In her latest "online chat" Metro Board Chair Pam O'Connor took a shot at transportation planning and how we decide whether or not a street is doing its job. In response to a question about bus-only lanes, O'Connor channeled her inner transportation reformer and made the case that we make so often here at Streetsblog: Streets are about people, not just cars.
Remember, this is my opinion, not necessarily Metro's...but one problemis that current environmental review focuses on the movement of thesingle occupant vehicle and "mitigations" to keep those moving oftenhave a detrimental effect on the movement of transit (much lesspedestrians and bicyclists). We need to analyze proposals not on "levelof service" based on how long a car is delayed, but on the "level ofservice" for transit and other modes.
Pam, we couldn't agree more! Now what do we have to do to get traffic counts and other studies to prioritize moving people over moving automobiles?
