 Hey, well, welcome to the California Bicycle Summit 2024 Advanced Session on Complete Streets on CalTrans Corridors. I'm Kendra Ramsey, Executive Director of the California Bicycle Coalition, and we are very excited to see all of you here today. I know we'll have folks trickling in over the next several minutes, but thank you for taking time this morning to talk about this important topic with us. We look forward to an informative presentation and lively discussion. We will be saving time during our session today in two chunks. So the first question and answer session will be after we hear from Senator Scott Wiener. The second question and answer section will be for the remainder of the panelists towards the end of the webinar. So briefly today's agenda, talk a little bit about who you'll be hearing from. We'll have our panel discussion with question and answer, first with Senator Wiener and then with our panel. And then we'll tell you a little bit more about the California Bicycle Summit. Great, so today we will have with us Senator Scott Wiener, Senate District 11 from San Francisco, who we'll introduce in a moment. We'll have Jeannie Ward-Waller, who joined Fearless Advocacy in 2024 as the Director of Transportation Advocacy. For six years, Jeannie was a visible change agent inside CalTrans, including in her role as CalTrans Deputy Director for Planning and Modal Programs. She led development and growth of CalTrans Sustainability Program and established the first ever Office of Race and Equity. Prior to her time in state government, Jeannie served as a highly effective advocate and coalition builder in Sacramento as the Policy Director for the California Bicycle Coalition and for the Safe Rouse National Partnership. We have Laura Talkoff, she's Spurs Transportation Policy Director. She believes that a sustainable transportation system is for scaffolding for a society that cares for the environment, that embraces public life and that it's healthier, more just and more prosperous. There's a background in urban and environmental policy and planning, spanning transportation, land use, urban design, climate resilience, and energy, and has worked in the Bay Area and New York Metropolitan Area. Sandhya Lada is Deputy Director of Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. Born and raised in India, Sandhya moved to the United States in 2018, starting her journey as a volunteer at Transform and Greenbelt Alliance. She joined SVBC in 2019 with a personal passion of discouraging use of private vehicles. In her current role as the Deputy Director, she oversees the advocacy team efforts and supports the executive director in various capacities. Her experiences span from rural development, parking policies to urban street design, outside of work, she finds joint dancing, hiking, camping, and embarking on adventures with her toddler. You also have myself and Jared Sanchez, Cowbikes Policy Director here. We will be deferring a lot to our other esteemed co-panelists, but we're here if any questions come for us as well. So briefly, our California Bicycle Summit will be held in April in San Diego. It'll be an opportunity to hear conversations like this one and many others, and we very much hope to see you all there and continue the conversation. So jumping right into the meat of things. Why are we here today? Complete Streets. So Complete Streets, as many of you I'm sure know, are roadways that are designed, planned, and implemented to provide safe mobility for people of all ages and abilities. That includes people walking, bicycling, scooting, using assistive mobility devices, and taking transit. So what complete streets are not? Unfortunately, the term Complete Streets has been used at the state level many times to refer to any element of a project that benefits people biking and walking, including legal requirements, such as Americans with Disability Act or ADA improvements, rather than that comprehensive vision that I just mentioned, and that is depicted in the slide, that it's supposed to embody. So instead of the whole view, it can be typically used as just one piece of that view, which does not result in a facility that is useful for all roadway users. So CalBikes history, working to achieve Complete Streets in California goes back quite some time. In 2008, the Complete Streets Act said that all cities and counties are required to have Complete Streets policies as part of any substantial revision to their circulation element of their general plans. In 2013, California's Active Transportation Program was established consolidating bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure funding for cities, counties, and the facilities they're in. In 2014, the Protected Bikeways Act required Caltrans to develop design standards for protected bikeways, which have now been rolled out in many of our communities. In 2017, Senator Wiener made the first attempt at a Complete Streets bill with SB760. In 2019, the most recent iteration of the bill before last year, SB127 made it all the way to the governor's desk and then was vetoed by Governor Nussum with the statement that Caltrans had adopted a policy on Complete Streets and did not need legislation to require these facilities to move forward. So tracking and tackling Complete Streets implementation, CalBike has been working to understand how well Complete Streets have been implemented since 2019 when SB127 was vetoed. So our Complete Streets campaign, we are looking at essentially Caltrans director's policy on Complete Streets, DP37, which is the policy that requires Complete Streets, and specifically looking at hundreds of Complete Streets decision documents or CSDD, which we received through a public record doctor request and looking at those records, understanding what's been implemented in those, in those many projects in terms of facilities for people bicycling and walking and really understanding how well Complete Streets are being implemented across those projects. We also conducted last fall Complete Streets member survey at 3,000 respondents replied to that survey that were sent out to CalBikes members and almost all respondents reported feeling unsafe bicycling and walking on the local streets that also served as Caltrans roadways. So these things all come together to bring us to today with Senate Bill 960, which was introduced by Senator Scott Wiener with co-sponsorship from CalBike, Spur, Streets for All, Walk San Francisco, Kids Safe San Francisco and AARP of California among others and really seeks to institutionalize and require that Complete Streets be implemented on all Caltrans roadways. So without further ado, I would like to opt sharing my screen so that I can introduce Senator Scott Wiener. Senator Scott Wiener represents San Francisco and Northern San Mateo County and the California State Senate. Elected in 2016, Senator Wiener focuses extensively on housing, sustainable transportation, civil rights, criminal justice reform, clean energy and alleviating poverty. Before his election to the Senate, Senator Wiener served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. During his time on the board, he chaired the San Francisco County Transportation Authority and served on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission as well as the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District Board of Directors. Senator Wiener has been a great friend to people using active transportation and transit and we are very excited to work in partnership with him. I'll drop my screen share there. And I know we are set to be joined by Senator Wiener shortly while we... Good morning, Senator Wiener. Thank you for being here. The floor is yours. Yeah, and I'm not Ryan, not a Shami by the way. Yeah, maybe someone can change that. