Edmonton Presents Complete Streets Guidelines

Edmonton will be presenting their Complete Streets Design Guidelines to their council on May 13, 2013. In addition to the Complete Streets document, Edmonton is also introducing the final draft of their Designing New Neighborhoods Guidelines. Both policies complement and support each other.

Major cities like Edmonton have developed guidelines like these to help develop roadways and transportation corridors to better serve users of all modes of travel. Sites like Complete Streets for Canada and National Complete Streets Coalition provide resources for agencies interested in developing and implementing their own Complete Streets policies and guidelines. The map below from the National Complete Streets Coalition illustrates how many cities in the United States have adopted some level of Complete Streets initiative.

A map of cities in Canada with Complete Streets initiatives can be found on the Complete Streets Canada website. And for an example of complete streets guidelines for a city outside of North America, check out the Abu Dhabi Urban Street Design Manual

 

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April’s Recommended Reading List for Civil Engineers

Lately quite a few good resources have shown up in my email. So I've compiled a reading list for this month to showcase these new releases. The first publication I'd like to recommend is:

Minimizing Traffic-Related Work Zone Crashes in Illinois by The Illinois Center for Transportation at the University of Illinois 

If you are involved in work zone safety, particularly in Illinois, you'll definitely want to check this out. Although much of the report focuses on Illinois, in one section it also lists some of the statistics about work zone crashes in several different states. Below is a page from the document summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of the different work zone strategies. 

FHWA-ICT-12-017 26 page 9


The next item might not make it to most people's reading lists: Composting Animal Mortality Removed From Roads: A Pilot Study of Rotary Drum and Forced Aeration Compost Vessels by the Virginia Center for Transportation Innovation and Research

I'm including this report mainly because it highlights a topic that seems to be rarely discussed: disposal of animals picked up by highway departments. According to the report, "the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) removes an estimated 55,000 deer carcasses from its roadways each year at a cost of more than $4 million per year." That's a lot of money to spend on getting rid of dead animals. It's good to see that Virginia is investigating more efficient ways to handle this and sharing the information with others because every highway maintenance department deals with this issue.


And finally a newly released publication from the City of Chicago Department of Transportation: Complete Streets Chicago Design Guidelines.

This is a nicely laid out publication offering a look at how the Chicago DOT will incorporate a complete streets approach to transportation.

City of Chicago DOT Complete Street Design Guidelines

 

If you have any favorite publications of your own, we'd love to hear about them!

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