Gary Toth on Complete Streets: One Size Does Not Fit All

This is an excellent video of Gary Toth's presentation at the Complete Streets Forum in Toronto last month.  It focuses on how to build communities through transportation.  The presentation also includes great slides of examples from across the country.  This presentation should provide many useful ideas for Lee County and local jurisdictions as they implement their complete streets programs and redesign how we plan transportation. 

Last month Gary Toth spoke at the Complete Streets Forum in Toronto about the symbiotic relationship between the Complete Streets and Placemaking movements. Early on in the talk, posted above in full, Gary points out that a complete street makes travel “safe, comfortable, and convenient” for all modes–but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it overtly provides for each one in its own area.

Complete streets can often include flexible or mixed-mode areas (Salt Lake City’s green lanes are a great example), but the focus should be on creating a street that is welcoming to everyone, no matter the mode of travel.

The question at the heart of Gary’s talk is about how we build community through transportation. When talking about streets, “Complete,” he argues, “has got to be about community-building, not just about taking space away from cars.” Efforts to create more complete streets often bump into opposition that claims bike lanes and bump-outs are part of a “war on cars,” and Gary explains how to re-frame the issue as being about creating neighborhoods that are safer and more inclusive: the kinds of places where you feel comfortable letting your child ride ahead a bit when out biking.

If you enjoy the video above and are interested in learning more about how to engage your local transportation agency to start rethinking streets as places, here’s a link to the Citizens Guide to Better Streets, which Gary mentions at the end of his presentation.

Posted by: Project for Public Spaces

Gary Toth: Levels of Service and Travel Projections: The Wrong Tools for Planning Our Streets?

As the County works to ensure that the complete streets/sustainability focus in the EAR is carried through in the actual Comp Plan amendments, it is critical to revisit the transportation "level of service" methodology that  spews out the "need" for wider and faster roads.  Today's PPS article by Gary Toth is a must read for policymakers involved in this process.

Project for Public Places (PPS) Blog: February 6th, 2012
  Posted by: Gary Toth

Would you use a rototiller to get rid of weeds in a flowerbed? Of course not. You might solve your immediate goal of uprooting the weeds — but oh, my, the collateral damage that you would do. Yet when we try to eliminate congestion from our urban areas by using decades-old traffic engineering measures and models, we are essentially using a rototiller in a flowerbed. And it’s time to acknowledge that the collateral damage has been too great.

Click here to read the article.

The "deadly duo": Level of Service (LOS) & travel projections

National Complete Streets Coalition 6/16/10 News:
More on the Balancing Act: What to Do about LOS?
Putting a priority on completing the streets for all users almost invariably means turning away from or downplaying the single traditional measure of the success of a roadway: automobile Level of Service, determined through sometimes questionable traffic projections. Wayne Senville of Planning Commissioner's Journal writes two thoughtful blog posts of the problems with Level of Service and travel projections, drawing on a recent Project for Public Spaces workshop by Gary Toth. The same theme was sounded in a recent APA Planners Training Service workshop on Complete Streets, in which renowned engineer Walter Kulash derided the 'grades' assigned to different levels of congestion. The Complete Streets: Best Policy and Implementation Practices report also discusses changing a community's view on congestion, and the potential for alternative LOS measures.

Click here for the blog on level of service, and here for the travel projections blog.

It's important that the elected officials on the MPO board understand the flexibility they have as they develop the County's 2035 Long Range Transportation Plan, due to be completed by 12/31/10. Below is the message we sent to all MPO members, along with articles.

From: Darla [mailto:dletourneau@bikewalklee.org]
Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2010 3:36 PM
To: MPO Members
Subject: Ideas for LRTP: LOS & traffic projections

MPO Members,
As a follow-up to the discussion at yesterday’s MPO meeting about the need for the upcoming 2035 Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) to reflect the new transportation paradigm and a vision for Lee County’s future, I wanted to share with you some recent thoughts from Gary Toth (a national preeminent expert in transportation planning & land use) on Level of Service (LOS) and traffic projections, which can be useful in thinking about how to approach our LRTP.

Darla Letourneau
Steering Group
BikeWalkLee