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Photo credit: Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT)
Behind every well-lit block and repaired sidewalk is a city that made a deliberate choice. Across the country, municipal leaders are prioritizing the infrastructure residents use every day, and the results are showing up in crime statistics, voter approval ratings, and the simple fact that families feel safe on their walk to school.
Fixing the sidewalk sounds simple enough, yet sidewalk repair and pedestrian safety improvements are among the most consistently underfunded items in city budgets across the United States.
Portland, Oregon, chose a different approach and built a funding model to support it. In 2016, voters approved a 10-cent gas tax, establishing the city’s first dedicated local funding source for transportation safety. “Fixing Our Streets has a history of strong support from Portland voters — in 2016, voters created the program with 53% voting in support, and in 2020, voters approved it with 77% approval,” says Dylan Rivera, public information officer and spokesperson for the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation.
The program targets the exact types of infrastructure that tend to be deferred: new crossings, sidewalk gaps, lighting, and Safe Routes to School improvements. “The Fixing Our Streets program has provided critical investment in our longstanding Safe Routes to School program,” Mr. Rivera explains.
The city worked directly with school communities to identify the highest-priority routes, holding open houses across Portland school districts and surveying families in multiple languages to determine where kids faced the greatest barriers to getting to school safely. As of September 2025, Portland has completed more than 350 projects under the program.
What makes the model work is that it’s a steady, voter-backed stream directed toward the small fixes that add up. For seniors, people with disabilities, parents pushing strollers, and children walking to school, these are the differences between being able to get around and not being able to.
In Philadelphia, better streetlights proved to be a powerful public safety strategy, and the data backed it up. A University of Pennsylvania study of Philadelphia’s LED streetlight upgrade found a 15% drop in outdoor nighttime crime, consistent with decades of U.S. and U.K. research showing that improved lighting reduces crime by an average of 20-21%.
“To actually see the data that there was a 21% reduction in outdoor nighttime gun crime — above and beyond just some of the positive trends in crime reduction — was incredible to learn,” said Katie Bartolotta, vice president of Policy and Strategic Partnerships at the Philadelphia Energy Authority. What made those findings especially valuable was their timing. “It’s not just a study of the project itself; it’s a contemporaneous study,” she said. “So, we could learn in real time, as we were still installing, where the fixtures were having an impact and to what extent.”
The Philly Streetlight Improvement Project (PSIP) replaced about 130,000 outdated high-pressure sodium streetlights with modern LEDs over two years, a $91 million effort funded by a sustainability bond, concluded in late fall 2025. The upgrade is projected to reduce energy consumption by more than 50%, cut municipal carbon emissions by 10 %, and eventually pay for itself through energy savings.
The project also created 200 jobs, hiring residents through the city’s Future Track program to prepare alleyways for the new fixtures. What’s more, Future Track completers were brought into permanent city employment, turning a two-year lighting overhaul into a lasting job pipeline.
Getting there required a different approach to capital planning. At 2,000 fixtures a year, the Streets Department’s prior pace would have taken decades. “Just go big,” Ms. Bartolotta advises other cities. “Together with the Philadelphia Energy Authority, the Streets Department was able to transform the entire city in a short period of time.”
The returns went beyond safety and energy. “When you look at some of the qualitative studies that UPenn did with focus groups, they’ve said, ‘This shows that the city cares,’” Ms. Bartolotta said. “It really does hit on all of these different quality of life factors; it’s an infrastructure investment that’s going to pay dividends for generations.”
For city leaders, LED streetlighting is proof that a modest infrastructure investment can deliver an outsized public safety return.
Photo credit: Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT)
Fort Bragg, California, has about 7,500 residents and a practical problem that may sound familiar to many communities: not enough trash cans in public spaces and not enough budget to fix it the conventional way.
So, the city decided to get creative. Using a state Clean California grant, Fort Bragg added 55 new waste and recycling bins and upgraded 20 existing ones across three key areas: the Coastal Trail, downtown, and school campuses. The Fort Bragg Unified School District Art Department got involved and mentioned that sports fields had no outdoor recycling bins at all. The city brought the district in as a full partner, and students created the artwork that now wraps every bin.
The result is infrastructure that works and tells a story about the community that built it. For cities and towns wondering how to tackle sanitation challenges without a major budget line, Fort Bragg’s approach offers a clear path: find the grant, find the partner, solve the problem.
Chantell O’Neal, the city’s assistant director of engineering, says the school partnership was never an afterthought. “The partnership with the Fort Bragg Unified School District Art Department was part of the vision from the very beginning,” she says.
“Our community has a long history of using art as a tool for placemaking, and this project was a natural extension of that. When I first pitched the idea to our mayor, who also happens to be an art teacher at the local middle school, he immediately saw the educational and creative value for students. The teachers were enthusiastic, the students were inspired, and the project quickly became something much larger than just replacing trash cans.”
Downtown business owners have taken note, too. Since installation, O’Neal said, they’ve shared how much they appreciate both the improved functionality and the burst of local character the art brings to the district.
For O’Neal, the lesson applies well beyond Fort Bragg. “For small cities like ours, trash cans are one of those unglamorous but essential public services,” she adds. “When I saw this grant opportunity, I thought: why not approach a basic infrastructure need with creativity, education, and a little fun? That combination turned out to be the key to a successful application.”
Photo credit: Ameresco
Cities like Portland, Philly, and Ft. Bragg understand something that doesn’t always make the news: when a street feels safer after dark, when a family finds a park worth returning to, when a resident can navigate downtown without losing their way, that’s the work of a city that’s paying attention.
These improvements generate trust and make residents feel cared for. And for the mayors and administrators making these calls, that may be the most lasting return of all.
Residents noticing something has gotten better is, for sure, a win worth celebrating.
