Conversations about how we use our roadway space often spark lively debates among engineers, planners, and community members. The inherent physical constraints of our streets bring opposing interests into competition. Transportation professionals have tools and standards to understand the needs of different modes and street uses, but there are few resources available to evaluate tradeoffs between these uses. Instead, unspoken assumptions about roadway priorities—often in direct conflict to stated vision and goals—govern what decisions are made.

NCHRP Report 1036 Roadway Cross Section Reallocation: A Guide provides a framework for decision-making that promotes transparency and helps support community priorities. This resource quantifies the impacts of street cross section changes on safety, equity, environment, economy, and quality of life. It presents a new framework for evaluating traffic operations which considers the all-day performance of a street beyond the peak hour.

This presentation will apply the Cross Section Reallocation decision-making framework to a Buffalo-based case study. Practitioners will first identify the dimensions needed to provide a safe cross section for all modes using the information from the Guide. They will review traffic data from the case study and conduct a high-level capacity analysis to review the performance at the peak hour and across the day. Finally, participants will develop cross section alternatives and evaluate them against a variety of project goals and outcomes. The session will end with a discussion about the framework and how its methods and outputs can be best communicated with community members and decision-makers.

This presentation is relevant for Engineers and Planners that want to learn about the how to assess traffic operations across the whole day and better align goals with decision-making.