It’s been nine months since the adoption of Tucson’s Complete Streets policy for a more equitable transportation network and it’s being highlighted as an investment for the city’s future in a report analyzing policies of the 40 largest cities in the United States.
The rankings released last week by CityHealth, a collaboration between California-based integrated health-care organization Kaiser Permanente and the de Beaumont Foundation, a charitable organization focusing on health, recognized Tucson’s transportation policy known to lead to healthier living.
CityHealth looked at nine different policies that could affect the health of citizens, such as Tucson raising the tobacco purchasing age to 21 and earned sick leave policy and awards bronze, silver and gold medals based on how strong the policies are.
Tucson was given a gold medal this year for its Complete Streets policy that “explicitly accommodates all ages and all abilities,” the report says. The city failed to receive a medal in this category in 2018.
Liz Voyles, vice president of communications for CityHealth, says the policy is an important step forward for Tucson, which joins more than 1,500 jurisdictions nationwide in adopting the policy.
“If you make streets safe, it means that people start walking on them, and they start biking on them, and they don’t go everywhere in a car,” Voyles said. “If you start building streets that accommodate different modes of transportation, people start to use different modes of transportation. If you start to make the healthy choice easier for people, they start to get more physical activity in the case of the complete streets.”
In 2016, the Tucson Department of Transportation and the Living Streets Alliance began working to build a policy to help focus on infrastructure projects leading to a transportation network benefiting all people.
“In essence it’s about providing safe transportation choices, so people feel like when they get up in the morning they can make a reasonable choice about how they want to do that,” said Patrick Hartley, the Complete Streets program coordinator hired after the City Council adopted the policy on Feb. 5.
“They can feel like they can take the bus, they can ride a bike, they can walk, or they can use their automobile, and each of those are equal and safe choices for them.”
Embedded in the policy is identifying ways to reallocate space to balance transportation opportunities, whether it be safer roadsides for walking;; comfortable bus stops; buffered and protected bikeways; signal optimization; and infrastructure for safe crossings along Tucson’s roads.
The policy is also made to protect the most vulnerable in our communities and in the portions of town in need of more transportation resources, according to Evren Sonmez, of Living Streets Alliance, who helped develop the policy.
“When you think about older people or younger people who don’t have the ability to drive, that makes up a huge group that needs other transportation options to be able to access schools and jobs and recreational opportunities or social opportunities,” Sonmez said.
“Then the policy also specifically calls for paying attention to communities of color, low-income communities and also neighborhoods where there’s a concentration of households without access to vehicles.”
The shift in focus also brings new economic opportunities, said Hartley, adding that it’s possible to revitalize public spaces, like what’s being done in the downtown area.
“You create more business of people walking into businesses that maybe historically they would’ve just driven right by because they’re going from A to B,” Hartley said. “But now actually that street can be a destination in and of its self. So that’s an attractor and a draw for residents so that they’re comfortable walking down the street and they can pop in into places they wouldn’t have gone previously.”
For 2020, the Department of Transportation and the Complete Streets Coordinating Council, which was implemented as a part of the policy, will continue work on a Mobility Master Plan that will define transportation priorities for the next 20 to 25 years and a Complete Street Design Manual to identify how construction crews should build and accommodate all people as much as possible.
Officials hope that new projects, such as those in the voter-approved, $225 million Proposition 407 plan from 2018, which includes improvements to new paths for pedestrians and bicyclists, will be among the projects with the policy in mind.
However, a complete transportation network for Tucson won’t happen overnight, according Hartley.
“But if we don’t start now in really rethinking our streets and rethinking our transportation system then we’ll continue to do the same thing forever,” he said.
“I think this is a really exciting time for the city of Tucson and the Department of Transportation. We are genuinely looking forward to changing the way we do business and rethinking our streets and reshaping our communities through that.”
Down the Road
RTA seeks public input on draft guiding principles: The Regional Transportation Authority is conducting a survey through Dec. 13 for the public’s input on guiding principles drafted by the RTA’s Citizens Advisory Committee. The committee will consider the principles as they identify projects to develop a future 20-year regional transportation plan.
The committee will be charged with weighing the value of regional benefits of proposed projects versus the estimated construction costs to meet the budget.
The current RTA plan and the special taxing district’s half-cent sales tax — both approved by voters in 2006 — will expire in June 2026.
The survey is accessible by visiting www.RTAmobility.com
