This month, the Board approved a Grant Agreement between SBCTA and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) for SBCTA to receive $537,377 for the development of a Comprehensive Pedestrian Sidewalk Connectivity Plan – Phase II (Plan).
In February 2019, Phase I of the Plan was completed. The main goal for Phase I was to reduce current duplicative efforts by multiple staff at the regional and city level in implementing systematic sidewalk projects. Through the process of completing Phase I, it was determined that additional data beyond the initial scope of work was warranted and that valuable information could be collected in a Phase II along the same 17,000 miles, such as:
In October 2019, SBCTA staff submitted an application for a Comprehensive Pedestrian Sidewalk Connectivity Plan – Phase II grant through Caltrans Sustainable Transportation Planning Sustainable Communities Grant program and received notification of the award in June of 2020.
The additional data collected through Phase II will fill in knowledge gaps that were identified in previous plans completed by SBCTA when identifying improvement opportunities for the County’s Disadvantaged Communities (DAC) areas. In those previous plans, such as those related to climate adaptation, greenhouse gas reduction, improving walking routes to schools, and allocating resources to remediate environmental justice issues, opportunities to show how active transportation infrastructure could be enhanced, or affected by land use changes in general, were minimally addressed due to their scope of focus. However, with data from Phase I and Phase II, these plans could more precisely implement their objective of improving quality of life in DACs since data will be present to assist in those plan implementation activities where there were none before.