended as a standard section for every Local, Collector, Arterial, and Intersections & Crossings pattern page; only the two pages above carry it so far.
Media items can now carry a per-page endorsement status. MED-013 (Safe By Design, 2+1 roads) is Aligned on the new retrofit and Context-only on Rural Collector, whose typical case it doesn't describe.
Sitewide color reorganization (landed 2026.09.23): every Scale now has its own real 6-tier color ramp (Network through Element, hues in Scale order), replacing the shared Freeway-gray placeholder on the newest four; Freeway's ramp deliberately departs from the Brand Guide's neutral gray at the site owner's direction. Pattern, Retrofit, and Modal Hierarchy components updated; Brand Guide's Scale ramps and Accessibility notes updated to match. The Roadmap's color-reorganization and ecosystem-map items were removed, both now shipped.
Known incomplete: the Rural Collector table has several deliberate open gaps (NACTO and Complete Streets intersection cells, Dutch pedestrian cell, lane count outside the Commonway column). The separated-facility gap width for speeds of 45 mph and above is not yet specified anywhere in the publication. Four sources could not be independently verified: the Green Book Table 6-1 values beyond the highest-volume column, the AASHTO bike guide's wider-shoulder-above-50-mph figure, the Missouri 12 to 24 percent passing-lane figure, and the Dutch 60 km/h access-road speed. The 2+1 retrofit's applicability to Default (No Parking, No Direct Property Access) and Scenic Highway / Byway is by reasoning, not yet researched on those pages.

2026.09.22

Pattern Index illustration coverage expanded from 11 to 26 of 111 patterns. 15 patterns wired up with a real illustration for the first time: all 4 Network patterns (Grid, Dendritic / Hierarchical, Radial, Organic / Irregular), all 6 Corridor patterns (Density Step-Down / Step-Up, Rural-to-Town Gateway, Character Transect, Rail-With-Trail Corridor, Road-Adjacent Greenway, Transit Alignment Corridor), Bicycle Boulevard / Neighborhood Greenway and Shared-Use Path (Local Streets, completing that category), Bike Highway / Greenway (Collectors), Stroad (Arterials), Protected Intersection (Intersections & Crossings), and Sharrow plus Modal Filter / Point Closure (Elements). Artwork for 11 already-illustrated patterns (10 Local Street patterns plus Roundabout), the shared placeholder graphic, and the two Foundations-page diagrams was also refreshed with updated versions.
Kevin hand-placed every image file directly in static/patterns/ outside of a session; each session's task was wiring the matching image prop into that pattern's card in patterns/+page.md and verifying it live. See CLAUDE.md for the updated convention, including a note that the extension isn't locked to .png (several new files are .jpeg) and a known filename typo (net-den-02-dendritic-hierachical.png) that's intentionally left as-is since the reference already matches it.
A 27th pattern illustration added: Turbo-Roundabout (Intersections & Crossings). Every Pattern Index, Retrofit Strategy Index, and Media Gallery card image now lazy-loads (loading="lazy" decoding="async"), confirmed live to only fetch images near the initial viewport rather than all of them at once.
New GuideDiagram component replaces the raw <img> tag on the four Foundations pages with a topic diagram (Density Tiers, Design Speed & Speed Limits, Scale Hierarchy, Street Types & Classifications), adding real width/height (for layout-shift prevention), an aspect-ratio fallback, and an optional caption via a real <figure>/<figcaption>, on top of the same lazy-loading. Documented on the Brand Guide. Building it surfaced a real sitewide bug, now fixed: base.css's global image rule was missing height: auto alongside max-width: 100%, so any image carrying real width/height attributes had its height pinned to a fixed pixel value instead of scaling proportionally, visibly stretching it once the width was capped down to fit a narrower column. See CLAUDE.md for the full diagnosis.
New AuthorPhoto component adds a photo to the "About the author" section on /about/commonway-system/: a hardcoded 1:1 square crop, positioned beside the bio text on wider screens and stacked below it on narrow ones, with a "Kevin Young, Author, Commonway System" caption underneath. Internal links to that section were also added from two places that reference Kevin by name without one: the Acknowledgments page's opening line and the Project Governance page's opening line.
JSON-LD structured data now names Kevin as a co-author, not just the Commonway System Organization, on every pattern/guide/blog page's schema, alongside a sameAs set of his real profile links (personal site, LinkedIn, GitHub, Facebook, about.me) on the sitewide Organization's founder field too. A deliberate, requested reversal of this file's prior "Organization only, not a named author" stance for individual articles; the Organization stays the first author in the list, this only adds Kevin by name and profile links alongside it. See CLAUDE.md for the full reasoning.

2026.09.14

Four new Foundations pages gained a real illustration each: Scale Hierarchy, Density Tiers, Street Types & Classifications, and Design Speed & Speed Limits. Each is a single PNG, hand-placed directly in the page, styled automatically with a themed rounded-corner/border/shadow treatment so it reads as real content rather than a bare embed. See CLAUDE.md for the raw-<img>-tag convention this follows.
New Media Gallery entry, MED-021 (Strong Towns, "The Key to Slowing Traffic is Street Design, Not Speed Limits"), tagged to the Design Speed & Speed Limits guide page. The Gallery's first article-type entry, alongside its existing video and podcast items.
Retrofit Strategy Index section order changed from Corridor/Intersection/Network to Network/Corridor/Intersection, both in the sidebar and on the index page itself; the page's own intro text and frontmatter description were updated to match.
Homepage hero background tuning: the ink-halftone effect's dots now swell to a larger peak radius for a bolder look at full swell.

