A crosswalk and bus stop along Nolensville Pike creates a safer crossing for people walking or rolling in Nashville.
Looking for opportunities with every type of project
TDOT’s new scoping guidance is a great step toward getting features like sidewalks, crosswalks, pedestrian refuge islands, or bicycle facilities included in larger capital projects when they’re needed. However, state DOTs rarely put the same level of consideration into routine repaving projects, which make up a huge portion of a DOT’s work. Roadway repair projects are typically funded through different pots of money and have a more streamlined process with less community engagement. As a result, most states simply default to repaving a road with the same layout it had previously.
But TDOT has recognized that this approach to routine repair is a major missed opportunity. States can often improve conditions for people walking and biking at relatively low cost when they resurface a road—for example, by restriping the road with narrower lanes to slow down traffic or adding a bike lane. Unfortunately, without taking the time to engage the public or the local agencies first, the state may not know what changes would be beneficial or needed until it is too late to include them in the project.
To bring more of these opportunities to light, TDOT recently switched from a one-year list of upcoming projects to a three-year list they share more proactively with regional and local agencies so they have the chance to raise needs that could be addressed as a part of the project (including through a local funding contribution). Upcoming resurfacing projects will also be posted online in map format to make it easier for residents to see that a project is coming up in their neighborhood.
This new process makes it so both TDOT and local stakeholders can raise a need or opportunity in time to integrate it into an upcoming project’s scope, and it has already resulted in better coordination. For example, cities have been able to raise upcoming utility projects to coordinate the timing with TDOT’s resurfacing projects, reducing costs to both the state and the locality by avoiding tearing up the road twice in short succession. It’s a clear win-win, but few other DOTs have taken this step.
Prioritizing the most important needs
Many DOTs haven’t done the legwork to measure the things that matter for people walking and biking in a comprehensive way. As a result, when it comes to evaluating which projects to fund, they can’t sufficiently prioritize those needs. As we have discussed previously, level-of-service (a measure of vehicle delay) has been the dominant performance measure for roadway design, and continues to drive transportation agencies toward overbuilt, expensive, car-oriented highways and sprawling development.