Milpitas resident Kristal Caidoy describes herself as "born and raised in the Silicon Valley, loves to grow vegetables, socialize with community members in transportation, hiking, board games, and cats."She also forgot to mention she's a badass.

Envision Silicon Valley – the long-term planning process that may lead to a transportation sales tax on the November ballot – is moving along full steam. A list of preliminary project evaluations is now available from VTA.

Last we updated you in late 2013 on Skyline Blvd., Caltrans District 4 had promised to apply a sand seal treatment on Highway 35 to address the poor surface quality resulting from a chip seal maintenance job in Fall 2012. Early in fall 2015, Caltrans completed the 22-mile sand seal project!

Since last year, I have been working with a team from the City of San Jose as it begins implementing the city’s Vision Zero initiative. As some of our readers will recall, San Jose declared last May that it would begin the fight to reduce its roadway fatalities and major injuries to zero.The work to achieve this goal has been an enlightening experience. We have taken a close look at fatality and injury collisions along San Jose’s 14 Safety Priority Streets – the 3% of the roadway network that accounts for 50% of the city’s fatal crashes. Our recommendations thus far have consisted of the mundane – refreshing faded paint and upgrading signals to modern-day standards – to the progressive – constructing a two-way cycletrack between neighborhood parks.