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Yesterday, the National Complete Streets Coalition released an inspiring and informative new report, examining and rating more than 200 local and state Complete Streets policies from across the country. “Complete Streets Policy Analysis 2010: A story of growing strength” underscores the tremendous growth of the movement and highlights exemplary policies as helpful guidance for policy makers and advocates working on complete streets in their communities.

Just a few hours after the report’s release, the Alliance hosted the first discussion of this important analysis on our Mutual Aid call “Complete Streets: What Makes a Model Policy?” Stefanie Seskin, local and state policy manager for the Coalition and author of the report, kicked off the discussion with an overview of the findings and some insight into what it means for the movement.

“It’s really exciting to see this movement take off and see so many policies adopted that hit the 10 elements of an ideal Complete Streets policy,” she said. “We have at least one policy in 47 states and a state-level policy in 24 states, plus Puerto Rico and DC. Most of the policies have been adopted at the city level — about two-thirds — and the most common have been in suburbs of 300,000 or fewer. Most of the major cities are either in the process of adopting Complete Streets policies or have adopted them in the past few years. But small towns are well represented, too. One in five policies are in rural or small towns.”

But while the quantity is impressive, the new report also analyzes the quality of the measures, based on the 10 elements of an ideal Complete Streets policy. According to Seskin, the trend is toward “more comprehensive policies with more accountability” and the analysis identifies model policies for each element and the top policies overall. (Kudos to advocates in Connecticut, Minnesota and Missouri, who had multiple policies make the top 15!)

You can still catch Stefanie’s entire presentation by listening to the call recording.  And, of course, check out the blog post and full report from the Coalition.