 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Carol Werner. I'm the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute and I'm delighted to welcome you here this afternoon for this briefing entitled Complete Streets, Improving Safety and Choices for All. And indeed that is exactly what this briefing is going to focus on. We are very glad to have as partners in this Smart Growth America and their project of the National Complete Streets Coalition. To talk about this important issue and the fact that there are now 500 entities across the country, the local, state, regional level that have embraced the whole notion of Complete Streets and how we do a better job in terms of thinking about all of the users of our streets and to make things better in terms of choices, safety, and how this really is manifested in different ways depending upon whether you are a small community, a large city, rural versus urban or suburban, everything has its own look. But again, the whole purpose is to make things better in terms of options and safer for all users. To open our briefing this afternoon, we are absolutely delighted to have with us Congresswoman Doris Matsui from California. And she has been such an important leader and we're going to hear more from her with regard to legislation that she has just introduced. But the Congresswoman has represented the city of Sacramento and its surrounding areas since 19, or since 2005, where she has been committed to strengthening Sacramento's flood protection and we all know how important that has been. Ensuring the quality and affordable health care for all. She's worked aggressively to promote a clean energy economy so that indeed her area can be a vibrant region where families can live, work, and play and truly be a land of opportunity. She has been a very passionate advocate with regard to increasing public transportation options in Sacramento and I would say also nationally. She has been engaged in the planning and execution of an intermodal transportation center in downtown Sacramento and was also highly instrumental in securing the necessary funds to extend Sacramento's light rail system. She serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee which holds jurisdiction over issues that impact all of us every single day in terms of thinking about energy, health care, technology, consumer protection, environmental quality, and the list goes on. She is co-chair of the Bipartisan Congressional High Tech Caucus. She's vice-chair of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition and she is also chairing a task force on seniors, a very important constituency as well that we're going to hear more about today. So it is my pleasure to introduce Congresswoman Matt Sui. Thank you very much Carol and it's a delight to be here today. Thank you very much for being here. I'd love to be here with advocates like yourself because you're the soldiers on the ground and you understand what your neighborhoods are like and you want to ensure that there is safety in your neighborhoods and be able to have everyone use it and not just have it overloaded with cars as we know that the highway system was built in the 50s and 60s where cars were dominant and we are changing our lifestyle and we have to also change our roads and the way we get along. So I'm thrilled to be joining this impressive group of all of you transportation stakeholders this afternoon and I'd like to thank EESI, the National Complete Streets Coalition, and Smart Growth America for hosting this briefing and thank you to this panel of very distinguished speakers for being with us today and thank you for contributing all that you do and also how we're going to be discussing how we move forward. Several years ago I became an advocate for National Complete Streets policy for the same reason that everyone else has safety and safety for pedestrians, safety for bikers, safety for the disabled, safety for transit riders, safety for the elderly, safety for children walking to school, safety for all users of our streets and like many other cities across the country, my home district of Sacramento continues to bear witness to too many preventable accidents involving pedestrians. Just last year, Michelle, who was 16 years old, a high school student, was struck and killed as she was crossing a busy street and she was doing is crossing the street to volunteer at a local elementary school in Sacramento and here in D.C. every single day we hear on the morning traffic reports about a pedestrian or a bike rider that has been struck and this is absolutely unacceptable, but unfortunately unsurprising. Too many of the roads in our country are designed solely with drivers in mind and making them unsafe to the thousands of Americans to choose alternate forms of transportation. Now, we all know we're moving towards alternate forms of transportation, so we do have to change, but these needless and avoidable accidents are vivid reminders of why we need complete streets policies. We all know that there are best practices to make our streets safer, but without turning that knowledge into action, we are unnecessarily putting many at risk. This year, the Complete Streets Coalition passed a huge milestone, and Carol mentioned that. When the 500th jurisdiction throughout the United States adopted complete streets policies, cities and states have been leading the way, and it is far past time for the federal government to step up and show that it too is committed to improving the safety of our communities and that is why I'm excited to once again introduce and we're going to call it the Safe Streets Act. This bipartisan legislation introduced by Representative Joyce and myself is our response to show we are serious about advancing responsible transportation policies. The Safe Streets Act gives states two years to adopt comprehensive complete streets policies for transportation projects. It will ensure that future transportation investments are designed, planned, and constructed with all the needs of the users in mind, regardless of their age, mobility, or motor travel. Shortly, you're going to be hearing from our panel of experts about the many benefits provided by complete streets policies. Safety, environmental, economic, public health, the list goes on and on, and the cost of inaction, as we all know, is great. And unfortunately, often tragic. I remain steadfast in my commitment to advancing these goals and look forward to working with all of you, a greater number of all of you, on the shared vision of making our communities more livable, sustainable, and most importantly, safe. This is our time. I think when you look back even five years ago, I don't think you saw as many walkers or bikers around. And many cities, including DC, are really thinking very creatively about how we might make these changes so that people could actually, you know, not only use bikes, for instance, for recreational activities, but as you know, as I know, a lot of people ride their bikes to work. And we're encouraging that because, you know, unfortunately, we have here a certain number of cars, as you know, and we're not going to build anymore. Really, we can't widen the roads anymore here. So with allowing the streets to be able to be used by all in a safe manner is going to move us forward. And I look forward to the day that every street we see is complete and safe. So thank you very much. And I look forward to working with you as we move forward. Thank you. We have received a charge and I think that we are so fortunate to have that kind of leadership here in the Congress to really provide a vision to work in such an important bipartisan way so that everybody can help understand the stakes that we all have in this important issue. And as she was speaking, I also was and mentioned how often we see tragedy connected with our streets and it just made me think of what happened just a few blocks from here yesterday with regard to the horrific accident over by Union Station in terms of many people being injured, you know, where the street clearly was not safe and we saw a lot of injury as a result of a terrible accident. At this time, I would like to turn briefly to Jeff Anderson, who is the president and CEO of Smart Growth America and Smart Growth America is, is a partner for this particular briefing. And it is wonderful to have Jeff here. He is very well known for his leadership in sustainable community planning and development. Before he came to Smart Growth America as its president and CEO, he served as the leader of the Smart Growth Program at US EPA for eight years. He's been a leader in the Smart Growth Movement and an author of the 10 Smart Growth Principles that have been a foundation for Smart Growth across the country that have been used by many officials across the country as well as advocates. And he has provided very hands on assistance to a number of local local jurisdictions. Jeff. Thanks for coming this afternoon. We really appreciate it. I just wanted to say thank you to EESI for jointly hosting this along with us. We're pleased to be in partnership with you, so appreciate that. And I definitely want to thank representatives Metsui and Joyce for their leadership on this issue and particular representatives long standing leadership. She's been very stalwart with her support and concern for these issues. Smart Growth America, for those who don't know, we're a national nonprofit organization. We are concerned with creating great communities with getting jobs and transportation and housing near shops and schools and other daily amenities that people need. We think these build economically vibrant communities, help fiscal budgets be kept in line at the local level, and create great livable places. And obviously what we're here to talk about today is complete streets and safety. And some of you may know the story of Raquel Nelson about