2026.09.11

New Guide page, "How the Transportation Ecosystem Fits Together" (guide/how-the-transportation-ecosystem-fits-together/), placed in Foundations directly after How to read a retrofit strategy. Explains the landscape of organizations that write street-design guidance, standards, and advocacy, MUTCD, PROWAG, NACTO, AASHTO, Strong Towns, CNU, Vision Zero Network, PPS, Complete Streets, Create Streets, CROW, SWOV, ITDP, grouped by how much binding authority each actually carries rather than by acronym or subject, and states plainly where Commonway System itself fits relative to all of it. 15 real, tiered citations, all sourced directly from each organization's own site or the governing federal regulation. Built from a written ticket; its raw <sup class="citation"> markup was translated to the publication's real Citation/EvidenceChip components per the standing ticket-verification rule, and MED-013's Related Media tagging was extended to this new page.
New homepage hero background: the diagonal-line texture behind the hero title (.hero-lines) has been replaced with a native, from-scratch canvas animation, small halftone-style dots whose size swells and recedes in organic, varied-size clusters that drift gently rightward across the hero, evoking traffic flow along the roads and streets this guidebook is about. No third-party effects library, no purchased asset: built directly in Svelte with layered value noise, confined to a couple of curving path shapes so the motion itself reads as street-like rather than a generic background wipe. Respects reduced-motion preferences (a static, non-animated dot grid for anyone with that setting on) and leaves the hero's teal glow and dark background untouched. See CLAUDE.md for the full build and tuning writeup.

2026.09.10

Sitewide citation-link audit (Item 22) completed. All Pattern, Retrofit Strategy, and Guide pages with References sections now carry working outbound links to their primary sources, sourced and verified domain by domain across five batches: Guide pages plus all 17 Retrofit Strategy entries; the Design Speed guide page plus the Network, Corridor, Local Street, Collector, and Arterial pattern categories; Freeway, Intersection, and Facility patterns; Element patterns; and a final round of corrections (two citations updated to their current published editions, one retargeted to a federal source after its original NACTO page was retired).
Final tally, from a fresh sitewide crawl: 315 citations total across all Pattern, Retrofit, and Guide reference lists, 310 linked to a working source. The remaining 5 (not the 4 originally estimated) are the Network pattern citations marked "Print/ebook source, no persistent URL to monitor" across Grid, Dendritic / Hierarchical, and Organic / Irregular, intentionally unlinked per their own notes.
Pattern-count audit (Item 33): the live count is 111, not the 106 that had gone stale in a couple of places. Fixed in CLAUDE.md and in this page's own Roadmap section; every dated changelog entry below keeps its own historical count as written, per the standing rule that a changelog entry records the count at that date, not the current one. Found, but left for a separate decision: the 2026.08.28 launch entry's summary interpolates the live count instead of a fixed number, so it silently drifts and currently misstates what actually shipped that day.
Self-reference terminology audit and correction (Item 11): audited every +page.md and README.md for "website"/"site"/"book"/"guide" used as self-reference to this publication, then corrected roughly 106 instances across 21 files to the locked house style, "the publication" for format/medium self-reference and "the guidebook" for whole-publication content self-reference. "The Guide" naming this site's own /guide/ section, every citation and external-document title, and a couple of generic analogies were confirmed as exemptions and left untouched. See CLAUDE.md for the full rule and its exemptions.
Public Roadmap section rebuilt as a direct mirror of the canonical Open Items table (tracked outside this repo), replacing a list that had drifted out of sync: nine grouped subheadings by area (New content, Structure changes, Existing content, Audits, New features, Design system, Standing / ongoing, External), one entry per Public item, no Private items and no internal-tracking detail. Kept in sync with the canonical table going forward per the standing Roadmap Sync process.

