HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-06-23 Public Comment - M. Egge - Level of Service Work SessionFrom:Mark Egge
To:Agenda
Subject:Level of Service Work Session
Date:Thursday, April 6, 2023 5:39:10 PM
Attachments:CleanShot 2023-04-06 at 17.24.34@2x.png
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Madam Mayor, Mr. Deputy Mayor, and City Commissioners:
Regarding your upcoming discussion of Level of Service standards, I
wanted to share a few thoughts from my perspective as both a
transportation planning professional and as a local advocate for safe,multimodal transportation systems that align with the City's goals of being
an environmentally sustainable city that's affordable to live in.
In short, "Level of Service" is increasingly a discredited (or, at least,outmoded) measure of transportation performance.
The biggest problem with Level of Service is that it measures the wrong
thing: the purpose of our transportation system is not to allow people tomove freely through space ("mobility") but rather for people to be able to
get where they need to go ("accessibility"). Level of Service tells us
nothing about whether or not city residents are able to reach their jobs,
childcare, or recreation—only if delay may be encountered while traveling.While development may result in additional traffic congestion, it can also
improve the ability of residents to access their daily destinations if it puts
residents in closer proximity (a walk or bike-ride away, perhaps) of their
daycare provider, a coffee shop, or their office.
For years, transportation planning has focused on measuring mobility as a
proxy for accessibility for the simple reason that mobility has been easy to
measure and access difficult to measure; fortunately, newer analyticalmethods provide a much richer toolbox to answer the fundamental
question of "is our transportation system doing its job and allowing people
to access their destinations."
The second issue with Level of Service is that it considers only the
experience of motorists. ACS Census data indicates that, depending on the
part of town, 5 – 50% of residents travel to work or school by means other
than driving a car. In many cases, changes to the roadway systemintended to improve Level of Service often create difficult or dangerouscircumstances for users of all other modes. Bozeman's current Community
Plan recommends replacing Level of Service with a Multimodal Level of
Service to reflect the fact that areas that work well for pedestrians oftenprovide limited mobility for vehicles (e.g. think of Wild Crumb) and arevery successful at connecting people to their destinations.
A final criticism of Level of Service is that it leads, by definition, toeconomically inefficient outcomes. Level of Service A typically means that
there's so much transportation system capacity that it never becomes
congested—not even during the busiest parts of the day. Even Level of
Service D typically corresponds to areas where, 95% of the day, there islittle delay. Conversely, lower levels of service are typically indicative of
economically vibrant places. Strong Towns has written extensively on this
topic and summarizes this in a neat little graphic:
I strongly support the recommendations presented in the staff memo to
adjust LOS standards to make them more aligned with the community we
hope to become. I likely support the recommendations to make Traffic
Impact Studies more targeted in nature and to address all modes ratherthan just individuals in motor vehicles.
I personally think these recommendations could (and should) go further to
shift our thinking toward planning for a future where people can accesstheir destinations (rather than a misguided pursuit of paradise for
automobiles). Recognizing the constraints concerning staff time and
resources, these are very good recommendations and deserve immediate
implementation.
Thank you,
Mark Egge219 E Story St
Bozeman, MT 59715
-- Mark Egge(406) 548-4488he / him