a little over a year ago down in Atlanta. A mother with a couple of kids was getting off a bus on an arterial in Atlanta and got let off on the side of the street. And she could walk a half mile with kids in one direction to the intersection or a long way in the other direction to the other intersection. And she did what I wager anyone in this room would do, which is cross where she was because the other side of the street was where her house was. And in the process of that crossing, one of her kids got away from her and got killed, which is incredibly tragic obviously. There were charges filed in the case, vehicular manslaughter. They were charged against Raquel Nelson, the mother who lost her kid. Because she had apparently not used the street correctly in crossing to get to her house. So that was clearly a situation where the design of the street, the design of the community, the placement of the transit stop all conspired to create a very unsafe situation. It's not uncommon, you know, situation around the country. We tend to focus on the impact it has on pedestrians, on bicyclists. But, you know, if I'm the driver of that car, that's a horrible experience. And in fact, we also know from looking at places where complete streets have been implemented around the country, it makes the road safer for the drivers. It makes the road safer for the auto users as well. So this is really about all users on the streets and making great places where we can feel like we can, you know, take kids in our car, take kids across streets, take kids on bikes, let them go on bikes, God forbid, without us. Because that's what a bunch of us used to do. And we'd like to have our kids have that autonomy and not have to drag them around everywhere and use our time that way. So this is a critical issue. It's a critical quality of life issue. It's a critical issue for safety. And I'm just very thrilled to be the place where the Complete Streets Coalition comes together in Smart Growth America and to be able to work with all the terrific partners, many of which are here this afternoon. And in particular, thrilled to just have a small part on this panel and hear from some of our partners at the local level who are really advancing this issue so assiduously. So thank you. And talking about partners who are advancing these issues and dealing with very complex situations at the local level, we will turn to our next speaker, who is Danny Pleasant, who is the Transportation Director for the City of Charlotte. Everybody should listen up because just remember that the transportation secretary designate is Danny's mayor. And so we might get some good clues. But I think let me tell you just a little bit about what all Danny's been dealing with in terms of his capacity at Charlotte because we all know that Charlotte has just been growing. It's a burgeoning city in the southeast. There is so much new economic growth, population growth, et cetera. And so as I said, he is the director of Charlotte's Transportation Department. And so he's in that capacity, as you would presume, he is responsible for road and transportation planning and operations, including the policy development necessary as well as neighborhood traffic projects. He has to oversee capital project prioritization. We all know how difficult that can be. His department is responsible for 2,100 miles of streets and traffic signals at more than 630 intersections. The department provides planning services for the Mecklenburg Union Metropolitan Planning Organization and recently developed a transportation action plan to deal with the expected growth over the course of the next 25 years. Danny came to the city of Charlotte in 2002 after he had served as a transportation planning bureau chief for the city of Orlando for 14 years, another small challenge, right? And he'd also been a transportation planner in Atlanta, Georgia, Chapel Hill and Fayetteville, North Carolina. So we are very, very fortunate to have Danny with us this afternoon to talk to us about how this is being addressed at the local level and some of the things that we should be really thinking about with regard to complete streets. Thank you, Carol. It's not often I get to raise the mic. So I appreciate that. You're welcome. So, as Carol said, I am proud to serve the city of Charlotte as its transportation director. Charlotte is, in case you don't know, it's the largest city in North Carolina. It is located about halfway between Washington, D.C. and Atlanta along I-85 and I-77. I hope you'll come to see it. Charlotte is currently the 17th largest city in the country. We probably didn't realize we were that large of a city as far as an incorporated city is concerned. Our metropolitan area is probably in the 30 range, something like that as far as large cities. The Census Bureau declared us the fastest growing urban area in the country between 2010 and 2012. And I don't know if we can keep that pace, but it certainly is interesting that we're growing that fast right after one of the worst recessions we've ever had. But Charlotte is a sprawling, sunbelt city. Most of its growth occurred since the 1950s. It occurred in the heyday of the automobile. Lots of roads and highways were built, sprawling development pattern, separated uses, all the things that you see in these kinds of cities. And so as we prepare our city for the challenges of the future, we remain very mindful that we are in a changing demographic and a changing market preference era. And for Charlotte to compete, and we like to compete, we like to attract business and industry into our city. We like our quality of life, and we like to put ourselves up against any city in the country for all that. And we have that civic pride, and I hope your city has the same civic pride that we do. So around 2000, we started, and actually in the 1990s, we started looking deeply at what our city needed to be as it developed over time. And we planned around something called a center's quarters and wedges framework so that we could create those lifestyle choices throughout our city and integrate our transportation system with those lifestyle choices, which includes creating lots of transportation choices as well. And as we thought about this, we went out and we polled our citizenry, and we continue to poll them about every two years. And we've been doing that for about 12 or 15 years or so. And we find that when asked the question, do you believe that streets should be available for all users virtually? We get an overwhelming yes, they should, for bicyclists and walkers and transit riders. And most anyone else that we haven't even thought of yet have a right to use their streets. And so that's an important piece that we feel very empowered by our citizenry across the city, because just about every perspective believes that we should have streets that are available for everyone. And so, you know, many of our streets look like this and I bet many of the streets in your town look like this as well. It could be anywhere USA, we believe, where streets were designed strictly for automobile use. And, you know, occasionally folks will want to use these streets and more and more, as the congresswoman said, folks want to use them. They want to start refitting these streets so that they're more friendly to everyone that's there. And as Jeff said, you know, it's really important for automobile travel as well. We found in our city that the area that actually is the densest area of the city where most concentrated employment exists, where most of our cultural amenities and most of our attractions exist, actually is less congested than the suburban areas that surround us. And that's strictly because we have not only great streets, but we have a great street network woven together that gives people lots of choices and route choices and can mitigate a lot of traffic using the system. So you're about two and a half times more likely to be congested in the outer parts of the city, the automobile oriented part of the city than you are in the part of the city that is actually more densely populated than in the other part of the city. So there's a great benefit to automobile drivers to have a good complete street system and a network of complete streets as well. And as we mentioned, the market really is tilting strongly toward places that are livable, walkable. Even the National Association of Realtors in their survey or their market preferences found that 53% of those that they surveyed and they surveyed an awful lot of people were willing to trade off the large house and the large lot and with an extra long drive for a smaller home, smaller lot, but in a walkable place and places to walk to. So it's important that you'll see surveys from the National Association of Home Builders will tell you the same thing in their market surveys. And certainly many people still like the big house and the big lot and they're willing to drive further for that. And in our view, that's fine. But another choice out there has not been offered quite as frequently perhaps in the past 30 or 40 years as the walkable communities. And so the market is shifting. We've got lots of data that tells us that that part of the market actually held up better during the recession than perhaps the suburban part of the market. So we know people want to be there and it's a trend. And with the two biggest generations ever in our country, my generation of baby boomers who are looking at retirement and perhaps a different lifestyle and those that we call the millennials most definitely tell us in surveys that they're more interested in a more walkable lifestyle. It doesn't have to be the middle of a big city, doesn't have to be Washington, D.C., although lots of people come here. It can be a small town or village, but it needs to have that essence of walkability and good streets make for that essence. So what do we do in