Roadways for People is a roadmap for transportation professionals who want to help make communities more livable, accessible, and just.
Through years of training and education, transportation engineers and planners are experts in their focus areas. Their expertise is essential to creating well-thought-out and safe transportation solutions. But the key to channeling this expertise in the right direction is to listen to the people who travel in and around their communities. People are the experts on their needs, desires, and values. But many of us in the transportation field were not necessarily taught about how to work with the communities we serve or how to collaborate effectively with other professionals in the field. Roadways for People provides a roadmap on how planners and engineers can create transportation solutions for people through a community solutions-based approach that involves racial equity, collaboration, and community engagement at all levels of the work through a community solutions-based approach.
Meet the Authors
Lynn Peterson
Author
Elizabeth Doerr
Co-Author and Principal at Doerr & Co.
Lynn Peterson, Author
Lynn Peterson is a national expert in developing transportation solutions. Throughout her career as an engineer, planner, and elected official, she sought out a resource that didn't just focus on the technical guidelines for transportation engineering and planning. She wanted a resource specifically for transportation professionals that could help guide a more inclusive approach to developing solutions with communities. After many years without that resource, she realized she needed to create that resource herself.
Elizabeth Doerr, Co-Author
Lynn found a symbiotic partnership with writer and community engagement expert, Elizabeth Doerr. Elizabeth's expertise and awareness around social and racial justice issues and effective community engagement are evident throughout the book. Her journalism background was crucial for working with the many subjects, contributors, and collaborators that helped showcase real-life examples of the community solutions-based approach.
Elizabeth is also Principal at Doerr&Co. a communication, writing, and social impact firm where she works with individuals to plan, propose, and write their books. You can find her work in publications such as CityLab, Portland Monthly, and Baltimore City Paper.
The Approach
Roadways for People outlines an inclusive, community-centered approach to thinking about how we move through the places we live, play, and work.
What is a community solutions-based approach?
Throughout most of the 20th Century, this car-only approach was the predominant approach to transportation policy, planning, and design which resulted in a patchwork of dislocated communities cut off from opportunity. It was an approach that mostly favored the wealthy.
Throughout the last two decades, innovators and visionaries in transportation planning and engineering began to change the conversation to favor approaches that involved communities in the planning process. Roadways for People brings these inclusive approaches together into a practical framework that transportation professionals can use.
“Seventy years of a car-only approach—not car-centric, it’s car-only—is actually not just non-driver hostile, it’s driver hostile. No one benefits from it, even the driver gets harmed by it. It has all these negative effects in that it cuts everyone’s opportunity to participate in the economy and essential services.”
–Beth Osborne, Director of Transportation for America
A Case Study
The impact of the status quo on communities of color.
Communities of color have been deeply impacted by status quo approaches to transportation planning and engineering. Below is a clear case of how our communities have been impacted by transportation planning processes as well as why and how this needs to change, now.
The Symptom
Black people are 82% and American Indian and Alaska Native people are 221% more likely to be hit by drivers than White people. These are among many statistics that show the disparity between safety for people of color on roadways than White people.
The Problem
Neighborhoods with a majority of residents of color are more likely to have high-speed highways running through them. Additionally, these communities are less likely to have safety mechanisms such as crosswalks and warning signs.
The Root Cause
Urban planning practices, such as the "urban renewal" era of the mid-20th century, targeted communities of color by destroying and dislocating them to build America's interstate highway system. Even today, systemic racism inherent in transportation policy and implementation, coupled with the lack of representation of professionals of color in the field, means that communities of color are often overlooked and ignored for essential transportation improvement projects.
The Solution
The community solutions-based approach seeks to create a collaborative and open process with community members and other transportation professionals. The solution is to understand the historic racism within our field, get out of our siloes and work as a team with other transportation professionals, and to ensure community members are a part of the process from the problem statement creation stage to the construction of the project.
Roadways for People gives you a roadmap for a community-centered approach to utilize on your next project.
