Even the highway engineers know better these days.

AASHTO, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, is the main professional association for traffic engineers. It will soon present to Congress and the USDOT its suggestions for federal transportation planning in the years to come. The suggestions come in the form a 4 page pdf document.

The pattern that emerges from the document is one advocating for more spending on safety projects, transit projects, and other intermodal projects, rather than a bunch of highway widenings. They want to raise the gas tax, make cycling safer, reduce emissions, encourage smart growth, and change regulatory formulas to level the playing field between cars and other modes. They don’t go so far as to suggest that LOS-based planning has been wrong (as many urbanists would argue), but nor do they advocate for a vastly expanded highway network. Their rhetoric, if more moderate, essentially matches ours.

This from a bunch of traffic engineers.

Good show, guys.