Who Do Your Dollars Serve?

As pressure builds for local jurisdictions to spend ARP funds perfectly, millions of public dollars are already spent under the radar each year with little to no public representation.

Photo by Paul MARSAN on Unsplash

The American Rescue Plan (ARP)may catalyze a shift in civic participation. As awareness of ARP funding increases, local jurisdictions are feeling the pressure–and they should be. For too long, public funds in this region have been spent under the radar on projects that contribute to sprawl, deteriorate quality of life for area residents, diminish small business potential, and destroy the natural environment. So as the pressure builds, I believe that the value of ARP funds exceeds their dollar values. This injection of funding has effectively increased the public’s awareness and concern of public spending and hopefully will establish a new paradigm for civic participation.

More often than not, elected officials and public entities make decisions without public input. This results in projects that do not serve–and sometimes even degrade the quality of life of–their respective communities. That’s because decision-makers leave important questions out of the conversation. And in particular, one very important question: who does this project serve?

With every decision made and every proposal put forth, there is a long list of benefits that have been spelled out by project teams. These benefits demonstrate that certain metrics have been met and make the project eligible for public funding. However, on the other side of each of these alleged advantages is often a disadvantage. But the full scope of a project can only be known if the public and decision-makers ask the right questions.

An example

Let’s use a recent transportation project as an example. The subtitle of a local news article from 2020 reads the following:

“[County Commissioners] have approved to begin a $3 million project to reduce congestion and improve safety along a busy stretch of South Avenue in Boardman.”

The article elaborates:

“The widening project … will provide a two-way left-turn lane … a right-turn-only lane and a left-turn only lane for the southbound traffic … and a left-turn only lane for the northbound traffic …

In addition, there will be [two left-turn only lanes] for the northbound traffic … and [two left-turn only lanes for the southbound traffic.”

This project was claimed to provide safety improvements and congestion mitigation. Now, the County Commissioners aren’t required or expected to be traffic engineers or planners (although some–okay, I–would argue that some knowledge of both should be necessary), so they rely on other elected officials (such as elected transportation engineers) and hired professionals to make recommendations in the best interests of the community. They rely on their brain trust. Before giving the project the green light, the Commissioners should have used the one tool available to any decision-maker, regardless of knowledge or credentials, and that is the power to ask the right questions.

Elected officials work for the who, and it is their responsibility to always have the who in mind–to always bring the who to the table. So, “for whom will these intersections be safer once the improvements are made,” would have been a powerful question before giving the project the green light.

Would the intersections be safer for drivers? No. Wider lanes, wider angle turns, and additional turn lanes serve one primary function: to move cars more quickly from point A to point B while theoretically minimizing the margin for error. That means drivers could travel faster in each direction and take faster, wider turns without risking a head-on collision with a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction. All of the improvements listed not only move cars more quickly, but allow and even encourage drivers to drive more recklessly and mindlessly. You cannot remove psychology from transportation, regardless of popular belief.

What’s going on here?

Part of the reason the Mahoning Valley lags behind many other parts of the country in terms of quality of life is that we have not prioritized planning. Instead, we’ve allowed transportation engineers to lead the way in shaping the built environment. Don’t get me wrong: we need engineers. But there is a place for engineers in the project development process, and that is post-planning.

Engineers do not have the skillset to assess a project from all angles. Have you ever wondered why roadways in the Valley keep getting wider and wider and look more and more like highways (with each improvement promising to solve current safety and congestion concerns)? Have you wondered why many areas in the county are being consumed by concrete? If so, I invite you to learn more about the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), commonly referred to as the transportation engineer’s bible; how it undermines safety; and why more than 25,000 public comments were submitted to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in May 2021 to demand a rewrite of the manual. As quoted in a May 2021 article entitled “Let’s Throw Away These Rules of the Road” (Schmitt, Bloomberg CityLab):

“Why overhaul this MUTCD? For one, it is needlessly prescriptive, leaving little to no room for public feedback. The MUTCD is often used to shut down neighborhood-level campaigns for a new crosswalk or bike lane. (It happens so often, reform-minded traffic engineer Ian Lockwood dubbed this phenomenon the ‘technical brushoff.’) And perhaps most importantly, the manual subordinates pedestrian and cycling safety (and driver safety to a degree as well) to an all-encompassing focus on vehicle throughput, even as U.S. traffic deaths — especially for pedestrians and cyclists — have been mounting.”

In short, the decisions transportation engineers have been making in the Valley are based on outdated practices that have been proven unsafe. Furthermore, our transportation engineers have been trusted to develop projects from start to finish, which have resulted in projects that ignore quality of life, psychology, and human behavior–all considerations of urban planning. If you don’t believe me, go to Boardman, Ohio, and look around. And if you’re feeling brave, take a walk or ride a bike to the nearest grocery store (but I do advise you do so with caution).

