Replete Complete Streets
Six key drivers to navigate client expectations and steer them toward complete streets.
Read on if you are about to embark on or are already knee deep in a complete streets effort.
Always happy to discuss further.
—Michael King
1. Why aren’t your streets complete already?
Are you frustrated with the pace of or lack of progress with complete streets in your community? Try a counterfactual: why aren’t your streets complete already? Perhaps your community has had a complete streets policy for a number of years. There are over 1700 CS efforts in Canada and the US. Does yours have teeth, or is it a proclamation sans prescription? Do the people doing the design work know about said policy? We have found that policies need metrics, and those need to be integrated into everyday practice.
Complete street design is a known subject. In the past 26 years no less than the following have been published. They posess a panoply of progressive designs. Is your staff reading them? We have found that professional development (often through associations such as APBP, CNU, and ITE) help to ensure everyone is up to speed.
Neighborhood Street Design Guidelines, Institute of Transportation Engineers, 2003.
Urban Street Design Guide, National Association of City Transportation Officials, 2013.
Most agencies have some version of a project delivery process. This is the order by which public works are delivered. The PDP usually includes scoping, funding, planning, design, engineering, construction, and maintenance. Often the PDP can be linear – without feedback loops. In this case, a decision made at the funding stage can unintentionally affect the design. Or a fundamental maintenance concern (think snow removal) is overlooked until it is too late to accommodate.
2. Remember the paths
Let us consider two towns. The first has a rectilinear gridiron. There are buildings and streets. Maybe a few alleys, but essentially people get around via the streets. All streets in this community should be complete.
Community #2 has streets, but also a robust network of paths. Radburn, New Jersey has an alternating grid of streets and paths. Phoenix, Arizona has larger blocks with numerous mid-block passageways. Brampton, Ontario has superblocks interspliced with paths and parkways. Question: must these paths be complete?
Yes. It is just as important to invest in the path system as the street system. This may perplex some – streets are seen by some as serious and paths frivolous. Wrong. Paths are integral elements to the mobility network. I would much rather cycle to school on a path than a road. We need to ensure paths are secure, continuous, maintained, and wide enough.
Most importantly, we need to focus on path-street junctions. Too often I have witnessed paths that simply end at the road, foot bridges in disrepair, poorly lit underpasses, traffic signals which require cyclists to push a button and wait an inordinately long time, and multiple stop and dismount signs. Often this is due to intra-agency, inter-agency, or inter-jurisdictional coordination, or lack thereof. Or a misguided belief that cyclists enjoy stopping and dismounting - which they rarely do. We need to ensure that people on paths can cross streets safely and conveniently – just as if they were driving.
I recommend your complete streets program tackle this issue. One of my project’s sole focus was to identify ways to cross the street at all of a city’s bus stops. Sometimes it is the little things.
Excellent path crossing in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
Poor path crossing in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA. Cyclists are meant to stop and dismount while drivers may continue unabated.
Grid in downtown Portland, Oregon. 264’ / 80m spacing. Nine intersections in this four block sample.
Grid in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. 380’ / 116m spacing. Six intersections, five crossing, three path junctions in this four block sample.
3. Metrics, not checklists
The classic image of a “complete street” is one replete with sidewalks, bike lanes, crosswalks, a median, and trees. It looks complete, so it must be. Never mind that it could be a seven lane 45 mph mini-highway, as long as it ticks off all the “complete street” boxes.
What about shared streets, open streets, woonerven, narrow streets without sidewalks, verkehrsberuhigungzonen, curbless streets? A shared street typically has no markings at all – is it complete? Here are some metrics:
Would you let your 8-year-old walk home from school?
Can your elderly neighbor cross the street to visit friends?
Would you feel comfortable dining in a streetery?
I consider a street complete based on its performance, irrespective of how it looks. It is important to distinguish this nuance. A street without a bike lane is not necessarily incomplete. A street with crosswalks and traffic signals is not necessarily complete. It is about context-sensitive design. Cities must contend with and counter the blind reliance on a checklist. Performance measures are useful in this regard.
Is this a complete street? It has sidewalks, bike lanes, a median, and trees. Location withheld to protect the innocent.
Complete path in Ottawa, Canada. Multi-modal and available to all.
4. Soil LOS
Have you ever wanted to pull your hair out because of “vehicle level of service”? VLOS was invented to justify wider roads. It measures motorist delay in a vacuum - irrespective of other factors. It is plumbing. Sink clogged? Get a bigger pipe.
To counter VLOS, let’s envision complete street levels of service.
Bicycle facilities proportionate to vehicle speed/volume
Bicycle facility level of service in winter
Crash severity per person per distance
Crossing per bus stop, path, desire line
Crosswalk per crossing
Day vs. night use by women and children
Peak hour vs. off-peak vehicle speed
Soil volume per tree per distance
Stormwater retention/runoff ratio
Vehicle volume/capacity ratio
Like life, there is a greater chance of getting what you want if you tell someone what you need.
Complete street in snowy Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Maintenance is integral in any CS program.
5. Will we get sued?
Back in the 1990’s when we began the New York City traffic calming program, some refused to sign on because they feared lawsuits. So we asked the commissioner, a lawyer. He directed us to work with agency lawyers and thus the program began.
My takeaway – partner with your legal team early on and weave them into the CS process. They know a lot more about liability and risk management than I do.
6. Think beyond Complete Street retrofits
Complete streets was borne out of frustration. Frustration with streets without crosswalks and bike lanes. Frustration with overly wide streets and overly narrow sidewalks. Frustration with an industry ignoring anyone not driving. Streets needed a retrofit.
Let us retrofit what we can, but let us also consider the future. Streets in New York, Toronto and Portland are already mostly complete. Most have sidewalks and crosswalks and the bicycle networks are growing. Washington DC recently passed a law generally requiring sidewalks, crosswalks and bike lanes.
How do we move from retrofitting existing conditions to creating new places that are born complete? Put simply, let’s get away from designing for driving. My current favorite is Houston, which is planning 1800 miles of “high-comfort bikeways”. And they serve Viet-Cajun crawfish.
Lots to unpack here…
We transportation professionals need to keep our eye on the prize…
Climate change will not wait for us to get over our driving addiction.
Thanks to Brent Raymond of DTAH for photos, review and suggestions.