Charlotte? Well, we got busy about changing about everything. We changed our policies and methods of designing streets, our guidelines we use for our capital projects. City Council adopted new design guidelines and changed the zoning code and subdivision code so that we got the kind of streets that will serve us better in the future. We believe we have better land development manual. We apply our guidelines to all areas. In essence, we created and crossed the board change that complete streets are totally integrated into our transportation planning, design and construction all through the organization. And so from a city perspective, what happened is that our council got very focused on redesigning and designing streets better. And so in the last few years, they put about $400 million into constructing roads or doing road widenings or in some cases conversions of roads to get about the business of creating better streets for our city. And so it's important for you to see of Charlotte that we have adopted complete streets as our norm, as our normal operating way of doing business. And so some of the streets that we've been able to touch along there have sort of varied across the spectrum from arterials to more localized streets and small collectors in places within activity centers and places in a more suburban context. And so all of those have really turned out to be great. Now, a lot of folks ask us about what is the cost of doing a complete street versus just a regular street for cars only? And we're all suffering from a lack of resources to do these things and to move forward in our communities. And so we wanted to just kind of graph that. And so what this graph does, it tells you over a period of time the dots and the blue lines that connect those dots will tell you for four lane road. This is our sort of our sample. And we use 11 foot lanes with sidewalks and bikeways as our sort of complete streets model. If you take that four lane road just in a regular thing, I'm not going to make it by the way, in a regular street, you can kind of see the orange line there. But with complete streets in the yellow line, it adds somewhere between 2.5 to 8% more and we'll admit that for a four lane kind of a road. But what the dots tell you is that variation in building roads from year to year kind of swings pretty wildly back and forth. And it's related to the availability of labor, the cost of asphalt, the cost of petroleum. Petroleum drives the cost of asphalt. So what you can see is the increased cost for complete streets really fits almost within the variance of what a normal street construction project would be anyway. So it's just not that huge of a deal. Charlotte has been nationally recognized for its complete streets across pretty much all the professional organizations that we deal with. 2009 EPA awarded us a Smart Growth Achievement Award as part of our efforts with our urban street design guidelines. Urban street design guidelines is what we call complete streets before people call things complete streets. So our MPO has adopted a complete streets policy. And what I'm probably most proud of is our State Department of Transportation adopted a complete streets policy in North Carolina. Fairly conservative and a huge highway system maintained the largest or second largest depending on if I want to pick a fight with Texas or not. State maintained highways in the country. And they adopted a complete streets policy at the board level. And then the staff, the leadership at NCDOT got about the business of creating the practices and guidelines for their 14,000 employees that work for their agency. And I'm proud to say that the person, Tracy Newsom, who led our efforts co-chaired the group that put together the state's guidance for designing streets. And so they're in the business now of driving that practice down into their organization. So very quickly, why should we have a federal policy? Well, it's because we need to see the consistent application across the country of these, of building safe streets throughout the network of cities and towns, particularly that we're focused on. In Charlotte, roughly 55% of our thoroughfares, centerline miles, are controlled by the State Department of Transportation. And most of those are on the federal aid highway system. So there's a big inventory of streets that the federal government should be influencing the way they're built. In our experience, through our bond packages and the work that we do, about 70% of the projects that we tackle are actually on the state highway system, just because the state doesn't have the resources to come and rebuild streets in a more urban fashion. So we take that on, of course, with their permission, because they do that. So we're there. Some state-maintained streets, obviously, are freeways. We're not talking about freeways here. We're talking about streets. Those streets that are, those arterial types of streets that come through our major cities, that have come through our towns and villages. And in a village, it's typically the main street, frankly, of that village. And there are commercial streets where people are, where those streets typically include bus routes, bus stops, as Jeff mentioned, bus stops are critical. And some of these areas have bus stops where there is no signalized traffic, there is no signalized intersection anywhere nearby. So that's important. We need to look for opportunities to advance the complete streets, practice to the next level, and prepare our cities and towns for the next generation of folks that want to come. There. And we need to get, you know, part of it is getting pedestrians and bicyclists across freeways. We're not talking about freeways, but we're talking about getting back and forth across, and this is vitally important. And oftentimes these bridges are built with little to no sidewalk or certainly no places for bikeways. And it's very uncomfortable for people to cross. And we feel like they don't feel safe. They don't feel comfortable that they're there. But you can rebuild those kinds of facilities. And we've done that in Charlotte several times so that they work for pedestrians and bicyclists alike. And then there are the big arterial streets that are near freeway interchanges. They're usually high speed arterials and they're wide open and they're just not well suited for pedestrians and bicyclists. But you can go back and retrofit those as you've seen here in Charlotte to make those actually work for communities. And then there's those areas of the city that are just completely rebuilding and responding to those market forces that want more walkability. And for us, we are now in the transit business. We opened our first light rail line in 2007. And this has been the response. About $1.4 billion worth of redevelopment has happened in the corridor outside of the downtown area. And in response to very sensitive design that we've put into place, the transit system, the willing developers who are willing to transit oriented development in that area. But in this particular case, that South Boulevard Street that you see was a state maintained road. And their standards would simply not allow them to build us to build the street or rebuild the street in a way that was more pedestrian friendly and more appropriate for the kind of development along the way. Including on street parking and some tight turn radiuses and all the elements there. So we had to take over maintenance of that street and we've done that time and time again. Transferred maintenance from the state to the city just because it didn't meet the city's, the state's standards. But, you know, lately the state has been changing and this is an example of one that is a state road that we right sized in response to a development there of affordable housing right next to it. So in summary, our recommendations are pretty quick and they're pretty simple that we do need a national policy to accelerate implementing complete streets and cities, towns and villages across the city, across the country. We think that properly designed sidewalks and bikeways are a huge part of that, particularly as they cross overpasses and underpasses. We believe that, you know, properly designed sidewalks are part of the formula along thoroughfares. And then we really need to pay attention in public transit world to those areas where folks need to cross the street. They simply need to cross the street and they have a right to cross the street and they have a right to cross the street safely. And finally, there's lots of guidance out there, lots of national standards, lots of agencies have released good standards. And we simply need to be able to tap into the greatest flexibility that those standards allow us to have across our profession. And with that, I'll just wrap it up and go to the next speaker. So doesn't that make you all want to go to Charlotte? Come on. On your briefing notice, you will see the name Lynn Peterson from Washington State's Department of Transportation. Late yesterday afternoon, we learned that she had to stay in Washington State, was unable to come because there was a special session of the legislature specifically on the state transportation budget. And so I think we all know what that means. And so she had to stay to finalize the agreement with that budget committee of the special session. So we are very, very pleased that we were able to find someone at the very last minute who is actually a perfect person to have here as part of this briefing today. And that is Camille Middleholz, who is the acting director of the Office of Safety, Energy and Environment in the Office of Transportation Policy in the secretary's office at the Department of Transportation. And Camille leads the environmental policy team in the secretary's office at DOT. She has 35 years of experience working on these transportation environmental issues. And so I