NACTO (National Association of City Transportation Officials)

NACTO today announced that Ryan Russo will join the organization as its next Executive Director later this year, bringing visionary leadership, transformative policy experience, and innovative design excellence to one of the country’s most influential organizations that reimagines transportation in cities. Russo is a highly regarded city and transportation planner with 25 years of experience, including as a former director of the Oakland Department of Transportation (OakDOT) and as a deputy commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT). Ryan will succeed NACTO Executive Director Corinne Kisner, who will leave NACTO in June after 11 years, the last five as executive director. Over her tenure, Corinne worked closely with NACTO staff, members, and its board to grow the organization into a voice for cities on the national and international stage. She will continue to advise the organization until the end of the year as she transitions to an independent consulting capacity. 

USDOT’s award yesterday of more than $3.3 billion to more than 100 communities to knit together communities is a visionary step toward creating a better future for all people in our country. 

NACTO is seeking a proactive, experienced communications professional to join our team as a full-time Program Manager! Apply at: nacto.org/careers

"Asphalt art projects — collaborations between cities, community groups and artists — have taken off in the past decade, thanks to early-adopting cities such as New York, Seattle and Portland, Ore., with help from NACTO (National Association of City Transportation Officials) and “tactical urbanism” firms such as Street Plans." And now, at last, cities have been given permission from the federal government to unlock their creative potential and roll out streets that engage the eye — and work better.

ICYMI: Last month, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) published the 11th edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), a little-known but crucial document that governs all road markings, speed limits, stop signs, and traffic signals across the U.S., has played an outsized role in the unsafe design of our streets. NACTO has spent years working to reshape this document, which has long prioritized moving vehicles quickly at the expense of safety, sustainability, and accessibility for people. The new edition of the MUTCD makes important steps toward a safer, more people-focused transportation system. While it does not include every necessary reform to create comprehensively safe streets, it moves us closer to USDOT’s goal of a transportation system that is safe, sustainable, and equitable. Here are six key things to know about the new MUTCD: 1. The document is framed more inclusively around safety, accessibility, and access for all modes of travel, even as it continues to fall short in key areas to meet these goals. 2. Speed limits will be set based on local safety needs, not by speeding drivers, a step that by itself will save hundreds of lives on U.S. roadways. The new MUTCD replaces the discredited “85th percentile” method with a context-sensitive method that accounts for adjacent land use, pedestrian and bicyclist needs, and crash history. It encourages using good street design to prevent speeding and explicitly discourages using the 85th-percentile method to set speed limits in all urban and suburban contexts and in small-town main streets. 3. Proven safe street designs like best-practice intersections and separated bike lanes are now included in the manual, a significant improvement from the previous MUTCD, even as some treatments–like green-backed shared lane markings and proven bike signal treatments–are unreasonably not permitted. 4. Pedestrian safety needs to be more adequately addressed, despite some improvements. The new draft includes explicit permissions to install new crosswalks, asphalt art, and sidewalk extensions, including guidance on how to address the needs of people with disabilities. However, stronger reforms are needed; engineers are still encouraged to wait until several people are hurt or killed before installing a traffic signal. 5. The manual places unreasonable restrictions on cities and agencies building red transit lanes, an effective and necessary tool as cities work to recover transit ridership and use transit to rebuild local economies and cut greenhouse gas emissions. 6. The alarming draft section on autonomous vehicles has been improved, even as questions remain about the viability of the approach this document takes, where streets are designed for AVs instead of AVs being required to work on the already-existing streets cities have. Read more at the link: https://lnkd.in/ejq7wr8w

"Traffic fatalities in the U.S. are up sharply since the beginning of the pandemic — especially for pedestrians and cyclists. That's bringing attention to a previously obscure federal manual that's sometimes called the Bible of road design. "Since 1935, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices has set national standards for street signs and road design, with major revisions every decade or so. The latest version runs to more than 1,000 pages. And while the MUTCD doesn't get much attention outside of transportation circles, it has a major impact. "'It is the most important pedestrian safety document that you have never heard of,' said Michael McGinn, the executive director of America Walks and a former mayor of Seattle. https://lnkd.in/g6TKnNAY

"Since 2015, Seattle has lowered speed limits across much of its road network, setting residential streets at 20 miles per hour and most larger urban corridors at 25 miles per hour. After these changes took effect, studies showed that car crashes fell by approximately 20%, while the crashes that did occur resulted in significantly fewer injuries. "Cities across the U.S. are following Seattle’s lead, with speed limits dropping from Denver and Minneapolis to Washington, D.C., and Hoboken. Although these changes are motivated by the need to reduce deaths and injuries from car crashes, there’s a growing recognition that they also benefit the climate. "'Safety and environmental goals go together. They’re inevitably interlinked,' said Venu Nemani, P.E., the chief safety officer of the Seattle Department of Transportation." https://lnkd.in/eycUXEt8

The new edition of the #MUTCD makes important steps toward a safer, more people-focused transportation system. While it does not include every necessary reform to create comprehensively safe streets, it moves us closer to USDOT’s goal of a transportation system that is safe, sustainable, and equitable.

Tomorrow, December 19, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) will publish the newest edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). The MUTCD governs all road markings, stop signs, and traffic signals in the U.S. and has played an outsized role in the unsafe design of streets. We’ll work with a team of planners and engineers from NACTO member cities to review the new MUTCD so we can better understand how FWHA’s changes might impact our streets. In the coming days, we’ll analyze the new edition based on a list of six key requests we made to FHWA, ranging from removing guidance recommending the use of free-flow speeds to redefining the Manual’s primary goal as safety for all users. NACTO has been advocating for years to re-envision the MUTCD because it has prevented the widespread use of proven, people-friendly street design. Under prior editions, someone crossing a street is less important than the fast-flowing movement of cars. Often, even multiple people dying at an intersection is not enough for the MUTCD to recommend installing a walk signal. With the expertise and experience of NACTO members across the country, we submitted hundreds of specific edits to the draft MUTCD that FHWA released in 2020. These edits represented both the minor inconveniences of a manual not written to reflect the realities of urban streets, and major issues that prevent cities from implementing infrastructure like red bus lanes and contraflow bike lanes. By coming together as a coalition of city transportation practitioners through NACTO, we’ve elevated the importance of MUTCD reform. In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be combing through the document, line-by-line, to understand the impacts on cities. In the meantime, visit our website to learn more about the changes we’ve been advocating for, and what we’ll be looking for as we review the latest edition of this important document: https://lnkd.in/eQZSdGkm

"Sometime around 2009, American roads started to become deadlier for pedestrians, particularly at night. Fatalities have risen ever since, reversing the effects of decades of safety improvements. And it’s not clear why. "What’s even more perplexing: Nothing resembling this pattern has occurred in other comparably wealthy countries. In places like Canada and Australia, a much lower share of pedestrian fatalities occurs at night, and those fatalities — rarer in number — have generally been declining, not rising. "In America, these trends present a puzzle that has stumped experts on vehicle design, driver behavior, road safety and how they interact: What changed, starting about 15 years ago, that would cause rising numbers of pedestrian deaths specifically in the U.S. — and overwhelmingly at night?" https://lnkd.in/gUeWRQn9