Ten things to know about the BUILD Act’s failure to produce better outcomes

The BUILD America 250 Act, approved by a House committee early on Friday, May 22nd, is a lot like the IIJA—minus a whole lot of funding for transit, rail, and reducing emissions. Here are ten things to know about the bill and how it will fail to advance T4America’s simple three priorities.

After a year of hearing that “the House is definitely going to release and markup a draft bill sometime this month,” Lucy kept the football on the ground, and the House finally released a five-year, $474 billion reauthorization proposal last Sunday on the eve of this year’s Infrastructure Week. Predict the same thing every month, and eventually it will come true.

How will Congress pay for this enormous bill? The short answer is they won’t—your grandkids will. A modest amount of new funding will come via a controversial new fee on electric vehicles, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous gap between revenues and spending. Just like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), an enormous subsidy from all taxpayers would be required to cover annual spending that is roughly double what the gas tax brings in each year. And all that for a fairly status quo proposal that fails to meet the moment and will not deliver a transportation system that safely, affordably, and reliably gets us all where we need to go.

But in a bill with less money than the IIJA, it’s transit and passenger rail that take the hit.

Though leadership on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee describes it as a $580 billion bill, in reality, it includes only $474 billion in guaranteed funding, representing a cut from the $539 billion guaranteed by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Nearly all of that difference comes from cuts to transit, passenger rail, and scrapped competitive grant programs. Highways? They get a healthy bump in guaranteed funding.

1) There was a notable attempt to prevent a repeat of the Trump administration’s massive flood of grant cancellations

This administration has been unwilling to follow the current transportation law, as evidenced most clearly by their abrupt 2025 cancellation of billions in grants that were previously awarded to states and local communities. The BUILD Act included some surprising language aimed at preventing a repeat: “the Secretary may not terminate, withhold, or delay the execution of a grant agreement for a grant or award (in part or in whole) made using funds made available under this Act” based on any arbitrary reasons or a change in preferences of a new administration. While this provision would be a step in the right direction, it unfortunately does nothing to restore the billions in grants rescinded under the IIJA.

Another way to think about this provision: it will successfully prevent the cancellation of grant funding for the kinds of projects that this administration will absolutely not select in the first place. This is a move in the right direction, but it’s slamming the proverbial barn door after the horses are already in another zip code.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) did attempt to restore the canceled IIJA grants via this amendment during Thursday’s marathon committee markup. This amendment, which failed on a voice vote, would have retroactively applied to all grants awarded under IIJA, noting that “the Secretary shall obligate and execute grant agreements for any project that was selected, awarded, or publicly announced for funding by the Department on or after November 15, 2021” via the IIJA or Inflation Reduction Act, and prevent the Secretary from canceling them. When it was offered during the markup, Chairman Sam Graves backed the Trump administration’s decision to cancel these grants, noting that Sec. Duffy inherited a backlog of unobligated funds, so the only solution was obviously to cancel them all and take back the money.

Rep. Huffman had some support, but considering the fact that canceled grants spanned republican and democrat districts alike, you’d think that a sizable number of committee members—but especially those in the minority—would be loudly standing up for those communities and making the restoration of these grants one of their fundamental prerequisites for support.

Apparently not.

Grant cancellations aside, here are nine other things to know about the BUILD America 250 Act, organized around our three simple principles. (Note: We’re just calling it the BUILD Act from here on.)

Fix it first

Overall, this bill fails to make meaningful strides towards prioritizing maintenance and repair on our roadways. States are not required to demonstrate progress toward any hard and fast targets for road or bridge conditions before building new road capacity with federal-aid highway programs. There is no change to the current paperwork exercise of performance management, and states are not required to set any targets they’d be held accountable for meeting. (Read more about this T4America principle)

2) Dedicated bridge repair funding is back, but lacks accountability

Congress eliminated a dedicated bridge repair program back in 2012, but what’s old is always eventually new again, and the BUILD Act creates a new dedicated formula program for bridge repair. Some IIJA bridge programs are consolidated into a new $9.2 billion annual program—creatively called the Bridge Program. Each state would receive $75 million, plus an amount based on factors like bridge area and the amount of bridge area in poor condition. Some money is set aside to be spent on the thousands of oft-overlooked bridges not on the federal-aid highway system (though states can opt out of this), and 25 percent is set aside for states to run a competition for awards to locally-owned bridges. States have to produce a new report describing progress made on reducing the number of bridges in poor condition, but there are no real penalties for failure.

Beyond this formula program, there’s a new $2 billion annual competitive grant program (without guaranteed funding) that’s focused on improving the safety, efficiency, and reliability of bridges on the National Highway System only. While the details are different, with dedicated funding and little accountability, the BUILD Act’s approach is not that dissimilar from our pre-2012 approach to bridge repair.

3) The slightest of head nods toward repair accountability

The National Highway Performance Program (NHPP) is the largest highway-focused program that states have control of. Within this program, states will have to develop and maintain a state asset management plan. Under BUILD, any state that fails to develop and implement its asset management plan will see the federal share for projects within NHPP drop down to just 65 percent. While that sounds like a move in the right direction, there are no requirements that states set or meet binding, positive targets on repair. That’s not going to cut it.

UPDATE: This 65 percent provision already existed in current law. The updated language makes some small changes to how USDOT will assess compliance, but this is not a notable change in the BUILD Act. – Ed. 6/17/2026

4) Reconnecting Communities is functionally dead

This bill completely eliminates the Neighborhood Access and Equity Grant program, which was best understood as the authorized, long-term version of the Reconnecting Communities pilot program, which technically ended this year. This likely means the end of federal money spent on repairing divisive infrastructure, and the end of a program T4America helped create back in 2020.

The concept of Reconnecting Communities survives as a project eligibility within a new grant program (STAG) that would replace the BUILD competitive grant program. (Yes, this is confusing. The BUILD grant program is the one formerly known as TIGER and RAISE.) But considering that this administration canceled nearly every single unobligated Neighborhood Access and Equity grant project, it’s unlikely that any reconnecting-style projects would win funding in this new grant program under this administration. The Senate should resuscitate this program, and there was an amendment offered during the markup to restore the Reconnecting Communities program and rename it.

Safety over speed

While there are a few changes that could be perceived as small improvements to safety policy, the program fails to make improving safety a centerpiece priority across the entire program and will do very little to reverse the U.S.’s roadway safety crisis. (Read more about this T4America principle)

5) Safe Streets for All local grant program survives

Tucson residents paint the street orange, green, blue, and white to draw attention to a bike lane in their Complete Streets demonstration project. — Photo courtesy of Living Streets Alliance staff. From Smart Growth America’s profile of Tucson’s Complete Streets policy. https://smartgrowthamerica.org/tucson-complete-streets-is-about-more-than-pavement/

Perhaps the best news in this entire bill is the survival of the Safe Streets for All (SS4A) grant program, which is only available directly to cities and local communities (including tribes) for projects to make concrete changes to their streets to improve safety. SS4A’s survival is good news for safety, and it was also moved into the highway title of the bill and given guaranteed funding through contract authority, sparing it from future appropriations fights. In IIJA, 40 percent of SS4A funds were (likely mistakenly) set aside for planning, and one of the eligible uses was for quick-build demonstration projects. The BUILD Act reduces that set-aside to a much more rational 5 percent. That might seem too low, but considering how much money has been put into planning over the last five years, it’s time to pour more money into implementation and actually building projects to improve safety.

The bad news is that the program is roughly half the size it was during the IIJA, and all mentions of Vision Zero were eliminated. And we’re putting a lot of faith in a program that has already been weaponized by this USDOT. USDOT has selectively canceled SS4A grants they didn’t like and also changed the criteria to let applicants know they won’t select projects that make people safer by removing parking or repurposing lane space. This USDOT wants to improve safety with SS4A grants, as long as those improvements don’t come at the expense of their other, higher priorities.

6) States aiming for more people to die on their roads have to inform the Secretary

Under our weak system of measuring performance, numerous states have routinely set targets for more people to be injured/killed on their roadways. These targets have been posted publicly on FHWA’s website, but the BUILD Act makes a subtle change to require the Secretary to notify Congress when states do it in the future. But there will continue to be no penalty for setting these regressive targets, and Congress has not shown any appetite to create actual accountability for reducing roadway deaths. But it will be harder for Congress to claim they didn’t know that states were aiming for such bad performance.

Invest in the rest

While the BUILD Act increases guaranteed funding for highways, guaranteed transit funding is going down. There are a few changes to provide some modest flexibility to use capital dollars for operations, but there are none of the dramatic increases in transit capital or operations funding on par with what it would truly take to invest in the rest and build a world-class transit system. (Read more about this T4America principle.)

7) Guaranteed highway money is going up while transit is decreasing.

IIJA provided an historic increase in guaranteed funding for highways and transit. That’s only the case for highways this time around.

Though the bill’s authors are quick to note that transit contract authority is increasing over IIJA levels, the guaranteed amount for transit is actually going down, thanks to the loss of advance appropriations. Transit goes from $91.2 billion in guaranteed funding in the IIJA down to $87.6 billion in BUILD. Highways, meanwhile, jump from $351 billion up to $376 billion in guaranteed funding. This also means that transit is dipping below its typical 20 percent share of the overall bill. The 80/20 split has often fluctuated slightly above or below that 20 percent threshold, but the decrease is still notable.

8) Changes to the transit capital program…which is currently frozen by the Trump administration

No one should be celebrating any positive changes in the program for building and expanding transit systems, considering that it has been ground to a halt by the current administration. The bipartisan authors in the House have failed to recognize this reality nor have they done anything in this bill to attempt to require this administration to follow the law and administer this program in this new five-year proposal.

There are some changes to streamline transit capital project delivery, including rewarding transit agencies that have recently navigated the federal process successfully with a speedier process. Likely recognizing the increasing costs of bus rapid transit projects and other “Small Starts” projects, BUILD raises the funding threshold for these projects up to $1 billion (with a 50 percent max federal share) and changes their name to Streamlined Starts. The law would broaden the eligibility for Core Capacity projects, which could make it possible for projects to do things like investing in automation to increase throughput on a busy rail line. And transit projects in the pipeline can receive extra credit in the evaluation process for local policies in favor of housing development near transit.

