03-22-2024, 06:04 PM
Civil engineering is kind of bizarre in that way, compared to other engineering fields. To get your P.Eng. you have to commit to essentially continuing education for your entire career, which you think would lead to change and refresh of so-called industry best practices.
Take road widths as an example.
Back in the 1950s rural highways were examined to see what features correlated with high or lower crash rates and severity of crashes. This was, primarily just one study, IIRC, and is where the idea of broad roads, wide lanes, straight or easy curves, and long sightlines as being safer came from, and all roads were designed broader and wider and straighter than they needed to be for that safety. An 80km/h rural highway was over-designed for 100km/h, an urban arterial intended to be 50km/h was designed for 70km/h, and a 30km/h residential street for 50km/h, as that buffer supposedly made them safer yet.
By the 1970s we knew this wasn't the case for urban and suburban streets. The overly broad and wide layout just means that absent any enforcement motorists drive the design speeds rather than the posted limits because that feels safe. This makes things much more dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists.
You would think that civil engineers, being the subject matter experts in this field combined with their commitment to ongoing continuing education, would have recognized that the "industry best practices" were no such thing in the case of urban and suburban streets and that they would have been the driving force behind getting government manuals, policies, standards, and guidelines so they no longer recommended dangerous, overly broad streets but narrower ones with other design features that instead of encouraging motorists to speed instead hold them back to the intended speed limits.
But that's not what civil engineers did. For whatever reason they continued to accept and use these known faulty designs for municipal roads & streets, and have done so for decades.
When you ask the civil engineers why they didn't design it in those other ways that are known to be safer, they point you at the manual from which they copy-pasted the specifications and then throw up their hands as if that absolves them of any responsibility, professional or ethical.
Municipal councillors are partly to blame, but not as much as one might think. While the councils are decision-makers, they are not the subject matter experts. Governments at any level rely on staff to tell them what's what and to point out good from bad based on objective information and reasoning. To say what will work and what will not, with appropriate caveats when necessary, and to make sure that this is all done with accurate and up-to-date information. We cannot expect municipal councillors or other legislators to be the subject matter experts, it must be the civil engineers who drive this change and update of standards and best practices. Municipal councillors need to foster a culture among their staff so they feel able to come forward and say "Hey, we need to change how we do things because the evidence now shows that the way we are doing it now is incorrect, harmful, or even dangerous", and that the councillors will listen to them and task them with updating relevant policies and guidelines for the council to approve.
To put it harshly, road and street design manuals that give templates based on understandings known for decades to be wrong and harmful are lazy copypasta and tradition masquerading as "industry 'best' practices", and civil engineers who have let those manuals and templates persist without getting them changed or producing new ones are culpable and deserving of censure.
It should not be necessary for interested citizens to have to push for such changes with the civil engineers resisting almost every step of the way. Kitchener's Complete Streets should have been published in 1989, not 2019.
Take road widths as an example.
Back in the 1950s rural highways were examined to see what features correlated with high or lower crash rates and severity of crashes. This was, primarily just one study, IIRC, and is where the idea of broad roads, wide lanes, straight or easy curves, and long sightlines as being safer came from, and all roads were designed broader and wider and straighter than they needed to be for that safety. An 80km/h rural highway was over-designed for 100km/h, an urban arterial intended to be 50km/h was designed for 70km/h, and a 30km/h residential street for 50km/h, as that buffer supposedly made them safer yet.
By the 1970s we knew this wasn't the case for urban and suburban streets. The overly broad and wide layout just means that absent any enforcement motorists drive the design speeds rather than the posted limits because that feels safe. This makes things much more dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists.
You would think that civil engineers, being the subject matter experts in this field combined with their commitment to ongoing continuing education, would have recognized that the "industry best practices" were no such thing in the case of urban and suburban streets and that they would have been the driving force behind getting government manuals, policies, standards, and guidelines so they no longer recommended dangerous, overly broad streets but narrower ones with other design features that instead of encouraging motorists to speed instead hold them back to the intended speed limits.
But that's not what civil engineers did. For whatever reason they continued to accept and use these known faulty designs for municipal roads & streets, and have done so for decades.
When you ask the civil engineers why they didn't design it in those other ways that are known to be safer, they point you at the manual from which they copy-pasted the specifications and then throw up their hands as if that absolves them of any responsibility, professional or ethical.
Municipal councillors are partly to blame, but not as much as one might think. While the councils are decision-makers, they are not the subject matter experts. Governments at any level rely on staff to tell them what's what and to point out good from bad based on objective information and reasoning. To say what will work and what will not, with appropriate caveats when necessary, and to make sure that this is all done with accurate and up-to-date information. We cannot expect municipal councillors or other legislators to be the subject matter experts, it must be the civil engineers who drive this change and update of standards and best practices. Municipal councillors need to foster a culture among their staff so they feel able to come forward and say "Hey, we need to change how we do things because the evidence now shows that the way we are doing it now is incorrect, harmful, or even dangerous", and that the councillors will listen to them and task them with updating relevant policies and guidelines for the council to approve.
To put it harshly, road and street design manuals that give templates based on understandings known for decades to be wrong and harmful are lazy copypasta and tradition masquerading as "industry 'best' practices", and civil engineers who have let those manuals and templates persist without getting them changed or producing new ones are culpable and deserving of censure.
It should not be necessary for interested citizens to have to push for such changes with the civil engineers resisting almost every step of the way. Kitchener's Complete Streets should have been published in 1989, not 2019.