CONTEXT SENSITIVE SOLUTIONS/
CONTEXT SENSITIVE DESIGN
COMPENDIUM OF REFERENCES
From Project for Public Spaces (PPS) web page
As early as 1954, Jane Jacobs pointed out a phenomenon
that has affected every urban, suburban and rural community
in the U.S.:
The erosion of cities by automobiles proceeds as a
kind of nibbling. Small nibbles at first but eventually
hefty bites. A street is widened here, another is
straightened there, a wide avenue is converted to
one way flow and more land goes into parking. No
one step in this process is in itself crucial but
cumulatively the effect is enormous.
Instead of “solving” congestion, more highways actually
encourage the construction of new low-density, single-use
development at the urban edge. In these new communities,
destinations are farther apart, requiring us to drive longer
distances and more often than in traditional more compact,
mixed communities. This “generated traffic” quickly fills up
the highways again.
Low density single family home development via
subdivisions has been increasing across the country for
many years. This form of development generates
disproportionate amounts of traffic, creates poor road
connectivity, contributes to congestion on the state
highway system by funneling more traffic onto it,
and makes it expensive to provide public services.
Today, many transportation agencies at every level
(federal, state, county and municipal) are looking to
other ways of dealing with congestion. Instead of
focusing on how fast cars can move through a particular
place (mobility), DOTs are thinking about how easy it
is to reach destinations (access) – by car, as well as by
transit, bike or foot.
PPS has helped to further these institutional changes
at transportation agencies:
- NHDOT hired PPS to guide the writing of New
Hampshire’s new Transportation Business Plan,
a truly comprehensive, statewide transportation plan
that emphasizes “wellness” and system maintenance.
- Last year, the FHWA asked PPS to conduct an all-day
workshop about the relationship between transportation
infrastructure and community quality of life.
- In 2003, The Federal Highway Administration
commissioned PPS to create www.aboutcss.org,
an extensive online resource center for transportation
officials across the country.
- With funding from NJDOT, New Jersey Office of Smart
Growth, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and NJ
TRANSIT, PPS and the Municipal Land Use Center at
the College of New Jersey are training and educating
local mayors, planning boards members, and other
interested parties in Integrated Land Use and
Transportation Planning.
New Hampshire (2005 - 2006)
Client: NH Department of Transportation
Faced with rapid land-use development throughout
the state and the prospect that this trend will continue
through the next 25 years, the New Hampshire Department
of Transportation set out to learn how this growth will
impact the state’s transportation system, and what can
be done to manage it.
NHDOT hired the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation,
Project for Public Spaces and other advisors to create a
Community Advisory Committee to conduct this research
and analysis, as well as an extensive public outreach
campaign. The result of this public effort was a report,
"A Transportation Plan for New Hampshire" - the first state
long-range transportation plan developed by a citizen
committee.
The plan includes a vision for a comprehensive
transportation system – one that considers all
modes and actions that affect the demand side
of transportation in addition to the supply side.
A copy of the meeting summaries, interim reports
and the full final report can be found at
www.nhtranplan.com.
(Here it is)
New Hampshire Transportation Business Plan
The Community Advisory Committee (CAC) was
convened by New Hampshire Transportation
comissioner Carol Murray in the fall of 2004
to develop a Long Range Transportation Plan
for New Hampshire. Specifically, our charge was
“to establish strategic direction for future investment
in, and management of, state transportation assets
over the next 20 years.”* This is our report in
response to this charge.
Over the 18 months that we worked together the
CAC realized that the NHDOT cannot by itself meet
the state’s transportation needs. Transportation is
too important an issue to leave solely to transportation
planners. Effective transportation solutions require
partnerships – across agencies, across jurisdictions,
and in collaboration with private and non-profit
organizations. Every citizen of the state is a partner
in this effort. We therefore submit this report to the
Legislature and to the Executive, both the Governor
and the Executive Councilors as well as to NHDOT.
We are also publishing this report for general circulation
and discussion among the NHDOT’s “core customers”
– our citizens.
Transportation is not an end in itself; its purpose
is to serve common community aspirations for a
better quality of life. Unfortunately, transportation
is increasingly becoming a threat to quality of life in
New Hampshire, not its handmaiden. Unless forceful
action is taken now to reverse this trend, our quality
of life will deteriorate. This is particularly true with
respect to three of our greatest community assets:
our small town character, the prosperity of our
growing small cities and the beauty of our great
outdoors. We recommend the initiation of a broad
conversation on the future growth and development
of our state.
Addressing congestion by increasing road capacity is
often just a temporary fix and, in any event, we just
don’t have the money. However, these growth rates
are not inevitable. In particular, the VMT growth rate
assumes no change in land use plans. It represents the
“business as usual” trend of continuing to grow in
primarily a pattern of low density residential and
commercial development. We can change this trend.
In addition, these VMT growth trends assume no
significant change in transportation energy costs.