On the negative side, the IIJA-created program for procuring low- and no-emission buses is toast.

9) A new focus on transit safety, crime, and fare evasion

bus driver wearing mask adjusts mirror — Image from Flickr/MTA NYC

There’s a significant new focus on transit safety and fare evasion—both with funding set aside from transit formulas, but also in new policy requirements.

Instead of just one percent, urban agencies will be required to spend 1.5 percent of their transit formula funds on a wide range of eligible transit safety and security projects, including fare evasion prevention, new technology, and new police officers. Agencies have to start gathering and reporting data to FTA on how much money they are losing to fare evasion, and there are requirements for making fare evasion a criminal or civil offense. There are no penalties for the states or cities that continue building streets and roads that ensure that anyone’s walking trip to transit might be the most dangerous part of their journey.

10) Passenger rail loses out big time

After $66 billion guaranteed in IIJA for rail, the BUILD Act provides zero dollars in guaranteed funding for passenger rail and reduces authorized spending below IIJA levels, while making some marginal improvements around rail permitting and Amtrak accountability, and logically combining several programs.

The result of losing the guaranteed funding means that Congress will have to do something it didn’t have to do over the last five years: consider every year whether or not it will provide the authorized amounts of rail funding. Policy improvements aside, the rail title overall decreases federal investment in passenger rail and is a step back. We expect the Senate Commerce Committee to take a different approach.

The bill was approved by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on a 66-2 vote in the wee hours of Friday morning. Stay tuned on the blog for more on the law and the next steps.

Here’s how we will grade the next surface reauthorization bill

Empty scorecard to grade a bill against three principles: safety over speed, fix it first, invest in the rest.

With the IIJA expiring in September, a draft version of the next surface transportation reauthorization will eventually be released. As with previous bills, T4America plans to release a public scorecard on how well Congress’s proposal would steer the federal program toward achieving its stated goals. Here’s what we are looking for.

Transportation for America is ready to grade the next surface transportation reauthorization, and our rubric is incredibly simple.

The federal government has spent $1.5 trillion over the past 30 years to achieve its stated goals of improving safety, fixing infrastructure, reducing congestion and emissions, and improving public health. The reality is that despite the massive amount of money poured into the system, we don’t have much to show for it. The success of the next transportation bill should not be measured by how much or how little money we put into the program, but by how well it holds the system accountable for achieving our national goals and being responsible to the American taxpayer.

Similar to our past scorecards, T4America will be grading legislative text on a pass/fail basis against our three core principles. In line with these principles, T4America will be looking for how the text prioritizes 1) safer roads over speed, 2) the maintenance of existing infrastructure, and 3) investing in more transportation options.

Safety over speed

The roads in most developed countries are safer than ours and continue to improve, but Congress continues to prioritize vehicle speed above all else, including safety. Safety needs to come first.

What we’ll be looking for: States and MPOs should be required to set concrete targets to improve roadway safety and reduce roadway deaths and to report progress on safety goals. When states fail to meet those safety targets, their flexible funding under the National Highway Performance Program and the Surface Transportation Block Grant Program should be dedicated to projects that are proven to move the needle on safety. Localities also need evidence-based guidance for roadway designs, and the federal government needs to overhaul its own road safety guidance and provide localities the freedom to experiment. Read T4America’s policy recommendations for prioritizing safety over speed in surface transportation reauthorization.

An emerging consideration: As the autonomous vehicle (AV) market continues to expand, it is vital to ensure that the rapid growth of this industry does not come at the expense of safety. The next law must promote transparency, make AV data public, and require reporting of collisions, malfunctions, and other anomalies. Local oversight also needs to be preserved, and localities should be able to determine how autonomous vehicles are deployed and operated on their streets. Finally, left unchecked, empty AVs could clog our roads while waiting for passengers. USDOT should establish a pricing mechanism that disincentivizes AV operators from allowing their vehicles to operate without passengers, preventing roads from being filled with empty cars. Read T4America’s other policy recommendations on ensuring AVs meet their potential.

Fix it first

Prioritizing roadway expansion and leaving maintenance as an afterthought, with no long-term plan for decades of maintenance costs, is nonsensical. We can’t afford to keep expanding the size and scope of the system without a clear plan to maintain what we’ve already built. Our last Repair Priorities report showed that we’d need $231.4 billion per year just to keep our existing road network in acceptable condition. Every new road, lane-mile, or bridge adds a costly new financial obligation for decades to come, pushing that number even higher. We need to be accountable to taxpayers and cannot continue to defer maintenance. Federal funding should prioritize fixing what we have before building anything new.

What we’ll be looking for: Legislative language must center accountability to ensure that maintenance is not on the back burner. If federal funds are given to grantees to increase roadway capacity, recipients should first demonstrate that they can maintain that asset over the course of its entire lifetime. Grants should not be distributed to agencies that cannot maintain the capacity they claim to need. States and MPOs should be required to set clear, measurable targets for improving pavement conditions, and when they fail to meet those targets, USDOT should step in and reorient National Highway Performance Program and Surface Transportation Block Grant funds toward repair. See the rest of T4Americas’s policy recommendations to prioritize existing maintenance needs.

Fixing roads should also include reconnecting communities and addressing the harms of previous infrastructure decisions. Projects built in the 1950s (and continuing through today) destroyed local economies and undermined the health and connectivity of people living near highways. Language that expands programs like the Reconnecting Communities Program (RCP), a competitive grant that funds the redesign and deconstruction of outdated infrastructure, must be included in the text (we’ll be looking out for the REPAIR Infrastructure Act, which continues the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program). Opportunities like RCP offered communities the chance to improve access to daily needs such as jobs, schools, food, recreation, and healthcare resources by building complete streets, fixing sidewalks, and investing in access to public transit. Additionally, models need to be updated for accuracy so agencies can accurately assess the impacts of highway alternative projects, and agencies must be transparent with the public about which models they use. Read the rest of our policy recommendations for an idea of what we are looking for in the next surface reauthorization bill to fix our past infrastructure history.

Invest in the rest

As the U.S. has built out the highway system, there has been too little support for other modes of transportation. Households need choices for how to get around, and we do not have freedom if there is a monopoly on mobility. The next surface reauthorization bill text must ensure we can build out a world-class transit system, a strong passenger rail network, and take charge of the electric vehicle market (EV).

What we’ll be looking for: One of the biggest challenges localities face is securing reliable funding for transit operations. Fare revenue does not cover the full cost of transit operations, and only smaller systems are allowed to use their federal funds on operations. Larger systems do not have that flexibility, and even if they did, that flexibility comes at the expense of money for capital improvements. In the next surface bill, T4America will be looking for policies that provide robust support for federal transit operations (similar to the Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act). Rural communities also rely on transit, and we will be looking for language that improves mobility services in rural areas by streamlining funding from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Read T4America’s full policy recommendations on how to build out world-class transit.

Passenger rail needs to be preserved and expanded on in the next surface bill. Amtrak’s national network of long-distance and state-supported routes provides vital transportation connections for communities. We are looking for policies that restructure roles and responsibilities, so that Amtrak’s board includes representation from individuals with demonstrated interest in the system and regular experience using passenger rail. The legislation should also encourage residential, commercial, and mixed-use development near rail stations to support transit-oriented development. Read T4America’s complete policy recommendations on building world-class passenger rail.

Federal transportation policy should position the U.S. to build a competitive advantage in electric vehicle manufacturing. An important part of supporting this market is expanding a reliable charging network by increasing the flexibility within the EV fueling program. The surface bill should include reducing unnecessary restrictions on the National Electric Vehicle (NEVI) program and ensuring that EVs pay into the system just like gas and diesel cars do. Read T4America’s other policy recommendations on investing in the EV market.

Looking ahead

T4America will look closely at any reauthorization proposal and grade it against our three core principles—priorities with broad support from voters across the political spectrum. Bills that fall short of these very attainable goals will be rated accordingly, while proposals that deliver the mark will earn a ringing endorsement. We will publish our scorecards and determine whether the next surface reauthorization law would actually deliver measurable and improved outcomes.

State DOTs should spend their safety money on safety or hand it over to locals

This Congress is focused on how federal dollars go out the door in the next surface transportation reauthorization, and it looks like states might win big time. But with a track record like theirs, why shouldn’t Congress consider who else might use their money better?

If the tone and policy goals uplifted by the current committee chairs authoring the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s sequel have been any indication, the next surface transportation reauthorization bill is likely to be a boon for state DOTs. In the House, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Sam Graves has stated that the bill will get “back to basics,” ensuring the federal program steps back from bike lanes and pedestrian paths and focuses more on laying asphalt for roads. Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito, Graves’s functional equivalent in the Senate’s committee in charge of drafting authorizing language for highway programs, is of about the same opinion on the direction of the program, with her focus on streamlining the many programs created by the IIJA and increasing states’ flexibility.

Their priorities overlap well with the wishlist that state DOTs have for this upcoming reauthorization. Other than asking for a huge increase in funding, their primary goals are to reduce accountability wherever possible and increase their already significant flexibility to spend as they see fit. One way they may do the latter is by having the IIJA’s competitive discretionary grants, which were made available to local entities like towns, cities, and counties, absorbed into highway formula programs that they directly control. This (likely) scenario for federal policy would result in a net loss of available funding for localities while also increasing the bottom line for state DOTs.

What the BASICS Act does

It seems that localities see this writing on the wall for competitive grants. Earlier this month, the Bridges and Safety Infrastructure for Community Success (BASICS) Act was introduced in the House on a bipartisan basis by Representatives Bresnahan (R-PA-08) and McDonald-Rivet (D-MI-08).

The bill is supported by the Local Officials in Transportation (LOT) Coalition (made up of cities, counties, and regional planning organizations), and as such, the BASICS Act seeks to ensure that a greater portion of the massive federal transportation program’s funding and programming authority ends up in their control, rather than just with state DOTs. Contrast this with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), which represents state DOTs and is advocating for an increase in both the total funding that goes to state DOTs and the overall share of funding going to them as well.

How the bill shifts control and adds accountability

In short, the BASICS Act would shift how federal highway formula dollars are suballocated and programmed to make funding more accessible to localities.

It would do this by moving money and increasing the portion that flows down to localities in existing FHWA programs, increasing the federal share for planning dollars for regional planning organizations, and clarifying local entities’ influence over project selection.

