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2,100 letters delivered to FHWA in support of easing restrictive street design regulations

Earlier this week, with our partners at the National Complete Streets Coalition, we delivered nearly 2,100 letters to FHWA supporting their proposal to ease the onerous federal design standards that make it needlessly difficult for local communities to build safer, more complete streets.

Complete Streets director Emiko Atherton

National Complete Streets Coalition director Emiko Atherton on her way to FHWA in Washington, DC earlier this week.

It was an incredibly encouraging move by FHWA, and thanks to many of you who sent in one of the nearly 2,100 letters, FHWA will hear the message loud and clear that this move has broad support.

In case you missed the news back in November, FHWA made an encouraging proposal to scrap 11 outdated provisions in the current design criteria that local communities and states must adhere to when building or reconstructing certain roads with speed limits under 50 mph — adhere to, or go through an arduous process of requesting an exception from FHWA to do things like line a downtown street with street trees, reduce the width of lanes to add a bike lane, or curve a street slightly to slow traffic and make it safer for people in cars and on foot.

Communities of all sizes are eager to capitalize on their streets as economic assets and boost the bottom line by making them safe and attractive for everyone to use them. Under these current design guidelines for federal-aid roads, communities might adhere to out-of-date FHWA regs rather than fight for exceptions that can delay a project or even increase the cost.

Along with Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition, we rallied our networks to show support for this welcome change. And earlier this week, National Complete Streets Director Emiko Atherton personally delivered all of your letters to the U.S. Department of Transportation — trying not to fall over while balancing the 15-pound stack along the way.

The overwhelming support for the proposed rule demonstrates the groundswell of bottom-up, grassroots support for designing safer, more complete streets. We hope FHWA will take note by moving ahead with adopting the rule as it stands and making no modifications.

Thank you to all who submitted a letter of support, we look forward to keeping you updated in early 2016 with the latest developments.

fhwa design guidlines thank you

USDOT proposes to remove restrictive design guidelines that make safer streets more difficult to build

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) took an encouraging and surprising step, proposing to ease federally-mandated design standards on many roads, making it dramatically easier for cities and communities of all sizes to design and build complete streets that are safer for everyone.

This proposal is open for comment, and FHWA is waiting to hear from the public.

Send a letter of support to FHWA

These outdated federal guidelines get in the way of better street design, but FHWA is proposing to scrap many of them. This is indeed great news, but for these changes to go ahead, FHWA needs to hear that they have strong support for the proposed changes.

Join us and generate a letter to FHWA today. We’ll be delivering your letters in person to FHWA all at once before the December 7th deadline.

Currently, FHWA has a long list of design criteria that local communities and states must adhere to when building or reconstructing certain roads, unless they choose to go through an arduous process of requesting an exception to do things like line a downtown street with street trees, reduce the width of lanes to add a bike lane, or curve a street slightly to slow traffic and make it safer for people in cars and on foot.

In this new proposed rule, FHWA decided after a thorough review to scrap 11 of 13 current design criteria for certain roads because they decided these criteria have “minimal influence on the safety or operation on our urban streets” and has a stronger connection for rural roads, freeways and higher speed urban arterials.

This new freedom for local planners and engineers would cover all roads on the National Highway System (NHS) with designed speeds under 50 mph. This covers most of the non-interstate roads and highways running through communities of all sizes that are built with federal funds, like the typical four-lane state highway through town that we’re all familiar with, perhaps with a turning lane on one side. Incidentally, many of these roads are among the most unsafe for pedestrians.

In FHWA’s own words, this move will “refine the focus on criteria impact on road safety and operation” and “encourages engineered solutions rather relying on minimum, maximum, or limiting values found in design criteria.”

In our words, this move will liberate local communities that have been working hard to make their roads safer for everyone that uses them, and rid them of the need to petition FHWA for exceptions to do exactly that. It’s a win for the movement for safer and more complete streets and also a liberating change for transportation engineers, especially those that have been working hard with their planners and elected leaders to bring innovative, safer street designs to their communities.

