Complete Streets
SABA is a proud supporter of Complete Streets initiatives. This new way of looking at land-use and transportation planning marks a shift from traditional models that focus on maximizing automobile throughput and gloss over problems like high vehicle speed in residential areas, poorly connected roads, and increasing vehicle emissions and fossil fuel use. Complete streets are those that incorporate all forms of transportation and try to solve these problems before they develop.
Why Complete Streets?
Complete streets provide pedestrians with a safe and comfortable area to walk, giving them easy access to businesses, public transit, and designated crossing points.
Complete streets give bicyclists a designated place on the roadway. This keeps them off of sidewalks and out of conflict with pedestrians and also establishes that they have the same rights and privileges to the roadway as automobile users.
Complete streets also help automobile drivers. As more trips are made on foot or bicycle, automobile traffic is reduced, leading to lower congestion and less stressful drives.
Other Benefits
Complete streets help make roads safer for all users, but also help in other ways. By building interconnecting roads instead of a system of arterials and cul-de-sacs, roads become more useful to everyone. Users have more choice in how to efficiently move from one area to another, whether in a car, on a bike, or on foot. Public transit systems and emergency services can more efficiently serve areas, lowering their costs and increasing their utility.
All of that reduced automobile traffic means less gasoline used, lower road maintenance costs, and lower vehicle emissions. All of those extra miles walked or ridden means lower obesity rates, higher general happiness, and a stronger sense of community.
SABA Taking a Stance
That’s why SABA has been proud to join the Complete Streets Coalition of Sacramento alongside WALKSacramento, Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails, and Sacramento Regional Transit to promote Complete Streets initiatives in the Sacramento region.
We’ve already seen significant results. The City of Sacramento adopted a resolution in 2004 to approve pedestrian friendly street standards that corresponded to the nascent complete streets guidelines. The next year, the Sacramento Transportation and Air Quality Collaborative released a report detailing the best practices for developing complete streets. 2008 saw the passage of California’s AB 1358, the Complete Streets Act and SB 375, which united transportation, housing, and land use planning and set them to environmental standards. Even the federal government got in on the action in 2009, passing its own Complete Streets Act, directing state and local transportation agencies to adopt complete streets policies for federally funded transportation projects.
SABA will continue to keep pressure on local and state agencies to ensure that complete streets guidelines are incorporated from the very beginning of every transportation projects and that they are adhered to throughout the region.
Last updated 2011-04-5 01:00:26 PM (EST). Please send corrections and revisions to our Webmaster.