What are some of the benefits of complete streets?
Complete streets improve safety. They reduce crashes through safety improvements. A FHWA review of the effectiveness of a wide variety of measures to improve pedestrian safety found that the practice of simply painting crosswalks on high-speed roads designed for automobile travel does not reduce pedestrian crashes. But measures that design the street with pedestrians in mind — sidewalks, raised medians, better bus stop placement, traffic-calming measures, and treatments for disabled travelers — all improve pedestrian safety. One study found that designing for pedestrian travel by installing raised medians and redesigning intersections and sidewalks reduced pedestrian risk by 28%. Complete streets also improve safety indirectly, by increasing the number of people bicycling and walking. A recently published international study found that as the number and portion of people bicycling and walking increases, deaths and injuries decline. Complete streets encourage more walking and bicyclin
