Agenda - Planning Commission - 04/04/2013

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Completing the Streets By Carol Gould, AICP, and Mike Morehouse The responsibility for establishing a congruent interface between private land development and the public right -of -way is often hidden within a regulatory "twilight zone." This lack of clarity presents one of the great- est challenges to planners and policy mak- ers striving to balance access with mobility and create a prosperous and livable commu- nity. This conundrum is especially vexing as many places are now looking for ways to re- prioritize how transportation serves commu- nities, switching from conventional mobility goals to those emphasizing safety, modal balance, healthy choices, environmental sustainability, character of place, and eco- nomic growth to name a few. The paradigms of the past must evolve in order to facilitate the needs of today's towns and cities. The term "complete streets" encom- passes street design practices collectively aimed at the safety, mobility, and accessibil- ity needs of users of all ages and abilities. With contemporary zoning practice focused increasingly on community character, land - use regulations need to address the concept of complete streets at the same time that they address how transportation serves as an element of that elusive "sense of place" often sought by municipalities. In the United States, municipal and state agencies typically build the public streets, and private devel- opers build to the street line, inclusive of structures, access drives, and other frontage elements. Nonetheless, many private devel- opers also construct what become new public streets as part of subdivisions, or new neigh- borhoods (such as new urbanist enclaves). So who is responsible for the design of what is or ultimately will be public rights -of -way? And who is responsible for the transition area between the public travel ways and private land both for new and upgraded infrastruc- ture, where sidewalks, bicycle routes, and transit stops are meant to meet the pave- ment? The answer isn't always clear. To complicate matters, state and re- gional departments of transportation, local public works and engineering offices, and planning and zoning commissions tradition- ally have all had different mandates for the design and function of public ways. Their decision making is commonly done in isola- tion from one another and, as a result, can be counterproductive. With the exception of buffer requirements, conventional zoning has historically had little to say about what hap- pens in the legal gray zone between private property and the public right -of -way. In recent years, zoning requirements for access man- agement and parking have been evolving as an increasing number of communities seek to address the need to control how travel on private property links to travel on the public way. Other contemporary zoning techniques, such as traditional neighborhood develop- ment (TND) and transit - oriented develop- ment (TOD) districts, emphasize the form of development and routinely include language requiring contributions to the public realm, including sidewalks and streets. Yet these techniques often fail to discuss transporta- tion infrastructure in the context of a larger community mobility network. If we, as planners, agree that how streets look, feel, and function impacts a person's experience and impression of a place, then land -use regulations are an important toot to help manage the design and functionality of public streets, not only in terms of traffic, but in terms of balancing all modes of travel for improved connectivity and accessibility. According to the National Complete Streets Coalition, hundreds of communities nationwide have adopted complete streets policies and programs. The question becomes how best to mesh those local programs with private site design, where development meets the road. This article looks at what it means to complete the streets and provides some ex- amples of how communities are doing this. It then explores how zoning can be used as a means to help communities facilitate the complete streets process. It concludes with some thoughts about zoning and implemen- tation of an effective complete streets ap- proach to roadways. PROBLEMS WITH THE STREET DESIGN STATUS QUO Conventional traffic engineering for streets emphasizes capacity and safety for car and truck travel. Leading engineering organiza- tions such as the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) publish guid- ance on the design and operation of public streets. Level of Service (LOS), a long- standing performance measure in the traffic engineering community, is often cited in these publications. LOS corresponds to a letter grade, A through F (with A being the best and F the worst), for the amount of de- lay a vehicle experiences on a road or inter- section. It is a basic measure of congestion that only considers car and truck traffic. Conventional LOS determinations are based on subjective criteria; namely, what level of frustration (delay) is the average driver willing to tolerate? The problem with LOS is that it is biased against walking and bicy- cling and promotes sprawl by increasingly pointing to the need to add car capacity to roads to "improve" conditions. Relying on LOS to plan and design the street net- work limits opportunities to complete our streets. This is because car capacity is often provided at the expense of sidewalks and dedicated bicycle and transit infrastructure. Car capacity is quickly consumed, peak period congestion returns, and the demand for more capacity increases. ZONINGPRACTICE z.13 AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION I page 2