Completing Our Streets: The Transition to Safe and Inclusive Transportation Networks by Barbara McCann

Author:Barbara McCann [McCann, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Transportation, General, political science, American Government, Local
ISBN: 9781610914314
Google: MER1mwEACAAJ
Publisher: Island Press
Published: 2013-10-14T23:41:31.367520+00:00

Profile of a Champion

The first complete streets champion I got to know was Michael Ronkin. At the time, he was the bicycle and pedestrian program manager for the Oregon Department of Transportation, and our first encounter was an argument over the phone about pedestrian safety statistics. The content doesn’t matter here, but Michael’s response does: rather than shutting me out, he proposed we co-present a session about the issue at the upcoming Pro-Bike conference in 2000 in Philadelphia. I agreed, and we’ve been working together ever since; after he became a consultant, we ended up driving all over Virginia, developing the first version of the Complete Streets Workshop.

Michael’s shock of thick black hair matches his direct style; he has an uncanny ability to include his underlying philosophy when answering any question. He grew up in Geneva, Switzerland; it isn’t his wisp of an accent that gives him away, but his orientation toward what he calls a “sensible transportation system.” When he went to work for the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) in 1989, it didn’t make sense to him that his department spent an inordinate amount of time preparing a report to document that the agency was spending the required 1 percent of its funds on bicycle and pedestrian projects. The state’s so-called Bike Bill, passed in 1974, had made this the law; as the nation’s first proto-complete streets policy, it also required that “Footpaths and bicycle trails, including curb cuts or ramps … shall be provided wherever a highway, road or street is being constructed, reconstructed or relocated.” Yet, little attention had been paid to this “routine accommodation” part of the statute. Exceptions were routinely granted, and sidewalks were not included on state projects unless local governments wanted and paid for them.

Right away, Ronkin demonstrated one attribute of a champion: instead of grumbling about the uselessness of the spending report, he found a way around it. He told me, “When I became the program manager, I just stopped publishing the report [on how much we’d spent], and waited for any complaints. Guess when the first knock came? Never. No one gave a s--t about those reports.” This freed up his time to follow the directive of his new boss, Bill Geibel, who wanted to get serious about implementing the routine accommodation part of the law. Their first strategy: getting a series of opinions from the state attorney general confirming that the law did indeed require bike and pedestrian facilities, on both state DOT and local transportation projects.

Ronkin did not rely on legal rulings alone: he built relationships with people who could help him advance the goal. He sought out the help of people in the department with more experience and more credibility. He befriended Terry Wheeler, the official in the design section who was responsible for granting exceptions to the policy, as well as another employee responsible for standard drawings. The Americans with Disabilities Act was coming into force at the time, and Ronkin says, “We kind of hijacked ADA to help enforce our walkway standards.

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