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for having me today. As noted, my name is not Ryan, I'm Scott Wiener. Ryan is my amazing transportation staffer. And it's good to join you today. And I wanna thank CalBike for all you do to make our streets safer, to make our transportation system more sustainable and to really envision a better future for how people get around. It's so easy to get stuck in the status quo and to assume that because in the 1940s and 1950s we built our cities in a certain way and our transportation system in a certain way that means it always has to be that way and it has to be super car centric and everything has to be built around the needs of cars. And we know that, excuse me, that that is not the case. So we had a certain transportation system 100 years ago that was much more bike and pedestrian friendly and then we decided to change it in some pretty horrific ways that undermined both safe and sustainable transportation and also undermined housing and we can change it again. And we need to be very intentional and strategic about doing that. And so we are all working very, very hard to make it easier and possible and safer for people to bike in addition to walking and taking transit and working very hard to make sure that we're showing up the funding for our public transportation systems in the Bay Area. And I'm just super grateful for the collaboration. We are, I'm also very honored this year to once again be working with Cal Bike on legislation to finally force Caltrans to be much more proactive and aggressive in ensuring the safety of pedestrians, cyclists, people waiting for the bus, et cetera on state-owned roads. That is Senate Bill 960. As you know, there is a huge network of quote unquote state highways that are not actually highways that are city surface streets. We see it in San Francisco with 19th Avenue and Park Presidio and Lombard and Van Ness and so on and so forth in Southern California and roads like Santa Monica Boulevard. These are technically state highways and state is responsible for them. And Caltrans has a long history of not doing enough to ensure that they are safe for all users. And it plays out in big cities, it also plays out in a lot of small towns where their main road, their main street is technically a state highway and Caltrans controls it. And we have some of these smaller towns where it's hard to cross their main street because there's no crosswalk, there's no safe place to cross, there's no sidewalk, let alone a bike lane. And so in 2017, I first partnered with CalBike on legislation and took us three years to basically a bill to require Caltrans to really take into account and work with local communities on these safety features when it is doing work on one of these roads. And we finally, after three years in 2019, got that bill, let's be 127 onto the governor's desk. At the time, governor Newsom sadly vetoed that bill and when I spoke with him about it, he said, hey, listen, I'm hiring new leadership but Caltrans and the state transportation agency, we need to give them a chance to do this on their own without a mandate. And so we said, okay. And there have been some improvements in some but not nearly enough and not nearly fast enough. And so we are back with a big coalition led by CalBike and others with SB960 to require that Caltrans do what it should be doing voluntarily but frequently is not. And I wanna be clear, there are a lot of great people inside Caltrans who believe in this. People who want to do more around complete streets on our network of state-owned roads that are really city surface streets and I'm really grateful for their perseverance but we need to move the agency as a whole in a better direction. And so this is another opportunity to do that. It'll be a fight, the department does not, I'm sure, will not want to be told what to do but this is long, long overdue. People are dying. People are not as safe as we want them to be and the state needs to do the right thing. So I look forward to working with all of you to get SB960 across the finish line. We have support from all over the state of broad coalition. And so again, thank you so much for everything that you do. We have a big opportunity with this bill with some other road safety bills that we're working on including to require speed governors on new vehicles, the work we're doing around transit funding, real opportunity to move California in a more positive direction. So again, thank you so, so much. Thank you, Senator Wiener. And if there's, if you still have time for a few questions, we've had a few coming in over the question and answer function. So here's one, given the ever growing risk from climate change, which you support and ensuring complete street systems include green street elements to reduce the heat island effect flooding, air pollution, water pollution, while making biking and walking more appealing and comfortable. Yeah, I think that's definitely something to consider. And I think we should be, as we do street work, we should be taking into account the long-term sustainability of that infrastructure. So I think that's something that I would be open to supporting. Great, thank you. Here's another, how can we stop the epidemic of highway widenings across California? Big question there. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a fan of highway widening and we know that increasing highway capacity doesn't end up even really reducing congestion. And so, and it's extremely expensive and it just ends up being more BMT. And so, it's not something that I would typically support. There has been legislation in the legislature over the last few years to try to put more constraints on highway widening and those are bills that I support. And we just need to keep pushing. They haven't passed so far. And we know that we're in this sort of like, it's like a little bit of a vicious cycle that because California, plus we designed our transportation system to make it hard for people to get around anyway, other than driving. People then, the political support for more sustainable approaches sometimes is not what we would want it to be. But as we continue to do the hard work to create more options for people to get around in ways that do not involve driving, we will build more of a constituency for being more and more aggressive in focusing our transportation dollars in promoting sustainable transportation, not unsustainable. Thank you. So we've received several questions on specific facilities throughout the state, essentially asking that in many instances, they're Caltrans roadways, often adjacent to freeway interchanges where the design that's been put forward does not provide the best protection and safety for people bicycling and walking, few examples of unprotected bikeways or higher speed roads with sharers. And the question essentially is, how do we get these Caltrans designs to meet the needs of people walking and biking on these projects that are currently already in the pipeline? Yeah, I mean, that's what SB960 is about, forcing them to do that. And so we, so for example, when I was on the board of supervisors in San Francisco, we had one particular interchange. It was where the 280 becomes the, it goes off into San Jose Avenue. And that was like extremely dangerous. And we were able to work with Caltrans to make some improvements there. It's not perfect, but it's much better than it was before. But sometimes it takes a disaster. We had, it was, I believe it's 19th Avenue and slow. There was a left turn there that was really, really dangerous for pedestrians in terms of pedestrian car interactions in San Francisco for years and years was asking Caltrans