In the course of the committee’s work (October 2004
to May 2006) the price of oil has risen from less than
$30 per barrel to more than $70 per barrel. We need
to have a plan in case gasoline remains at $3 per
gallon gas prices or goes up higher. We don’t have one.
Common Sense Solutions
“The New Hampshire Way”
• The project satisfies the purpose and need as agreed by a
full range of stakeholders
• Communication with all stakeholders is open and honest,
early and continuous
• All relevant disciplines are included on the project team
• The project development process is tailored to the
circumstances and examines multiple strategies to address
the purpose and need
• The selected strategy is in harmony with the community and
preserves environmental, scenic, aesthetic, historic and natural
resource values
• Upon completion the project is seen as having added lasting
value to the community
• Faster, better and more efficient strategies win over bigger,
slower and more expensive
Recommendations:
a. Promote zoning that encourages traditional downtown
development and redevelopment by promoting street
connectivity, on-street parking, pedestrian-friendly
environments, reduced minimum parking requirements etc.
Main streets and traditional municipal centers are the
lifeblood of our communities – their protection should be
our priority.
b. Review all Main Streets and key local roads
classified as state highways (Class II) for possible
reclassification as local roads (Class V) or programmatic
exemption from state minimum design speeds.
c. At local option, keep all reconstruction of roads,
bridges and streets within their existing width and scale
(“footprint”).
d. Encourage coordination of local master plans with
neighboring municipalities, especially along common
transportation corridors (road, rail, trail corridors etc.).
Consider the idea of “Village Oriented Development” (VOD),
where the distinct character of villages within a municipality
is maintained and strip development between villages is
avoided.
8. Develop multimodal corridor plans to better
understand, and coordinate transportation and land
use:
Whenever possible, before the Department builds a
new road segment or otherwise expands capacity, it
should develop a “corridor plan” to study how traffic
will be generated and distributed along the road
(see sidebar on corridors).[36]These plans can also
be a vehicle for engaging local leaders in a discussion
of how expansion, reconstruction, or increased access
will affect adjoining land uses and of tools, techniques
and programs to avoid strip development.
9. Develop corridor management plans to protect
our road investments:
Once a project is built the Department cannot preserve
system capacity without local help. This requires joint
development of corridor management plans that outline
the roles and responsibilities of state and local
governments in managing corridors in terms of the
qualities to be preserved and the actions by all parties
to maintain these qualities. Agreements implementing
such plans should be negotiated before corridor
improvements begin.Where local technical assistance
is needed for implementation, the state should provide
such assistance.
10. Broaden citizen engagement in regional
transportation planning:
Our participation on this statewide committee has
educated us on the pervasive role of transportation
in the social, economic and environmental well-being
of our communities. More citizen engagement on
transportation issues is critical. While regional
Transportation Advisory Committees (TACs) help
develop and prioritize projects for 10-year plan
consideration, they are mostly made up of public
officials – both appointed and elected, including
members of city councils, boards of aldermen or
boards of selectmen. The voice of private and
independent sector groups, as well as transportation
consumers such as the interests represented on this
committee, should be added to these regional
conversations.
14. Develop new performance measures for
transportation health:
Traditional transportation performance measures
focus on vehicle speed (faster is better) and vehicle
congestion (less is better). We recommend
people-oriented measures, such as making trips
times more reliable, increasing trip choices,
and reducing household costs of transportation.
We also support periodic “customer satisfaction”
surveys and other on-going public outreach to
encourage easy communication between the
department and its various customers.
Community Technical Assistance Program
(CTAP): A Smart Growth Corridor Initiative
What it is: An initiative to help the 26 communities
in the I-93 corridor develop and implement a blueprint
for growth through technical assistance and innovative
land use planning.
Principles:
• Growth is inevitable, sprawl is not
• The communities are the customer
• Community character drives growth
• The agencies (federal and state) are a resource
• Consensus is the goal, collaboration is the process
• Agencies, communities and non-profit organizations
are equal partners
• Agencies collaborate to provide one-stop shopping
for planning tools and assistance
• Assistance includes financing help and staff expertise
• The process is transparent and open to the public
F. Investment strategies that diversify the
system
We left the issue of transportation finance for last for
two reasons: (1) we have a tradition of small, low-cost
government and throwing money at a problem should
be our last, not first, option, and (2) more money,
without a clear investment strategy to achieve specific
public outcomes, often simply makes matters worse.
Congestion keeps getting worse. Our landscape continues
to deteriorate. We need a different strategy. Here are
some ideas:
16. Leverage public funds with private investments.
Transportation improvements add value to land. The
Department can leverage that value to secure developer
participation in the cost of access roads or transit
improvements to serve that development. This is
especially important for developments around transit
stations where private funding and/or new property
tax revenues can be used as a local match for federal
transit assistance since state gas taxes cannot be used
for this purpose.
From ”Making Places” Newsletter of the Project for
Public Spaces.
