Safe Routes to School Strategic Plan for the City of Los Angeles: Get involved!

The City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT)  invites you to save the date for Thursday, March 21, 2:00 – 4:00 in the Caltrans Building (100 Main Street, LA 90012 in Conf Room 1.040B) to review milestones and progress to date on the city’s forthcoming Safe Routes to School Strategic Plan.

The City of Los Angeles is prioritizing need for infrastructure improvements among their 495 schools that fall within the City’s boundaries.  This has been something the SRTSNP and many other partners have been working alongside LA DOT and partners both internally and externally.  Among the many things about this effort that inspire me – is the relationship between the school district and transportation planning agency underway with this effort – not to mention current efforts to loop in community based organizations.  And I love how data is informing this project prioritization effort – it’s inspiring to see the City of Los Angeles endeavor toward this.

Complementary goals include:

•  evolving a safety countermeasures toolbox and costs to support recommendations for infrastructure and non-infrastructure needs per school/project,
• increasing communications and build partnerships between city agencies, LAUSD, and SRTS stakeholders, and
• formulating strategies to fund and implement SRTS school plans via transportation and non-transportation funding sources.

The LADOT SRTS team has been making productive strides with GIS mapping and analysis, relationship building with multiple levels of LAUSD, policy inventory analysis, plan outlining and scoping topical working groups such that we would like share with all interested stakeholders:

• Analysis and assessment of a prioritized list of schools citywide
• Overview of collaborative in-roads with LAUSD headquarters and school-specific
• Update on LADOT’s synergy with concurrent large-scale SRTS programs/projects citywide
• Draft of a future SRTS citywide process and resources
• Draft plan outline and project timeline
• Opportunities for you/your team to engage in SRTS Strategic Plan working groups

City staff looks forward to all hearing from all interested stakeholders as this will be a wonderful opportunity to provide input, clarifications, insights and perspectives as City staff continue to evolve the Plan.

This March 21 presentation is taking place during the regularly scheduled City of Los Angeles PAC (Pedestrian Advisory Committee) meeting.  Going forward, the SRTS Plan will continue to be a significant focus of the PAC meeting agenda.  Attendance at PAC meetings will ensure consistent and regular communications about SRTS Plan progress and developments.  If you have recommendations of persons to attend, please contact LA City DOT Pedestrian Coordinator Margot Ocañas
at margot.ocanas@lacity.org.

We welcome your forwarding this SAVE the DATE to  all interested stakeholders – now is a great time to get involved and help support this endeavor with diverse perspectives and interests.