Context Sensitive Solutions Technical Assistance: Florida Department of Transportation
Meeting Summary
Welcome from FHWA and Introductions
DeWayne Carver, FDOT, kicked off the meeting by welcoming everyone and letting all participants introduce themselves. He explained that FHWA had sponsored the meeting to engage FDOT Division Directors in FDOT’s Complete Streets implementation efforts.
Fleming El-Amin of FHWA thanked the FHWA Florida Division for helping to make the meeting possible, and provided all participants with two handouts. He explained that one of the handouts offered information on FHWA’s CSS website, including information on CSS as it relates to Complete Streets. The handout also provided a list of related program websites and contact information for FHWA personnel on the livability team. The other handout listed FHWA pedestrian and bicycle resources, including publications, guidance, and websites. Fleming explained that most of the resources were produced very recently and covered a wide range of topics relevant to CSS and Complete Streets.
Fleming indicated that Florida was the sixth State to receive technical assistance under the current FHWA CSS technical assistance effort. He also announced that FHWA was preparing to host virtual peer exchanges among the States that received TA and others, including one focused on Complete Streets on October 25.
Presentation on Complete Streets Best Practices from Other DOTs
A national overview of Complete Streets and CSS practice, including examples of what other States were doing, was provided. Key items mentioned during the presentation included:
Many DOTs are working to be more transparent with communities about their work.
The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has teamed with the Kentucky Department for Public Health to provide bicycle and pedestrian planning support for communities.
The Michigan DOT has released guidance on their process for conducting lane elimination reviews.
Several States have set guidance to prevent DOTs from experiencing cost overruns on projects.
The Washington State DOT’s design manual explicitly states that the DOT seeks to engage with local stakeholders as part of their decision-making process.
Indiana DOT’s OpenRoads program—their version of Performance Based Practical Design—is an approach that “targets investment decisions to the roadway system as a whole, rather than seeking to accomplish individual project perfection in a single location.”[1] In its first year of implementation, it reduced the cost of capital projects from an initial $200 million cost estimate to $80 million.
The New Jersey DOT and Pennsylvania DOT together have developed the Smart Transportation Guidebook, which lays out what the DOTs have been able accomplish, what they have not been able to accomplish, and the communities’ responsibility. The guidebook also codifies the concept of diminishing returns as a design philosophy.
Figure 1: Pennsylvania DOT used the Smart Transportation process to rescope the Route 202 bypass from a four-lane controlled access freeway with a 65-mph design speed to a two-lane multimodal parkway with a 35-mph design speed. Lower speeds allowed for bending the road to fit into the surrounding context as well as eliminating the need to clear cut wide swaths of adjacent woodland. The design also eliminated large overpasses and reduced the number of lanes. Thus, the rescoping led to dramatically fewer impacts, and at less than one-half of the original project cost. Source: Al Biehler, Former Secretary, Pennsylvania DOT
Some DOTs are looking toward multiple performance metrics beyond just level of service.
The PennDOT Connects program makes it policy that building communities, economic vitality, and health issues are important factors in addition to level of service.
Colorado DOT’s Downtown Streets guide states that “great streets are more than infrastructure…unfortunately many transportation facilities built in recent decades are singularly focused on moving cars from place to place.”[2]
New York State’s Greenlites program sets up a matrix of broad performance metrics for community, environmental, sustainability, and transportation metrics.
In 2014, FHWA sponsored a webinar on quality of life performance measures and Level of Service (LOS), which highlighted the need for practitioners to consider multiple performance metrics and LOS goals that consider all road users, support livable communities, and help achieve CSS.
Several State DOTs have enacted policies to ensure that community and environmental metrics are fully considered during transportation decision making, while also setting clear expectations and benchmarks for local communities to meet. For instance, some States require communities to carefully consider land-use planning regulations to ensure local destinations do not become overly congested due to excessive auto-oriented land uses that significantly impact capacity on regional thoroughfares and State highways.
The Florida DOT has been a national leader on Complete Streets, as exemplified by the release of statewide lane elimination guidance and reducing default lane widths in urban areas.
FDOT’s Complete Streets Handbook expands upon the five functional classification contexts provided by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program publication, An Expanded Functional Classification System for Highways and Street, and defines eight contexts: natural, rural, rural town, suburban residential, suburban commercial, urban general, urban center, and urban core.
It is important that State DOTs continue to work with local communities to prioritize projects and discuss funding constraints in order to maximize benefits.
Description of the FDOT Complete Streets Policy and Guidance
DeWayne Carver, FDOT, provided an overview of Complete Streets policy implementation at the meeting. Key items mentioned during the presentation included:
In the Dangerous by Design report released by Smart Growth America in 2011, Florida communities were listed as the highest in terms of pedestrian and bicycle fatalities, prompting FDOT’s Secretary to take action.
Florida pursued the “4Es” of road safety: education, engineering, enforcement, and emergency services. In addition to these efforts, FDOT developed a Complete Streets policy adopted in 2014. In addition to safety, the policy promoted quality of life and economic development. The policy also highlighted the desire to serve the transportation needs of all users, including cyclists, freight handlers, motorists, pedestrians, and transit riders.