want to say, first of all, I so deeply express my appreciation for your being willing to come in at the last minute. But at the same time, it's really, really such an important voice that you bring to this whole discussion. So we are just delighted that you're here. Thank you very much, Camille. Thank you. I'll just stay here, I think. And I see lots of colleagues that I've worked with over the years in the audience, so it's great to see you. Livability, I think, is becoming increasingly important. And as mentioned, I've spent a lot of my career doing environmental work and how the Department treats environmental policies. And I think that the livability is just a wonderful outgrowth of that. We've really seen that people are very interested in having a lot of choice in what they do, the way they travel and where they live. And really being able to travel in a more environmentally sustainable way is important to people. And the Department has tried to respond to that growing interest. And really, since the beginning of the Obama administration, there's been a major emphasis on livability and sustainability. And so we've been working hard to try and really see that if you're on a bike, if you're in a car, if you're walking, you really need to be able to travel as safely as possible. And we need to promote policies that are going to be supportive of that. In 2009, we actually began a partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And we just celebrated the fourth anniversary of actually setting up the partnership. And we've worked hard over that time to really get our programs to work better. The federal programs are all set up with different authorizing legislation and have different goals. But to really break down the barriers between the different programs and see what we can do to have our programs work together. And of course, especially in transportation, we work with state partners and local partners. Most of our grant programs will go either to a state DOT or to a transit agency. So the principles of the partnership, or you may have read them many times, but I thought I would just reiterate them because I think they're very important. Providing more transportation choices, promoting equitable, affordable housing, enhancing economic competitiveness, supporting existing communities, coordinating policies and leveraging investment, and valuing the communities and the neighborhoods that we're serving. So what we're trying to do is really is to help the cities become greener places. And I think it's just wonderful seeing all the exciting things going on in Charlotte. We're also, you know, we're very pleased to really see an interest in bicycling as a way of traveling. But at the same time, we're also very concerned that after we've been making some very good progress overall in transportation fatalities, we're actually seeing an increase in recent years in both the pedestrian fatalities and the bicyclist deaths. So we obviously want to make safety a very important part of what we're doing. I do want to mention that we have, as one of our overall goals, the department has five or six goals that govern our strategic plan, and livability is one of those goals. And under that, we have a number of performance measures, and one of them is increasing the number of states that have complete streets policies. And we've been tracking this for about three years now, and we have seen an increase. Right now, we have 29 states actually have policies that somehow promote a complete street. And then there are also now, and this is actually statistics that are kept by the National Complete Streets Coalition. But there are 369 cities that have complete street policies and 37 counties and 40 metropolitan planning organizations, which are the organizations that are responsible for coordinating the planning in a metropolitan area for what federal funds will be used for transportation. We have an exciting program that actually came first to DOT in the Recovery Act. We call it TIGER, which is Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery. We're just entering our fifth round of grants under that. It still has not been permanently authorized in one of our overall authorizing statutes, but we have had a series of annual appropriations that have continued the TIGER program. This is not exclusively geared towards livability, but we have been able to support quite a bit of livability and bicycle pedestrian types of projects. I think it's 130 million that have been bicycle pedestrian projects so far, specifically. And then the other types of programs are oriented towards multimodal connections in freight and multimodal connections for passengers. And so it's really intended to be a program that kind of doesn't fit neatly into the other categories of funding that our surface transportation authorizing has. So stay tuned for the TIGER program. We have the applications just closed June 3rd, and we're now very busy with our reviews. We were lucky enough in 2010 actually to have a specific set aside for planning grants that helped projects kind of get farther along in their development and so that they were riper for actually receiving the funds. And we worked very closely with our HUD and EPA partners actually in choosing cities, and we actually were able to coordinate with some of their grants to make the grants even more effective. One example I'm familiar with, for example, is in Ransom West Virginia in Charlestown. There actually were several different grants that were working together to clean up brownfields and do transportation planning and housing planning together. So that was an exciting opportunity. Unfortunately, we haven't had designated funds for planning since then, but nevertheless we are very excited that the TIGER program is continuing and giving us a way to go beyond the funds that are available. We do have pretty good flexibility in the federal highway programs to fund bicycle safety and pedestrian safety projects and things that can better accommodate pedestrians, but this is a supplement and it's really helpful. Finally, there was a mention of design standards. We are also very interested in seeing better design standards. The design standards really typically are worked through organizations like Ashto, and we think that it would be very helpful to have more flexibility in design standards so that communities when they're planning transportation improvements can really accommodate designs that are going to be better used by pedestrians and bicyclists and people that are in wheelchairs and the like. I'll close now and I'll be happy to answer any questions. Also in closing, I'll mention we still have year three report copies and I left those outside there if anyone's interested. I encourage you to help yourself. Thank you. Great. Thanks so much, Camille. And again, I thank you very, very much for being here and we look forward to your being able to answer questions and hopefully people will be able to pick up the material that you brought later. And as you were speaking and thinking about, in terms of talking about design guides and looking at what was going on in different states and localities and everything, I think that it raises again how important it is for what happens at the national level, at the federal level to really learn and look from what is happening in terms of needs as well as things that are being put into place at the state and local level as we heard from Danny with regard to Charlotte. And we're now going to hear more about what this really means from another kind of perspective, particularly in terms of thinking about what this means for seniors. And we are delighted that Angela Vance is here with us today. Angela is Associate State Director for Advocacy with AARP West Virginia. And she comes from a background of working in social service and was a former social worker. And as a result of working in those kinds of settings and in program development, she is able to bring that to this work with regard to AARP. She spent time working in the West Virginia House of Delegates and also working with a variety of statewide programs for nonprofit organizations in West Virginia that were dealing with health issues like the State Alzheimer's Association. So this has allowed her to really develop a lot of relationships within the legislature as well as within the advocacy community, which is very, very important as we really look at the critical needs that we see with regard to an aging population and how those special needs also fit into the needs that we see with regard to complete streets. Angela, welcome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today. My name is Angela Vance and I'm with AARP in the state of West Virginia. So I'm here to bring you the older Americans perspective and the state perspective, I hope, as it relates to this. AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization. We have 37 million members across this country. And to my friends here from West Virginia that I saw walk into the room, we have about 300,000 members in the Mountain State right now, so we're very proud of that as well. Thanks again for the invitation to participate and to share the experience that we just had during the last legislative session in West Virginia. Older people consistently tell us that it's important for them to be able to stay in their homes and their communities as they age. Without question, mobility is key to achieving this desire. Let's face it, it's about getting to the grocery store, going to church, getting to medical appointments, staying connected with your family and friends, and being able to get around your community. Nationwide, more than 8 million people over the age of 65 don't drive a car anymore, and that number is going to continue to grow, and it's growing at a very fast rate. According to a recent AARP survey, two-thirds of