In South Bend, Buttigieg challenged idea that cars rule the road

‘Complete streets’ concept balances needs of cyclists, pedestrians and drivers

For years, drivers in South Bend., Indiana, held in their heads a magic number: Get their car to hit that speed and you could whip through downtown without seeing a red light.

When Pete Buttigieg took office as mayor of the Indiana city in 2012, he changed that. He pitched a $25 million plan to convert downtown’s wide, one-way roads into two-way streets with bike lanes and sidewalks. He hoped making it safer to get out on foot would encourage more people to spend time and money in the area.

Buttigieg branded the idea “smart streets.” Opponents lampooned it as “dumb streets.”

To Greg Matz — who pegged that magic number precisely at 32½ mph — it looked like a waste of money.

“It seemed like an inconvenience,” said Matz, 46. “That was exactly the point, to slow down traffic, which in my initial view was a bad thing.”

Buttigieg pressed ahead. He secured the support of the City Council to borrow money for the project. He held off primary and general election challengers who campaigned against it during his 2015 reelection bid. Soon after, South Bend’s roads were torn up for construction and Buttigieg cut the ribbon in 2017.

Three years later, Matz convert.

“Downtown was a ghost town. You wouldn’t go there after dark,” said Matz, who went on to volunteer for Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. “The results speak for themselves. It’s more than just the number of businesses; it’s the feeling of it not being dead anymore.”

In the coming days, the U.S. is a

Senate is expected to confirm Buttigieg as secretary of transportation. He will bring experience taking on the car-centric street designs that have dominated the American landscape, but which many urban leaders are striving to undo in the face of rising pedestrian fatalities and a reckoning with transportation policies that bored highways through neighborhoods home to Black residents.

Buttigieg said his experience building support for the program will shape how he approaches his new job in Washington.

“It feeds my perspective on the value of local work around mobility,” he said in an interview. “I think a successful department is one that really empowers local leaders to make and drive decisions that work in their communities.”

The 15-year-old movement for “complete streets” seeks to balance the needs of pedestrians and cyclists with those of drivers.

But wherever political leaders try to make changes, they face entrenched opposition from some drivers who see the projects as needlessly making traffic worse.

Experts say the pushback shouldn’t be surprising when generations of drivers expect to have their needs catered to and cities have evolved to become difficult to navigate without a car.

“We have approached local transportation the same way we approach highway transportation, with the goal of moving as many cars as quickly as possible,” said Corinne Kisner, director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials. Complete streets “represents a shift in thinking and thinking about design as more contextual and less cookie-cutter.”

Urban transportation leaders say they are excited to see someone with Buttigieg’s résumé at the helm of the Transportation Department, which under the

Trump administration had an avowed focus on rural areas.

In Buttigieg, they hope to get a leader willing to work more closely with cities. They want the department to make policy changes and funding decisions that help make urban streets safer and more enjoyable for people outside cars.

As he labored to garner support in South Bend, Buttigieg said he made appeals to history by pointing out that making roads primarily about cars was a brief experiment in the thousands of years humans have lived in cities. He highlighted American cities that implemented similar projects. Nonetheless, opposition was fierce.

“There were people saying it was going to be the end of our city,” Buttigieg said. He said he doesn’t recall his own magic number in downtown South Bend, but remembered his father having the drive nailed down “just so.”