Save the Date: Sixth Annual Complete Streets Dinner — Join the National Complete Streets Coalition and celebrate this year’s successes at our sixth annual fundraising dinner! The dinner is an intimate event that brings together advocates from across the country for food, fun, and conversation, and will be held this year on the evening of Tuesday, January 12, 2016, during the Transportation Research Board 2016 meeting. Stay tuned for more information about how to purchase tickets and this year’s featured speaker!
Pass that rule, FHWA! — Last month, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) put forward a great idea. The agency proposed a new rule that would dramatically ease federal design standards for many roadways. It’s a move that would make a Complete Streets approach significantly easier for communities across the country. In order for the rule to pass, though, the FHWA needs to hear that the measure has strong support. Sign a letter to FHWA today.
Federal transportation bill moves to conference — Thank you to everyone who contacted members of Congress last week to support of safe streets in the next federal transportation bill. The Senate and House begin conference on the bill today, which means it’s not too late to speak up. Tell your representatives to make streets safer in the next transportation bill.
Send us your Complete Streets policies! — Have you passed a Complete Streets policy in 2015? Tell us about it! The National Complete Streets Coalition is currently collecting Complete Streets policies passed this year for documentation in our Policy Atlas and ranking in next year’s Best Complete Streets Policies of 2015 report. If your town, city, county, or region recently passed a Complete Streets policy, email Mary Eveleigh.
Complete Streets Workshop heads to Pittsburgh — The National Complete Streets Coalition will be in Pittsburgh on December 1-2 to conduct a Policy Development Workshop with City staff, representatives from the Mayor’s Office, transit agency staff, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, health partners, local advocates, and other stakeholders. The workshop will assist the City in developing a Complete Streets policy for Pittsburgh that builds on the Complete Streets executive order Mayor Bill Peduto signed in April of 2015. The workshop will lay the groundwork for development of the new policy by helping participants identify common Complete Streets goals, discuss elements of an effective policy, and begin to draft Complete Streets policy language.
The Fiscal Implications: Roads in New Jersey — Smart Growth America teamed up with New Jersey Future to find out how much state, county, and municipal governments in New Jersey could save on road maintenance bills by building in more compact ways. The Fiscal Implications of Development Patterns: Roads in New Jersey analyzes population and employment density to understand just how much money could be saved if the distribution of New Jersey’s population and jobs could be made even incrementally more dense and compact.
This December: T4America’s “The Innovative MPO” webinar — Join Transportation for America for The Innovative MPO: How MPOs Can Save Money and Improve Safety by Adopting Complete Streets Policies on Thursday, December 3rd at 3:30 p.m. EST. The discussion will take a look at how metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) can reduce costs and improve safety for their residents by adopting Complete Streets policies and using those policies to help select projects. Coalition Director Emiko Atherton will join the discussion.
Career opportunity: Data Fellow — The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking a Data Fellow to serve within the Office of the Under Secretary for Policy in the Office of Safety, Energy, and the Environment. The goal of the project is to further develop DOT’s data-driven approach to decision making as it relates to safety issues with implications across modes of transportation. The Fellow will collaborate with individuals from DOT’s operating administrations and offices under the Secretary of Transportation to connect, understand, analyze, and visualize DOT safety databases, data sources outside of the Department, and geospatial data.
Walk to school? But how do I find the front door? — Walking rarely enters the conversation when new schools are planned. In fact, the regulatory and approval processes focus on facilitating bus and automobile access to schools, and ensuring that there is sufficient parking. Now a new report by WalkBoston offers strategies for improving pedestrian safety through walkable campus design. The research was prompted by observations that even when communities build new schools in the right place, the design of school campuses still provided only limited support for walkers, and too often favored vehicles over walkers in their site layout.
A new tool to improve health and transportation — The U.S. Department of Transportation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have released The Transportation and Health Tool to provide data on a set of transportation and public health indicators for each U.S. state and metropolitan area that describe how the transportation environment affects safety, active transportation, air quality, and connectivity to destinations. The tool also provides information and resources to help agencies better understand the links between transportation and health and to identify strategies to improve public health through transportation planning and policy.
Explore the benefits of street-scale features — As the costs of physical inactivity become increasingly evident, and as planners, public health professionals, and others working in the field of active transportation strive to make walking and biking safer and easier, the necessity of retrofitting and updating street facilities and sidewalk features is apparent. A new report by the American Planning Association’s Planning and Community Health Center highlights a literature review that focuses on the benefits that may arise from investment in different types of street-scale features, either independently or in combination.
The town of Westfield, New Jersey was recognized at the recent New Jersey Complete Streets 2015 Summit for its Complete Streets policy. In 2013, the Westfield Town Council passed a resolution stating that all public roadway, public right-of-way, and public facility projects, both new construction and reconstruction, undertaken by the town of Westfield shall continue to be planned, designed, and constructed in accordance with the Complete Streets philosophy whenever feasible in order to safely accommodate pedestrians, bicyclists, public transit users, and motorized vehicles operators and their passengers of all ages and abilities.
Last month Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle Public Schools, and Cascade Bicycle Club unveiled Seattle’s first-ever Safe Routes to School Five Year Action Plan, entitled Safe Streets, Healthy Schools and Communities. A cornerstone of the Mayor’s plan includes a major investment in the expansion of Cascade Bicycle Club’s in-school bike education program. The program will reach every third through fifth grader in Seattle Public Schools—nearly 13,000 students annually starting in the 2016-17 academic year. The three-week curriculum is also expanding to include walking safety and will align with the new state P.E. and health standards.
The Vincennes, Indiana city council has approved an ordinance that calls for sidewalks and bike lanes be added to all new street projects whenever feasible. The ordinance encourages city officials now and in the future—as well as private developers—to consider adding sidewalks, curbs, curb ramps compliant with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act standards, and bike lanes to new street projects as well as some repaving projects. Any exception to the ordinance would require approval from the Board of Works.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |