Abstract:
As part of the City of Charlotte's Smart Growth strategy, staff and consultants are developing comprehensive new urban street design guidelines to be applied to all new and modified streets. The design guidelines provide for all travel modes, while explicitly considering land use context, street function, and allocation among competing uses for often-limited right-of-way. The design guidelines offer direction on planning and designing for five street types and their intersections. As important as the "ideal" cross-sections developed, however, is the information provided to guide the tradeoff decisions inherent in street design, particularly in retrofit or modification situations. To that end, the guidelines include a step-by-step approach to their application. The approach is to be used by land planners, traffic engineers, urban designers and any other stakeholders when faced with accomplishing a variety of objectives within constrained conditions. A test application to a street improvement project demonstrates how the new method has resulted in an alternative street design that would not have been as likely under the traditional approach to street design in Charlotte.