Since these controlling design criteria were first established in 1985, any project that didn’t meet all of the minimum design standards had to receive individual approval from FHWA. This was done on a project-by-project basis and added time and difficulty for those wanting to create safer roads. Now, for these NHS roads under 50 mph, engineers will only be required to attain design variances for just two criteria – design speed and structural capacity.

Today’s proposed rule follows on the heels of FHWA’s summer release of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Funding, Design, and Environmental Review: Addressing Common Misconceptions that addresses 10 misconceptions that often prevent or slow construction of safer roads. This is a valuable resource that will help local governments, metropolitan planning organizations and civic leaders improve the safety of our roads by debunking misconceptions ranging from the pots of money available for bike and pedestrian projects to explaining that FHWA rules are not the roadblock to complete street road design.

FHWA deserves praise for their leadership on this important issue. The rule is open to public comment for 60 days through December 7, 2015. Let’s take the opportunity to provide public comment and thank FHWA for their leadership and make sure it is implemented to help make safer streets for all to enjoy.

For these proposed changes to go ahead, FHWA needs to hear that they have strong support for the proposed changes.

Generate a letter to FHWA now, and urge your friends to join in. It only takes a moment.

Announcing a new academy for local leaders who want to dig in on performance measures for transportation

In partnership with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA),T4America is announcing a new yearlong training academy for metro regions that are hoping to learn more about the emerging practice of performance measurement, and applications are open now.

Transportation leadership academy performance measures

2012’s transportation law (MAP-21) ushered in a new era, creating a nascent system for states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to better determine success or failure by measuring the performance of their investments against federally-required measures. Some metro areas have been doing this for years before MAP-21 passed, and others are now scrambling to understand how to incorporate this new system into their process of creating plans, selecting projects, and measuring the effects of those projects and the effectiveness of each transportation dollar that gets spent.

This year-long leadership training program will educate local business, civic, elected leaders, and practitioners at the early stages of performance measure development, and will prepare participants to act on opportunities within their communities while plugging them into a dynamic national network of like-minded leaders throughout the country.

We know it sounds like wonky stuff, but with money for transportation harder to come by than anytime in recent history, a more accountable system that sets goals with input from the community, chooses transportation projects accordingly to meet those goals, and then measures the outcomes in a feedback loop will be essential for ensuring we get the best bang for the buck going forward.

This new academy for 2016 builds off the successful experience in 2015 with our partners at TransitCenter in a similar yearlong academy with leaders from three metro regions who have plans to invest in transit as part of their long-term economic development strategies. There are scores of smart, capable people at the local level who are trying to make great things happen in their communities, and we’re hopeful that this Transportation Leadership Academy will provide participants at the metropolitan level with the tools and support they need to set up a system for measuring performance to guide their planning and project selection processes.

Four things to know about applying: Get your application. Common questions are answered in this FAQ. Applications are due on November 13th. We’re hosting an informational webinar on October 21st at 2 p.m. EDT for those who want to learn more. Register for the webinar today.

Who should apply: Individuals who are working on transportation at the metropolitan level in regions that are at the early stages of performance measure development. Participating individuals may include local business, civic, elected leaders, and practitioners. For example, individuals may be elected officials on the board of an MPO or senior staff of chambers of commerce, labor organizations, civic groups, community associations, local or regional foundations, or major employers. Each regional team should have a participating staff member or board member of their local MPO. Both a staff member and Board member are encouraged to participate on a team.

Not sure who your MPO is? Search USDOT’s database of MPOs to find out.

Hold states accountable for repairing roads and bridges – send a letter to USDOT

The U.S. Department of Transportation is in the process of writing new rules to hold states accountable for the condition of their roads and bridges. USDOT’s strong first draft rule was a step in the right direction, and we want to thank them — and ensure they don’t bow to pressure to soften these requirements.

Can you take just one minute to sign this letter to USDOT? We’ll hand-deliver a copy straight to USDOT for you.

Did you already take action? Share this action with others:

The 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) requires transportation agencies to begin using a new system of performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent. USDOT is working to establish these new metrics for safety, the state of repair, congestion (coming soon!), air emissions and other aspects of our transportation system through an iterative process of draft rules, feedback, refined drafts and final rules.

