Complete Streets is an approach to planning, designing, building, operating, and maintaining streets that enable safe access for all, regardless of mode of travel. Complete streets policies and practices improve safety, enhance public health, reduce pollution, and boost local economies by increasing property values and supporting local businesses. The City of Madison, WI has long pursued a Complete Streets approach, strengthened by its Vision Zero Action Plan in 2022. In that same year, Madison launched its Complete Green Streets Program. We asked MIP Member City Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway to share a little more about Madison’s innovative program, how it’s streamlining the city’s street improvement efforts, and how they’ve overcome challenges to implementation:
Can you please describe what the Complete Green Streets approach is and how it differs from a more traditional approach?
The City of Madison’s Complete Green Streets Guide provides a unified and consistent decision-making framework for planning, designing, building, and operating streets in a way that reflects Madison’s values. It is different from traditional street design decision-making approaches by considering all modes of transportation from the beginning of the planning process, rather than treating pedestrians, bicycles and transit as afterthoughts. It also values other uses of street space like trees and gathering spaces. It not only considers modal hierarchy, or modal networks, but also acknowledges land use context in a way that many other existing complete streets guides are lacking.
What challenge were you trying to solve in creating the approach?
Madison is a community that values walkability, bike-friendliness, transit, and sustainability. However, street space is finite, especially in a developed, geographically constrained place like Madison’s isthmus. With highly involved neighborhood, business, and advocacy groups, the competing demands for the use of constrained rights-of-way often translated into lengthy discussions and delayed timelines for street projects. Sometimes, the results were dozens of concepts, compromises that no one was happy with, gaps in the bike network, and lingering questions about equity of the decisions. The Complete Green Streets Guide that resulted from this effort means the City now has a clear, consistent decision-making framework for streets projects based on street characteristics, leading to faster implementation.
As Mayor, what were the main barriers to getting Complete Green Streets started/accomplished, and how are you addressing them?
One barrier was the competing needs and the lack of consensus among different City agencies and among the greater community. A cross-agency staff team was formed to develop the guide, including Traffic Engineering, Transportation, City Engineering and Planning. Inputs from Forestry, Streets, Metro Transit, Parking and the Fire Department were also incorporated when developing the Guide. Bringing together the concerns and ideas from many different departments ensured that the approach considered the different needs of departments involved in planning, designing, building and operating streets and the public right-of-way. The City also used a multi-phased public engagement process started with building consensus on street values, which are the primary criteria for making street decisions. A street use hierarchy was then developed to reflect those community values.
Another challenge was equitable public engagement. Combing resources with concurrent initiatives such as Vision Zero and Safe Streets Madison, the City created a plain-language resident engagement program titled “Let’s Talk Streets.” This engagement focused heavily on hearing from low-income residents and people of color. It leads to the establishment of a process for working in areas identified as Equity Priority Areas.
What key successes or breakthroughs would you like to share?
Madison’s Complete Green Streets Guide is already shaping the city’s street projects, streamlining the process, avoiding network gaps, making community engagement more productive, and better engaging historically under-represented stakeholders. The guide helps ensure that each individual street project fits into the larger network needed to support walking, transit, biking, and driving, and helps ensure that City streets include green infrastructure needed for resiliency.
The guide is also helping the City in increasing coordination of staff across multiple agencies to further goals related to multi-modal transportation, storm water management, increasing tree canopy and ensuring safety for all users.
What learning lessons would you offer to other mayors looking to establish a similar program in their community?
While the effectiveness of Complete Green Streets is tied to the fact that it was painstakingly tailored to Madison’s needs, many concepts can be used by other communities. All communities would benefit by having intentional conversations about Street Values and how they guide decisions, as well as adopting a modal hierarchy that prioritizes people over cars and that prioritizes safety over speed. Building consensus among city departments and the larger community is critical, and an equitable public engagement process with plain languages is key. Community should focus on building complete networks for all modes, instead of making every street “complete”.
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway is the 58th Mayor of Madison, WI. Elected in 2019 and re-elected in 2023, Mayor Rhodes-Conway has prioritized affordable housing, rapid transit, equitable economic growth, and climate resilience. She participated in the 2023 Mayors Institute on Pedestrian Safety.