Before City Gets to Work on Complete Streets Manual, the “West Davis Community Walk”

The city’s spent the last month or so piloting some Complete Streets projects all ’round town, among them the Grand Avenue Better Block-ing that transformed the four lanes and land in front of R.L. Griffin’s Blues Palace near Fair Park the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Sustainable Development and Construction is this close to wrapping up its research, in the hopes of spending the rest of the winter writing the manual it expects to debut at an open house some time in the spring.

But before the deed’s done, the city will return Saturday to the street where it all began, more or less: W. Davis, not far from the site of the very first Better Block event in the spring of 2010. The timing’s certainly good: Thursday marks the kick-off of the 16th Annual Jingle Bells on Bishop, on top of which the city is adding what it’s calling the West Davis Street Community Walk during which “the public is invited to walk a three-block stretch of West Davis Street with us and share design ideas that can help shape plans for future improvements on this and other parts of West Davis Street.” From the city’s note this morning:

The West Davis Street Community Walk will take place on Saturday, December 3 between 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Group walks will be facilitated every 15 minutes along West Davis between N. Bishop and Cedar Hill, starting at the parking lot of Café Brazil. The walks will feature on-site demonstration/comment stations along the street designed to seek input on such issues as reverse angled parking, sidewalk widths, pedestrian amenities, crosswalks and bus stops.

To which Theresa O’Donnell, head of sustainable development, adds: “We need folks who know and visit the area to show us how to make West Davis Street work better.” In other words: Jason Roberts.