Massachusetts Department of Transportation Complete Streets Pedestrian and Bicycle Level of Service Study

The 2010 update of the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM 2010) Urban Street Level of Service (1) is currently the primary resource for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) to evaluate multimodal level of service (LOS) for pedestrians and bicyclists. VHB assisted MassDOT in conducting a study to understand the state of the practice for multimodal transportation analysis, identify and analyze the quality of various multimodal LOS evaluation tools, and improve MassDOT’s confidence in the quality of tools to simply and reliably provide results that are meaningful to decision makers. The study first task involved a review of the structure and limitations of the HCM 2010 Urban Street LOS methodologies using a typical roadway segment cross-section and evaluating a variety of multimodal facility projects for the segment. The second task involved evaluation and comparison of LOS results using several alternative multimodal LOS tools to evaluate existing and future conditions on five case-study roadway corridors identified by MassDOT for multimodal facility improvement projects. The results of the study suggest that the HCM 2010 Pedestrian and Bicycle LOS methodologies contain significant limitations for practitioners, agencies, and officials responsible for making decisions about multimodal facilities. Alternative tools with streamlined methodologies may be better suited to assess pedestrian and bicycle operations on MassDOT roadways.