2026.09.04

New top-level Media Gallery section (/media/), added between Retrofits and Reference in the nav. A Media item is a small external reference, a YouTube video, podcast, or article, tagged with which Pattern pages, Retrofit Strategy pages, or Guide pages it relates to; the Gallery itself is a real, filterable/sortable index (search, plus checkbox filters for media type, source, and topic), not a static list. Launched with one seed entry (a Not Just Bikes video on continuous sidewalks); see below for same-day additions.
A companion "Related Media" section now appears on every Pattern page, every Retrofit Strategy page, and select Guide pages (Foundations, Make It Happen, and About → The Commonway System), showing only the media items tagged to that specific page. If nothing is tagged, the section renders nothing at all, no empty state, so it's live on all of those page types now even though only a handful currently show anything.
Two real gaps in the source ticket were found and resolved before building, rather than built around silently: the ticket described reusing "the existing Form Controls component pattern already used on the Pattern Index" for the Gallery's filters, but no working version of that exists anywhere on the publication (the closest match is an explicitly decorative, non-functional Brand Guide mockup); the Gallery's filtering is new, real client-side logic. Separately, the ticket's media-tagging field only supported Pattern IDs and Retrofit Strategy IDs, but Related Media was also specified for Guide/About pages, which have neither; that field now also accepts a page's own route path. See CLAUDE.md for the full writeup.
Data architecture note for future sessions: media items are the first "data record" content type in this publication, distinct from Patterns/Retrofit Strategies/Guide pages (which are full hand-authored content pages with no queryable structure behind them). Each media item is one small TypeScript file, checked by pnpm run check against a shared schema, not a markdown page — see CLAUDE.md's new "Media Gallery & Related Media" section for the reasoning, and for what a future session needs to hand over to add another item to the library.
Follow-up layout request: /media/ was rebuilt from the sitewide 3-column template (sidebar, content, table of contents) into a page-specific 2-column layout, main content on the left, search/filter/sort controls stacked vertically on the right in place of the table of contents, since neither a sidebar nor page headings made sense for this page. A second follow-up capped Related Media's own card grid at 2 columns, decoupled from the Media Gallery page's own grid, which stays at 3.
Same-day second batch: four more Media Gallery entries added (MED-002 through MED-005, three City Beautiful videos and one BicycleDutch video), from a second written ticket. The Gallery now shows 5 items and 3 distinct sources; Related Media now shows real content on a much wider set of pages, including several tagged by more than one entry at once (Protected Intersection carries both a general "are streets too complicated" video and a Dutch protected-intersection design video, for instance). The ticket asked for one specific check before implementing: that all 47 relatedTo IDs across the four new entries actually resolve to live pages, rather than trusting the list as given. All 47 did; nothing needed flagging or fixing.
Mobile layout fix and redesign for the Media Gallery's filter panel: scrolling on a narrow screen used to make the filter panel visually overlap the results grid underneath it (a sticky-positioning bug, only surfaced once someone actually scrolled past it on a phone), and separately, the panel was permanently expanded there, pushing every result below the fold. Both are fixed: the panel is now a native, collapsible disclosure on mobile, collapsed by default, positioned right before the results count instead of above the page title, while desktop keeps the original always-expanded, non-collapsible panel with no changes to its behavior.
Third Media Gallery batch: 15 more entries (MED-006 through MED-020) from a batch explicitly submitted as an unfinished draft rather than a ready ticket, since it named patterns/retrofits by title only and needed the real ID codes looked up against this publication's own frontmatter. Four judgment calls the draft flagged for a human decision were confirmed before implementing: a Vision Zero-themed video with no clean pattern fit now tags the About page that discusses CS's philosophical grounding directly; a stroads/road-classification explainer now also tags the Guide page on Functional Classification; a turbo-roundabout video's endorsement was set to "context-only" rather than "aligned," since the video itself reports the design's documented pedestrian/cyclist tradeoffs; and a suggested new Retrofit Strategy for rural highway safety was deliberately held off as its own future ticket rather than folded into a media-only batch. The Gallery now holds 20 items across 7 sources.
One direct fix: MED-002's own relatedTo list was missing Cul-de-sac, despite the video itself being specifically about cul-de-sac subdivisions. Added on request.

