Congressman Moulton Introduces “Building Safer Streets Act” to Improve Street Design Standards and Make Streets Safer
WASHINGTON,, DC – Congressman Seth Moulton has introduced the “Building Safer Streets Act,” a bill that would bring street design standards into the 21st century and make way for innovative, locally-sensitive street designs and improvements by providing government agencies from the federal to local level with resources to remove red tape and make streets safer. It will also adjust street safety-focused grants so that the money reaches small communities.
This bill is the House companion to Senator John Fetterman’s Senate version, introduced last Fall.
Congressman Moulton has long been a strong advocate for building safer, greener, and more efficient transportation infrastructure in America.
“Over 100 people die due to road traffic accidents every day in America. Our community is no stranger to this type of tragedy,” said Congressman Moulton. “Road safety should be a bipartisan effort. Never again should a pedestrian be injured or killed while crossing the street when they have a signal or simply walking down the sidewalk. We've made progress with new federal grants to help, and this bill would improve road design and federal safety reforms -- that will create safer streets for everyone.”
The Building Safer Streets Act would:
- Create a streamlined exceptions process for FHWA-recommended features that improve safety, removing the need for slow and costly exceptions requests
- Ensure FHWA guidelines and guidance distinguishes between rural, suburban, and urban needs
- Adjust the Safe Streets for All grant program to address the specific needs of small and rural communities
- Provide clarity for states and localities on how they can design streets to better accommodate users
- Direct the FHWA to help states and localities design streets that account for freight and transit networks (e.g. at-grade rail crossings, truck routes, or bus stops)
- Create a consistent process at FHWA for determining design exceptions for projects that do not include multimodal facilities (e.g. bike lanes)
- Require public documentation for FHWA decisions that expressly prohibit certain designs and limit local flexibility
- Prevent FHWA from considering higher speed limits as a contributor to value of time metrics
- Prevent FHWA from accepting rising road fatalities as an acceptable safety performance target
- Facilitate data-collection regarding updates to highway design manuals to allow best practices for designing lower speed non-freeway roadways.
Congressman Moulton will reintroduce the bill in the 119th Congress and work with stakeholders to move it forward.