There’s a lot of talk about anti-racist urban planning, but little in the public discourse in the way of anti-racist street engineering- anti-racist design at a nuts and bolts level.

Using my privilege, both as a white male in America, but also as a road designer influencing the function, feel, and safety of streets all over the communities I work in, I would like to speak out and signal to my peers to do the same.

To be sure, I will get many things wrong here, but please believe my words are placed here in good faith and please supplement them, correct them, add to them, and add your own words as needed.

Regardless, a conversation needs to be had about intentionally incorporating self-regulating features into our street designs. We need streets that don’t rely on biased intervention to police them or make them safe for all users, but regulate themselves naturally on their own.

And I won't even dare to use the word 'equity' here, because, quite honestly, a person like me doesn't even know what that looks like.

So, here goes. At my own peril, here are some ideas for anti-racist transportation engineering that can be pursued in every city today:

A good place to start is to stop expanding roads in already marginalized communities. We know transportation planning has been historically racist against Black, indigenous, and Asian populations. There is really no reason to perpetuate that. If you have plans, cancel them.

Note: Routing itself is largely a planning issue, but engineers control the traffic models that dictate how many lanes of what size should be constructed and these are not entirely unbiased.

Slow speeds by design rather than enforcement- narrow lanes, tighten radii, ease ‘green waves,’ remove beg buttons, add LPIs, and otherwise stop designing roads for 50 mph but posting their speed limits at 35 - it’s an entrapment that breeds unbiased intervention from police.

End or eliminate pretextual traffic stops. Minor infractions - such as a burnt out license plate bulb or not signaling long enough for a turn - are used as a means to stop and search a vehicle and are, unsurprisingly, wildly racially-biased. These have got to stop.

Daunte Demetrius Wright was pretextually stopped and needlessly murdered on April 11, 2021 for having an air freshener hanging from his rear view mirror - apparently viciously illegal in Minnesota. Daunte was not the first, and will surely not be the last.

Chuck the MUTCD. Ok, not all of it - of course, a stop sign should always look like a stop sign - but make it okay to customize things like community-inspired crosswalks. Allow and support community-led placemaking initiatives. Public art is ok and is not unsafe.

In fact, chuck the whole “public engagement” process altogether. If we need to schedule a meeting to "engage the public," we’re doing it horribly and grotesquely wrong.

Leverage traffic enforcement cameras- a recent pilot project concluded that the official police reports contradicted the physical evidence (photos) so often that the cameras had to be removed. Wrong answer.

Jaywalking- forget about it. Jaywalking, or as it’s otherwise been referred to for millennia as simply, ‘walking,’ is a manufactured issue. Read this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-16/jaywalking-laws-don-t-make-streets-safer

Let kids ride their f-ing bikes. Wherever. Whenever.

But, it behooves us to understand how seemingly trivial items like new bike lanes can perpetuate existing inequities by encouraging a mobility option that's only accessible to select groups or otherwise serves to gentrify an area against the interest of the community.

Focus on making it safer for people to walk, roll, and use transit. It is no secret that pedestrian road violence is higher in communities of color. @schmangee explores this topic in her new book, ‘Right of Way.’ Go buy it right now. Go! https://islandpress.org/books/right-way 

Invest in better transit stops- seating, shelter, lighting are the bare minimum. Include intuitive and accessible design and don't block the sidewalk. Seriously, this is the bare minimum we can do here.

Invest appropriately in all communities. Be intentional. Oakland DOT, for example, has systemically built equity into their asset management decision-making process to work against systemic disinvestment. https://transfersmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2020/11/Issue-6-Russo_final.pdf

Eliminate bicycle registration ordinances and helmet laws which are, again, are subject to a wildly racially-biased enforcement pattern. Make the streets safe for users through engineering, not enforcement.

Don't be afraid of #ActsOfPublicJoy from people who don't look like you. Celebrate them.

...I'm at a loss. I don't really know if any of these things will help, but we have got to get more intentional about the way we as road designers help shape our streets and communities. We know our infrastructure systems are horribly racist. Let's do better. Let's start today.