Project for Public Spaces -- The Complete Streets Movement

November 17th, 2011 | Go to Placemaking Blog Home
Are Complete Streets Incomplete?
Posted by: Gary Toth
“The desire to go ‘through’ a place must be balanced with the desire to go ‘to’ a place.” — Pennsylvania and New Jersey DOTs’ 2007 “Smart Transportation Guide.”

The “complete streets” movement has taken the United States by storm, and has even taken root in countries such as Canada and Australia. Few movements have done so much to influence needed policy change in the transportation world. As of today, almost 300 jurisdictions around the U.S. have adopted complete streets policies or have committed to do so. This is an amazing accomplishment that sets the stage for communities to reframe their future around people instead of cars.

But communities cannot stop there. Complete streets is largely an engineering policy that, according to the National Complete Streets Coalition website, “ensures that transportation planners and engineers consistently design and operate the entire roadway with all users in mind — including bicyclists, public transportation vehicles and riders, and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.”

Getting transportation professionals to think about including pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users is a key first step in creating great places and livable communities. But that is not enough to make places that truly work for people — “streets as places.” The planning process itself needs to be turned upside-down.

We at PPS like to say that engineers can ruin a good street, but they cannot create a good street — a street that is truly complete — through engineering alone. A small but growing group of communities have recognized that to really “complete their streets,” they need genuinely place-based and community-based transportation policies that go beyond routine accommodation.

“The design of a street is only one aspect of its effectiveness. How the street fits within the surrounding transportation network and supports adjacent land uses will also be important to its effectiveness.” — Charlotte “Urban Street Design Guidelines”


This illustration from Indianapolis's "Multimodal Corridor and Public Space Design Guidelines" reflects how the new wave of street policies specifies Placemaking guidance as well as how to accommodate all modes.
Communities such as Indianapolis, Charlotte, Savannah, San Francisco, and Denver have created community-based street policies that turn the transportation planning and design process upside-down, acknowledging that the role of streets is to build communities, not the other way around. The example from  the Indianapolis “Multimodal Corridor and Public Space Design Guidelines” illustrates how this new genre of street policies specifies Placemaking guidance as well as how to accommodate all modes.

PPS is helping communities realize a different vision of what transportation can be. We’ve worked in small communities in rural areas, such as Brunswick, Me.; Newport, Vt.; and Tupelo, Miss. We’ve gone to larger communities such as San Antonio, Tex., Los Angeles, and San Francisco. On our travels, we’ve conducted capacity-building  workshops, helped develop street typologies, created visions for right-sized streets, and worked on community-based transportation policies.

Place-based plans, policies, and programs allow downtown and village streets to become destinations worth visiting, not just throughways to and from the workplace or the regional mall. Transit stops and stations can make commuting by rail or bus a pleasure. Neighborhood streets can be places where parents feel safe letting their children play, and commercial strips can be designed as grand boulevards, safe for walking and cycling, allowing for both through and local traffic.

Countries outside the U.S. are not immune from focusing on street design as an isolated discipline. After World War II, many countries around the world became enamored of a planning approach that was driven by traffic engineering. Some, like the Netherlands, reversed course relatively quickly and returned to community-based, livable street design. Ultimately, the Dutch went even further in the right direction, in part thanks to the influence of the legendary Hans Monderman (himself a traffic engineer), who developed and promoted the concept of “Shared Space.” Monderman’s designs emphasized human interaction over mechanical traffic devices. By taking away conventional regulatory traffic controls, he proved that human interaction and caution would naturally yield a safer, more pleasant environment for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.

We are poised to create a future where priority is given to the appropriate mode, whether it be pedestrian, bicycle, transit, or automobile. Cars have their place, but the rediscovered importance of walking and “alternative transportation modes” will bring more people out onto the streets — allowing these spaces to serve as public forums where neighbors and friends can connect with one another.

In order to truly complete our streets, they need to be planned and designed appropriately, using the following guidelines.

Rule One: Think of Streets as Public Spaces
Not so long ago, this idea was considered preposterous in many communities. “Public space” meant parks and little else. Transit stops were simply places to wait. Streets had been surrendered to traffic for so long that we forgot they could be public spaces. Now we are slowly getting away from this narrow perception of streets as conduits for cars and beginning to think of streets as places.


A street in Amsterdam.
Streets and parking can take up as much as a third of a community’s land, and designing them solely for the comfort of people in cars, and then only for the most congested hour of the day, has significant ramifications for the livability and economics of a community. Under the planning and engineering principles of the past 70 years, people have for all intents and purposes given up their rights to this public property. Streets were once a place where we stopped for conversation and children played, but now they are the exclusive domain of cars. Even when sidewalks are present along high-speed streets, they feel inhospitable and out of place.

