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Redwood City appoints a new Transportation Director, and hopefully, Tanisha Werner can finally put some effort into city hall’s favorite slogan: “Transportation, Children and Youth.”
The organizational setup at city hall so far had no real transportation director. They just gave the person in charge of community development a little side hustle of doing circulation studies. And man, did that show? That lack of focus led to some of the weirdest examples of “How-Not-To-Do Transportation” (please, let’s do a minute of silence for the Sequoia Transit Center circulation study).
There is nothing more sweet than giving unsolicited advice, which nobody will take seriously but allows you to issue a “Told You So” later. So here it comes:
- Follow Your Dreams
- Follow the Law
- Thou Shall Not Steal From Children
- Take Pride in Engineering
Follow Your Dreams
And “Your Dreams” means the city’s goals and dreams, of course. For this particular blog post, we are talking about the top strategy of “Transportation, Children, and Youth” and the top transportation goals found in expensive plans that have been done over and over again, like RWCMoves or WalkBikeThrive:
- Achieve a mode split target of 50% of all trips being non-driving modes by 2040 …
- Create a walking and bicycling-friendly community …
- Provide seamless connections and improved street access to all areas …
- Eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries by 2030 …
But how would a new Transportation Director achieve all that?
Simple, just follow your heart or even better, Just Follow The Law!
Follow The Law
The template to achieve 50% non-car mode is relatively simple, and multiple cities around the world are currently working on it. All you need to do is promote more Active and Public Transportation for the people who will most likely be around in 2040 – our children. That is often referred to as Safe-Routes-To-School (SRTS), and for over 30 years now, Downtown has shed its shared responsibility towards school-aged children. That includes City Hall and the School District District Office (RCSD) – both literally and figuratively miles away from any of our schools.
California keeps nudging and poking both organizations with law after law to do better, but both organizations keep ignoring Sacramento:
- AB321 (2008) – You know you have a very car-centric Transportation Department when they have been ignoring this 15 mph school zone law for over 15 years. Sacramento noticed that, too, and sent another nudge in 2021
- AB43 (2021)—With this law, finally, a few neighboring cities like Menlo Park, San Carlos and even the Unincorporated County have started implementing 15 mph school zones. Redwood City, on the other hand, is still looking for “funding” to do more “studies” (another word for delay, delay, delay) around this important subject.
- The Superior Court of California issued a devastating report about bike safety, which Redwood City has been defying for 22 years and counting. Council member Howard called this report a ‘wake-up’ call, but then City Hall quickly hit the snooze button. What the Grand Jury really wants is an independent Bicycle Advisory Committee (TAC), one person at city hall focusing only on people riding bicycles, and, of course, bike lanes.
- There are 25 more reasons to have bike lanes.
But where is all the money for Safe-Routes and bike lanes supposed to be coming from? Easy …
“Thou Shall Not Steal From Children”
Every year, millions of federal, state, local, and ultra-local funds are available to support Active Transportation and Safe Routes to School. If Redwood City would just stop taking that money and redirect it towards car-centric projects like “Hopkins Landscaping Project,” “Vera Bike Boulevard,” or “Roosevelt Traffic Calming,” there would be plenty of funding for real SRTS projects.
The funniest and most obvious version of this pillaging was “The People’s Budget,” when the city manager promised protected bike lanes on ECR. Since there was never a real intention to implement those protected bike lanes, the city spent $170k on a PROTECTED BIKE LANE sweeper instead. The hope was that nobody would notice the added word “sweeper.” By adding just one little word, $170k in bicycle funding went right towards a car-centric expense. Because without protected bike lanes, the sweeper is just another parking lot sweeper.
Take more Pride in Engineering
Redwood City calls itself a Vision Zero city. The goal is “to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries by 2030”. So far, this goal is moving in the wrong direction because the Transportation Department keeps hiding behind others – namely “Education” and “Enforcement.” And yet all the experts in the world say that if “Engineering” doesn’t take more responsibility, safety and mode shift can not happen.
“Her experience in engineering and her commitment to community service make her the perfect fit for this role. We look forward to her leadership in advancing our City’s infrastructure and transportation initiatives.”
[City Manager Melissa Stevenson Diaz]
Tanisha’s new title is Director of Engineering … and Transportation. We are all hoping to finally see the Transportation Department taking on the engineering challenges with the necessary professional pride. We can’t continue with speed humps, All-Way stops, or flashing beacons on every street and every intersection. There are way better solutions out there.
Editor’s Note: The views and opinions expressed in all blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Redwood City Pulse or its staff.
Was just passed by a SamTrans bus with 6 people in it! Why, oh why, would Redwood City waste even more money on public transportation? Putting bike lanes on busy streets is dangerous for both cars and cyclists. Congestion on streets like El Camino creates massive pollution. Let’s not spend more money on things we don’t need.