Thank you for this opportunity to discuss with you how we can work together to make our streets more complete.

Thank you for this opportunity to discuss with you how we can work together to make our streets more complete. 1

Thank you for this opportunity to discuss with you how we can work together to make our streets more complete. 4

I d like to cover the following topics in this short presentation: 5

Complete streets are. [click and read each word/phrase as it appears.] They have been called many things, and are many different things to different audience. 7

But the bottom line is 8

Here are some images that come to mind when we talk about ALL USERS. Complete streets cater to all modes walking, bicycling, driving, and transit. 9

Users range from those that are very young to the very old 10

and with various physical abilities 11

Complete Streets are also successful main streets, business addresses, neighborhood streets, or great streets along park spaces. These streets successfully support land uses they are serving by providing multi-modal access and bringing users to the land use. 12

I d like to share an example of a complete street here in our region. [THIS COULD BE THE OCEAN BEACH BOULEVARD EXAMPLE OR ANOTHER LOCAL EXAMPLE IN THE MUNICIPALITY IN WHICH THE PRESENTATION IS BEING GIVEN; IF IT IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE, THOSE SLIDES WOULD REPLACE THESE. THE SPEAKER CAN ALSO SHOW AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT A COMPLETE STREET IS NOT.] 13

This was what Ocean Beach Boulevard looked like just before reconstruction it was comprised of 2 very wide travel lanes (20 feet wide) and no sidewalks or bike lanes. Travel speeds were much faster than signed, and pedestrians and bicyclists has no safe place to travel. They were also experiencing flooding on portions of the roadway.

These were the plans the City of Cocoa Beach developed and built. This is the northern section where flooding was prevalent. To save time and money, the City re-used the existing right of way and profile of the roadway; they re-used the space to add another travel lane, bike lanes, sidewalks, and a wide median to retain stormwater.

This is the plan for the northern section. Although they has less room in the right-ofway, they still fit in bike lanes and sidewalks.

And, this is what the street looks like today space for pedestrians, bicyclists and cars to all travel safely.

This is in the northern end where they had less space and less of a drainage problem.

And they did this all within the existing right of way. The project was 1.3 miles long, and cost about $2 Million. It was funded with state and local funds, including a stormwater grant.

Complete Streets are important because we want to keep our citizens safe. More and more we are realizing that we are not designing our streets to be safe for all users. And, studies show that likeliness of pedestrian crashes are directly related to how streets are designed. For instance, sidewalks are indicators of the likelihood of pedestrian crashes 21

In 2008, the country had more than 5,000 cases of pedestrian fatalities and more than 100,000 of pedestrian injuries along roadways. This problem is very acute in major cities within our state. In its latest findings, Transportation for America s Dangerous By Design report ranked 4 Florida metro areas among the most dangerous in the country for pedestrians (Orlando-Kissimmee, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Miami-Fort Lauderdale, and Jacksonville). North American cities are also ranked among the worst in pedestrian fatalities when compared to other countries. The wheel represents the pedestrian fatalities per capita for a handful of cities around the world. The source of these statistics is from The New York City Pedestrian Safety and Action Plan, August, 2010. 22

A roadway s design speed impacts pedestrian safety. It is 30mph for a reason. This ad campaign from Europe shows how much more severe 10mph difference in speeds would have on crash severity. 23

The reason for this is the distance with which a driver has to come to a full stop from the moment a decision is made to hit the brakes varies depending on how fast car is traveling initially. When one is traveling at 37mph, it takes almost 280 feet (three times as far) before a driver can react and get the car to a full stop. When traveling at 19mph, it only takes 97 feet before coming to a full stop. 24

At 15 to 20mph, a driver can pay attention to potential conflicts along the side of the road, including people walking and land uses along the road. When traveling at faster speeds, a driver can only focus on things that are much farther with a reduced cone of vision. 25

