by Sam Esquivel
February 1, 2022
Opinion:
Massachusetts’ Complete Streets contract design specs and subsequent policy are examples of great programs, but slow the needed infrastructure renewals and upkeep across the state.
Should there be a better, faster, more efficient way of granting towns and cities in the state funding for infrastructure in a manner consistent with maximizing contractors, engineers, and others’ time, and by extension, money?
The Trials and Tribulations of Road Upkeep
Here in Massachusetts and in most northern winter-experiencing states, roads have shorter service lives than their southern counterparts. And for us drivers, don’t we know it… we dodge potholes, utility patches, and rough segments. So of course not all roads are equal. From pristine new pavement, to old sunken subgrades, winter impacts road conditions and causes degradation over less time. Expectedly road conditions are a mixed bag. And their upkeep is essential for the safety of us motorists and our vehicles. Road condition critique has become commonplace in our lives and we wonder why those rough roads don’t get fixed, why years go by before any improvements are seen. The answer is rather complex and multifaceted. A lot gets done before, during, and after a road rehabilitation project is completed. Focusing on Massachusetts’ Complete Streets contract design specs program solely relates to the funding and policy for these projects. The program provides assistance to towns and cities doing rehabilitation projects of public infrastructure, so long as they follow the outlined design specifications. Specifications which increase safety for road users. This program is great, but the reality is that it slows the needed infrastructure renewals and upkeep in instances across the state. The resulting backlog of work needed to be done only frustrates the public and in cases poses a hazard to road use. It isn’t as streamlined or fast as it can and should be.
An overarching question: Why does local road infrastructure struggle? Yes, it certainly gets the job done at a minimum, but what holds it back from becoming greater and more efficient? What bounds the progress of towns and cities across the state to do better? This past summer I worked for the Town of Brookline DPW in their engineering and transportation department. During my time there I got insight into the good, bad, and ugly of the engineering department, whose woes are analogous to that of towns and cities surrounding Boston. From my conversations with management and engineers there, I noticed flaws in the system which could use some revision for the sake of time, money, and public benefit. As I saw it, common contributors that dampen efficiency are time, money, labor supply & demand, weather, and contractor availability etc. This goes hand in hand with policy seldom brought into this conversation and it’s what I want to focus on now. A lot in the engineering field is affected or dictated by the policy that governs funding- which ultimately can make or break intended efficiency. Funding doesn’t come from a sole source for most projects. Funds often originate from state-wide initiatives, federal grants for larger projects, and of course the town or city’s own funds. MassDOT’s Complete Streets program provides funds to help urban and suburban infrastructure improve in the state. Here is what Complete Streets are from source,
Complete Streets are streets for everyone. They are designed and operated to prioritize safety, comfort, and access to destinations for all people who use the street, especially people who have experienced systemic underinvestment or whose needs have not been met through a traditional transportation approach, including older adults, people living with disabilities, people who cannot afford or do not have access to a car, and Black, Native, and Hispanic or Latino/a/x communities. Complete Streets make it easy to cross the street, walk to shops, jobs, and schools, bicycle to work, and move actively with assistive devices. They allow buses to run on time and make it safe for people to walk or move actively to and from train stations.
Creating Complete Streets means transportation agencies must change their approach to community roads. By adopting a Complete Streets policy, communities direct their transportation planners and engineers to routinely design and operate the entire right of way to prioritize safer slower speeds for all people who use the road, over high speeds for motor vehicles. This means that every transportation project will make the street network better and safer for people walking, biking, driving, riding transit, and moving actively with assistive devices—making your town a better place to live.
In Brookline I noticed that projects attempting to improve sidewalks, ramps, roads, and intersections were being delayed or put off for periods of time because of the overreaching strict adherence to the Complete Streets policies bleeding an exhaustive amount of time and resources in design and reconstruction of urban infrastructure. My time at the engineering department confirmed this and the engineers that I spoke with expressed the sentiment that I and the public in Brookline share.
From what I learned, MassDOT’s Complete Streets program essentially offers financial incentives for local governments to learn about designing safer streets for bikes and pedestrians and to integrate these safer infrastructure designs into their local public works projects. With these conditions met, funds are dispersed for the completion of projects- statewide. Funds from MassDOT do not always fully fund, but more often complement the funds that towns have to complete the project through. “Since the program’s launch in 2016, 235 cities and towns have worked through the program to adopt a local Complete Streets Policy, and 205 municipalities have completed the next step of developing a Complete Streets Prioritization Plan, which makes projects eligible for construction funding”- MassDOT. In theory this program is a win-win for everyone, and in no way is this program inherently bad, but it could see some improvement.
Time is the key. An occurrence and frustration from so much time spent designing to specifications is that those designs otherwise are so similar to what engineering department’s transportation engineers would design. The program acts as a formality to already existent industry standards to designing roads and other public infrastructure. To me this is a waste of time, when not having the tight restrictions would yield similar results and benefits. For example, for most projects, a new traffic count and trip generation survey must be completed and studied. You compile large amounts of data and propose alternatives to whatever your data is on. This can be traffic studies, trip counts, signal timing, volumes etc. It’s not a streamlined process that achieves all these things with comparable scrutiny in less time. To comply with other physical benchmarks of the project like curb extensions, wider bike lanes, priority lanes, and others sometimes requires the road to be expanded or contracted even before the road rehabilitation begins (paving and pavement markings). Even for simple coatings of asphalt, these standards are asked for. Patching potholes thankfully does not require this. For most cases in Brookline this equates to lots of time and money in addition to what the original scope of the work is. Brookline, like a lot of Massachusetts towns, has old infrastructure dating to the mid 20th century. The street I live on in Brookline (constructed in the 1960’s) took about three years to complete. Longer than expected and longer than desired. Unfortunately Massachusetts is one of the lowest ranks in national infrastructure. The Boston Globe ranks it at #48 and Maine at #47 respectively. With the premise of better infrastructure equating to economic productivity and efficiency, Massachusetts needs to improve infrastructure, and MassDOT’s Complete Streets program can be a contribution to these improvements, which should be a catalyst for improvement, not a buffer of kinds. Having to conform to these standards creates bottlenecks for projects in towns trying to receive funding from these programs. With so much work needed to be done it’s frustrating to be held back from even the most basic improvements that we’d all like in our urban environments. Assuming the mission of Massachusetts infrastructure designers and builders being to better the lives of people in Massachusetts, then this primary objective should be to do so in a timely and efficient manner so that these public funds are not mishandled, but taken full advantage of, and done to maximize the good for which they are intended for.
Having explained a downside to MassDOT’s Complete Streets program, you could probably figure out by intuition or prior knowledge that the outlines in the design specifications DO have their merits and are important to safety and equity standards between all users of public ways. I’m not advocating for the removal or non adherence to the standards, but I’m promoting the lost notion of efficiency in the bureaucracy that encapsulates the structure we live in and the lost resources we often turn an eye to. Money bleeds in these projects from change orders, unforeseen circumstances, delays, and the list goes on. This back and forth is unproductive and not many citizens realize what it takes to get a road paved and pavement markings drawn up. Various other countries have similar initiatives or more standardized design for infrastructure and instances of maximized utility from public funds. I don’t have an answer, necessarily, but I want people to be aware of what can be happening in your town or city’s DPW and why your infrastructure isn’t necessarily super great as a result… and why you should care about it.
Sources:
https://mass.streetsblog.org/2021/07/21/massdot-announces-12-5-million-in-shared-streets-comp lete-streets-grants/
https://smartgrowthamerica.org/program/national-complete-streets-coalition/publications/what-ar e-complete-streets/