Award-Winning Complete Street Just Another Deadly Stroad

The intentions behind the concept of Complete Streets are clear and straightforward. A street should be a safe place for everyone who uses it. It’s not enough to design a street for automobiles and make everything else an afterthought; we have to accommodate the mobility of everyone in a way that respects their humanity. An urban street shouldn't be deemed “complete” until it does.

I absolutely support these concepts, but I don’t support Complete Streets.

In my career, I have watched the concept of Complete Streets go from being a fringe, revolutionary idea to being fully co-opted by the old-school transportation professions. It now largely resembles the worst of their mindless excesses instead of the radical ideals Complete Streets advocates originally set out to promote.

To gain widespread acceptance, the Complete Streets strategy was to graft itself on to existing systems and bureaucracies, lubricating bottom-up change with meaningful amounts of top-down funding. State departments of transportation and local transportation offices took the money, and they have continued to check the boxes necessary to keep getting the money, but the results consistently fall short of the original concept.

In a recent Crash Analysis Studio, we examined a fatal crash on Ager Road, a Complete Street in Hyattsville, Maryland. A woman named Hellen Jorgenson was attempting to cross the street on foot when she was struck by an automobile being driven along Ager Road. We published a report detailing the many design factors that contributed to the crash. As we examined this location, I reacted with shock to the conscious indifference the design demonstrates to the safety of anyone outside of an automobile. It was only later that I was informed that multiple industry organizations have recognized Ager Road with some of their highest awards. 

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has named Ager Road one of their 2023 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement award recipients. ASCE called Ager Road a “Green-Complete Streets Project” and claims the project “improved the safety, functionality, and aesthetics” of the street. According to the ASCE, Ager Road underwent a road diet to reduce speeding and improve pedestrian facilities.

The Ager Road project also won an award from the County Engineers Association of Maryland (CAEM) as their 2022 Large Project of the Year. CAEM referred to it as a Complete/Green Streets Project. 

The Washington DC Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (WDCSITE) also named Ager Road their Project of the Year. The organization called the project a “powerful example” that created a more “connected, inclusive community.” According to WDCSITE, Ager Road makes good on the Complete Streets objectives to “improve safety, accessibility, functionality, and aesthetics.” 

In their award presentation, WDCSITE states that Ager Road is “truly is the County’s hallmark green-complete streets project that addresses the needs and enhances the daily lives of its underserved residents through multi-modality.”

The Maryland Quality Initiative (MdQI), another industry organization, gathered at their annual conference and gave Ager Road their Modal Award for Projects over $5 million. MdQI also refers to it as a “Green-Complete Streets Project” that is meant “to reduce speeding” and provide an “intelligent transportation system.”

Ager Road is the transportation industry’s model for a Complete Street. Let me show you some of the things we found when we took a look at Ager Road.

Ager Road is being recognized for reducing speeding. That might be true; we don’t know what speeds were prior to the project. However, we did go out and do a study that measured speeds today. A modest amount of fieldwork revealed that 7 out of 10 drivers on Ager Road exceeded the 30-mph speed limit. A significant percentage went more than 10 miles over that limit. 

Ager Road is being recognized for improving pedestrian facilities. Here’s a before and after photo of one section near the fatal crash site. My colleague Asia Mieleszko pointed this out in an article last week and I questioned whether we had the photos reversed. We didn’t.

By “improving pedestrian facilities,” it is also possible the engineering associations are referencing the fence that was built in the median of Ager Road. It is designed to keep people from crossing from the residential area on the left in this photo to the West Hyattsville station on the right (a station on the DC Metro line), except at designated crossings (which are 850 feet apart).

Multiple industry awards cited the improved accessibility achieved on Ager Road. In a Complete Streets framework, that would generally mean that Ager Road is easy and safe for people of all ages and abilities to walk and bike. Again, “improved” is a low bar (you can go back and look at the “before” conditions on Google), but there is nothing about this unprotected bike lane and sidewalk that is easy or safe, especially given the excessive speeds this design has created.

The professional societies giving their members awards for projects like this like to market their work in the popular language of the day. Thus, Ager Road was said to create a “connected, inclusive community,” one that “enhances the daily lives of its underserved residents through multi-modality.” In a Complete Streets framework, this suggests that the underserved residents who use Ager Road will not experience difficulty getting around.

