What makes a "complete street" complete? A robust definition, given context and public input

Abstract

The concept of "complete streets" has gained momentum as a way to make communities more livable. This study presented a novel way to assess completeness, given context and public input. The approach was to use a four-dimensional audit for automobiles, transit users, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Although other assessment methods are intended to evaluate operational performance, this study proposed an audit-based assessment method as a valuable addition for planning purposes. Audit results were plotted on four axes to depict a provision profile to compare the balance between the modes. The most significant innovation was a framework to calculate a completeness score according to a community's vision for that particular street. Advantages of the framework were demonstrated through a case study in which 67 streets were assessed in a small, rural community. A review of the results revealed that some streets, as the result of the community-defined context, received completeness scores that were better than expected. Public volunteers provided critical input in the case study, and their role is explained in this paper.