transportation engineers and planners so that they had not yet begun to considering the design needs of older adults in their multi-multi-planning. We have to change this, and it's interesting because it sounds like the generation in the middle who's doing the work right now or some of it is not taking the generation above them and below them in consideration when they're making these decisions, so I thought that was an interesting perspective to bring. This survey does confirm why this is such an important issue for communities across the country, and one of the reasons why the West Virginia Legislature decided to pass the legislation to implement a statewide complete streets policy. We must consider all transportation users during the planning phase of transportation construction, not after the last concrete or pavement is put down on the project. We have a couple of slides that we can just look at right now. I think the grass really is greener in North Carolina based on your presentation, sir. And so one of the things that we really talked about in West Virginia when we were putting together this policy was that where the need exists in the community and for those communities, we need to look at that and enhance that. Obviously, this young woman could use a sidewalk, and if you can see they've kind of created a sidewalk with the path that they have wore down by walking on it. The next slide, okay, obviously a crosswalk would enhance the safety for this gentleman as he crosses the street and hopefully gets to a place where he can pick up some public transportation. Again, you can see where folks have created a sidewalk along this road. There is a need for people to walk on this road is evident. And here, so the slide before, I guess if you're in a wheelchair or a stroller, you're just out of luck. And the next slide is, I don't know if they ran out of time or money or what was happening there. This is everyday USA and this is very familiar to what we're seeing across the country. Design for transportation infrastructure to enhance livable communities must take into consideration, as I said, strollers, wheelchairs, walkers, bikers, storefronts, traffic patterns, and traffic patterns not just for local folks who are driving every day, but we also want to think about tourists. There's a story from West Virginia when we were working on this project in Fayette County, those of you who have been whitewater rafting, if you haven't I encourage you to come visit us. There was an interchange that was rebuilt and when it was rebuilt, it knocked all the businesses out because nobody knew how to get there anymore. So when you come visit us, we hope that we are making positive changes so that you can get to where you want to be and you can feed our local economies. The legislation passed in West Virginia not only sets forth a statewide policy, but it also empowers communities to work with transportation planners to meet the needs of those individual communities. So again, we're not talking about changing every project or retrofitting everything that's going on, but it's about working with the communities to see where the need actually exists in making those changes. A or P, of course, has been working at the forefront of this issue for many years, representing older Americans to ensure that communities are livable and that everyone has the opportunity to live with dignity and purpose. The benefits of changing transportation policy are numerous. Roads that welcome pedestrians and bicyclists signals for drivers to slow down. This enhances safety for those working the pedals or those driving behind the wheel. We're concerned that too many streets are hostile to those who want to walk to their destination. This is especially true in rural areas. Every two hours a pedestrian dies in an accident on a roadway in our nation, I didn't realize that I got stuck in some of the traffic from the accident that occurred yesterday after I arrived into D.C. An older American is killed nearly twice as likely to be killed while walking than those under the age of 65. The slide that you saw before that with the gentleman pushing the cart up the hill there, when we talk about older individuals staying in their communities and staying connected, there's only so many times they're going to call to try to get help from a neighbor or a friend and at some point it's going to lead to isolation and we certainly don't want that going on. And I think the slide before that showed everyday USA, the thoroughfares that you see going through. I know that I was recently out of town and I was at a hotel and I could see the restaurants, but I couldn't figure out how to get there. And so when you have those big thoroughfares with no crosswalks and no ways to get there, you have to get in your car and you have to drive there or depend on somebody to do that. And then of course this fella on his bike, your pictures were a lot prettier than these are, aren't they? And to give bike riders the opportunity to ride in a safe, productive way I think is crucial. Last year, the West Virginia University Injury Control Research Center, who we collaborated with and also with the West Virginia Division of Highways, reviewed 2000-2006 West Virginia crash reports to better understand the financial burden of motor vehicles crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists. I don't have to tell you that you look at how many people died and that's how you change policy unfortunately in many instances. During the past decade nearly 300,000 or 300 excuse me pedestrian and cyclists died on West Virginia roadways as a result of injuries. Sustained in motor vehicle related traffic accidents according to data from the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration. Between 2000 and 2006, the total human capital cost associated with these types of motor vehicle accidents on West Virginia roadways was approximately $80 million per year. These are total costs. And so we heard from Jeff talking about the unfortunate incident that occurred and this poor woman was charged and all these things happened. And I think the flip side that we don't often talk about is when there's a major accident, if somebody is injured or killed, often there's property damage that's associated with that. There's cost to municipalities and EMS related cost. You could be taking a perfectly working person and now they're disabled and they are counting on taxpayer dollars for a lot. So when you think about accidents I think it's helpful to think about it in that room. In West Virginia and across the country people age 50 plus tell A or P that they would walk, bicycle and take public transportation more if those transportation options were safer for them to do so. Half of older non-drivers did not get out of the house on any given day in part because they lack transportation options and that goes back to there's just only so many times they're going to call their neighbor or their family member because they don't want to be a burden to folks. I'm going to go through these slides really quickly because I got the warning up here and I do have a few more things to say. And so this is just an example of a rural area and if you look at it there's a little cluster of the signage and the driveway is very close and it's hard to see where you're supposed to go. And so just making a few minor changes can really make this intersection much more livable. You look if you separate that and you move the sign back potentially and then the next slide you have a crosswalk and an arrow with a turn lane that enhances pedestrian safety and safety for those traveling in their car and then the third thing that you could do is to add some sidewalks. And so those are easy fixes that we can look at in our rural, even our rural downtown communities as we look to improve options. Simple policy changes at the local and state and federal level can make active living easier. In 2010 in coordination with the National Physical Activity Plan West Virginia developed its own physical activity plan with the aim to create a statewide culture that facilitates physically active lifestyles. Complete Streets was one of their recommendations that came out of this plan and so we worked and collaborated with them as we set forth the policy. We all know that physical activity is critical to a healthy lifestyle and public health strategy has focused intensely in recent years on the built environment or the built community so that people have safe options to ride their bike and walk on a regular basis. West Virginia unfortunately has the second highest rate of physical inactivity at 35.1% according to the research we did with West Virginia University this past year where the sixth highest obesity in physical inactivity related cost and that comes in at about $208 annually per taxpayer. On the other side of this coin we are only spending 0.6% or $1.55 per capita of federal transportation money on pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure where the fourth lowest in the country when it comes to this kind of spending so we are very excited that a statewide Complete Streets policy is going to hopefully change some of that for us in the state of West Virginia. Complete Streets designed is not the entire solution but it is part of the solution for chronic disease associated with low levels of physical activity. I think states are starting, they're going to have to start looking at spending in a much more global way and so one of the things that the legislation does that we created it does create an advisory board and it brings together folks from the Department of Health and Human Resources and folks involved with physical activity that we look at those health related costs and that we're not planning those projects in silos. Healthcare costs, that's not what we're here to talk about but it's certainly a huge