Dallas' First-Ever Strategic Mobility Plan Ties Land Use to New Transportation Ideas

The city of Dallas recently released the draft of its first-ever five-year Strategic Mobility Plan, Connect Dallas. The draft culminates two years of work by city officials, the Dallas Department of Transportation, residents, and stakeholders.

According to the draft document [pdf], Connect Dallas is intended to further the city's sustainability, safety, equity, housing, and economic goals.

The following are among the specific measures targeted by the plan include new support for transit initiatives and new attention to the connections between transportation outcomes and land use regulations:

• Reform the development review process to support multi-modal transportation by right-sizing parking requirements, shifting impact analysis from Level of Service to Vehicle Miles Traveled, among other actions.
• Streamline project delivery processes for all transportation programs, like the bike program, vision zero, and ADA conformity.
• Create a Transit Support Program to coordinate with various city of Dallas departments to help streamline coordination on transit initiatives, and advance improvements to transit speed, reliability, and access.
• Establish a citywide Mobility Hub framework to enhance access to existing transit service and identify capital investment needs to support increasing transit ridership.
• Update the Thoroughfare Plan and the Bike Plan to identify existing roadway and bicycle facility needs.
• Adopt a Vision Zero Action plan.
• Develop a freight master plan that updates designated truck routes based on changes to land use, sets policy on the design of roadways along truck routes and where truck routes intersect with pedestrian and bicycle routes, and identifies future infrastructure investments and improvements needed to support efficient freight movement, increase safety, and address freight-related issues.
• Create a Mobility Management Working Group within the Department of Transportation to begin to manage the city's curbside mobility assets.
• Implement a staff-wide transportation demand management system for city employees as a model for external replication.

One of the document's driving principles is to align the city's land use goals, set to be revised in the city's ForwardDallas! comprehensive plan update, underway in 2021 and 2022. ForwardDallas! was last updated in 2006. 

The 100-page draft plan is open for public comment until February 5, 2021.