Transportation planners have a HUGE opportunity (and responsibility)

Land use and mobility are intertwined, which is why transportation planners play such an important role in fixing the built environment.

Crosswalks and push-buttons are good things. But let's not pretend they fix the underlying problem of neighborhoods that are hostile to people walking and rolling.

📜 Local land use outlaws walk-friendly places making driving the only viable choice, and then 

🪦 Traffic analysis prioritizes crash-friendly intersections making walking a downright deadly choice.

Transportation planners and engineers are gathered right now in Philly for the Institute of Transportation Engineers annual meeting. The organization has been dominated by civil engineers and operations engineers, but more planners have been joining ITE recently. That’s encouraging—planners are one of the best people groups suited to connect the dots between land use and mobility in order to help fix public infrastructure. (I’m of course assuming they see the connections.)

One big challenge is that it's professionally risky—especially for consultants—to point out ways that the fundamentals are preventing human flourishing: zoning, overlay districts, set backs, clear zones, trip generation, intersection LOS, lane widths, etc.

Job security is no joke and the status quo is not fond of mocking or even questioning the basics. The vast majority of consultant work is for public agencies, so there’s a natural instinct to go with the flow. For instance:

Just give the client what they want. Stop bashing level of service, it's fine.

Don’t use the word “dangerous,” it makes the client look bad.

We can’t say “hostile to pedestrians,” that assigns blame to the engineers.

Don’t say anything bad about zoning, our contract is coming up for renewal.

I say these things as an insider with 25 years of consulting experience. And I can also tell you their fears are absolutely justified. Consultants aren’t looking for an intellectual fight, they’re looking to hire firms to act as an extension of their staff. Improving the built environment isn’t easy because so much of the resistance comes from the experts. 

In any industry, policies, guidelines, and tools can be misused and abused. But I have hope, in part because there are so many people using the internet to share what they’re learning. Transportation planners are often in a unique position to be involved early in a project: site plan review, corridor studies, environmental studies, grant applications, RFP responses, unsolicited proposals, etc.

Consultants can, if they choose, find ways to guide their public sector clients to better futures. Agency employees, if they choose, can learn from a plethora of online and IRL resources. 

Traffic engineering reform and land use planning reform are interconnected. If you happen to work in one of those fields, get to know the basics of the other. And for you transportation planners, no pressure friends, but I think you play a huge role in stopping or maintaining terrible neighborhood design.