LEXINGTON, Ky. — The Urban County Council's Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee met Tuesday to advance two major sustainability and transportation initiatives affecting how residents interact with city streets and energy systems.

The committee reviewed a draft Complete Streets Design Manual, a technical guide that updates Lexington's street design standards for the first time since 2005. The manual must be approved by the Urban County Council before taking effect. The Urban County Council adopted a Complete Streets policy in December 2022, with the goal of ensuring that every transportation project considers all travelers and all ways of getting around including cars, bikes and scooters.

The updated manual consolidates guidance from multiple regulatory documents and covers street typologies, multimodal corridor design, pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, intersection design, roundabouts, speed management, and pavement standards. The draft sets standards for how the city and developers must design streets to accommodate pedestrians, cyclists, transit users and drivers. The committee is expected to report to full Council in August, with adoption anticipated in late summer, followed by Planning Commission review of related subdivision regulation amendments.

In related sustainability news, the committee also heard from program managers about Solarize Lexington, which will be restructured to include all six counties included in the Lexington-Fayette County Metropolitan Statistical Area, including the communities of Bourbon, Clark, Jessamine, Scott and Woodford Counties, and will relaunch during spring 2026. The program originally launched in 2023 to help homeowners lower their energy costs and switch to renewables, supporting Lexington's community-wide goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.

The council authorized a Memorandum of Agreement with Solar Energy Solutions for the 2026 Solarize Lexington Program at a cost not to exceed $460,000, designed as a group-buying initiative to deliver cost-competitive solar installations for qualified low- to moderate-income Fayette County homeowners. Since launching in 2023, Solarize Lexington has facilitated 128 residential solar installations, allowing participants access to discounted wholesale rates and step-by-step guidance through the solar installation process.