Complete Streets is important because we want to enable our citizens to move around when they want to, even if they do not have the ability or the desire to drive. This is especially important for older adults, who want to remain in their communities and stay mobile. By 2025, the number of people over the age of 65 will more than double (to about 62 million), representing 18% of the population (nearly one in five Americans). 2009 National Household Travel Survey found that the percent of people who have stopped driving doubles each decade after the age of 65. The lack of opportunities to take transit, to bike safely, and to walk safely makes travel to the store, doctor, or to visit family and friends impossible. Let me share with you some statistics that demonstrate this. According to multiple studies, half of older Americans say it is unsafe to cross a major street near their home. 55% of older Americans living in inhospitable neighborhoods say they would walk and bike more often if the built environment improved. Sources: Surface Transportation Policy Project. Americans Attitudes Toward Walking and Creating Better Walking Communities. 2003. American Public Transportation Association. 2009 Public Transportation Fact Book. 2008 National Household Travel Survey. Non-drivers represent 29.8% of Americans. Of those over 65, non-drivers represent 20.79%. Steven Raphael and Alan Berube. Socioeconomic Differences in Household Automobile Ownership Rates: Implications for Evacuation Policy, paper prepared for the Berkeley Symposium on Real Estate, Catastrophic Risk, and Public Policy, March 23, 2006, http://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/raphael.pdf 26

The ability to move around safely is also very important for young children who are dependent on someone else to drive. This staggering statistic (71% vs 17%) shows how much less children are walking today, and how much more car trips are being added to our roadways. A number of factors contribute to this, but not having an opportunity to safely walk to school is one important reason for this. 27

Complete streets capitalizes on the potential for us to encourage many short trips that are occurring in our daily lives to be made by walking or bicycling. These trips that are less than 3 miles could easily be done by bicycling. But, this is only feasible if the right infrastructure is available to support this travel. Today, More than 70% of trips than are one mile or less are made in a car. Data: National Household Travel Survey, 2008 28

These statistics are not only relevant from a national perspective. A similar trend is occurring in our region and our residents want the same flexibility to move around in different ways. In 2004, the TPO conducted a survey and found these results. 29

The Federal government has started to more aggressively change policy to address this need. On June 16, 2009, EPA, HUD, and US DOT signed a partnership agreement to help improve access to affordable housing, more transportation options, and lower transportation costs while protecting existing communities nationwide. Through six guiding principles, this partnership will coordinate federal housing, transportation, and other infrastructure investments to protect the environment, promote equitable development, and help to address the challenges of climate change. Complete streets measures address all 6 of these principles. 30

The State has also taken notice. FDOT conducted a sidewalk and bikeway gaps analysis on all state roads and is developing measures to close these gaps. FDOT is also asking our region and our local communities to do the same inventory on local roadways to quantify the need for completing our sidewalks and bikeways. 31

Five major themes came out of the workshop. Let me quickly go over each one with you. 32

We all recognize the need for active participation from multiple players- from FDOT, from the TPO, and from our local communities. [click] FDOT needs to make sure that its standards allow/require complete streets. SCTPO can help to program and fund these projects. Our local municipalities can encourage Complete Streets through comprehensive plans, policies and land development regulations to make sure the land uses and the design of the streets work together to be safe for all modes. As an example, this image shows the vision of a complete street created by a community in Virginia. [click] We can see that a single agency or entity cannot create a great street on their own. The various pieces must come together in a holistic, comprehensive manner, meaning we all must coordinate with one another. 33

We need to all raise our standards to accommodate livability goals in designing and planning for our streets. As we do this, we can encourage the private development community to do the same. And we can do this through policies, incentives, and by simply building great streets for them to model after. 34

