Highways

Completing Rural Highways: Challenges and strategies for state agencies

From November 2022 to May 2023, Smart Growth America worked with the State Smart Transportation Initiative, a project of SGA and the High Road Strategy Center, to host a series of four virtual workshops for staff at state departments of transportation (DOTs) to discuss challenges and strategies for implementing Complete Streets on state-owned rural roads. The goals of these workshops were to 1) provide space for small teams from state DOTs to engage in peer-to-peer conversations, idea exchange, and problem-solving and 2) identify and uplift the approaches that are working for state DOTs at the national level. There were roughly 30 participants from nine states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Washington.

Complete Streets Transportation

Completing Rural Highways: Managing and maintaining assets

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Whenever an agency plans to develop new community assets—whether it is a road, utility, or sidewalk—they must have systems such as funding and coordination for regular maintenance in place to preserve them in the long term. Having those systems in place and a concrete plan to coordinate with local agencies can preemptively address unique challenges related to Complete Streets projects.

Complete Streets Transportation

Completing Rural Highways: Funding Complete Streets

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Even with a strong commitment to Complete Streets principles, many state agencies and their local partners lack dedicated and consistent funding streams to add the necessary elements to existing road projects. Rural infrastructure can be particularly difficult to fund, costing more per capita, so adding new elements is often seen by state and local agencies as a burden. Smart Growth America and the State Smart Transportation Initiative worked with practitioners to illustrate how their peers have found ways to overcome these obstacles.

Complete Streets Transportation

Completing Rural Highways: Making the case

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Gaining widespread support for Complete Streets projects can be a challenge. Agencies sometimes face resistance from within or they face opposition from local businesses and community members. Smart Growth America and the State Smart Transportation Initiative worked with practitioners to identify obstacles to making the case for Complete Streets and illustrate how their peers have found ways to overcome them.

Complete Streets Transportation

Mammoth infrastructure bill is notable for its powerful precedents and significant shortcomings

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The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill awaiting the president’s signature is notable both for Congress’ most significant commitment yet to address climate change, and its general failure to do anything to fundamentally change the sources of the problem and reach the level of ambition required. This bipartisan infrastructure deal (the IIJA), approved by Congress on November … Continued

Advocacy Climate Change Complete Streets Transportation

Three forward-thinking moments from the “Undoing the Damage of Urban Freeways” webinar

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For decades, transportation planners planned and built urban freeways that destroyed many communities of color and continue to have devastating economic and environmental effects long after their inception. We’ve rounded up three of most intriguing ideas from the “Undoing the Damage of Urban Freeways” webinar to learn from in future planning:

Transportation

An exercise in futility

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Our Transportation for America program has released a comprehensive report on why our default “solution” to traffic congestion—widening highways—simply does not work. The Congestion Con proves with data that one more expensive freeway lane most certainly will not solve congestion, and perhaps congestion is the wrong thing to be trying to solve in the first place.

Transportation

Reconnecting Neighborhoods: How the Twin Cities are working to heal the wounds inflicted by urban highways

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Highways routed through population centers in the 50s and 60s have scarred many communities around the country and left neighborhoods disconnected from opportunity. To help address this in the Twin Cities, Smart Growth America worked with MnDOT on two intersections around I-94 to identify problems and improvements that can be made.

DOT Innovation