Long-Awaited MUTCD Update Sets New Road Safety Standards
The cover for the 11th edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.
For the first time since 2009, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has filed an updated version of its Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). The manual sets design standards for controlled intersections, road markings, highway signs, and more roadway elements. The latest changes include updates intended to improve pedestrian safety, provide enhanced access for mobility-impaired users, and add signage standards for electric vehicles.
“Uniformity and consistency in message, placement, and operation of traffic control devices have been shown to accommodate the expectancy of the road user, resulting in a more predictable response, contributing to improved road user safety overall,” says the FHWA in a summary of the new standards.
The need for pedestrian safety improvements is acute. A report from the Governor’s Highway Safety Administration found that 7,508 people were struck and killed by vehicles on American roadways in 2022, the highest figure since 1981.
The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NATCO) had harshly criticized the previous standards, saying MUTCD “has played an outsized role in the unsafe design of our streets,” by prioritizing the “fast-flowing movement of cars” over safety for other users. It called for a series of changes, and analyzed this update, finding some substantial improvements.
The primary safety improvement is updating the guidelines such that, “on urban and suburban arterials and rural main streets, the 85th-percentile speed should not be used as the sole consideration in setting speed limits.” NATCO predicts that eliminating this practice, in which speed limits are set by prevailing traffic usage, will save hundreds of lives a year on U.S. roadways. This section also gives greater discretion to engineers and municipalities to set appropriate limits in a way NATCO says “encourages using good street design to prevent speeding.”
Pedestrians receive enhanced emphasis in the new guidelines, which call for more accessible crosswalk activation buttons (also designed to be compliant for mobility-impaired users), updated crosswalk design patterns, and the use of rectangular rapid-flashing beacons Also included are provisions in which crash data must be used for traffic signal and intersection design (a key emphasis of Strong Towns’ Crash Analysis Studio).
Bicyclists should see eventual enhancements to intersection design, including guidelines for separated bike lanes, plus “two-stage turn boxes, bicycle traffic signal faces, and a new design for the U.S. Bicycle Route sign.”
The use of painted lanes had been a contentious topic for roadway engineers, so MUTCD now gives specific guidelines for the use of paint color to designate special uses (green for bicycles, red for transit).
Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn notes the limitations of the MUTCD, specifically that state and city standards may take precedence, it treats highways as tantamount to other roadways, and “doesn’t supersede engineering” discretion in its implementation.
So while there’s reason to be skeptical about the impact of this MUTCD update, the rhetoric in the supporting materials can be seen as progress.
“Just as speed limits need to reflect the road design, the road design similarly needs to reflect the desired operating speed. Road engineers should have discretion over road design.” This is a recurring Strong Towns message and cannot be emphasized enough. It also says the new provisions are “intended to ensure that practitioners consider all road users when setting a speed limit.”
To address safety in locations other than at traffic lights, “The existing pedestrian volume and delay criteria were expanded to include bicyclists, projected volumes, paths of travel, the ages and abilities of road users, and the location or frequency of public transit stops to guide practitioners on additional factors to consider in determining where to mark crosswalks away from controlled locations.”
Another encouraging semantic change is amending the term “curb extensions” to “sidewalk extensions” to better emphasize their intent.
Drivers who appreciate a DOT with a sense of humor will be discouraged by one new provision in the MUTCD. “Messages with obscure meaning, references to popular culture, that are intended to be humorous, or otherwise use nonstandard syntax for a traffic control device, not be displayed because they can be misunderstood or understood only by a limited segment of road users and, therefore, degrade the overall effectiveness of the sign as an official traffic control device.”
Under new DOT regulations, future MUTCD updates will occur in four-year cycles.
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Ben Abramson is a Staff Writer at Strong Towns. In his career as a travel journalist with The Washington Post and USA TODAY, Ben has visited many destinations that show how Americans were once world-class at building appealing, prosperous places at a human scale. He has also seen the worst of the suburban development pattern, and joined Strong Towns because of its unique way of framing the problems we can all see and intuit, and focusing on local, achievable solutions. A native of Washington, DC, Ben lives in Venice, Florida; summers in Atlantic Canada; and loves hiking, biking, kayaking, and beachcombing.