The Road Ahead
How context-sensitive solutions will change our streets
By Benjamin Fried
The central tenet of CSS is that communities should
not be molded to the requirements of motor vehicle
traffic alone--transportation should preserve the scenic,
historic, and environmental resources of the places
it serves.
"Go out, ask people what they want from their
transportation system, and then do it."
This new approach questions some of the most
fundamental assumptions of the culture of road
building, and requires engineers and community
activists alike to reinvent how they think about
transportation. It recognizes that transportation
planners are community builders, and that the
public has an important role to play.
Context Sensitive Solutions.org
"Context sensitive solutions (CSS) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary
approach that involves all stakeholders to develop a transportation
facility that fits its physical setting and preserves scenic, aesthetic,
historic and environmental resources, while maintaining safety and
mobility. CSS is an approach that considers the total context within
which a transportation improvement project will exist."
-- Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)
Core Principles of CSS
Beginning with the Thinking Beyond the Pavement conference in
Maryland in 1998, CSS practitioners have identified core principles
about CSS product and process that can be applied to both project
implementation and evaluation.
Legal and Professional Basis of CSS
Congress, the Federal Highway Administration, governors, state
legislatures, professional organizations, and state and local transportation
agencies have all played an important part in the development of CSS,
including addressing tort liability issues. Meanwhile, public interest groups
have made developing better methods of road design a major part of their
agendas.
Context Sensitive Design/Thinking Beyond the Pavement:
Memo from FHWA Associate Administrator for Infrastructure
"As we strive to improve the quality of transportation
decision making by promoting strategies that establish
a better link between transportation planning and
environmental review processes at the systems planning
level as well as the project level, one of the key strategies
is the CSS approach to project development. One of the
Vital Few strategies is for FHWA to provide guidance,
information, and training to States on "integrating the
planning and environmental processes" and encouraging
context-sensitive solutions/context-sensitive design
(CSS/CSD). Guidance and training for CSS/CSD is evolving.
Both FHWA and AASHTO have recently initiated actions to
develop CSS/CSD training. Also, the NCHRP report on the
experiences of the five pilot States in implementing CSS/CSD
has been completed and will be issued later this year.
Much of the training developed will be based on the findings
in this report. However, given the identified need for training
within FHWA and State DOTs at multiple levels, and given the
strategic goals of the Vital Few, we should not wait for the
FHWA or AASHTO training development to be completed.
Some training and guidance resources developed by other
organizations are already available and we, FHWA and State
DOTs, should take full advantage of them in order to become
familiar with and trained in CSS/CSD concepts and implementation
as early and quickly as possible.
As listed in the attachment, the American Society of Civil
Engineers, the Project for Public Spaces and the Kentucky
Transportation Cabinet through the Kentucky Transportation
Center already have training available. The listing is only for
major efforts we are aware of and includes those applicable
on a nationwide basis. Many State DOTs have developed State
specific training for their own people. However, they may or may
not be applicable or available to other States."
http://www.contextsensitivesolutions.org/content/reading/
kinggee/resources/king-gee-memo/
“One of the Vital Few strategies is for FHWA to provide
guidance, information, and training to States on "integrating
the planning and environmental processes" and encouraging
context-sensitive solutions/context-sensitive design (CSS/CSD).”
http://www.sha.state.md.us/events/oce/thinking
BeyondPavement/thinking_3.asp
The Ecosystem Approach: Shifting the Focus to Interagency Cooperative Conservation
Central to Eco-Logical is the "ecosystem approach," a method for sustaining or restoring ecological systems and their functions and values. It shifts the Federal government's traditional focus on individual agency jurisdiction to the integrated actions of multiple agencies. The goal-driven ecosystem approach is based on a collaboratively developed vision of desired future conditions that integrates ecological, economic, and social factors. It is applied within a geographic framework defined primarily by ecological, rather than political, boundaries.
Moving beyond the customary project-by-project approach to meeting infrastructure needs and toward the ecosystem approach defined in Eco-Logical can result in a range of benefits, including:
- Safer, improved infrastructure — All agencies and stakeholders contribute to the delivery of infrastructure. The collective abilities and knowledge shared in the ecosystem approach should allow a more balanced understanding of ecological and social concerns.
- Improved watershed and ecosystem health — Integrating the preventive, diagnostic, and prognostic aspects of ecosystem management should lead to greater understanding of the relationships between ecological issues and human activities.
- Increased connectivity and conservation — Since the ecosystem approach takes a broad view that encompasses the interaction of human and natural systems, it can help agencies plan and design infrastructure in ways that minimize habitat fragmentation and protect larger scale, multi-resource ecosystems.
- Efficient project development — Uncertainty during project development imposes a high cost on agencies and partners, in both time and money. An ecosystem approach fosters cost-effective environmental solutions that can be incorporated early in the planning and design of infrastructure projects.
- Increased transparency — Infrastructure projects developed with an ecosystem approach provide opportunities for, and encourage, public and stakeholder involvement at all key stages of planning and development.
