Promoting Complete Street Policies with Traffic Signal Timing Practices

This webinar is led by ITE Complete Streets Council.

To learn how to register and see more information about the webinar, including obtaining instructions for the PDH credit certificate fees, please view the webinar course page here.

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Webinar Description:
Adoption of Complete Streets (CS) policies and practices is accelerating due to a growing national emphasis on providing a safe, comfortable, and equitable travel experience for all road users. In response, a few proactive agencies have reimagined their traffic signal timing practices to reduce vehicle speeds, reduce cycle lengths, and enhance comfort levels for alternative modes. Despite this, most major signal timing guidance documents, policies, tools, traffic impact studies, and research efforts continue to focus on reducing delays and improving level of service (LOS) for single-occupant vehicles. As evidence of this, an upcoming National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) project seeks to expand multimodal user guidance in the Signal Timing Manual (STM – second edition), but does not recognize or mention CS.

The Transportation Research Board (TRB) Traffic Signal Systems Committee has not yet pursued any research topics on the effects of CS on longstanding traffic signal timing practices. TRB’s Highway Capacity Manual (HCM), which serves as the basis for many popular signal timing tools, does not provide a unified LOS procedure for CS. To address this gap, this webinar will provide lessons learned and recommended practices from multiple agency representatives.

These representatives bring firsthand knowledge of the real-world challenges in trying to reconcile fundamental conflicts of interest pitting driver vs. pedestrian, mobility vs. safety, policy vs. practice, and inertia vs. change. Their experience and recommendations will help to lead and inform the next generation of efforts to evolve longstanding traffic signal timing practices into a multimodal world.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall practical traffic signal timing adjustments and approaches that have produced quantifiable multimodal performance improvements for agencies.
• Discuss the completed and ongoing research that will serve as a basis for new practices and procedures.
• Recognize the technical and political challenges, causes of institutional inertia, and obstacles to changes in signal operations practices.
• Explain specific recommendation from the expert panel regarding needed changes to signal timing tools, guidance documents, and research initiatives.

Policies: Live Webinar Registration for this webinar closes 30 minutes prior to start. The webinar recording will be made available on-demand it will have a shelf life of 60 days to register before it is archived. Participants are able to purchase and retrieve their PDH credit certificate until their access to the content expires. After the content expires and goes into archive, the PDH credit certificate opportunity is forfeited.