Complete Streets

Complete Streets are well-balanced, efficient corridors that not only allow a multi-modal transportation system, they encourage it.

Street corridors are the connective tissues for cities. When street corridors are well-balanced and offer comfortable places for pedestrians (able-bodied and disabled), bicyclists, micro-mobile riders (scooters, etc.), as well as for cars, trucks and buses, then those streets can be powerful tools in a city’s economic infrastructure.  In far too many American cities, however, roads have become hostile environments for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Delivering on the pressure put upon them by society and its policy makers for 70 years, traffic engineers have made roads almost entirely about the motor vehicle. In making road networks as efficient for cars and trucks as possible, engineers have made many neighborhoods places to drive through instead of places to drive to.

Complete Streets are right-sized, have many intersections where motor vehicles have to stop for traffic signals or stop signs, have clearly marked lanes for bicycles (either dedicated paths or lanes shared with motor vehicles), on-street parking, ample collector strips (for streetlights, trees, parking meters, etc.), and comfortably wide sidewalks.

Complete Streets offer fertile ground for business and livability. They offer places where local businesses can thrive and people can connect.