"If you care about streets at all, and most people do - they tend to prefer one street to another, they go out of their way to be on certain streets and to avoid others, they find that travel, shopping, or visiting a friend is simply more pleasant on some streets than on others..." - Allan B. Jacobs, Elizabeth MacDonald, Yodan Rofé The Boulevard Book

PPS has noticed that many great streets around the world are boulevards. Paris' Champs Elysees is a grand boulevard that combines tremendous amounts of traffic, public transit, and tourism, while maintaining a distinct sense of Parisian urbanity at the pedestrian level. The Prado in Havana, Cuba is a ten-block-long, marble-balustraded, terrazzo-floored, shaded promenade with built in sit-walls within the central boulevard of Old Havana. Avenue Sant Germaine/Montaigne

Our focus is on the pedestrian-oriented downtown street; how an existing arterial can be enhanced to help lure pedestrians back out to the street. Some of the issues that should be considered are

ELEMENTS OF A BOULEVARD

• Center section
• Sidewalk
• Access Lane
• Medians

TYPES OF BOULEVARDS

One way to emphasize pedestrian activity over automobile traffic is to design that relates to the sidewalk.

Multi-way Boulevard

These are streets characterized by a central roadway of at least four lanes for generally fast and non-local traffic, separated from local and pedestrian traffic lanes on either side by tree-lined medians. The medians can be of various widths, sometimes nothing more than planting strips, or they may contain walks, benches, transit strips, bike paths, and even horse trails. The local access ways are narrow and have one through lane and one or two lanes for parking. The sidewalks may be wide and have their own line of trees, but often may be rather narrow.

Multiple roadway boulevards are designed to be multi-functional, and to accommodate different types of traffic - fast, slow, pedestrian, and sometimes bicycle ? all within the same right-of-way. They are balanced streets that provide for the needs of many users.

Street Boulevard

• Minimum required distances for lanes may meet DOT standards, but may or may not achieve the desired effect. For example, a typical DOT "street" lane scheme for an average 40' wide street (2 lanes movement with 2 lanes parallel parking), would have 25'-40' lanes, every 125'-150', staggered on either side of the street. Our proposal is to reduce the width of lanes and place them every 50' and opposite each other.

Center Median Boulevard

• The difference in design from an highway, will automatically inform the driver that he/she has entered a different zone and compel them to slow their cars down.
• In addition to dealing with the characteristics described above, street/boulevard design must deal with these:

• street width
• sidewalk width
• typical height of buildings
• number, placement and types of trees
• type of pavement surfaces
• roadway geometries
• length of block

Although a standard of distance between trees might be decided upon (every 40' or 50'), allowance for existing or recommended circumstances should be responded to such as a cafe, a bench, bus stop, telephone, etc.

• Non-irrigated hanging planter.
• Irrigated: enclosed irrigation pipe within the lightpost.
• Individual lightpost decorations: Banners, holiday and special events decorations
• Planters

QUALITY AND STYLE

The choice must meet the community's preferences for an attitude about the character of the street, as well as accommodate their list of desired attributes. Our experience has dealt primarily with revitalization projects that have been interested in period lighting.