However, what is most interesting about the bill is how it addresses safety issues and accountability. Under current federal transportation policy, states can transfer up to 50% of any federal highway formula program’s funding to other highway programs, including out of safety programs like the Highway Safety Improvement Program.

The BASICS bill would require that any state DOT intending to transfer safety dollars out to another program must first ensure that localities have a chance to compete for those funds themselves, eliminating a loophole that DOTs have used to siphon literally hundreds of millions of dollars out of the Highway Safety Improvement Program into more flexible programs.

State DOTs want more money and fewer guardrails

AASHTO opposes the BASICS Act. Citing internal analysis, they find the bill would change how funding from the Highway Trust Fund is distributed, shifting the ratio from 85 percent for state DOTs and 15 percent to localities, to a new 75/25 percent state and local split. For reference, AASHTO wants to increase the portion of the HTF that goes to state DOTs to 95 percent. Considering that the discretionary grants from the IIJA that many local entities used may be disappearing, AASHTO’s proposal would likely make federal funding inaccessible to localities.

AASHTO’s article argues against the LOT Coalition’s proposal, highlighting three consequences from the change:

Program delivery would be fragmented.
Obligation rates would slow down.
State-owned roads and bridges would receive less federal funding

All of these results should be viewed as worthwhile trade-offs for increased accountability or outright benefits. When state DOTs have transferred hundreds of millions of dollars, on net, out of the Highway Safety Improvement Program after record-breaking traffic fatality levels, a small shift in responsibility could be the kind of disruption needed to actually improve outcomes.

It’s also worth interrogating what type of program state DOTs are actually delivering today, especially when AASHTO is calling for the reauthorization bill to “eliminate or reduce all federal regulatory burdens that are not explicitly required in law, including performance measures.” With the vast majority of funding flowing directly to them, State DOTs are, in effect, in charge of the federal highway program. If they are to claim credit for successes, they need to be held accountable for their failures. While local-led planning and project delivery could get things wrong just as much as state DOTs do today, they may also end up being more accountable to the priorities and nuances of communities, based purely on their proximity. When your city or county misspends money or fails to take care of obvious needs, it’s a lot easier to hold them accountable than a faceless, faraway, typically unelected state transportation agency.

As an indication of just how far away they are from thinking about outcomes, one of AASHTO’s top talking points revolves around how good they are at spending other people’s money quickly. Obligation rates, meaning simply the speed at which federal dollars are spent by a recipient, do not imply any measurement of success based on outcomes. If anything, the use of obligation rates as a metric should be scrutinized. What are you getting for that spending? Are results improving at unprecedented rates? Or are DOTs just prioritizing funding any investment as fast as possible?

Further, with the ability to wield multi-billion-dollar, state-supported budgets in addition to federal sources, state DOTs have significantly greater financial resources at their disposal compared to other types of project sponsors. However, despite those resources, it’s not uncommon for state DOTs to spend so much on wasteful projects that they effectively bankrupt themselves and leave billions of dollars of federally supported assets at risk of disrepair. Meanwhile, it is common knowledge that most local budgets have to be balanced.

Locals may indeed have slower obligation rates for federal funds, but that could just as much be a result of USDOT’s yo-yo approach between administrations in their handling of discretionary grants and the sparse federal dollars they had access to over the past few years. In some cases, it may be that their state DOT itself is the barrier to local-led projects’ obligations.

With challenges swinging between managing an overwhelming number of requirements and funding opportunities under the Biden administration, to dealing with vast uncertainty, a lack of communication, and distrust in federal partners over the past year under the current paradigm, it is easy to attribute external factors to the expediency of locally-led projects’ obligation rates.

Congress shouldn’t put all its eggs in one basket

Finally, it’s hard to overstate how much money state DOTs would likely still receive under this proposal, especially if existing competitive grant programs are cut to provide more money for highway formula programs.

It’s also hard to see why state DOTs should receive more funding in the first place, especially when they have failed to significantly improve on the real basics over the years, like road maintenance and safety. Besides, even judging this from the user-pays lens currently favored by Congress, recent analyses from the Brookings Institution show that the existing funding flows aren’t all that equitable in the first place, with localities receiving less federal funds than what they necessarily pay into the Highway Trust Fund, considering how much time people spend driving on local roads.

If Congress is looking to consolidate the number of federal transportation programs, it should not put all its eggs in one basket by entrusting state DOTs with responsibility over nearly all of the federal transportation program’s funding. Giving other local-led entities continued participation in the federal program is a good hedge against state DOTs’ records of perpetually needing increased funding to achieve the same poor results for spending. Congress should ensure that all its recipients of federal funding are held accountable for results.

Letter to Congress calls for penalties for failing to improve roadway safety

Nearly 40,000 people are dying on our roads each year, and Congress must take action to address the crisis by requiring changes in policy and practice. Last week, the National Complete Streets Coalition, Transportation for America, and a coalition of 24 other national, state, and local organizations sent a letter to Congress, calling on them to immediately address safety in road design instead of letting thousands more die year after year.

Since the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was passed in 2021, roughly an average of 40,000 people have died per year on U.S. roads. If the trend continues, over 200,000 people will die over the course of the next five-year surface transportation reauthorization bill. The federal government has a fundamental duty to protect those who are getting killed everyday and they cannot wait until this transportation bill expires (or later) to address the roadway safety crisis. That’s why we wrote a letter calling on Congress to hold hearings on improving federal roadway design standards to prioritize safety for all roadway users, change the federal roadway design standards based on the lessons learned from those hearings, and penalize state DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations that fail to improve safety.

Federal roadway design standards favor the speed of cars over the safety of everyone using the roadway, leading to a 40-year high in people killed while walking and biking, and higher roadway deaths per billion vehicle kilometers traveled than any of our peer nations. The federal government provides hundreds of millions of dollars each year to state DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations which they then use to build dangerous roads constructed using roadway design standards that favor car speeds over regularly-placed crosswalks, daylighted intersections, and protected bike infrastructure. When more and more people walking and biking die on these federally funded roads, the government levies zero consequences against the main culprits, state DOTs and MPOs. Congress will try and pass a new “traditional” transportation bill by next year, a supposed “return to basics.” However, our traditional methods of funding transportation have resulted in congestion, crumbling roads, and a record number of lives lost. The U.S. cannot afford to continue with business as usual. Congress needs to hold hearings and learn from experts about road design that protects all road users, alter road design recommendations in response to what they learn, and restrict funding to states and MPOs who exacerbate the roadway safety crisis.

In a letter sent to Congress last week, we proposed three concrete actions for Congress and USDOT to take. You can read them in full in the letter, but they are:

1. Prioritize safety in all road design guidance and within the entire federal transportation program, rather than treating safety as an afterthought.

Federal roadway design guidance is inherently broken. Manuals such as the Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets from AASHTO and the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices value continuous movement of cars over the safety of those both inside and outside vehicles leading to wide, high speed roads. There is no requirement that our federal roadway design standards be proven to improve safety. It is well established that speed increases the deadliness of a roadway and that safety and speed are fundamentally incompatible, yet the design manuals our federal government recommends ignore this basic truth. This creates a dangerous environment for pedestrians, cyclists, people with disabilities, and those inside vehicles. Congress needs to ensure that our roadway design guidance is evidence-based, allows for innovation, and protects those who are walking, biking, and driving.

2. Require measurable improvements on safety from all funding recipients—with penalties for failing to perform.

Congress funneled historic amounts of money to state DOTs and MPOs in the IIJA with big promises to improve roadway safety, however those results have yet to be seen. Congress cannot continue to dole out millions without any enforceable targets, therefore Congress should tie funding to outcomes, including safety. Congress must call on these states to answer for the disappointing outcomes resulting from federal funds. If states and metropolitan planning organizations fail to meaningfully decrease the number of people dying while walking and biking on their roadways, Congress should limit their funds to programs that improve safety and repair rather than allow them to burn millions on dangerous new or expanded roads.

3. Hold hearings in the House and Senate focused specifically on how road design contributes to the roadway safety crisis and holds the key to solving it.

Reauthorization in 2026 represents our best opportunity to orient federal policy and spending toward improving safety. But we need to lay the groundwork for that bill now. Congress must hold additional hearings focused specifically on the ways road design contributes to the roadway safety crisis, why we are failing at all levels to implement safer designs, and how Congress can actively help address this crisis. They need to quickly gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between roadway design and poor safety outcomes, successful interventions to address roadway safety through design best practices, and why states repeatedly fail to implement safe road design. They must call for the best roadway design practices from at home and abroad to be more widely implemented and recognize the roadway safety crisis as a public health emergency. Congress cannot spend the next year writing a transportation bill that fails to address dangerous roadway design and its contribution to the roadway safety crisis. They need to go beyond public support for safety and show their commitment by working with experts to problem solve and address the fundamental issue of flawed roadway design through legislation and appropriations.

Congress cannot ignore the catastrophe they’ve helped create. They need to listen to the local, state, and national voices that are demanding they use their legislative authority, act now, and save lives.

Reforming state transportation plans to make safety the priority

Finding and deciphering the lists of transportation projects planned by states and metropolitan planning organizations are nearly impossible for the average person. The plans they do have often involve making roads faster and more dangerous and the goals they have are divorced from a supposed priority of safety. These plans need to be transparent and easily understandable so that the public can understand how projects advance transportation priorities.

The U.S. provides billions of dollars in block grants to state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations (MPO), but despite using public dollars, the projects seem unrelated to the USDOT’s “top priority” of safety. The DOTs and MPOs are allowed the freedom to allocate federal funding to projects they prioritize. They are required to document these projects, however in the end there is no real requirement to explain how these projects actually benefit the goals of the federal transportation program, namely safety. If we want to ensure that our program advances safety, we need to make sure that the entities receiving funding explain how their projects advance goals.

T4’s policy proposal for prioritizing safety over speed

In our second principle for reauthorization, Safety over Speed, we outline how to monitor how our states and MPOs are spending on safety:

Require states and MPOs to detail in their core planning documents—State Transportation Improvement Programs (STIPs for states) and Transportation Improvement Programs (TIPs for metros)—their goals for safety and clearly explain how the projects they are choosing will advance those targets for safety.
All approved STIPs and TIPs should be posted on the FHWA and FTA websites and be fully searchable.
Update benefit-cost guidance to prevent transportation agencies from claiming safety benefits in congestion reduction projects without a study that shows congestion reduction will prevent crashes that result in fatalities and serious injuries for all road users.

