How would you improve mobility?

Do you ever think about “going car-less”? After a long afternoon sitting in traffic on the highway, other transportation options besides driving start to look pretty appealing. But to make other transportation options a realistic alternative to driving, we need reliable options that link home, school, work, and other destinations. In addition, better coordination between transportation providers is critical to ensure connectivity between modes, thereby improving the efficiency of the whole trip. For example, when bus or train schedules are not coordinated with ferry landings and departures, it adds time to the trip and passengers that might otherwise make the trip using transit continue to use their cars.

The issue of improving mobility affects all of us, whether we drive or not. To ensure the timely and reliable movement of people and goods we need to address bottlenecks to relieve traffic congestion. Private sector data providers are increasingly working with transportation agencies to address a range of mobility problems, including bus arrival times, traffic flow information and real-time incident alerts.

As part of WTP 2030, the Commission has developed a preliminary list of the necessary steps and actions to initiate key strategies in the near‐term (initiate actions between 2011-2017).

The following near term actions are proposed under the Mobility goal:

• Continue to add capacity strategically for all modes, including public transportation, by completing the system improvements underway today, managing system demand, and operating the system efficiently
• Continue to reduce bottlenecks on key transportation corridors
• Continue to develop and implement intelligent transportation improvements, such as signal coordination, integrated traveler information, and customized scheduling and trip planner information
• Couple land use policy, siting decisions, demand management and transportation needs to leverage the value of existing infrastructure investments and future transportation investments, such as:

• Create incentives to concentrate jobs and housing close to transit hubs
• Make corridor improvements holistically, including local multimodal street connectivity improvements that support bicycle, pedestrian, car, and truck travel to and from the corridor
• Site government facilities, such as schools or social services offices, to be accessible by travel modes that meet the needs of the users

• Improve public transportation service to connect rural areas and tribal communities to job centers, medical and social services, and higher education

Is this the right list? Is anything missing? What are the top priorities with respect to actions to promote mobility from your point of view?

In addition to leaving comments on this blog, we encourage you to use the online public input tool to tell us about the transportation issues and priorities that are important to you.

You can also read the WTP plan and related documents online.