Many local communities within Florida adopted Complete Streets standards, but they often clashed with FDOT standards, requiring District engineers to request exceptions and variations.
FDOT collaborated with Smart Growth America to develop the Complete Streets Implementation Plan, completed December 2015. The plan described how to enact the Complete Streets policy step by step and provided a common vision for FDOT. The plan also helped FDOT understand that Complete Streets is a process, not a product.
The Complete Streets Implementation Plan identified 12 documents that required updating (currently underway by FDOT). As part of the implementation process, FDOT engaged with representatives from its Districts, MPOs, regional planning councils, and the private sector.
The Complete Streets Handbook was developed as a starting point to the process of updating FDOT documentation. The Handbook introduced FDOT’s newly defined context classifications, but it was neither a design manual nor a “best practices” guide. The Handbook presented the roles of FDOT and local governments regarding Complete Streets implementation.
Overall, FDOT’s Complete Streets efforts do not imply or result in new funding, so projects will continue to be programmed and funded as they were previously. The difference is that the projects will now include context classifications.
The eight context classifications FDOT developed expand upon the categories of urban and rural and help determine design criteria, including appropriate design speed.
FDOT is updating its Design Manual, which incorporates context sensitive design criteria. The Manual will indicate how context classification influences design criteria. One significant change included in the revised Manual will be that certain context classifications will have greater flexibility in allowable design speed ranges.
The revised Manual increases flexibility in design. Certain elements that previously were not allowed at higher design speeds can now be accommodated and local partners have an opportunity to become involved in this process.
Criteria changes in the revised Manual include reduced lane and median widths (that will not require design exceptions), and increased border and sidewalk widths.
Each FDOT District has a Complete Streets coordinator and implementation continues through meetings and regular communications.
The District Offices have taken different approaches to defining context classifications including: defining them project-by-project; defining them through proactive corridor/town planning; and defining all contexts within their District all at once.
Challenges to Implementation Discussion
Participants were divided into four breakout groups and given instructions to come up with any challenges they associated with FDOT’s Complete Streets implementation plan. Participants first had to rapid-fire list any challenges, and those are listed below from each group.
Table 1: Challenges to Complete Streets Implementation
Group 1
Group 2
Staff to do context classifications
Maintain project schedules
Local input
Cost impacts to planning budget
Cost impacts to individual projects
3R targets
Local visions of corridors versus current use
Freight versus bike/pedestrian
Long term maintenance commitment
Politics – high turnover in local governments
Training for staff
Statewide consistency
Realistic timeframe for implementation
Buy-in – internal and external
Staff – Who? How Many?
Funding – non-capacity program
Coordination with L/A (limited access) or high-capacity roads
Managing local expectations
Decision making/managing expectations (ability to say no)
Picking the context – Where do you draw the
lines? Future conditions? How included? Minimum length of a segment?
Local government expectations – what level of
engagement is expected?
Perception of Complete Streets
Maintenance questions
Doing the context classification with existing resources
How does context classification affect project development and environment (PD&E)?
Culture change in FDOT – silos
How do we balance the function/purpose of the roadway?
Revisiting the status/role of level of service
Once each group came up with their list of challenges, they discussed them and wrote down their top ideas, rephrasing as necessary. All breakout groups then came back together as one big group and posted their challenges on the wall, categorized them, and discussed. Clarifying notes are provided as needed.
How does context classification affect/relate to PD&E [Clarification: The Districts noted that once a project enters PD&E, if they have to do context classifications it would break the schedule and budget.]
Doing context classification within existing resources [Clarification: Where do Districts get the staff or consultant funding for this new layer of work?]
Maintain project schedules
Context class determination
Realistic time frame for implementation
The effort to obtain local input
How to staff context classification
Cost impact to projects
Planning and budget impact for eight classifications
County/MPO requests don’t match priorities (MPOs set priorities then later ask FDOT to do something not in the original list)
Statewide consistency for classifications and funding
Funding
Additional right-of-way (R/W) needs (when to draw the line if completing a street requires new R/W) [Clarification: The concern was that often a community could ask for a feature that cannot be accommodated without buying new R/W.]
Long term maintenance commitment – locals [Clarification: The concern was that FDOT should not be responsible for maintaining everything that is built as part of a project, for instance decorative lighting or perhaps a short walking connector to a local facility.]
Local government expectations – what level of engagement is expected
Future land use – if FDOT agrees to complete a street based on future land use changes, how does FDOT ensure the locals do what they say
Local visions of the corridor versus current use (Dreams versus reality)
Politics – High turnover in local elected officials results in changing visions
Project Delivery Process – Scoping
How do we balance the function/purpose of the roadway…e.g. Strategic Intermodal System (SIS), level of service (LOS) [Clarification: Since road space is finite, often times, there is not enough space to layer in a bike lane, for instance, without reallocating space from other uses (e.g. take out a lane from through traffic)]
MPO: Realizing SIS needs in addition to Complete Streets
Bike lanes versus on-street parking
Design/target speeds
Funding non-capital
Training/Culture change
Culture change in FDOT – silos [Clarification: The structure of FDOT, in which units are specialized to match production needs, sometimes insulates staff in certain units from understanding the big picture.]
