Complete Streets Design Guide (CSDG)

The Complete Streets Design Guide is available for comment! See the Project Documents tab for the draft, and use this survey for submitting input: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MC_CSDG

Complete Streets are roadways that are designed and operated to provide safe, accessible, and healthy travel for all users of our roadway system, including pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, and motorists. On a Complete Street, it is intuitive and safe to cross the street, walk to shops, and bicycle to school. These guidelines were developed with three core goals in mind:

Safety
Maximizing safety in accordance with the County’s Vision Zero goals, which seeks to eliminate severe and fatal traffic collisions by 2030. This includes reducing speeds along our roadways as well as improving crossings across streets.

Sustainability
Improving the ability for streets to contribute toward cleaner water and cleaner air in accordance with the County’s Climate Change goals. This includes improved stormwater management practices and additional guidance on street trees and other streetside vegetation.

Vitality
Making streets great places to be: encouraging commerce, encouraging community, and promoting travel as a safe and enjoyable activity. This includes separating street types by areas.

The Complete Streets Design Guide also seeks to be a one-stop shop for general planning and design guidance, unifying a number of policies, regulations, and other guidance from across multiple agencies that have previously been difficult to find.

This guide will be used both by private development in designing streets that they affect, and also by public agencies in implementing their own projects. While this does not formally affect State roads (those posted with number signs, such as MD 355 or US 29), the County will use this guidance as we work with the State on their projects.

This will also be used by planners working on future master plans. While the design guide does not change any public rights-of-way, planners working on future master plans may use it to identify how much right-of-way a street needs to achieve a community’s vision. The Complete Streets Design Guide also includes information of priorities in cases where there is not enough right-of-way to implement an idealized street design.

The Complete Streets Design Guide was developed jointly by the Department of Transportation and the Montgomery County Planning Department (M-NCPPC), with the support of the Department of Permitting Services, Fire and Rescue Service, and Department of Environmental Protection.