to make some light signal changes to improve pedestrian safety and it wasn't happening. And then someone was killed in a crosswalk and the next day the change was approved. And it shouldn't take one off fighting by a stubborn county supervisor. It shouldn't take someone dying. It should be just baked into the DNA. And so one of the goals of SB960 is to just bake into the DNA of Caltrans an approach where they're just automatically when they're doing projects saying, okay, how do we make it safe for cyclists? How do we make it safe for pedestrians? How do we make it safe for people who are waiting for the bus? And that's really our goal. We've had some sort of follow-ups to that. How can local agencies, how can we help local agencies who'd like to take control over these surface level roads that are owned and maintained by Caltrans? How can we help them do that so that they can implement the facilities that they'd like to see locally? That's a broader issue. I mean, there are, and I think by memory serves and please forgive me if I'm misremembering but I think there have been one offs where there'll be state legislation that transfers a road from the state to a city or a county. So that is possible and it is a fair question about like what does this Caltrans really have to be, does the state really need to own Van Ness Boulevard or 19th Avenue? And I guess they would say, well, you know, those connects Highway One or Highway 101 and just because it's running through a city, and they'll express concern that if these segments that run through cities are then controlled by local governments and it could undermine the state transportation network. And I understand and respect that but cities, local communities need to have more of a voice on what happens on these roads. And so if Caltrans wants to avoid a push to take away more of these roads, Caltrans needs to, I think step up, do more, be more collaborative in improving the safety of these roads. I remember in the last, back in 2018, 2019 with the last build of the governor ultimately vetoed talking to, you know, I'm a city, city selector guy in San Francisco and I'm used to these big roads, you know, in San Francisco that we're fighting with Caltrans about but like meeting all these people from rural California where the only road in their town is a state-owned road and there are no sidewalks and there are no crosswalks and talking to a mother who, her kid goes to school like one or two blocks away from their home but the kid can't walk to school. The mom has to drive the kid because it's not safe to cross the street because there's no way to do it safely. That's outrageous and people should not have to live like that and so yeah, we've got to keep fighting this fight. And I think what'll probably be our last question while you're still here, how can people on this call help with SB960 and getting this passed? Yeah, we need, so we need a big coalition behind us but we need people from every part of the state to be contacting their legislators starting with the Senate but ultimately the assembly as well to see if they support it. If you look at the Senate Transportation Committee that is the first committee that it goes to. There are a lot of great members of that committee and I suspect we will have open minds and sympathetic years but it will be good for members of that committee to hear from folks in their community that they think that this is important. We also, we ultimately need the administration, the governor and his agencies and departments to be supportive. So just folks making themselves heard would be a good thing and then of course supporting all of the amazing organizations that are our coalition behind the bill. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your time and your work on this issue. Thank you. Thank you so much. Have a good one. Me too. All right, next up on our panel we have Jeannie Ward-Waller. Can you hear me Kendra? Yes, I can. Okay, let me just do a quick screen share. It's always weird to look at your own face. Nice things. Sludge. Okay. And can you also just confirm that the slides? Yes, you can see your slides. Okay, thank you. Well, good morning everyone. It's amazing to see so many folks on the webinar this morning hopefully that reflects all the enthusiasm for the CalBike Summit coming up. Really excited to see you all then. And so excited to bring you more information this morning about SB 960. We have an awesome group on the call. We're gonna quickly, Laura and I are gonna tag team this just to kind of give you a little more detail than the Senator did about SB 960 and why it's important. I think we're preaching to the choir on a lot of this. So we're really just trying to arm you with the best talking points for why this bill is so important. So just to start, these are the sponsored groups. We're a couple of us are on today with you and we're just really pleased to be working with Senator Wiener and his team to advance this bill. So Kendra said this already. What a complete street is. I think you all know already why it's so important to have complete streets. Here is some of the latest traffic fatality data specifically for pedestrians and bicyclists, straight out of Caltrans own safety report. And we all know this, we feel this deeply and painfully on our streets but fatalities and serious injuries are rising and really at an alarming rate. So we're not making progress on making our streets safer. We need to take a much stronger approach to making sure that our streets are safer. So that's part of the impetus of course with SB 960. And we really feel like Caltrans as the State Department of Transportation owner operator of the state highway system, state highways are everywhere in our state. Of course, as we've already discussed today, this is the place to really set the bar very high. And Caltrans has done it for themselves. Caltrans has implemented a complete streets policy back in 2021 that we refer to as DP 37, apologies for the acronyms, but that is the shorthand for Caltrans own complete streets policy, which we directly reference in this bill. We want Caltrans to codify that policy or the legislature to codify the policy that Caltrans has already adopted. And we want to really make sure that Caltrans is taking it seriously and implementing it. Unfortunately, what we're seeing so far since Senator Wiener got SB 127 passed all the way through the legislature several years ago. And then also since Caltrans adopted this policy is that implementation has been way too slow and piecemeal. And so we're not satisfied that Caltrans is taking their policy seriously. We want to push harder. And I want to just give some credit to CalBike staff who have done a really impressive job. They acquired a whole bunch of documents, hundreds of documents from Caltrans through a public records request. These documents are called complete streets decision documents. Caltrans uses them on every single shop project of which there are hundreds each year to basically document why or why not are complete streets facilities being included on shop projects. And SHOP is the program that we're focused on. Sorry again for the acronyms. SHOP is a state highway operation and protection program. Think of it as Caltrans bread and butter. It is the biggest pot of state highway dollars. It is what Caltrans uses for virtually, nearly all of the maintenance rehab, repaving work that they do on the state highway system. It's really, it's the biggest thing to focus on. It's the big grill in terms of all the state transportation dollars that are invested in our system. So on every one of those projects that get funded out of the shop, Caltrans does one of these decision documents. They have to say, what