Florida Transportation Official Has Work Cut Out for Him

Since 2011, Billy Hattaway has been on a mission to make Florida convenient and—especially—safe for cyclists and pedestrians. It's no easy task. The state's roads are among the deadliest in the nation for people who aren't protected by two tons of steel. Streetsblog interviewed Hattaway about the progress he has made as the Florida Deptartment of Transportation's lead bike-ped official. 

The problem with Florida's roads is rooted in the state's development patterns, according to Hattaway: 

"From the mid-’60s on there was nothing but sprawl development. That was the result of things that the Federal Housing Administration put into place. There’s a lot of things that contributed to that. Certainly the focus on moving cars was a part of that. Everyone wanted the American dream. It’s a hard ship to turn. All the retail followed that pattern. Now we have these big box stores."

He says that he is approaching the challenge on two fronts: culture and design. Culture is coming along, but design will require extensive rebuilding: 

"We have to equip our engineers with a different set of tools to do design. We had sort of a one-size-fits-all approach to street design, whether it was rural or urban. For example, we used 12-foot lanes everywhere In Florida DOT, we are changing our standards. If you’re a state route going through an urban area, the standard lane width will be 10 feet. We’re in the process of changing the standard. We’ve already adopted the 11-foot lane standard and we’ll be putting in the 10-foot lane here shortly. We’re using what I call context, volume, and speed. All three things need to be looked at, and context will have a much bigger role than it’s had in the past. We’ve treated context now as if it were landscaping — making the area pretty."