The road, the parking lot, the transit terminal — these places can serve more than one mode (cars) and more than one purpose (movement). Sidewalks are the urban arterials of cities. Make them wide, well lit, stylish, and accommodating. Give them benches, outdoor cafés, and public art. Roads can be shared spaces, with pedestrian refuges, bike lanes, and on-street parking. Parking lots can become public markets on weekends. Even major urban arterials can be designed to provide for dedicated bus lanes, well-designed bus stops that serve as gathering places, and multimodal facilities for bus rapid transit or other forms of travel. Roads are places too!

Rule Two: Plan for Community Outcomes
Communities need to first envision what kinds of places and interactions they want to support, then plan a transportation system consistent with this collective community vision. Transportation is a means for accomplishing important goals — like economic productivity and social engagement — not an end in itself.

Great transportation facilities truly improve the public realm. They add value to adjacent properties and to the community as a whole. Streets that fit community contexts help increase developable land, create open space, and reconnect communities to their neighbors, a waterfront, or a park. They can reduce household dependency on the automobile, allowing children to walk to school, and helping build healthier lifestyles by increasing the potential to walk or cycle. Think public benefit, not just private convenience.


Due to peak-hour design, Speer Boulevard in Denver limits the northward expansion of downtown Denver while remaining empty at midday. Instead of adding value to the community, it actually limits the city economically, socially, and in every other way. It doesn't even do what it was designed to do: solve congestion during peak hour. I-25, just to the north at the top of the photo, is bumper to bumper during peak hours. The 10-lane cross-sections become a mere parking lot.
Designing street networks around places benefits the overall transportation system. Great places — popular spots with a good mix of people and activities, which can be comfortably reached by foot, bike, and transit — put little strain on the transportation system. Poor land use planning, by contrast, generates thousands of unnecessary vehicle trips, clogging up roads and further degrading the quality of adjacent places.

Transportation professionals can no longer pretend that land use is not their business. Transportation projects that were not integrated with land use planning have created too many negative impacts to ignore.

Transportation — the process of going to a place — can be wonderful if we rethink the idea of transportation itself. We must remember that transportation is the journey; enhancing the community is the goal.

Rule Three: Design for Appropriate Speeds
Streets need to be designed in a way that induces traffic speeds appropriate for that particular context. Whereas freeways — which must not drive through the hearts of cities — should accommodate regional mobility, speeds on other roads need to reflect that these are places for people, not just conduits for cars. Desired speeds can be attained with a number of design tools, including changes in roadway widths and intersection design. Placemaking can also be a strategy for controlling speeds,. Minimal building setbacks, trees, and sidewalks with lots of activity can affect the speed at which motorists comfortably drive.

Speed kills the sense of place. Cities and town centers are destinations, not raceways, and commerce needs traffic — foot traffic. You cannot buy a dress from the driver’s seat of a car. Access, not automobiles, should be the priority in city centers. Don’t ban cars, but remove the presumption in their favor. People first!

Moving Beyond Complete Streets to Build Communities
Complete streets policies support these three rules. More importantly, they open the door for new ways of thinking about how the transportation profession should approach streets. But communities cannot get complacent and expect transportation planners to carry the whole load of creating great places. Instead, community leaders and advocates need to collaborate with the profession to tap their engineering skills to help build streets that are places.

Using an “upside-down planning approach,” this new collaboration can help the United State achieve success in tackling public health problems, climate change, energy consumption, and a failing economy. We can once again foster streets that are the cornerstone of great places.

To see the palette of PPS tools that are available to help you create streets that are places and foster “Building Communities Through Transportation,” visit our transportation services page.

Categories: Blog, Building Communities through Transportation, Transportation
Tags: complete streets





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Crescent Heights project on Alton Road North of Fifth Street will be presented to Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club, Nov 22nd

By: David Kelsey

Meeting Date:            Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

Meeting Time:           8:30 AM

Meeting Place: David’s Café II, 1654 Meridian Ave., South Beach

     Jonathan Carrdello, of ADD, Inc., architect for Crescent Height’s Alton Road north of 5th Street development, will be the guest seaker at the Nov. 22nd meeting of the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club.  He will be presenting the latest proposal for a possible joint venture with the city that includes a signature pedestrian bridge, much like New York’s High Line park, spanning the McArthur causeway / 5th Street entrance to the beach and connecting the project to the area south of 5th. 

