Below are comments we gave before Detroit City Council:
We are continuing to advocate for the city council to adopt a Complete Streets ordinance.Â
Complete Streets are those that are designed for all users – motorists, transit users, pedestrians, people with disabilities, bicyclists, and more. Complete Streets make it easier for everyone to safely travel along and across the street.
We began our ordinance work 15 years ago and much has changed. Back then, we saw the ordinance as a tool to get the city to build Complete Streets.Â
While we weren’t successful in passing that initial ordinance, we were successful in pushing for change. Detroit now has a Complete Streets Department and an excellent Streets for People Transportation Plan. It’s built some amazing Complete Street projects including streetscapes. Thousands of speed humps and other traffic calming features have been installed. And, DPW has been very successful tapping into state and federal funding to make this happen.
So why do we need an ordinance today?
We believe a Complete Streets ordinance can codify what the city is doing today, while giving the city more leverage in getting the state and county to do the same.
We don’t expect the ordinance to change course or have any major effect on the DPW budget. Those changes have already occurred.
Still, we believe this ordinance is as important as ever.
As we’re seeing right now in Washington DC, a new administration can abruptly shift a transportation department’s direction away from best practices. An ordinance could dissuade this from happening in Detroit.
Detroit had 130 traffic fatalities in 2023 with 28% being pedestrians, so clearly there is a continued need to emphasize safer street designs.
We believe an ordinance would help keep us on that path.
Update: Shortly after this post was published, the Governor signed HB 4012.
We’re involved in many different challenges at the city, state, and federal levels. We’ve been on a hot streak since late last year and we wanted to share the highlights of what we helped accomplish.
Restoring Bike Lanes ✅
We had heard that General Motors wanted the bike lanes removed on East Grand Boulevard primarily between their Factory Zero plant and I-75. There were concerns about truck traffic around bicyclists, though if that was correct, we would prefer seeing them advocate for separated infrastructure. People are going to bike on East Grand regardless and bike lanes are a proven safety countermeasure.
The City was planning a public meeting to discuss options before anything happened. However, we got an email from a bicyclist in January that the bike lanes had been removed early.
We brought this issue up with Council member Scott Benson. When former Council President Brenda Jones had introduced an ordinance to require communtiy engagement before bike lanes went in, Benson got wording included so that engagement would be also required when they were removed. This was largely driven by the bike lanes inexplictably being removed from East Grand between I-75 and Woodward.
This is a safety win for everyone, including the truck drivers. Long term, we’re advocating for the city to create safe bike infrastructure along all of East and West Grand Boulevard, connecting both ends of the RiverWalk, and creating a loop within the Joe Louis Greenway.
Keeping Downtown Sidewalks ✅
It’s not uncommon for residents and corporations to request that city vacate part of the public right-of-way. Engineering analyzes the impact on utilities and sends the petition to city council.
In late Novemeber we reviewed a request from the Detroit Athletic Club to vacate 60 feet of John R between Adams and Madison. Our concern was this included losing the sidewalk – a bad precedent, but especially in Downtown. We contacted Council member Gabriela Santiago-Romero’s office since she chairs the Public Health and Safety Committee where this request flowed through. We stated our opposition to the city “giving sidewalks to a private landowner and reducing walkability, especially within the Downtown.” We reached out to our disability advocates who shared our concern.
We met with the DAC and the Council member Santiago-Romero about the vacation, and to their credit, the DAC came up with an alternative that keeps the sidewalks on both sides of John R. The road itself will go from three lanes to two. We support this.
The biggest issue remains: Council received this vacation request without any information regarding the sidewalk removal, only the impacts on utilities within the right-of-way. We are looking at changing the city ordinance to require Engineering to analyze the impacts these requests have on non-motorized transportation.
Maintaining Residential Speed Limits ✅
Michigan law allows cities to use default speed limits in specific situations. They don’t require speed limit signs since motorists should know the defaults. For most residential streets in Detroit, the default is 25 MPH.
That default was set to expire on January 1, 2024. Why? The expiration had been added to gain the support of the Michigan State Police for some other legislation. MSP wanted to study whether they could raise this default. Apparently the effects of this on Detroit neighborhoods and many older suburbs wasn’t considered. We alerted the Michigan Municipal League of this issue.