We need to make sure that our policies and practices support Complete Streets. This means that we may need to change what our policies say regarding designing streets both at the state level and at the local level. Many of our streets today serve automobile travel really well based on our design standards. We need to make sure that we plan and design streets that support ALL modes of travel safely. We can look to our peer DOTs to see how they are revising their policies to implement complete streets. The Pennsylvania DOT has recently adopted flexible design standards for all their transportation projects. These guidelines match roadway design to desired community contexts. The guidelines recognize that a regional arterial in a rural place need to be designed differently from one in a suburban place, or one in a town center. No longer are PennDOT engineers directed to think that the maximum design value, (widest possible lane width, for instance) is the best solution; but instead they are encouraged to focus on solutions that fit a community s context. At the local level, we can look at our comprehensive plans and land development regulations to make sure that our local streets are planned and designed for ALL modes. SHOULD WE PROVIDE AN EXAMPLE OR 2 HERE? 35

We also need to make sure that our $$ is in the right place to support Complete Streets. We need to encourage complete street projects and prioritize these on our TIP, LRTP, and work programs. The TPO has started this by creating a complete streets program on this year s TIP. This money will be used to plan, design and construct Complete Streets projects in our region. 36

The third take-away theme from the workshop is that we need a goal and a way to measure our progress as we advance complete street efforts. What should our goals be, and how should we measure our progress? Do we want a certain number or mile of our streets to be complete streets by a certain date? We then need specific metrics to track progress towards this vision. For instance, we can track safety related to bicycle and pedestrian travel or we can track % of streets with complete sidewalks, etc. 37

Here s a little bit more detail about how our TPO is addressing Complete Streets. 43

Aside from a Complete Streets policy, other tools are available to implement Complete Streets. These include 44

Let s look more closely at what a Complete Streets policy entail. 45

Here are some examples. More of these can be found on line at the Complete Streets Coalition website. 46

Here is an example of implementing Complete Streets through the comprehensive plan. The City of Jacksonville incorporated multi-modal performance measures in the transportation element of their comprehensive plan. They are evaluating their roadways not only based traffic levels-of-service, but also based on pedestrian and bicycling levels-of service. These ratings are then used to prioritize transportation investments. This map shows pedestrian level of service for various streets within the City. 47

Moving a step beyond Jacksonville, the City of Largo relates transportation investments to future land use context as a way of implementing Complete Streets. This map shows the citywide multi-modal mobility network with key corridors supporting redevelopment in Activity Centers. Through the Strategic Plan, the City aligns programming and capital improvements with the community's goals. Since 2004, the City Commission and City staff have used the Strategic Plan as a guide for policy decisions, budget updates, and capital project proposals. Between 2004 and 2009, the City invested an estimated $14.4 million in the completion of 17 projects related to Strategic Plan implementation. These projects included the roadway and streetscaping improvements, expansion of the sidewalk network, and economic development initiatives. The City is also working to establish a multimodal level-of-service to prioritize bicycle and pedestrian improvements along the Community Streets, and developing standards to guide the design of Community Streets. 48

Revising a city s land development regulations is another way of getting at Complete Streets. In 2009, the City of Jacksonville Beach adopted a vision plan that called for strategic transportation investments in Downtown. At the same time, the vision plan became the framework for the revision of their existing land development regulations to a form-based code. The form-based code calls for development of complete streets through regulating the street design, building/site design, and park and open space design. This form-based code approach will also be used in Viera s Phase 3 development. 49

Street standards call for variations in street types, classified based on the land use context of the roadway and the corresponding mobility role of each street. Specific cross sections were adopted. A streets call for wide sidewalks, pedestrian amenities, street trees, and bicycle facilities where appropriate. The code also included connectivity standards through block size maximums. 50

Building standards were developed to govern the form of buildings, and specifically the elements of a building that interface with the public street. Site design standards include height, building façade design, set-back, landscaping standards, etc. Street types are used as a framework for building design standards. For instance, A streets require active ground floor use, store fronts, and do not allow driveways or parking lots in front of the buildings. 51

I d like to end this presentation with a couple of images of the same street but in different municipalities with very different policies and regulations. We can truly make a difference through strong local planning and great partnerships! 52