Complete Streets Design Manual

The City of Hamilton has developed a Complete Streets Design Manual, which was endorsed by City Council in July 2022. This manual provides a set of consistent guidelines and tools to inform the design, implementation, maintenance and monitoring of CLB Streets across the city. The Complete Streets Design Manual provides an expanded toolbox of ways to improve Hamilton's streets.

The purpose of this manual is to:

• Encourage designs that better balance considerations for the different transportation modes that share streets;
• Focus on enhancing road safety, and;
• Design streets to address the transportation requirements and placemaking functions of surrounding areas.

What are Complete Streets?

Complete Streets are defined as roadways that are planned and designed to balance the needs of all road users. The goal of Complete Streets is to allow people to get around safely no matter their age, ability or how they choose to move. The Complete Streets concept is closely tied to the Safe Systems and Vision Zero approaches to road safety, which aim to design the transportation system to anticipate human error and accommodate human injury tolerance with the ultimate goal of eliminating death or serious injury on roadways.

This manual is a resource for everyone involved in the planning, design or maintenance of Hamilton’s roadways, including local residents who support safer streets. Guidance for street design, intersection design, implementation, and general design components is covered in this manual to ensure users and practitioners are well equipped to understand and apply the principles of Complete Streets.

The manual was developed in two phases in 2020/2021 and 2021/2022, and stakeholders were invited to provide their input to help inform the project. Public Engagement was central to the development of the manual.