Top 10 Characteristics of a Bad Traffic Study Reviewer

Having prepared traffic studies for over 40 years now from coast-to-coast-to-coast-to-coast (if you include the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes - as you should), I’m still a little surprised by how inept most traffic study reviewers are.?? “Those who can - do, those who can’t - teach” should, for the traffic engineering profession, probably be changed to: “Those who can - do, those who can’t - review”.

I know what you’re thinking; Buckholz is going to criticize those individuals who review his work and can approve or disapprove it??? Is he crazy??? They’re all going to be miffed at him and he won’t get anything approved.? Too late for that; they’re already miffed at me and – probably due to the combination of pressure from my clients and my innate ability to go over their heads and make them look bad to their bosses – I still eventually get the vast majority of my studies approved.

Anyway, the world is coming to an end in 2033 and I pretty much have all the money I need to fuel my Adderall addiction so, what the hell, here goes:

1.)??? ?They’re not really a traffic engineer.?? Oh, they may be an engineer all right, and they may have the world “traffic” somewhere in their title (director of traffic operations, senior traffic manager, etc.) but most of their education and training is in drainage or land use planning or roadway engineering or some other loosely related field and they got moved over into traffic engineering because there was an agency job opening.? They often only know the terminology of traffic engineering and really have no working feel for what is important in a traffic study and what isn’t.?? And worse yet, some of them are – get this – planners!?? (I once had a planner insist that peak hour factors are not an important item and that a value of ONE should be used.? Now, if you don’t know what a peak hour factor is and why ONE is a bad default value then quit reading this article right now – it’s not for you.? Unless you are a big wig that makes decisions on who should be reviewing traffic studies and how they should do it.? In that case, please read on.)

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2.)??? They have no practical feel for traffic operations.? ??There are some trained traffic engineers that have spent their entire professional career in the office with their head in a software program and they have no gut feel for what does and does not work when it comes to either traffic flow or traffic access.?? They can’t anticipate AT ALL what motorists might do when faced with a certain traffic control arrangement. ?That ignorance comes from not spending enough time watching motorists in their natural habitat!? They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well a site visit is worth a thousand pictures.? I still participate in the traffic counts for most of my traffic studies because it gives me a chance to WATCH what is going on.? Traffic flow is complex and software models are abstractions of that complexity.? Sometimes what is not accounted for by the models bites you in the butt.? Put me in a room and let me discuss a challenging project with a professed traffic engineer for 15 minutes and I can pretty much tell you if they do or don’t have a working knowledge of practical traffic flow principles.? Most of them don’t.?

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3.)??? They don’t understand traffic signal operation.? For most traffic studies in urban and suburban areas intersection operation is the critical item; and most key intersections are signalized.? If you don’t understand how modern actuated traffic signals operate then you don’t understand how to properly review and evaluate a Synchro signalized intersection report or a Highway Capacity Software operational methodology report.?? I almost never get any comments on these analyses and it’s not because there are no items worth discussing; it’s because the reviewer has no idea what they are looking at!

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4.)??? They use a checklist.? Checklists are great if you’re flying an airplane, so you don’t forget to put the flaps down, but if you have such little command of the traffic engineering profession that you need to rely on some checklist to conduct a traffic study review then you probably need to find some other profession.? “We see you didn’t calculate the internal trip-making for this development as required by checklist step 4c.? Please resubmit.”?? But it’s a single-family residential development.? I said it’s single-family residential and the trip generation formulas already take into account … oh forget it.??

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5.)??? They rely too much on agency “requirements”.?? Agency requirements (which should be called guidelines) in and of themselves are fine but an engineer must know when it does more harm than good to follow one.? I often get the comment that some full median opening is “too close to another median opening and violates our access management requirements”.?? Well, the side street movements at this intersection are expected to operate at level of service C during both weekday peak hours under Build conditions with minimal queueing.? And if we put in a directional median opening and force everybody who wants to turn left to make a right turn and then a U-turn we are going to force them to make that U-turn at the next intersection - which happens to be a congested signalized intersection that operates at level of service F during both peak hours.? “Sorry Mr. Buckholz, those are our requirements.”?? I see.? So much for engineering.?

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6.)??? They want to do your engineering for you.?? Engineers routinely exercise engineering judgment and not everyone has the same quality of engineering judgment.? Your judgment is probably going to be worse than mine since I’ve been doing this for a long time - so show a little respect and, when it comes to engineering judgment, ask a question before you level a criticism or direct a change.?? “The trip distribution relative to the shopping center driveways is not acceptable.? Assign 60% of the traffic to the east driveway and 40% to the west driveway.” ??If you want to make arbitrary decisions like these without any discussion, then maybe YOU should sign and seal the damn study.?

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7.)??? They drank the Jim Jones Koolaid on some topic.?? As traffic engineers we have a lot of different tools at our disposal to solve a given access or traffic flow problem and those tools have expanded over the years with alternative intersection designs and roundabouts and traffic calming schemes and complete street layouts all now available for our use.? Each one has its place, and the competent traffic engineer knows where each one has a reasonable chance of working.? “We like roundabouts here in Podunk County so we would really like to replace that high volume signalized intersection with a 3-lane roundabout.”??? Uhhhhhh, but the analysis shows a 95th percentile peak hour queue length of 30 cars on the west approach with a roundabout – and that’s assuming that the motorists of PoDunk County understand the lane discipline required to safely and efficiently negotiate a three-lane roundabout (which almost nobody in the US does).? “Sorry Mr. Buckholz, we like roundabouts.? They’re safer and more efficient than signals you know.”???

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8.)??? They have no policy on what the design period should be.? Here’s one place where an agency policy is important, yet most agencies are silent on the subject.? Do you want me to analyze the average day of the year?? The average day of the peak season?? Weekday AM and PM peak hour?? Maybe the Saturday peak hour for a shopping or tourist area??? Should I design for the opening year of the development?? Five years later??? You can have big differences in the results of a study depending on the design period.?

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9.)??? They don’t call me to discuss the results.? I mean, crap, I worked hard on the study and I have lots of insight into the situation and -since I’m a traffic engineering savant - maybe you just might want to pick my brain on what the most important issues are.? We could discuss the various design trade-offs.? I get a call maybe one out of every 20 traffic studies that I do and it’s usually to inform me of some way that I have violated one of their requirements – not to discuss solutions.? It’s really very sad.? ??I am of the opinion that good access is good access and what works for the developer usually works for the reviewing agency.? But some developers are short-sighted and will do anything to save a dollar.?? I may have a great idea for improved access to the site but if the developer shoots it down then it never gets analyzed.? It might be worth a direct call to me (not a video conference with 12 participants) to pick my brain on how traffic access might be improved.

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10.)?? They don’t implement the recommendations! ??After all that work the project gets built and the driveways have one egress lane instead of the recommended two.?? And the exclusive right turn lane that easily met the warrants is not there.?? And they put in an all-way stop instead of the recommended roundabout.? I give up.??

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