Gary Toth: Levels of Service and Travel Projections: The Wrong Tools for Planning Our Streets?

As the County works to ensure that the complete streets/sustainability focus in the EAR is carried through in the actual Comp Plan amendments, it is critical to revisit the transportation "level of service" methodology that  spews out the "need" for wider and faster roads.  Today's PPS article by Gary Toth is a must read for policymakers involved in this process.

Project for Public Places (PPS) Blog: February 6th, 2012
  Posted by: Gary Toth

Would you use a rototiller to get rid of weeds in a flowerbed? Of course not. You might solve your immediate goal of uprooting the weeds — but oh, my, the collateral damage that you would do. Yet when we try to eliminate congestion from our urban areas by using decades-old traffic engineering measures and models, we are essentially using a rototiller in a flowerbed. And it’s time to acknowledge that the collateral damage has been too great.

Click here to read the article.