Walking and Biking

May is National Bike Month

Grab Your Helmet and Get Involved! Join the masses in this monthlong celebration of bicycling and all the health, fun, and financial benefits that come with riding. May 14 is the official Bike to Work Day in the Bay Area. There are tons of ways to get involved and support bicycling as a great transportation choice:

Volunteer with TransForm as a part of Bike to Work Day at either a May 11th goodie bag stuffing at REI in Berkeley or May 14th from 4-7pm at one of our energizer stations (East Bay BART Stations). Contact Andrea to volunteer.
Ride to work on May 14 as part of Bike to Work Day
Join the Team Bike Challenge
V olunteer at an energizer station in your neigbhorhood on Bike to Work Day on May 14

Learn more at the Bay Area Bicycle Coalition's official Bike to Work Day website. Get involved by volunteering with your local bicycle coalition for Bike to Work Day: East Bay Bicycle Coalition Marin County Bicycle Coalition Napa County Bicycle Coalition San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition Walk Oakland Bike Oakland Sacramento cyclists, take the whole month and join your region's million-mile challenge!

Check out all your opportunities to get involved and support cycling as a premier transportation choice.

Walking and Biking

Safe Routes for the Mayfair Community

A Study of Safe Routes to Transit and Station Design for the Proposed DTEV Corridor

This report lays out in great detail the specific projects that will increase bicycle and pedestrian safety in the Downtown/East Valley (DTEV) corridor, which runs along Alum Rock Avenue and Santa Clara Street between East and Downtown San Jose corridor, and the amenities and services that community members want at and near the stations.

download the full report (820k PDF file)

Executive Summary

The Downtown/East Valley (DTEV) corridor, which runs along Alum Rock Ave. and Santa Clara St. between East and Downtown San Jose, has the highest transit ridership in Santa Clara County. In 2000, voters passed Measure A, a transportation sales tax that includes funding for light rail along this corridor. The Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) is now deciding whether to extend light rail or enhanced bus service

Walking and Biking

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TravelChoice New Residents

TravelChoice New Residents is an innovative new program to reduce single occupancy vehicle trips that is coordinated by TransForm.

About TravelChoice New Residents

TravelChoice New Residents will provide the missing information that connects TOD residents with the transportation options available to them and significantly reduce vehicle use and ownership.

TravelChoice is an innovative, personalized marketing program which proactively offers information and incentives for all transportation choices available in a given neighborhood, not just one mode. It also targets all trips that a household makes, not just a single destination such as work or school. Further, it is highly tailored to each specific neighborhood, providing localized maps, neighborhood-specific transit materials, multilingual outreach and more in order to connect with each household.

TravelChoice New Residents aims to connect with new households before they move in, effectively helping them to start new travel habits before they fall back on previous auto-oriented behaviors. TravelChoice New Residents will focus specifically on educating and motivating residents at the time they are moving into their new homes in walkable communities near transit. In the end, TravelChoice New Residents looks to provide a permanent, developer funded service in each new development in which it operates, providing transportation updates on an ongoing basis and conducting one-to-one outreach on an annual basis.

The goal is to shift travel behavior by educating residents when they move and thereby reducing vehicle ownership. More than any other factor, low auto-ownership rates is an excellent predictor of high rates of walking, bicycling and public transit use.

For more information, contact John Knox White.

TravelChoice New Residents supported by:

TravelChoice provides households with personalized transportation information with the goal of reducing solo driving trips by increasing transit usage, biking, and walking. The program is modeled after numerous successful projects in the United States and abroad. TransForm's 2006 TravelChoice pilot project achieved an impressive 14% reduction in drive-alone trips.

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Safe Routes to Transit Grant Program

The Safe Routes to Transit (SR2T) Program awards $20 million in grants to facilitate walking and bicycling to regional transit. The program is funded by Regional Measure 2, and is administered by TransForm and the East Bay Bicycle Coalition. By improving the safety and convenience of biking and walking to regional transit, SR2T will give commuters the opportunity to leave their cars at home, and reduce congestion on Bay Area bridges. Learn about the creation of SR2T.

Bicycling and walking are cost-effective and sustainable ways to reach regional transit stations, yet many commuters cite safety as the main reason they drive instead. Safe Routes to Transit (SR2T) promotes bicycling and walking to transit stations by funding projects and plans that make important feeder trips easier, faster, and safer. Improvements in the safety and convenience of bicycling and walking to regional transit gives commuters the opportunity to leave their cars at home.

To date nearly $12 million has been awarded to over 30 capital and planning projects.

SR2T funds may be used for:

Secure bicycle storage at transit stations/stops/pods
Safety enhancements for ped/bike station access to transit stations/stops/pods
Removal of ped/bike barriers near transit stations
System-wide transit enhancements to accommodate bicyclists or pedestrians

Cycle Three of the SR2T grant program closed in 2009. Congratulations to the Cycle 3 grantees, and thanks to the excellent work of the Safe Routes to Transit Advisory Committee!

