O’Connor: We Need to Count People Movement Not Car Movement
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 problem
is that current environmental review focuses on the movement of the
single occupant vehicle and “mitigations” to keep those moving often
have a detrimental effect on the movement of transit (much less
pedestrians and bicyclists). We need to analyze proposals not on “level
of service” based on how long a car is delayed, but on the “level of
service” 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?
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