Here's your chance to tell USDOT how to make intersections safe for walking & bicycling

The window closes Nov. 15. Submit your comments and make sure your pro-walk, pro-bike friends do the same.

The US Department of Transportation is ready to hear your ideas. Specifically,

a request for information seeking comments on improving the safety of pedestrians, bicyclists, and other vulnerable road users at roadway intersections.

It’s nice to get a chance to submit formal comments for transportation researchers to review and consider. Maybe I think it’s nice because I think it’s easy. We already know how to enhance intersection safety for walking, bicycling, or anything else happening outside of a car. Still, I added a comment and I hope you do, too. 

Speed kills, and modern intersection design encourages speed.

Since experts already have a plethora of safe design options, reform comes down to willpower. I’ve written recently about this here, here, and here. 

Here's a tourniquet if traffic safety is the department’s top priority: 

1. Immediately freeze federal funding for any project that widens an intersection in any way. 

2. Applicants must prove that their project protects walking and bicycling. 

3. Any project that widens an intersection for vehicles or demonstrates a likely increase in vehicle speed loses federal funding.

4. Redistribute the withdrawn funds to the project applications demonstrating the highest return on investment.

5. Publish the best 10 applications for everyone to see and copy for future funding cycles.

Stop the bad guys, reward the good guys. It’s that simple for the USDOT if they truly believe the urgency of protecting vulnerable road users.

Standard intersection analysis leads to hostile walking and bicycling environments. Over my 24 years in this business, the most common response from my fellow consultants is a fear that traffic calming will sacrifice funding. It’s a rational fear because many localities are rewarded per lane mile. They know that if they widen a road from 2 to 4 car lanes, it’ll get far more federal support than a measly separated bike path.

The industry chases money, not safety. So the keepers of the purse need to make sure federal money is used to make intersections safer. 

There are plenty of design guides for modern planners and engineers to use. NACTO and CNU publications have been available for years. Instead of prioritizing safe designs promoted by groups like those, we get hostile environments like the intersections below.

This is a gateway to Virginia Commonwealth University in downtown Richmond. 

This intersection is the result of standard practice that gets federal funding.

I hope you urge USDOT to use a tourniquet to stop the current design practices. Holding back federal funding will have an immediate impact on engineering behavior.