State DOTs and MPOs receive billions in federal funding, and they are required to assemble lists showing the projects they will advance with those funds over the next four years. These required documents, known as Statewide Transportation Improvement Programs (STIP) and Transportation Improvement Programs (TIP), have to be updated at least every four years and explain which projects are being advanced by those federal dollars. The purpose of these documents is to explain how agencies are prioritizing projects and to help the public understand where their money is going and what it is expected to achieve. They fail miserably on all counts.

To understand a STIP/TIP, you first must try to find it. For a document that is supposed to inform the public, they can be extremely difficult to locate, and nearly impossible to decipher. Each state and MPO houses these documents differently. In some cases, these documents are not even posted publicly. Once you do find a STIP or TIP, it can be a mess to decipher. These documents vary wildly in how they explain information. Some are unsearchable, 100-plus page PDFs listing projects. Most lack any meaningful explanation of why the projects are prioritized.

Image from the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (Austin area) TIP that shows adding a lane will improve safety, pavement condition, and system performance.

Theoretically the projects that states or metro areas are choosing to include in these documents are supposed to improve transportation performance measures, including safety. That’s how the federal program was recalibrated back in 2012: States get lots of flexible money, but have to accomplish certain goals, like fewer roadway deaths.

But this is where this process breaks down: the process by which states and metro areas choose these projects with no real plan fails to connect to or advance any of their priorities To put it another way, a state may set a goal of reducing fatalities and injuries, and then pick a suite of projects to build over the next four years that have zero connection to actually accomplishing that goal. Afterwards, we’re all surprised when safety doesn’t improve or they miss their targets (or they hit their terrible targets).

Because the projects included in STIPs and TIPs receive federal funding, they need to be publicly available, searchable, and readable, so that taxpayers can understand both where their money is going, and what agencies are attempting to accomplish with it. Congress needs to direct USDOT to reform guidance on STIPs and TIPs so that they are housed in an easily-searchable, central database run by USDOT—all easily findable in one place. That means if someone is interested in how their state or MPO is spending money, they should be able to go to a centralized website, click on their state, and filter to find projects that are safety focused. When they explore a project, in addition to the typical information on funding sources and a general project overview, each entry should also include an explanation of how that project is going to improve the state of their system.

However, simply requiring explanations for the projects included in STIPs and TIPs won’t fix this issue. We need to change how states and metros justify their projects, especially around safety and repair. Oftentimes agencies will add a lane, claiming that it will improve the pavement condition of a roadway and improve safety. These justifications, the benefit-cost guidance, claim that congestion reduction will improve safety. In their eyes, creating less congestion creates fewer instances where cars will start and stop, leading to less minor crashes. However if congestion reduction actually reduces congestion (which is not a guarantee), it ends up speeding cars up. During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, less people drove, congestion was reduced, and speeds increased, and as a result our roads grew deadlier than ever. Safety is fundamentally incompatible with speed. Faster roads increase the likelihood of deadly crashes and create a hostile environment for pedestrians. We shouldn’t be funding safety programs that actually make it more dangerous for all road users, but our safety guidance values fast roads. To prevent transportation agencies from claiming safety benefits in congestion reduction projects, we need to require them to conduct a study that shows congestion reduction will prevent crashes that result in fatalities and serious injuries for all road users. We need to stop funding congestion reduction projects with grants that should advance safety.

Conclusion

Our transportation system is supposed to serve all road users, so why should we be targeting safety dollars to projects that do not prioritize that goal? In order to make safety our priority and to have real accountability, we need to ensure that states and MPOs are choosing projects that will measurably improve safety for all roadway users. That means clearly outlining what projects they’re working on and explaining how they advance safety. Without reforming the process by which STIPs and TIPs are created and shared with the public, it will be impossible to understand what our money is going towards.

To truly prioritize safety, federal guidance must be grounded in evidence

Road safety is described as a top priority by transportation agencies and decision makers. However, the actions and regulations they produce often undermine this stated intention. Road design standards must be backed by concrete research to justify designs that prioritize safety ahead of speed.

T4’s policy proposal for improved safety

In our platform for reauthorization, under our first core principle of “Design for safety over speed,” we call for government agencies to “Conduct research and provide evidence-backed guidance for roadway design.” This article explains why this is critical, and some of the steps required to make it happen.

Current road design standards are NOT based on evidence and science about road safety

Roads are not naturally occurring features–they are designed and built by people. And these people are generally planners and engineers who follow certain rules and guidelines that are created by experts—particularly in the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT). Sounds reasonable, right? The problem is that while everyone seems to agree that safety is a top priority, there are numerous instances in these rules and guidance where safety clearly takes a backseat to other objectives:

The Green Book and Highway Safety Manual: The main guide used by road designers is the Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets, which is published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and informally known as the “Green Book.” AASHTO also publishes the Highway Safety Manual, which focuses more specifically on safety interventions and design. Both of these are adopted by FHWA, and they are often treated as gospel by transportation officials at lower levels. Unfortunately, these documents have justified road designs that prioritize vehicle speed over safety and access for everyone else. Tragically, and all too often, transportation professionals fail to take action until after a deadly threshold has been crossed. For example, residents in the Southwest neighborhood of Washington, DC identified an intersection as extremely dangerous with scores of crashes, dozens of injuries, and two deaths in just a few years. However, the local authorities failed to take action until another pedestrian was killed there in April 2025.

Intersection at 6th and M Street SW, Washington DC.

The same story played out in San Antonio, where it took dozens of crashes and multiple deaths at a dangerous intersection before the city finally decided that a traffic light was “warranted.”

The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (MUTCD) is a massively influential publication that sets standards for numerous aspects of road signs and is frequently invoked in the design and operation of roads across the country. A clear example of using the wrong evidence and prioritizing speed over safety that has dominated the MUTCD is the infamous 85 percent rule–a ridiculous practice that reads like an Onion headline. It basically means setting or adjusting speed limits on roads based on how fast cars are already driving—rather than designing speed limits based on the context and safety needs of the street. Because the majority of drivers tend to exceed speed limits, this creates a feedback loop that pushes speed limits up and makes roads more dangerous over time. And speed is a crucial factor in determining the likelihood and severity of car crashes. Simply put, high speeds and safety are incompatible when it comes to roads, especially in complex settings where there are multiple types of road users (e.g. pedestrians, transit, bicyclists, and motorists).

With the most recent MUTCD edition and in statements about the manual, the FHWA has insisted that the 85th percentile rule is just one factor among many that should be considered when setting speed limits. However, the term appears forty-four times in the document (and even more in a recent FHWA Speed Limit Setting Handbook) and thus remains an important standard that transportation professionals will most likely continue to view as a key input for determining road speeds.

By creating or adopting design guidance that prioritizes speed over safety, the FHWA reaffirms that the status quo is acceptable and provides legal cover for local agencies who follow their designs. Such standards can result in road designs that are clearly dangerous.

Design speed vs. posted speed

Posted speed is the legal maximum limit for driving on a road, while the design speed is the speed that vehicles will actually travel based on roadway features and conditions. Ideally, these should be aligned, but often there are mismatches (e.g., roads that are designed in a way that encourages high speeds, regardless of posted speed).

What can we do?

The federal government can play a significant role in determining the safety of our roads and should make changes to reverse the situation:

Require science-based standards at FHWA that prioritize the safety of all road users, including within the MUTCD and any other guidance documents. These should be updated and improved regularly based on the evidence.
Make clear that there is no legal shield for transportation agencies simply because they follow design standards, unless those standards are demonstrably tied to the safety of all users. Federal regulation should only include design standards that are backed by publicly available evidence showing that they reduce crashes that result in fatalities and injuries in the contexts where they’re applied.
Provide guidance for context-sensitive speed limits (limits that are based on surrounding road and land use, not simply driver behavior) and require the posted speed and design speed to be the same. The 85th percentile rule is NOT the only way to establish speed limits.

There are a number of alternate proposed methods, including NACTO’s approach (which aligns with MUTCD guidance). Some states, such as Florida, have taken steps to create context-sensitive street design guidance. Under the Florida system, planners and engineers must consider existing and future characteristics to ensure that roads are designed for the right vehicle speeds, road users, and trip types. But the federal government should play a more active role in guiding and supporting states and localities. The U.S. can also learn from international best practices in this domain.

If safety is our top priority, we actually need to measure it

Safety is a top stated priority for nearly every transportation agency. So why don’t we have more comprehensive up-to-date information on the danger of our roads? The limited information we do have fails to explain the scope of our safety crisis, and therefore fails to give us the information we need to address it.

We say safety is our top priority, but we do not have current national data on how many people were killed or injured, or where. The Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s “yearly” report on deaths suffered in motor vehicle traffic crashes, is wildly out of date and limited. For something constantly described as our highest priority, taxpayers and policymakers are kept woefully in the dark about how bad things are, how we’re trying to address it, and whether or not those interventions are working. We will never improve safety if we don’t measure it better.

T4’s policy proposal for improved safety

In our platform for reauthorization, under our first core principle of “Design for safety over speed” we have a goal to improve the basic data on safety so we can address it. To do this we spell out two things that need to change:

Publish safety data, such as the Fatality Analysis Reporting System data, to the public within one year of the end of each calendar year, and expand the data to include roadway environment conditions.
Collect and analyze the deployment of safety countermeasures and results, updating approved countermeasures based on this information.

Three limitations of our safety data

1) There is no national dataset on injuries to people walking or rolling that is reliable, comprehensive, and current.

From the timing to the quality of it, the data we have is wholly insufficient in telling where people are getting killed and why, meaning that we can’t change what and how we build. Currently there is a 16-month lag in FARS data. If you were killed in a car crash in December 2023, it would not be published until the spring of 2025 and the data would lack critical details. The point of FARS is to provide crash data in a timely fashion so that we can address issues with our roads, but it has not served that purpose to this point. Even if this data was updated annually, it would lack critical details including road design and injuries that occurred.

