Steer Davies Gleave developing a Complete Streets Initiative in Orange County, California

Steer Davies Gleave was appointed in April 2015 by the Orange County Council of Governments (OCCOG) in California to undertake a Complete Streets Initiative to help create a transportation network that serves all users, and to ensure that Orange County is in compliance with the California Complete Streets Act (AB1358) 2008. The Act requires the circulation element of General Plans to “plan for a balanced, multimodal transportation network that meets the needs of all users.”

This challenging and ground-breaking project involves working with OCCOG, Orange County Transportation Authority and 35 jurisdictions across Orange County to develop a suite of flexible policies and design guidance that will be tailored to suit the character, use, and capacity of all street types within a diverse transportation network. 

The initial phase of the project, now complete, involved the delivery of a Comprehensive Needs Assessment Survey Report. Steer Davies Gleave undertook individual meetings with all the jurisdictions and achieved a 100% response rate to the survey. This showed that Complete Street principles are already being applied in Orange County, with almost half of jurisdictions saying this is a typical part of their project development.

However, despite the application of a Complete Street approach, 75% of respondents had yet to adopt a specific Complete Streets policy. In addition, the barriers to the implementation of Complete Street in Orange County are seen as limitations in public funding, a lack of staff and a lack of information or technical expertise. 

Three public workshops were also held in June 2015 hosted by agencies in different regions of Orange County. The workshops were to introduce communities and local stakeholders to the OCCSI project and encourage them to share their views, which would inform future street designs in Orange County.

In order to accommodate community members who could not attend the workshop, a set of webpages for the project were created by Steer Davies Gleave on the OCCOG website to provide information and enable comments. 

Steer Davies Gleave is currently working on the draft guidance document that will be issued to all the 35 jurisdictions for comment in the New Year. The OCCSI is a tool to help realize Complete Streets in Orange County and is primarily written for local planners and engineers to understand what Complete Streets are, how to shape policies to help deliver them, how to design them, and how to evaluate success. The Initiative will also be accessible to all — local communities, jurisdictions, agencies, advocacy groups, developers, elected officials and more.

Visit the Orange County Complete Streets Initiative website