The Word on the Street: Assumptions and Power in Planning
Streets and neighbourhoods: such a conflicted relationship.
Our streets depend, for their vitality, on the neighbourhoods they link and serve. Neighbourhoods, likewise, depend on their streets.
Yet in our planning and development processes, the two are often at odds. A good part of that apparent opposition and conflict is due to the different perspectives and languages of planning participants – in particular, citizen advocates and transportation professionals. The unfortunate reality is that the nature of the process in most jurisdictions doesn’t bring the two sides together to set and agree upon common goals.
As a result, citizens do their best job and transportation engineers do their best job – with the latter more often than not having their way. This is really no mystery if we examine how planning processes unfold, the assumptions that are made at key steps in the process, and the language we use.
In most jurisdictions, the urban planning process follows a sequence that seems rational and reasonable and comprehensive enough. Citizen and stakeholder workshops and idea harvesting come early in the process. Having participated, as a citizen and as a planning communications consultant, in many plans large and small, I have seen excited and collaborative groups of stakeholders generate all sorts of bright maps, flip chart lists of attributes and conceptual drawings.
Often, unfortunately, the people who will kill these plans and ideas – or at least severely compromise them – are not at the table. Traffic engineers or traffic consultants are handed the planning concepts after citizens, stakeholders and urban planners have done their visioning. At that point, the engineers are brought in to do professional analysis of the street designs needed for urban plan. In many cases, these are consulting engineers coming in cold, months or years after the original planning was done.
What we often overlook is the mandate that is written for second stage traffic studies. While they are instructed to ‘consider’ the neighbourhoods goals and characteristics such as pedestrian environments, retail needs, residential character and other influences, their actual mandate is still to flow vehicles. In communities where I have worked, there is no public input or discussion of what these street studies will measure, or how, or what values will be placed on what attributes of the streets. In the absence of such discussion, engineers will of course simply apply the industry standards that they are familiar with.
Traffic engineers, of course, are trying to do their job like the rest of us. Even Jane Jacobs, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, has sympathy. In the absence of new measurements, she writes, “…the alternative is to be left with confusion about what to try and why.”
Immediately, though, the shift in language is telling. The traffic consultants begin to talk about “what is feasible” and “capacities” and “projections.” “We might need that right-of-way for future capacity,” an engineer says and there goes the planned bike lane or widened sidewalk or buffering boulevard.
Two recent posts on Planners Web point out the limitations of traditional transportation measures such as ‘level of service standards’ and vehicle volume projections.Wayne Senville’s editorials quote traffic engineer Gary Toth, who notes, “design decisions based on LOS performance measures end up serving only the through motorist at the expense of the very communities that the road is also supposed to serve.”
A traffic “capacity” study says that congestion at intersection x will reach “unacceptable levels” within two years. Who’s to argue? Look – the numbers are all there. How, exactly, are we defining “unacceptable”? Is this a community definition? No, it is a professional definition – a code that is deemed by that profession to work in most places most of the time. The turning radius must be such. The lane width must be so many metres / feet.
Jacobs, writing almost 50 years ago, noted the “erosion” that vehicle planning has on other community attributes:
“Erosion of cities by automobiles entails so familiar a series of event that these hardly need describing. The erosion proceeds as a kind of nibbling, small nibbles at first, but eventually hefty bites. Because of vehicular congestion, a street is widened here, another is straightened there, a wide avenue is converted to one-way flow, staggered-signal systems are installed for faster movement, a bridge is double-decked as its capacity is reached, an expressway is cut through yonder, and finally whole webs of expressways. More and more land goes to parking, to accommodate the ever increasing number of vehicle while they are idle.”
Sometimes, after the engineering studies come back, citizens make weak attempts at questioning the fact that the walkable little street they had imagined is now widened, with dedicated turn lanes on corners where no one requested them, and signal systems that keep cars moving at the expense of pedestrians. The community’s protests, though, are soft – not soft in tone, perhaps but soft in that they rely on feelings, emotions, a general sense of place. When heard by decision making panels, development boards, or elected officials, those appeals do not stand up to data-based studies that say this or that “must” be done.
Of course, the outcome of the traffic studies was a foregone conclusion. There is no conspiracy at work here but again if we return to the question of mandate, we can’t commission a traffic study with a wholly data-based terms of reference and expect to see any recommendations other than ‘the streets in this study need to be wider, faster, more direct.’
The alternative is a planning process that questions and establishes community street design standards at the start of the process, with involvement from all those early stakeholders. The alternative is to let citizens in on the discussion of what will be measured and what is important. What outcomes does the community want? What are its values and how might those be reflected in its street design? In the design of our community’s streets, what kinds of behavior are we trying to encourage and discourage? If compromises are required, which compromises are people prepared to make? How does the community define “acceptable” and “unacceptable” traffic congestion?
In the broadest sense, a community needs to be involved in deciding what its streets are for. That calls for changes in the planning processes used by jurisdictions across North America.
