While meeting with members of Congress at the National Bike Summit, Complete Streets legislation was re-introduced. The same bill was introduced in the Senate in 2008 but died in committee.

The basic premise is road agencies should adopt a policy that ensures all transportation modes are reasonably accomodated, includinng biking and walking.

According to bill sponsor Senator Tom Harkin:

When Americans choose to leave their car at home and walk or ride a bike to school or work, they are making a healthy decision. We need to ensure streets, intersections and trails are designed to make them easier to use and maximize their safety.

This legislation will encourage Americans to be more active, while also providing more travel options and cutting down on traffic congestion.

Everyone is encouraged to use this quick online form letter to ask your Senator and Representative to support this legislation.

We typically got receptive but uncommitted support while in Washington DC, perhaps in large part because the bills were only recently introduced.

More details from the Complete Streets web site:

The Complete Streets Act of 2009 was introduced in both houses of Congress on Thursday, March 12. Senator Harkin (IA) sponsored S. 584 with Senator Carper (DE) as original cosponsor. In the House, Congresswoman Matsui (CA-5) sponsored H.R. 1433 with Representatives Tauscher (CA-10), Maloney (NY-14), and Wu (OR-1) as original cosponsors. The Complete Streets Act of 2009 defines effective complete streets policies that are flexible enough to use in daily transportation planning practice. The introduction of these bills is a key step in ensuring safer, better-designed streets across the country.

Organizations from the YMCA to the National Association of Realtors have lined up behind the measure, because they see the benefits complete streets will provide on issues ranging from the obesity epidemic to greenhouse gas reduction to providing inexpensive transportation alternatives in tough economic times. See what everyone is saying about the bills (pdf).

There is also additional information on the Transportation for America web site.

Tags: complete streets, legislation, National Bike Summit, Tom Harkin

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Law, On-road bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.