May/June 2017

28 American Traffic Safety Services Association ROADWAY SAFETY In 2011, the Alexandria City Council adopted a Complete Streets Policy, which called for the Northern Virginian locality’s Department of Transportation and Environmental Services (T&ES) to apply the concept of street accessibility for users within its daily operations. The policy goes on to ensure complete streets infrastructure is implanted in all streets projects “to the extent possible.” In the years since the city’s council adopted Resolution 2621, Alexandria has 25 complete streets projects showcased on Alexandria’s city government website, six of which are ongoing or due for evaluation and 19 that are designated as complete. The department’s latest featured project is the resurfacing of Cameron and Prince streets. While some improvements for pedestrians have been constructed on both streets that sit between the Union Street and King Street Metrorail stations, multiple complete street applications continue to be made through spring of this year. According to the website alexandriava.gov, the city has acted to “install pedestrian countdown signals at signalized intersections, upgrade non-ADA compliant curb ramps [and] repair sidewalks to address safety and tripping hazards.” Currently, Alexandria is resurfacing both streets “where necessary and weather pending” and plans to improve crosswalk visibility by re-striping lines at high-traffic crossings, construct bicycle lanes without affecting parking or driving lanes and include “shared lane markings” on streets where bicycle lanes cannot be added. While all of these improvements seem standard when considering what defines a complete street, Peter Furth, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, said there is not a definitive design to establish a street as complete. “Complete streets, it’s a catchy [phrase] meant to emphasize that we have a lot of streets that are incomplete, meaning there are a lot of functions that streets should fulfill,” Furth said. “It would be a mistake to think that every street should fulfill every function so in a sense the word complete streets is a little bit, if you take it to it’s extreme, misleading.” According to Furth, the functions that streets serve can include carrying through traffic, carrying bus traffic, providing a safe space for pedestrians to walk and cross (or what Furth calls “crossability”), providing a safe space for bicyclists or providing space and a quiet atmosphere for homes but every street does not have to serve all functions. “A street is incomplete when the way it’s designed and the way it operates is not serving some of its intended functions,” Furth said. Furth said the U.S is falling far behind countries like the Netherlands in terms of complete streets because of an overreliance on cars, a lack of public transportation in many areas, a lack of funding for safe walking or bicycling infrastructure, urban sprawl etc. Traditionally, Furth said, one function has been respected above all others and that is the function of through traffic, which he added is “not universal but typical,” and that leads to other functions such as crossability or bicycling to be neglected. But taking care of those typically neglected functions is highly important because not only do they improve safety by slowing speed limits, having fewer lanes and ultimately taming the road but in many cases, they do so without affecting the function of carrying through traffic at all. In order to shift focus to those neglected functions, Furth said implementing different traffic control devices or roadway design Pedestrians cross through a gateway of R1-6 signs. According to the User Guide for R1-6 Gateway Treatment, prepared by Ron Van Houten of Western Michigan University, the placement of signs on the curb, as pictured, requires Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) permission to experiment unless the curb is on a “median island, pedestrian refuge island or curb extension.” Photo provided by Ron Van Houten, Western Michigan University Complete streets breakdown Creating safe living spaces with traffic control devices and road design features