Modernizing Mitigation: A Demand-Centered Approach

  • September 24, 2018
  • COWS
  • Mayors Innovation Project

This is a guide for practice, with relevance for technically trained staff and non-technical elected officials and other stakeholders. It is intended to inform policy around mitigating the traffic impacts from land use changes, a major factor in transportation system funding and design. It argues that conventional practice, which focuses on funding increases to roadway capacity, has created many problems and suggests that entities involved in mitigations, whether state or local governments, consider demand-side measures before resorting to roadway capacity increases. The report is general enough that it should apply to practice in most U.S. places, and to state DOTs as well as local units of government, but the reader will need to consider how the program would work in specific settings.