Making Traffic Engineers Bicycle-Friendly

Traffic engineers often seem to treat bicycles as an afterthought when planning roadways. Or they do something for bicyclists with the best of intentions, but the result just doesn’t quite work.

The Michigan Department of Transportation has a remedy for this. Since 2005, MDOT has been putting traffic engineers, planners and public officials behind the handlebars for a view from the other side of the windshield. Hundreds of transportation officials and decision makers have received training in bike planning, but perhaps more importantly, experienced the streets from a cyclist?s perspective. And yes, that means they get on bikes and take to the streets.

Many haven’t been on a bicycle in decades so they don’t all feel comfortable with this. And then they might be taken down a four-lane, high-traffic arterial road without bike treatments.

You can read more about this here, and then imagine how different West Windsor and New Jersey might look if we did this too.

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One Response to “Making Traffic Engineers Bicycle-Friendly”

  1. Why not hire engineers or planners who already ride bikes?!?! It’s so frustrating being underemployed in this field and then having to witness new infrastructure being built that so under-serves both bicyclists and pedestrians.

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