Clearwater Complete Streets Plan To Be Presented At City Council

CLEARWATER, FL -- City staff and Kimley-Horn & Associates, the city’s consultant on this project, are presenting the final Complete Streets for Clearwater Implementation Plan to the City Council at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 20.

The city council meeting will be held on the first floor of the Clearwater Main Library, 100 N. Osceola Ave. in downtown Clearwater.

The city started the process of developing a plan in late 2017 to establish a framework for the city and its departments to incorporate and construct Complete Streets designs as part of its infrastructure programming. This includes increasing safety for motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists and incorporating more public transportation options.

Between 2013 and 2017, there were more than 17,000 traffic crashes in Clearwater that included
pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and vehicles. These crashes resulted in 50 fatalities and 380 incapacitating injuries.

There is also a demand for transportation options in the city. Currently, 11 percent of households in Clearwater do not own a vehicle and a person with a disability lives in 23 percent of the city’s households.

While previously, streets were primarily designed to carry vehicles, the Complete Streets plan takes into account the safety of everyone using the streets. It includes bike lanes, sidewalks, crosswalks and designs that increase traffic flow without increasing speed.

The council will also discuss a recent grant award to develop Complete Streets conceptual improvements for Fort Harrison Avenue.

The meeting can be viewed on the city’s Facebook page, YouTube channel and on C-View TV Spectrum channel 638, Wow! channel 15 and Frontier channel 30 as well as the city’s streaming video.