FARS data comes from crash reports that are tracked independently by local police departments and compiled at the state level, all with different recording methods and organizational categories. This leads to an incomplete data set that is released later and later every year. Creating a standardized system around data collection that includes the reasons behind a crash, any injuries, and the environmental conditions could help make reporting more consistent and effective.

2) FARS data does not specifically and accurately report on serious injuries at a national scale.

The second problem with FARS is embedded right in its name and purpose: tracking fatalities. A limited number of emergency departments report injuries. Their race and ethnicity classifications can differ and they are not required to report detailed crash information. Many injuries remain unreported because they are not severe enough to warrant a hospital visit or people don’t have the means or desire to enter into the formal healthcare system. In Dangerous by Design 2024, we estimated that 67,336 people were injured in 2022. But that’s an educated guess, not concrete data. Tens of thousands of people are physically harmed by the way we design our roads, but we have no clue about the true effect. This is a policy failure that seriously hinders our ability to understand the true extent of our safety crisis.

Because this data comes from crash reports, many traffic-related injuries are not recorded if they are not “severe.” Each jurisdiction and report also has their own definition for what constitutes a severe injury, making national reporting more difficult. If someone realizes they were hurt worse than they thought and then go to the hospital later—which often happens to people biking or walking when adrenaline subsides—they are not recorded as a serious injury in a crash report. That injury is then not recorded in FARS. To understand the safety crisis on our roadways, we need to include the missing injury numbers from car crashes in our data. We also need to create guidance and standardize how we track these injuries so that injuries are tracked properly.

3) We lack a full picture of danger on our roadways

FARS fails to capture the kind of comprehensive data we need about environmental conditions, infrastructure, the design of the road or its deficiencies—not just “was a crosswalk present” but also “what was the quality of the lighting.” This means we don’t ever have good information on what is creating our most dangerous roadways.

Crash reports provide limited information about where accidents happen and what the conditions and infrastructure look like. For example, injuries that occur on poorly maintained sidewalks are not recorded at all. All serious non-fatal injuries need to be included in this data. Requiring roadway environmental conditions in crash reports will greatly improve the clarity on what we need to improve. FARS data needs to report more details about crosswalk placement and quality, roadway design speed (not just the speed limit), intersection design, lighting conditions and quality, and roadway user visibility. It also needs to include the state of the roadway repair so that we can understand how roads in poor condition affect safety.

Additionally, FARS makes it impossible to truly assess the impact on different groups of people, especially when it comes to people of different abilities. There is no ability to disaggregate people using walkers, wheelchairs, or other assistive devices from people riding skateboards, bicycles, or rollerskates. FARS data groups people with disabilities under the overarching group of “nonmotorists.” This limits our ability to actively address the fatality epidemic among the disability community, the people who most need our help in creating safe infrastructure. The label nonmotorists includes cyclists and people walking with the disability community, all of whom may have differing needs. Having a specified data set for the disability community would help the U.S. target investments to address the dangers of our roadway design for our most vulnerable communities.

With better understanding of how deaths occur, where injuries are happening, and the infrastructure conditions that are contributing to those deaths, we can better understand the crisis and target money to make changes to improve safety. Having annually updated, improved, and comprehensive crash data is the first step in solving our roadway safety crisis. Only after understanding the true extent of our problem will we be able to target real investments to improve the lives of everyone using our transportation system. We have codified safety as one of the seven national goals of the federal program. Yet we know so little about it. We cannot profess to care about a crisis we are failing to measure well. It’s past time for that to change.

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 do most pedestrian deaths happen on state-owned roads?

A young man and woman attempt to cross the street on a worn out crosswalk while two cars approach

Ask anyone at a state department of transportation, 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.

7,522 people were struck and killed while walking in 2022, an average of more than 20 deaths per day. These numbers represent the harsh reality many Americans see on a day-to-day basis: in most places across the U.S., there are few options to travel safely and comfortably outside of a vehicle. When that’s the case, a simple walk to school, work, or the grocery store can mean risking injury or death.

Some of the deadliest roads in the nation are state-owned—often wide, high-speed roadways that place an emphasis on vehicle travel, even as they cut through places where people frequently walk, bike, or roll. However, design changes on these deadly roadways often face pushback from state DOTs—even when those same DOTs claim that safety is their number one priority.

There is a logical disconnect between the way our leaders describe the goals of our roadways and the way our roadways are designed. Despite the stated goal of safety, engineers’ actual top priority is moving cars quickly—as evidenced by measures and models like value of time and level of service.

Years of research have shown that when roads are designed for vehicles to drive as quickly as possible, there are serious consequences for the safety of all other travelers. Yet the same design changes that would improve safety also come up against barrier after barrier to progress.

The change we need from state DOTs

The unfortunate reality is that our traffic engineers have been taught for decades that most problems can be solved with wide, high-speed lanes. Changing that thinking requires a real culture shift, starting at the very top. State DOTs require strong leadership and support to tailor projects to a well-defined problem and evaluate the outcomes of their decisions.

A willingness to rethink old models and reckon with the fact that the go-to solution hasn’t solved many of our transportation problems can go a long way in bringing about a safer travel environment. The good news is that alternative solutions are out there—if state DOTs are willing to give them a try. A select number of state DOTs have already started to implement change by, for example, navigating opportunities to utilize a Complete Streets approach on rural highways or trying out a quick-build demonstration project to boost engagement.

The typical approach to designing our roadways has left safety behind. We can’t curb the danger with more of the same. Going forward, state DOTs will need to think outside of the box to protect everyone traveling on their roads.

Our federal leaders have to be part of the solution

Guidance and regulations from USDOT often set standards that prioritize high-speed vehicle travel, but these same regulations also allow state DOTs to make safer choices if they wish. Unfortunately, practitioners at state DOTs don’t always seem to know they have this flexibility, and even if they are aware, they face additional barriers if they want to use it.

When state DOTs use extra time and effort to overcome these barriers and test out a new safety feature, this gets no notice from the federal government—even if it results in improved safety. In fact, if a state DOT does nothing and allows more people to die on their roadways, that DOT receives the same level of funding and attention as those making effective safety improvements. This creates a system where it is far more practical to maintain the deadly status quo than it is to implement proven safety methods.

Recently, our colleagues at Smart Growth America wrapped up a series of technical assistance projects to build partnerships between local communities and state DOTs and advance safety on state-owned roadways. T4A Director and VP of Transportation and Thriving Communities Beth Osborne reflected on the experience:

We’ve heard through our years of work, including most recently with participants in this program, that state DOT staff often feel left on their own to determine whether a non-traditional safety treatment they may like to try out is permitted by USDOT…even if it has a proven track record of improving safety. There is a great opportunity for federal leaders to work with states, local leaders, and safety and public health partners to foster and support more learning through demonstration projects with proactive new guidance.

For state DOTs to truly prioritize safety over speed, system-wide change is necessary—and they can’t do it alone. USDOT can help by providing affirmative guidance that promotes safety strategies that actually achieve results. Future legislation must also hold states accountable for choosing safety 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.

Three principles to guide federal transportation spending

T4A's three principles for transportation funding are Safety over Speed, Fix It First, and Invest in the Rest

It’s time for transportation investments that achieve results for all Americans. For future investments in U.S. infrastructure, Congress should follow three key principles: prioritize safety over speed, fix it first, and invest in the rest.

We’ve released our three principles for future federal investments in our nation’s infrastructure. Learn more about them at t4america.org/platform.

Federal transportation policy has very serious problems to solve. Our roads, bridges, transit, sidewalks, bikeways, and rail systems are in disrepair; congestion has increased; pedestrian fatalities and emissions are the highest in decades, and rising; and too many people lack safe, affordable, and convenient access to jobs and essential services.

For too long, Congress has thrown more funding at the problem, hoping that spending more dollars on the same thing will lead to different results. However, all this money has only continued to make our problems worse. As Congress makes decisions about limited taxpayer funds, it’s time that they invest smarter, prioritizing our dollars to create a transportation system that works for the average American.

With the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act expiring in 2026, the next surface transportation reauthorization, a significant federal investment in our nation’s infrastructure, will be top of mind for the next Congress. Based on the results of the last reauthorization (and the one before that, and the one before that), it is clear that we need a fundamental change in approach. That’s why we’re calling on Congress to update the decades-old federal transportation program to design for safety over speed, prioritize maintenance, and invest in the full transportation system, including opportunities to walk, bike, and take public transit.

Invest in the rest

For more than half a century, we’ve invested hundreds of billions of dollars into building a sophisticated highway system that attempts to connect everyone to everything everywhere—by car. We’ve completed a highway system that was once the envy of the world, but now that same system is failing to meet today’s needs. Imagine what we could achieve if we applied the same level of funding and energy into investing in more options to get people where they need to go.

Past road projects destroyed walkable communities or eliminated walking as an option. Investments in highways have drastically outpaced transit investments, with roughly 80 percent of federal transportation money going to highways since the 1980s while only 20 percent has gone to public transportation. As a result, most Americans have to travel by car to get where they need to go—whether or not they want to or can afford to—which leads to more traffic, more lanes, and more harmful climate emissions.

It’s time for Congress to invest in the rest of our transportation system, which has been neglected for far too long, and bring the freedom of choice back to everyday Americans trying to get where they need to go as conveniently, safely, and affordably as possible.

It’s Invest in the Rest Week! In our next three posts, we’ll be diving into this principle and why it should be a top priority in federal transportation spending. Check out the first post here for more on this new T4A principle.

Safety over speed

Ask any member of Congress, and they’ll tell you that they believe our roads should be safe for all travelers. Yet federal investments in transportation have made our roads deadlier. In 2022, the number of people hit and killed while walking reached a 40-year high.

This is because our transportation models and policies prioritize the speed of vehicles over the safety of all road users. High-speed car travel makes sense in some environments, like on interstates or limited access highways. However, when fast-moving cars encounter people walking and biking on our local roadways, crashes, injuries, and deaths become far more likely. When it comes to roads like these, we have to choose between vehicle speed and the safety of all road users—we can’t have both.

Fix it first

There is an $830 billion backlog for repairing existing U.S. highways alone. The entire federal program spends about $50 billion per year, so even if we devoted 100 percent of all federal money to maintenance for ten straight years, we’d still be unable to fully address this backlog. This does not even account for the costs of maintaining and preserving the additional roads and bridges that we continue to build.

