Ab 392 Fact Sheet

What do the grant programs do?

1. Community Based Transportation Planning (CBTP) Grants: 

A $3 million annual program funding projects that increase affordable housing, improve the housing/jobs balance, encourage transit-oriented and mixed-use development, expand transportation choices, reflect community values, and include non-traditional participation in transportation decision making.

2. Environmental Justice (EJ) Context-Sensitive Planning Grants: 

A $3 million annual program that has had a significant impact in reaching out to minority and low-income communities to ensure their participation in transportation planning and create greater equity in transportation investment decisions.

Support AB 392...Support Your Community

This proposed legislation would permanently mandate $3 million per year to each of the two grant programs to fund community involvement in the transportation planning process. These programs reflect Caltrans' growing commitment to improve mobility in all modes of transportation for all communities. Unfortunately, these small programs are often the first to face funding cuts in times of fiscal crisis, thereby sending an unfortunate message that community based planning for alternative transportation and environmental justice projects are not a priority for California .

The grants serve to enrich the planning process, bringing planning agencies and low-income and minority communities together in a common effort to build needed trust, define needs, and find workable solutions. Without such assistance, the status quo maintains the episodic nature of planning where communities are alienated and future transportation projects end up being developed without real input from the real stakeholders.

Support AB 392 and help ensure your community's involvement!

What you can do:

• Contact your legislators and tell them to support AB 392, which will mandate these grant programs and help to maintain their full funding.

• Sign your organization onto a coalition letter to legislators emphasizing the value of these programs.

• Send individual letters of support to key decision-makers

These programs have proven essential to the planning, programming and implementation of transportation projects that improve public participation, promote context sensitive planning, reduce congestion and pollution, and improve mobility in low-income and minority communities.

Small Grants-Big Impacts

In the East San Fernando Valley an Environmental Justice grant will fund a community-based master planning process that will harness recent transportation developments and reduce congestion by creating a new prototype for mixed use urban schools as centers of neighborhood and community life.

The City of San Jose is using a planning grant to plan a pedestrian and bicycle path that will connect 13 neighborhoods to the downtown area and other community resources, such as parks and schools.

Los Angeles County received a grant to plan pedestrian and multi-modal linkages for communities adjacent to the historic Arroyo Seco Parkway , a significant historic transportation resource linking some of the most ethnically and historically diverse communities in the Los Angeles Basin .  

With a Caltrans Planning grant, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is conducting outreach to determine the issues, needs, and barriers faced by low-income and minority community members who use transit as their primary mode of transportation.

In San Joaquin County , a grant to the San Joaquin Council of Governments is supporting the county's Welfare to Work Transportation Assistance Program. This program better enables low-income individuals to garner employment by improving their access to, and mobility within, their community.  

The City of Sacramento is using a planning grant to develop a Pedestrian Master Plan, helping to ensure the safety of pedestrians and augment pedestrian connectivity to a variety of services, such as work, school, and health care.

With a Caltrans Planning grant, the City of Fresno is conducting outreach to determine the issues, needs, and barriers faced by low-income and minority community members who use transit as their primary mode of transportation.

In Santa Barbara County , the planning & development department, along with UC Santa Barbara and the Isla Vista Park and Recreation District, received a planning grant to develop the Isla Vista Multimodal Transportation Plan.

In East Los Angeles , SCAG and CSU Los Angeles evaluated the adequacy, safety, and security of the pedestrian and bicycle facilities in terms of both immediate and longterm transportation needs and proposed safety measures for implementation.

Contacts:

For more information contact Phil Olmstead at (916) 448-1687 ext. 303

or Michael Mendez with Assemblymember Cindy Montanez at (916) 319-2039