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Danny Pleasant: The street design guidelines are really all
about sizing the street correctly with the adjacent land uses so that you've got the
right size street for a neighborhood. Plus, streets give visitors and the population in
general a real good sense of what the city is all about. You really experience the city
from that public realm that we call streets. So it's really important that we get those right.
Pat Mumford: It isn't just about light rail or highways.
Really we need to see how neighborhoods connect from a vehicular standpoint, from a pedestrian
standpoint, from a bicycle standpoint. And then it really got down to, how do we create
a sense of place? We have so many developments these days that aren't done along those same
lines that developers worked neighborhoods a century ago. They just feel different. And
so I believe strongly that there's value, inherent value put into neighborhoods through
these urban street design guidelines.
Susan Burgess: My neighborhood was actually considered the
first suburb, even though it's obviously walking distance to the center of city now, and was planned
with a grid, which makes traffic flow very easy; and also beautiful, wide sidewalks with
wide planting strips. Hundred years ago when it was developed we had wonderful trees planted
so now our entire neighborhood is tree canopied, and has become sort of the model for what
we would like to develop all over the city.
Anthony Foxx: East Boulevard, which is a centrally located
street in our city, it's one of the best roads we have in the city right now that had two
lanes on both sides, and cars running down both sides. And the city proposed to create
a three-lane road: two lanes, one on each side, and then a central lane that would be
a turning lane. The community was in arms. They said, "Why are you going to do this?
Why are you putting this road on a road diet?" And not only do we have three lanes for cars;
we have bicycle lanes on both sides, we have cuts within the street that allow for pedestrian
crossings, and it's an amazingly good success story for how good design can impact transportation.
Josh Rimany: I drive both sides of the boulevard every
day, mostly on this side because I work and live on this side. And just seeing the organization
of how everything is placed along this side, where it's complete, versus having four plus
lanes over here with no organization whatsoever, personally I've seen more accidents on this
side of the street that's not complete, because there's really no organization, and it's really
hectic actually because there's turning lanes that aren't turning lanes and people will
drive where they shouldn't. And here you've got such an organization of where you go,
where you should be, and having that -- the pedestrian refuge is much, much safer for our residents.
Todd Williams: You know, prior to World War II, we designed
streets differently. In fact, we designed them much more pedestrian friendly.
Elizabeth Avenue today is a perfect example of that. We hope to continue that in some
of the other streets that we have as part of our redevelopment of the district here.
Elizabeth represents really a six-block urban fabric that's part of a much larger 20 or
30-block urban pattern, and the opportunity here is to really create a walkable district
that can be experienced by both the pedestrian on the street as well as the automobile.
Pat McCrory: We have to have connectivity. I'm very proud
that we have a very successful bus system, light rail system, but in order to have that,
you have to have people walk around and be able to get to the transportation. And that
means cars, bicycles, walking. The more choice you have, I think, the better our city is
going to be in the future for pedestrian-friendly access, for business, and for our environment.
Anthony Foxx: If we're not able to move workers, and goods
and services around our community efficiently, we're ultimately going to lose out on opportunities
to grow our economy. We're very cognizant of that, which is why we are deploying these
assets out in the community: the transit, the bicycle lanes, the sidewalks, the well-designed
roads. All of that plays a role in making a community feel like a community, and we're
real excited about it.
Jim Westmoreland: Our board of transportation adopted a complete
streets policy for the department. We're currently in the process of beginning to develop our
planning design guidelines to actually implement the policy within the department. I think
one thing that we saw early on with the department when we were thinking about developing a policy
is we already had a very good, established role model in the city of Charlotte in terms
of what they did with their urban street design standards. And we knew, and our board members
picked up on this, that the city of Charlotte was really ahead of the curve in terms of
both -- not only other cities across North Carolina, but also nationally in what they're
doing with their -- both their urban street design standards and with the complete streets
movement in Charlotte.