State departments of transportation must do more to make America's transportation system safe, equitable, and green — especially given the Trump administration's attacks at the federal level, a new report argues.
In the first update to its "Innovative DOT" framework in 10 years, the State Smart Transportation Initiative emphasized that DOTs are rapidly evolving from their historical role as the offices that built the interstate highway system, to their modern one as expansive public agencies held responsible for managing complex multimodal transportation networks and land use decisions — as well as the majority of our national transportation funds.
Some agencies, though, haven't exactly embraced that evolution, even as the interstate system has grown to gargantuan proportions they can't afford to maintain — and as emissions, road deaths, and congestion have all skyrocketed under their watch.
"We're adding a little bit of capacity here and there, but there's not much more we can really do to grow the highway system to meet the demands of an ever-growing country," said Chris McCahill, SSTI's managing director. "So now state agencies are charged with providing access for people to get where they need to go by all modes — driving, transit, walking, biking — and that means different ways of designing, different ways of modeling what people need, and an entirely different skill set."
Fundamentally remaking how they do business, though, won't be easy for all state transportation offices, many of whom McCahill says have updated their mission statements with lofty rhetoric about "sustainability" and "equity" without really changing the underlying processes that control what actually gets built, and what doesn't.
As the new presidential administration attempts to withdraw federal discretionary grants for the very multimodal projects that would deliver the benefits communities need most, it's critical that DOTs leverage their power as decision-makers to fill the void, especially since Secretary Sean Duffy walked back his plans to exert more control over their decisions, leaving them holding the reins.
"The innovative DOT framework is about is making sure that those big concepts translate into actionable steps," he added. "So that includes everything from how they're spending money, how they're picking projects, how they're designing projects to meet all those needs, and who they're bringing on to the team to make sure they can do that."
To start, McCahill and his colleagues urge DOTs to give their "mobility"-focused mission statements more teeth by adopting better performance measures to guide how they spend their money, such as measuring how a proposed new highway will impact access to key destinations for people across all modes, rather than how it will impact "level of service" or commute times for drivers alone.
They can also give those performance measures real power by tying them to concrete, long-term goals outlined in their statewide plans— a basic step that, McCahill points out, only nine states do right now.
At the same time, the report authors argue that DOTs need to "recognize that the ability to predict future travel behavior has significant limitations," such as the many states that fail to account for induced demand when proposing highway expansions. And that means focusing on maintenance and resilience — and to only add new lanes as a "last resort."
McCahill acknowledged that shifting those core principles will be a political challenge — not least because since many DOTs are directed to expand highways at the behest of state legislatures that pass bills writing new lanes directly into their budgets, without fully understanding how disastrous prioritizing capacity over maintenance can be.
"A lot of folks still want added lanes," he added. "There's a lot of talk about congestion, whether it's in the news or in local government, and folks want to see relief ... I think that there's a lot of work that could be done at the state level [to help] the public understand the costs of maintaining infrastructure, the risks of not keeping that infrastructure up to date, and the trade offs involved in maintaining that infrastructure versus investing in new, bigger, more expensive [highways]."
To cut through the noise, the report authors argue that it's long past time for state DOTs to more actively monitor and be transparent about the condition of their roads and bridges, so it's crystal clear to communities and lawmakers just how many of them will be left crumbling as politicians push for ribbon-cuttings on new lanes — and make it their default policy as a department is always to fix it first.
They also encourage states to embrace congestion pricing and other transportation demand management strategies that charge motorists proportionally to the real costs of excessive driving.
Of course, DOTs need a new way of thinking about what to build in addition to what not to build — especially if their intention is to put people before cars, which McCahill argues they should. And that starts with evaluating projects to maximize dollars, regardless of which mode they benefit — and not to be surprised when local, multimodal projects pencil out best.
Even if communities are doing that analysis, though, DOTs still need to rewrite state design standards to emphasize the needs of people outside cars by default.
"if you look at the design standards and the approval processes that they're following, a lot of that often takes extra work on the behalf of the designer; they had to get design exceptions just to, for instance, fit a bike lane on a road," added McCahill. "We really need to take [the idea of] designing for people and not just cars, and incorporate it into the underlying design principles ... It's about making that the path of least resistance for designers, making it easy for them to do their job."
In some cases, McCahill argues that a state's best bet to build people-centered infrastructure is to just distribute funds directly to local communities to make investments outside of the core highway system, while taking steps to reconnect communities divided by highways built by their predecessors. And that often means thinking beyond the transportation system itself to address inequities through housing and development initiatives by repurposing DOT-owned land for shelter, developing community land trusts, and more.
Those sorts of innovative strategies, though, won't be easy to execute without an innovative team, including hiring and working to retain a wider range of professionals beyond engineers alone. That could include staffing up with community engagement specialists, data analysts, planners, and even artists-in-residence who can help build relationships with the public — and being proactive about seeking fresh perspectives beyond the white males with a narrow set of professional degrees who dominate agencies now, whatever Trump's Washington might think about it.
"[DOTs] can't always compete with the private sector, but they want to bring the best and brightest people into the agency that in order for them to be effective, that really does mean having a diverse workforce," added McCahill. And that obviously means gender and race diversity, as well as class diversity."
The report authors also urged DOT to diversify their approaches, including embracing quick-build solutions that allow communities to test projects out before laying final asphalt — and respond quickly to known crash hot-spots, even if that's not their typical MO.
"Trying to get some of those projects done requires really fast coordination between local governments, and state officials, and neither party is used to moving that fast in a collaborative way," McCahill added. "And then there's all kinds of logistical challenges like licensing approvals and contracting; those are all things that usually take a much longer time. So state agencies that want to do quick-build projects have to give it a try and see what those hurdles are, so they can get some of those barriers out of the way."
To take those kinds of innovative steps, though, McCahill said DOTs will need to be brave enough to think beyond the status quo — and that advocates can help by vocally supporting them when they do.
"It is important to continue to put pressure on agencies when you don't feel like they're doing the right thing, but also to recognize and praise when they do things that you do like," he added. "I think oftentimes, folks who work in state agencies feel like they're constantly under attack from advocates and folks who are unhappy with project outcomes. So it could go a long way to reward things that agencies are doing right — [because] when advocates are there to back them, that can go a long way."