     The pedestrian bridge, proposed to be designed by world-class designer Santiago Calatrava, is expected to become a landmark for Miami Beach.

     There is no charge for attending and everyone is welcome.

     David Kelsey, Moderator for the Breakfast Club.

   

FDOT Alton Road Project Discussed at CMB Neighborhood Committee --

Article by Gabrielle Redfern on Nov 14, 2011
Appearing in Transit Miami

Miami Beach Becomes First Municipality In Florida to Challenge Mandatory Bike Lane Law


At the City of Miami Beach’s Neighborhoods and Community Affairs Committee meeting today, City staff attorneys were directed to challenge the Florida State Statutes that require the inclusion of bicycle facilities on state roads, and protested the inclusion of bike lanes on the Alton Road reconstruction project on the same safety grounds that require the facility contained in the Statute.

You might remember that Transit Miami has been pushing the department to consider alternatives to a traditional bike lane since the first time FDOT ventured on the island back in June of 2008 . We later reported on the progress of the project here and here, all the while hoping that FDOT would try using more that one tool in their bicycle planning toolbox. Finally, after years of lobbying and advocacy, FDOT presented several alternative options for a bicycle facility on Alton Road at the quarterly progress report on the $40 million dollar project.

Too bad Miami Beach City Commissioner’s told FDOT to take their bike lanes and put them, well, somewhere else.

Not only that, Commissioner Gongora convinced his fellow policymakers of the idea to attack the law requiring FDOT to consider other users for the roads they build and maintain. The Commission added to the Legislative Agenda of their paid Tallahassee lobbyist to get the provision of the Florida Statutes 335.065 removed or changed by giving the municipalities the ability to opt out of bicycle facilities required by the DOT. (Mind you we are talking about Miami Beach - arguably some of the best urbanism in the entire State of Florida, and the one place most poised to take advantage of a well designed bicycle network.)

So today FDOT comes back. The Mayor had said that the bike lanes should not be next to the flow of traffic but between the curb and the parked cars - a parking protected cycle track.

FDOT showed that.

That required a three-foot buffer between the four-foot bike lane and the 8-foot parking lane, reducing the sidewalk to six feet.

Then Commissioner Ed Tobin, who used his power while he sat on the MPO, asked for a physically separate cycle track.

FDOT showed that.

That resulted in an Alton Road with 10-foot sidewalks and a four-foot bike lane separated with a four-foot jersey wall from the traffic, but no parking lane.

FDOT then showed an option with a 16-foot sidewalk and four-foot bike lanes, and again with no parking.

For it’s part the City’s Public Works Department showed their alternative which was to make West Avenue an alternative to having a bike lane on Alton Road. FDOT responded by requiring that all the numbered east-west streets between Fifth and Michigan Avenue be retrofitted with bike lanes, which would require millions of dollars the City would have to borrow and permanent removal of 56 parking spaces.

The kicker is that work would have to be done before FDOT gets started on Alton Road.

So we’re back to Alton Road.

You have the heap on the credit to FDOT. We are used to giving them hell here on Transit Miami, but we have to give credit where credit is due. They have done a lot of work and shown they can see a different type of road in the future for many of our city’s streets. They should make certain that all of their projects get such attention to detail in nurturing the mix of users. FDOT is realizing it’s responsibility to make getting from one place to another as enjoyable and safe as possible for everyone.

Not just those in cars.

And that’s what we need. We need to stop building the same old roads that provide for only one type of mobility. Alton Road needs more people walking, taking transit, and riding a bike- not driving in their cars.

Commissioners Jerry Libbin, Michael Gongora and Jonah Wolfson disagree and voted to challenge whatever design FDOT plans to build on Alton Road that includes a bike facility – on safety grounds.

It was one of the most twisted uses of the law I have ever seen. 40 years of research and data supporting the safety and efficacy of bike lanes by the Federal Highway Administration and the current work of Dr. Jennifer Dill dismissed by two lawyers and a politician.

The City is doing its best NOT to have FDOT build a complete street. I pray every night the City would use half the effort it puts into fighting bike facilities, into building them along with better sidewalks and crosswalks.

Where were these same politicians when FDOT used the Baylink infrastructure promised to us when they rebuilt the Macarthur for the port tunnel?

And with everything in South Beach going down the tubes, except the water, faster than you can say Atlantic City, the only hope we have for a stable economic future and decent quality of life is to allow for more mobility on this tiny island through as many modalities we can offer, not just expecting everyone to get around Miami Beach in a car.

