There’s been a lot of talk over the years about the importance of a truly multi-modal transportation system, but progress eludes us. Sure, there are “one-offs” that people can point to where transportation projects take a more multi-modal perspective, but the overall approach to transportation planning is still stuck in auto-centric twentieth-century thinking. Many transportation policy makers still behave as if it’s 1960, not 2014.

Take the recent controversy surrounding Commonwealth Avenue. Transportation planners failed to take into account all users of the Commonwealth Avenue road system, and gave short shrift to the need for a more bicycle and pedestrian friendly environment. The predictable pushback by bike and ped activists was proof that the old ways of thinking no longer respond to the needs and expectations of a population that increasingly rejects the auto-centric norms of the last century in favor of alternative mobility options. The Commonwealth Avenue debate casts new light on the urgency of creating safe bike lanes in a city with increasing bicycle use.

What many highway and roadway planners seem to be missing is that we are fully immersed in a great transportation transition – a transition that is having a profound impact on how people think about their personal mobility. People are changing their mobility behaviors in real time. The signals are everywhere: younger people are driving less and deferring buying cars (or even getting drivers licenses); on-demand bicycle services thrive in our major cities; technology-driven alternatives like Zipcar, Uber, and Lyft are replacing the need for many urbanites to own cars; disruptive start-ups like Bridj are hoping to change how people perceive bus travel, and the fight for pedestrian safety has taken on a long overdue sense of urgency. More people these days prefer to walk or bicycle if they are able, both for the health benefits and because one can often get to a desired destination faster than waiting for a bus stuck in vehicular traffic. But many barriers exist to walking and bicycling safely, something that ought to be every citizen’s right.

Our transportation funding and planning system has shortchanged citizens who are drawn to what I call “self-propelled” transit: the mobility offered by walking and bicycling. For too long, the federal government has denigrated these transportation modes by calling them “enhancements.” By definition, an “enhancement” is an improvement to something that exists and is fully adequate. Well, we know that is not even remotely true for pedestrian and cycling access. Many streets are not pedestrian friendly; many bicycle lanes – if they exist at all – are poorly designed and often unsafe. Not all modes of transportation are funded or treated equally, but the stars may be in the right alignment for true modal equity to advance as the platform for future transportation planning and funding.

A lesson can be taken from the great citizen activist movements of the 1960s and 1970s – movements that pushed back hard on the kind of transportation planning and construction made infamous by New York City’s Cross Bronx Expressway and Boston’s (never built) Inner Belt. As a result of citizen activism, a consensus developed regarding a more neighborhood friendly and environmentally friendly approach to transportation planning. One specific outcome of that consensus was to require that transportation projects undergo and respond to rigorous environmental review. The MEPA process of Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) and Environmental Impact Reports (EIR) that is taken for granted today has become a critical filter on transportation projects to ensure a thoughtful and comprehensive review of transportation impacts on the environment: air quality, wetlands, and open space. The environmental review process has established a reliable paradigm of necessary coexistence between the need to improve mobility without degrading quality of life or the environment. We can learn from this experience and replicate it to ensure that the same thoughtful approach to planning is taken with regard to public safety issues.

As state transportation secretary in 2009, I met on several occasions with bike and ped activists who expressed frustration with the lack of attention given historically to their mobility issues. This lack of attention was bipartisan in nature – it happened under Republican and Democratic governors, under conservative, moderate, and liberal administrations. It occurred to me that the answer was not to simply hope that every future transportation secretary would care about these issues in the same way I did. That isn’t realistic – every person has his or her own set of priorities. The problem was structural and needed a structural solution. The answer was to embed a safety requirement into the permitting process. I therefore proposed that Massachusetts adopt a safety impact review (SIR) process that would mimic the environmental review process. A safety impact review process would require transportation planners to demonstrate that any plans for the design or redesign of transportation projects take into account the needs of pedestrians and bicyclists.

Earlier this year I wrote on this subject with my friend, Toronto-based urban planner Tanzeel Merchant, for the on-line forum StreetsBlog. What we said bears repeating here:

The safety impact review would require projects meeting a certain financial or scale threshold – such as public infrastructure and utilities, building development or redevelopment, and parks and public space projects – to demonstrate impacts on bike and pedestrian safety and accessibility, measured against set metrics. The outcomes can be reviewed and impacts mitigated to maximize safety. By establishing clear thresholds for an SIR, we can ensure that it will not add undue time or expense to implementing smaller scale improvements like pedestrian islands or bike lanes in discrete urban environments. The SIR would be structured to encourage safe multi-modal mobility, with a specific focus on three desired outcomes:

• Reduced likelihood of crashes and injury or death (pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, and drivers.)
• Greater access to, and increased use of, streets and open space.
• Maximized access to light, public open space, ventilation, and recreation opportunities.

For those who think this will add to costs and red tape, we would point to the unacceptably high costs of inaction – bodily injury and death, the costs of litigation, and the loss of economic growth (expressed as both private sector investment and housing values). Pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly neighborhoods score higher on all these factors.

If a safety impact review is required as part of the transportation permitting and approval process, we can ensure the kind of thoughtful and transparent approach that will improve projects by making them more likely to improve public safety and quality of life. History has proven that this issue will not take care of itself – the transportation planning and design system that exists today is not designed to produce outcomes that are friendly to today’s changed mobility habits. We cannot rely on the status quo to change the paradigm it has comfortably lived with for decades. The safety impact review will ensure that our transportation planners have no choice but to embrace the moment, and the future.

James Aloisi is a former state transportation secretary and a principal at the Pemberton Square Group.