Last month, the Federal Highway Administration put forward a great idea.
The agency, which oversees the design of millions of miles of roads in the United States, proposed a new rule which would dramatically ease federal design standards for many of those roadways. It’s a move that would make a Complete Streets approach significantly easier for communities across the country.
The battle is on in Congress this week for the final version of the next federal transportation bill.
In one corner, the Senate and its version which includes strong language to make streets safer across the country. In the other corner, the House and its version which falls far short.
Which will win?
Last week the House of Representatives passed its initial version of a multiyear transportation bill. This bill has the potential to make streets safer across the country, help communities build more homes and offices near transit, and give more control of transportation investments to local communities. In order for this to happen, though, the House’s version of the bill needs to improve considerably.
Representatives agree: they’ve filed more than 200 amendments to the current version of the bill. Today the Rules Committee will decide which ones to allow to the floor. And then later this week, the full House will vote on all the amendments and create their final version of the bill.
Several amendments under consideration would improve how the bill supports walkable communities served by transit, including:
New sidewalks near the intersection of Rice Street and Hardy Street, and at the entrance to Wilcox Elementary School. Photo via the County of Kaua’i.
County leaders in Kaua’i, HI are working to revitalize the Līhu’e Town Core as a vibrant, walkable heart of the island, with Rice Street as its main street. In 2008, the county crafted its Holo Holo 2020 plan to guide that work, and in 2014 they asked Smart Growth America to inform that work with a parking audit workshop. What has Kaua’i been up to in the time since?
Over the last year, Kaua’i has gotten started on its revitalization work with Complete Streets improvements to Hardy Street. New sidewalks, turn lanes, bike lanes, on-street parking, and street plantings will eventually run the entire length of Hardy Street, which is parallel to Rice and curves around to intersect with it in the heart of Līhuʻe’s town core.
House’s draft transportation bill includes Safe Streets provision — Last week, the House of Representatives’ Transportation and Infrastructure Committee marked up its version of a multi-year surface transportation bill. The original version of the bill included important language to encourage states and metropolitan planning organizations to plan and design for the safety needs of all users in federally-funded projects—a fantastic first step in helping communities across the United States use a Complete Streets approach. During markup, Representatives Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) and Dina Titus (D-NV) offered an amendment which makes the new draft even stronger. The new provision would require the U.S. Department of Transportation to provide regular updates on states’ progress and best practices on pedestrian safety improvements. Thank you to Representatives Curbelo and Titus for their leadership. The bill will next go to the House floor for a full vote. View Transportation for America’s amendment tracker >>
NJ Complete Streets Summit advances safe streets strategies — On October 26, the New Jersey Department of Transportation and the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center hosted the 2015 New Jersey Complete Streets Summit. The Summit brought together planners, engineers, and policy-makers from throughout New Jersey to advance strategies for providing safe, multi-modal transportation systems that are accessible to all users. The event featured keynote speeches from Mayor Dawn Zimmer of Hoboken and the National Complete Streets Coalition’s own Director, Emiko Atherton. Jack Nata, Manager of the Division of Traffic and Signals for Newark, and Mayor Benjamin Lucarelli of Fair Haven were awarded 2015 Complete Streets “Champion Awards” and the Cities of Camden, Hoboken, New Brunswick, Ocean City as well as the Borough of Highland Park and Passaic County were awarded the 2015 New Jersey Complete Streets Excellence Awards. The Summit also recognized 51 municipalities and two counties for their policy adoption. Congratulations to all of the awardees for your great work on behalf of Complete Streets! We hope to see similar gatherings in other states. View event photos >>
Seattle’s chief road engineer Dongho Chang, next to Broadway’s new protected bike lane. Photo via the Green Lane Project on Facebook.
When activists painted a guerrilla bike lane in Seattle, they didn’t expect a traffic engineer to thank them. 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. 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.
We might not have trash-powered flying cars in 2015, but we CAN invest in a transportation system of tomorrow. Congress is considering the next federal transportation bill this week — tell them to make it a forward-looking one.
The U.S. House of Representatives introduced their proposal for a new federal transportation bill last week, and Representatives will mark up and vote on the bill in committee tomorrow.
This gives us a small window of time to improve the bill as it stands, and we need your help. Tell your Representative to make the next transportation bill a forward-looking one.
Crossposted from Transportation for America.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) took an encouraging and surprising step this week to make it dramatically easier for cities and communities of all sizes to design and build complete streets that are safer for everyone by easing federally-mandated design standards on many roads.
Currently, FHWA has a long list of design criteria that local communities and states must adhere to when building or reconstructing certain roads, unless they choose to go through an arduous process of requesting an exception to do things like line a downtown street with street trees, reduce the width of lanes to add a bike lane, or curve a street slightly to slow traffic and make it safer for people in cars and on foot.
In this new proposed rule, FHWA decided after a thorough review to scrap 11 of 13 current design criteria for certain roads because they decided these criteria have “minimal influence on the safety or operation on our urban streets” and has a stronger connection for rural roads, freeways and higher speed urban arterials.
Photo: Elvert Barnes via Flickr
This post is the seventh in a series of case studies about Complete Streets people, places, and projects. Catch the final one next month!
The Washington, DC region prides itself on robust bus service, and a recent change to bus stop accessibility standards is opening the system to even more people.
Thousands of people in the Washington, DC region take the bus each day, including people with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provides three basic criteria when defining an “accessible” bus stop. It should 1) have a firm landing surface; 2) be at least five feet wide and eight feet long; and 3) connect to the curb. Because when bus stops are narrow or located in a patch of grass, getting to and waiting at the bus stop isn’t just unpleasant for people with disabilities — it’s a barrier to travel.
Del Paso Boulevard in Sacramento, CA. Photo courtsey of Fehr & Peers.
This post is the sixth in a series of case studies about Complete Streets people, places, and projects. Follow the full series over the next several weeks.
If you’ve walked along Del Paso Boulevard in Sacramento, CA in recent years, you may have noticed horses imprinted on the street’s brickwork. The bricks are a tribute to the area’s ranching history — and a sign of a modern commitment to safety for everyone using the street.
Between 1844 and the early 1900s, in what is today North Sacramento, sat over 40,000 acres of Del Paso Ranch. The ranch’s ownership passed through several hands before it purchased by James B. Haggins, a Kentucky native who earned his fortune in copper mines and railroads. Haggins raised more than 1,000 thoroughbred horses at Del Paso Ranch, including, according to one source, the first Californian horse to win the Kentucky Derby. In 1905, when Haggins announced that he was leaving horse breeding because he was operating at a loss, a New York Times headline proclaimed that that his stock farm was “the Greatest Nursery of Thoroughbreds in the World.”