During our Twitter Town Hall, we explored the many facets of sustainable and balanced transportation planning. First we identified the goals of transportation planning, in addition to transporting cars efficiently, from pedestrian safety to biking infrastructure to alternative transportation development. Then we discussed the issues and obstacles that make effective transportation planning complicated and difficult, and some ideas behind resolving them. In today’s post we recap the various solutions ways to get involved.
There are many different organizations and coalitions across the country working to make the transportation planning process easier to navigate for all street users. For example, three of our panelists – Angie, Stefanie and Jess – were with us as experts on the subject, and they represent three organizations doing great work in the area.
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The mission of the ULI Rose Center is to encourage and support excellence in land use decision-making. By providing public officials with access to information, best practices, peer networks and other resources, the Rose Center seeks to foster creative, efficient, practical, and sustainable land use policies.
The National Complete Streets Coalition at Smart Growth America is based in the belief that the streets of our cities and towns are an important part of the livability of our communities. Complete Streets policy ensures that transportation planners and engineers consistently design and operate the entire roadway with all users in mind – including bicyclists, public transit vehicles and riders, and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.
A key element to balanced street design is that local leaders and planners need to work with community stakeholders, and collect meaningful input that informs a vision. Citizen engagement is vital to any project in the public realm, for everyone involved – road engineers, government officials, transportation agencies, and alternative transportation or complete streets advocates. Placemaking principles remind us that the community is the expert – and when it comes to their neighborhood street, they are the ones that know best what it is they need.
In the same way, it is important for community members to get involved. Finding ways to participate can seem daunting to people without planning or policy backgrounds, but there are many options. Go to the stakeholder meetings your local leaders are hosting, and bring your neighbors. Keep yourself up to date on conversation, and informed of the possibilities. There are many resources, like “Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach,” which was created as a how-to which illustrates best practices for creating more complete streets.
This information is not just for planners – get informed and use it.
Also, groups like Transportation for Michigan and The Greenway Collaborative are testing out alternative ways to gather community input, like online editable maps and phone applications. This helps widen the net since not everyone can attend meetings or audits.
The next step is to identify a location within your community that needs improvement. Good planning data is important – but experience is extremely valuable. Getting out and experiencing firsthand the road as a pedestrian and cyclist will bring insight and help identify problems. One method is conducting a walking audit – an assessment of the walkability or pedestrian access of an external environment. Walking audits are a great way to literally explore issues, and also to get your neighbors engaged. It is an opportunity to bring together everyone involved in the process, and more so, for these groups to identify problem and opportunity areas together. Request that your elected officials join you too, so that they get outside to walk, bike or take transit, and then they too will see where the problems are.
When considering the options for a road in your community, look at the various issues at play. How do cars move through, and what are the traffic congestion factors? How easy is it to cross the street at different times of day? How much are those seconds your saving for car commuters worth compared to other goals in your community? What are the sidewalk conditions? These things can be explored through observing and also through engaging the people that work, live and play along the street.
If you deduce that a road could be downsized, ultimately, you have to have an engineer evaluate the situation to know if a road diet will work. Road diets are defined by the Federal Highway Administration as narrowing or eliminating travel lanes on a roadway to make more room for pedestrians and bicyclists.
Generally, four lane roads that have 20,000 annual average daily traffic (AADT) or less are good candidates to become a road with one lane in each direction with a central turn lane; the leftover space can be used for a variety of things like bike lanes or parking.
While there are many reasons to want more complete streets, sometimes the issue lies with convincing others of the benefits. People who do not walk or bike may not see a reason to care, but it is important to remind people that complete streets have many more benefits than just safe walking and biking. Luke Forrest of the Michigan Municipal League participated in the conversation via twitter, and pointed out the strategy that many cities have used successfully: planning corridor redesign as part of an economic redevelopment strategy. Healthy streets draw people – to walk around, socialize and shop – and strengthen the economic vitality of the area. Additionally, this could be a way to bring business owners into the process, prioritize the project, and secure funding from non-transportation related sources.
Our panelists shared with us a few examples of places that have used transportation planning strategically.
- Ferndale’s 9-Mile road diet: Ferndale has become one of hippest, coolest, most walkable areas in state, and has seen an increase in mixed use developments coming in.
- Boulder, Colorado set a clear vision for its transportation future, and today is among the highest for rates of walking, biking, alternative transit. See the City of Boulder Transportation Division’s “Transportation to Sustain a Community.”
- New York City has had tremendous success with road diets, right of way improvements, and implementing bike lanes. Overall congestion has dropped, retail activity has increased, and in general spaces have improved for everyone – even drivers.
The most important message we’d like to leave you with is to make your voices heard. Reach out to your friends and contacts, and you can have a very powerful impact on the direction your transportation agencies take. Utilize the resources available to you to stay informed: read StreetBlog, The Atlantic Cities, Complete Streets and others for inspiration and guidance. Keep up with organizations like Mode Shift, which provide an important piece to the puzzle. Get involved in organizations like the League of Michigan Bicyclists and the Urban Land Institute to keep informed and to find ways to advocate for healthy streets.
We all need to remember that transportation is about access to destinations for everyone – not just mobility, not just auto-mobility. It is about supporting and providing for a shift away from auto-centric goals, and enhancing the benefits for everyone.
National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) “Urban Street Design Guide”
NACTO “Urban Bikeway Design Guide”
“Model Street Design Manual”
Active Transportation Policy “Complete Streets Complete Networks: A Manual for the Design of Active Transportation”
Institute of Transportation Engineers Context Sensitive Solutions
Complete Streets Design from Smart Growth America National Complete Streets Coalition
Many tips on “Implementation” page of National Complete Streets Coalition page
Photo from Jeff Nickerson on flickr.com