Complete Streets Make Mobility Meaningful

By: State: Indiana | Source: AARP.org

How are the sidewalks in your city or suburb? The bike lanes? The bus system?

In most places, the answer will be "nonexistent".

Not because people don't want them, but because developers, planners, engineers, and state and local governments have generally thought too narrowly about transportation and mobility.

The result? Traffic gridlock, air pollution, overreliance on fossil fuels, unsafe options for adults and children who bike and walk, and essentially no options for nondrivers.

AARP hopes to change all that with Complete Streets, a holistic approach to mobility that is gaining traction across the country.

• Complete Streets asks planners and engineers to broaden their traditional practice of designing primarily for cars.
• Complete Streets insists that all users should benefit from our transportation systems, not just motorists.
• Complete Streets imagines flexible transportation systems that respond to specific local needs and circumstances.

Admittedly, that's a tall order in the land of the car. But we think it's doable, and we're training a cadre of volunteers to promote Complete Streets to the state transportation agencies and metropolitan planning organizations that can put Complete Streets into practice.

Nationwide, five states have passed the Complete Streets concepts into law and six others have incorporated them as state transportation policy. More than 40 localities have adopted Complete Streets, too, including Chicago and Champaign, IL, Louisville, KY, Washtenaw County (Ann Arbor), MI, and Bloomington/Monroe County, IN—Indiana's first Complete Streets community.

How complete, and whose definition?

Complete Streets is just one element of a larger AARP initiative called Livable Communities. Essentially, AARP believes that communities should be "livable" for people who are aging—with realistic housing options, multiple ways to get around, and access to services and public spaces that promote independence.

Here in Indiana, AARP is putting Complete Streets at the center of its Livable Communities push.

• We're training volunteers to serve on Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and MPO advisory committees, including technical and policy committees.
• We're conducting walkability assessments in four urban centers and providing both training and materials for people who want to conduct independent assessments in other places.
• We also backed successful local legislation in Marion County that requires sidewalk construction in all new and renovated developments.

No single description encompasses Complete Streets. But they generally include such features as sidewalks, bike lanes, ample crosswalks, "refuge" medians and audible pedestrian signals.

Complete Streets also can vary by locale—rural, urban, suburban.

Consistently, though, they function as multi-use transportation corridors and not mere carriers of cars and traffic.

So, let's end this journey where we began.

How are the sidewalks in your city or suburb? The bike lanes? The buses?

Complete Streets won't solve all those shortcomings immediately, but you can help us start the process by getting involved today.

Find out more at www.completestreets.org, or send e-mail to Irene Wegner of AARP Indiana at inaarp@aarp.org.