Our congressional leaders are well aware of this deficit. In fact, when they are determining how many taxpayer dollars to devote to our nation’s infrastructure, the need for maintenance is always top-of-mind. However, when states go to spend those dollars, they almost always prioritize costly highway expansion projects over needed repairs. And despite the clear public desire to see maintenance needs addressed, there is no federal requirement that they spend these funds any other way.

We can’t continue to build more roads and bridges if we can’t take care of the ones that already exist. Our federal funding needs to be focused on achieving a state of good repair.

For decades, Congress has poured money into the same flawed system. We’ve seen the results of that strategy. It’s time to make smarter investments in our transportation system. Starting now, we will continue to engage our congressional leaders to advance these three principles—and in the year ahead, we’ll be calling on you for help.

Complete Streets make a difference

People cycle and walk down a green path near a transit stop.

Though it’s an uphill battle, national efforts to prioritize safety over speed really can gain momentum and achieve results. The Complete Streets movement is one such example.

The term Complete Streets refers to an approach to planning, designing and building streets that enables safe access for all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit riders of all ages and abilities. While every complete street is unique depending on a community’s local context, these streets ultimately support a variety of transportation options and enhance the quality of life for residents by promoting safety, accessibility, and sustainability.

While it wasn’t always this way, an overemphasis on vehicle travel at the expense of all other modes of transportation has resulted in incomplete streets being the default approach to transportation in the U.S. It’s our hope that decision-makers at every level will change that by prioritizing safety over speed.

The early days

The term “Complete Streets” was first coined in 2003 by Barbara McCann, who now serves as the Senior Advisor to the Associate Administrator for Safety at the Federal Highway Administration. Two years later, she helped form the National Complete Streets Coalition, now a program of Smart Growth America. This coalition has played a crucial role in advocating for Complete Streets policies and practices over the last 20 years.

One of the landmark moments in the movement’s history occurred in 2009 when the National Complete Streets Coalition released its first Complete Streets Policy Guide. This guide provided a comprehensive framework for communities to develop their own Complete Streets policies. An updated policy framework, released last year, which serves as a national model of best practices to create a policy at any level of government. Click here to see the updated framework.

Successes and ongoing challenges

The impact of Complete Streets policies can be seen in numerous cities across the United States. For example, the city of Portland, Oregon, is renowned for its successful implementation of Complete Streets principles. Portland’s emphasis on cycling infrastructure, pedestrian-friendly design, and transit options has contributed to its reputation as a model for sustainable urban transportation.

Similarly, New York City’s implementation of Complete Streets features, such as protected bike lanes and pedestrian plazas, has transformed its streetscape, making it safer and more accessible for residents and visitors alike. These examples underscore the potential of Complete Streets to create more vibrant, equitable, and sustainable urban environments.

Despite the successes, the Complete Streets movement faces several challenges. Implementing these principles often requires overcoming entrenched interests and overcoming budgetary constraints. Additionally, achieving broad public support and ensuring that all community members benefit from Complete Streets projects can be complex. The number of people hit and killed while walking continues to rise across the country, reflecting the need for decision makers at every level to prioritize safety over speed. Click here for the National Complete Streets Coalition’s reflections on the path ahead.

The Complete Streets movement reflects a growing recognition of the need for transportation systems that serve all members of society, and change is far from over. Over the past 20 years, the concept has evolved from a visionary idea to a widely accepted approach that is reshaping the way we think about and design our roadways. As cities continue to embrace Complete Streets principles, they pave the way for more equitable, sustainable, and livable communities, setting a new standard for how we envision and experience our public spaces.

The loss of transportation choices in the U.S.

Investments and policies that support car travel at the expense of all other transportation options have helped create a culture of driving in the U.S. Investing in a variety of transportation choices, like opportunities to bike, walk, and take public transit, would improve safety and accessibility for all.

The ghost of walkable streets’ past

Before the car started to take off in the early 1930s, streets were for everyone. Wagons, walkers, bikers, horses, they all utilized the street to get to daily activities and destinations. Pre-Industrial Revolution Americans would walk between 10,000 and 18,000 steps per day, and high rates of walking and biking to work or school continued throughout the late 60s. Because the street was so widely used by many different forms of transport, it functioned as a public space, a place where children could play as much as cyclists could bike to the store.

Three cyclists travel down a wide path in this black-and-white photo — *NYC Parks Photo Archive*

When cars began rising in popularity in the 1920s, they entered a space not designed for them, posing a danger to other travelers. The public grew alarmed at rising death tolls and vehicle crashes, calling for reduced vehicle speeds and more protections from the car. Automakers, dealers, and enthusiasts flipped their narrative, advocating for legislation and funding campaigns that sought to regulate and restrict where people could walk and bike.

The latter campaign succeeded, but it didn’t make our streets safer. Instead, streets ultimately became a place where quick, convenient car travel is often prioritized over the safety and comfort of all other road users. In 2022, the number of people hit and killed while walking reached a 40-year high.

The illusion of choice

Post-WWII in the United States was a time of world-building, of focusing on creating a brighter future for the country in the aftermath of destruction. The infrastructure that came along with this shift made suburban lifestyles the ideal, and the car a symbol of freedom. A combination of economic incentives and a deprioritization of dense, mixed-use development led to sprawling cities with destinations spread far apart, connected by high-speed roadways.

Today, Americans are driving more for the same basic tasks. Research from Transportation for America and Third Way found that households in both rural and urban areas are driving significantly farther per trip as of 2017 than they were in 2001 to accomplish their commutes and daily tasks. Often, driving is the only convenient, safe, and reliable transportation option available, requiring households to shoulder the cost of a vehicle in order to access their daily needs. When people can’t afford regular access to a vehicle, when their car breaks down, or when they otherwise don’t have the ability to drive, they must navigate a transportation system that wasn’t built for them.

A lack of safe transportation options leads to reduced access to economic opportunity, increased risk of being hit by a vehicle, and higher rates of air pollution. These trends are felt by everyone, but they have the harshest impact on low-income communities and communities of color.

Reminder that we destroyed our own cities.

(Main & Delaware Street, Kansas City) pic.twitter.com/2SojGFDPbp
— Culture Critic (@Culture_Crit) September 1, 2023

We need Complete Streets

Decisions made in the past have left our streets incomplete, prioritizing one way of travel over a wealth of other options. Complete Streets are streets that are safe for all users and that connect community members to the resources they need. This blog is the first installation of a four-part series on the Complete Streets movement. Keep an eye out for our next blog, where we’ll dissect the origins of the Complete Streets movement and what it aims to achieve.

We need to expand the conversation on transportation safety

A cyclist travels down a busy highway on their way to Baltimore.

We can’t significantly address safety concerns if we’re not looking at the most dangerous modes of transportation.

On May 9, the chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, Representative Sam Graves, and the chairman of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee, Representative Rick Crawford highlighted recent increases in crime reports according to FTA-tracked data. The period of time evaluated (2020-2022) represents some of the worst times for transit as agencies struggled to deliver service, ridership fell, and travel behavior changed across the country.

Transit safety is foundational to encouraging communities to utilize this public resource and enjoy its numerous benefits, including economic, environmental, and public health benefits. It is essential that federal investments protect taxpayers as they travel. Unfortunately, Representatives Graves and Crawford failed to take note of the need for safety enhancements for all modes of transportation, including modes that are far more dangerous than taking the bus.

From 2020-2022, during that same period highlighted by Graves and Crawford, fatalities on our roadways exploded. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, projected roadway fatalities increased from 39,007 to 42,795. According to Smart Growth America’s Dangerous by Design report, the number of people hit and killed while walking grew to 7,522 in 2022, marking a 40-year high.

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, passenger car occupants are the primary victims in highway fatalities, totaling more than 10,000 deaths each year since 2010. By contrast, non-rail public transit occupants (like bus riders) accounted for less than 100 highway fatalities each year. Other types of public transit, like subways, accounted for less than 300 transportation-related fatalities each year. (To fully understand these numbers, it’s important to note that highway fatalities, including non-rail public transit, counted only direct fatalities like deaths that occur due to a collision. Other types of public transit included incident-related fatalities, and so these deaths are likely overstated in comparison.)

Whether we’re driving, biking, walking, or taking public transit, we should be able to travel safely. But when representatives like Crawford derail the conversation to “shine a light” on transit security alone, it unnecessarily discourages and scares individuals from riding public transportation, despite it being statistically safer than operating a private vehicle.

Increased operations funding can help support transit agencies’ efforts to improve safety. Hiring transit ambassadors and having security officers on board are just two interventions that would support crime mitigation efforts. Collaborating with local services to support housing and mental health could help address criminal activity from multiple angles.

Transit ambassadors point a rider in the right direction — *(LA Metro)*

Safety must be a priority—no matter how we travel

We’re glad federal representatives are having conversations about transportation safety, and we hope to see these conversations translate into increased funding for transit operations and security. But to truly address dangerous travel conditions, we need to consider the full picture. We hope to see additional efforts to address the top contributor to transportation-related fatalities in the US: private vehicles on high-speed roads.

Find out how we can enhance safety for all road users by improving street design. Read Dangerous by Design here.

Dangerous by Design 2024: Deaths of people walking up 75% since 2010

The 2024 edition of Dangerous by Design is out now, combining federal data with lived experience to unpack the connection between roadway design and the ever-increasing record deaths of people walking. The report ranks the most dangerous metros in the United States based on pedestrian fatalities from 2018 to 2022. Click here to access the report’s analysis of the deadliest metro areas and national trends > >

The number of people struck and killed on our roadways continues to rise—reaching 7,522 in the latest available federal reporting, a 75 percent increase since 2010. That’s an average of more than 20 per day. We found that almost every metro in the U.S. was deadlier for people walking in 2022 than in 2021.

Smart Growth America’s rankings of 101 metro areas show that nearly every metro has gotten more dangerous—and those that didn’t get worse have remained about the same.

This year, Memphis was ranked the deadliest city for pedestrians. 344 people died from 2018-2022, an increase of 158 deaths compared to the previous five-year period.

As in previous editions of the report, Smart Growth America found that Black and Indigenous Americans, older adults, and people walking in low-income communities still face the greatest risk.