Training for staff and consultants (need to get training at all levels)
Staff: who, how many?
Staff training (internal buy-in, understanding roles)
Strategies to Address Challenges
The participants were once again divided into the original four breakout groups and each assigned one of the first four categories listed above. The training/culture change category was not assigned to a breakout group but was instead provided to DeWayne so he could brainstorm solutions from the FDOT Headquarters perspective. The strategies developed by each of the groups are shown below. Clarifying notes are provided as needed.
Table 3: Strategies to Address Complete Streets Implementation Challenges
Group 1: Managing Expectations
Group 2: Project Delivery Process – Scoping
4P – Priority project programming process → helps manage expectations
Timeframes for data collection/ground truth (input by partners)
Timeframe for implementation (input by partners)
Guidance would be helpful, a checklist (input by partners)
Coordination with locals
Transition timeframe
Capacity – process works, no impacts, MPO prioritize [Clarification: implementing the Handbook for capacity increase projects where the MPO has matched scope requests to the budget, will not impact project delivery.]
Non-capacity – FDOT owns currently, we prioritize – no input, context requires input [Clarification: Historically, FDOT has “owned” the process for non-capacity 3R projects, meaning that the scope and budget are relatively cut and dry and FDOT has not shared a lot of the decision-making with stakeholders.]
Funding not on five year
State funds – not on priority, but data-driven, not recurring, always changing
Some problems not complete street friendly: 3R, bridge
Safety – only what data-driven, highway safety improvement program (HSIP) funds
LAP (local agency program) projects – federal funds
TA (transportation alternatives) funds – TPO (transportation planning organization) priority
Trail funds
Group 3: Funding
Group 4: Implementation Phasing
Better clarification that additional funding will be local/federal, MPO
3R projects would need local funding during scoping process – commitment
Reallocation of 3R dollars (excess 3R)
More time to phase-in [Clarification: More time is needed particularly for projects requiring primary or secondary context classification measures].
Enhanced education for all
Clarify only context during planning for projects [Clarification: Impacts on project schedules and budgets will accrue as the need to do context classifications are retroactively applied to projects in or past PD&E.]
Clarify current and future classification
Prioritization of Strategies/Closing Discussion
At the conclusion of the workshop, each breakout group was asked to report out on one of their proposed strategies to overcome the challenges discussed earlier. The highlights of the reporting out are indicated below. In addition to the strategies, an action item emerged out of the discussion for DeWayne to investigate the wording on local engagement in the flow charts of the Handbook to ensure that it is clear. Additionally, District Directors agreed that they should meet more regularly to discuss progress on implementing the Complete Streets Handbook. Clarifying notes are provided as needed.
Table 4: Priority Strategies to Address Complete Streets Implementation Challenges
Challenge
Priority Strategies
Managing Expectations
3R projects already in the system should be grandfathered in prior to Handbook adoption.
Following the 4P process helps manage expectations. [Clarification: The 4P process is a scope development process used by two of the seven FDOT Districts to establish project features, budget and schedule, prior to the project being programmed.]
Project Delivery Process – Scoping
In the Handbook, a distinction should be made between capacity and non-capacity projects, regarding how to apply the Handbook’s strategies.
Complete streets mesh well with capacity projects. However, FDOT owns non-capacity projects, which are based on design criteria and public engagement is not incorporated into every step of these projects.
The concept of “no new funding” needs to be reinforced in the Handbook. [Clarification: For 3R projects, the public needs to understand that these are on a fixed budget with a tight schedule and that only Complete Streets elements that can be accommodated within the original budget can be implemented.]
More time needs to be allotted for phasing in.
Funding
The Handbook should clarify that funding for anything that adds to the 3R project scope
needs to come from the local community, the federal government, or MPOs.
The local funding commitment needs to come during scoping. [Clarification: Once the project scope is set, it is entered into the Capital Program, which is a public document. The budget and schedule for that project needs to be established prior to being programmed to avoid politically troublesome budget reallocations or schedule delays from one project to another.]
Implementation Phasing
The Handbook should clarify the role of existing and future context classifications. [Clarification: Determining future land-use classifications is a complicated process relying on speculative growth and development projections and should be limited to major FDOT projects.]
[1] Indiana Department of Transportation. “Open Roads (Practical Design).” (website) Available online:
http://www.in.gov/indot/3261.htm, last accessed August 16, 2017.
[2] Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Colorado Department of Local Affairs, and Colorado Department of Transportation. (2016). Colorado Downtown Streets: A Tool for Communities, Planners, and Engineers. Available online:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-vz6H4k4SESQk9vSGRlQll5dnM/view, last accessed August 16, 2017.
