National Center for Sustainable Transportation

Transportation agencies nationwide use pavement management systems (PMS) to maintain roads and highways. Pavement management has typically been used for auto-oriented infrastructure. However, state and local agencies are increasingly adopting complete streets policies to promote roadway designs focused on the needs of all transportation users. Complete streets designs include new assets such as pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure that are not typically incorporated into mainstream pavement management systems and do not have asset management systems of their own. Including pedestrian and bicycling features into asset management systems (directly in PMS or via other approaches) would help ensure that sidewalks and bike lanes are properly maintained over time and continue to provide the safety, environmental, and public health benefits attributed to complete streets design. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Davis surveyed all 50 state departments of transportation and conducted in-depth interviews with agency experts to understand the implementation status of complete streets asset management, identify what state transportation agencies need to improve their asset management plans, and develop a road map for implementing complete streets asset management. This policy brief summarizes the findings from that research and provides policy implications. 

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