Meet the Man on a Mission to Make Florida Walkable and Bikeable

Great article about the sea change happening at the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). This new approach will eventually lead to a different, more pedestrian friendly, lower-speed Dixie Hwy. through Lake Worth. I understand that the initial planning stages are underway. The person being interviewed is Billy Hattaway with FDOT. Click title for link to article. Here is part of it:

What are you trying to do to turn the ship?
     In my experience doing this work, on the transportation side 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.
     But we need communities to work with us. We’re not going to do 10-foot lanes where the buildings are set back 500 feet from the road and there are huge surface parking lots.