Inclusive Transportation
Introduction
For example, the introduction of shared dockless bicycles and scooters may have improved economics for some cities. However, they created issues for people with disabilities, such as when users leave them in the middle of the sidewalk or a curb ramp, creating a tripping hazard or making a sidewalk impassable for someone in a wheelchair. The results have caused cities to create regulations or in some cases ban them altogether.
Empty roads that were already unsafe because of the number of lanes became more unsafe as people drove faster. In 2020, there was an uptick in fatalities, an estimated 23 percent increase for Black people and an 11 percent increase for speed-related crashes. Unfortunately, in 2021 the United States had the highest number of traffic-related fatalities in sixteen years.
Empty roads that were already unsafe because of the number of lanes became more unsafe as people drove faster. In 2020, there was an uptick in fatalities, an estimated 23 percent increase for Black people and an 11 percent increase for speed-related crashes. Unfortunately, in 2021 the United States had the highest number of traffic-related fatalities in sixteen years.
Transportation is Personal
How they move between an origin and a destination is as routine as breathing. When that routine is disrupted, such as by being delayed by a traffic jam caused by a crash, twisting an ankle on a broken sidewalk, getting a flat tire while riding a bike, or having to stand in unpleasant elements because their bus never arrived—then people notice.
They took my grandparents’ home as well as the others on the block, leaving my great-grandmother’s house and the corner store. In addition, prior to the highway, the community had raised money to build a new high school at St. Francis Xavier Roman Catholic Church, which had a majority Black student population. Just four years after the church completed construction of the school, the state tore it down for the highway. My mom was in the last graduating class. As of this writing, a six-lane portion of I-10 still overshadows the church.
...capacity building moves beyond engagement to ask how you are providing resources for the community to continue to expand its work.
They took my grandparents’ home as well as the others on the block, leaving my great-grandmother’s house and the corner store. In addition, prior to the highway, the community had raised money to build a new high school at St. Francis Xavier Roman Catholic Church, which had a majority Black student population. Just four years after the church completed construction of the school, the state tore it down for the highway. My mom was in the last graduating class. As of this writing, a six-lane portion of I-10 still overshadows the church.
...capacity building moves beyond engagement to ask how you are providing resources for the community to continue to expand its work.
What does this look like in a transportation setting? Let’s say you are installing a bike lane in a community where one did not exist before. An example of capacity building could be providing the community with a tool kit and resources to host community rides or pop-up clinics to help repair bikes to encourage people to use the bike lane. In addition, you could give them access to appropriate parties to notify when the bike lane requires maintenance, such as sweeping or refreshing the paint. I think many professionals are unclear about this step. We build the bike lane and move on to the next project.
My engineering curriculum did not focus on why the road was being designed, only on how to design it and minimize the cost to construct it. When civil engineers are disconnected from the communities where their projects are located, it leads to decisions that prioritize infrastructure over the actual needs of the community.
Everyone deserves safe, reliable, and affordable transportation options. By this, I mean that anytime someone needs to get from point A to point B, they have multiple options. I repeat, I am not anti-car. However, I believe strongly that driving in a vehicle alone should not be the default or the only option.
The main tool to accommodate the growth in traffic volumes has been expanding roadways to add more lanes. As the transportation adage goes, we cannot build our way out of congestion. Large projects that expand the number of vehicles that can travel are expensive and take decades to design and build. Even researchers acknowledge that expanding the roadways actually increases traffic volumes; this is what is known as induced demand, or, stated in another way, a self-fulfilling prophesy.
If we continue to project from today using trends from the past, we will get the future we predict.
Equity Is More than a Baseball Graphic
An opposing interpretation of equity is that it means taking from someone to give to someone else.
Equity starts with an inclusive outreach process to understand what is the community’s need rather than what you may interpret as the need.
The fundamental challenge is that the needs of the community more than likely exceed the resources available at any given time.
What I have seen in my career is that communities expend effort developing transportation equity plans, but when it is time to implement, the community divides the resource pie so everyone’s neighborhood gets some incremental change. However, that incremental change is not enough to make a noticeable difference. The areas that need it most never get the resources they need.
