San Mateo County Transportation Plan Will Include Measurable Targets
San Mateo bicycling advocates on Bike to Work Day 2016
The San Mateo County City and County Association of Governments (CCAG) Board of Directors passed a resolution on Thursday, February 9, to adopt the San Mateo Countywide Transportation Plan 2040 (SMCTP 2040) with the caveat that CCAG staff would bring back a list of things to work on at next meeting with proposed timeline, including providing measurable targets for the plan.This was a huge win for the San Mateo County Alliance to Renew Transportation (SMcART), a group made up of transportation, environmental, health, and housing advocates, including SVBC. We’ve been working over the past six months to enhance the accountability and impact of the plan. The group also includes Friends of Caltrain, Transform, Sustainable San Mateo County, MenloSpark, and Acterra, among others.The last Countywide Transportation Plan was passed in 2000 with a life span of 10 years. The draft SMCTP 2040 was released in fall 2016 and SVBC sent a detailed comment letter. The plan has a strong central vision to improve mobility through “an economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable transportation system that offers practical travel choices, enhances public health through changes in the built environment, and fosters inter-jurisdictional cooperation.” However, SVBC and SMcART advocates encouraged the following improvements to the Plan:
Align the SMCTP 2040 investments to the vision, goals, and objectives of the plan
Include more ambitious but attainable goals and specific metrics
Provide more time for meaningful community input
Quantifiable goals help to set a baseline of where we are today and measure progress over time. Measurable targets also help to dictate how funding should be allocated. For example, the SMCTP 2040 has a forecast for people biking for all trip purposes in San Mateo County from an estimated 1.7% in 2006 to 5.0% in 2040. We think this is quite low, especially for all trips, not just work trips:
In 2015 Palo Alto had a bike to work mode share of 9.2% for people over the age of 16 and Menlo Park had a bike to work mode share of 6.7% for people over the age of 16, according to the US Census.
City of San Jose has set mode shift goals in its 2040 General Plan update (2010) for 15% mode share by bike.
State of California has the goal to triple biking (from 1.5% to 4.5%) by 2020.
We also encouraged stronger traffic safety goals, like Vision Zero, the goal to eliminate traffic fatalities and major injuries. With the inclusion of ambitious and attainable goals, like 10% trips by bike by 2040, then the agencies are pushed to achieve that through funding and programming. The cities and counties are also held accountable if they fail to meet their goals.Besides sending comment letters, SMcART advocates met personally with many of CCAG’s Board members and committee members to share our platform and concerns. Before going to the CCAG Board, the final draft was presented to CCAG’s Technical Advisory Committee and Congestion Management and Environmental Quality Committee. These bodies shared our concerns that there were no measurable targets in the plan and recommended that these were included.CCAG staff took the community and committee input to heart and when they presented the final draft on February 9, they promised as a next step to begin an outreach process to engage local agencies, jurisdictions, and other stakeholders for in-depth discussion about the goals in the plan and to develop ambitious and attainable targets immediately. They also assured the Board that future updates to the plan would take place in a five-year cycle.CCAG Board members held a detailed and engaged discussion in which they brought up the following issues:
Need for measurable targets.
Need to review periodically to see what’s working and what isn’t.
Equity analysis needs to be more developed and include benefits and disadvantages of transportation projects on underserved communities.
Need for more involvement of cities and other transportation agencies in the development of the plan.
How to achieve the vision, implementation, and targets.
There was also debate over whether to delay adopting the plan until measurable targets were developed or to pass the plan as is and add targets as a follow-up step. The latter motion was ultimately approved. The next step will be to work with CCAG staff to highlight the key objectives that need measurable targets. Then, set baselines and work to establish those ambitious and attainable targets. There will be additional public outreach in this process and we hope that you will be involved.A huge thank you to the entire CCAG Board for hearing our concerns, speaking up for targets and underserved communities, and discussing the issue thoroughly. We also very much appreciate the months of hard work by CCAG staff and look forward to working with them over the next year to develop the targets for this plan.