Read the first installment of the report here to learn more about this year’s metro rankings and how pedestrian deaths impact people from different metro areas, races and ethnicities, income levels, and ages. And stay tuned for upcoming Dangerous by Design releases this summer, sharing analysis for states and congressional districts.

Rethinking the intersection to prioritize safety over speed

A cyclist crosses an intersection with the aid of a green bicycle crossing signal

The rising rate of pedestrian fatalities is a consequence of deadly design decisions that prioritize driver speed and convenience over the safety of all other road users. Today, we dig into one example: crosswalk signals.

As communities work to advance safe streets, they must also ensure that these efforts lead to design changes that effectively integrate with the technology managing traffic flow for all users. Many walk signals are timed based on outdated standards that prioritize maximum green time for all motorized vehicle movements. Signal timing gets reviewed on a case-by-case basis, leveraging a manual last published in 2015 that isn’t supplemented often to consider the diverse needs of pedestrians, such as people with disabilities, seniors, cyclists, or parents with strollers.

Walk signals are just one example of how our infrastructure prioritizes the speed of vehicles over the safety of other road users. This practice comes at a deadly cost.

We are in the midst of a historic and alarming increase in the number of people struck and killed while walking, which has been on a steady rise since 2009, reaching levels not seen in more than 30 years. Speed is the number one culprit in these fatalities. Speed is also the best predictor of whether or not a collision will result in an injury or death. Design elements, including effective traffic signals, are essential to reducing speeds and improving safety.

If not designed correctly, intersections can be one of the most dangerous places where folks in and outside of cars interact. There are many recent examples of places that experience a high number of crashes at crosswalks. Saint Paul, Minnesota is a prime example of this. In 2016, Shelby Kokesch was killed while attempting to cross Kellogg Boulevard, a busy thoroughfare, from the Minnesota History Center. Though Kokesch used a marked crosswalk, it lacked a stop sign or a crossing signal. While one car pulled over to let Kokesch and her mother pass, the second vehicle—an SUV—did not stop.

At the time, Saint Paul responded with higher traffic enforcement around crosswalks, ticketing drivers who failed to stop at marked crosswalks and yield to pedestrians. During the crackdown, Sergeant Jeremy Ellison reflected, “An overwhelming response from people is, ‘I didn’t see them.’ People are not paying attention and they’re driving too fast.”

This is a design problem—and it has a design solution

Signalized intersections draw attention to pedestrian crossings and help ensure that traffic comes to a complete stop before travelers enter the crosswalk. Street design can be more influential on driver behavior than speed limits or enforcement alone. Complete Streets—an approach to designing streets that prioritizes the safety and comfort of people who walk, bike, and roll—can lead to slower driver speeds, reducing the risk of crashes and roadway fatalities for folks both in and outside of cars.

Designing an intersection with safety in mind can take a lot of different forms, such as shortening the length of an intersection by reducing the number of vehicle lanes—or by ensuring appropriate time to cross the street. Walk signals and walk signal timing also play an important role by giving pedestrians adequate time to cross. For example, leading pedestrian intervals allow pedestrians to begin crossing the street before cars turn right or left, signaling to drivers that pedestrians are present and making it easier for them to see and yield to other people using the road.

One aspect of a Complete Streets approach is practicing effective community engagement. Administering walk audits with a variety of road users, community residents, and decision makers can assist municipal planners in determining whether a signal offers enough time to cross the street. By implementing this approach, planners and engineers can experience a street in the same way as the people who travel on it every day. Using this method can allow cities and states to make their streets safer and more accessible.

Pedestrian fatalities will continue to rise until we prioritize the safety of all road users over the speed of a few. The effective use of crosswalk signals, combined with other elements of safe street design, can reduce the danger on our roadways and ensure that everyone can safely get to where they need to go. Learn more about a Complete Streets approach here.

Celebrating 20 years of Complete Streets

A calm tree-lined street in Brooklyn, NY hosts one lane of car traffic, a bike lane, street parking, and a median to shorten the crosswalk distance for pedestrians.

The term “Complete Streets” was coined two decades ago, and while a lot of progress has been made, the fight for safe streets is far from over. To commemorate 20 years of the Complete Streets movement, we’ve rounded up some resources that can help you keep up the fight.

Barbara McCann, the current Senior Advisor to the Associate Administrator for Safety at the Federal Highway Administration (and the first Founding Director of the National Complete Streets Coalition) wrote a blog post to commemorate Complete Streets’ 20-year anniversary.

Thousands of planners, engineers, and others in government, consulting, and public interest groups have worked … to make safety for all users routine in policies and in practice. Now more than 1,700 Complete Streets policies are remaking transportation projects across the country.
—Barbara McCann

But we know this work is far from over. One of our three guiding principles at Transportation for America is safety over speed, a rule that we hope will guide decision makers to reduce the speed of vehicles and prioritize the safety of people walking and rolling to their essential destinations. And while some key safety programs passed in the 2021 infrastructure law, the federal spending bill left even more money available for the deadly status quo, which means we’ll need to keep advocating for safer streets at the local, state, and federal levels in the years ahead.

Our colleagues at the National Complete Streets Coalition (NCSC) are doing the same—and arming advocates with tools to join the movement. Take a look at some of their most recent resources.

1. Policy Action Guide

In partnership with CityHealth, NCSC produced this guide to equip planners and practitioners with practical resources for overcoming barriers and navigating the complexities of policy implementation. From building coalitions to crafting compelling narratives, it offers a comprehensive toolkit for effecting change at the state and local level. Access it here.

2. Complete Streets Story Map

Spread the word about the Complete Streets movement. Whether you’re a planner, engineer, advocate, or new to the smart growth space, the Complete Streets story map (produced in partnership with CityHealth) can serve as an interactive tool that breaks down what makes a Complete Street and why they’re important. The tool also features two case studies—Pittsburgh, PA and Milwaukee, WI—that demonstrate how these communities achieved their Complete Streets vision. Learn more here.

3. Policy Evaluation Tool

NCSC evaluates and scores Complete Streets policies across the country using their Policy Framework (updated just last year). Now, advocates and policymakers can do the same, using a free and open-source tool to evaluate existing or drafted local, MPO, or state-level Complete Streets policies. Use the tool.

There’s more to come

Smart Growth America will soon release a summary of their 2023 Complete Streets Leadership Academies, where they partnered with states and local communities to implement safe street design on state-owned roadways. Stay tuned to see what they learned from this year-long technical assistance project in communities across the country—and keep following us here for more opportunities to advance street safety where you live.

Road feels unsafe? DOT says prove it!

In the United States, where and how traffic deaths occur are painfully predictable. But even with historically high levels of funding available, traffic engineering standards and federal policy combine to create a safety catch-22, ensuring that a transportation agency walking the walk on traffic safety is the exception, not the rule.

Photo by Nk Ni via Unsplash

If you’re somebody who walks or rolls to get to work, school, or any of your other daily needs, chances are that you know the most dangerous parts of your local transportation system: the crosswalk that cars don’t stop at because there’s no light, the bike lane that ends abruptly, or the sidewalk ramp pointed to the middle of an intersection instead of the crosswalk. When you go through these areas, you might think that they’re oversights, mistakes made by an inattentive traffic engineer or planner who would make the adjustment needed if they just walked or rolled a mile in your shoes. But in reality, these flaws are part and parcel of a broader system that requires either reckless behavior or deaths to make the case for safety.

Instead of proactively asserting a right for people to walk and roll safely and conveniently outside of a vehicle, the standards that DOTs use to determine when and where they put safety infrastructure actually require people to either risk their bodies or experience harm before any paint or concrete are poured.

Transportation for America is a program of Smart Growth America, an organization that empowers communities through technical assistance, advocacy, and thought leadership to realize our vision of livable places, healthy people, and shared prosperity. See how Smart Growth America is engaging with National Pedestrian Safety Month here.

The safety infrastructure catch-22

One hot summer morning in 2021, I went to an unsignalized intersection in Northern Virginia and watched people wait for a break in traffic to cross a road that was 60-feet wide, dividing homes and a bus stop from a food bank. Though state law makes it legal for people to cross on foot at unsignalized intersections, it’s obviously a risky, unsafe thing to do.

Google Maps screenshot of Fordson Road, Alexandria, VA at 7558 Fordson Road, showing three lanes of traffic and no marked crosswalk

Unsignalized intersection on Fordson Road in Alexandria, VA

But this is the catch-22: For the state DOT (VDOT) to paint a crosswalk there, they require that at least 20 people choose to cross that dangerous street each hour.¹ Put another way, if enough people engage in risky, unsafe behaviors, the state might decide to make it safer. But when it’s unsafe to walk and roll, fewer people are going to do so. And with fewer people walking and rolling, DOTs like VDOT think that there’s little demand for safe infrastructure.

This unproductive cycle is the product of street design standards and manuals that your local traffic engineer relies on and navigates in order to make their decisions. In some cases, as NACTO says about the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), it can actually “require multiple people to die at an intersection before a pedestrian signal is ‘warranted’.”

Why did the pedestrian cross the road?

The people who pay the price for this nonsense approach to safety are people like Filadelfo Ramos Marquez. Filadelfo was killed in December 2021 while crossing an eight-lane road in Tysons Corner, Virginia. Those responsible for the street’s design can choose to blame the victim for not using a crosswalk as a way of abdicating their responsibility, or they can ask: why did he cross where he did, and how do we make it safer?

Google Maps screenshot of VA-123, showing the pedestrian bridge in the background connecting to the metro station on the right. A car enters the roadway through a slip lane. There are at least six lanes of traffic shown.

Road conditions where Filadelfo was hit and killed.

Although this intersection has traffic lights, the only way to cross it on foot is via a pedestrian bridge. However, when the metro station that the bridge connects to closes, so does the bridge itself. If Filadelfo thought that the station was already closed at 9 p.m., or that he had to pay a metro fare in order to use the bridge, then he had two choices: cross where he did, or add a third of a mile to his trip in order to use a painted crosswalk.

This leads us to the broader point: We do not currently measure OR care about the travel time of people who walk and roll. Pedestrians’ time isn’t just worth less than that of drivers, it’s not measured at all. In VDOT’s standards for an unmarked crosswalk at an unsignalized intersection, like the one I went to in summer 2021, the agency effectively says (starting on page A4) that saving pedestrians time is fine, so long as it doesn’t affect too many drivers.

