Get Us Moving San Mateo County

FeaturedGet Us Moving SMCNotes
Written By Shiloh Ballard

Since late last year, the San Mateo County Transit District (SMCTD) has embarked on the Get Us Moving San Mateo County process, a public engagement and education effort to provide information and collect community feedback about transportation solutions for the county. This press release provides more information. The process is similar to that of VTA’s in Santa Clara County in 2015, Envision Silicon Valley, which eventually led to the transportation sales tax measure in November 2016. Read on to find out more about the process and how you can get involved via a survey and public meetings.

Since mid-2017, SVBC has been working with Transportation Equity Allied Movement (TEAMC), a coalition of diverse community groups, on transportation issues in San Mateo County. We started off with a win by getting the City and County Association of Governments (C/CAG) Board of Directors to include measurable targets in the Countywide Transportation Plan (SMCTP) and SVBC now is part of the SMCTP 2040 Follow-Up Working Group to determine those metrics. Since then, we’ve been meeting regularly with the groups that make up TEAMC such as Youth Leadership Institute, Friends of Caltrain, SAMCUCA, Transform, MenloSpark, Sustainable San Mateo County, Urban Habitat and more to discuss how we can collaborate to improve transportation in San Mateo County. TEAMC developed a platform of Transportation Justice Principles to help inform our input to Get Us Moving San Mateo County.

To that end, SVBC and our allies are also participating San Mateo County Stakeholder Advisory Group for Get Us Moving San Mateo County. We want to better understand and inform the framework for the potential ballot measure, weigh in on the goals and metrics of any measure, and gather input from our members about what types of projects they’d like to see funded. We’ve discussed this process at the San Mateo County/Peninsula Committee and SVBC Policy Advisory Committee and will continue those discussions this spring.

December 20 was the due date for public agencies to submit their lists of projects to SMCTD. These are essentially wish lists that will be considered to inform the categories in the tax measure. SVBC worked with city agencies to ensure their bike plans and projects were submitted. Eventually, the projects will be developed into draft expenditure plan that is expected to be deliberated throughout the winter and spring and approved next summer.

Now’s the time to get involved: Information gathered at this stage will be used to inform the potential transportation sales tax measure in fall 2018. Your input is a critical component of this process.  Please take their short survey by the end of Feburary 2018 and make your voice heard as a roadmap is developed for faster, better transportation in San Mateo County.

There will also be four upcoming public workshops on this process to get more involved (updated as info becomes available):

If you would like to get more involved with SVBC’s work on this issue, join our SMC Committee email list or the next meeting or contact Emma Shlaes at emma@bikesiliconvalley.org.

Shiloh Ballard
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