Look, we get it: this is a wonky and arcane affair. So why should you take action and provide a comment on this pavement and bridge proposed rule? Because USDOT is truly listening to comments and making changes as a result.

USDOT’s first rule on roadway safety wasn’t a good one, to put it bluntly, and it failed to ensure that safety would improve. Yet the thousands of comments we delivered played a part in improving it.

In that draft, states were allowed to fail half of the fatality and injury targets and still receive a passing grade. But after receiving more than 1,500 comments, USDOT incorporated that feedback into this improved draft for roads and bridges, requiring progress on all targets — not just 50 percent of them.

Now USDOT is going to hear from the other side, those that don’t want states to be held to such high standards. We need to let USDOT know that we support the changes they made and that requiring progress across the board is just as essential for evaluating the condition of our roads and bridges.

Between 2009 and 2011, all U.S. states collectively spent $20.4 billion annually to build new roadways and add lanes to existing roads, and just $16.5 billion annually repairing and preserving existing roads and bridges. But by 2011, after spending more than half of all highway dollars on expansion projects, just 37 percent of our nation’s roadways were in ‘good’ condition. And today, more than 260 million trips are taken each year on the country’s structurally deficient bridges.

That’s not good enough. We need to hold states accountable to meet measurable targets with our tax dollars. USDOT has drafted a better rule to make that happen, and we need your help to ensure it stays that way.

Read and sign this letter today, and we’ll deliver it to USDOT before the May 8 deadline.

Credit where it’s due: With repair rule, the feds listened to public comment

In developing new standards for ensuring our roads and bridges are kept in good condition, officials at the U.S. DOT did something skeptics would find surprising: They really listened to public comment, and reflected it in the newly released rule.

T4America’s Beth Osborne

As we have noted here often, the 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) requires transportation agencies to begin using performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent. The U.S. DOT is working to establish those metrics for safety, the state of repair, congestion, air emissions and other aspects of our transportation system.

State DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) will then set their own targets for areas. They then must show how their investment plans will help them reach the targets and report on the results. If they fail to make enough progress on say, road and bridge conditions, they would be expected to spend more in those areas.

Creating this brand new system from scratch is a challenge. DOT officials have to figure out which sets of data are truly valid measures and where the data come from; how much time and wiggle room to give states and MPOs in setting and meeting targets; and what happens when they don’t.

We at T4America and many of our allies howled last year when USDOT’s first proposed performance measure, on safety, allowed states and MPOs to fail outright on half of the measures, making the targets for states virtually meaningless. T4A and the Complete Streets Coalition responded with 1500 public comments saying that this was not good enough.

We are still waiting for the full rule on safety, but with the release of this second proposed rule on system conditions (i.e. bridge and pavement maintenance) USDOT has shown that they heard us on the question of how agencies will be held to account. The new rule proposes that MPOs and states must hit all of the required targets — 50 percent success is no longer a passing grade. And states must either beat the trends or, if their target is not as good as the trend line, they must hit their target. This is a substantial improvement. Considering the current condition of the country’s infrastructure, holding states’ and metros’ feet to the fire on state of repair is critically important. As Smart Growth America’s 2014 Repair Priorities report made clear, most states are still spending billions on new roads or expanding existing ones — while neglecting their growing repair backlogs.

Between 2009 and 2011, the latest year with available data, states collectively spent $20.4 billion annually to build new roadways and add lanes to existing roads. America’s state-owned road network grew by 8,822 lane-miles of road during that time, accounting for less than 1 percent of the total in 2011.

During that same time, states spent just $16.5 billion annually repairing and preserving the other 99 percent of the system. … [In 2011], just 37 percent of roads were in good condition that year—down from 41 percent in 2008.

Under the new rule, that kind of investment decisions and resulting diminishing performance should fail to pass muster in the future.

As someone who has worked for USDOT and is accustomed to the dense documents we sometimes produced, I was struck by the clarity and tone of this (still long and technical) rule. The impact of the public comments — including those provided by T4America and our partners — was clear. USDOT explains each issue they had to grapple with, what they heard from stakeholders on each issue, the principles they used to evaluate options, how each option performed in that evaluation and then their final choice. Reading the rule felt like having a frank conversation with the experts at FHWA writing the rule.

