Urban Transportation Commission calls on city to narrow traffic lanes
Research supports the Urban Transportation Commission’s proposal for narrower highways in Austin.
During the body’s regular meeting on July 1, commissioners unanimously supported a motion suggesting that the city implement a 1- to 2-foot smaller standard for traffic lanes in several of the city’s larger streets and roads.
The current Austin traffic lane standard, which is based on the municipal code’s Transportation Criteria Manual, stipulates that so-called Level 3 and Level 4 roadways—two types of roads that include thoroughfares like Lamar Boulevard or South Congress—must have a width of 11 to 12.5 feet.
Commissioner Spencer Schumacher submitted a resolution that would reduce those figures to 10 feet for regular lanes and 9 feet for limited lanes, with a higher restriction of 11 feet for lanes that are frequently utilized by buses, trucks, and other heavy vehicles.
Austin is one of four Texas towns that are members of the National Association of City Transportation Officials, a group of local transportation departments that collaborate to develop standards and carry out research. This would put Austin more in line with their recommendations. Schumacher contended that it might help increase street safety in Austin.
He referenced a Johns Hopkins study from 2023, which was conducted as part of the school’s Bloomberg American Health Initiative. The study indicated that lanes that were about 12 feet wide had a higher crash rate than lanes that were between 9 and 10 feet wide.
According to Schumacher, the reason for this is that while 12 feet is large enough to start experiencing extremely high speeds, it is not quite wide enough to have what we would call forgiving infrastructure. In actuality, they discovered that 12-foot lanes are the riskiest choice, particularly for arterial routes.
It’s important to remember that the city government is not required to follow the Urban Transportation Commission’s recommendations, and any code modifications that may result from the resolution would probably still take years to transform Austin’s streets through planned repaving and repainting, road diets, and minor infrastructure projects. However, that does not preclude it from occurring.
Whether they like or dislike wide-open lanes, Austinites will have to wait and see if the city adopts the concept for the time being.
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