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Complete Streets


What are Complete Streets?

  
Image © 2009 Caltrans
   A bicyclist gets ready to merge with motorized traffic. Complete street designs incorporate safety features for cyclists as well as pedestrians.

 Complete Streets are roadways designed to enable safe access for all legal users including bicyclists, pedestrians, people using mobility aids, transit riders, and motorists. Complete Streets don’t all look the same. A complete Street is planned, designed, operated, and maintained in a way that’s appropriate to the function and context of the roadway, whether rural, suburban, or urban. What is adequate on a major arterial is different from what would be needed on a freeway, and what is sufficient in a rural setting (often just a standard shoulder) is much different from an urban one. In fact, there is no design prescription to make a corridor ‘complete’. Shoulders, sidewalks, convenient bus stop placement, traffic speed reduction, accessible pedestrian signal timing, and medians can all improve safety and mobility for users.


Why do we need Complete Streets? Aren’t roadways supposed to be for cars?


Image © 2009 Caltrans		      
Mid-block crosswalk with a raised island for pedestrian refuge and a visible crosswalk.

      
Making room for all types of travelers on our roadways provides benefits for everyone including:
  • Complete Streets contribute to a healthy and active lifestyle. Many people would walk and bike more if they could do so more easily and safely.
  • Complete Streets improve traveler safety. By designing roadways with basic elements of complete streets, such as safer bus stop placements and raised medians, we all can travel more safely - including people of all ages and abilities.
  • Complete Streets help the environment. Many of our daily vehicle trips are short – 3 miles or less. If some of these trips were made on bicycle or foot we could significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and breathe cleaner air.
  • Complete Streets reduce congestion. Providing more travel options relieves some of the burden on our overcrowded roadways – everyone can get where they want to go more quickly and efficiently.
Learn more about Complete Streets:
  
Image © 2009 Caltrans
   A bus makes a stop on a road with motorized traffic and light rail train tracks. pedestrian and bicycle access is important here as people walk or ride to public transportation modes.