Towards a Transport Accessibility Manual
Transport policy decision follow from application of rules and standards. To the dismay of many in the transport community, these standards often come from another time with different values, including US documents such as:
ITE's Trip Generation Manual
AASHTO's Green Book
TRB's Highway Capacity Manual
While those aren't going to change overnight, new preferences can be documented and embedded if they too become standards.
One of the key problems is what to value when investing in transport or regulating land development. Readers of this blog will likely prioritize accessibility -- the ease of reaching valued destinations. This connects transport and land use, considering both how easy it is to move and where things are located. While many planners know how to measure this, many don't, and all could benefit from standardizing application to best practice.
To that end, I think we need a working group to develop such a standard, which would clarify topics like how to measure, how to compute, how to present, and what to consider. Let me know if you are interested, and I will add you to a mailing list to discuss this. I hope there can be a meeting at TRB in DC in January.
