Traffic Calming Liability Issues - Institute of Transportation Engineers

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Minimizing Liability Transportation professionals are accustomed to working with guidance documents. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets and Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) have been characterized as the profession’s "bibles." These universally accepted manuals take much of the risk out of roadway design. Follow these manuals and you, the transportation professional, are unlikely to end up on the losing end of a lawsuit. Traffic calming is another matter due to the lack of any comparable guidance document. Traffic calming measures are not simple geometric features of streets, nor are they traffic control devices in the MUTCD sense (see below). Thus, the standard guidance documents are of limited use. The Europeans, British, Australians, and Canadians have design manuals, rules, and/or regulations governing traffic calming. 3 But in the U.S., there is no national design manual and may never be. There seems to be as much support among traffic managers for flexibility as for standardization. In the absence of standards, what is to immunize traffic calming programs against legal challenges? The answer is: a rational planning and implementation process. A rational approach is important in tort liability and substantive due process cases. Government’s exercise of police powers, including the power to control traffic, must not be arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable. Program features that contribute to reasonableness include: Ä documentation of traffic problems via speed measurements, traffic counts, and/or other studies; Ä consideration of alternative traffic calming measures and selection of one capable of solving documented problems; Ä installation of measures on a trial basis subject to follow-up performance evaluation; and Ä follow-up evaluation of impacts to check that measures have performed as intended. 4 Traffic calming programs structured as popularity contests, relying exclusively on neighborhood petitions and financial antes to decide what gets build, are inviting litigation. Likewise, programs relying on casual observation of traffic conditions, ad hoc contacts with neighbors, and intuitive judgments, are at legal risk. 4
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Traffic Calming Liability Issues - Institute of Transportation Engineers

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