If you remember the fable about the race between the tortoise and the hare, the hare is the early favorite and appears to be the obvious winner. Although the hare is faster, the small turtle wins the day through its perseverance.

Have you ever been stuck in traffic (like 11th Street on Friday afternoon?), and someone on a bike (the tortoise) is beating you (the hare) in your slow crawl toward home?

This race happens every day for us in our daily commute, hurrying to and from work or dropping off our kids at school or sports. It’s a race on the road, a race between cars, bikes and pedestrians.

We have all been taught since we were very little that the car rules the road. Our roads are ever widening to accommodate more cars. But what if, in another race, there is someone late for work in a car, and your child on his way to school on a bike, and your elderly mother walking across the street?

Now, it’s not about who wins, but who is safe. What if there was another choice, where everyone on the road could coexist safely? It’s a planning strategy called “complete streets.”

Complete streets is one of those simple ideas that make all the sense in the world when explained: Everyone on the road — cars, bikes and pedestrians — gets equal importance. None are excluded, and everyone gets to move at his or her own pace, safely next to each other.

With complete streets, walkways are built offset from the street, with planting to buffer noise and filter air pollution. Bike lanes are ample, well-marked and interconnected to one another in comprehensive bike routes. The flow of pedestrian traffic is taken into consideration crossing major thoroughfares, giving pedestrians safe haven in wide medians to await the next light.

The need for complete streets has become more urgent. Unfortunately, in our adulthood, in our rush to get from point A to point B via cars, our society has lost its health: 67 percent of us are overweight, 30 percent of the adult population is obese, and a staggering 16 percent of our children are starting their lives obese.

It sounds simple, but all we need to do is get back to the basics, get out of our cars, and walk and ride our bikes more. But can we do it safely? There are some good and bad examples of complete streets in Tracy:

A+: Sycamore Parkway

This is a major, well-traveled street, yet it has a bike path, and a separate walkway buffered from the street by planting — it’s almost an urban forest. The large planted median naturally slows cars down to keep them within the speed limit. It’s the best example of the complete streets we should be striving for.

B: Redbridge

This planned subdivision is a good example of how narrow suburban streets slow cars (where traffic should be slower anyway) and still gives ample space to bike lanes and pedestrians. It only loses points for not being interconnected outside its neighborhood.

D: The crossing at 11th Street and Corral Hollow Road

Imagine your elderly mother trying to cross this intersection and you will get shivers down your spine, because she won’t make it in one light. There are no protected medians for this extra-wide intersection to allow pedestrians (young and old) to cross and wait safely for the next light.

F: West Valley Mall

Have you ever tried to walk from Best Buy to the mall? I wouldn’t encourage it. There are no walkways to cross the loop road without walking in the parking lot, and bicyclists (if you are brave) share a narrow curved road with speeding traffic.

• For a change: Walk for health: All you need is 30 minutes a day.

• To make a difference: Walk or bike instead of taking the car to the store, coffee shop or downtown.

• To make a stand: Influence those that improve Tracy to make our streets complete Streets. Visit www.complete

streets.org for more information.

• Christina D.B. Frankel is a 20-year Tracy resident, architect and mother of three. Her column, Living Green, runs twice-monthly in the Tracy Press. She can be reached at cdfrankel@sbcglobal.net.