Reducing excessive speeding is one of the most effective ways to improve road safety—especially where people are walking or biking. While lowering speed limits and adding traffic calming measures help, growing research highlights the value of self-explaining streets that give drivers constant cues to slow down.
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Congestion pricing could be the only path to managing gridlock
Transportation agencies in the U.S. spend billions of dollars each year expanding highways to ease gridlock. Yet commute times have increased 20% over the last 50 years and traffic congestion is still worsening, according to a several reports. New research confirms congestion pricing may be the best path toward any kind of relief. New York’s program, which launched in January amid plenty of controversy, looks like a promising example.
DOTs face new challenges as rural areas evolve
The transportation needs of urban and rural places are not as binary or opposed as they’re made out to be, and the distinctions will continue to blur over time. Agencies can work to understand the full context of each place and its interconnections to meet the unique needs of every community.
Focusing on EV charging along corridors exacerbates equity issues
Federal initiatives to fund electric vehicle infrastructure, like the NEVI program, encourage EV chargers along highway corridors, and also promote equitable distribution of the infrastructure. According to a new study, however, these two goals may be at odds. Evidence suggests the corridor-based approach is not leading to particularly equitable outcomes.
In California speed made crashes more deadly during the pandemic
In California, during the stay-at-home period of COVID-19, people drove less and the total number of crashes went down; but the frequency of fatal crashes increased due to drivers driving faster on open roads. New research leverages pandemic-era speed, volume, and crash data in that state to show that in an urban setting adding lanes to relieve congestion and decrease the number of fender benders can make room for risky behavior and higher speeds that increase the severity of crashes.
State DOTs working to improve public engagement around urban highways
Many highways that once cut through cities across the country are now coming of age, and the state DOTs responsible for maintaining them are beginning to wrestle with what those facilities should look like in the coming decades and, in some cases, whether they should be there at all. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has signaled strong interest in rethinking these highways and USDOT will soon be inviting applications for its $1B Reconnecting Communities program, authorized through IIJA. That will be good news for a small number of agencies facing mounting pressure from community members pushing for innovative thinking on urban freeways.
Caltrans joins MassDOT in requiring road projects to serve all modes
Culture change at large agencies like state DOTs is slow but steady. In California’s case, the agency has taken several important steps, prompted partly by SSTI’s 2014 external review. The agency started by updating its mission, vision, and goals—shifting its focus from strictly “mobility” to “a safe, sustainable, integrated and efficient transportation system.” It is now formalizing that mission in its design process through a Complete Streets policy directive.
Oregon moves toward a safer speed-limit approach
The Oregon Transportation Commission last month approved a revised speed-limit guidance that abandons the long-standing-but-arbitrary 85th percentile rule in many cases. Instead of relying on drivers to set speeds by their behavior, the new guidance provides context-based safe speed ranges for urban and suburban roadways, ranging from 20-25 mph in urban cores to 25-35 mph in more suburban areas. The rule gives leeway for setting limits outside of those ranges. Rationales for exceptions do include observed motorist speeds, but they are based on the slower 50th percentile rather than the 85th.
Researchers say investment in infrastructure has the potential to move short trips out of cars
Can the rise of new personal mobility options lure drivers out of their cars for short trips? Several recent reports say, “yes,” but only if cities resolve both infrastructure and legal issues surrounding their use. At the same time, examination of walking and biking rates from 2001 to 2017 show that better infrastructure and policies are needed to help them supplant driving for short trips. However, cities that have invested in infrastructure have seen a dramatic rise in active transportation.
New NACTO and USDOT Volpe Center reports call for improved vehicle design to increase safety
A pair of new reports examines how the design of large vehicles—such as fire trucks, garbage and recycling vehicles, and freight trucks—impacts traffic fatalities in cities. These types of vehicles have a disproportionate impact on urban roadway safety for all users. However, vehicle design changes and new technology could significantly reduce that impact.