The National Complete Streets Coalition recently announced that applications are now open for their ‘Safe Streets, Smart Cities Academy’ that will help three cities transform their commitment to traffic safety into practice. The Academy will bring together ten-person teams from three cities across the country for a series of three in-person workshops and six distance learning modules. The Academy will build the skills necessary to create safer, slower streets, including proven safety countermeasures, tactical urbanism, and community engagement. Participants will also learn about how emerging smart cities technologies provide opportunities to prevent crashes and save lives. City’s will apply these skills to plan and implement safety demonstration projects in their communities.
The previous academy worked with three cities—Lexington, KY; South Bend, IN; and Orlando, FL. Orlando transformed a dangerous five-lane speedway into a three-lane Complete Street with protected cycle tracks and a mid-block crossing with a painted pedestrian refuge. Lexington used inexpensive, flexible materials to redesign confusing intersections by redirecting cars and adding crosswalks and pedestrian refuges. To reduce speeding on neighborhood streets, the City of South Bend launched a demonstration project to test traffic-calming tools they had never used before including traffic circles, chicanes, and speed bumps. The full report regarding the demonstration projects may be downloaded here.
This free technical assistance program is made possible thanks to a Safe System Innovation Grant from Road to Zero – a coalition of more than 700 organizations committed to eliminating traffic fatalities in the United States by 2050. Participants will also receive travel assistance and a $8,000 sub-grant to support the demonstration project.
The deadline for submission is Sunday, August 19 at 11:59PM ET. Questions may be directed to info@completestreets.org.
