What drew me to transportation planning and engineering has always been a desire to keep people safe on our streets and rethink how we move through our rapidly growing communities. With safety for all road users as the foundation, my passion lies in bridging the two practices to effectively and efficiently create safer streets.

This cannot be accomplished without the collective, altruistic synergy I have found at DRMP, where we integrate safety into everything we do through our Multimodal Transportation Safety services. Multimodal transportation is the availability of multiple convenient, safe, and competitive modes of transport that connect people to their everyday destinations. Our service starts with planning and project development and then carries through design, construction, and administration. Our team looks beyond traditional traffic data to understand how people move around in their communities. We ask questions such as: What choices do people have to get to work, school, or recreation? Are their options connected and accessible? Do they feel safe walking or biking in their neighborhoods? The answers to those questions influence how we plan and design projects that support mobility and livability.

What enables DRMP to deliver safety projects and initiatives in an efficient and effective manner hinges on these core elements:

• We are a truly comprehensive transportation planning and engineering firm: from visioning to construction, including project development, surveying and mapping, full design, construction, and construction inspection engineering (CEI) services. This means we serve as a one-stop shop for imagining, articulating, and implementing infrastructure assets, creating a holistically safer transportation system.
• We have been serving our communities for decades and are familiar with the needs, challenges, and opportunities of each community we serve. Each community has a story to tell, and we help elevate each story with multimodal safety as a central theme.
• We serve agencies at all levels of government: departments of transportation (DOTs), cities, counties, and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), as well as private clients. Through this, we’ve fostered partnerships and acquired multi-agency skillsets that allow us to help advance safer infrastructure projects.

Safety and Community Voices

Effective safety planning anticipates risks and designs systems that protect people rather than relying on reactive measures after crashes occur. That’s the essence of the Safe System Approach: acknowledging that humans are fallible but that our streets don’t have to be unforgiving.

We plan and design streets with context and intention, knowing that transportation safety and access differ in communities.  By evaluating data through a lane use and demographic lens, we can pinpoint where improvements are needed most, whether that means safer routes for children walking to school, better access to transit for workers, or more complete streets for aging populations.

Community engagement is central to this process. It is when you listen to the community’s story, needs, challenges, and what makes their place of living in a “community” to them and then translate that into actionable strategies. This requires intentional, meaningful outreach; and tactful, humanizing, and authentic capturing into an infrastructure investment.

NE Mizner Blvd. at NE 2nd Street “Quick Build” Intersection Design

One example of DRMP’s commitment to creating safer streets is the NE Mizner Boulevard and NE 2nd Street protected intersection project in Boca Raton, Fla., completed with our Trilon partner firm, Alta Planning + Design. The City asked us to evaluate this location because it had a high number of crashes, despite already having bike lanes. Those lanes were not protected or buffered from traffic, and the intersection served a mix of residential, commercial, and truck activity. It was a challenge to balance all those needs in a confined space.

The DRMP/Alta team collaborated with a European vendor, ZICLA, that specializes in temporary to semi-permanent road safety treatments, to develop a quick-build concept for the protected intersection. We added curb extensions and designated paths for pedestrians and cyclists, without impeding vehicles. The design installation was celebrated by City Council members and residents.

Given that this is the first protected intersection in the City, the multimodally safer design serves as a successful example of implementing infrastructure that is safer and more forgiving for everyone.

Lake County, Fla., Safety Action Plan

DRMP is also helping Lake County, Fla., plan for safer roadways through its Safety Action Plan, which our firm is developing in partnership with our Trilon partners, Alta Planning + Design and CPH. Lake County is one of the fastest-growing areas in the Central Florida region, and with that growth comes increased pressure on its road network. Our team began by analyzing crash data to identify key trends and developing crash profiles to guide the County’s next steps.

The plan will help establish a foundation for policy, design, and programmatic recommendations that make the transportation system safer and more sustainable. We also helped the County apply for a federal Safe Streets for All (SS4A) supplemental grant to fund demonstration projects and additional analysis.

The County is aiming to use the Safety Action Plan as a blueprint that will help identify, prioritize, and implement life-saving safety countermeasures across the area.

Every project is an opportunity to make streets safer, to give people choices in how they travel, and to enhance the connection between mobility and quality of life. When we design with safety in mind, we create communities where everyone, no matter how they get around, can move confidently and arrive safely.