Since 1987, the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition has acted as the voice for bicyclists and has advocated for safer streets and hundreds of miles of bike paths, lanes, and trails all across the San Diego region. Today, SDCBC has joined Circulate San Diego, beautifulPB, and Bike San Diego in a national effort calling on the Federal Highway Administration to rewrite the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) in a manner that supports safe systems design, so advocates and jurisdictions alike can help build safer streets for all roadway users.
The MUTCD is a document of federal regulations governing the design of every roadway in the United States, requiring that all traffic signs, surface markings, and signals legally conform to national standards. The current iteration bestows serious barriers for members of the Bicycle Coalition and the greater bicycling community.
Our high national rates of traffic violence necessitate the need for a rewrite of a document that was intended to improve roadway safety. The proposed amendment ignores the needs of cyclists and pedestrians and fails to consider the diverse needs of vulnerable populations that utilize our streets: children, older adults, and those with disabilities. There is also a strong emphasis on autonomous vehicles and advancing the inequities associated with increasing uniformity. This is at odds with the goals of many communities and will undercut the Biden Administration’s efforts to address climate change and address inequities in our transportation system.
The San Diego County Bicycle Coalition thanks our community partners for joining this effort in calling on the Federal Highway Administration to rewrite the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD).