2026.09.03

Retrofit Strategies Batch 1 scaffolding: five new Guide pages, built from a written ticket (an instructions file plus five content files), that lay the groundwork for the Retrofit Strategy catalog landing in Batch 2. No Retrofit Strategy entries exist yet, none of these pages have anything real to cross-link to as a catalog entry, they only build what a future entry will point at.
Four new pages published under Guide → Make It Happen: Legal & Planning Mechanisms (right-of-way control tools and policy mechanisms that make a retrofit possible in the first place), Funding & Financing Mechanisms (eight value-capture tools in a structured what-it-is/purpose/revenue/leveraging format), Decision & Evaluation Processes (Intersection Control Evaluation and the Road Safety Audit), and Construction Methodology & The Build Spectrum (the four-stage demonstration/pilot/quick-build/permanent framework, plus CS's own "test before you pour" position). All four carry real, tiered citations.
A fifth new page, How to read a retrofit strategy, was placed in Foundations directly under How to Read a Pattern rather than in Make It Happen. It documents the future RFT-SCALE-## ID format (SCALE is Corridor/Intersection/Network) and what each section of a Retrofit Strategy entry will contain, once real entries exist. Initially scaffolded into Make It Happen alongside its four batch-mates, then corrected once flagged: it's structurally How to Read a Pattern's sibling, not a Make It Happen tool, and pagination follows sidebar position. See CLAUDE.md for the full reasoning and the house rule this sets for future batches that mix structural roles.
How to Read a Pattern and How Road Changes Actually Happen both gained cross-references into the new pages at their existing natural attachment points (a corridor-preservation aside, an engineering-study/warrant discussion, a capital-project discussion), rather than a bolted-on "see also" list.
Citation format in the source ticket (italic evidence-tier labels, no inline markers in the prose) was translated to the publication's real EvidenceChip/Citation components rather than transcribed literally, per the standing ticket-verification rule; inline citation badges were added by hand at the closest topical match for each reference, so nothing in the four new References lists sits orphaned with no inline attachment point.
Retrofit Strategies Batch 2: the catalog itself. A new top-level Retrofits section (/retrofits/, sibling to Patterns in the navbar) now holds all 17 real RFT-SCALE-## entries, 10 Corridor, 4 Intersection, 3 Network, plus its own index page, built from a second written ticket (an instructions file plus 23 content files). A new RetrofitCard component gives each entry the same visual ID-card treatment Patterns use, with a Corridor/Intersection/Network scale label in place of a status badge, since Retrofit Strategies are never endorsed or discouraged, only applicable or not.
Six new patterns landed alongside the catalog, needed as real destinations for the new strategies: Modal Filter / Point Closure, Median Island, and Neighborhood Traffic Circle / Mini-Roundabout (Elements); Median U-Turn, Restricted Crossing U-Turn, and Displaced Left-Turn (Intersections & Crossings, all three Situational by design, a narrow-context fit rather than a broad default).
A new "Getting there: Retrofit path options" section, the piece deliberately deferred from Batch 1, is now live on 22 pattern pages, pointing each one at the Retrofit Strategy or Strategies that lead to it. Ten existing pages (Bollard, Curb Extension, Bicycle Boulevard, Pedestrian Safety Island/Refuge, Boulevard, Roundabout, All-Way Stop, Vertical Speed Control, Signal, Grade-Separated Interchange) also gained reciprocal Related Patterns links back to the six new patterns.
Verified against a real pnpm run build, not just pnpm run check: all 24 new pages' internal links and citation anchors resolved cleanly under strict prerendering on the first build. See CLAUDE.md for the full build, including the Network-scale "applies within, not leads to" phrasing rule and the mixed-scale Pattern-ID reference in the three protected-bike-lane retrofits.
Same-day follow-up: the Retrofit Strategy Index (/retrofits/) was rebuilt from a plain numbered list into a card grid matching the Pattern Index, via a new RetrofitIndexCard component. Coloring for both the new index card and the existing Retrofit Strategy ID card now follows each strategy's functional Pattern peer rather than a separate palette: Intersection strategies use the real Intersections & Crossings ramp, Corridor and Network strategies share Patterns' own still-placeholder Freeway-gray. Both components are now documented on the Brand Guide alongside their Pattern-catalog counterparts.