Last year, House Bill 4126 was introduced to keep the 25 MPH default. Unfortunately it got “stuck” in the House throughout the summer. We reached out to House Speaker Joe Tate to help get the bill moving — and it did. From the House to the Senate, we worked with committee leaders to keep this bill progressing along. It was signed by the Governor Gretchen Whitmer in late November.
Setting Lower Speed Limits ✅
We’ve worked with State Representative Bradley Slagh for three sessions, but it seems we’ve finally helped push his speed limit bill onto the Governor’s desk.
Speed limits are commonly set based on the 85th fastest motorist when they aren’t using the default speed limits mentioned above. However, if the 85th fastest motorist was at 43 MPH, current law requires the limit to be rounded up to 45 MPH. Rep. Slaugh first introduced a bill to give road agencies the ability to round down to 40 MPH. However, it also unintentionally removed the ability of counties to set speed limits based on an engineering study, so we got involved.
We helped improved the text to clarify that all speed limits can be set based on engineering studies. We also got a resolution of support from city council thanks to Council member Benson.
The bill, House Bill 4012, also got slowed up and Speaker Tate got it moving to the Senate. We gave testimony in Lansing at the Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The example we shared was of MDOT/MSP raising the speed limit by 10 MPH on Fort Street in Detroit despite it being between a neighborhood and Kemeny Rec Center/Park. After the change, a young boy was killed walking to the park. That was in Senator Stephanie Chang’s district, but after redistricting, was now in Senator Erika Geiss’, both of whom were on the committee with Geiss as chair.
The bill was unanimously moved to the Senate floor with a recommendation for approval. It’s now on the Governor’s desk.
A 35-person study group from the Detroit Green Task Force recently spent three days in Seattle to learn about that city’s sustainability and climate action efforts. The Detroit group included four city councilmembers (Benson, Calloway, Santiago-Romero, Waters), many departments heads, and advocates, including us.
The City of Seattle was especially gracious in welcoming us and putting together a very thorough agenda. While there are many obvious differences between the two cities (e.g. average household income), there were also many similarities and opportunites to learn from their sustainability practices.
Edie Gilliss, Citywide Coordinator for Climate Iniatives in Seattle’s Office of Sustainability & Environment
We heard presentations on many topics from energy to waste, water to solar, and our focus area, transportation. As for the latter, they recognize the need to reduce single-occupancy vehicle traffic through investments in public transit, walking, and biking. Electrifying the status quo is not enough to get to carbon neutrality in the transportation sector — and it’s also not an equitable approach, a leading priority across all their efforts.
Every morning we led a group run to see some of those investments in person. One highlight were Healthy Streets, which are similar to their neighborhood greenways but with fewer restrictions on neighborhood activities that would otherwise require street closures (e.g. basketball).
Healthy Streets are closed to pass through traffic, but open to people walking, rolling, biking, and playing. The goal of this program is to open up more space for people rather than cars—improving community and individual health.
Seattle’s Healthy Streets and neighborhood greenways include traffic calming, such as bump outs, speed humps, 20 MPH speed limits, and traffic circles.
Seattle has also invested in thousands of traffic circles. These are small gardens that fit within a residential intersection to slow vehicles. They are not roundabouts! These are also in the city’s Design Guide. Since returning from Seattle, we’ve submitted a grant application to pilot these in Detroit.
Detroit & Seattle elected officialse-Trikes used for street maintenanceStormwater retention pondADA ramps maintain pedestrian access through construction zonesCurb-protected cycletracksTraffic circle
One thing we didn’t see in Seattle: broken and missing bike lane delineators. Theirs seem far more durable that those used in Detroit. We were told they rarely need replacing. We hope to try those as well with out traffic circle pilot.
A major takeaway for us was climate change. They’re feeling the effects of record temperatures, expanding forest fires, and risings seas, whereas Michigan hasn’t. We can’t help but think this is one reason why Seattle and the state of Washington are taking climate action much more seriously than Michigan.
Overall, it was an invaluable experience, not only to learn from Seattle, but to strengthen connections within our Detroit group. We look forward to implementing some of what we saw here at home.
Thanks to the Kresge Foundation, Amazon, and Visit Detroit for making this visit possible. We also would like to thank Washington DOT Traffic Engineer Dongho Chang and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways Executive Director Gordon Padelford for helping us plan our group run routes and meeting with us during the event to share additional information.
Video from our group runs through Downtown Seattle
