DEPARTMENT: Transportation & Public Works
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Tomika Monterville, Director
COUNCIL DISTRICT IMPACTED: Citywide
SUBJECT: Equity in Transportation Decision-Making: UPDATE
SUMMARY:
The Transportation Department will provide an update to the City Council's Transportation & Mobility Committee on a proposed strategy to incorporate equity into the transportation decision-making process.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
In February 2021, Committee Chair Gonzales requested a briefing on how the Transportation Department proposed to incorporate equity into multi-modal decision-making to ensure the needs of the most vulnerable in the community were met with transportation projects and plans.
Staff proposed to utilize the City's Equity Atlas as the foundation for developing categories and criteria to evaluate future transportation plans and projects. Staff planned to assess the City's Multi-Modal Plan to demonstrate the application of the equity scorecard.
ISSUE/UPDATE:
Concerns related to the application of equity in transportation decision-making have prompted staff to integrate the City's Equity Atlas and project-specific (i.e., stormwater, Parks & Recreation, etc.) and general (leverage of other city investments, part of other City plans/projects, etc.) criteria to ensure that the needs of marginalized and underserved members of the City are met with transportation plans and other City investments.
Public Works and Transportation staff are actively developing and evaluating categories and criteria for use in the evaluation of projects for the 2022 Bond Program which will be an enhanced assessment of projects beyond past evaluation criteria.
Upon evaluating the staffing capacity of the Transportation Department and the opportunities to incorporate equity into the update of the Multi-Modal Plan, it was determined that a major update of the Bicycle Master Plan (BMP) was more appropriate given the recent fatalities. The update of the BMP will als...
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