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Entries tagged: Livable Streets

This month we celebrated with the National Complete Streets Coalition, as they marked the passage of more than 200 complete streets policies across the U.S.

Well, add Kansas City, Missouri, to that quickly growing list.

This week, the Kansas City City Council passed a “Livable Streets” resolution that recognizes “streets and sidewalks are an important part of our community that serve transportation needs and are also a part of the public realm where people live, shop, interact, and travel” and resolves that “Kansas City supports the concept of Livable Streets as a means to promote great neighborhoods, healthy and active people, and a thriving community.” The Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation lauded the passage of the complete streets policy as a “a giant step forward.”

According to federation: “Kansas City is moving to the forefront of transportation parity in Missouri following the adoption of similar Complete Streets policies in Columbia, De Soto, Ferguson, Crystal City, Festus, Herculaneum, St. Louis, and Lee’s Summit.”

“The Livable Streets resolution is a sort of capstone to several different polices and plans that are already moving the city forward towards becoming safer and easier to navigate by whatever mode of transportation people choose,” Eric Rogers, the vice president of the MoBikeFed writes on KCBike.info. It builds on recent progress, including a Bike KC Master plan, a walkability plan and the reform of the development code and parking regulations.

“It’s great to see more Complete Streets policies being adopted in Missouri,” says Sarah Shipley, a KC resident and staffer at the MoBikeFed. “It means our roads and streets will be designed for everyone and safer for everyone — the old, the young, people with a disability, people who walk, bicycle, take the bus, or drive.”

Click here to read the full resolution.

Back in October, we highlighted a major victory in the Show-Me State. After years of targeted advocacy and partnership building, the Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation helped cut the ribbon on a new bike-ped path on the Heart of America Bridge in Kansas City (pictured).

“Advocates have been working for this day for more than two decades,” Brent Hugh, MoBikeFed’s executive director, told us. “The Missouri River cuts the Kansas City metro area in half, and a safe crossing point for bicyclists and pedestrians has been the biggest missing piece of the area’s bike-ped network.”

Kansas City is far from unique. Bridge crossings pose significant challenges — and opportunities — for bicycle and pedestrian advocates across the country. To help spur more successes like the one in Missouri, the Advocacy Advance Team has just released its latest report, Bridging the Gaps in Bicycling Networks: An Advocate’s Guide to Getting Bikes on Bridges.

“Bridges provide critical connections in a transportation network,” writes Darren Flusche, policy analyst for the League of American Bicyclists and lead author of the report. “After a generation of building bridges exclusively for cars, it is time for a more inclusive approach. Bicyclists and pedestrians need bridges at least as much as any other road users and advocates are increasingly making progress with transportation agencies. However, because of their scale and complexity, advocates often need to undertake serious, concerted campaigns to ensure accommodations are made.”

“This report identifies some of the common objections to bridge accommodations for biking and walking and offers suggestions on how to answer them,” Flusche adds. “It also contains recommendations based on the experience of several successful and on-going advocacy campaigns.”

The report is a must-read. It brings together all the relevant statistics, policy statements and federal regulations that you need to discuss these critical issues with officials in your community. It includes key insights and engaging anecdotes from advocates across the nation. Click here to download your copy.

Then mark your calendars for our “Learn from the Bridge Access Report” Mutual Aid call on December 15th at 3 p.m. EST (please note the date and time change!). Advocacy Advance staff will join the call to answer any questions about the report and a panel of advocates will share their experiences in waging and winning bridge campaigns in their communities. Be sure to read Bridging the Gaps and dial in to add your voice and insight to this important discussion.

Click here to register for the call.

It started in 2005 as a single patch of sod on a metered parking space in California.

That’s when the creative minds at Rebar, an art and design company in San Francisco, realized the absurdity that so much public space is gobbled up by the movement and storage of private vehicles. So they decided to put a single parking space to a different use, as a temporary park.

“Our original PARK stood for two hours — the term of the lease offered on the face of the parking meter,” the group explains on its website. “When the meter expired, we rolled up the sod, packed away the bench and the tree, and gave the block a good sweep, and left. A few weeks later, as a single iconic photo of the intervention (above) traveled across the web, Rebar began receiving requests to create the PARK(ing) project in other cities. Rather than replicate the same installation, we decided to promote it as an “open-source” project, and created a how-to manual to empower people to create their own parks without the active participation of Rebar. And thus ‘PARK(ing) Day’ was born.”

In just a few years, it’s taken off. Park(ing) Day has grown into a global event that challenges people to rethink the way roads are used and reinforces the need for broad-based changes to urban infrastructure. This year, on September 17th, plenty of Alliance organizations took part in the creative, temporary redesign of their communities’ streets.

In the Steel City, Bike Pittsburgh pimped out the pavement by creating an urban lounge, complete with wooden furniture and a fancy throw rug, where cyclists could kick back and hang out. BikePGH didn’t just have its own space, though. Some volunteers also offered a bike tour of the more than two dozens oases across the city. Check out pictures from the ride here.

Out west, in California, the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition got comfortable next to the curb, too. “Couches, tables and chairs, potted plants, hammocks, and sod adorned the streets of San José as places where people normally dump their abandoned cars were converted to places for people to meet and mingle. Some were lured by SVBC’s offer of a $100 Sports Basement gift certificate, though most probably wanted to see the city made a bit more welcoming to humans for a couple of hours.” More from the SVBC blog here.

And up in the Northeast, Boston’s Livable Streets saw the Park(ing) Day tradition expand into double-digit participation: “Boston saw its first spot in 2008. In 2009 there were five spots in Boston and Cambridge, and this year it was expanded to 10 spots across Boston, Brookline and Cambridge. It was a huge success, and there’s a lot of energy and enthusiasm to expand to more spots next year.” Get the full story in Livable Streets’ newsletter.

How did you spend your Park(ing) Day?

Check out a combination effort of four Alliance organizations in Pennsylvania, coming together to forge progress for biking and walking across their state. Find more information at http://www.livablestreets.com/projects/pabikewalk/project-home

On August 6th, New York City’s Transportation Alternatives (T.A.) released a new report titled Streets to Live By: How livable street design can bring economic, health and quality-of-life benefits to New York City. According to T.A., the report, “compiles and analyses the most recent data on the benefits of great streets.  The study reveals outcomes of livable streets projects around the world. According to T.A., the report “finds that street designs that make people comfortable and draw them in are, in fact, the very groundwork for a healthy community and local economy. The study also details the benchmarks of livable streets, including physical activity, better air quality, more social cohesion and increased economic activity; benchmarks that City agencies can use to measure the livability of any given street or neighborhood.”

Download a copy of the report…