Complete Streets advisory vote tonight

Take a ride to City Hall tonight and show support for Complete Streets. Passing a Complete Streets ordinance in Spokane will help make all street repairs more bike and pedestrian friendly.

But we have a Master Bike Plan and a Comp Plan? Why do we need a Complete Streets ordinance? There's a lot history and complexity around the long answer, but the short answer is that we need to bake some bike/ped-specifics into the "Street Standards." When city engineers go and tear up and rebuild streets, they don't go to the Master Bike Plan or the Comp Plan, they go to the Street Standards. More on that here.

As for funding, we have a Street Bond project that could be funding basic bike/ped facilities with the big projects that are being done, but the road warriors made sure that funding was scoped "curb to curb" early on. So there's money there, it's just a matter of raising the bar of expectation for our community to one that embraces other modes of travel beyond the SOV.

And don't let them fool you: the cost of adding on bike and ped facilities to these multi-million dollar road projects is in nearly all cases, truly trivial.

For a much more eloquent discussion of Complete Streets, see Barb's post on her blog.

Then come on down to City Hall at 6pm and be a cyclist or a walker.