It requires elected leadership willing to make the hard decisions and a transportation department willing to implement them. Elected leaders want to get reelected, so they will push for resources for their constituents even when they do not have the greatest need. Richer communities will point out that their tax dollars are funding the improvement, so they should get the resources in their community. Without a true commitment to equity, the allocation of resources gets decided by who attends the public meetings, who has influence over the decision-making process and the people making the decision, and, more important, who has the power at the expense of the Silently Suffering.
Constraining resources often leads to people feeling the need to advocate for their specific community.
It requires elected leadership willing to make the hard decisions and a transportation department willing to implement them. Elected leaders want to get reelected, so they will push for resources for their constituents even when they do not have the greatest need. Richer communities will point out that their tax dollars are funding the improvement, so they should get the resources in their community. Without a true commitment to equity, the allocation of resources gets decided by who attends the public meetings, who has influence over the decision-making process and the people making the decision, and, more important, who has the power at the expense of the Silently Suffering.
Constraining resources often leads to people feeling the need to advocate for their specific community.
We reframed equity as prioritization. The analogy I came up with was an emergency room (ER).
Equity requires that we understand the past, without being trapped in it; embrace the present, without being constrained by it; and look to the future, guided by the hopes and courage of those who have fought before and beside us.
Should There Be a War on Cars?
With LOS [level of service] as the guiding principle, naturally the solving of congestion focuses on peak times, which are the morning and evening rush hours. Our predecessors designed roads for the worst six or so hours of the day—and the business as usual approach continues this practice even now. During the other eighteen or so hours, however, the roads have excess capacity, which leads to people speeding, which in turn leads to a high number of crashes. It is dangerous, and wasteful, similar to how big-box retailers build surface parking lots for Black Friday shopping, and for the rest of the year these lots are virtually empty.
For example, the State of Louisiana is proposing to invest $1.1billion to widen the same Interstate 10 that destroyed my family’s neighborhood in Baton Rouge. In February 2021, through the environmental review process established by the National Environmental Policy Act, the state received a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) despite the need to acquire twenty-seven residential and five commercial structures, of which 64 percent are in environmental justice communities, defined as communities made up mostly of people of color and low income. Depending on your point of view, you may or may not agree with the assessment that acquiring twenty-seven residential properties is not significant.
Engineers and planners intentionally designed the national highway system to go through Black, Brown, and low-income neighborhoods. There were some attempts to build them through White neighborhoods, but these were often met with resistance from those communities. Putting the highways through Black, Brown, and low-income neighborhoods was the path of least resistance. Not because people in those communities did not care—but because they had the least power. Black people did not have the right to vote until 1965, so technically they were not a political threat.
For example, the State of Louisiana is proposing to invest $1.1billion to widen the same Interstate 10 that destroyed my family’s neighborhood in Baton Rouge. In February 2021, through the environmental review process established by the National Environmental Policy Act, the state received a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) despite the need to acquire twenty-seven residential and five commercial structures, of which 64 percent are in environmental justice communities, defined as communities made up mostly of people of color and low income. Depending on your point of view, you may or may not agree with the assessment that acquiring twenty-seven residential properties is not significant.
Engineers and planners intentionally designed the national highway system to go through Black, Brown, and low-income neighborhoods. There were some attempts to build them through White neighborhoods, but these were often met with resistance from those communities. Putting the highways through Black, Brown, and low-income neighborhoods was the path of least resistance. Not because people in those communities did not care—but because they had the least power. Black people did not have the right to vote until 1965, so technically they were not a political threat.
There are plenty of “get out and move” campaigns, but how does one get out and move when there are no sidewalks or paths, no trees to provide shade, and no places to sit when one gets tired?
Moving 50,000 vehicles and moving 50,000 people are not the same thing. The latter would not require widening the road, and, depending on the solution, you may even be able to narrow the roadway, resulting in less maintenance cost—and other benefits.
For example, I worked on a transit study where the buses made up 3 percent of the volume of vehicles moving through the corridor, but they were moving over 51 percent of the people through that corridor.
I worked on one project where the intersection was rated as LOS F. The main reason was that the volume of people using the crosswalk prevented vehicles from being able to turn. People waiting at the traffic signal would have to sit through two or more red lights before they could make a turn. Our team recommended a Barnes Dance, which means people using the crosswalks get their own traffic light cycle, during which they can move in any direction, across or diagonal. With the proposed solution, the number of cars able to drive through the intersection would increase, since they would not have to wait for people to cross the street. The other benefit would be increased safety for people using crosswalks because no vehicle could enter the intersection during the signal phase that was exclusive to people walking.