Go beyond the dangerous bike lanes and sidewalks and focus on the larger context this design was constructed within. Here’s a map of Ager Road’s location in relation to the neighborhood. On the left (west), we have the West Hyattsville Metro stop, a major transit investment connecting this neighborhood to one of the nation’s most important metropolitan areas. On the right (east), there is a struggling neighborhood full of homes and businesses. Dividing them is Ager Road, a 4-plus lane “Complete Street” moat, complete with a fence down the middle to frustrate anyone seeking to cross. 

If you zoom out a bit in that Google map, you’ll recognize perhaps the most tragic part of this project: the multimillion-dollar Ager Road is completely unnecessary. The neighborhood is surrounded by highways; there is more than ample auto mobility here. The last thing the residents and businesses of this neighborhood lack is access to high-speed, high-capacity roadways. They’re encircled by them!

Let me point out one last thing. Here’s one of the “intelligent transportation systems” referenced in the industry awards. It is a rectangular rapid flash beacon powered by a solar panel. I know; the word “intelligent” is doing some really heavy lifting.

Being solar powered, the designers could have placed the rectangular rapid flash beacon anywhere. They chose to place it on the far side of the sidewalk, out of the natural line of travel for a human walking. We all know why it was placed there; so as not to impede the flow of traffic and, ironically, so it would not be struck by a wayward automobile. 

This is where Hellen Jorgensen was struck and killed while attempting to cross Ager Road.

As was noted in the Crash Analysis Studio, the designers of this award winning Complete Street made sure that traffic would flow smoothly, but they didn’t bother to note that the lighting placed in this location puts the singular crossing—the only one they provide in 850 feet—in perpetual shadow.

They ensured that there was ample signage dedicated to directing traffic how to flow, but they didn’t seem to notice that their signs obscured not just the people crossing but, ironically, the signs that were supposed to alert drivers to those very people. Signs obscuring signs, but you can guess which ones were given priority.

On this “hallmark Green-Complete Streets project,” the designers ensured that they checked all the boxes required for a Complete Street, but they put in none of the effort needed to understand the real struggles of someone outside of an automobile. 

It should be no surprise that the project received multiple awards from the scions of the transportation industry. This is what success looks like to them. The only question that remains is whether this is what success looks like to Complete Streets advocates. 

Are the individuals, nonprofits, and government working groups with “complete streets” somewhere on their business cards going to sit by and silently allow the very professions they sought to reform use the Complete Streets brand to greenwash deadly stroads?

What do you stand for, Complete Streets? I don’t recognize you, anymore.

At Strong Towns, we’re in the advocacy business. We know that, from time to time, people are going to take our ideas and our message and use them to make arguments antithetical to what we believe. We accept that. It’s the messy part of the bottom-up movement we’ve created. Millions of readers and thousands of members around the world are using Strong Towns concepts to build more prosperous places. Our message will mean something slightly different to each of them.

That’s okay, because we’ve built a large enough movement centered around core principles. A few divergent actors on the fringe won’t overwhelm the whole. That’s the strength of bottom-up systems. Slow, steady, and powerful.

From the beginning, the coalition of Complete Streets advocates chose a top-down strategy. They defined their actions in terms of existing, centralized systems. That did result in more funding, and broader industry acceptance, at a more rapid pace than a bottom-up approach would have achieved. One can understand how well-intentioned people chose this route for their advocacy.

Yet, a top-down strategy meant working within entrenched systems. It meant finding common cause with the very people who most fervently resisted their ideals. There was certainly more funding with this approach, along with greater access to power, but the ultimate cost of that success was having the core ideals of Complete Streets cast aside and tokenized.

We need you to wake up, Complete Streets advocates, and recognize that your work is being widely used for evil ends. It’s time to rediscover your core ideals and stand on principle against the industry insiders who are co-opting your message for their own gain. It’s time to refocus on the bottom-up concerns that made your work urgent in the first place.

Hellen Jorgensen needed a Complete Street. Instead, she got a deadly stroad wrapped in half-measures and industry propaganda. It’s time for you to find your voice, Complete Streets advocates. This nation needs you.

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