We need this Alton Road reconstruction project – but we also need better mobility on Miami Beach. I am dismayed at the lack of vision in this community. Everyone on a bike or on foot, on a board or on skates or in a stroller or wheelchair or scooter is a person not in their car.

What a wonderful place this could be.

CMB Police Department will announce New Sector Plan at Community Breakfast Meeting

Community Breakfast Meeting
Thurs, Nov 17th, 10:00 am
Royal Palm Hotel, 1545 Collins Avenue
RSVP to Officer Doty by Wed Nov 16th
305-218-7463 -- DeborahDoty@MiamiBeachFL.gov

Officer Deborah Doty extends this invitation for breakfast on Thursday, November 17, 2011, 10:00 a.m., at the Sunshine Palm Room, Royal Palm Hotel, 1545 Collins Avenue.

This Community Meeting is hosted by the Neighborhood Resource Team of the City of Miami Beach Police Department in order to announce and explain the new Sector Plan.

Please RSVP by Wednesday, November 16th to Officer Doty at 305-218-7463 -- DeborahDoty@MiamiBeachFL.gov. 

Flamingo CIP Stakeholders Meeting -- Monday, November 7, 2011, 3 to 5 pm -- Mayor's Conference Room, City Hall

Meeting Notice – Flamingo Park Neighborhood Association

CIP Flamingo Neighborhood Stakeholders Meeting
Monday, November 7, 2011, 3 to 5 pm
Mayor’s Conference Room – Miami Beach City Hall, 4th Floor

Flamingo – from Washington to Alton, from Sixth Street to Lincoln Road --
our historic, urban, residential neighborhood in South Beach
aiming to be the most pedestrian-friendly neighborhood in Florida.

All those who live, work, or visit the neighborhood are invited to attend and participate

PROPOSED AGENDA

1. Completion of Phase I – 7th to 9th Streets, Washington to Meridian

a. Concern with the Meridian Avenue Bulbouts and Crosswalks
b. Comparison of Euclid Textured Crosswalks & Pennsylvania Painted Crosswalks

2. Preview of Next Phases

a. Sixth Street Corridor
b. Sixteenth Street Corridor
c. Status of Stormwater Masterplan

3. Information on Implementation of Flamingo Park Projects

a. Status of Tennis Center

i. Removal and Replacement of Trees

c. Handball Court Project
d. Opportunity to Visit with Project Architectb. Football Field Project

4. Other Matters

a. Enforcement of Short Term Rentals
b. Becoming Florida’s most pedestrian-friendly neighborhood -- Tammy Young & Ben Batchelder
c. Drexel Avenue, North of 16th Street
d. Alton Road FDOT Redevelopment Project
e. Florida’s 2012 battle: Gambling Dollars vs Disney Image
f. Veterans Day Parade – Scott Needelman & Adam Shedroff

 
 

Still time to join the Flamingo group in the Veterans Day Parade -- Contact Scott Needelman

Honor our Veterans -- 11-11-11 at 11

Participate in Veterans Day Parade
November 11, 2011 -- culminating at 11:00 am

Once again this year, Scott Needelman will coordinate our participation in the Veterans Day Parade. Please be in direct contact with Scott if you would like to participate in the parade this year honoring our country's veterans. This activity is a part of the Flamingo Family Priorities section headed by Adam Shedroff.

Lining up along Washington Ave on 17^th street at 8:30 am, marchers will travel south on Washington Ave and then west on Eleventh Street into Flamingo Park.  At approximately 10:30 am there will be a ceremony in the park followed by a free picnic for all participants.

You may contact Scott at telephone 305-710-5584 or you may contact him by e-mail at SAN1455@Att.net. The parade culminates at 11am followed by a picnic lunch in Flamingo Park. Hope you can be a part of this fun day in the neighborhood!

West Avenue Bridge -- Public Meeting -- Tuesday, November 15th, 6 - 8 pm

Workshop Presentation -- West Avenue Bridge
Tues, Nov 15, 6 - 8 pm, Presentation at 6:15pm
at Miami Beach Reguional Library
227  22nd Street, Miami Beach

The City of Miami Beach will conduct a public workshop meeting for the West Avenue Bridge Project Study. 

At the workshop, the City will present potential alternatives for a low-level bridge over Collins Cana at West Avenue.  The bridge concepts presented will include alternative bridge widths comprised of various lanes, sidewalks and bike lands.  The NO BRIDGE alternative ill also be presented.

During the workshop, maps, drawings and other project information will be available for review and the public will have the opportunity to ask questions and provide comments to the project team.