Jaibin Mathew, Author at Transportation For America

Three ways quick builds can speed up safety

It will take years to unwind decades of dangerous street designs that have helped contribute to a 40-year high in pedestrian deaths, but quick-build demonstration projects can make a concrete difference overnight. Every state, county, and city that wants to prioritize safety first should be deploying them.

Quick-build demonstration projects are temporary installations to test new street design improvements that improve safety and accessibility. Here are three reasons why you, your elected leaders, and your transportation agency should have them as a tool in your arsenal:

1. Improve safety quickly in the most dangerous places

If elected leaders or transportation agencies are truly committed to safety, they must consider ways to improve immediately.

Transportation in this country often moves at a snail’s pace. Between planning, community engagement, and construction, adding safe infrastructure can take years. But that can leave dangerous conditions unchanged for far too long. If the number one goal is safety, and we know where the most dangerous places are, then we should be doing everything possible to fix them as quickly as possible.

As opposed to the years required for many capital projects, quick builds can go up in a matter of a week, addressing pressing issues immediately. While we should plan long-term safety projects, making safety the number one priority means doing everything we can to implement change in the meantime.

2. Cheaply test specific designs, interventions, and materials

Transportation departments are rightfully worried about building things that will be in place for the next 30 years. It’s hard to move concrete once it’s poured. That is precisely why quick builds need to be used more.

While permanent changes to infrastructure may need years to plan, temporary measures that use paint and plastic don’t require the same level of deliberation. A quick build can test out possible designs using building materials that transportation departments already have on hand. The beauty of this is that it allows you to test a concept in real life (at very low cost), get feedback, and make it better. Quick builds can be iterated upon and provide data inputs for future, permanent projects.

Quick builds can also help foster vital partnerships between local transportation departments and state DOTs. The deadliest roads are owned by the states, with 54 percent of pedestrian deaths taking place on these roads. If localities want to design roads for safety and economic activity while a state DOT wants to move cars as quickly as possible, this can lead to friction. Quick builds allow these stakeholders to learn how to work with each other. Smart Growth America’s Complete Streets Leadership Academies put this idea into action in multiple states.

3. Build needed trust for stronger permanent projects

Building highways through neighborhoods and continually ignoring communities has led to a situation in which low-income and minority groups are disproportionately harmed by traffic violence. It takes years to build up trust in places that have been disregarded. Quick builds can help the process of restoring relationships by demonstrating the responsiveness of local agencies, showing that change is possible. If someone is killed in an intersection, swiftly changing the intersection means much more in comparison to filing a potential improvement away in a list of projects years from implementation.

How federal leaders can help

State DOTs look to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for guidance. FHWA has communicated that quick builds are allowed on state-owned roads, but that’s about as far as it goes—leaving state DOTs to do the heavy lifting on figuring out how to implement one in their state. This piecemeal approach means progress can be slow as each state works alone to discover best practices. To help make more quick builds a reality, the FHWA can provide a proactive guide to quick builds on state-owned roads and run training sessions for state DOT employees and FHWA regional offices.

So much of our transportation policy is based on a reactive response to issues. We wait for someone to get killed on a road, the community speaks out, and then the department of transportation (sometimes) acts. Quick-build demonstration projects are excellent ways to change road design today and are an important tool to finally prioritize speed over safety, but the work can’t end there. Quick builds are just the first step in building a safe transportation system. They are templates for a permanent, future change where safety is prioritized over speed.

It’s Safety Over Speed Week

Click below to access more content related to our first principle for infrastructure investment, Design for safety over speed. Find all three of our principles here.

Three ways quick builds can speed up safety

It will take years to unwind decades of dangerous street designs that have helped contribute to a 40-year high in pedestrian deaths, but quick-build demonstration projects can make a concrete difference overnight. Every state, county, and city that wants to prioritize safety first should be deploying them.
Why do most pedestrian deaths happen on state-owned roads?

Ask anyone at a state DOT, and they’ll tell you that safety is their top priority. Despite these good intentions, our streets keep getting more deadly. To reverse a decades-long trend of steadily increasing pedestrian deaths, state DOTs and federal leaders will need to fundamentally shift their approach away from speed.
Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.

Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

Principle #1: Safety over speed. Any serious effort to reduce deaths on our streets and roads requires slower speeds. Federal funding should require approaches and street designs that put safety first. Cartoon of the grim reaper tipping the scales towards pedestrian deaths while holding a speed limit: 55 sign.

Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.

Transportation in this country is fundamentally broken, creating a dangerous environment for everyone who uses it but especially for those outside of vehicles. The way we’ve built our roadways has transformed what should be easy trips into potentially deadly journeys. Though our cars have more safety features than ever—cameras, lane keep assist, automatic braking—those advancements have only served to protect people within vehicles. They didn’t save any of the 7,522 people killed while walking in 2022. In fact, as cars become safer for people inside the vehicle, they have gotten even larger and more deadly for people outside of them.

The fact of the matter is that fast-moving vehicles present a danger to people walking. We can’t address this danger if we are unwilling to commit to safer speeds.

We can’t do it all

The policies and practices that inform the design of our roadways often serve one primary goal: to move as many cars as possible, as quickly as possible. That negates the experience of everyone walking, biking, and rolling. Yet, if you asked the same people designing our roadways and dictating these policies whether safety is their top priority, they would absolutely say yes. Our approach to road design, reinforced by federal guidance and manuals, continually tries to juggle both speed and safety, when these two goals are fundamentally opposed.

When we try to prioritize both safety and speed, drivers end up receiving competing messages. Current roadway design requires people to drive perfectly while creating an environment that incentivizes risky behavior such as speeding. Safe roadways don’t ask people to slow down. They are designed so that safe speeds are the most intuitive option.

Less talk, more action

USDOT and other agencies have called for safer streets, but federal funding and policies haven’t led to results. This can be attributed to a variety of factors, including the relatively small amount of money set aside to specifically address safety compared to the much larger amount of money going to build even more dangerous roads.

State departments of transportation are allowed to set safety goals where more people die every year, knowing they will get more funding regardless. Meaningless “safety” targets allow governments to point their fingers and say they’re working on it while building even more deadly roads. The danger is often not addressed until multiple people get hurt. It’s no surprise that the majority of pedestrian deaths occur on federally funded, high-speed state roads.

There are not enough policies to support environments where safe mobility is available for all modes. The Surgeon General called to promote walking and walkable communities and to create a built environment that allows for human connection. The USDOT’s supposed top priority is safety and the Federal Highway Administration has a long-term goal of zero roadway deaths. But there’s no follow through on these statements. We want people to go on walks, and kids to play outside, and for there to be less deaths on the road, but our policies and tax dollars continue to primarily support projects that overlook non-vehicular traffic—at the expense of everyone else. Our transportation system is built on a series of hypocrisies.

If we want a system that moves people without killing them, we need to start putting our money where our mouths are. We need policies that put safety first, placing everyone’s well-being at the center of our roadway design.

It’s Safety Over Speed Week

Click below to access more content related to our first principle for infrastructure investment, Design for safety over speed. Find all three of our principles here.

Three ways quick builds can speed up safety

It will take years to unwind decades of dangerous street designs that have helped contribute to a 40-year high in pedestrian deaths, but quick-build demonstration projects can make a concrete difference overnight. Every state, county, and city that wants to prioritize safety first should be deploying them.
Why do most pedestrian deaths happen on state-owned roads?

Ask anyone at a state DOT, and they’ll tell you that safety is their top priority. Despite these good intentions, our streets keep getting more deadly. To reverse a decades-long trend of steadily increasing pedestrian deaths, state DOTs and federal leaders will need to fundamentally shift their approach away from speed.
Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.

Congressional briefing emphasizes electrification and public transit to meet climate goals

The sun rises behind the U.S. Capitol, casting the dome in a golden glow

54 years since the first Earth Day, the US is still focusing on highway expansion. In light of increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, due in part to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Transportation for America and its partners engaged the Future of Transportation Caucus to brief Congress on transportation decarbonization. We explained that to truly decrease emissions we need to electrify transportation systems and support travel options beyond private vehicles.

In a briefing on Capitol Hill, T4A Policy Associate Corrigan Salerno showed how highway expansion funds in the IIJA dwarfed historic investments in public transit leading to disastrous GHG emissions increases. The short and sweet of it is that mode-shift needs to be coupled with electrification to decrease our GHG emissions. Taylor Reich from the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy explained that coupling electrifying transportation with mode shift (opportunities to travel outside of a car) will save the government and private citizens trillions, lower energy consumption, and lower emissions.

