Month of Action Archives - Transportation For America

Month of Action Week 4: A manual for safer streets

EDIT, Wednesday, May 12: The deadline to submit a comment supporting a rewrite of the MUTCD closes this Friday. We need you to submit a comment before then—it only takes one minute using the tool below!

The Federal Highway Administration has extended the comment period on the Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), a document used by planners across the country for street design. We need you to submit a comment urging the FHWA to rewrite the MUTCD to put pedestrian and cyclist safety front and center.

*A person biking in Washington, DC. during the Black Lives Matter Ride for Justice in summer 2020. Photo by Ted Eytan on Greater and Lesser Washington’s Flickr pool.*

It’s Week 4 of our Month of Action! Thank you if you took last week’s action to share the Congestion Con with your Senators.

For Week 4, we need you to tell the Federal Highway Administration to rewrite its guide to traffic safety.

The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is a street design document used by planners across the country. Yet to date, the MUTCD has done little to help stem the approximately 40,000 traffic deaths the U.S. sees each year. This is due largely to the Manual’s overemphasis on designing for motor vehicle speed on rural highways, and failure to truly take into account all modes of travel in the places where people live and work.

The previous administration proposed tepid changes to the MUTCD that failed to fix its deeply flawed approach. We need you to submit a comment to show support for rewriting this document.

Submitting a comment to the Federal Register is easy. You can either download the template comment we co-wrote with NACTO here, personalize it as much or as little as you like, and submit your comment through Regulations.gov, OR, you can use this simple form below to quickly and easily send in your comment right from this page.

Don’t forget to customize your letter however you like and add in examples, your organization name (if any) to help your letter stand out from the rest.

Month of Action Week 3: Ending the Congestion Con

Vehicles moving slowly on a congested highway in Seattle. The highway crosses a narrow river.

With Congress writing long-term transportation policy this month, we need to make sure that this bill doesn’t continue the broken status quo. This week, we need you to tell your Senators that widening highways just makes traffic worse.

With the Senate writing long-term transportation policy right now, our Month of Action is going full-steam ahead. Thank you if you took last week’s action to send a message about the Complete Streets Act to your members of Congress.

For Week 3, we need you to tell your Senators that widening highways doesn’t work.

In the name of “congestion relief,” we’ve spent decades and hundreds of billions of dollars widening and building new highways. Even though we widened freeways faster than population grew, congestion got worse—144 percent worse, as we found in our report last March, the Congestion Con.

It’s time to stop wasting billions on projects that make our problems worse.

Use the Congestion Con to tell your Senators how much freeway growth and congestion increased in your urbanized area.

(1) Find the percent growth in lane miles and congestion (technically known as “delay”) for your urbanized area here.

(2) Personalize this tweet to your Senators:

“Our metro area increased lane miles by XX% yet congestion increased by XX%. Expanding highways doesn’t work. Let’s end the #CongestionCon. @your senator @your senator t4america.org/maps-tools/congestion-con/”

(3) Find your Senators’ Twitter handles here. (If you don’t have Twitter, you can send this message as a short email.)

Thank you for taking action! It’s time for a long-term transportation bill that actually connects us to the jobs and services we need, equitably, sustainably, safely, and affordably. Thanks for helping us get there.

Month of Action Week 2: Tackling our deadly streets

With Congress writing long-term transportation policy this month, we need to make sure that this bill doesn’t continue the broken status quo. This week, we need you to take action to support the Complete Streets Act.

With the Senate writing long-term transportation policy right now, our Month of Action is going full-steam ahead. Thank you if you took last week’s action to send our template reauthorization letter to your member of Congress.

For Week 2, we need you to take action to support the Complete Streets Act.

The number of people struck and killed by drivers while walking increased by 47 percent over the last decade, as our partners at Smart Growth America found in the latest edition of Dangerous by Design, to be released tomorrow. We are in the midst of an astonishing safety crisis as the United States has become—over decades of broken policy—an incredibly deadly place to walk.

But a handful of leaders in the U.S. House and Senate have introduced a bill that would finally require states and metro areas to design and build safer streets for everyone. The Complete Streets Act of 2021 is desperately needed but it will take your support—and the support of your members of Congress—to get this bill passed into law.

Keep an eye out tomorrow for Dangerous by Design 2021, Smart Growth America’s report showing how dangerous each state and the largest metro areas are for people walking.

It’s go time: Launching our Month of Action

With Congress writing long-term transportation policy this month, we need to make sure that this bill doesn’t continue the broken status quo. We need a bill that prioritizes maintenance, designs for safety over speed, and selects investments that improve people’s access to jobs and services—not increase vehicle speed. And we need your help.

The Senate committees responsible for writing portions of the next long-term transportation law are hitting the drafting board now, with a bill expected later this month. We need to take action to influence this important legislation.

T4America believes that our three principles for transportation policy—prioritize maintenance, design for safety over speed, and require that investments connect people to jobs and services—can remake America’s transportation program to better address the climate crisis, equity and quality of life in our communities.

We’re launching a Month of Action to advocate for these three principles in the long-term transportation law. Sign up for our mailing list to receive one small action every week to help influence this important legislation. You’ll also receive our biweekly newsletter on federal policy and transportation news, the Round-up.

Subscribe for the Month of Action

This week’s action: Send this template letter to your Congressional delegation.

If you want to do more to influence the transportation bill than the weekly actions (thank you!), we put together an advocacy toolkit for you, which contains:

Talking points on the three principles
A template meeting request letter to your Congressional delegation
Sample social media posts
Sample social media graphics

With pedestrian fatalities skyrocketing, millions of Americans stranded from jobs and opportunities, and the climate crisis quickly reaching the point of no return, we need to act: We can’t afford to waste another five years and billions of dollars on programs that just make our problems worse. And we will not fundamentally reform the federal transportation program without your help.

If you represent an organization or are an elected official, please sign our letter urging the Senate to pass a long-term law that orients the program transportation program around what counts: connecting everybody to jobs and services equitably, sustainably, affordably and conveniently.

Missed the webinar on our principles?

Fear not, we recorded it! Check out this short webinar with T4America staff below.