[SDCBC] Anyone notice the commentary in the Union

[Gene Carman]

Taking a new look at streets and sidewalks
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By Neal Peirce
December 13, 2007

The cause has simmered for years – and we've all 
felt some of it: frustration with fast traffic 
that turns streets through our neighborhoods into 
corridors of fear. There is a resentment about 
narrow, rough or nonexistent sidewalks, a 
reluctance to have children cross high-speed 
roadways while walking to school. Bicyclists take 
their lives in their hands when venturing onto major roads.

Now, finally, there's an organized nationwide 
movement to fight the good fight for saner 
streets. It's a coalition mounting a nationwide 
campaign for city and town roadways that includes 
safe, quality space for pedestrians and cyclists 
and public transit users, accommodating their 
wishes just as seriously as those of car and truck drivers.

It's called, fittingly, the Complete the Streets 
movement 
(<http://www.completestreets.org>www.completestreets.org). 
Its members cover an amazing gambit – from 
America Bikes and AARP, Smart Growth America and 
the American Society of Landscape Architects to 
Paralyzed Veterans of America. The Institute of 
Transportation Engineers is even on board, 
amazing for a profession long known as the 
“throughput crowd” for its pushing of maximum 
numbers of vehicles at maximum feasible speed 
through cities and villages alike.

Complete Streets “are about a right of way for 
everyone out there traveling, walking or biking,” 
says Barbara McCann, the movement coordinator. 
All users of all ages and abilities, she asserts, 
need to be able to move safely along and across a 
complete street. And, McCann adds, “safety is a huge reason.”

As well it should be: Every 113 minutes across 
the United States, a motorized vehicle hits and 
kills a pedestrian or cyclist. Every eight 
minutes, one is injured, sometimes paralyzed. 
Most of Europe, by contrast, has worked for years 
at expanding walkways and bikeways, making 
intersections safer and erecting physical 
barriers to fast city and town traffic. On a 
per-mile basis, a German pedestrian has only a 
third as much chance of being a traffic fatality 
as his American counterpart; a German cyclist only half.

People tightly wed to the single-passenger car 
concept are least likely to accept the complete 
streets idea. But 90 percent of us, according to 
a survey by the National Association of Realtors, 
believe that new communities should be designed 
so we can walk more and drive less, and that 
public transportation should be improved and accessible.

States and cities are getting the message. 
Illinois this fall passed a complete streets law 
requiring the state's transportation department 
to include bicycling and walking facilities in 
all its urban-area projects. Five other states 
(Massachusetts, Florida, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode 
Island) now have some form of complete streets 
law on the books. More than 50 metro regions, 
counties or cities – Charlotte to Johnson County, 
Kan., Salt Lake City to Seattle – have passed 
similar statutes. Many others are now considering them.

Chicago, for example, is moving to narrower 
traffic lanes, median “refuges” and curb 
extensions for pedestrians, as well as converting 
four-lane roadways into three lanes with marked bike lanes.

But for “a really dramatic increase in cycling in 
cities,” says Tim Blumenthal, executive director 
of Bikes Belong, “painting stripes won't make 
enough people feel safe.” Paris is creating and 
protecting new bike lanes with vertical 1.5-foot 
separation posts. On New York's Ninth Avenue, one 
of four lanes of traffic has been removed and 
parked cars moved out several feet from the 
sidewalk, creating a safe cycle-only corridor.

Project for Public Spaces has some of the right 
advice for cities: “Stop planning for speed.” 
“Right-size” road projects in cities and suburbs 
to “reconnect communities to their neighbors, a 
waterfront or park.” And “think of transportation 
as public space” – roads, transit terminals, 
sidewalks, reconfigured to create pleasant 
environments, a true sense of place.

Finally, there's health. News reports indicate 
America's obesity epidemic “is leveling off” – 
but at outrageously high and dangerous weights. 
So what's the best cure? Walking? An average 
person walking half an hour a day would lose 
about 13 pounds a year. Blumenthal would have us 
think about “two miles, two wheels” – cycle or 
walk for the 41 percent of all our trips that are two miles or less.

Complete streets make the walking/cycling 
prospect sound far more attractive. And now the 
American Public Health Association is seeking to 
connect obesity with the increasingly dire 
climate-change challenge. Trading miles behind 
the wheel for increased walking, cycling and 
public transit can trim pounds and cut greenhouse 
gases simultaneously. Not to mention reducing 
smog and car deaths and registering less heart 
disease, osteoporosis and depression.

“This may present the greatest public health 
opportunity that we've had in a century,” says 
the University of Wisconsin's Jonathan Patz, 
president of the International Association for Ecology and Health.

He may be right. But we're not likely to get 
there until we make our streets and public realm 
safer and more appealing – the essence of the complete streets message.
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