Complete Streets Webinar by Smart Growth America: Evaluating Projects

Earlier this week, the second webinar was held by Smart Growth America sharing their research on Complete Streets. This time the focus is on evaluating projects to measure success and the report on the subject was released today. To Read my notes taken during the webinar read on, or view the full report at this link http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/guides/evaluating-complete-streets-projects-a-guide-for-practitioners/.  

p.s. nice to see a picture from BC on the cover, bicycle counter in Victoria.

These are the rough notes I took during the Webinar:

• Measure what you want to achieve, what are the goals of the community and how does this project contribute to those.
• Using photos and visualizations to display the benefits in an understandable way.
• Explain the benefits in terms of tangible benefits to people rather than technical benefits.
• Although health benefits are often a positive outcome of complete streets, they are difficult to quanitfy and require data over the long term, stick with traditional measures such as mode share, and increase in numbers of pedestrians and cyclists.
• Engagement is important in explaining the benefits, take it to the people in the area where the project is.
• Setting the goals at the start helps set design direction and makes it easier to decide on trade-offs which are often necessary.
• Benefits of evaluating schemes is that overtime we can get a better understanding of what does and doesn't work. Limited data available at the moment.
• Benefits of complete streets include improvements in safety, slowing of vehicles, comfort and accessibility of other modes, aesthetics, on-street parking, better use of street space.
• Barriers to implementation often include refocussing those established in traditional automobile centric design to buy in to the need and importance of other modes, this can include engineers, city staff and councillors who see traffic performance as the number 1 issue.
• Data for complete streets is often qualitative rather than quantitative, established LOS for cars, less so for other modes. We've been measuring vehicle performance for cars for decades, time to refocus.
• One recent way for cyclists is to measure traffic stress based on the type of facility and level of confidence in the rider. One tool that was mentioned is Street Score Plus which can be found here http://asap.fehrandpeers.com/streetscore/ , they have a lot of other interesting tools there. Mapping out the streets using these categories can help identify where there are gaps. Its a good way to help achieve 8-80 goals.
• Conditions and attitudes can vary by area, so important to consider local issues, needs and preferences when considering performance measures.
• Resurfacing provides a good opportunity to repurpose the street. Always think how we could use it better?
• The public are becoming more aware of transportation issues, don't be afraid to use some technical data to explain benefits, but overall needs to be understandable to all.
• Some upcoming ITE initiatives include the formation of a complete streets Council, moving the trip generation manual to include multi-modal data, a tactical urbanism series, information on accommodating pedestrians and cyclists through interchanges and guidelines for low/intermediate speed roadways.
• Lastly, when evaluating projects do not forget lifecycle costs including operation and maintenance requirements.