Highway Capacity Manual

Letter to Planning Board, July 9, 2020

Dear Chairman Anderson,

The Action Committee for Transit urges the Planning Board to end the use of Highway Capacity Manual analysis in the Subdivision Staging Policy.

This analysis is based on the outdated and dangerous concept that the purpose of a street is moving motor vehicles rather than moving people. It causes roadway modifications that make our streets less useful and more dangerous for transit riders, pedestrians, and bicyclists. And it doesn't fix traffic congestion. After half a century of growth policy, we know that wider intersections quickly fill up with new traffic.

This is a matter of equity. The current SSP exempts Metro station areas, most of them relatively affluent, from the use of HCM, precisely because we understand that it makes streets hostile and dangerous to pedestrians. Yet the lower-income areas where the most pedestrian deaths occur are still subject to it.

Continued use of HCM would be contrary to important county policy decisions, such as Vision Zero and the reduction of single occupancy vehicle mode share. Please act to make our streets safer and more inviting.

Sincerely,

Paul Goldman

Action Committee for Transit