NEW Federal Money for Complete Streets

 Laguna's Street Design Options

 

 

Either you build cities for cars and traffic, or you build cities for people and places. Laguna Beach has enough of the former, now there is new federal funding to achieve the latter.

 

 

 

Phoenix received $25-Million in discretionary federal funding to build a bike and pedestrian bridge connecting downtown with a suburban community.  This would be like connecting Aliso and Montage with the Aliso shopping mall (the existing bridge is blocked not used.)  

St. Louis was awarded $15-Million in discretionary federal funding from the US DOT to build a bike and pedestrian path to reduce the high incident of traffic collisions on the Greenway. Wouldn't Laguna Beach benefit from some investment in reducing traffic injuries and fatalities along PCH and Laguna Canyon Road. 

Hundreds of millions of dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are starting to flow to new bike and pedestrian infrastructure around the country. The funds originate from the US Department of Transportation headed by Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. 

 Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg emphasizes decarbonizing our future and what the US can learn from street design for bike and pedestrians. The Secretary learned Active Transportation plays a role when when visiting Copenhagen and Amsterdam as then Mayor of South Bend Indiana where he learned about Complete Streets Policy.  

The Secretary had three take-aways from the trip. First, that street design for bike commuting is a greater city commitment than for the casual bicycle sport rider. For raising the cycling mode-share, design really does matter .  

Second, cycling did not begin with bikes, it began with cars just like in the United States. Cities made a set of choices, they made policy decisions and design decisions that made those cities a great place to walk or bike. 

Third, there is a tipping point when cycling and walking is successful. When the number of people cycling reaches 2% the mode-share for cycling trips increases dramatically. So the planning success strategy for US cities unaccustomed to cycling traffic is to reach that 2% tipping point. 

South Bend Indiana adopted Complete Streets, the brief  summary from the Secretary:  

There was ferocious opposition to the complete streets improvements that we made in South Bend. But once we did them, very, very few people, if any, want to go back. It really made everybody better off and made no one worse off. 

-LS