Applications for the fourth cycle of the program will be accepted in 2011. Future funding cycles will occur in 2011, and 2013.

Information for Safe Routes to Transit grantees is available here.

SR2T Contact Info

The program is run by staff members from TransForm and the East Bay Bicycle Coalition:

Carli Paine, TransForm
Dave Campbell, East Bay Bicycle Coalition

The SR2T Grant program awards $20 million in grants to facilitate walking and bicycling to regional transit. The program is funded by Regional Measure 2, and is administered by TransForm and the East Bay Bicycle Coalition. By improving the safety and convenience of biking and walking to regional transit, SR2T will give commuters the opportunity to leave their cars at home, and reduce congestion on Bay Area bridges.

Walking and Biking

Safe Routes to Schools

A Comprehensive Approach to Creating Healthier Kids and Communities

Explore the menu at the left to learn about where and how we work - and get involved!
For more information about starting a SR2S program at your school, contact Nora Cody.
Find out if your school is already participating here.
To sign up for the Safe Routes to Schools' newsletter, contact Seth Goddard.

Safe Routes to Schools (SR2S) is a comprehensive, proven approach to getting more kids walking and biking safely to school. It gives kids and parents skills, encouragement, and inspiration through a range of activities, events, and lessons, while also addressing local pedestrian and personal safety concerns.

With its focus on fun and safety, kids and parents alike love SR2S.

Schools think SR2S is great: it reduces congestion around schools, involves parents and teachers, and means that more kids arrive at school energized and ready to learn.

Neighbors and community members love SR2S too, for the improvements it brings to pedestrian and biking infrastructure, reduced traffic and air pollution, and the sense of community it builds.

TransForm and the Safe Routes to Schools Alameda County Partnership

TransForm, a champion for making it easier and safer for people to walk and bike places, started an urban pilot project of the Safe Routes to Schools program (SR2S) in 2006 in Oakland, modeled after the hugely-successful Marin County Safe Routes to Schools program.

This fledgling effort has grown into the Safe Routes to Schools Alameda County Partnership. Led by TransForm, the Partnership includes the Alameda County Public Health Department, Cycles of Change, and many other local agencies and organizations.

Together, the SR2S Alameda County Partnership is now reaching tens of thousands of students at more than 60 Alameda County public elementary schools.

The Safe Routes to Schools Program is funded in part with a major grant from Measure B (Alameda County's half-cent transportation sales tax, administered by ACTIA).

TransForm launched a Safe Routes to Schools pilot program in 2006. Since then, the Alameda County Safe Routes to Schools Partnership, spearheaded by TransForm, has received funding to bring the comprehensive Safe Routes to Schools program to much of Alameda county.

Walking and Biking

Bike/Ped Advocacy

For too long, walking and bicycling have been ignored as serious transportation options. Despite the fact that an estimated 11% of all trips in the region are made by pedestrians and bicyclists, funding levels of pedestrian and bike programs had been incredibly low. No wonder 25% of people who die in car crashes aren't even in cars - they're pedestrians and bicyclists!

In the Bay Area this situation is changing fast. TransForm works closely with the the Bay Area Bicycle Coalition to enact regional change. Currently the most critical campaign is on the 2009 Regional Transportation Plan, where the draft investment plan would:

quintuple funding for the regional bicycle network to $40 million per year
initiate a regional Safe Routes to Schools program at $10 million per year
quintuple funding for the Safe Routes to Transit program from $2 million per year.

These changes will provide critical benefits for our health and environment. They also increase the livability of our cities while providing safer access for people with mobility challenges.

Another great way to plug in is with your local bicycle coalition.

To understand the impact that our urban design is having, TransForm has authored a few excellent reports including Can't Get There from Here, which examines the declining independent mobility of California's children and youth, and provides an excellent set of implementable recommendations

Our Roadblocks to Health report highlights the lack of transit and pedestrian access to health care, nutritious food and recreation. and Bringing Safe Routes to Scale helped make the case to MTC for the need for a regional Safe Routes to Schools grants program.

For information on TransForm's bicycle and pedestrian advocacy contact Carli Paine.

This section includes some of the key ways you can be an advocate for safer streets and trails. It includes contact information for bicycle and pedestrain coalitions in your area, and ways to plug into regional efforts.

Walking and Biking

Bringing Safe Routes to Scale

How Safe Routes to Schools Can Get Bay Area Kids and Commuters Moving

This report estimates that investing in Safe Routes to Schools infrastructure, education, and encouragement projects region-wide would result in up to 110 million fewer miles traveled every year by Bay Area vehicles.