Safe Roads for All

For a century, road development in the United States has been centred around cars, but in Massachusetts that’s starting to change. The state’s new design guide aims to meet the needs of all road users by translating theoretical goals–like inclusivity, accessibility, safety, and multiple kinds of users–into metrics.

April 11, 2025

Anya Groner, Writer, Journalist, Teacher

Ask 100 people what qualities define a good road and you’ll likely get 100 different answers. Drivers focus on speed and efficiency. Bikers want protected lanes. Pedestrians value shade and sidewalk. Caretakers with strollers appreciate gently graded hills. Those using wheelchairs need ramps. Bus riders call for safe crosswalks and convenient bus stop locations. Everyone needs safety. With a newly released design guide and revised speed assessments, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) aims to meet everyone’s needs.

Photo courtesy of: MassDOT. Source: Adapted from the Designing Streets for Kids Guide, Global Designing Cities Initiative, 2020.

For a century, road development in the United States has been centred around cars, but in Massachusetts that’s starting to change. “The industry has done a relatively good job on making space for vehicles,” observes Francisco Lovera, the Complete Streets engineer for the highway division of MassDOT. “We are trying to balance that space.” Since 2013, Massachusetts Healthy Transportation Policy has encouraged projects that increase bicycling, public transit, and walking. More recently, MassDOT’s 2020 Shared Streets programme provided grant funding and technical assistance for cities and towns looking to redesign curbs, streets, and parking to support safety, mobility, and commerce. These small-scale interventions included creating rotaries to slow traffic, turning street parking into outdoor seating venues, allocating designated bus lanes, and turning underused roadways into event space.

Then in 2022, MassDOT sent a team to the Urban95 Academy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the state’s planners and engineers scaled up these initiatives. The Urban95 programme typically helps city planners implement child-friendly designs, but this was the first time an entire state–comprised of 351 municipalities–took the course. The impact was profound. “We got a bigger perspective,” says Lyris Bauduy-Liautaud, Deputy Director of Project Management. “We feel more responsibility about introducing [child-centred planning] into our standards and educating our practitioners.”

“With inspiration and technical assistance from the Urban95 programme, we switched from ‘a pedestrian is a single person walking to a family of four or a caregiver pushing a stroller,’”
Jacqueline DeWolfe

In 2023, MassDOT released their updated Project Development and Design Guide (PDDG). Used by planners, designers, practitioners, and decision-makers across the state, the guide translates theoretical goals–like inclusivity, accessibility, safety, and multiple kinds of users–into specific metrics. “We are trying to create parity [between various users],” says Jacqueline DeWolfe, a Commonwealth Bradford Fellow and the former director of mobility policy and programme development at MassDOT. “We want it to be safe for children to get to a neighbour’s house, to school, to a nearby playing field, but how do you do that?”

The road beside the Boston Museum of Science safely accommodates walkers, bikers, drivers, and buses. Photo courtesy of: MassDOT.

To begin, says Bauduy-Liautaud, MassDOT changed how traffic data is collected and used. Instead of focusing on the fifteen minutes of “peak use” when congestion is highest, MassDOT also measures non-commuter road use. These days, short trips (those between one and three miles) outpace commutes. When there’s a safe route and users feel comfortable, they’re likely to walk or go by bike. Policymakers are also challenging long-held assumptions, like what a pedestrian is and how much space they require. Instead of single lane sidewalks, for example, the PDDG offers multiple different examples of pedestrians and their spatial requirements. A family of four walking side by side, for instance, needs an eight-foot-wide sidewalk. A caretaker with a stroller needs at least five feet. Planners are advised to consider everyone and think contextually and expansively.

"Instead of focusing on the fifteen minutes of “peak use” when congestion is highest, MassDOT also measures non-commuter road use. These days, short trips (those between one and three miles) outpace commutes and they’re often made by bikes or pedestrians."
Lyris Bauduy-Liautaud

But making change on such a large scale requires flexibility. The state of Massachusetts contains diverse geographies–rural mountains, suburbs, beach towns, and old cities with minimal space to expand roads. The new PDDG is both more informative and less prescriptive than MassDOT’s previous design guides. “We’re getting out of our own way,” says DeWolfe. The goal is to plan and design for current and potential users while also leaving room for designers and municipalities to innovate based on their unique contexts.

These days, MassDOT is working closely with designers as they develop proposals and encouraging them to go beyond meeting minimum requirements. Often, Lovera says, that means getting personal about safety. “I’m saying to them, ‘it’s not a number, it’s a space that a human being is going to use. Are you okay with the risk, even if it was your own child?’”

Horizontal countermeasures can slow traffic and enhance safe roadway access. Photo courtesy of: MassDOT.

In addition to the updated PDDG, MassDOT has also shifted their thinking around speed management. Until recently, roads were built to accommodate drivers going five miles above the speed limit. The practice didn’t create safer roads. Instead, it created faster drivers. “We had put the brakes ‘pun unintended’ on that practice,” says Lovera. “That is not an acceptable solution anymore.” The problem hit home in 2021 when a spike in traffic fatalities prompted the adoption of Vision Zero, a safe system approach aimed at bringing that number down to zero. “Speed has a huge impact on the likelihood of a serious injury or fatality,” says DeWolfe. High-speed roads also minimise outdoor access for children. “Parents don’t let [their] children go out in the [street] because they don’t feel comfortable.”

The Shared Streets programme sponsored the Willson Street Bike Lanes Project in Salem, which included protected bicycle lanes, improved delineation of vehicular lanes, and new signage. Photo courtesy of: Erin Clark for Barr Foundation.

Currently, there’s no metric for how much traffic calming interventions like cones, speed bumps, speed tables, reduced travel lanes, and curve extensions slow cars down. “We know anecdotally that it works,” says Lovera. “We’re trying to get the science behind it.” Through data collection, Lovera hopes MassDOT can eventually provide an array of solutions that municipalities and designers can choose between. “If someone needs to slow traffic down from 39 miles per hour,” says Lovera, “they’ll be able to say, ‘Let’s choose a, b, and c interventions and get to 30 miles an hour.’”

The next few years will be crucial for MassDOT as they collaborate with municipalities across the state to apply their new standards to upcoming projects and then collect and interpret data from those roadways. The goal isn’t just to decrease fatalities, but also to increase access. “I’m very optimistic,” says Lovera, “that [the PDDG] will change how we decide our roadway infrastructure in Massachusetts and across the country.”

Anya Groner’s award-winning writing explores the changing environment’s impact on community and equity. Her journalism and essays are featured in Guernica, The New York Times, The Oxford American, Orion Magazine and The Atlantic.