PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — A zoom webinar hosted by the Active Transportation Alliance and the Illinois Public Health Institute discussed the best practices for maintaining streets in Peoria Thursday.
The webinar was the first in a three-part series. The series gathers insights from national experts to help educate Peoria stakeholders, and achieve the best outcome from the City’s Complete Streets Policy.
Peoria adopted the Complete Street policy in 2015. The goal of the policy is to improve the process of designing, building, and maintaining streets to be safer and more friendly for pedestrians and bike riders.
One of the presenters, Mark Fenton said Peoria can’t afford to not implement Complete Streets.
“You are in a competitive marketplace as a community, people are deciding whether to live there or not, businesses are deciding to build there or not, developers are deciding whether to develop there or not, and Complete Streets are going to be one of the strongest assets you can bring to those conversations,” Fenton said.
According to another one of the presenters, Complete Streets is said to not only give more options for residents to travel but also reduces the number of car crashes by 88%.
The webinar was made possible by funding from the Illinois Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The grant was administered by the Illinois Public Health Institute.
