Dive Brief:

• The St. Petersburg, FL City Council approved its Complete Streets Implementation Plan, a guide for how the city's streets will be designed and function over the next 20 years.
• The plan aims to help make streets safer and more accessible for users for all modes of transportation, including pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. It updates the 2015 plan, and leaders intend to make additional updates every five years.
• "With the passage of our Complete Streets Implementation Plan, we will continue to make our streets safer for bicyclists, pedestrians, and yes, even drivers," Mayor Rick Kriseman said in a statement. "This plan has wide-ranging support across our city and is bolstered by national data showing that Complete Streets equal safe streets."

Dive Insight:

The complete streets concept means people of all ages, abilities and economic backgrounds can safely and easily move throughout a city. Many cities have these plans to guide their planning and boost community sustainability. While cities' complete streets plans collectively have some common threads, they are locally focused to reflect each community's unique elements and needs.

St. Petersburg's plan addresses needs in the city's motor vehicle, transit, trail, sidewalk and bicycle infrastructure networks. It includes key steps such as adding bike lanes, crosswalks and a bus rapid transit line, as well as increasing the use of data to improve traffic safety.

Those elements also play into St. Petersburg's overall smart city efforts. This spring the city was named the latest Smart Gigabit Community, through which it receives access to a low-latency, ultra-fast network with local cloud computing and storage capabilities. A strong internet backbone helps cities implement technology innovations, including transportation and mobility improvements such as smart traffic signals, digital crosswalk signs and systems for tracking and analyzing transportation data.