Setting Priorities at DOT

This piece, written by Charles L. Marohn, president of Strong Towns, addresses many of the issues we discuss on Bacon’s Rebellion — how to prioritize transportation spending. Appearing originally in the Strong Towns blog, it is republished here with permission. — JAB

Last week I was asked to privately comment on a priority ranking system being developed by a state DOT. After providing a (not flattering) critique of the proposed ranking system, I then offered my thoughts on how I would develop one.

Since I’m quite confident my suggestions will generate little more than amusement for anyone beyond the individuals/organization that requested my thoughts, I’ve decided to share them here. I’m not trying to embarrass any specific DOT or endanger any relationship (I was asked to comment in private) and so I’ve replaced the name with XDOT. Go ahead and substitute whatever your local DOT is because my advice would be the same.

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First, XDOT should not be prioritizing projects, it should be prioritizing corridors. Where are the most important and productive places and then what are the transportation corridors that connect them? Rank the corridors first and that will give a good sense of where the real priorities need to be.

Once that is done, then prioritize projects within each corridor. I would suggest the following ranking for projects within a priority corridor.

1. Critical Safety. Address a safety issue that has become critical, where there have been repeated accidents and a likelihood of future problems.
2. System Preservation. We need to prioritize maintaining what we have, especially in the most critical corridors.
3. Removal of Access. Access points along a corridor are the leading source of accidents and primary source of congestion. Removal of accesses between destinations (aka: productive places) is the lowest cost and most effective way to improve the operation of a transportation corridor.
4. Increase Capacity. Once access management has been attained, managing capacity is a relatively straightforward task. When travel demand between two productive places increases to within design, there are any number of alternatives that can be explored. Construction of additional lanes.
   1. Congestion pricing to spread peak flows into non-peak times.
   2. Deployment of bus rapid transit.
   3. Construction of a rail line.
   4. Other
5. Provide Alternatives. Priority should be given for improvements that provide alternatives for travelers between productive places.

Note that none of these criteria are applicable within a productive place. Within a productive place, highway standards are counter-productive to creating and sustaining value in a network of local streets. If XDOT is going to maintain local streets as part of its overall transportation network, it needs to do the following.

1. Turn Back. Provide local governments with the option to take over the maintenance of local streets. This should be done in places where the priorities of the local government (value creation) and those of the DOT (automobile transportation) conflict.

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