2026.09.02

Merged Commercial Arterial (ART-CAR-07) into Stroad (ART-STD-05). Commercial Arterial and Stroad were the same failure mode under two names; Stroad's page now covers both, with citations merged from both original pages. ART-CAR-07 is retired and not reassigned. 301 redirect in place.
All 11 Intersections & Crossings pattern pages gained a Recommended/Situational status badge, applied to both the page's own Pattern ID card and its Pattern Index row (Protected Intersection already had Recommended; the other 10 are new). Reverses the publication's prior documented convention that intersections carry no status; see CLAUDE.md. Uncontrolled's Design notes also gained one sentence pointing to Stop / Yield as the next control tier once volume rises past the point Uncontrolled stays safe.
New "Descriptive" status badge added for patterns documented as an existing condition rather than a design recommendation. Applied to Organic/Irregular (NET-ORG-04), resolving its previously flagged pending-decision callout. No other pattern currently qualifies.
New static/_redirects file added for a real Netlify-level 301 (the Commercial Arterial → Stroad merge above needed one, and adapter-static has no server-side way to produce a redirect on its own). CLAUDE.md updated throughout to document all of the above, including a new working-convention note on verifying a written ticket's concrete claims (citation markup, token values) against the actual code rather than transcribing them literally.
Bicycle Boulevard / Neighborhood Greenway (LOC-BBG-12) fully rewritten, dropping its "demonstrates the components" placeholder framing for real content: a Paired illustration, Modal hierarchy, Design notes with 2 real tiered citations, and a Related patterns section. It was the last of the 106 live pattern pages still carrying placeholder content or the "Unsourced claim" flag.
Four pattern pages converted off a non-standard "Why this pattern exists" / "Key considerations" template onto the publication's standard Modal hierarchy → Design notes structure: Parkway, Downtown Thoroughfare, Multi-Use Trail / Greenway, and Shared-Use Path. Existing citation numbers and their attachment points were preserved on all four; only the surrounding prose and headings changed.
New Illustration component system built for the Brand Guide's illustration spec (a Paired/Single-condition/Diagram/Descriptive/Conditional frame-and-callout renderer, standing in for real vector art until each pattern's illustration gets drawn) and applied to Local Default (LOC-DEF-01, replacing its old "no illustration yet" placeholder note, and adding a new NACTO reference) and Stroad (ART-STD-05, a required Single-condition illustration plus a justified plan-view supplemental). This is a sitewide component now available for every pattern page's Illustration section, but illustration content has only been authored for these 2 pages plus Bicycle Boulevard above; the other ~103 pattern pages still have none.
Fixed a cosmetic sidebar bug: the Patterns sidebar showed "Stroad / Commercial Arterial (Avoid)" for the Stroad entry, inconsistent with the page's own "Stroad (Commercial Arterial)" title set during the 2026.09.02 merge above. Now matches.
Related patterns rollout completed: the 35 pattern pages still missing a Related patterns section (11 Local, 5 Collector, 5 Arterial, 4 Freeway, 10 Intersections) all got one. Every one of the 105 live pattern pages now carries exactly one. Protected Bike Lane / Cycle Track (ELM-PBL-37) also gained a 4th Key Considerations bullet citing its existing NACTO reference, which had been listed but never cited inline.
How to Read a Pattern gained two new sections matching the publication's current pattern-page structure: "Illustrations," explaining the Paired/Single-condition/Diagram/Descriptive illustration forms in reader-facing terms, and "Related patterns," describing the cross-reference list every pattern page now ends with. Two stale cross-references on the same page were also fixed: the citation-example pointer and the Caution-admonition example both used to point at Bicycle Boulevard sections that no longer exist after its rewrite above; the Caution example now points at a real, verified example on One-Way Street instead.
Post-verification cleanup: a leaked instruction sentence ("Citation badge 1 also appears once more, in Illustration callout 3 above") was found rendering as live page text on Bicycle Boulevard, immediately after Design notes — meta-commentary from the drafting process that should never have been visible content. Removed; a sitewide scan turned up no other instances. The Pattern Index's Arterial table had a visible numbering gap (skipping straight from 6 to 8) left over from the Commercial Arterial retirement, since the Pattern Index card's number badge is drawn directly from the Pattern ID's own trailing digits. Closing it meant renumbering Parkway from ART-PKY-08 to ART-PKY-07, a one-time, explicitly authorized exception to the publication's normal "IDs are never reassigned" rule, made only because the publication is four days old and not yet public; see CLAUDE.md for the full reasoning and the house rule this sets for any future case. The Commercial Arterial → Stroad redirect itself was double-checked and confirmed already correctly in place from earlier the same day.
New Guide page, "Design Speed & Speed Limits" (guide/design-speed/, under Foundations): explains why design speed, operating speed, and posted speed limit diverge, and states the Commonway System's own rule, design speed always equals posted speed, with concrete numbers by Character Type. Built from a user-supplied ticket; its raw citation HTML was translated to this publication's real Citation/EvidenceChip components rather than transcribed literally.
New Speed & Modal Hierarchy card component system (SpeedModalHierarchyCard, SpeedLimitSection, ModalHierarchySection, ModalHierarchyRow, ModalHierarchyPill, SpeedLimitSign), replacing the old plain "Modal hierarchy" heading and list on all 23 automobile-allowing Local, Collector, and Arterial pattern pages, and extended in a Modal-Hierarchy-only form to the 4 patterns that exclude automobiles entirely (Pedestrian-only Street/Plaza, Shared-Use Path, Bike Highway/Greenway, Multi-Use Trail/Greenway). Section A renders one MUTCD-style speed-limit sign per applicable speed (stacked above the description on Arterial pages, which can carry up to 5 at once; side by side on Local/Collector); Section B renders one colored pill per mode, ">" between ranked modes and "=" for an explicit tie (a real case on Shared-Use Path and Multi-Use Trail/Greenway's own equal-priority Pedestrian/Bicycle pairing). Two further special cases: Stroad shows signs with no pill row at all, since it has no ranked hierarchy to show; Festival Street and School Street each show two labeled pill rows, since their hierarchy changes by time of day.
Pill icons are 5 exact icons from the Lucide icon set (person-standing, bike, tram-front, car, truck), supplied directly by the user and used under Lucide's ISC license. New THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES file added at the repo root for this and any future embedded (not npm-dependency) third-party asset, linked from the Terms and Conditions page's "Code and content licensing" section.
Arterial's pill color is a documented accessibility exception, not a silent pass: black technically clears WCAG contrast against Arterial's green in both light and dark mode, but reads far less legibly in practice than white, so Arterial pills are fixed white in both modes with a dark text-shadow/icon-shadow glow standing in for the missing contrast margin, a real, computed shortfall rather than an estimate. Documented as a "Fail (mitigated)" row in the Brand Guide's Accessibility notes table, the same treatment already given the publication's other known, flagged color exceptions.
How to Read a Pattern gained a new "The Speed & Modal Hierarchy card" section (between Density tiers and Admonitions) with a live rendered demo. Brand Guide's Components section gained two new entries, "Speed & Modal Hierarchy card" and "Modal hierarchy pills," plus 6 new Accessibility notes rows with contrast ratios computed directly against the real tokens.css values.