Finally, for the sake of building an inclusive transportation plan, you will need to center the voices of people who travel during off-peak hours. As an example, schedule data collection during off-peak times. If there are schools, schedule data collection and observations around school arrival and dismissal times and on weekends, when others in the community may be using the playground. I did this for a Safe Routes to School assessment and found that many of the kids were being walked to school by older siblings, who then continued their trip to their own schools. From an engineering standpoint, this means the design requires not only safe routes to the subject school but also safe routes between schools. From a community advocate standpoint, it requires engaging the school of the older sibling, which without engagement might be assumed to fall outside of the project scope.
“What does equity look like when we achieve it?” The task force members explicitly said that for them, the analysis must show that the commute time would be improved for the areas that the data showed currently had the worse outcomes. This meant looking at the census tracts that had the highest rates of asthma, the longest commute times, and the lowest rates of car ownership. In pushing beyond the bare minimum of analysis, the task force also said the analysis should shorten the commute for residents who had been pushed out of the city by economic development and gentrification.
As you think about a study, plan, or project you may be working on, how can you measure equity? There are two key steps as you reflect. Step 1 is analyzing the history of the community you are studying. Step 2 is working with the community to develop metrics that lead to restoration, which really only that community can articulate.
Policies lay the foundation for many decisions. For example, I worked with a city that had a policy that the curb-to-curb space could not be expanded unless there were extenuating circumstances, and even then the answer was no. That meant the roadway could not be expanded, but we could do a “road diet,” or narrowing of the roadway.
The city’s policy decision was “Work with what you have, and if we are going to spend money to reconstruct the road, it will not be to widen it.”
One thing that gets muddled as people in the United States attempt to adopt Vision Zero is conflation of the total number of crashes with the total number of crashes that lead to deaths and serious injuries. Vision Zero does not demand perfect records, and it recognizes that crashes will occur because we are human. Instead, it argues that the focus should be on deaths and serious injuries.
If you focus on crashes regardless of the resulting injury, you may move resources from communities that need them more because they are where people are dying.
We did not just inform people; we also engaged with them and used their feedback and stories to shape the plan. As an example, after talking with a group of young Black teens at the youth summit, we removed all enforcement related to people walking and biking. The young people conveyed to us that sometimes crossing the street midblock got them away from a group of people who may want to cause them harm. The teens weighed their risk of being targeted by violence as higher than their risk of being struck by someone driving a vehicle.
In addition, we heard from people that having police enforce laws related to walking and biking put the community and law enforcement in conflict with each other. Charles T. Brown has documented in his research for his podcast Arrested Mobility how laws such as those prohibiting jaywalking are disproportionately enforced in Black and Brown communities, for men in particular. In DC’s Vision Zero plan, enforcement was instead targeted to dangerous driving behavior such as excessive speeding, driving under the influence, distracted driving, and reckless driving.
Power, Influence, and the Complexity of People
As with many department of transportation undertakings in which projects are split into multiple phases, sometimes a phase that was promised to the community never gets constructed, and if it does get constructed it is because members of the community continued to advocate for what was promised to them.
...public engagement is the first item cut when a project’s budget is reduced.
As an example, if you are analyzing bus service, the people who rely on the bus the most may use it during off-peak hours, including late at night. Yet meetings about the bus route may be held in a location that is inaccessible by bus or at a time when people who are most dependent on the bus are not able to attend.
Bringing People and Planning Together
..the planning process and public engagement process run parallel but do not do a good job of informing each other. By this, I mean there is a technical process focused on the elements that impact the conceptual design or the alternatives, and there is a public engagement process to get feedback, but it is not often clear how the public feedback shapes the final alternative.
To save the budget, the person leading public engagement is excluded from the project management and technical team meetings but is still expected to put together a public meeting to get feedback.
The disconnect is compounded because project managers often do not understand engagement, or it is not something that is a strength for them. Very few project managers have both strength in the technical components and ideas for how to engage the public. A public engagement lead who is not included in technical meetings is left to rely on the project manager to communicate guidance from the client in the public engagement process. We have all played “telephone” and understand how this puts clear communication at risk.