are they including on the project? Why are why not? Are they including certain complete streets facilities that may be in plan? So CalBike did a really detailed analysis and basically found that, you know, Caltrans often says like, well, we know that there's facilities needed, but they're too expensive. Or, you know, it's going to slow down the pace of the projects going to take an extra year or two if we include the stuff. So we're just not going to include it because we don't think that it's feasible on this project for various reasons. So we're just not seeing the commitment that we would expect that we would hope to see based on DP37, based on all of Caltrans, you know, policy commitments that have been made. And sorry for a bunch more words and more data on the slide, but basically what this slide tells you is, you know, we looked at the proposed shop for 2024, which is Caltrans proposed investments in these projects out of the shop program over the next four years. So starting in 2024 through 2028. And we're only seeing about 20% of those projects, including complete streets facilities, including any type of bikeway, sidewalk improvements, crosswalk improvements. And those are the types of facilities that Caltrans really counts or targets as, you know, these are the priority types of facilities that we would like to be including. And Caltrans own plans identified roughly 15 billion in invested need in those types of facilities in bikeway, sidewalks and crosswalks. And we're only seeing roughly 280 million that they plan to invest over the next four years. So 15 billion in need, 280 million being invested in the next four years. And in a, you know, program that's roughly, you know, 20 gonna invest 20 billion over that time. So, you know, really just not doing enough. We need to push harder. There needs to be a stronger approach. So I'm gonna hand it to Laura to talk about the transit priority piece of the bill and we'll tag team back and forth here. Thanks, Jeannie. The numbers really speak for themselves. So thank you to Cal Bike for doing that analysis. Good morning, everyone. My name is Laura Tolkoff. I'm the Transportation Policy Director for SPUR. Before we jump into the details of the bill as I pertain to transit priority, I'm gonna talk just a little bit about SPUR. So SPUR is a member-supported nonprofit urban policy organization that works to make the Bay Area more sustainable, more equitable and more prosperous through research, advocacy and engagement. In our transportation program, you know, we really believe that walking, biking and taking transit should be the safest and the best options to get around the Bay Area cities for people of all ages and abilities. This means that we're constantly working to reduce driving in our cities to make transit safer, more reliable and easier to use to make our streets safer and to support growth around transit. Over the last few years, we've been working with Senator Wiener on a couple of bills that really accelerate complete streets infrastructure, like SB 288 and SB 922, which created a CEQA exemption for things like active transportation plans as well as complete streets projects. And that has been used to really accelerate dozens of projects over the past three years throughout the state. So we're really grateful for the Senator's continuous leadership in that area. As you know, complete streets, excuse me, complete streets also include transit. And we know that transit, when it gets priority on the roadway is much faster and more reliable and much more useful. And those are huge factors in really boosting transit ridership. Secondly, we know that it's much more, a much more cost effective way and a quicker way to really deliver much more transit service at service relative to other modes. And California really needs transit, needs more people to take transit for more trips if we're going to reach our goal of carbon neutrality by 2030. And we really need to do it fast, which is why transit priority is so important. Unfortunately, we're really far away from our goals on climate neutrality and incremental change is really not an option if we're gonna meet our goals. So just briefly, what is transit priority? So Spur recently worked to publish a report called Making Roads Work for Transit that identifies ways that local governments, the Bay Area region and the state can really accelerate transit priority improvements. And we define transit priority treatments or improvements as changes to the physical roadway layout, traffic control, signal operations and traffic enforcement that are designed to improve transit efficiency, speed and reliability. And these exist on a pretty big spectrum. So everything from something as seemingly small as a signal upgrade at a single intersection that experiences a lot of delay to a full transit lane like on El Camino Real on a whole corridor. Next slide, please. So as I mentioned, transit priority really has many advantages for today's riders, for future riders, for safety to reduce conflicts between buses and cars and people. And it also reduces operating costs and improves coordination, like transfers between routes. But the reality is that progress on this has really been slow, particularly on state roadways and because local governments and transit agencies often require state permission. And it's really just not a core part of Caltrans's normal highway operations. It's probably the least developed area of the complete streets work that Caltrans has been doing. Next slide, please. And we also know that transit priority is really important for advancing transportation equity because racial and economic differences are really stark and have only grown starker since the pandemic between bus riders and all travelers. Next slide, please. So as the Senator mentioned, this is a bill that really focuses on state highways. In the Bay Area, there are many state highways that are effectively surface streets and where many different transit lines and routes that carry a lot of people every day operate. So these are just a few examples of some of those routes in the Bay Area, like, you know, routes 22 and 49, which effectively operate on the 101, right? Or El Camino Real is another example. Next slide, please. So we see, you know, effectively we see state highways as really important for improving the quality of transit. So what would SB 960 do? This is where we're gonna dig into more of the specifics of what the bill is intended to do and how it does it. So here I'm gonna turn it over to Jeannie to walk through the first part of that. Thank you, Laura. So yeah, we wanna get into a little more of the details. There is a lot in this bill. So I would encourage you, if you haven't already, to, you know, look at the language to, you know, really understand the details. We're not gonna obviously go through the bill because there's a lot in there, but we're gonna kinda cover the key pieces. So I said this before, but part of the purpose of SB 960 is to codify, you know, Caltrans own complete streets policy. So we do refer directly to some of the language. Of course, that's already been vetted through Caltrans, you know, executive team approved by the director supported by, you know, Kelsta and the governor's administration. So we think, you know, the language is great in that policy. It's very strong. Let's just support that in this law. So we do, you know, reference how the intent is for projects to provide comfortable, convenient and connected complete streets facilities. We use the language of all ages and abilities facilities. So I think to the points about making sure that Caltrans is not just, you know, dropping a share on a high-speed facility, you know, we really wanna see