part of it. So we're excited that everybody was sort of at the table and we started to make those decisions. In West Virginia the Department of Transportation is responsible for 92% of the West Virginia roadways. We are one of four states that maintain both state and county roads along with our friends from North Carolina, Virginia and Delaware and as we went to implement this policy we realized that we were the only state out of those four who didn't have a statewide Complete Streets policy so that was certainly another selling point when we went to the legislature because as I told my friend we're always competing with all I have to say is North Carolina does it and I'm in, right? Our older population in West Virginia is growing and we have the third highest proportion of elderly in the country at 16% so it is time that we start to make these changes when we redesign projects or certainly when we build new projects. This policy change which will become effective July the 9th gives planners and designers more opportunity to look beyond simply thinking of streets as functional arteries for moving motor vehicles at the greatest speed possible. Our streets are building blocks or bones for creating thriving communities. Businesses do better when there's an inviting environment that encourages and invites people to walk past door fronts. We know that good street design is the fundamental to main street revitalization and I think we saw that in the earlier presentation. Welcoming environments can facilitate spontaneous interaction with neighborhoods and this is so essential for older adults who become socially isolated because these kinds of things really do lead for poor health outcomes for older individuals. We worked with when we sat down to work on the policy of course we kind of led the charge but worked with a lot of groups and I really just want to briefly mention those. The American Council of Engineering Companies, the disability community, Generation Charleston and Generation West Virginia which are our young professional groups in the state were really key players in this movement. Their desire is to keep people in Charleston instead of going to Charlotte which is what everybody seems to do. And so we're hopeful that these instituting these policies will keep young people, they want to be in towns where they can walk to and live and play all within three or four blocks. So we're really excited to work with them. We also worked with the West Virginia Association of Counties because the state maintains so much of the roadways that county commissions are giving out the money and we don't seem to have any influence over the planning and so we're hoping that that's going to make those changes as well. Again, I talked about the Healthy Lifestyles Coalition Physical Therapy Association, Public Transit and the Hospitality and Travel Association was another key player. As I said before, we want people to come to West Virginia, we want tourists in our cities and we want them to be able to get to where they need to be and have a good experience so they will come back. Continuing an act of local and state policies will begin to change this outcome but ultimately we need to work for the support of this Safe Streets Act. I'm so excited that there's potential for a federal policy. I think it will make a real difference. This will serve as a statement of vision for policies that provide the planning and political framework for new paradigm of routinely using transportation investments to create streets intended to serve all users while working to institutionalize this approach in everyday work. Thank you, I really appreciate your attention this afternoon and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Great, thank you, Ann. And I think it was a wonderful compliment to have Angela from West Virginia here with Danny in terms of Charlotte, North Carolina. And I was also so struck by the basic issue here really is in terms of really thinking holistically because everybody has a reason why this is such an important thing whether it is local businesses, it doesn't matter in terms of the age but anybody as we were saying who uses streets every part of our communities has a stake in our figuring out how to do this right and as it manifests itself in different ways in different places to meet all of those needs. Well, let's open it up for your questions and if you would just identify yourself please, that would be great. Anybody have a first question or comment? Okay, let's start over here first and then we'll come to you. Go ahead. Yeah, John Wentmore with the pedestrians.org. Many years ago when Pat McCrory was mayor of Charlotte he worked hard on getting sidewalks built and transit and so on and kind of grumbled about getting state DOT to help make things more pedestrian friendly. Now he's governor, what's happening at the state level? Well, he hasn't been governor for very long just the first few months in it and I think the General Assembly has been working pretty hard to well do what General Assembly did I guess pass the budget and General Assembly switched parties pretty dramatically this time around they're going about the business of adjusting the way they like to see the government work. The governor so far hasn't had a chance to weigh in very much he did put on the table a new funding strategy for transportation across the board generally I think it makes a lot of sense it uses a more data driven approach to prioritize projects but it is largely a highway development program we've been struggling a bit to get transit and bicycle pedestrian facilities brought back into it and we've been successful to bring some of that back into the funding mix but overall it's still very heavily weighted toward the highway side but I do think it allocates funds a little more reasonably and rationally than it has in the past it kind of recategorized how we do funding it hasn't completely passed unless it happened today and sometimes I believe it will take us a while to sort through and find out exactly what it will mean to us in the cities Great question over here Thanks John from Senator Cantwell's office and I'm losing my stuff for Angela is this support for complete streets something that's national with AARP or for West Virginia I guess I'm curious because my own Washington delegation is looking at this issue right now AARP across the country and here is supportive of the complete streets movement and we have folks here if you'd like to speak with them in more detail after the presentation can get you some information That'd be great Terrific Are there questions? Comments? Okay, go ahead Heather Biden at the apple West Virginia, you mentioned something I experience all the time I drive 500 miles, get to my motel I just want to go and walk to the restaurant across the street and they make me get back in my car which is as a tourist or a business traveler that's important to me Have you latched on to get the tourism department to talk with the department of transportation to make things a little more pleasant to get someone from the motel to the restaurant? No, in fact, I mean as I said before the policy actually doesn't go into effect until July the 9th but tourism is represented on the advisory council which will be led by the secretary of the department of transportation originally and so I think it's up to folks like us to make sure that this works this is our first step and our first crack at it so they are involved in that part of it the tourism folks are the counties the health folks are a part of that and so it's everybody working together so I mean it's just incumbent on us to make sure that that advisory council is connected and that they are doing a good job representing everybody and that they have the ability to have influence and so I think the opportunity is there to do that with the passage of the legislation we should have to keep the momentum going I was really impressed by the number of different kinds of groups that you were talking about Angela that had come together in terms of support of the state policy because everybody saw that they had such an important stake in this and I just wanted to ask Danny do you have sort of a comparable kind of coalition or in terms of thinking about the different entities that may have come together in Charlotte to really help support this and how do we you know and is this being replicated sort of across the country are people really sharing their experiences and as we look towards does this you know what makes sense nationally well it's interesting I'd say that probably the most active group of street users that make their voice known as the bicycling folks and and they've been wonderful from the time we started doing what we call a transportation action plan to urban street design guidelines they were always there and if there was ever a question about street design they'll fill the council chamber and make their presence known always done very logically, politely in a civil way but they certainly let their voice be known it's really I've found it difficult and others may have a different experience to get a coalition of walkers pedestrians and that's kind of funny because everybody actually is a pedestrian even if you're going from your house to your car in the garage you're still walking there and so everybody has to walk they just are but there doesn't seem to be a voice for walkability the real estate industry is interestingly coming to this because they're seeing where the market is going as I described in my remarks and so you're starting to see some interest there from folks and then our city council is convinced and as someone mentioned unfortunately fatality sometimes draw attention and create an opinion or some direction to us to get about the business of creating safer streets and we wish that wasn't the cause of doing that but so often