Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Transportation engineering

Signs that say "Bike Lane Ends" now have the official stamp of approval in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. That's what counts as progress. Photo: Phil Riggan via Twitter

When Will America’s Street Design Bible Enter the 21st Century?

By Angie Schmitt | Mar 14, 2017 | 20 Comments

Last year, the number of people killed on U.S. roads surged back above 40,000. But you don't see much urgency on the part of the transportation engineering establishment to change a failing street design paradigm. So we checked in with one of the engineers in charge of America's street design bible.

Giving buses priority on downtown Seattle streets has helped transit account for most of the growth in commute travel since 2010. Photo via Streetfilms

Q&A With Dongho Chang, a Traffic Engineer Who Stresses Safety Over Speed

By Angie Schmitt | Feb 14, 2017 | 5 Comments

Dongho Chang belongs to a new generation of transportation engineers who see their job as more than moving cars. His work with Seattle DOT has established the city as a national leader on designing multi-modal streets. We recently spoke to Chang about his work in Seattle and how the profession is changing.

8 Transportation Engineering Euphemisms That Should Be Tossed Out

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 17, 2017 | 30 Comments

To this day, jargon that originated in the mid-20th Century highway era tilts transportation engineering against walking, biking, and transit.

Engineers to U.S. DOT: Transportation Is About More Than Moving Cars

By Angie Schmitt | Aug 26, 2016 | 16 Comments

A trade group representing the transportation engineering profession thinks it’s high time for American policy makers to stop focusing so much on moving single-occupancy vehicles. U.S. DOT is currently deciding how it will assess the performance of state DOTs. Will it continue business as usual and equate success with moving huge numbers of cars? That’s […]

Translating Road Engineer-Speak Into Honest English

By Angie Schmitt | May 20, 2015 | 3 Comments

Scott White at Velo Paso in the great state of Texas has been developing these “snarky pseudo infographics” based on some of his observations of the traffic engineering world. He’s been Tweeting them under the hashtag #TransPedia, a satirical take on the language of road widening and car-centric street design.

Exposing the Deep-Seated Bias in Transportation Decision Making

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 16, 2014 | No Comments

Transportation engineers think of themselves as detached and data driven. But bias is built in to many of the profession’s key metrics, write Eric Dumbaugh, Jeffrey Tumlin, and Wesley Marshall in an excellent report recently published by the Institute for Transportation Engineers Journal [PDF]. You can trace this bias all the way back to the dawn of […]

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