facilities that are protected, that are going to work for people of all ages and abilities. So we reference that language as well. We talk about Caltrans using, you know, the latest and greatest standards, design standards that they have developed. So you all may be familiar with the Design Information Bulletin 94, which was just recently released by Caltrans. We expect, you know, that's basically new design standards that get incorporated into the Highway Design Manual. That becomes, you know, the Bible for Caltrans. These are the reference standards that Caltrans should be using on all their projects. So our bill, you know, really requires that Caltrans, you know, use their latest and greatest guidance. And then we do include language to prioritize and engage, you know, particularly consider the needs of underserved communities. And we define what that means in the bill. And then as I described at the top, you know, there are also a lot of reasons why Caltrans is not necessarily, you know, including these facilities, even where they've already been identified in plan. So we wanna, you know, remove some of the barriers to why Caltrans, you know, staff out in the district may not be deciding to include facilities on projects. One of those, as I said already, is often cost. We really wanna remove cost as a factor in deciding not to include facilities on projects. So that's part of what the bill intends to do. It's also going to set, require Caltrans to set stronger targets for both 10 year, four year and 10 year investment in complete streets facilities. And we kind of narrow the criteria of when Caltrans, you know, does not have to include a facility, but you know, really, we think in any case where they've identified a facility in their own plans, you know, that should not, that location should not qualify for an exemption. Jared, are we running low on time? I just saw you come up. Are we okay on time? I just saw Jared pop my video. Okay, so on the transit priority side, similarly it tries to do two key things. The first is really to increase Caltrans' leadership on transit priority issues. So, you know, you often have a, you know, take the instance of signal priority. You'll have a bus traveling through multiple cities or multiple counties, and those cities and counties are gonna need to have equipment that can really communicate with all the signals along the route. And so, you know, for something that seems as seemingly simple as that, you really need strong coordination and strong leadership on something like that. You know, and Caltrans is a really complex agency with 12 districts, many departments, often that act, you know, pretty independently of each other and distinct and varied histories and cultures. So, really establishing transit priority as a central objective requires state leadership at the top. And so, what that looks like in this bill is that it would require Caltrans to adopt a transit priority policy for the state-owned highway system that really directs each of those districts and groups how to really prioritize this in their work. It requires Caltrans to take stock of transit priority facilities on state-owned highways and incorporate those into future identify needs and incorporate those needs into future shop cycles. And it would require Caltrans to set performance targets where they are lacking for transit speed, reliability, person throughput, and so on. And the second thing that it does is really remove Caltrans internal barriers to approving local transit priority projects. So, there's projects that Caltrans can lead and then there's projects that transit agencies and local jurisdictions can lead, right? So, on this front, the bill is requiring Caltrans to create design standards for transit priority projects located on state-owned highways that act as surface streets. Those are the Vannettes, the El Caminos of the world. And then it would also require Caltrans to streamline their own internal review and processes for local transit priority requests on local roads where they intersect with or coincide with state-owned highways. So, we have continuity in the infrastructure. And so, those are the two key elements of the bill for transit priority. And so, how can you help? I think the Senator went over some of the options, but we're emphasizing them and providing our contact information here if you'd like to learn more or want other resources to get involved. So, the first is, of course, to contact the Senate Transportation Committee before March 31st to tell the representatives, your representatives that you support this bill. You can certainly reach out to us for a template support letter or you can send us a logo to add to our big letter as we build support and submit that. I think a number of you have put in the Q and A examples of places where you see kind of egregious complete streets needs. Send us more of those. That's always helpful for us to understand and point to examples in different districts throughout the state where there are needs that are really unmet. And then finally, I think, you know, this bill is very technical, but it's also very human that this is really a matter of life and death for a lot of people. And so, if you have a story that you wanna tell, that is often really what is most persuasive when it comes down to these types of things. So, if you have a personal story, you'd like to share about how you have been impacted by a traffic crash or just the difficulties of taking transit to get where you need to go, please do reach out and share them with us. And we'd be delighted to work with you on making sure your story gets heard. Thank you. And Laura, I just wanted to add so the Senate Transportation Committee, the bill has now been scheduled to be heard on April 9th. So that's why we're encouraging you get letters in if you do wanna support the bill by the end of March because the committees do usually have a deadline of about a week ahead where they need to be able to register. So for more nights, I think that's it for the overview of the bill. We pass it back to you. Thank you, Jeannie and Laura. Yeah, thank you, Jeannie and Laura. And I think we will turn it over to Sandhya to talk about the local context, Silicon Valley. Thank you, General. She's sharing my screen. Can you go and see my screen? Yes. Okay, perfect. Hello, everyone. We're in the final stretch of the webinar this morning, so stay with me. My name is Sandhya and I'll be discussing impact of the initiatives shared by previous panelists at the local level through SVBC's El Camino Real campaign, the same El Camino Real that Laura mentioned multiple times, so let's dive deep into that. Quickly about the coalition, SVBC is a 501C3 nonprofit organization with a mission to build healthier and more just communities by making bicycling safe and accessible for everyone in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. I'm very proud to be a part of this, a part of the nation's largest bicycle coalition. Before we jump into the campaign, let me take a step back and explain what is El Camino Real and why is this campaign so important? So El Camino Real is a 41 mile stretch which extends from San Francisco border all the way to San Jose. It passes through 19 jurisdictions and it is owned and operated by the state agency Caltrans whom we've been talking about all this while. Whoever is familiar with this area knows the geography such that a north-south corridor connects cities spread across this longitudinal stretch. Folks living in this area often have a lifestyle where they live in one city, work in another, go to a third city for groceries and maybe to a fourth one for recreation. And for all of these purposes, the north-south commute route is