Community-Based Transportation Planning

Designing Travel Solutions
At the Local Level

MTC is taking a grass-roots approach to identifying barriers to mobility and working to overcome them. With its Community-Based Transportation Planning Program, MTC has created a collaborative planning process that involves residents in minority and low-income Bay Area communities, community and faith-based organizations that serve them, transit operators, county congestion management agencies (CMAs) and MTC.

Launched in 2002, the Community-Based Transportation Planning Program evolved out of two reports completed in 2001 — the Lifeline Transportation Network Report and the Environmental Justice Report.

The Lifeline Report identified travel needs in low-income Bay Area communities and recommended community-based transportation planning as a way for communities to set priorities and evaluate options for filling transportation gaps. Likewise, the Environmental Justice Report identified the need for MTC to support local planning efforts in low-income communities throughout the region.

Local Participation Is Key

The outcome of each MTC-sponsored planning process is a community-based transportation plan that includes locally-identified transportation needs, as well as solutions to address them. Each plan reflects the objectives of the program, which are to:

• emphasize community participation in prioritizing transportation needs and identifying potential solutions;
• foster collaboration between local residents, community-based organizations, transit operators, CMAs and MTC;
• build community capacity by involving community-based organizations in the planning process.
  

Program Guidelines

The guidelines for the Community-Based Transportation Planning Program serve as a blueprint for implementation. They specify that CMAs serve as the lead agency in each collaborative planning process, and that results of the Lifeline Report serve as the starting point for analyzing transportation gaps in each community.

Final community-based transportation plans contain:

• demographic analysis of the area;
• documented community outreach strategies with results;
• a listing of community-prioritized transportation gaps and barriers;
• a listing of strategies or solutions to address identified gaps;
• a listing of potential funding sources for solution implementation;
• identified stakeholders committed to implementing the plan.

Project findings are forwarded to applicable local or county-level policy boards, as well as to MTC, for consideration in planning, funding and implementation discussions. A full copy of the Community-Based Transportation Planning Program guidelines can be downloaded here.

Pilot Program a Success

The Community-Based Transportation Planning Program began with pilot projects in five communities; plans were completed in 2004 in these areas:

• South Hayward/Ashland/Cherryland (Alameda County)
• Richmond/N. Richmond/Old Town San Pablo (Contra Costa County)
• The city of Napa (and surrounding communities)
• East Palo Alto (San Mateo County)
• Dixon (Solano County)

As a result, several transportation strategies identified through the community planning process successfully competed for MTC’s Low-Income Flexible Transportation (LIFT) funding in late 2004, and are described below.

• A partnership between the city of East Palo Alto and Opportunities Industrialization Centers West, a community organization, will provide on-demand shuttle service for youth to improve access to jobs. Additionally, a free shuttle connecting East Palo Alto with Caltrain, bus routes and jobs will be expanded.
• The Napa County Transportation Plan-ning Agency will initiate a shuttle with a flexible route to provide access to jobs in the early mornings, evenings and weekends.
• A new, subsidized taxi service for low-income residents of Dixon and the surrounding areas will improve access to employment, medical and shopping destinations.
• The Neighborhood House of North Richmond received funds to purchase bus benches and to support a transportation coordinator who will provide information about transportation options in multiple languages and coordinate several training programs on how to use transportation services.

Communities Selected for Participation

Twenty-five low-income Bay Area neighborhoods are identified in the Community-Based Transportation Planning program guidelines. With completion of five pilot reports, MTC has a goal of completing the remaining plans by 2007.

Contact Information

For more information about MTC’s Community-Based Transportation Planning Program, please call Therese Knudsen, program manager, at 510.817.5767, or email: tknudsen@mtc.ca.gov.