BikeWalkKC has put signs up along Broadway Boulevard suggesting ways to make city streets more “complete streets.”
By BikeWalk’s definition, that means “roads should be designed and built to include everyone – walkers, cyclists, children, seniors, the disabled, transit riders, and even motorists.”
The “complete streets” concept advocated by a national coalition that says too many city streets are designed only for fast-moving traffic, making them unfriendly to forms of transportation other than automobiles.
In conjunction with Saturday’s Better Block on Broadway, BikeWalk hung signs throughout Midtown like the one above, which urges readers to reimagine Broadway as a complete street.
BikeWalk’s Eric Bunch says the group decided to concentrate on Broadway because Better Block was already focusing on the street, “but its part of a much larger campaign of complete streets to connect all the neighborhoods in the city.”
Bunch says three lanes of traffic are enough for most streets, and some of the space that is taken away from cars could be used for bike lanes. For example, the Broadway signs suggest it could be reduced to three traffic lanes with buffered bike lanes on either side.
Slowing down traffic can increase business for merchants, Bunch says. “If you slow down traffic, people can see what’s around them.”
He says complete streets also reduce car crashes.
The next step, Bunch says, is to bring together stakeholders to start generating more community interest in the idea of complete streets.
The City of Kansas City adopted a complete streets resolution in 2011.
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