Founded in 1996, NACTO has participated in a number of research initiatives dealing with surface transportation in urban areas.

Past campaigns have focused on bicycling, bus rapid transit, light rail, bike share, and freight.

Conference sites In October 2014, the Global Designing Cities Initiative was launched as a subsidiary of NACTO to bring guidance for safe streets to an international audience.

[2] The initiative will work especially close with the 10 cities chosen to be a focus of the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety: Accra, Addis Ababa, Bandung, Bangkok, Bogotá, Fortaleza, Ho Chi Minh City, Mumbai, São Paulo, and Shanghai.

In March 2011 the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide, part of the Cities for Cycling initiative, was officially released.

Janette Sadik-Khan, the New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner, announced the release at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C.[3] The Bikeway Design Guide provides technical guidance on over twenty different bicycle infrastructure designs.