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Safer Roadways: A Complete Streets Guide
Southern Red Cedar and Southern Wax Myrtle are excellent species but need more space away from urban street edges. Native trees have certain advantages to being compatible with the environment and have other benefits such as vibrant wildlife and other environmental values due to their appropriateness to the climate and region. The regionally native deciduous trees of Redbud, River Birch, Sweetgum, Sycamore, Pecan, Southern Magnolia and Ligustrum are also excellent candidates in more naturalized parkway-like conditions. Allow adequate soil conditions for growing and thriving for the proposed areas of tree plantings. Generous space should be allocated to tree lawns up to eight feet in width. In Urban General (C4) contexts, streetscapes should have at least six-to- eight-foot tree wells and hardscape, but also with the possibility of subsurface tree soil cells for expanded root growth area. Wayfinding Wayfinding Sign
Streets should be intuitive for all users. Wayfinding should be provided for all modes, in the manner that works best for them. While wayfinding for motorized users is standard and visible on most streets, wayfinding for people walking or riding a bike is often non-existent. Providing wayfinding for people walking or riding a bike near trails, parks, schools and connecting neighborhoods to community centers, must be considered more frequently. Providing relevant information when and where it is most useful can greatly improve the user experience. On typologies with more expected pedestrian and bicycle users, digital and interactive wayfinding
displays help provide information to people who may not be able to understand how to find that information via a smartphone or another internet-connected device. These large displays can provide maps and directions to different destinations, advertisements for local businesses and city events, and transit maps and bus arrival times near transit stops. Wayfinding displays can be linked to positive health encouragement by including messages about the health and wellness benefits of walking to nearby destinations. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Transportation Health Impact Assessment Toolkit outlines several strategies to improve physical elements of a street network to encourage more active transportation such as children biking to school or employees walking to work. Providing wayfinding with signs, maps, and landscape cues to direct pedestrians and bicyclists to the most direct route is one of those strategies 26 .
26 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Strategies for Health-Oriented Transportation Projects, and Policies to Promote Active Transportation https://cdc.gov/healthyplaces/transportation/promote_strategy.htm
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