CARTEEH logo with green car and plant

Center for Advancing Research in Transportation Emissions, Energy, and Health (CARTEEH)

A USDOT University Transportation Center

Complete Streets

Complete Streets is a transportation design approach that ensures the safe mobility for all road users, from pedestrians and bicyclists to people with disabilities.1 Like transit-oriented development, it emphasizes active forms of transportation to encourage less personal vehicle use and decrease vehicle miles traveled. On the other hand, incomplete streets tend to favor car use since it makes it less convenient for road users to walk, bike, or use public transit, therefore resulting in community severance. While traditional road development focuses on vehicle movement and flow, zoning reforms utilizing the Complete Streets concept emphasizes the movement and connectivity of all road users.

Complete Streets components can include:

-Narrower vehicle lane widths and traffic calming measures to foster a safe environment for pedestrians
-Improved and accessible crosswalks with appropriate signals
-Buffered pedestrian and bicycle lanes from vehicle traffic

Considering this strategy will help achieve the goal of the following objectives

  • Less Contamination
  • Less Emissions
  • Less Traffic Noise
  • Connectivity and Inclusion
  • Healthy Destinations
  • Less Traffic Violence
  • Active Transportation
  • Green Space

Transportation lifecycle phases

This strategy is associated with the following transportation lifecycle phases:

  • Construction
  • End of Life
  • Maintenance
  • Material Selection
  • Operations
  • Policy and Planning
  • Project Development

Who's involved

  • Local governments
  • MPOs
  • Private developers
  • Transit agencies
  • Vulnerable road users
Complete Streets is a transportation design approach that ensures the safe mobility for all road users, from pedestrians and bicyclists to people with disabilities.1 Like transit-oriented development, it emphasizes active forms of transportation to encourage less personal vehicle use and decrease vehicle miles traveled. On the other hand, incomplete streets tend to favor car use since it makes it less convenient for road users to walk, bike, or use public transit, therefore resulting in community severance. While traditional road development focuses on vehicle movement and flow, zoning reforms utilizing the Complete Streets concept emphasizes the movement and connectivity of all road users.
Complete Streets components can include:
-Narrower vehicle lane widths and traffic calming measures to foster a safe environment for pedestrians
-Improved and accessible crosswalks with appropriate signals
-Buffered pedestrian and bicycle lanes from vehicle traffic

How it Helps

Complete Streets can be a key mitigation strategy to shift more trips to low-carbon modes of transportation, thus reducing vehicle emissions. If road users feel more comfortable commuting in alternate forms of transportation, this can reduce traffic congestion, air pollution, noise pollution, and benefit both individual and community health.2,3 Improved road designs that segregate slow-moving, non-motorized transit (such as bicycles and pedestrians) from fast-moving, motorized transit will considerably improve road safety. Additionally, Complete Streets designs can incorporate green infrastructure to make walking and biking paths more inviting, reduce temperature, and improve air quality.4

Implementing

Elements:

There are several ideal elements that any Complete Streets policy or program should contain. These include careful design guidelines to ensure that best practices are being followed.1 The surrounding land use and community’s transportation needs should also be evaluated so that the intervention is designed for the right target population. There should also be a way to ensure that the benefits of the Complete Streets approach benefits all users, particularly the communities who have been underserved.

Partners:

This strategy requires coordination between several entities like transit agencies, city planners and zoning boards, transportation engineers and planners. Intentional development between these groups can produce a number of human-friendly neighborhood design elements, including locating homes within a safe 400-meter distance of resources like bus stops and town centers.5

Incentives:

Incentives can be a very productive way to encourage the use of mixed land use and zoning to promote Complete Streets designs. Some examples of incentives that can be effective are tax abatements for companies who participate in mixed land use and zoning as well as increasing access to affordable housing that is in mixed land areas.6

Examples

1) Portland’s Complete Streets Policy

The city of Portland, Maine has adopted a Complete Streets Policy that ensures that all road users are considering when designing the surrounding transportation infrastructure. All planning and designing projects must include complete streets considerations when applying for funding.

https://www.portlandmaine.gov/2080/Complete-Streets

2) California’s Complete Streets Act

In 2011, the California Complete Streets Act was passed so that roadways are designed so that all users can travel safely while receiving adequate physical activity.

https://www.changelabsolutions.org/product/california-complete-streets-policies

3) Congress for New Urbanism Guidelines

Many urban design practitioners, including the Congress for New Urbanism, offer guidelines for pedestrian-friendly new development as well as retrofitting auto-centric existing development. In general, these include partnering with the community to identify its needs, aligning codes and ordinances, right-sizing streets to human scale, reducing parking, increasing the green space, and repurposing existing buildings.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LqlJ20ZdorABvD_ZxaZ_i1K3PZlKDxbs/view

1. Zhu, Y. (2016). Effects of Complete Streets on Travel Behavior and Exposure to Vehicular Emissions. https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/classic/research/apr/past/11-312.pdf
2. Complete Streets. (2016). https://atpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/06_Environmental-Benefits.pdf
3. National Complete Streets Coalition. Benefits of Complete Streets: Complete Streets Fight Climate Change. http://old.smartgrowthamerica.org/documents/cs/factsheets/cs-climate.pdf
4. NACTO. Urban Street Stormwater Guide: Complete Streets are Green Streets. https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-stormwater-guide/streets-are-ecosystems/complete-streets-green-streets/
5. Rachele, J. N., et al. (2017). Neighbourhood socioeconomic and transport disadvantage: The potential to reduce social inequities in health through transport. Journal of Transport & Health, 7, 256-263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2017.09.002
6. Delaware Complete Communities Toolbox. Mixed-Use Development. https://www.completecommunitiesde.org/Planning/landuse/mixed-use-development/