The Minnesota board that regulates engineering licenses is abusing their power in order to stifle the free speech of Charles Marohn and retaliate against the Strong Towns movement for their advocacy on transportation, infrastructure, and engineering reform. Strong Towns has filed suit in federal court to stop the board’s actions.
Read MoreEngineers are great at building roads, but we should never ask them to build our streets.
Read MoreIn the postwar era, North American cities bulldozed whole blocks and neighborhoods for freeways, parking, and urban renewal. Old fire insurance maps can help us piece together what happened.
Read MoreTransportation engineering profession is at a crossroads. The industry has not honored its ethical obligations. That must change.
Read MoreI received a chilling response from the state licensing board. This abuse of power should concern everyone, especially my fellow engineers.
Read MoreWastewater engineers and the communities they serve may be suffering from the same delusion—that the good life will go on forever.
Read MoreA small number of engineers use the formal complaint process to silence those who want to make streets safer and reform their profession. We're not going to let that happen.
Read MoreIf your community has a huge backlog of unfunded infrastructure maintenance — and it’s the rare one that doesn’t — there are some basic and obvious steps that need to be taken.
Read MoreFor a traffic engineer, to be conservative in your design is to spend extra money building capacity you don’t really need. The spiraling costs of this approach are enormous.
Read MorePublic officials trying to make their city’s street more humane are often thwarted by the professional engineers giving them advice. If that’s your city, it’s time to make a change.
Read MorePublic officials trying to make their city’s street more humane are often thwarted by the professional engineers giving them advice. If that’s your city, it’s time to make a change.
Read MoreFour years ago, a fellow civil engineer in Minnesota tried (unsuccessfully) to challenge Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn’s license, in retaliation for Strong Towns’s criticism of infrastructure lobbying organizations. This incident still says a lot today about the need for reform in the profession.
Read MoreRemember that engineer who was fined in Oregon for saying, “I am an engineer”? He won in court. Again.
Read MoreWhen an intersection checks all the boxes on the traffic engineer’s checklist—efficient flow, reduced crash rate, check—but remains a completely hostile place for humans, and we point that out, what happens? Often, the engineers don’t even seem to hear what we’re saying.
Read MoreLearn to dispel the common myths you hear from transportation agencies with regard to safe streets. The guidance isn’t as sacred as they want you to believe.
Read MoreThe “safety features” built into our modern streets are often downright dangerous. It's time to use the forgiveness of slow speeds instead of forgiving design.
Read MoreEngineering professionals must change their approach to designing roads and setting speed limits or they will continue to be responsible for thousands of deaths on American streets every year.
Read MoreChoosing a design speed is an application of core values. We shouldn't allow the engineering profession to make this decision for us.
Read MoreThe most compelling thing we can do today to make our cities wealthier and more successful is to substantially slow automobile speeds on our streets.
Read MoreWhat sorts of streets make up a strong town? It's time to get past the standard “local, collector, arterial, freeway” hierarchy of street design.
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