times it is right, I think Antelom mentioned that too that often times it's that that ends up driving changes and okay back here we'll be a star from the planning association I just have a little question about where you see the federal role in defining standards because we heard both the need for flexibility and the need for national standards so I'm wondering I'm not sure who would be the best one to speak to this but where you see the specific needs for this type of legislation probably everybody should respond to that do you want to start Camille? sure I think the federal role is to describe the areas where we're supposed to be having design standards and as I mentioned most of the design standards are kind of consensus standards that come from the experts for example the state DOTs will have experts that will participate on a committee and we've seen some progress I think in recent years in getting a little bit fresher in considering street streets there's also something called the manual on uniform control of traffic devices and that sets some very specific standards for safety of not just traffic control devices but signs and that sort of thing but those are all very important I think where I'm understanding the interest we have really trying to better understand what we have and where we are out of date and trying to get up to date but we need to do it within the constraints of the federal requirements of how we would set those standards but normally I think the AASHTO standards for example they're developed by a consensus group and then the department actually does a rule making that says okay these are the standards now and I think what we would be doing in the future most likely would be to have additional rule making that would maybe say that this range of standards could be used by cities and states as they're adopting their design policies okay, Jeff well this is a really meaty topic I guess I'll try to limit myself to three basic points one is I think we do better when we're defining when we're very clear about the goal at the federal level and trying to hold people accountable to meeting goals and then recognizing they're different and allowing people to sort of figure out what's the best way to get to those goals locally so that's one comment the second is I think as as Danny alluded to that there is in fact a lot of flexibility out there in current guidelines that largely goes unused and so I think there's a huge federal role in making it clear look there are other pieces to our design manuals than what typically gets done and so practice becomes guidelines rather than guidelines being the guidelines so I think there's a big educating role out there just to widen the playing field and then those committees of experts people are very expert in the thing they do we have a long history of some professions focusing very much on how do I get cars through here in the fastest, safest way you're going to get a certain result when you get those experts together and ask for guidelines it's different than if you get all the road users who are trying to use this together and say alright how does all of this work together you're going to get some different guidelines so I think also exploring where are the places that are out of date to think about all users rather than moving the maximum number of vehicles through this intersection in the time period which is a potentially good traffic engineering goal although you have places that are pretty much hollowed out downtown where the traffic level of service is fantastic it's because no one's there and there's no economic activity they're hollowed out traffic is working great it's not the sign of a healthy economically vibrant community Angela I think from our perspective or I guess from the state's perspective it would be so helpful to have a federal policy to look to for the guidance and everything seem to you know all the you tie up all the money right and so as we look through the planning and the way the money flows we can look through those policies and if we've set up in West Virginia as an example all the users when we're looking at designing things and approving things and ideas for things if that trickles or if that starts from the top and begins to trickle down and that's part of the state and the county and the MPOs as all those plants as all those plants are put together I mean you know one of the things that we really emphasized it's really about at the planning stage when you make those decisions it's not it's not after the fact where we you know we can't go that route so I'm really enthusiastic that there's some movement and that we're able to be here today to talk about it you know the question is always when do you when do you bring the federal government and someone made the point now I will confirm that this has been a ground up bottom up movement of cities and towns then states finally coming on board and now it's really time I think at the federal level to come on board with it I sort of see this as a kin in some ways to civil rights you do have the right to cross the street you have the right to for a safe street you have a right to walk you have a right to ride your bike and I think it's public services incumbent upon us to make sure those rights are upheld and protected and so I think on the one level you can you can see it as just a right to access and remembering that streets make up the vast vast vast majority of the public realm that's out there in some cities it's a third of the land the third of the real estate in our city it's not quite so much but I you know I tease and say I'm the largest real estate manager in the city I manage about 15 thousand acres of real estate with all of our street rights away and all that sort of thing so from a city perspective we want that to show well we wanted to show off our city well and and we think it can but it remember that the relationship between particularly the federal highway administration and state departments of transportation is very intimate and the states get to make up pretty much the parts of the practice that they want to do so you have the capital green book which you know it's it it it it provides some breath of practice and some the ability to apply that practice in the right context in the right scenarios in state departments of transportation hours in particular and others I'm aware of will tend to narrow that guidance down to fewer choices and fewer fewer applications and so we'd like to see that broaden to take advantage of the full scope of flexibility and context sensitivity in those areas I'll give an example we had fights with our state department of transportation about how you calculate super elevation and super elevation simply is how how much do you bank a road to get around a curve this is how you do that in an urban area generally super elevation is inappropriate but because it's a state road and there is this mindset of moving traffic you know that that gets designed in the roads and sometimes we say okay if you're going to design it and at least design it in such a way that makes more sense for an urban area and they won't hear anything of it they've changed their tune quite a bit in the last four or five years I would say and so it's becoming much much better but those are the kinds of examples that we in practice wrestle with day in and day out day in and day out and federal highway administration basically says what the state says it's okay it's okay with us and it and we know from an urban perspective often times it's just not so that's it's kind of it I could go on and on about linkages between economic development and other investments the federal government puts in an environmental perspective and a public health perspective but we won't go there but it is really such an important issue I think in terms of in terms of thinking about you know safety access but also the economic activity piece which in the economic development piece is a really really critical element of the whole thing too it makes you wonder whether state transportation departments really understand and really look at that as part of the whole thing along with Angela's points too in terms of thinking about public health and how that is is also an important an important piece too a few months ago we had done a briefing up here which some of you may be aware of that was basically looking at the connection between transit and real estate property values and what was happening there because there was that value that was really being seen in terms of that whole access connection and everything so other questions or comments okay back here this is probably for Ms. Vance but in areas that I'm familiar with there's a great deal of effort providing housing for senior citizens and people of lesser economic means and a lot of the planning for that seems to be done in a vacuum so that housing is plunked down in various rural areas and who knows where is any of that being taken care of in the planning for the safe streets certainly it's a component of it or absolutely should be and I think it's probably with all real estate I was really thrilled when I heard the National Realtors Association is involved in looking into this because people are making choices about where they live I'm just thinking about the community that I live in right now and you're absolutely right there are sort of senior high rise buildings that have been built in the downtown area so there's some accessibility but to your other point there's not accessibility in many of those areas I think the thing that we really focused on we're looking at this is that folks want to stay in the homes that they're currently living in and so how do we make sure that they have those supports necessary or if they want to move to a community that is more accessible that maybe is not necessarily senior housing as designated