A Complete Street

It's funny, ever since the Sustainable Transportation wrokshop I've been looking at streets differently - regular readers will have seen my posts (here & here) looking at some of the worst examples of "incomplete streets" in Grande Prairie. Well, even at a convention I couldn't stop looking at how the streets and sidewalks were laid out.

Throughout Quebec City the sidewalks are busy with tourists and locals walking everywhere. In the old section the streets are as narrow as they would be any historic European city, very charming but not a lot of room for bikes let alone say a wheelchair for example. But, on the walk from our hotel to the convention centre I realized I was on one of the best examples of a complete street I had ever seen! I snapped the picture below...



This was taken early on Sunday morning so the traffic is pretty light but as you can see the road is four or six lanes wide. Some of the things that makes this a very "complete" street:

• Very wide sidewalk
• Trees make a great separation from the road
• Crosswalks are wide, well marked and very obvious
• Countdown lights to let pedestrians know how much time there is to cross
• Bike lanes marked on the sidewalk

With great streets like this, it's no wonder there are so many people walking here!