Miguel Moravec from the Rocky Mountain Institute and Move Minnesota advocate Katie Jones described how states are already incorporating electrification and mode shift into policy. Minnesota’s Climate Action Framework and Colorado’s GHG Transportation Planning Standard require transportation infrastructure projects to abide by local GHG reduction targets. Thanks to these regulations, major highway expansion plans have been set aside in favor of bus rapid transit, active transportation networks, and transit oriented development.

The path forward

Most of the funding for highway expansion projects comes from formula funds with few strings attached, giving state departments of transportation (DOT) the option to expand aggressively. With the Senate voting 53-47 against mandating DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations (MPO) to track their GHG emissions, Congress is not helping increase transparency into our state transportation investments or halt endless highway growth.

Colorado and Minnesota are already implementing solutions and Maryland is trying to catch up. The federal government must meet their decarbonization efforts by bringing these state-level approaches to a national scale.

And there’s a path forward to do just that. Legislation such as Senator Markey’s GREEN Streets Act requires minimum standards for GHG, vehicle miles traveled (VMT), and air pollution reductions. It would also require DOTs and MPOs to publicize the environmental and health impact data for large expansion projects.

We already know that transportation decarbonization is necessary for fighting climate change. Electrifying all cars, a lofty goal on its own, won’t be enough to solve our climate crisis. Goal setting and transparency are integral to decarbonization. Without building more public transportation, establishing more active transportation infrastructure, and giving people the freedom to travel outside of a car, we won’t make significant progress. To truly respect our planet, our federal leaders must do more to address mode shift and electrification.

Four young professionals stand inside the House Chamber, smiling at the camera — *The four presenters at the briefing (from left to right): Miguel Moravec, Katie Jones, Taylor Reich, and Corrigan Salerno.*

Progress for passenger rail in the South and beyond

A shiny passenger train chugs down the track in a southern town

Two recent developments at the federal level can help propel passenger rail expansion in the South and across the country.

Interstate Rail Compact Grant

The states of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana make up the Southern Rail Commission (SRC), which has been steadfastly committed to expanding passenger rail service in the South for the past 40 years, most recently achieving success for the restoration of service on the Gulf Coast.

On March 14th, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) announced that the SRC, along with rail commissions in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic won an Interstate Rail Compact (IRC) grant. The SRC will match 50 percent of the $400,000 they have been awarded and use these funds to hire more people, market passenger rail, conduct impact studies, and apply for more federal grants. In short, they can spend the money on everything but running the service itself.

The SRC has been fighting the good fight for decades. Passenger rail service in the United States has been on the ropes for decades, with much of the service in the South phased out in the 70s. The situation only worsened after Hurricane Katrina in 2005; passenger rail service has not been running on the Gulf Coast for nearly 20 years.

The grant spells good things for the ongoing fight for passenger rail. In addition to the restoration of service on the Gulf Coast, the SRC has several projects to support, including passenger rail extensions between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Mobile to New Orleans, and Dallas to Atlanta. This grant will help them further advance their efforts.

Passenger Rail Advisory Committee

Hot off the heels of the IRC grant announcements, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) has publicly announced the membership of their new Passenger Rail Advisory Committee (PRAC). The STB’s duties related to passenger rail service have expanded in recent years, leading to the creation of the PRAC. This committee is intended to advise on increasing route efficiency, mediating between passenger and freight companies, and improving inter-city rail-related processes. Its formation is a testament to continued progress for passenger rail at the federal level, which we hope will translate to support for passenger service across the country.

Among the names of the 21 voting members lies our own chair, John Robert Smith, former Amtrak board member and former member/long-time advisor to the SRC. The inclusion of advocates like John Robert, who have dedicated decades in the pursuit of passenger rail service across the country, will be critical in supporting expansion efforts in the present day.

While these advancements for passenger rail are particularly good news for the South, they’re also proof of what’s possible in the rest of the country. The SRC continues to build upon their recent success in the Gulf Coast, showing what bipartisan leadership on interstate rail can accomplish. As support for passenger rail continues to evolve at the federal level, we hope more leaders will follow their example.