'Complete Streets' 2.0: Eyeing safety, Indianapolis revises 10-year-old road design policy

Ten years ago, as City-County Councilor John Barth was searching for funding to revitalize Tarkington Park, he heard from residents of Crown Hill a very basic concern.

Families didn't feel comfortable crossing 38th Street to get to the park.

"It’s possible, but it’s incredibly dangerous, and it hasn’t gotten much safer since then," he said in a recent town hall.

He and Councilor Maggie Lewis turned to a concept that's been around for decades: the idea that the city should approach street design with all travelers in mind by incorporating elements like bike lanes and walking paths into street projects. The concept, known as "Complete Streets," is seen in cities across the country as one tool to reduce road injuries and fatalities.

Their Complete Streets ordinance, passed in 2012, got national praise. But after a few years, it drifted to the background.

Read: People keep dying in crashes on Indianapolis streets. What can actually be done about it?

"When we first did this, I feel like it was always part of the conversation," Lewis recently told IndyStar. "And we still do, but I don't know that it's been a priority."

It was safety, again, that prompted the councilors to take another look at the policy this year with a critical eye, following the community response to the death of a well-known cyclist on 86th Street.

"It's an opportunity for us to really put this back out front," Lewis said.

What's in Indy's Complete Streets 2.0

The revised ordinance, adopted by the council Monday night, gets far more specific, and includes an expanded emphasis on transparency and equity.

It says the policy applies not just to city projects and private developers, but to projects undertaken by virtually everyone else, from IndyGo to public utilities to individuals. It adds new performance metrics that the city must report publicly, including the percentage of Complete Streets projects that are within half a mile of a school and the percentage located in underserved neighborhoods.

A new section of the ordinance describes how those performance metrics, as well as any exceptions to the policy, should be reported on the city's website..

A main critique from advocates has been the shortage of publicly accessible documentation of the policy's successes and exceptions. To date, the public reporting on how many bike lanes, sidewalks, accessible curb ramps and more have come out of the Complete Streets policy has been limited to quarterly reports that give no sense of overlap. An IndyStar records request of reports cataloging any exceptions to the policy over the last 10 years turned up nothing, because no such exceptions have been presented to the council, spokesperson Ben Easley said.

The department says engineers put all city projects through the Complete Streets design process, without exception. That doesn't always mean the project will end up having Complete Streets elements, such as if they determine incorporating them would be "unduly cost prohibitive," contrary to public safety or simply unnecessary.

Barth said the intention behind this revised policy is to compel the department to report publicly any instances of Complete Streets elements not being implemented after the design process is complete. The revision also requires DPW to identify barriers to Complete Streets implementation and potential solutions.

Town hall: "Complete Streets" and Indianapolis' pedestrian safety crisis

The revised policy takes a meaningful step forward in requiring transparency and documentation of how dollars are spent with regard to Complete Streets, Connie Szabo Schmucker, advocacy director of Bicycle Garage Indy, told IndyStar. But she said the fact that what constitutes "unduly cost-prohibitive" is not defined leaves a significant loophole.

Another new section establishes a formal process for reviewing intersections where fatal crashes occur and considering what infrastructure improvements might be necessary to prevent similar tragedies. This review team must include a representative from the police department, the Department of Public Works, the Department of Metropolitan Development and two citizens, one representing an organization that advocates for cyclists or pedestrians.

This is something DPW has done in recent years on an informal basis, director Dan Parker said. Now the team will have to report publicly their findings, according to the policy.

How the policy has worked

The renewed look comes as pedestrian deaths on Indianapolis streets have taken a turn for the worse.

Nearly 150 pedestrians have died from car crashes in the last five years, compared to about 100 the previous five years and 80 the five years before that.

Advocates point to a variety of approaches to curb the problem, from better street design to more education about road safety to laws that allow automated enforcement.

Since 2012, several high-profile thoroughfares have gotten the Complete Streets treatment: Sunset Avenue near Butler University, Dr. M.L.K. Jr. Street, streets where bus rapid transit lines have been built, and now Broad Ripple Avenue and West Morris Street.

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In the last 10 years, the city has built 100 miles of bike lanes, 43 miles of new or rehabilitated trails, 1 million linear feet of sidewalks and more than 3,000 new or rehabilitated crosswalks, Parker told the council's rules committee in May.

In the last five years, the department has shifted infrastructure dollars away from surface treatments and toward total street reconstruction, away from road widening to road "diets." But the city operates with a massive spending gap on infrastructure, as the money available doesn't begin to cover the basic needs of its uniquely sprawled network.

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“One of the things that people in Indianapolis truly don’t understand is how underfunded we are, and how much progress we’ve made since the institution of this policy, but how much more needs to be done, and how much more money is needed to do that," Parker said at the recent town hall.

But the department supports the policy revisions, he said, as well as efforts to find more sustainable funding sources for transportation infrastructure in the face of alarming safety statistics.

"Now is that time to act," he told the rules committee in May.

Now implementation will be key, Szabo Schmucker said, as well as ongoing reevaluation of the policy — preferably more often than every 10 years.

"Hopefully this isn't the only iteration," she said.

View the full policy at bit.ly/3NXjxNX.

Contact IndyStar transportation reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on Twitter @kayla_dwyer17.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Amid fatal crashes, Indianapolis revises 'Complete Streets' policy