2026.09.01

Full citation sourcing completed for the rest of the guidebook: 93 pattern pages gained real References sections and inline citation badges (46 pages already had References from an earlier session but no inline badges, so those got badges only; 47 pages, mostly Corridor, Local Street, Collector, Arterial, Freeway, and Intersection typologies, got References and badges built from scratch). 105 of the 106 live pattern pages now carry real citations; only Bicycle Boulevard / Neighborhood Greenway remains flagged, a confirmed placeholder page left that way on purpose. Sources include AASHTO, MUTCD (11th Edition with Revision 1), NACTO, PROWAG, FHWA, NCHRP research reports, and CROW/SWOV for the Dutch Sustainable Safety citations, each tagged Legal/regulatory, Evidence-based, or Precedent-based.
Fixed a real bug in the navbar’s CalVer version number: it was computed from the build machine’s wall clock at build time, which isn’t always the same moment as the last real push, so re-running a Netlify build against an already-published commit (a manual redeploy, a cache-clear-and-rebuild, an automatic retry) silently advanced the version past the date anything was actually published, confirmed live when the navbar read one day ahead of every page’s own "Last updated" text. The version is now computed from the last commit’s own date instead (src/routes/+layout.server.ts), so it only changes when new content is actually pushed, and stays correct no matter how many times the same commit gets rebuilt. The development server is unaffected and still shows the live current date while editing.
New Pattern IDs page published under Guide → Foundations: the nine-prefix Scale table and status-badge explanation that used to live inline on How to Read a Pattern now have their own page, linked from How to Read a Pattern, Scale Hierarchy, and Street Types & Classifications. How to Read a Pattern's own Pattern ID card section is now shorter and leads with a live example card (reusing the Brand Guide's illustrative "Urban main street" sample) instead of the full reference table, so a reader sees a real card before reading about its parts.
Make It Happen chapter published under Guide, resolving the Roadmap's "Process-explainer chapter" item: "How Road Changes Actually Happen," a four-question method for finding out who has authority over a specific road and how to actually request a change, covering restoring vs. adding vs. changing a standard everywhere, public vs. private roads, splits in jurisdiction, and the seven ways a request gets processed once the right authority is found. A companion reference page, "When Jurisdiction Doesn't Follow the Pattern," catalogs real documented exceptions (consolidated city-counties, independent cities, tribal land overlaps, special districts, and more) that don't fit the general method cleanly. Both carry real citations. The Guide intro page and the Make It Happen sidebar group were updated to match.

2026.08.31

Pattern ID scheme corrected sitewide: Segment/Intersection (LOC/COL/ART/FRE/INT) was previously the only Scale documented as encoding Scale in its prefix. The full nine-prefix system is now in place and documented: NET (Network), CDR (Corridor), FAC (Facility), and ELM (Element) as flat, non-subdividing Scale prefixes, alongside the existing five Functional Classification prefixes at Segment/Intersection. How to Read a Pattern, Scale Hierarchy, and Street Types & Classifications all rewritten to describe the corrected scheme.
Three new live Segment/Intersection pattern pages: Shared-Use Path (LOC-SUP-13), Multi-Use Trail / Greenway (COL-MUT-06), and Protected Intersection (INT-PRI-11, the first new Intersections & Crossings entry since the original ten). Added to the Pattern Index card grid and sidebar; pattern count reached 40.
A new "On the Horizon" section was briefly added to the Pattern Index listing 63 named-and-scoped-but-not-yet-built patterns as descriptive reference tables; superseded later the same day, see below, once all 63 became real pattern pages.
Full Network/Corridor/Facility/Element pattern batch built out: all 63 previously-scoped patterns (4 Network, 6 Corridor, 10 Facility, 43 Element) now have real pattern pages, plus 3 more new Segment/Intersection patterns resolving every item on the old "under review" list: Downtown Thoroughfare (COL-DTH-07), Commercial Arterial (ART-CAR-07, a documented anti-pattern), and Parkway (ART-PKY-08). Live pattern count is now 106. Avenue and the Downtown One-Way/Two-Way Street cluster, also once "under review," were deliberately not built: Downtown One-Way is just the existing One-Way Street (ART-OWS-06), and Avenue was dropped from consideration.
Pattern Index page fully restructured: the old five-classification-plus-two-appendix layout (Local/Collector/Arterial/Freeway/Intersections, "Under review," "On the Horizon") is now nine Scale-ordered sections (Network, Corridor, Local street, Collector street, Arterial street, Freeway, Intersections and crossings, Facility level, Element level), every section a full card grid, no more plain-bullet or table-only appendix sections. Sidebar restructured to match, 9 groups in the same order. JSON-LD Pattern Index ItemList now reflects all 106 patterns automatically, since it derives from the sidebar tree rather than being hand-counted.
PatternCard and PatternIndexCard gained four new classification values (network, corridor, facility, element), all sharing Freeway’s existing neutral-gray ramp as a placeholder color pending real Brand Guide colors for those Scales, flagged inline in both components. Organic/Irregular (NET-ORG-04) renders without a status badge, a flagged, not-yet-confirmed treatment for its own descriptive (not prescriptive) case, since the publication’s Recommended/Situational/Avoid system doesn’t have an equivalent value; see the page’s own note callout and this file’s Known gaps section.
Brand Guide’s illustrative "Urban main street" PatternCard demo renumbered from ART-UMS-07 to ART-UMS-09: the collision this file had been flagging as a future risk actually happened once Commercial Arterial and Parkway became real 7th/8th Arterial Typologies.

