Columbus is funding its Complete Streets policy: Mayor Michael Coleman announced in his State of the City address today that $2 million of its $30 million street resurfacing budget will pay for the design of on-street bikeways and another $1.5 million for multi-use paths. Columbus passed a complete streets law in 2009, so this commitment from the mayor and the region’s transportation planning agency, MORPC (which passed a Complete Streets policy in 2010) is a step toward building the city’s planned 110-mile bikeway system (this will pay for the design and feasibility study for two major bikeways traversing east-west in the urban core, and one in the northern suburbs, as well as a half-dozen crosswalk projects).

The mayor said:

We will be investing almost $3.5 million to build bikeways and bike paths so we can make Columbus ‘Bike City USA.’ By our Bicentennial, Columbus will have more than 110 miles of bikeways and bike paths, which if laid end to end would take us three quarters of the way to Cleveland.

At this rate, if we keep building sidewalks and bike paths, we will be able to walk, or ride our bikes all the way to Cleveland—since we won’t be able to ride a train.

Local cycling advocates Consider Biking—who dubbed Mayor Coleman “Bikin Mike”—hope to influence the city to bake into the design for the remainder of the $25 million in resurfacing projects designs that encourage access for all users, young and old.

Columbus’ Complete Streets policy is far from perfect—in fact, critics have held that it is more “complete streets lite”. There’s some truth here—it only requires construction of sidewalks and bikeways where designed by the city’s Bikeway Plan, where they presently don’t exist or meet standards (like ADA) and where there’s an addition to existing buildings of 50% or more. Like its counterpart in Dayton, enforcement and implementation have been slow since its passage. But, this is a sign that the city is starting to invest in its vision of a livable city, and that the hard work of converting existing streets is no longer an unfunded mandate.

See MORPC's site for Columbus' Complete Streets policy and toolkit.