Roadway Cross-Section Reallocation: A Guide (2023)

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S-1   A New Approach to Allocating Roadway Space Streets make up more than 80% of public space in cities and towns. Who gets to use this space and how they can use it affects a community’s mobility, safety, economy, and quality of life. For many years, designers have prioritized ease and convenience for drivers over the needs and safety of other street users. This Guide will help practitioners to allocate roadway space to reflect a community’s true priorities. Tradeoffs Are Inevitable Sidewalks or extra vehicle lanes? Loading zones or parking? Every element in a street cross section is a choice, and each choice comes with consequences, both positive and negative. Because tradeoffs are inevitable, it is important to understand the community’s priorities and all the available options before deciding what to do. This Guide supports direct, objective conversations about street design among transportation professionals, decisionmakers, and the community. Whatever a community prioritizes—equity, the environment, the local economy, or even parking—this Guide can help ensure that those priorities are reflected in decisions about cross sections. Transparency Matters A community may consider parking a better use of space than safety improvements. If so, leaders need to be explicit and direct about it among themselves and verify the community’s buy-in before making any decisions. Leaders should also understand and clearly articulate the tradeoffs. This Guide is designed to help transportation practitioners (1) make decisions about cross-section design that reflect comprehensive input from and awareness by stakeholders, (2) compare tradeoffs of decisions, and (3) facilitate productive community conversations. Practitioners benefit by acknowledging that communities may prioritize traffic capacity over other things for various reasons, including the following: • Streets feel unsafe and people cannot imagine themselves being comfortable walking or biking. • The loudest voices in the community are defending the status quo. • Drivers see safety improvement as something being done for other people. • Traditionally, streets have been designed to prioritize traffic capacity and, as a result, people may think this is “natural.” S U M M A R Y Roadway Cross-Section Reallocation: A Guide

S-2 Roadway Cross-Section Reallocation: A Guide Changing the Conversation Change is hard, but if people are engaged throughout the decision-making and design process and the resulting cross section reflects their priorities, it can be easier for people to adjust to change. Giving people real options for changing how they get around makes it easier to adjust to change, although it can take time to fully realize the benefits of a change if the change is part of a network that is not yet fully built. Communication Is Essential Communicating early and often helps everyone understand what is happening. If people are already aware of a project and the project has their support, it is easier for people to stay oriented when confronted with design details. Finding project champions early is essential. Trusted leaders within the various commu- nity groups that have a stake in the project can help build awareness and generate political support or funding for the project. Getting Answers: The Decision-Making Framework The centerpiece of this Guide is the Decision-Making Framework (Figure S-1), which presents a process for developing cross sections based on community priorities, mobility needs, and transportation safety. This process takes practitioners through the steps they will need to take and the questions they will need to answer to select a roadway cross section that suits its context and the needs of its users. These steps, relevant questions, goals, and examples are presented in brief as follows. (For more details on each step, see Chapter 2.) • Step 1: Define Your Limits and Set Your Goals. How much roadway width do you have to work with? What purpose does the roadway serve? Let community goals and city policies Figure S-1. Decision-Making Framework for Roadway Cross Sections.

Summary S-3   guide you as you look at the potential tradeoffs (e.g., bike lane or shared-use path; extra vehicle lane or parking). Categories of goals for Step 1 include safety, traffic operations, social (encom- passing goals related to health, equity, and quality of life), economic, and environmental. • Step 2: Consider the Context Through a Safety Lens. A safe street must be safe for all users. This step assesses the minimum safe roadway cross section—not just for drivers but for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit. Busy, high-speed streets need to provide more protection for pedestri- ans and bicyclists. • Step 3: Is There Enough Space to Build a Safe Road? If the answer is no, work within the con- straints to ensure safety. Go to Step 4. If the answer is yes, consider what you want to achieve beyond safety. Go to Step 5. • Step 4: Overcome the Physical Barriers to Safe Road Design. If there is not enough space in the street to design safely for all modes, consider ways to reduce the space needed for driving, walking, or bicycling. Potential options include converting a two-way street to a one-way street, reducing the speed, reducing vehicle volumes, creating a shared street (woonerf), closing the street to motorized traffic (creating a pedestrian zone), and creating a safe parallel facility. • Step 5: Develop Design Options—What Happens When You Change Your Roadway Cross Section? There are many ways to share space within a roadway cross section. In Step 5, you will choose a few suitable alternatives to evaluate. The community goals and city policies from Step 1 may make some options more desirable. Possible cross-section items include wider sidewalks, wider bicycle lanes, bus-only lanes, curbside uses (e.g., multimodal parking, “streateries”), medians, and additional general-purpose traffic lanes. • Step 6: Evaluate and Choose the Cross Section That Serves Your Community’s Vision and Needs. Using the decision support matrix (provided in Appendix B), practitioners can com- pare the alternatives developed in Step 5. The framework draws from the goals identified in Step 1 to report the performance of alternatives based on each goal. More Than Just Changing the Roadway Cross Section Changing a roadway cross section can encourage people to take different travel modes and use the street in different ways. The way space is shared over a roadway cross section should serve all users. The roadway cross section can affect safety, livability, and other important aspects of the community and corridor. Before reallocating public space, practitioners need to work with stakeholders to answer the following questions: • What are the options? • How does each option meet or fail to meet the community’s needs? • When should each option be considered? The cross section can be considered according to various zones or realms. Different zones serve different users and include different cross-section elements, as shown in Figure S-2. Consider Your Options Street space can be used in many ways. Understanding how cross-section elements affect outcomes helps communities identify the street design that meets their goals. Compare alternative options considering the community priorities and policies identified in Step 1. Transportation Safety: Raising the Floor The USDOT’s 2022 National Roadway Strategy states that safety is the USDOT’s top pri- ority. Therefore, this Guide explicitly prioritizes safety for roadway users, beginning with the least protected, and urges all practitioners to work toward these goals. Community priorities

S-4 Roadway Cross-Section Reallocation: A Guide may result in a design that exceeds safety requirements, but the cross section should never permit designs that have been proven to be unsafe or that include elements that discourage travel on foot, by bike, or by transit. This Guide establishes minimum safe designs for each street element and explains what a truly safety-first approach means in practice—going for- ward, the research team refers to this as “raising the floor” to draw attention to the idea that minimums (“must-haves”) are being redefined to enhance the safety of all users. This can be compared with “raising the bar” in which “nice-to-haves” are seen as desirable but not essential. Just as minimum lane widths are accepted as a safety need for vehicles, the Guide provides information on designing safer streets for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other users. Using this Guide and the proposed decision-making process will result in communities and decisionmakers building a transportation network that reflects multiple priorities while prioritizing safety for all users. Figure S-2. Cross-Section Elements.