Dewberry Project Manager Nathan Chapman explains complete streets in about 90 seconds.
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Hello, my name's Nathan Chapman and I'm a roadway design project manager in Dewberry’s Charlotte office. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about Complete streets. I'm sure you've heard the term and are aware that the idea has been gaining popularity across the industry for a few years now. The term complete streets represents streets that are designed to support safety and mobility for all types of users. That includes people of all ages and abilities, regardless of whether they're traveling as drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, or by public transit. Complete street policies don't follow a singular prescription and are typically set at the state, regional, and local levels and they're also supported by roadway design guidelines. This means that each complete street is a unique response to the needs of the community. These solutions may include sidewalks, bike lanes, bus lanes, accessible facilities, and safe crossing opportunities. Traffic calming is also a regular component of a complete street, using methods like median islands or narrower travel lanes. That list certainly isn't all-inclusive. In fact, we see new solutions popping up to these problems every week. So with all these add-ons, doesn't it make complete streets an expensive requirement for road projects? Well, no, not really. Compared to most roadway improvement projects, complete streets are relatively low-cost, quick to implement, and are high impact. Most of these improvements are even cost-effective enough to be undertaken by the people in your local government who know and understand the needs of the community the best. Well, thanks for watching and I hope you learned something here today.