2026.08.30

Homepage rebuilt from scaffold placeholder text into a real Hero / differentiator-strip / features-grid page, with three new components (Hero, EvidenceStrip, FeatureGrid) and two new PageLayout frontmatter flags (hideTitle, wide) for pages that need their own custom-placed h1 or a wider-than-prose content column.
Homepage hero redesigned to be full-bleed edge to edge and permanently dark regardless of the publication’s own light/dark toggle, with a subtle animated lane-line texture and a teal glow behind the logomark (both respecting prefers-reduced-motion), and a 60vh minimum height. New GlobalLayout mechanism (isHome) collapses the sidebar/toc grid to a single full-width column on the homepage only, since neither ever has content there.
Differentiator strip (the "why this guidebook is different" evidence-tier callout) redesigned from an amber box, which read as a warning notice, to a teal feature-highlight treatment matching the evidence chips’ own palette; its "learn more" link now uses the publication’s standard hyperlink styling instead of a custom color.
Differentiator strip and feature grid widened to match the navbar’s own 88rem measure, instead of the narrower 46rem prose column every article page uses.
/about/credits/ moved for real to /about/acknowledgments/ (route, not just display title this time), with every cross-link updated to match.
Guide section rebuilt: sidebar regrouped into Foundations, Find Your Pattern, and Make It Happen (the Introduction page now an ungrouped "Start Here" entry at the top, same idea as About’s own Overview item). New Scale Hierarchy page split out of the Introduction page’s old content. Two new placeholder pages, Find Your Pattern and Make It Happen, each with real explanatory copy and the standing "planned but not yet written" callout, one per new sidebar group so nothing has to move once each becomes a real page sequence.
JSON-LD structured data added publication-wide: an Organization and WebSite block on every page, plus a BreadcrumbList and a template-appropriate schema.org type (TechArticle for Guide/Reference/pattern pages, CollectionPage for the Pattern Index, AboutPage/WebPage for About, Blog/BlogPosting for the blog) generated from each page’s own frontmatter, no per-page authoring. Every page’s frontmatter gained a date field (datePublished, backfilled from its existing "last updated" date) and every pattern page gained a patternId field, now the single source for the Pattern ID card’s id instead of a hardcoded literal.
Pattern Index page (/patterns/) rebuilt from a plain bulleted list into a card grid: a new PatternIndexCard component per Street Typology, with a recolored image area (classification-ramp tint, swappable per-pattern illustration once one exists), a number badge, and a status badge for Situational/Avoid entries. A new shared StatusBadge component now backs both this and the existing Pattern ID card’s own status pill. Real illustrations added for 11 of the 37 patterns so far, all of Local Streets except Bicycle Boulevard, plus Roundabout. Added to the Brand Guide’s component showcase. The classification section intros on this page were also rewritten into plainer-language prose.
New Intersections & Crossings color ramp (six tiers, built from #8A5A13), resolving the classification’s old single-color placeholder the same way the guidebook’s other four ramps work; documented on the Brand Guide alongside them. Flagged, not resolved: this hue sits within about a degree of the publication’s reserved warning amber.
Mobile navbar layout fixed: below 940px, the version date, GitHub icon, and theme toggle used to clump on the left with empty space on the right once the primary nav links collapsed into the hamburger drawer. All five elements (logo, hamburger, version, GitHub, toggle) now space evenly edge to edge, with icon tap targets kept at their full size and the wordmark logo shrunk to make room on the narrowest phones.
Known incomplete: the new Scale Hierarchy page’s Network/Corridor/Facility/Element definitions carry over wording from an earlier planning session that was never formally re-confirmed as final; pending a maintainer read-through. Separately, found but did not fix a pre-existing bug: the mobile hamburger button doesn’t actually open the sidebar drawer on any viewport, confirmed on an unmodified copy of the publication, so the drawer’s nav links and page sidebar are currently unreachable on mobile.