This is especially encouraging because the third rule on congestion (and other measures) undoubtedly will be the hardest and, in many ways, the most impactful. It includes measures that are newer to the federal program and can be defined many different ways. For example, is the goal of highway performance to keep traffic moving at the speed limit no matter how many cars are on it? Or is it to know that your trip today will take the amount of time you budgeted for it? If it is the former, we will have to spend a lot of money paving over a lot of places at marginal benefit to ensure a safe and efficient commute or delivery. If it is the latter, we can address the issue with a mix of more affordable operational improvements, emergency response and new capacity. In congestion, are we only interested in the speed of cars or do we give communities credit for letting their residents opt out of congestion entirely by taking transit, walking or biking?

One thing we now know for sure: USDOT is listening to the public, so we need to engage. We thank USDOT for the improvements and for listening. It is a heavy responsibility, and one the folks at the U.S. Department of Transportation executed very nicely.

There are a couple more ways they can improve the rule further, like making more of the process available to the public. I encourage everyone to comment on the current draft.

Drop in driving growth is likely permanent, FHWA acknowledges, compounding the threat to transportation revenues

The slowing growth in the number of miles we drive each year looks like a permanent trend, according to the Federal Highway Administration, adding still more fuel to the fire in the debate over how to pay for a transportation program with dropping gas-tax revenues.

The most recent projections, released quietly last year but highlighted this week by USPIRG, are a significant departure for the federal agency charged with projecting the need for highway capacity and expected gas-tax receipts in the U.S. For the last several years, projections have substantially over-estimated the growth of “vehicle miles traveled”, which actually declined for several years before rebounding to a tepid pace more recently.

In this short document, FHWA projects that the amount of driving done by each American is unlikely to grow in the years to come. According to PIRG’s research, the agency had issued 61 straight forecasts that overestimated the actual increase in driving. FHWA is to be commended for taking a problem, rethinking it, and coming up with a better projection. The action clears up a discrepancy with the potential to hamper planning and decision-making, as we have noted in the past along with number crunchers at the State Smart Transportation Initiative, the Frontier Group and U.S. PIRG.

In this new FHWA projection, though the actual amount of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is still projected to increase by 0.75 percent annually from 2012 to 2042 (the red line in the chart below), U.S. population is projected to grow by about 0.7 percent each year in that period, which means that driving per person is likely to remain flat. As FHWA’s report notes: “This represents a significant slowdown from the growth in total VMT experienced over the past 30 years, which averaged 2.08% annually.”

It’s worth noting that this change also has huge implications for toll roads. Building a new road, tolling an existing one, selling the rights to toll a road to a private company — those decisions are often being made using these outdated VMT projections.

This adjustment by the feds underscores the trouble ahead for transportation funding, absent congressional action.

The gas tax has already lost a third of its value due to inflation, improvements in fuel efficiency, and the overall reduction in driving over the last decade. All of this means that the gas tax doesn’t bring in as much money as it used to — leading to the perpetual annual shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund that has required numerous bail-outs from the general fund, using increasingly creative accounting gimmicks.

The excessive projections of expected driving have allowed some to point to an expected rebound that would help overcome some of the losses due to increased fuel efficiency. That will be tough to do in the face of the new estimates.

As Congress returns to face a May deadline for figuring out how to continue funding for transportation, members will have to come to terms with the likelihood that the gas tax will continue to lose value. The pensions have all been fully smoothed and the couch cushions have been emptied out. If Congress plans to make up the funding gap, they’ll have to be willing to raise the gas tax or index it to inflation, or increase some other revenue source.

We live in a different time today. We aren’t flush with gas tax revenues. We have a backlog of maintenance that can’t be ignored. The amount of driving Americans are willing to do has come close to reaching a peak. People are looking for different ways to get around each day. More Americans are moving into walkable neighborhoods where their commutes are shorter and options are greater.

We need a system of funding transportation and making investment decisions that recognizes these realities.