very imperative. Now this area has three such connecting corridors, Highway 101, Highway 280 and Highway 82 which is El Camino Real. 101 and 280 are both freeways leaving El Camino Real as the only corridor that provides an equivalent for walking and biking. El Camino Real is also unique the way it is set up. It cuts through several downtowns through dense neighborhoods, has several schools along its way, is a destination for commercial centers, restaurants, groceries, hospitals and whatnot, making this entire corridor a community destination. So much so that this corridor is envisioned as a grand boulevard that connects communities and supports an improved and meaningful quality of life. So why El Camino Real and why now? As I mentioned earlier, this is the only direct non-freeway route that connects cities in the region which can be accessed by people walking and biking. This corridor has seen 3663 crashes and 54 deaths in 10 years, 25% of which were bicyclists and pedestrians. This crash data itself is a great indicator that this route is already heavily used by people walking and biking. The corridor provides great transit connectivity through buses and also through Caltrain. Lastly, this is a really exciting time for this corridor because as you see on the map, Caltrans has plans to repay of close to 50% of this corridor in the next five years through their shop projects, the same shop that Jeannie mentioned in her slides. This is a really rare and a perfect opportunity to get bike lanes implemented as a part of ongoing projects. And in spite of all of these arguments, this is the most common question we are asked, why not parallel routes? Well, because this is what a parallel route would look like. Okay, tell me, how many of you here drive? I can't see all of you, but I'm assuming there are lots of nods and yeses. How would you feel if this was your driving route to a destination? You would hit it, right? And you would demand for a much more direct route. That is exactly we are demanding for bicyclists and pedestrians. So this is what El Camino Real looks like today. It is a wide right of way with three, at least three lanes on each side. It has wide lane widths that go up to 15 feet wide in several areas, which invites high speeds. The posted limit is 35 and 45 mile per hour in different stretches, but the actual speeds are at least 55 mile per hour and more. Also there is limited to no infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians, especially at intersections. And this is what we want to see. We would like to see physically separated bike lanes, where there's a physical barrier between the fast moving vehicles and people walking and biking. We want to see safe infrastructure at intersections because these are the places with the most conflict and most crashes. And with all of this background, building a safe El Camino Real for people walking and biking became a long standing priority for SVBC. Our advocacy efforts in the last decade resulted in getting bike lanes on El Camino Real as a part of several bike bed plans, including those at the county, region, and also the Caltrans D4 bike plan. And now we have launched a campaign to get these plans implemented. Here is our vision. El Camino Real thrives as a vibrant inclusive corridor that postures a dynamic community where people can seamlessly live, work, shop, play, and connect, prioritizing efficient transit and active transportation to enhance the overall wellbeing and quality of life for all. This campaign is driven by the El Camino Real local team, a group of 15 plus active community members who meet every other week to strategize and run this effort. Some of our El Camino Real team members are here with us today. And I'd like to give you all a huge shout out for all your time and commitment on this campaign. If you're here, please feel free to introduce yourself and talk about your involvement in the campaign through the chat. And here is our impact or impact the advocacy efforts have resulted in so far. 3.5 miles off this corridor is gonna get green paint on the ground by end of this year, which is really exciting. This is going to be our inauguratory bike lane for this 41 mile stretch. Cities that are not a part of existing CalTrans projects are applying for grants to make necessary improvements. Some cities have started red curving so when they're asked to remove parking to accommodate a bike lane, it'll be a less daunting ask. This campaign is championed by several local and state officials like Supervisor Cindy Chavez, Supervisor David Canapa, Senator Josh Becker, Assembly Member Mark Berman, and so on. We've had two successful pilots showcasing protected bike lanes, which are really successful. And we've been doing continuous education and awareness that has helped get several businesses and local groups on board. And this is just the beginning. We want to take this campaign to an extent where there is an open streets event across the 41 mile stretch. We want to see I support bike lanes on El Camino Real posters hung up on every single business along the corridor. We want to host a community bike ride or community bike rides passing through all the 19 cities and so much more. But as for every campaign, we have some challenges too. And this party presents three of our primary barriers. First, getting community members on board. Getting bike lanes on El Camino Real will lead to removal of parking along the corridor in most cases. And as you may already know, whenever there is any discussion of removal of parking, there is always pushback. People are very sensitive to loss of parking in spite of there being several unused off-street parking lots, which can easily accommodate the on-street parking loss. This also includes businesses who are afraid they lose customers, in spite of case studies that have shown up to 50% increase in sales in such scenarios. Second challenge is working with local electives and city staff. And this challenge is unique and varies from city to city. There are some cities like Palo Alto who have really good parallel routes within their jurisdiction and hence don't care about connecting to other cities. While there are others who do not have sufficient staff capacity and funds to work on this project. The third and the biggest barrier is working with the state agency, that is Caltrans. Caltrans is a black hole. It is very hard to gauge their plans and processes from the outside. And I'm sure others on the panel will agree that Caltrans is a very bureaucratic, non-transparent and difficult agency to work with. I want to mention that this is not the case with all staff at the agency. There are lots of folks who really care and are passionate about complete streets elements, but their hands are often tied either by existing guidelines, policies or direction from leadership. Let me share one quick example of working with the agency. This is Caltrans Directive 37, the same one that Jeanie mentioned, which prioritizes walking, biking and transit over solo driving. But none of the agency's actions speak to this directive. And here are some examples from our conversations with the agency regarding El Camino Real. Whenever there is limited road width, the first thing the agency will compromise is space for bicyclists and pedestrians. When there is extra road width, the first thing the agency will do is grant those extra feet to vehicle lanes in spite of knowing the fact that wider lanes invite higher speeds and higher speeds have higher crash impacts. When asked to put a pedestrian crossing at an intersection, their guidelines don't permit them to put a crossing if one does not exist already. And I don't know how they plan to get people from one side of the road to