17-02 — Successful Approaches to Accommodate Additional Modes and Services in Existing Right Of Way

Original Scope: State DOTs are increasingly being challenged to accommodate a variety of modes and services within existing right of way. DOTs may be asked to dedicate (in whole or part) existing lanes or right of way to transit, high occupancy vehicles, bikes, freight or enhanced pedestrian access. The decisions to accommodate the additional modes and services requires a variety of site and community specific trade-offs, design and construction considerations and operational needs that have to be addressed for such accommodation to be accomplished successfully.

This scan will evaluate the design, operational and policy/procedural decisions that State DOTs have been faced with in response to a proposal from an external agency or entity to accommodate additional modes and services within existing ROW. A particular interest is on the dedication of existing lanes to transit as part of a Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Capital Investment Grant (CIG) project especially in urban settings. The scan team will examine technical issues associated with design, construction and operations/maintenance, but will also be strongly focuses on organizational, policy, procedural and “relationship” issues.

Implementation and Impact

Following the scan workshop in May 2018, the scan team worked at the state, regional, and national levels to advance scan findings. Highlights of these activities include:

At the local and state level, scan findings were presented at the Michigan chapter of the American Council of Engineering Companies, Florida DOT’s District Design Team, Pennsylvania DOT, Washington State Design Construction Conference, and to Pierce County groups commencing work on a BRT system. At the regional and national levels, the scan team presented the outcomes of the scan at the MAASTO Meeting and the TRB Standing Committee on Managed Lanes (ACP35) as well as the TRB Standing Committee on Light Rail Transit Systems (APO75).

Implementation is always the end goal with any project and scans are no different. Some examples of taking outcomes and recommendations of this scan and putting them to use include Washington State DOT working with Sound Transit to determine barriers to access. This then led to WashDOT hiring a consultant to identify best practices for access. Florida DOT used the scan recommendations to inform several projects including the SunRunner BRT in St. Petersburg, the Tampa TECO Line Streetcar Extension, and the Interstate 275 Bus on Shoulder project. A consultant hired by FDOT used the SunRunner BRT project, which was significantly influenced by the scan recommendations, in developing the 2020 Lane Repurposing Guidebook.

The scan team collaborated with AASHTO to develop two webinars to disseminate their findings. The first webinar in the series, conducted on May 31, 2019, included Beth Bonini of PennDOT and Scott Pedersen of MnDOT providing insights into Detroit’s Qline Streetcar, Richmond’s Pulse BRT, and the Minneapolis I-35W Orange Line BRT.

Part 2 of 2 in the webinar series, conducted on November 6, 2019, was moderated by Ming Gao of Florida DOT, while Dylan Counts of WashDOT presented insights into two Seattle area projects: Seattle’s East Link Rail and I-405 BRT.

Scan chair Sharon Edgar provided perspectives on the scan outcomes on the final day of the scan:

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