The real problem exists when transportation agencies decide that every road they touch must be approached using high speed transportation performance measures to the exclusion of community and environmental needs.   Ergo, it is a major step forward for two state DOTs to announce that the needs of communities must be factored in before blindly applying LOS standards.

A former boss of mine used to muse that citizens lean against gas pumps mumbling about paying 4 dollars a gallon for gas while holding a bottle of water that they paid the equivalent of 16 dollars a gallon for and which they could have gotten for free out of the tap.   Why?   Because the customer sees the value in the bottle of water and increasingly no longer sees value in the product that transportation agencies have been offering them.   Think about it…

By the way, I am not sure that local government is the primary culprit in forcing state and federal funding to be spend in pursuit of LOS C.   While I have no doubt that this is sometimes the case, more often it is the state or County DOT forcing the criteria on the locals.    Last week, a friend of mine from a small town of 7500 told me that a state DOT — over the objections of the community — is forcing construction of a roundabout to be four lanes instead of two, citing the “mandate” that transportation investment must meet LOS C criteria for growth twenty years into the future.  

Balderdash!    There is no mandate from above.  This is a self imposed directive and transportation agencies need to come about from behind the cover of mythical mandates, look a community in the eye, and admit that THEY have chosen to make a decision that places the needs of motorists during one peak hour a day twenty years into the future, over the need of the community for placemaking and economically viable local commerce and sense of community.  

The problem of course is that the folks whose mouths those words flowed out of, sadly and most likely don’t know the truth themselves.  This conventional and false wisdom has been passed down from generation of professional to generation, starting with the design of the Interstates in 1956 — and almost no one knows that the policy was based on a mission that was completed 30 years ago for a type of road that is hugely different from urban streets.  

Once medical professionals followed the conventional wisdom that blood letting would solve most ailments.  Now we know that it does far more damage than good. It is time to pull the transportation wizards out from behind the curtain and tell them that we just want to go home too.

Fortunately, the FHWA livability standards have made some progress in helping local governments to secure funding for projects that address areas other than traffic flow. All of the ARRA funding applications required applicants to look at these six principles. Forward thinking at the Federal level doesn’t always happen fast, but we are making progress.