Additionally, a public engagement lead who is not part of the technical process is essentially planning meetings without knowing what type of feedback will be useful for the technical process. This can backfire by making the public feel their concerns are being ignored—and result in genuine missed opportunities to make the project serve the community better. An example is creating a public meeting that has engaging activities but does not result in feedback that is truly useful to the technical process.
In my five years of studying civil engineering in undergraduate and graduate school, I did not have a single course or even lecture that discussed public outreach. Even though I had to take two English classes for my undergraduate degree, I never learned how to communicate with the public while in school. For my planning degree, I learned how to create maps, but I never learned how to create visuals to help the public understand the purpose of a project and what is being proposed.
The government entity did not listen to the community in the past, so every time it shows up for new community feedback, the community gets upset and brings up the issue from the past. The engineers or planners do not want to be yelled at by the public, so they create a process to minimize public engagement or concoct a convoluted faux-engagement process really designed to avoid getting yelled at. Then the community gets upset and sends emails or posts comments on the internet, which leads to engineers and planners being scared of the community. Rinse and repeat.
Not taking the time to understand the history of a place will leave you with a derailed community meeting and public engagement process. Think about it from the community’s perspective. You are asking for their input on a project when you failed to deliver on a previous promise. And it does not matter if it was literally you or not.
Large organizations, which include governments, are siloed. But it is important to remember that to the public, the government is simply the government.
What promises have been made to the public? This is an important question. Government staff may have made a promise to the community. However, it may not be documented anywhere, and the person who made the promise may no longer be in that position. You will want to know what has been promised. You do not necessarily need to honor the promise, especially if it was made a long time ago or standards have changed since then. If you are not going to honor the promise, you will need to thoroughly document and explain why. You cannot just ignore it.
What are small outstanding issues that can be addressed before the project starts? If the community has been complaining about something small, like the need to repaint a crosswalk or replace a sign, you will want to know. If at all possible, to try get those items addressed before the first public meeting. The engagement process can be derailed if such issues are not addressed or there is not at least a timeline to address them.
The Task Ahead: Where the Hard Work Continues
One, the modeling does not always capture changes in transportation trends. ... Two, the regional forecast models tend to overestimate future demand, meaning resources tend to be overallocated to transportation for cars. Finally, commute trips by biking, walking, and newer transportation modes such as electric scooters are undercounted.
One, instead of projecting VMT forward from the existing condition using transportation models, create a model that we can reverse model. For example, what if a region had a bold vision to remove 50 percent of the roadway lane miles within its long-range vision? By setting that as a constraint with the assumed population and employment growth, the model would lay out the transportation options to accomplish that goal. The goal would be a significant investment in modes that can move many people in a small amount of space, such as public transportation, passenger or commuter rail, and bicycle infrastructure.
From a job creation standpoint, it would create plenty of construction jobs to reconstruct roadways into a smaller footprint, including opportunities for new businesses to construct sidewalks and bicycle lanes. It would create jobs for people to operate and maintain vehicles. In addition, it would create jobs to maintain new green spaces that could be created by removing roadways.
Another example on the land use side would be to have a bold vision to remove all surface parking. Rarely is a surface lot the highest and best use of land. Having a vision to remove all surface lots could create space for housing, commercial development, office space, and open space. Parking could be accommodated by parking garages, but hopefully with our bold vision to remove 50 percent of the roadway, there would be less need for parking overall.
... none of us know what is going to happen in the future. Rather than project from what we can see today, we should be projecting from a vision of what we want life to be in the future. Projections based on the past are why we end up with wide roads.
A bold leader of a transportation agency risks being ousted if the elected leader is more concerned about being reelected or pleasing a particular group of people than they are committed to the bigger vision. A bold elected leader risks failed campaign promises if the leader of the transportation agency is not willing to keep moving forward even when the project generates vocal opposition.
A quick fix would be to have a universal certification that allows for information to be shared between states. That would allow small businesses to focus on projects to make money and create local jobs.
Some of this starts with early childhood education to get children of diverse backgrounds excited about science, technology, engineering, and math. We must teach young people about planning—it is powerful to understand why your community looks the way it does, whether you grow up to be a professional planner or not.