another with such a guideline. When asked to put a bicycle crossing at an intersection, their guidelines say they can't do so if there is no bike lane on either side of the street. And this is how they encourage biking. And this list and frustration can go on and on. And hence, we're really excited and looking forward to the Senate Bill 960, the complete streets bill that Senator Wiener, Lara and Jeanie talked about, with the hope that it will convert this directive into legislation, compelling the state agency to be more proactive in prioritizing and include street safety improvements that really maximize walking, biking, transit, passenger rail. As Senator Wiener mentioned, let's bake this ideology in the DNA of the agency. Last but not the least, if you live in San Mateo or Santa Clara counties or really care about this corridor, here are some things you can do. First and foremost, join us, join the El Camino Real local team as an active volunteer or join our Google groups or Slack channels to stay updated. You can also join us for our fourth annual El Camino Real ride which is on 11th May and this time we're going to cut across four cities on this corridor. You can also take action by talking to your local reps about this region, about this campaign or sign our petition. Help spread the word, maybe share an article, talk to a friend who lives in the area, talk to a business owner. The more people hear about this, the more receptive they will be. Our ultimate goal is to convert this stretch into a bike super highway and every small effort will go a long way in making this dream a reality. Thank you and feel free to reach out if you have any further questions or need any more information. Thank you Sandhya. That was very helpful to hear the local context here toward the Silicon Valley region. I know that it is close to 10. We did set this webinar up to potentially run until 1030. So if we have folks that would like to stay on to listen to some question and answer, we invite you to do so. I did put in the chat that there is a small registration discount for the Bicycle Summit open through midnight tomorrow. Essentially, Cal Bike will be covering the fees for folks who use the code that's in the chat and information on registering is there in the chat for you as well. But without further delay, I wanted to get to some of the great questions that folks have put in the chat for our wonderful panelists. We had a few questions that get into some very specific details about implementation. Caltrans has a design information bulletin 94, which was just released recently, which covers some of the ways complete streets can be implemented on Caltrans roadways and also on local streets that pass under or over a Caltrans roadway, which often can serve as conflict points for bicyclists and pedestrians in local communities. Essentially asking, will SB 960 help clarify the process that local agencies can use to implement complete streets on those roadways that they typically have to ask Caltrans permission currently to use their own standards on those locally maintained streets, even though, you know, when they are impacted by being above or below Caltrans roadways. And so, Feeney, Laura? Yeah. I'm happy to take that one. Yes, we love DAB 94. Yay, great job, Caltrans. It's a wonderful comprehensive update to Caltrans design standards. Does SB 960 clarify that locals can use their own standards? No, because that is already in Caltrans design manual. So there is already language and it was actually changed several years ago. I can't remember exactly when now because it was something I was involved in, but yeah, it's been several years. Caltrans design standards already say, you know, on local streets, you know, locals can use their own adopted standards when they cross the state highway. You still do have to go through an encouragement permit process. You still have to get Caltrans approval, but Caltrans design guidance does already give locals the ability to use their own standards. So I don't think that needs to be clarified. Our bill doesn't speak to it. If you're seeing that still come up as an issue in working with the Caltrans district, you know, please let us know because that's important to raise, you know, to the policy level and make sure that Caltrans is following their own guidance. Great, thank you. We had several questions about clarifying the transit priority piece of the bill. One question was, does SB 960 include key aspects of transit preferential streets similar to the policies in the San Francisco planning code such as curb cut restrictions for development projects, change of the use and limiting turning movements of vehicles onto those street types? So the SB 960 doesn't really, it's not setting design standards or really speaking to design standards for specific facilities, but it would be directing the agency to develop those types of things. It also does, you know, include a long list of what is transit priority improvements. So in terms of like turn restrictions, queues up lanes, that's all in there as one of the types of treatments that should be accelerated by the agency through their internal processes. But again, it's directing the agency to take certain actions that would clarify design standards, among others, but it isn't getting to the design standards themselves in the bill. Thank you. Let's see. We had another question kind of asking about the, how we can get full signal priority for transit vehicles and light rail throughout the state and does also related does SB 960 deal with full transit priority and signals? I think we're pretty far from full signal priority. I think there's a lot of issues to be worked out, not only in terms of having an established transit priority policy, which is the first step, figuring out a pathway to accelerate those projects, but there's also a lot of technology issues that need to be addressed. So for instance, some transit agencies where they actually already have signal prioritization, they have technology and compatibility issues where they don't actually get any sort of report that says here's how often signal priority is granted. There's certainly a role for standardization of that technology if we're looking at doing it at a large scale. So there's a number of different issues beyond kind of the state actions to accelerate the approval of transit priority. There's also transit priority on local streets, which is also an issue that that permission needs to be granted from local jurisdictions. So there's a lot of work that is yet to be done to figure out how we could actually really scale up transit signal priority in the state. Thank you. And I know Jeannie has to jump in a few minutes. So we had a few questions that I think I'll try to combine to get directly to her. So, you know, we've heard from a lot of folks in the chat in the question and answer about different districts kind of dealing with some of these different Caltrans districts dealing with some of these questions in different ways. And, you know, we know that there are a lot of folks at Caltrans that really also want to see complete streets happen in all of our roadways and are doing great work. So what, you know, what in your opinion, Jeannie, do you think would be a productive and likely to be successful way of, you know, shorthand saying reforming Caltrans, but longhand, like how do we get these policies in place and, you know, what can we do to make sure that, you know, what comes at the top level is being able to be implemented by folks in the individual districts on individual projects. