By adopting the city’s Complete Streets Design Guidelines during Tuesday’s city council meeting, the city’s elected officials set a new long-term vision for municipal roadways.
As new streets are built and existing streets are reconstructed, the new guidelines will be followed, which include such things as narrower streets and wider sidewalks.
The city first adopted a complete streets policy in 2018, becoming the sixth municipality in Ontario to do so, and options for street profiles have been debated ever since, including public consultation.
During Tuesday’s meeting, city Linear Infrastructure Services director Joe Rocca described the Complete Streets Design Guidelines as providing “guidance to the city and the development community in order to build roads in our community with all expected road users in mind.”
Although the guidelines set out road cross section options to draw from, Rocca clarified during the meeting that it’s a “flexible approach” and that alternatives can be considered at any point.
“We’ll look specifically at the roadway, the characteristics of the roadway and select the features that make the most sense,” he said.
Although developments and road redevelopments already at the detailed design stage will proceed as-is, Rocca said that any future road builds and rebuilds will adhere to the new guidelines which a unanimous city council adopted on Tuesday.
Three years ago, Rocca described the process as a “deliberate paradigm change in how public roads are being used.”
When tabling the proposed street cross section in April, Rocca similarly said the plan would “provide a unified guide in street planning and a guide to city staff,” which would be adopted over the course of many years and ultimately transform the profile of municipal roadways.
Key considerations included lane widths (narrower lanes are projected to reduce vehicle speeds and improve safety), sidewalks (wider sidewalks are expected to make them more accessible to people using mobility devices), ditch slopes (steeper slopes will eat up less land) and improved landscaping to make public spaces more visually appealing and aid in stormwater management.
“Generally speaking, complete streets are for everyone,” Rocca told city council members in April. “Streets are a significant aspect of the public realm and are integral to the liveability of cities. … While not every type of user or use may be accommodated on every street, the goal is to build a city with a well-functioning street network that supports and sustains quality of life.”
In the report tabled for Tuesday’s meeting, city Active Transportation co-ordinator LyAnne Chenier notes that the new guidelines seeks to standardize roads, “ensuring that every street, regardless of its location, includes the elements necessary to safely and efficiently serve its intended users.”
The issue of narrower lane widths has been a topic of discussion in recent months due to snowpack already narrowing roads during the winter months, which Rocca said would be a challenge they’re striving to address by pushing snow farther back from roads.
“Studies show that narrower lanes help reduce vehicle speeds, which in turn lowers the frequency and severity of collisions,” according to Chenier’s report, which also cites the idea that narrow lanes lead to congestion as being a “common misconception,” with lane widths as narrow as three metres not affecting how much traffic a road can handle.
Key components of the Complete Streets Design Guidelines:
- Road width: Urban roads will narrow from 9 metres to 7.5 metres, while rural roads will narrow from their current 6.7-7.3 metres to six metres (or 3.5 metres per lane in multi-lane roads) with half-metre gravel shoulders.
- Sidewalks: Increase width from 1.5 metres to 1.8 metres for urban roads and add 1.8-metre-wide sidewalks to rural roads in residential areas.
- Boulevard/buffer: Increase urban boulevards from 1.5 metres to 1.8 metres. Rural roads currently have a one-metre gravel shoulder for local roads and one to two metres paved shoulder for collector and arterial roads. The new standard is two-metre paved shoulders for rural collector roads.
- Ditch slopes: Increasing the slope from 3:1 to 2:1 for local rural roads.
- Landscaping: Landscaping with trees and shrubs, benches for rest areas across all cross sections is the new standard, which enhances current standards.
- Cycle track / bike lanes: The new standard is separated cycle tracks (1.8-metre boulevard space) or bike lanes on collector and arterial roads. During Tuesday’s meeting, Rocca said that separated bike lanes are recommended on roads with heavier traffic, and painted lines are recommended on roads with less vehicular traffic.
- Parking: Parking on one side of collector and local roads where permitted and no parking on arterial roads. The current standard allows more leeway by permitting parking on one or both sides of local and collector roads.
With the Complete Streets Design Guidelines adopted, Chenier’s report notes that they’ll be adopted in future projects “where feasible.”
For projects already underway, she wrote, “the proposed changes will be implemented only where there is no impact on the cost or schedule.”
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.