as senior housing but it does I didn't talk about this in my remarks but certainly accessibility to public transportation and other things would cut down on some of the paratransit trips that are made mostly within the disability community but a lot of seniors take advantage of those kinds of transportation options as well and I think one of the main reasons why paratransit community in West Virginia got involved with this and was supportive of it and we went and spoke at their conference last year and they were talking about it and frankly speaking they can't afford to go pick everybody up in front of their door they have got to have a way for people to get from their front door to where the bus picks them up or where the van gets them or something so they were sort of looking at it from that perspective on the cost of doing that so I'm not sure that entirely answers your question but your points well taken and that was sort of the realm of thinking when we worked with the policy in West Virginia and just to that point I was actually in Michigan earlier this week working with the community on non-emergency medical transportation it cost them 24 dollars to pick someone up and give them a ride it cost them four bucks for their transit so every time you can move one trip off and to the degree that grows that is just going to be a budget buster which means people either have access or they don't ultimately as a result of that okay one last question go ahead Hal Heimster with Balgenic I'm wondering Angela and Danny if you could speak to how you encourage the adoption of these policies when you started hearing pushback about this is just going to cost too much money we're going to have to retrofit every road out there on the hill if I understand representative Mattson representative Joyce's bill correctly it looks at new construction or the substantial reconstruction of existing facilities so it's not talking about retrofitting can you talk about that in relation to your two examples as I pointed out on the slide are the incremental cost of building a street with all the components in that particular example that I used and it varies all over the place depending on what you're doing and where you are you know it's somewhere between two and a half and eight percent increase in the cost on a per mile basis for example but if you look at the cost of road building it's been all over the place over the years and it jumps up and down we're in the present environment it costs are skyrocketing cost of petroleum cost of materials and cost of labor fortunately our economy is returning so that we're competing with people that are building buildings and doing all kinds of other construction as well but I guess the point is when you look at the incremental cost of complete streets compared to the variance that's already in the marketplace it just gets absorbed it almost disappears and I think you also have to look at the other side of the coin is what value added comes back to the communities where it's there in our particular case we know that where we've got our best streets we also have the strongest property values and it's almost turning on a light switch when you fix the street and get it right and the right proportion compared to the built environment the values start to pick off and then that helps us keep our tax rates low because you're spreading that value across the city in more areas so there's the cost side certainly we can never forget really the value added side and then who's to put a price tag on the safety increment that you get out of having better streets okay, we'll take one last question in the back I'm Jim McCall with the highways and transit subcommittee here in the house a question I had kind of piggyback on what Hal was just talking about up here on the hill the type of things Camille's office is doing has engendered a lot of opposition amongst Republicans engendered a lot of opposition among what is viewed as the quote traditional stakeholder community the road builders the contractors and frankly AASHTO so when we talk about complete streets we talk about practical design we talk about some of these other pieces contact sensitive design, smart growth the traditional stakeholders have always been pretty skeptical to put it mildly and actively in opposition to these types of things which they actually view as mandates very curious about the experience you had I know in North Carolina, the Carolina AGC is a pretty powerful player in West Virginia road builders Mike's a good guy but they've got their own interest so I'm curious about how you dealt with that because we're probably facing the same type of opposition here in Washington amongst the quote traditional stakeholder groups Danny and Angela well so we absolutely did encounter that and you're right, Mike is a great guy and he backed off this year and so we worked with him last year, started to work with him we worked on this bill for a couple three years as things go in this process and so we talked about new design we talked about when you go to make changes that are already part of the planning we emphasized that it was in the budget that you currently have in West Virginia right now we're facing huge deficits just like every other state does we're looking at how to just sustain what we have so when we first started this project we got a fiscal note from the Department of Transportation outlining how much it would cost to build a sidewalk on every road in the state of West Virginia and you know that tends to turn people off pretty quickly and so the next year we worked with the Department of Transportation we sat down with Mike and others we sat down with the group in West Virginia that's working aggressively on transportation and they you know they're influential at the capital and so we you know if you can't beat them join them and so we started working with them and at the end of the day the legislation that was passed in West Virginia sets forth the state policy it has numerous exceptions in it it is about new construction it doesn't apply in the case of an emergency I mean so it's we backed off a little bit they backed off a little bit and you know that's how you get things done but you're absolutely right and that's what was our experience and then this year by making those connections and sitting down and really explaining to folks and I think just his slide presentation alone probably could convince everybody to do it and the realtors I think is huge to talk about where people are wanting to live and when you're talking about spreading out the tax base and the economy that's coming in so I don't know if that's helpful or not but you're absolutely right and so we did have to work through that very aggressively Danny did you want to add? Well in our case I'm not aware that the general contracting community has had a problem with it at all typically they don't mind us raising prices a little bit of and doing more construction work that's usually an okay thing with them you know I can't help but to see the irony though with our State Department of Transportation if we wanted to add a little wider sidewalk or bike lanes we as a local government would have to pick up the incremental cost of doing that within our jurisdictions however if we were to ask for an extra turn lane or a little bit extra wide street no problem we can do that all day long and that's by far the more expensive thing to do anyway and so there's a great irony involved in that sort of singular focus on street capacity and road capacity the whole community building component of it which I believe is what we're all kind of out to do anyway in our particular case you know when we're going through this we'd have to have a lot of long discussions with people that were representing the development industry for various things and I think we came to a place where we had a lot of dialogue we compromised but came to a realization that we are building value we're making the place more desirable more vibrant as a community so we just haven't really seen a tremendous amount of pushback from that we haven't seen pushback from our general assembly which is decidedly conservative in these areas so it feels like people are embracing this as just good common sense infrastructure building well hopefully this can be the start of that and that we can find ways to I think the information and the presentations and how important this has been in the examples that have been presented today that we can get those shared and hopefully bring forth more examples in terms of thinking about the flexibility within those guidelines how that can actually really respond to local people's needs and hopefully work with you in terms of thinking about what does make sense in terms of the common sense approach so that members can see how it really benefits their own communities and in a cost effective very beneficial way I wanted to ask Jeff whether you had any short comments that you wanted to follow up with before we close out the briefing. Thank you just very short I just wanted to thank again the panel for joining us today and thank all of you for coming out SmartCraft America is really proud to be part of this and to be the host for the Complete Streets Coalition and to have partnered with you for this briefing so thank you great and I want to thank our presenters you guys were terrific thank you all and thank you Camille for making that heroic effort to be here with us today and and thank you all very very much for being here if you've got questions comments or whatever in terms of follow up any of us are happy to try and respond to that this is really really an important issue and hope everybody will also look for the Congresswoman's bill and in terms of the bipartisan coalition effort that she is building on this whole approach as well thank you all very very much for coming thanks