Houston’s City Mobility Planning Process: Implementing Context Sensitive Solutions
In the City of Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city, City Mobility Planning (CMP) is a new transportation planning process for long-term planning of major thoroughfares, freeways and for street and traffic improvements prioritization in the Capital Improvement Plan. The CMP is the framework for transportation planning of the City’s street network. In collaboration with Houston-Galveston Area Council, City’s Public Works & Engineering Department and Planning & Development Department the CMP developed new tools and processes to determine project priority. In the CMP, a new multi-modal street design approach is based on the best practices in Context Sensitive Solutions. The Office of the City Engineer included optional street corridors in multi-modal classification of Boulevards, Avenues, and Streets in Infrastructure Design Manual. The new City Mobility Planning travel demand model is an important tool to forecast traffic conditions in the future horizons. Traffic congestion on thoroughfares in the City and extra territorial jurisdiction (ETJ) are projected to be serious and severe (LOS F) on many thoroughfares by the year 2035. The authors projections show: 67% increase in work trips; 250% increase in work travel time; and 46% LOS F congestion on thoroughfares in the City and the ETJ. The new mobility study process with mobility toolbox will identify multi-modal solutions for an area or a corridor which allows for consistent planned approach to improvements throughout the City.
Chong, Raymond
Willhite, Joe
Burchett, Garrett David
TRT Terms: City planning; Context sensitive design; Level of service; Mobility; Multimodal transportation; Planning and design; Systems analysis; Traffic congestion; Transportation planning
Identifier Terms: Houston-Galveston Area Council