{"id":245197450,"date":"2012-10-08T22:24:10","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T22:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=245197450"},"modified":"2012-10-08T22:24:10","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T22:24:10","slug":"the-innovative-dot-a-handbook-of-policy-and-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=245197450","title":{"rendered":"The Innovative DOT A handbook of policy and practice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[B&#8217; Spokes: An axiom of government: What gets measured, gets done. So we need to redefine what is the Level of Service (LOS) for a given roadway:<br \/>\n*************************************************************************************************************************************************<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nWhat Is It?<br \/>\nTransportation engineering and planning have generally measured LOS as a ratio of actual traffic<br \/>\nvolume to the theoretical capacity of the road. There are two solutions DOTs can try to ensure LOS<br \/>\nsteers consistently towards high value investments: use LOS standards differently, and redefine them.<br \/>\nFor instance, DOTs often measure LOS at the time of peak delay during the day and use that to decide<br \/>\nif capacity additions are warranted. In the extreme example where service is bad for one hour of the<br \/>\nday and then good for the remainder, a large amount of money may be spent to solve a problem that<br \/>\nonly exists for a very short time, while the road is hugely underutilized for the rest of the time, making<br \/>\nthe benefits low and the costs high.<br \/>\nAnother important consideration is context. Some places are heavily congested because they are very<br \/>\ndesirable places to be. These places are often centers of economic activity that rely on a high volume<br \/>\nof travel and may be harmed by wider roads or faster traffic. Since one of the goals of transportation<br \/>\ninvestments is economic development, it may be counterproductive to \u201cfix the traffic\u201d by means of<br \/>\ncapacity expansion. Instead, it may be better to improve service by ensuring that people who choose<br \/>\nto travel by walking, biking, or transit can do so. However, traditional measures of LOS don\u2019t measure<br \/>\nthese changes, rendering these improvements virtually worthless as a means of improving the<br \/>\nmeasured LOS.<br \/>\nTo capture the impacts of multi-modal improvements, LOS can be redefined to account for the<br \/>\ncapacity and utilization of all modes. Measures of pedestrian, bicycling, and transit LOS mirror roadway<br \/>\nLOS measures in that they evaluate the adequacy\/availability of the facility for accommodating existing<br \/>\nand new travel. These generally include measures of capacity such as the presence, density, and<br \/>\nextensiveness of sidewalks and bike lanes; measures of connectivity, frequency, quality, and size of the<br \/>\ntransit system; and measures of utilization, such as people per square meter, volume of cyclists, and<br \/>\nnumber of public transportation users.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.smartgrowthamerica.org\/documents\/the-innovative-dot.pdf\">https:\/\/www.smartgrowthamerica.org\/documents\/the-innovative-dot.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[B&#8217; Spokes: An axiom of government: What gets measured, gets done. So we need to redefine what is the Level of Service (LOS) for a given roadway: ************************************************************************************************************************************************* &#8230; What Is It? Transportation engineering and planning have generally measured LOS as a ratio of actual traffic volume to the theoretical capacity of the road. There &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=245197450\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Innovative DOT A handbook of policy and practice&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245197450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245197450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=245197450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245197450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=245197450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=245197450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=245197450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}