Rethinking Streets: An Evidence-Based Guide to 25 Complete Street Transformations

Abstract

The predominant approach toward street function on major roads in the United States is to emphasize mobility and throughput of vehicles. The “Complete Streets” movement challenges some of this paradigm, emphasizing that streets should accommodate multiple modes of travel and should often be considered destinations themselves. Often, efforts to transform streets into complete streets (or from mobility-based to accessibility-based designs) face resistance from both professional communities and from the public that their design will reduce throughput and flow of vehicles. Complete streets advocates often counter that while their designs often create pedestrian and cycling space from areas that were previously occupied by automobiles, that throughput is often not impacted and that flow can actually improve. This project’s aim was to document a variety of existing and implemented examples of Complete Street improvements from around the country, visually document their design and context, and compare actual outcomes in order to create a design toolbox for transportation planners, traffic engineers, policy makers, and communities across the country. Local officials have few documented guidebooks to help them think about how to retrofit streets based on best practices. Rethinking Streets: An Evidence-Based Guide to 25 Complete Street Transformations was released as a grant-funded book in February 2014 and has since been downloaded over 4,000 times from transportation professionals and other community stakeholders from 20 countries, in addition to the distribution of 1,000 print copies. It is freely available on-line (rethinkingstreets.com) and this proposal is to share the resource and its findings to TRB participants.

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