Another key question: Which measurement standards are required by various funding sources? If federal DOT says the key measurement is vehicle throughput , then complying with those standards is what brings money into the community so streets are built that meet their standards. I'm neither a traffic engineer nor a professional planner; I'm a bike commuter/transit rider just recently appointed to chair a citizens' advisory committee for our local MPO. We are discussing the possible addition of a bike lane to a street that--much of the day--has no congestion whatsoever with four open lanes. There are a couple of pinch points morning and evening at streets that lead to on-ramps but we're a mid-sized city and have "rush minutes," not rush hours. The bike lane is in the long-term master bike plan and the street is being rebuilt now, so it's more cost-efficient to add it while the street is under construction. That, however, is a change to the design as put out for bid. We learned that if we propose the lane and reduce vehicle throughput at a light we trigger a federal requirement for an air quality modeling study. (The proposed lane is on an arterial in an area that used to be noncompliant with EPA air quality standards; our downtown is essentially in a bowl and is subject to occasional inversions that degrade air quality even if no cars move anywhere.) My question: Does the air quality model take into account the potential for reduced vehicular traffic thanks to a mode shift enabled by addition of the lane? The answer: No. Bikes are simply left out of the model completely. With standards like those that local jurisdictions have no choice but to comply with in order to get funding, the cards are stacked against responsiveness to local preferences, let alone efforts to genuinely change transportation habits through the provision of infrastructure. I hope the new Office of Livability and the new collaborative standards that DOT, HUD and EPA are developing will change some of this old thinking that's baked into the regs. @BarbChamberlain
Another key question: Which measurement standards are required by various funding sources? If federal DOT says the key measurement is vehicle throughput , then complying with those standards is what brings money into the community so streets are built that meet their standards. I'm neither a traffic engineer nor a professional planner; I'm a bike commuter/transit rider just recently appointed to chair a citizens' advisory committee for our local MPO. We are discussing the possible addition of a bike lane to a street that--much of the day--has no congestion whatsoever with four open lanes. There are a couple of pinch points morning and evening at streets that lead to on-ramps but we're a mid-sized city and have "rush minutes," not rush hours. The bike lane is in the long-term master bike plan and the street is being rebuilt now, so it's more cost-efficient to add it while the street is under construction. That, however, is a change to the design as put out for bid. We learned that if we propose the lane and reduce vehicle throughput at a light we trigger a federal requirement for an air quality modeling study. (The proposed lane is on an arterial in an area that used to be noncompliant with EPA air quality standards; our downtown is essentially in a bowl and is subject to occasional inversions that degrade air quality even if no cars move anywhere.) My question: Does the air quality model take into account the potential for reduced vehicular traffic thanks to a mode shift enabled by addition of the lane? The answer: No. Bikes are simply left out of the model completely. With standards like those that local jurisdictions have no choice but to comply with in order to get funding, the cards are stacked against responsiveness to local preferences, let alone efforts to genuinely change transportation habits through the provision of infrastructure. I hope the new Office of Livability and the new collaborative standards that DOT, HUD and EPA are developing will change some of this old thinking that's baked into the regs. @BarbChamberlain
I don't know what to say. This is absolutely one of the better blogs Ive read. You're so insightful, have so much genuine stuff to bring to the table. I hope that far more people examine this and get what I got from it: chills!! Good occupation and great webpage. I cant wait to study much more, continue to keep them comin!
I don't know what to say. This is absolutely one of the better blogs Ive read. You're so insightful, have so much genuine stuff to bring to the table. I hope that far more people examine this and get what I got from it: chills!! Good occupation and great webpage. I cant wait to study much more, continue to keep them comin!
"Their actual mandate is still to flow vehicles". Someday this era will look like the horse-and-buggy days. Cars will be archaic. "The community’s protests, though, are soft – not soft in tone, perhaps but soft in that they rely on feelings, emotions, a general sense of place. " Are there ways to present that "soft" data that will be credible to traffic engineers? What kind of measures can community dwellers create that can be integrated into the street design process?
"Their actual mandate is still to flow vehicles". Someday this era will look like the horse-and-buggy days. Cars will be archaic. "The community’s protests, though, are soft – not soft in tone, perhaps but soft in that they rely on feelings, emotions, a general sense of place. " Are there ways to present that "soft" data that will be credible to traffic engineers? What kind of measures can community dwellers create that can be integrated into the street design process?
"Sometimes, after the engineering studies come back, citizens make weak attempts at questioning the fact that the walkable little street they had imagined is now widened, with dedicated turn lanes on corners where no one requested them, and signal systems that keep cars moving at the expense of pedestrians." Truth!
"Sometimes, after the engineering studies come back, citizens make weak attempts at questioning the fact that the walkable little street they had imagined is now widened, with dedicated turn lanes on corners where no one requested them, and signal systems that keep cars moving at the expense of pedestrians." Truth!
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