At the National Complete Streets Coalition, our success truly results from the efforts of our coalition. We’ll be showcasing our Partners’ work and what drives their commitment to the Complete Streets movement. We recently spoke with Kimley-Horn and Associates, a Silver Partner and longtime supporter of the Coalition.
What is Kimley-Horn’s mission? What services do you offer?
Our core values are honesty, integrity, and ethics; exceptional client services; high expectations; sharing and caring; and sustained profitability. We have over 1800 employees in offices large and small across the country. Many smaller offices focus on the region in which they are located. Kimley-Horn is a firm of practice builders — specialists that are given freedom and corporate support to build their own business within the company. Because each practice builder can customize their work and recruit clients, we have a broad spectrum of specialties from traditional engineering services to those focusing on multi-modal transportation and Complete Streets.
Why does your organization support Complete Streets and the Coalition?
Practice builders recognized that Complete Streets has momentum at the local and state level and that it is an important ingredient in building communities. Additionally, our clients started to request a Complete Streets approach. To satisfy our clients’ requests, we rely on the Coalition for information.
What kinds of projects have you been doing lately?
Kimley-Horn has been working on a full range of multi-modal projects. We recently won the 2011 Golden Footprint Compete Streets Award from WalkSanDiego for our work on Allison Avenue in La Mesa, California. The project successfully mixes pedestrians, bicyclists, transit and auto uses using a variety of traffic calming tools.
Current projects include the Dallas, Texas Complete Streets manual and Columbia Pike streetscape redesign in Arlington, Virginia. The Columbia Pike project is unique because we are redesigning the streets for today’s users with the plan that a streetcar may be incorporated in the future. Kimley-Horn and Associates was also the primary author on Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach, from the Institute of Transportation Engineers.
How are you working to advance the Complete Streets movement?
As a firm we serve a broad spectrum of clients and urban design, place making and Complete Streets are part of the services we offer. We use and encourage the Complete Streets approach on our projects as one more way to create livable communities that work for all residents.