Best Complete Streets Initiatives: VELO Bloomfield


Based in Bloomfield, NJ (18 miles from New York City), VELO is a media and advocacy organization that informs and educates the public and policymakers on how to make the streets of Northern New Jersey safer for people, regardless of gender, age, race, disability, and/or socioeconomic status. VELO approach to equity includes raising the profile of transportation issues to policy and decision makers in working class, Latinx, and African-American communities. VELO excels in their community engagement efforts by not requiring people to alter their daily routines to participate. Since their launch, they have championed Complete Streets implementation, particularly in the immediate Bloomfield area, and amplified the voices of community members around transportation policies.

Complete Streets

Announcing a new resource on health equity and Complete Streets

The City of New Orleans and Jefferson Parish have made great strides in building out their bicycle networks and encouraging more people to bike, but much more work needs to be done to prioritize low-income areas, communities of color, and places with high rates of crashes and chronic diseases. To help achieve this goal, the National Complete Streets Coalition is pleased to release our latest report, Complete Streets for Health Equity: An Evaluation of New Orleans and Jefferson Parish.

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Complete Streets for Health Equity: An Evaluation of New Orleans and Jefferson Parish

The National Complete Streets Coalition, in partnership with Bike Easy, is excited to release Complete Streets for Health Equity: An Evaluation of New Orleans and Jefferson Parish. This report establishes an approach to evaluate Complete Streets programs with a focus on health equity for the City of New Orleans, Jefferson Parish, and other jurisdictions around the … Continued

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Policy #2: Diverse users – Prioritize Complete Streets where it is needed the most

A Complete Streets approach requires “diverse users” to be more than just a buzzword. This brand new addition to our policy framework aims to hold jurisdictions accountable for including equity into their plans based on the composition and objectives of the community, a requirement that was lacking from the previous framework. The U.S. history of systemic discrimination and exclusion based on race and income is part of the transportation context and cannot be ignored. Transportation choices should be safe, convenient, reliable, affordable, accessible, and timely regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, income, gender identity, immigration status, age, ability, languages spoken, or level of access to a personal vehicle.

Complete Streets

Announcing Intersections: Creating Culturally Complete Streets

The National Complete Streets Coalition is proud to partner with Transportation for America’s Arts & Culture team for our second national Complete Streets conference. Save the date and take part in the movement on April 3-4, 2018 at the Nashville Music City Center.

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“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.

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Dangerous by Design 2016

Between 2005 and 2014, a total of 46,149 people were struck and killed by cars while walking. In 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, 4,884 people were killed by a car while walking—105 people more than in 2013. On average, 13 people were struck and killed by a car while walking every day in 2014. And between 2005 and 2014, Americans were 7.2 times more likely to die as a pedestrian than from a natural disaster. Each one of those people was a child, parent, friend, classmate, or neighbor. And these tragedies are occurring across the country—in small towns and big cities, in communities on the coast and in the heartland.

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#StreetLights: It’s not about the streets, it’s about the people

street-lights

Last week I had the honor of opening Street Lights 2016, the National Complete Streets Coalition’s first-ever national conference, in Sacramento, California. Leaders from across the country came together on November 15 to share ideas, inspiration, and calls for actions on Complete Streets particularly as they relate to equity and implementation, two pillars of the Coalition’s core mission.

Complete Streets