A complete street is when it works for every user

Streets need to serve multiple use cases and should allow anybody in or out of a car to safely utilize the right of way. A complete street may have safe and frequent pedestrian crossings with pedestrian islands. It may have protected bike lanes to safely move bike traffic. It may have bus stops for transit access. And it may have well marked street parking and protected left turn lanes to improve road safety.

We applaud the city of Detroit for adopting a complete street strategy and want to encourage it’s further usage. We call for other cities in metro Detroit to adopt a similar policy. We call for Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb county to adopt a complete streets policy. We plead with MDOT to actually follow and implement their complete streets policy in every project they are engaged with.

Complete streets do not need to be expensive: when it comes time to redo the road, redo it to meet the complete streets standard. This means over an approximate 30 year cycle, all of our streets and roads will be safer, will move traffic better, and will improve quality of life for all.