Fitting Roadways to Community Needs
by Hannah Twaddell

The product of five years of hard work, a recent report by the Institute of Transportation Engineers report provides a much needed approach to integrating the transportation objectives of roadways with design considerations that take into account the built environment and pedestrian needs. Transportation planner Hannah Twaddell takes a closer look at the significance of the ITE's new approach to planning for urban roadways.

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Things were simple in the good old days. Engineers designed roadways; land use planners set urban development policies; transportation planners established regional roadway networks; and architects created buildings and parks. Each group stayed happily within its own dominion, used its own language, and concentrated solely on its own priorities.

But then people started getting wise to the fact that the decisions being made by each of these groups were having a profound effect on the quality of life in our communities, and that we all suffered when those decisions undermined, rather than complemented, one another.

Planning commissioners, elected officials, residents, and businesses from communities large and small began asking engineers to consider the land use impacts of roadway design and location decisions. They directed planning staff to craft land use policies that would help reduce traffic congestion. They required developers -- and their architects -- to demonstrate how their proposed shopping centers and housing subdivisions would fit into the larger community, and how they would handle increased traffic by means other than just widening roads.

These were all good ideas and concerns, but they made life more complicated for those who hadn't been trained to address them. People in various professions -- planning, traffic engineering, design -- began to see the need to work collaboratively and expand their knowledge. One result is a host of useful research and recommended practices.

One such product is a draft report recently released by a team of experts from the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Congress for New Urbanism (with funding from the Federal Highway Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities: A Proposed ITE Recommended Practice (a title clearly coined by a committee) offers a rich trove of information for the brave souls from each profession -- planning, engineering, and urban design -- who are venturing together into this complex territory. See Sidebar, Context Sensitive Solutions: A Team Approach.

The product of five years of hard work, the report -- which I'll refer to simply as Designing Urban Thoroughfares -- provides a much needed approach to integrating the transportation objectives of roadways with design considerations that take into account the surrounding built environment and pedestrian needs. The goal: to create vibrant, healthy, and walkable urban communities.

Designing Urban Thoroughfares also reflects a growing recognition that the time-honored (some would say fossilized) standards defined in resources such as the "Green Book," published by the American Association of Highway and State Transportation Officials (AASHTO), do not adequately address the kind of urban fabric many communities want to create. That said, the authors of the report are clear that it is not intended to replace the Green Book. Instead, it is designed to help planners and engineers deal with a range of considerations not covered in traditional guidelines.

As reported by Robert Steuteville in New Urban News, "the Green Book focuses on three factors -- capacity, speed, and topography -- in the design of thoroughfares. … The new manual views a host of other considerations -- including pedestrians, transit, and placement of adjacent buildings and businesses -- as central to the design of urban thoroughfares."

Three Steps to Designing a Walkable Urban Thoroughfare

Designing Urban Thoroughfares sets out a logical, structured approach to the planning and design of urban roadways. The process essentially boils down to three key steps:

1. Identify the roadway's context zone, functional classification, and thoroughfare type;
2. Based on the decisions made in step one, establish parameters for the size and scale of the road, including the roadway's target/design speed and the design/control vehicle; and
3. Design the roadway to best fit the characteristics of its context zone and thoroughfare type, focusing on four major elements or "realms":