After years of conflict and controversy, influential nationwide MUTCD street design manual finally released with many improvements | League of American Bicyclists

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Way back in December 2020, the Federal Highway Administration released its first proposal for an update to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) since 2009. Now, almost exactly three years later, the 11th edition of the MUTCD is finally published.

The League of American Bicyclists has long understood the importance of the MUTCD. It is a document that provides the building blocks used throughout the United States to sign, stripe, and signal streets so that people biking, walking, and driving have clear indications of how they are expected to interact no matter where they are in our nation. . . .

This edition of the MUTCD started on a rocky foundation. The first proposal had a drafting error that could be read to ban bicyclists. . . .

Other sections of the proposed MUTCD had issues too. We cataloged and commented on them extensively, ultimately submitting over 200 itemized comments as an organization and over 2,000 comments from our supporters.

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After years of conflict and controversy, influential nationwide MUTCD street design manual finally released with many improvements | League of American Bicyclists

MoBikeFed comment: Like the League and hundreds of organizations across the country, MoBikeFed also realized the importance of the MUTCD and the dysfunctional direction the planned 2020 MUTCD was taking.

It was letters and phone calls from hundreds of organizations like ours, and many thousands of individuals, that stopped the publication of the manual and led to the improvements in the manual that has now been released.

Continuing that process, we hope to see even more improvements in the next edition of the MUTCD that is due in just a few years.

This seems like an arcane corner of the traffic engineering and urban design world. But the MUTCD - updated by a very slow, bureaucratic process - has literally been stuck in the 1960s and 1970s-era of road design for many decades.

And if a design is not in the MUTCD - well, many local and state road and highway departments won't even consider it.

So even the moderate changes that have been made in the new MUTCD are going to make a really major impact - and we should see more positive change as the MUTCD update schedule is accelerated due to requirements in the recently passed Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.