Last month, we wrote about a letter we and our allies had sent requesting a $1 billion augmentation from the General Fund surplus. Since then, Governor Newsom proposed in his May budget revision, and the State Legislature has approved, a $500 million augmentation. While this is not as much as we hoped, it is a significant boost to the program, and more than was available in Cycle 5 originally.
Speaking of the ATP, we wrote in March of our happiness that Muscoy, one of the communities to which we provided technical assistance, was one of the communities slated to receive funding in Cycle 5 for its community sidewalks project.
After the most competitive cycle yet of the Active Transportation Program, we and our partners in mobility and environmental justice advocacy are pushing for a $1 Billion augmentation to Cycle 5 from the State General Fund, which is currently benefiting from an unprecedented one-time surplus. This augmentation would be sufficient to fully fund all applications that received a score of at least 80 out of 100 in Cycle 5, a threshold that we believe should be the expectation in every future ATP cycle.
CalTrans has released its last set of recommendations for corridors in the State Highway Network that will benefit from the $100 million reserved in the 2020 State Highway Operation and Protection Program (SHOPP) Cycle for Complete Streets augmentations.
Staff recommendations for Cycle 5 of the Active Transportation Program were released earlier this month. As we expected, the program became even more competitive than it was in Cycle 4: the cut-off score in the Statewide Component was 92 out of 100, a rise from Cycle 4’s cutoff score of 89. There was only enough funding for 41 projects in the statewide competition, and 9 in the Small Urban and Rural component, a decrease of 18 percent and 10 percent, respectively, from Cycle 4.
The Caltrans Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant program applications are now open! This grant program includes (1) Sustainable Communities grants to encourage local and regional planning that furthers state goals and (2) Strategic Partnerships Grants to identify and address statewide, interregional, or regional transportation deficiencies on the state highway system in partnership with Caltrans.
Earlier this month, the California Transportation Commission (CTC) approved allocations for a bevy of projects programmed in four SB 1-supported programs. As Streetsblog describes, many of those projects, which were brought to the Commissioners by CTC staff, are emblematic of discredited highway expansion planning.
Last month, Governor Newsom signed Executive Order N-79-20, which calls for the end of all sales of new fossil fuel vehicles by 2035.
CalTrans has released a draft California Transportation Plan 2050 that lays out strategies for the state’s transportation over the next thirty years.
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