![]() ![]() We’re so constrained by our geography, but people are biking and really allowing our economy to grow by taking the bus. In the last ten years, we’ve grown by 11%, but people are driving less and traffic volumes have decreased in that time by 10%. There’s amazing opportunity, and our population is growing by leaps and bounds. It’s an incredible time to be in Seattle. An opportunity came up at Seattle’s Department of Transportation, so I applied, and I am very fortunate to be here. It was a great city to work for, but my heart was in Seattle. It had a comprehensive understanding of how land use, water, and transit service providers can work together. I wound up working for a smaller city, the City of Everett, as a traffic engineer. I got a masters degree in public administration, but I quickly realized that the agency that I was working for did not include influencing policy in its mission in any way. I was interested in how to influence policymakers to make better decisions. Solving the congestion problem made it worse because it allowed more development to occur. I saw the consequences of making things more efficient. The agency was cutting-edge in how the organization functioned and the things that they did with the existing infrastructure, but the mission was really about moving vehicles on highways and interstates. Most of my career was working at the state Department of Transportation. How did you first start to use Complete Streets approaches? I wanted to do what I could to improve our ability to function as a society and to be really thoughtful about our impact to the environment. I think every student that was in his class was infected by his enthusiasm. I was primarily interested in civil engineering, and interested in transportation, but then I had this amazing professor, Fred Mannering, who just loved the topic. My college counselor took me downtown to show me what a big city looks like, and I was just blown away by the vibrancy, density, and the huge skyscrapers. I grew up in a suburban area of Seattle and Tacoma, and went to college at the University of Washington, which is in a very urban area. National Complete Streets Coalition: Tell us a little bit about yourself, what drew you to this work? Chang spoke with the National Complete Streets Coalition about a few of the Seattle Department of Transportation’s signature projects, the inspiration for his work, and what he’s learned in 25 years of traffic engineering. But that’s what Seattle traffic engineer Dongho Chang did, commending for bringing attention to the safety issue - and then installing a more permanent treatment soon after. When activists painted a guerrilla bike lane in Seattle, they didn’t expect a traffic engineer to thank them. Photo via the Green Lane Project on Facebook. Seattle’s chief road engineer Dongho Chang, next to Broadway’s new protected bike lane. An interview with Dongho Chang, Complete Streets engineer ![]()
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