2026.08.29

Pattern ID format finalized as CLASS-CTXCODE-## (e.g. LOC-BBG-12), replacing the old SCALE-CTXCODE-### scheme. Applied across every pattern page, the Pattern Index, and every illustrative example, confirmed with a full-repo search for zero remaining old-format IDs.
Bicycle Boulevard’s placeholder ID resolved to LOC-BBG-12; the Brand Guide’s separate "Urban main street" demo card migrated to ART-UMS-07.
PatternCard gained a status badge (Recommended, Situational/Discouraged, Avoid), applied to every Local, Collector, Arterial, and Freeway pattern page. Intersections & Crossings entries intentionally carry no status, matching the master reference.
Default (Standard Local Street) rewritten with real content and cross-links to every other Local Typology and to Continuous Sidewalk/Raised Junction.
New Release History & Roadmap page published under About, with a live pattern-page count and current-version date computed from the publication’s own routes rather than hardcoded.
Google Analytics wired up (GA4), loading only in production builds, never during local development.
sitemap.xml added and submitted to Google Search Console; robots.txt now points crawlers at it.
Fixed a mobile navigation bug: the hamburger drawer only ever showed a page’s own sidebar tree, never the navbar’s primary links (Guide, Pattern Index, About), which made them unreachable on narrow viewports, including the homepage.
Density Tiers and Street Types & Classifications published under Guide: the six density tiers with their ITE/CNU transect equivalents and unit-per-acre ranges, and what a Functional Classification and a Street Typology actually are, indexing every Typology by classification.
How to Read a Pattern rewritten with real content: the Pattern ID format, classification colors and status badges, all five admonition kinds, and how citation badges work.
Citation badges now link down to their numbered source entry publication-wide, instead of being plain unlinked numbers.
About section filled in with real content: Contributing / Volunteering, Governance, Reporting, and a new Credits page (a data-driven contributor list, currently empty pending the first real contribution). New Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy pages published alongside them.
Added the GitHub-side contributor infrastructure those About pages point to: issue templates (factual error, missing citation, dead link, accessibility), a pull request template, and a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md. Added a root LICENSE (MIT, covering the publication’s code only) and documented the code/content license split in the README.
Every page now shows a real "Last updated" date next to its edit link, sourced from git history at build time rather than filesystem metadata (which a fresh deploy checkout would otherwise reset on every file).
Added "Share" buttons (X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Bluesky, email, copy-link) to every page: plain outbound links only, no third-party share-button script or tracking, consistent with the Privacy Policy.
The version number in the navbar is now a link to this page.
Fixed a real production-build failure: the Brand Guide’s illustrative citation demo linked to a citation anchor that doesn’t exist, which adapter-static’s strict prerendering treats as a hard build error rather than a soft dead link.
Street Types & Classifications gained 10 real citations (Stroad, Street Typology, Living Street/Woonerf, Yield Street, Turbo-Roundabout, plus the three sources behind the Dutch CROW comparison table), mph conversions alongside every km/h speed figure, and working links from that comparison table straight to each pattern’s real CS equivalent page.
Wide tables now scroll horizontally in their own box instead of overflowing the page: a themed edge-fade shadow, a thin scrollbar, and a “scroll for more” hint shown only once a table actually overflows. Applied publication-wide through a new rehype plugin, not hand-added per table, and built as a wrapper around the table rather than changing the table’s own CSS display, so screen readers keep the table’s native semantics.
Evidence-tier chips (Legal/regulatory, Evidence-based, Precedent-based) rolled out to every citation on Density Tiers and Street Types & Classifications, and made a standing house rule going forward: every new citation gets one. The Contributing page’s review checklist now says so explicitly.
Sitewide URL restructure: the navbar is now Home / Guide / Patterns / Reference / Blog / About. All 37 pattern pages and the Pattern Index moved out of Guide into their own Patterns section; Guide now holds only its 4 remaining non-pattern pages. Two new sections launched: Reference (explaining the technical-detail layer planned beneath pattern pages, not yet populated) and Blog (a dynamically generated index, one welcome post so far).
About’s sidebar split into three groups, About/Development/Terms and Policies, and four of its pages got new display titles without changing their URLs: Governance → Project Governance, Contributing / Volunteering → Submit a Change, Reporting → Report a Problem, Credits → Acknowledgments.
Fixed this page’s own live pattern-page count, which had silently dropped to 0 after the Patterns move since the script computing it still pointed at the old guide/ path.

2026.08.28

Initial public launch of commonwaysystem.org, deployed through Netlify with a custom SveltePress theme. Guide structure established: Introduction, Pattern Index, How to Read a Pattern, and the first 37 Street Typology pattern pages across Local, Collector, Arterial, Freeway, and Intersections & Crossings.

#Publishing checklist and build notes

Before pushing a batch of work to GitHub, draft a short build note summarizing what changed since the last push. This does two things: it gives the changelog entry above something accurate to draw from, and it gives a checkpoint to review the work before it goes live.

A build note doesn't need to be long. Cover:

What content changed (new pattern pages, edits to existing ones, corrected data)
What structural or publication changes shipped (new components, navigation changes, styling updates)
Anything left in a known-incomplete state (a page that's live but flagged with an unsourced claim, a section still under review)

#Roadmap

Work that's planned but not yet built, grouped by area.

#New content

Induced Demand page. A new Guide page on induced demand, connected to the patterns, retrofit strategies, and Media Gallery entries it relates to.
Traffic Calming page. A new Guide page on traffic calming, connected to the patterns and retrofit strategies it relates to.
Hoofdnet/Plusnet methodology page. A new Guide page on the Dutch Hoofdnet/Plusnet road-network methodology.

#Structure changes

Classification overview pages. Landing pages for Local, Collector, Arterial, and Freeway, sitting between the Pattern Index and individual Street Typology pages, which currently jump straight from one to the other.
Dutch CROW reconciliation. Folding an internal CROW-comparison reference into the actual Commonway System patterns.

#Existing content

Commonway System page update. A refresh of /about/commonway-system/ with clearer information for a first-time visitor.
Brand Guide page update. Finalizing /about/brand-guide/ as the canonical brand reference, including documentation for components not yet covered there.
Related Media placement decision. Finalizing which page a specific Related Media item currently tagged to the Commonway System page actually belongs on.

#Audits

Website specification audit. A full audit of the publication against the checklist at specification.website.

#New features

Find Your Pattern tool. A two-part diagnostic tool plus an interactive, clickable hotspot map.
Photo Gallery feature. A new media type usable on any page: ordinary photos, before/after comparison sliders, and map-based street-level photos.
Related Media refinements. Improvements to how the Related Media component displays.

#Standing / ongoing

Illustration system rollout. Extending real illustration content beyond the handful of pattern pages that currently have it.
Bike Highway / Downtown Thoroughfare content pass. A future revision pass on these two pattern pages.
Binding-adoption template. A future, separate model template for formal municipal adoption.
More media items. Ongoing additions to the Media Gallery as new sources come up.

#External

Rosetta Places citation. Rosetta Places will cite the Commonway System by name once it reaches a citable state.

Suggest changes to this page (opens in new tab) Text-only version Last updated September 26, 2026