Programming

Last December, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) board approved $2.8 million for the Safe Routes to School program, along with a process for restructuring the education and non-infrastructure components. This is great news for partners in the city/county, who had feared the program could be cut in light of comments from board members at prior meetings expressing concern about citywide coordination of the program. 

The Safe Routes Partnership is excited to announce the next round of the Safe Routes to School Launch Program for 2018! Building off a successful 2017 pilot year, we are looking for five new California communities eager to move to a new level of safety and support for students walking and biking to school.

The Safe Routes Partnership submitted a comment letter to the Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District (RPOSD) regarding the Measure A Draft Grant Guidelines. Our recommendations focus on improving equity considerations, community engagement, project evaluation criteria, and discussion around concurrent funding measures in the LA County.

On Thursday, February 2, SCAG Regional Council approved recommendations for its Sustainability Planning Grants Program (SPG) to fund 54 projects with $9.6 million (see full list of recommended projects on page 5 here).

On January 26, 2017, Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation announced the release of the city’s first Vision Zero Action Plan and Safety Study. The plan outlines goals to reduce fatalities by 20 percent by the end of 2017 leading to the ultimate goal of zero traffic deaths by 2025 (hence the name of the campaign ‘Vision Zero’).

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) announced its regional ATP award list. MTC received 61 applications totaling about $166 million in response to the Regional ATP Call for Projects. Staff recommends fully funding 13 projects and partially funding one project for a total of $22.2 million. Of the 14 projects, 7 are Safe Routes to School-related, and 9 are under $1 million. 94% of funds benefit communities of concern. 79% of funds benefit SRTS-related projects.

On June 21, staff from the National Partnership attended a meeting of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Active Transportation Program to discuss the upcoming Cycle 4 grant process for the Active Transportation Program (ATP). We were encouraged to learn that the California Transportation Commission (CTC) and CalTrans are seriously considering a recommendation that we and o