PORTSMOUTH — Imagine being able to hop on your bicycle and safely share a town road with motorists and pedestrians, with full handicap accessibility.

That’s the idea behind a “Complete Street,” and you can learn more about the concept during a virtual Town Council workshop starting at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 16.

The idea behind Complete Streets is to provide safe access to all users, regardless of how they are traveling. 

Complete Street design features include, but are not limited to, sidewalks, paved shoulders suitable for bicycle use, lane striping, bicycle lanes, share-the-road signage, road diets, roundabouts, crosswalks, pedestrian signals, buss pullouts, raised crosswalks, and traffic-calming measures. 

The General Assembly, in June 2012, passed the Complete Streets law to integrate multiple transit options into the design and construction of the state’s transportation system. In July 2012, the R.I. Department of Transportation issued a policy directive requiring all consultants working on RIDOT transportation improvement projects to consider Complete Streets designs.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Town Planner Gary Crosby will present a proposed Complete Street draft ordinance overview and C.J. Opperthauser of GrowSmartRI will give an overview of the concept 

Accessing the meeting

To access the meeting online, visit https://livestream.portsmouthri.com/towncouncil.

Using your laptop or mobile device, you can raise your hand to ask a question, or pose the question in the moderated “Question and Answering” chat window. The host will then be able to respond to your raised hand or Q&A question.

To access the meeting by phone dial-in, dial 1/888-788-0099.

Once prompted for the meeting ID, dial 996-8471-9966#

Once prompted for a participant ID, dial # again.

While in the audio conference, to raise your hand to ask a question, dial *9 and the host will be notified of your interest to ask a question. Dial *6 to mute and unmute yourself.

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Matt Hayes, Portsmouth Times Publisher