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I want to appreciate the senator said this. I want to also appreciate like how many good people are Caltrans that are, you know, really care about these projects are working hard, you know, Caltrans has done a ton of work on planning. So Caltrans planning, I will give a special shadow to not because I was, you know, overseeing that division, but they have just done incredible leadership work for, you know, over a decade on trying to get complete streets into Caltrans projects. And in 2022, Caltrans completed active transportation plans for all 12 districts. So planning has been done to identify the facilities. Those plans are fabulous. I mean, you can find them online. Please interact with them. They were done through a lot of community engagement. And so the work has been done to identify where we need the facilities. Now the work needs to be done to get the, you know, the machine of Caltrans where the projects get churned out, where the delivery happens, you know, the engineering side, the project delivery side. That's the piece that we really need to focus on. And that's where we need more work to be done and more leadership and a bigger priority on, you know, hey, we can't just make excuses for why we're not including complete streets facilities on our project. So that is still going to require a lot of work and a lot of leadership inside Caltrans and particularly at the district level, because a lot of those district directors, you know, they grew up in the project delivery side. They were project engineers. They did design. They did, you know, they managed projects as they got delivered. So that's the mindset that they come to. They're very, you know, kind of institutionalized and like we got to get projects done. We got to get them done quickly. You know, that's kind of the driving force. So they need to hear from advocates. They need to hear from communities. They need to know how important these things are. So I think, you know, the work that Sadia talked about, you know, looking from the local perspective, understanding local needs, getting communities engaged, I think is so critical. And then that needs to be communicated to the Caltrans district, like not just the planner, you know, in the Bay Area at Sergio Ruiz, who runs the complete streets and transit office. He's fabulous, you know, he wants to do all the stuff, but he is not on the engineering side and he can't direct them. So, you know, the engineers need to hear from Silicon Valley by coalition from, you know, whatever group you're engaged in, whichever community you live in all over the state. So that's how we change what gets done at the district is really engaging with them and not just engaging with the planning staff, but engaging on the engineering side and with the district leadership, like all the way up to the district directors. The district director should know you and you should be reaching out to them to make sure they know what's important. And just before I jump off, I want to give kudos to Sadia and her group one more time. The chair of the Senate transportation committee is in San Jose. So Silicon Valley by coalition is really important to advocacy at that committee. So I just want to stress how important it is that first policy committee is kind of always the biggest hurdle for a bill. So, you know, that first deadline and getting support in and making sure that committee hears from you and I think hears from folks who are on from Silicon Valley by coalition is super, super important. So please do engage and you know, reach out to me, reach out to Laura, Jared, you know, all of us who are helping move this bill if you need, if you have any questions, but we need your support. So thanks. Thanks for the time everyone. Absolutely. Thank you, Jeannie. And I will turn, I think what'll be our last question to Laura and Sadia and how, you know, how do we help our local cities and communities work with Caltrans to make sure that the proper guidance is being implemented. We know a lot of our city staff are fighting these battles alongside our coalition partners and you know, are getting exhausted with doing the same process over and over again. So what are some tips for folks throughout the state who are trying to work and help their local agencies ensure that these projects are moving forward with good design? Do you want to start? Sure. I can go. And we haven't cracked the code. If we had, we would probably not be talking about this campaign today. But this is what we've heard from Caltrans staff and from like state advocates. A couple of things that work is like, you need to talk about this. Just like as Jeannie mentioned, it's not just discussing with the biped planners or the complete streets team. You need to talk to the traffic engineers to the leadership and hire up and try to build that pressure on this agency through other state officials. I think that is one really key aspect of how can you get that conveyed. And it's also not just from bike advocates. What Caltrans staff themselves says is the more the Caltrans team outside of the complete streets team hears about this from like community groups, from local officials, from city staff about how important this need is to them, the more receptive they will be to this entire need. I think it's a key issue that we hear that it kind of leads to a collapse of ambition. It's so hard to why try, right? If you don't have a really robust staff dedicated to this work, you know, it's part of the reason, you know, why we're pursuing this bill. And it includes efforts to really try and make it easier for local jurisdictions to get their projects approved in a much more timely fashion. I think one of the other things that we hear is, you know, just a need for the consolidation and prioritization of comments back on projects because you have a project that might get comments from the Striping Division and different comments from the Signal Division and that that is, you know, sometimes they're not in alignment, right? And so one of the things that we've been thinking about is how do you have sort of a project manager in the Traffic Engineering Division or encroachment per division that really helps you kind of navigate, but basically it would just be somebody who kind of helps, you know, helps project manage and really take ownership over those local projects to really shepherd them through the process. And maybe we should even have a different process entirely, right? The entire kind of review process is really set up for these larger projects, road projects, highways, you know, culverts, things like that. And maybe this actually needs a different process because it's actually a different type of project really fundamentally. So maybe it needs to move through the agency in a really fundamentally different way. These are things we're all thinking about. Not sure if they'll end up in SB 960 or somewhere else, but certainly these are the types of things that we're thinking about. Thank you both. And I think we'll end it there. We really appreciate all of you attending today. We had over 300 folks, many questions we didn't get to. So apologies for that, but lively discussion. Really appreciate both Sande and Laura being here today alongside Jeannie telling us about the great work that's going on and what everyone can do to get involved. So please, you know, get, stay, if you're not already receiving updates from Cal Bike, from Spur, from Silicon Valley Bike Coalition, we all have ways to sign up on our websites. We look forward to seeing many of you at the bike summit in San Diego in April. Reminder that there is a discount code that'll be good for a few days in the chat to get the fees waived on your registration. We hope to see you in April. Thank you everyone for being here and for being part of the work. Have a good rest of your day.