Complete Streets News — May 2017

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Webinar next week: Making the Most of Main Street — Join the National Complete Streets Coalition Wednesday, May 17, 2017 from 1:00-2:00 PM EDT for our webinar “Making the Most of Main Street: Complete Streets & Walkable Communities.” Co-host America Walks and speakers from Langley, WA will join the Coalition to discuss how a Complete Streets approach can help communities revitalize downtowns. Participants will learn about developing and implementing Complete Streets, the intersection of public health and rural economic development, how to get community members involved, and finding funding.

Complete Streets

New CDC recommendations combine transportation and land use strategies to promote physical activity

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have released new recommendations to promote physical activity by implementing a combination of transportation and land use interventions. The recommendations stem from the Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF), an independent panel of 15 public health and medical experts appointed by the CDC Director with the objective of identifying evidence-based interventions to improve health and quality of life. The panel includes distinguished doctors, professors, and researchers with expertise in health promotion and disease prevention. They conducted a comprehensive review of 90 studies examining the relationship between the built environment and physical activity to determine how best to promote exercise. Their new recommendations are an important step forward to understanding the linkages between health-related behavior and how we build our towns and cities.

Complete Streets

“Integrating Complete Streets, Vision Zero, and Transportation Equity” webinar recap

Last week we hosted the third installment in our monthly webinar series, Implementation & Equity 201: The Path Forward to Complete Streets. The webinar focused on “Integrating Complete Streets, Vision Zero, and Transportation Equity” and featured speakers from Memphis, Tennessee. Watch the full video recording of the webinar above, or download the PDF of the presentation.

A discussion recap

Emiko Atherton, Director of the National Complete Streets Coalition, kicked off the webinar by highlighting the opportunity for Complete Streets and Vision Zero to work together in pursuit of transportation equity. She presented findings from Dangerous by Design 2016, including that 46,149 people were struck and killed by cars while walking between 2005 and 2014, and that people of color and people age 65 or older are overrepresented among those deaths. Byron Rushing, President of the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals and Bicycle & Pedestrian Planner at the Atlanta Regional Commission, emphasized the importance of planning for both safety and equity simultaneously by combining Complete Streets strategies with a Vision Zero approach.

Complete Streets

A Tennessee trio wins our first Complete Streets Consortium award



A green lane for bicyclists in Knoxville, TN. Photo via the Knoxville Mercury.

Building a connected network of streets that is safe for everyone, no matter how they travel, takes region-wide collaboration. Our newest technical assistance award is designed to help three agencies in Tennessee do just that.

Smart Growth America and our program the National Complete Streets Coalition are proud to announce that a partnership of agencies in Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Nashville, TN is the winner of our first-ever Complete Streets Consortium technical assistance.

Complete Streets Technical assistance

How is the FAST Act being implemented? Complete Streets are among its successes.

At the end of 2015, Congress passed a five-year $305 billion federal transportation bill — The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. It was the first transportation bill to ever include Complete Streets language, and the first law enacted in more than 10 years to provide long-term funding certainty for surface transportation.

The Complete Streets provisions in the FAST Act represent a great step forward in the effort to make streets across the country safer for everyone who uses them. Notably, the bill requires National Highway System roadway designs to take into account access for all modes of transportation. It also makes NACTO’s Urban Design Guide one of the standards for when the U.S. Department of Transportation designs roads, and it permits local governments to use their own adopted design guide if they are the lead project sponsor, even if it differs from state guidelines.

Complete Streets

Cell phones are not what’s causing America’s epidemic of pedestrian fatalities


Crossposted from Medium.

More people drove in 2016 than in 2015, according to new data released this week by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA). Alongside that increase was a disproportionately high rise in pedestrian fatalities — a trend that the authors attribute to increases in distracted driving and distracted walking.

Complete Streets

“Creating Value: Assessing the Return on Investment in Complete Streets” webinar recap

Last week the National Complete Streets Coalition hosted the second installment in our monthly webinar series, Implementation & Equity 201: The Path Forward to Complete Streets. “Creating Value: Assessing the Return on Investment in Complete Streets,” held on March 23, 2017, discussed ways for advocates to quantify and communicate the diverse benefits of Complete Streets projects. Watch the full video recording of the webinar above, or download the PDF of the presentation.

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Register now for “Integrating Complete Streets, Vision Zero, and Transportation Equity”

The National Complete Streets Coalition is excited to continue our monthly webinar series, designed to help professionals from a variety of disciplines put Complete Streets principles into action. Implementation & Equity 201: The Path Forward to Complete Streets is exploring a new issue each month related to creating safer, healthier, more equitable streets.

Our next webinar in the series, Integrating Complete Streets, Vision Zero, and Transportation Equity will take place during National Public Health Week on Wednesday, April 5, 2017 from 1:00-2:00 PM EDT. Speakers from Livable Memphis and the Memphis Medical District Collaborative will join the Coalition and our co-host APBP in answering questions such as: How do Complete Streets and Vision Zero fit into a comprehensive planning approach? And what can planners and advocates do to support Transportation Equity in community development?

Complete Streets

Complete Streets News — March 2017

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Upcoming webinar: Assessing the Return on Investment in Complete Streets — Join the National Complete Streets Coalition tomorrow, March 23, 2017 from 1:00-2:00 PM EDT for our webinar “Creating Value: Assessing the Return on Investment in Complete Streets.” Co-host Stantec will join the Coalition to explain how to plan and design Complete Streets projects to make them more competitive for grants. Participants will learn how to use basic return on investment analysis to measure the benefits of Complete Streets. Missed our last webinar on Public Health in Complete Streets? View the recording here.

Complete Streets