Road Work Ahead?

Is your rural neighborhood road scheduled for an "improvement" project? If so, the design of this project is going to have significant effects on your family, your neighborhood, and your lifestyle, for better or for worse. The project will either promote neighborhood safety and integrity or degrade it. It will either add value to your investment in your home or decrease it. It will either improve your neighborhood character or damage it, possibly ruining forever the qualities that you and your neighbors value most.

Just as in urban neighborhoods, rural neighborhood safety and integrity depends fundamentally on the ability of residents to walk and cycle safely and comfortably. This is especially true for children. Beyond serving as access for motorized vehicles, there is a complex web of valued activity revolving around a neighborhood road:

• Walking to the neighbors
  
• Kids walking or biking to their friend's house
  
• Kids walking to the school bus
  
• Walking for exercise
  
• Family bike ride
  
• Bicycle commuting
  
• Wheelchair access

The neighborhood road is an integral part of any neighborhood structure and its value to the neighborhood lies in these human (pedestrian) scale activities that connect people to each other as neighbors. Safe, walkable neighborhoods are healthier places to raise kids and are known to have lower crime rates and higher property values.

In rural areas other activities such as horseback riding and moving agricultural equipment are an important part of life and depend on slower traffic speeds and road characteristics for safety.

Unfortunately for rural neighborhoods and the people who live there, conventional road building practice does not take these things into consideration. Using a design process that promotes increased automobile speeds and higher traffic volumes, beautiful rural neighborhood roads are frequently changed into highway style motorways that blight the neighborhood and degrade its integrity and safety.

New federal transportation policies are beginning to change this destructive, automobile centered approach. They advocate "thinking outside the pavement" when designing roads to include neighborhood character and safety. They recommend including citizens in the design process from the beginning.

By learning about safe neighborhood design and the road building process, you can make the world a better place, starting right at home!