What's going on at DDOT? Is Urban Design and Transportation Planning being de-emphasized?

I've wondered if there is some tension in DC's Department of Transportation since Dan Tangherlini moved over to WMATA. One big "change" that Dan made in the department was an attempt to bring a more balanced focus on multiple modes of transport, rather than being solely concerned about roads and traffic management. This has always been somewhat controversial within the department, because traditionally these departments are more or less "highway departments" and have focused on road building and automobility-centricity for decades.

The Transportation and Policy and Planning Administration branch took on a mobility, "levels of quality" focus on multiple modes, balancing other forms of mobility (pedestrians, bicycles, car sharing, transit, etc.) with the car, and taking an urban design-placemaking focus on streetscape plans. And the department hired Ward Transportation Planners, who were/are supposed to deal with broader issues, not just when people want stop signs on their block...

Remember back in the day of the Soviet Union, when Soviet watchers paid attention to whether or not people were pictured in photos in the Soviet newspapers to determine who was in and who was out?

Well, I noticed a redesign of the DDOT website today. Before, at the bottom of the middle section of the initial page, listing the major services and information sections, the last line used to list Transportation Plans and Studies.

DDOT website screenshot, 3/10/2005, via the Internet Wayback Machine.


Now that line isn't there on the front page.

To find Transportation Plans and Studies you have to click on Street Construction and Improvements.

While it's not improbable that the website was designed to simplify it--going from four columns to three--Street Construction is a lot different than urban design-oriented "Transportation Planning."

To my way of thinking, everything the department does should be flowing from Transportation Plans and Studies. From an information architecture standpoint, Street Construction and Improvements should be listed after Transportation Planning, not before. If you look at other pages in the Internet Archive, in early 2001, the DDOT website did not list Transportation Planning. It did list Transportation Planning starting in later 2001 through earlier this year.

This does not bode well.

Plus, other transportation modes have been organized under "Environment-Friendly Programs."

I think I would organize a website around the framework of a Master Transportation plan, with some additions:

Transportation Planning and Transportation Demand Management
-- city-wide
-- neighborhood/district/sector level
- Modes
- Urban Design and Infrastructure
- User Services

Alternatively, a transportation policy-development-infrastructure website could be developed separately from a transportation user-oriented website.

Index Keywords: mobility; urban-design-placemaking