What would a Complete Streets Policy change?
A Complete Streets Policy would:
- Put context-sensitive design at the forefront of projects, including balancing accessibility needs for people of all ages and modes of transportation;
- Acknowledge induced demand of designs, and require traffic projection modeling to be validated on historic data (increasing the state of knowledge of non-car-based traffic modes);
- Trickle down policy to the local level through state-level technical and financial assistance on projects.
- Oklahoma City Boulevard is an illustrative example, where sticking to level of car service principles and neglecting local context produced excessive speed, injurious crashes, and added cost for the local city and local police.
In Oklahoma City, ODOT was tasked with demolishing the old I-40 Crosstown to build Oklahoma City Boulevard, intended to be a grand entrance into downtown. After completion, updates and maintenance would be turned over to the city. However, the design lacked local context for what was intended to spur commercial development and interaction with downtown, and especially did not prioritize safety. Oklahoma City Boulevard opened to the public on August 19, 2019, with the design still highly reflective of highway movement. This resulted in 15 crashes in the first month, with 11 occurring at just one intersection. Despite the crashes, ODOT stated that the 2-way stop at this Klein Avenue intersection is implemented according to their design, and that signalization is not called for.
Shortly after, the Oklahoma City Police Department stepped up motorcycle patrols, and the city added more speed limit signs and cautions about it only being a two way stop. The city also pursued adding stoplights, which, per process, required a city-funded traffic study followed by city-funded construction. Notably, the traffic study revealed just 3% of motor vehicle traffic obeyed the 35mph speed limit, while 15% of traffic exceeded 50 mph. This is through an area with multi-use paths intended to accommodate pedestrian and bicycle access to many businesses.
A Complete Streets Policy would have focused on accessibility and safety in the local area, noting that cross traffic, pedestrian access, and commercial development would benefit from calmer traffic able to access those businesses. This has been a successful approach in many other places around the country, like South Bend, IN, Lancaster, CA, Indianapolis and Kansas City, resulting in enhanced safety, increased commercial activity, and increased business investment. Instead, the highway-like design that encourages speed through an area, did not help businesses, and in fact led to harm and costs for local residents and the municipality.
- It may seem smart practice to use future traffic projections to influence the design of current street projects, particularly when time, cost, effort, and lifecycle of the infrastructure. However, design often influences the resulting traffic pattern, an element known as “induced demand”. If you build more and wider roads and more car parking, that will influence more people to drive. If you build more bike trails, you’ll find more people riding bicycles (as evidence in Oklahoma City’s MAPS 3 trails investments, as well as with our neighbors in Fayetteville, AR).
In practice, Oklahoma traffic planning often builds for projected car traffic of 20 years in the future, assuming 2% annual growth. However, that model is not based on historic growth patterns. Oklahoma City in particular, has not regionally seen 2% cumulative over the past 20 years. (A few corridors may see 1% over 20 years, based on new commercial or residential developments, but regionally, traffic rates have remained stagnant over the past 2 decades, despite population growth.)
Inconsistently, recent projects have determined the need for a sidewalk to help kids walk to school based on a 1-time count of current walkers (prior to sidewalks being connected, and no safe crossings).
The impact of street expansion on fictional projections is more than induced car usage and discouraging walking (as roads become less safe and destinations become more spread out). This places a large burden on state and municipal backlogs. In 2004, FHWA ranked Oklahoma 49th in the nation due to number of structurally deficient highway bridges. This inspired the 2005 ROADS Fund (Rebuilding Oklahoma Access and Driver Safety), where up to $170M of personal state income tax bypasses the appropriations process to go directly to ODOT, in order to fill the maintenance gap not covered by oil production tax, motor vehicle fees, and bonds. By 2019, ODOT has brought the number of deficient bridges down from 1200 to 86. It’s an incredible amount of progress. But arbitrary traffic models that promote widening threaten ODOT’s progress.
It’s a problem for road quality too, with a 2017 report stating 45% of major roads are in poor condition. This impacts not only the efficiency and safety of car drivers, but also reduces the economic life of the cars, with an estimated cost of $5B per year to Oklahoma drivers. Much of ODOT and municipal budgets focus on road maintenance.
A Complete Streets policy would require addressing pedestrian needs on at least an equal footing as car service. The policy would acknowledge the impact of induced demand, and focus on designing future projects for the traffic and quality of life we desire, as well as the full lifecycle cost of the infrastructure. It further would require traffic projection models to be validated with historic numbers. This would prevent the cycle of continuous expansion that worsen the burden on our road maintenance budgets.
- The Oklahoma Department of Transportation often provides technical assistance, as well as financial matching support to local projects. A state-wide Complete Streets Policy would provide a consistent guide for project implementations across the state. This would enhance driver awareness and familiarity as they travel between different towns. Consistency would also ease driver education efforts.
A state-level Complete Streets Policy would also require local projects receiving state-level funding to incorporate Complete Streets Principals. This further facilitates evolving the community of practice for traffic engineering at all levels, while also increasing adoption of infrastructure. Consistent guidelines simplify the regulation expertise and tooling that construction companies need to support projects in different municipalities, thus streamlining construction costs and timelines.
Altogether, this greatly improves safety, further enhances public awareness, and reduces the long-term maintenance burden on the state.