Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Complete – and Green – Streets in New Jersey

Fans of the “Complete Streets” concept will welcome New Jersey’s latest contribution: “Complete and Green Streets For All.”  (For the uninitiated, the idea of “complete streets” is that streets should be designed to be safe and welcoming for people walking, cycling, boarding buses, sitting at sidewalk cafes, and doing other human activities beyond hurtling along the pavement in automobiles.)
The guidebook is published by New Jersey DOT (available here) but is the product of a very successful collaboration (led by the Tri-State Transportation Coalition) of advocacy groups, government agencies, academics, and others.  As presented at the recent Redevelopment Forum sponsored by New Jersey Future, a leading state thinktank, the group sought to weave health, equity, economic development, safety, and other concerns into a model of Complete Streets development.
Perhaps most significantly – from a design standpoint – the guide explicitly advocates making green infrastructure a key element of future Complete Streets, with direct benefits for climate change resiliency.
The new publication is not a design handbook.  NJDOT has other manuals for that.  It is, as the subtitle says, a “Model Complete Streets Policy and Guide.”  It provides local officials and citizens with a model policy, a model resolution, public participation guidelines, checklists, references, and other practical information for making Complete Streets happen.
Congrats to Commissioner Diane Gutierrez- Scacetti and my old colleagues at NJDOT for pushing this effort forward and for opening their doors to this wide coalition of people who can add so much to the future of transportation.
“Complete and Green Streets For All” helps define a vision that all of us should pursue!

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