Shortage of accountability

I’ve been trying to figure out who is responsible for improving the quality of life for Valley residents since my return to the area almost two years ago. So, this past summer, I set up a meeting with one of our local economic development organizations to find out. This organization is one of the entities that are responsible for administering and assisting with federal funding for communities in the Valley.

There were several of us in the meeting including a 30-year-career engineer, a young manager, and a fellow planner. I brought up a recent project that was paid for with federal funds intended to improve air quality. The project would widen the road and add a turn lane. Over an hour and a half, I expressed my concerns that the project would increase congestion and safety issues and further encourage urban sprawl, and posed my hypothesis that no public entity seems to take responsibility for the quality of life of residents. A few parts of the conversation have kept me up at night on numerous occasions:

1. I asked how they justify that the project would increase safety when widening roads has been proven to increase driving speeds. I was told that “speeding is a policing issue, not an engineering issue”.
2. I asked how they justify that the project would improve air quality when the improvements would increase traffic, due to induced demand. The engineers denied induced demand. (I invite you to learn about induced demand, which is summed up simply in this 3:00 minute video.)
3. When it was touted how many millions of dollars were secured and how many projects were implemented each year, I challenged the effectiveness of the spending and asked if the organization thought it was better to spend money on projects that degrade quality of life than to not spend the money at all. It was confirmed that yes, this was the thought process. Why? “Because if we don’t spend the money, then the money goes to Cleveland and Columbus.”
4. I asked if it was in the organization's authority to create a funding rubric that would only award funding to projects that considered multimodal mobility and other elements that increase quality of life. I was told that it is within their authority, but if they did that, “nobody would apply.”
5. The organization was touted as one of the best for offering pre-engineering dollars. But they do not offer pre-planning dollars, which seems to be the real need here.

Upon leaving this meeting, and others that would follow, it still has not become clear to me who is responsible for improving the quality of life for Valley residents. Now, let’s get back to our project example.

Photo by Jared Murray on Unsplash

Building out the people

We already learned the example project does not increase the safety of drivers.

So, does the project increase the safety of pedestrians? Most certainly not. Because urban design directly impacts the decisions we make, and the decisions of drivers can be fatal. Wider roads give us the cue to travel faster; wider turns tell us we don’t need to slow down; and the presence of more and more traffic signals conveys the message to drivers that we don’t need to use our own judgment. With drivers traveling at higher speeds, racing traffic signals, and taking faster, wider turns, the project area is a hellscape for pedestrians.

It’s worthy to note that the intersection in question was already dangerous before the project. I’ve traveled through one point in the project area several times in the past year and a half and witnessed three too-close calls on three different occasions, at this single point. These were people that were almost struck by drivers mindlessly taking wide eastbound turns. All of these accidents would have resulted in severe injury and probably death. The last one was a young teen on a skateboard and an outlandishly large GMC. This was all before the construction.

Since the moment construction began, I’ve not seen a single pedestrian. And I wonder, where did they all go? They were forced to find another path of travel in an environment that already works against them. And unfortunately, the data at this intersection can be spun to paint an optimistic story. Accidents and fatalities involving pedestrians at this intersection would likely be minimal. Not because the project increased safety, but because it’s created such an unsafe environment that it effectively eradicated the presence of pedestrians.

The issues that this project was meant to remedy have only gotten worse. Three million public dollars went toward exacerbating safety issues and congestion, as well as all of the psychological distress that comes with inadequate transportation options and being stuck in traffic.

The right questions

The thing is, not every leader and decision-maker will have all the answers. They may not have the knowledge to understand an issue or the skill set to properly evaluate project impacts. But what they do have is the power and the responsibility to demand more information from their brain trust and to bring the who to the table. You are the who. I am the who. And, we must not forget that they work for us.

If the commissioners would have asked the right questions, the story of this project could have been different. If the representation of the who was at the table, both figuratively and literally, the project team could have worked with the community to reimagine a different kind of intersection. An intersection safer for all people, regardless of their mode of transportation, their age, their income. This project could have set a new precedent for transportation projects in the Valley and disrupted the inequitable and unjust patterns of development that got us here today.

A new way forward

I truly believe the American Rescue Plan can catalyze a shift in civic participation. It is our duty as the general public to stay informed and to demand effective channels of communication. The ARP has injected large lump sums of money into local jurisdictions, but public funds are spent on a continuum.

It is within our right to demand that our public dollars fund projects that serve the public body. That projects serve people–not cars. It is reasonable for us to expect that our cities and towns set us up for success to thrive in a changing world. For too long, the public has settled for business as usual, and for a myriad of excuses from our elected officials as to why we lag behind.

Both the climate crisis and the coronavirus pandemic have shed light on the holes and inefficiencies of our system. The very system we’ve considered normal. We have the power and the responsibility as the public, and as global citizens, to ensure that we are doing our part to secure a future for generations to come. We don’t have time to sit back and be passive. I hope for 2022, you will pay attention, ask questions, and demand more. You’re more powerful than you think.