The popularity of Healthy Streets, a city program created at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to make public streets safer and more accessible to nonmotorists, has led the Austin City Council to look at expanding its scope.
At its regular meeting last Thursday, the council approved unanimously a resolution that will make it easier to hold block parties and other events on residential streets. The initiative directs Austin City Manager Spencer Cronk to look at expanding the current Neighborhood Block Party Program with that goal in mind. The updated program, called Living Streets, would more easily allow and enable residents to initiate and participate in community activities on public streets in their neighborhoods.
In addition, the council directed the city manager to evaluate, create, and implement, as feasible, programs for Play Streets—recurring, complete street closures that can last for several hours and occur multiple times per week—and Resident-Led Healthy Streets, which would be ongoing, one-block closures to through traffic, similar to the Healthy Streets established and chosen by the city in 2020 in response to the the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Living Streets program will attempt to address current barriers to such activities by reducing permit fees and costs as much as possible, simplifying and centralizing the permitting process, and allowing the inclusion of areas zoned for mixed use.
Unlike current rules that require the collection of the signatures of 100 percent of the block’s residents for event notification, the program would allow less formal measures for that process, such as public signs and door hangers. In addition, it would allow a simple majority of residents along the proposed closure to approve a block party of eight hours or less and a two-thirds majority to approve a proposed event closure of more than eight hours.
The council also directed Cronk’s office to look into securing adequate funding for the programs, the lack of which has hampered the Healthy Streets program. The city manager is expected to present more detailed plans for a Living Streets Austin early next year.
