UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies

Despite significant focus from engineers and planners on the issue of traffic congestion, much less consideration has been given to the converse issue – at what point is too much land allocated to paved streets? This study was prompted by concerns about the negative fiscal, environmental, equity, and safety impacts of excess pavement in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. For streets with low utilization relative to traffic volume, repurposing some of this public space could improve fiscal sustainability, environmental resiliency, and equity in transportation infrastructure, and reduce traffic violence. The analysis defines and identifies streets segments in the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) planning region with the lowest ratio of vehicle traffic to design capacity, categorizing the lowest decile as having excess pavement. The most urban counties in the region (Dallas and Tarrant) have the highest share of excess pavement. Dallas County is particularly overrepresented, with 37% of the region’s total excess lane-miles. Frontage roads and minor arterials are overrepresented in the subset of street segments with excess pavement (17% and 45.6% of excess pavement lane-miles vs. 4.9% and 38.9% of all lane-miles in the region, respectively). After incorporating street-level collision data, the majority of overbuilt and dangerous streets in the metroplex (for both fatal and non-fatal collisions) are located in Dallas County.