The intersection where Filadelfo was hit, with signals for cars but no accommodations at all for pedestrians, illustrates this biased tradeoff just the same. When this metro station was built, planners and engineers could’ve viewed it as an opportunity to improve the pedestrian experience, both around this one stop and along this entire corridor where crosswalks are routinely over 130 feet long. Seeing as Tysons Corner has two huge shopping malls, is one of the largest job centers in Virginia, and aims to be home to 100,000 residents by 2050, some might say this would’ve been prudent. But that would have required deprioritizing the 46,000 vehicles per day that drove here pre-pandemic. So instead of building the much shorter, much less expensive straight-line street-level crossing, they built the longer, more expensive pedestrian bridge. And now, instead of asking why pedestrians like Filadelfo still choose to cross roads like this, DOTs like VDOT simply pray they don’t.

A Google Maps aerial screenshot showing Filadelfo's route on the day of the crash. An orange line routes along the sidewalk and crosswalk, showing the loop he would've had to make to be as safe as possible if the pedestrian bridge was closed. A green line shows the route using the pedestrian bridge. A red line shows the route Filadelfo took, cutting through several lanes of high-speed traffic, just to the west of bridge.

Potential pedestrian routes in the area where Filadelfo was hit and killed. The green line shows the path using the pedestrian bridge that connects to the metro station. The orange line shows the route to the only marked crosswalk nearby. The red line and white arrow show Filadelfo’s route and the general area where he was hit.

The safety funding catch-22

One reason agencies seem to prefer the thoughts and prayers approach to traffic safety is that federal policy encourages them to. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) poured over $400 billion into roads and streets across the United States, but with few requirements for anyone to measurably improve safety. Although all of that money could be used to ensure the safety of all road users, most of it won’t be.

Instead, in exchange for billions in largely flexible formula grants they control, states are required to set safety performance targets each year. But the reality is almost laughable: states can literally set targets for more people to die without penalty, and there is almost no penalty for failing to meet even the most unambitious targets. Failing to meet targets just requires those states to spend their Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) dollars on highway safety improvement projects. And if vulnerable road users (VRUs) make up more than fifteen percent of all fatalities in a state, that state has to spend fifteen percent of their HSIP funds the next year on safety projects for VRUs. (However, most states aren’t even obligating all the safety funds they need to.)

In contrast, if local governments want to access funds specifically earmarked for safety, they usually have to spend time and money applying for competitive discretionary grants, like the Safe Streets and Roads for All program. Although this is better than nothing, and there’s additional marginal progress being made, the IIJA has the same double standard for safety that it does for climate: projects that improve safety are the exception, whereas projects that don’t are the rule.

And so long as making streets safer comes with tangible costs but traffic deaths do not, people will pay with their lives. The day before Filadelfo was struck, Matthew Jaeger was killed while riding a bike a few miles down that very same road.

To get to the other side

Changes need to come from the top down and the bottom up. Congress needs to stop creating small new programs for improving safety. After giving them billions to spend, Congress should hold states accountable for reducing fatalities. For states that fail to do so, this could mean requiring them to transfer money out of block grant programs (like the the National Highway Performance Program and Surface Transportation Block Grants) and move it to HSIP for every year that they don’t meet their targets.

USDOT can finish updating the MUTCD and improving the Green Book. In the meantime, if states can prove these documents interfere with achieving safety targets due to their erroneous assumption that speed is safety, USDOT should waive these design standards. The agency can also ensure regulations like the New Car Assessment Program look at how the weight, size, visibility, and marketing of vehicles keeps all road users safe.

States control the most dangerous streets, and they stay dangerous because states continue to prioritize speed and vehicle throughput over safety—as with the corridor that killed Matthew and Filadelfo. States actually addressing this danger would see immediate results in pedestrian safety.

And while cities press their states for action on the deadly state-owned arterial roads within their borders, they are free to make the streets they do control safer. They can pass Complete Streets policies, discarding their state’s speed-first design guidelines, and adopt modern street design guidance that prioritizes moving people and creating safe streets for everyone. (The IIJA made a vital change to allow cities to adopt NACTO’s Urban Street Design Guide, even if their state prohibits it.)

Anything less than these changes isn’t prioritizing safety. It’s just a catch-22.

Find more recommendations to make our roadways safer in Dangerous by Design.

AVs aren’t solving our transportation problems. They’re automating them.

A car rests just before a crosswalk on a wide roadway

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been dangled as a transportation “silver bullet” for decades. Now, they’re finally operating as robo-taxis in San Francisco. However, the Bay Area’s experience with these vehicles so far shows that it’s our reliance on cars—not who’s behind the wheel—that’s our most pressing problem.

On August 10, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted to allow two autonomous vehicle (AV) companies to operate robo-taxis in San Francisco 24 hours a day and charge for the rides. This decision came despite significant, wide-ranging opposition, brought up before the hearing and highlighted during. As part of limited, fare-free pilots conducted by these companies, San Franciscans have experienced exactly the chaos that replacing imperfect humans with impartial computers was supposed to solve.

This decision by the CPUC is a continuation of the mistakes we’ve made with our transportation systems for the past century. AVs are assumed to be the solution to dangerous streets, traffic congestion, and transportation emissions. Unfortunately, as they’re set up right now, AVs are nothing more than a distraction from the policy changes that would make our transportation system safer, more equitable, and more sustainable.

The unmet promise of automating transportation

Automating transportation isn’t a bad idea. In fact, automated transportation has existed for decades, in the form of public transit. Automated metros in places like Tokyo, Vancouver, and now even Montreal and Honolulu move millions of people every day around the globe. At airports across the U.S. you can also find automated “people movers” helping people move between terminals and access local transportation options. These technologies are highly regulated and implemented with a clear purpose: they reduce operating costs while increasing the capacity of public transit, allowing more people to travel.

For nearly a century now, car-makers have been arguing that automation could similarly revolutionize car travel. As historian Peter Norton has described, the automobile industry has depicted self-driving cars as a generation away for the past several decades. For people who can’t drive due to a disability, people too old to drive, people too young to drive, and people who simply don’t want to drive, this technology would be transformative.

Unfortunately, even if this future were as close as it seems, it may not live up to its promise. According to an advertisement by Cruise—one of the two companies now operating robo-taxis in San Francisco—if their technology was behind the wheel instead of humans, we would have far fewer deaths on our roadways because their products are “designed to save lives.”

This contrasts with reporting and data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) highlighting that AVs are certainly still involved in crashes, many of which result in serious injuries and fatalities. San Francisco’s experience as an AV-guinea pig provides some data on crashes and some insight into AVs’ current flaws. There are documented cases of AVs driving away from police, cruising down sidewalks, and coming to a dead halt when cell service is bad. While AV makers say these are anomalies, without data from the companies to disprove this we can only believe what we see plainly before us.

Beyond safety, AV proponents also promise less wasted time. With our cars driving themselves, we will be able to travel everywhere we need to go while still being able to work, catch up with friends and loved ones, or just relax from inside a car. However, this argument assumes that the amount we drive stays the same, an unlikely scenario when driving no longer requires anybody actually driving. In fact, research replicating an AV future and an analysis of data from existing partially automated driving technology show that AVs will lead people to spend significantly more time on car travel.

This additional time spent in a car also threatens to torpedo any hopes of a more sustainable transportation system. No matter whether AVs are electric or not, a future with more driving would still involve more extraction of natural resources and more pollution from tires and brakes. We will never reach ambitious climate targets with a transportation system that requires people to drive more, not less.

Promising a technological solution to a political problem—and then using political will to force their solution on society—is a consistent behavior of the auto-industry. In the 1920s, the industry knew that their products were killing children and congesting city streets. But instead of changing their products, they changed our communities. They created and supported the policies that have destroyed vibrant neighborhoods and displaced their residents, emitted huge amounts of carbon, and killed tens of thousands of us every year. That’s not innovation, it’s exploitation.

Selling us a bill of hoods

If AVs were being pursued because they were the most effective way to help people who will never be able to drive, maintain mobility for aging members of our communities, and save lives, we would all welcome them with open arms. That’s why the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety have released a list of tenets, which Transportation for America has signed on to, to guide an introduction of AVs into our vehicle fleet.

These guardrails aren’t an attempt to stop us from getting to a self-driving future. These policies are what’s required to ensure that the future includes everybody, including those outside of a car. That’s why individuals and advocacy organizations who exist to make transportation safer have made it clear: without changes to transportation policy, AVs aren’t set up to solve our problems, just automate them.

Right now, AV-makers would have us believe that all of our transportation concerns will go away if we simply replace human drivers with computers. But we know this is not true. Automation that leads to more driving will not reduce congestion or emissions. It will not free people from increasingly long trips to reach their essential destinations. It will not relieve people of the financial burden of car ownership. And it will not change the dangerous design of our roadways, which encourages high vehicle speeds at the cost of pedestrian safety. If we continue to give AV-makers free reign, without government regulation and data collection to understand their impact on our roadways, we will not get any closer to solving the problems AVs are supposedly ready to solve.

AV-makers—including the robo taxi companies in San Francisco —aren’t trying to solve these problems. They’re just trying to sell us cars.

VIDEO: Pedestrian fatalities continue to rise. Here’s why.

Beth Osborne talks with a CBS reporter on the side of a wide, busy roadway as a car speeds past

In a conversation with CBS Sunday Morning, T4A’s executive director Beth Osborne explains that our roads are dangerous by design.

If you watch CBS on Sunday mornings, you might have caught our own Beth Osborne talking about dangerous street design. She was joined by John Barth, who’s working on Complete Streets implementation in Indianapolis, and Latanya Byrd, a safe streets advocate in Philadelphia.

In the clip, Beth explained why more people are being hit and killed on our nation’s roadways. She noted that vehicles have gotten bigger, and streets continue to be designed for speed over safety. As we explained in our report Dangerous by Design, the combination of speed and size leads to deadly consequences for people walking, particularly people of color.

The interview follows news from the Governors Highway Safety Association that pedestrian fatalities reached a 40-year high in 2022. But people walking aren’t the only ones who pay the costs.

“It turns out when we build things unsafe for pedestrians, we build them unsafe for everybody. There’s really nobody winning in this system,” said Beth.