This disagreement is basic AF -

You see values, don't fully understand the process behind them, and argue it's inadequate and therefore worthy of overthrowing.

I see values, don't fully understand the process behind them, and argue that the guys who came up with the values put hella more work into those values than the people arguing they're bullshit.

Yet I'm the "arrogant engineer." Dude.

And thus the plan becomes to put a road somewhere because it's not disallowed, not necessarily because it is the best thing to do.

That is literally grad-student you arguing that you know better than the law.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that you do. Let's assume you are God's Gift to Urban Planning. Great. Document the shortcomings of the current approach. Document the improvements your new approach brings. Convince legislators and advocates to back your approach. Change the law. Make lives better for everyone. Save the world. Bring about a bright new tomorrow. After all, that's what everyone else tried to do, and that's why it's so goddamn awful to work with the process now - the rules on the ground are the ones that every interest of note was able to be the least mutually dissatisfied with.

I left architectural consulting before AV systems moved from section 16xxx of the CSI spec to section 07xxx of the CSI spec. I started architectural consulting while the move was halfway wargamed. That's ten years to change an esoteric behavior that impacts consumers not a whit, contractors just barely and required my company to change all their templates. The reason for the change? The invention of the Internet changed the definition of "technology" for building construction. You're just now hearing about CSI spec and know down to your very bones that this arcane and useless change will never impact your life a whit - but it was the subject of discussion, working groups, meetings and panels at two conventions a year, every year, that hosted tens of thousands of people and it affected them.

You have a better idea where roads go?

I don't think "my numbers are a good enough substitute for the truth" I know that plenty of visionaries died on that hill to make those numbers stand in, and I know that you're rejecting them not because they're bad, but because you think you know better.

Here's the arrogant engineer in me: People always think they know better. Generally, the less insight a person has into the world around him the greater changes he thinks need to be affected to improve things. Engineering is the act of putting the rubber to the road and yeah - the guys that make their living laying out roads know more about it than the guys that make their living driving on them... we won't even get into the people who merely commute.

QUALITATIVE MEASURES CHANGE. There was a time when qualitatively, this was a beautiful building:

Quantitatively, the e-rating of its windows, the STC of its walls and the earthquake resilience didn't change from the minute it opened until the minute the Nisqually quake forced a retrofit.

I think qualitative measures are important... but I also think there isn't a GIS application or platform in the world capable of doing any qualitative measurement whatsoever. I know that qualitative measurements will have changed while you're busy compiling them but quantitative measurements are there forever. Even the change in quantitative measurement is a quantitative measurement in and of itself while the change in a qualitative measurement is not just expected, it's anticipated. Ten years ago everyone was super-pissed about all the piss yellow sodium lighting everywhere so we changed it all out for LEDs. Now everyone's super-pissed about all the bluish-white LEDs - so pissed that an AMA warning about melatonin has newspapers suggesting fucking street lights give you cancer.

Objectively? This many foot candles decreases accidents this much and even an fc measure is integrative and nobody's willing to pay for it. So now we're all legislating. And something will probably come from it. But the same people harshing on LED streetlights? They're the ones who harsh on all night lighting... and qualitatively they have utter disdain for quantitative data.