US Highway Agency Drops Bike Lane and Speed Guidance – A Cautionary Tale for UK Local Authorities

The US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has quietly removed five safety countermeasures from its official Proven Safety Countermeasures list, cutting it from 28 to 23 items. Bike lanes and road diets were dropped from the pedestrian section, while the entire Speed Management category – all three items – was erased. The same week, the agency redirected $1.73 billion away from what the US Transportation Secretary called “DEI bike lanes”, wrapped in rhetoric about roads being “hostile to cars”.

For London readers, the move may seem distant. But the episode exposes a structural question that applies equally to UK street safety: what happens when local projects are built on borrowed authority from a higher level of government? The Strong Towns analysis argues that any street safety project that depends on a federal webpage or a national guidance document for its justification is standing on weak ground.

What was cut and what survived

The FHWA’s original list of Proven Safety Countermeasures had been a widely cited reference for city engineers across the US. It included infrastructure and behavioural measures with demonstrated crash-reduction benefits. The removals break down as follows:

The surviving measures are those that assume vehicles will continue moving at speed. The agency kept barriers and treatments designed to protect car occupants from roadside hazards, while discarding measures meant to slow drivers down. The Strong Towns writer notes that this is an honest self-description: the FHWA is a highway agency, and highways are built for throughput at speed. Asking a highway agency to prioritise speed reduction, they argue, is like asking an all-you-can-eat buffet to help with weight loss.

The stroad problem and the division of labour

A central point in the analysis is the concept of the “stroad” – a ruinous hybrid: five lanes wide, a 45 mph speed limit, lined with driveways, storefronts, bus stops and pedestrians. It fails at both jobs: too slow to move cars efficiently, too fast to function as a place. The writer contrasts a busy downtown street (West Avenue in Northwest Arkansas) with the stroad along Highway 71B, where fatalities are far higher.

The Dutch approach, cited approvingly, insists that a road does one thing: a highway moves vehicles at speed without driveways or crosswalks; a neighbourhood street is built for people. There is no in-between where functions mix.

For London, the stroad is not an unfamiliar problem. Major roads such as the A406 North Circular, the A23 through Streatham, or parts of the A10 combine high traffic volumes with bus stops, cycle lanes and pedestrian crossings. They are managed by TfL (Transport for London) and boroughs, not a federal agency. But the underlying question remains: does the organisation responsible for moving traffic also have the incentive to calm it?

Borrowed authority and the UK context

The Strong Towns piece describes how some US city engineers used the FHWA list as “institutional cover” when facing resident complaints about road-narrowing projects. “It wasn’t my idea – the federal safety countermeasures made me do it,” was the implicit defence. When that cover disappears, projects that were justified by central guidance become vulnerable.

In the UK, a similar dynamic may exist. Local transport planners and borough engineers often cite guidance from the Department for Transport – such as Manual for Streets, Local Transport Notes, or the National Cycle Network design standards – to defend protected cycle lanes, road reallocation or speed reduction schemes. If a future government or agency withdrew or weakened such guidance, projects without strong local crash data or public support could face political attack.

The analysis argues that projects relying on borrowed authority are fragile. A stronger foundation would be local data – “the three people hit on that corridor last year” – and a local coalition that does not depend on a distant central sign-off.

What happens next for London street design?

The FHWA move is a US story, but it arrives at a time when London is also debating the balance between central and local control over street design. TfL sets standards for the red route network and major roads, while boroughs control most local streets. The recent controversy around Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and the government’s backing away from some active travel schemes shows that central guidance can shift with the political wind.

The Strong Towns writer acknowledges that the FHWA’s actions do have real consequences. Some US state DOTs are likely to kill projects that would have survived under the previous guidance. The same could happen in the UK if the Department for Transport were to retreat from its current support for cycle infrastructure and speed reduction.

The key lesson, the author suggests, is that communities should not outsource their safety case to a central authority. “The federal government just informed all of us, by omission,” the piece concludes, that it is in the highway business. For London, the equivalent might be: don’t assume TfL or the DfT will always provide cover for lane reductions or 20 mph zones. Build the local evidence and the local political will.

Source: Strong Towns, “If a Highway Agency Stops Pretending to Care About Streets, Does It Make a Sound?”, https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2026-7-24-if-a-highway-agency-stops-pretending-to-care-about-streets-does-it-make-a-sound