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CC 04-16-19 #3 Safe Routes to School Program Update PresentationProgram Update Safe Routes to School Good evening Mr. Mayor and members of the Council. I’m Cherie Walkowiak, Safe Routes to School Coordinator for the City of Cupertino, and I come to you with a program update focusing on some of the new additions to the program since I joined the City in September I took over the program last September from Cupertino’s founding SR2S Coordinator, Chelsea Biklen. Prior to working here, I was a SR2S Coordinator for the City of Palo Alto, which Cupertino’s program is modeled after. I am honored to have the opportunity to bring to Cupertino what I learned from Palo Alto, and adapt it to fit the needs of Cupertino. 1 Mission To create a safer environment for Cupertino students and families to travel to and from school actively. For context, the mission of our program is… 2 SR2S Framework: 7Es Engagement Evaluation Engineering Education Encouragement Enforcement Equity We aim to accomplish this mission through program elements which we organize in a framework of the 7 E’s listed in this slide. Through my slides tonight, I’ll explain each E, and give an update on some of the new projects we’re working on each area. Implemented together, our 7 E’s can be a powerful tool to shift travel behavior. As Cupertino attempts to develop an elite Safe Routes to School program that will effectively reduce SOV use throughout the city, the strategies that are outlined in this presentation put Cupertino on a path to achieving this aim. 3 Engagement High School Student Representatives High School SR2S Banner Design Contest Teen Commission Collaboration Our whole program begins with Engagement, which refers to building relationships with partners and working together towards solutions. We do this in primarily two ways. First, at least once per year I meet with each of our 14 school teams, which consists of school admin, any SR2S parent or student champions, and sometimes a PTA member. We identify issues at the school sites and they let me know what their priorities are. From there, we may meet again, even several times to work on a priority project at the school, such as a bike workshop to teach kids how to bike safely on the road, student banner contest to encourage fellow students to walk or bike to school, or a red curb to improve site lines on a route to school. The projects we work on together all fall within our framework of 7 Es. Second, we come together as a broad partnership at our monthly SR2S working group meetings where parents, students, school staff, district staff, and community members can share resources and information about projects the schools and City are working on. Through these conversations, we talk about what issues are present, work together toward solutions, monitor effectiveness as we implement them, and refine solutions as needed. This school year, we’ve expanded our engagement with secondary school students, in three ways. First, we’ve recruited high school student representatives from each of the three high schools in Cupertino to be part of our Working Group. Second, we’re offering a SR2S-themed street light banner design contest, to high school students, so they can encourage people to walk, bike or carpool by displaying their artwork on the street lights that line our busiest roads. And third, the teen commission has invited us to collaborate with them on a few projects relating to student safety. 4 Evaluation Additions to Student Travel Tally Results: Alternative Travel Mode Participation Rates One of the ways we monitor our success is through Evaluation. One way we do this is that very fall and spring, all fourteen schools in Cupertino participate in a student travel tally survey, where teachers ask students how they got to school. We’ve added two new elements to the results of the student travel tally survey this year, which I’ll show you on the next slide. 5 Cupertino Safe Routes to School Fall 2018 Averages Across School Levels * Total alternative travel = all travel modes excluding family vehicle Data in this report may not equal 100% due to rounding. The citywide response rate for this survey is 56%. The blue cells in this table shows what percentage of students are getting to school by walking, by bike, family vehicle, carpooling with other families, transit, or other, which could include taking a scooter, skate board or wheelchair. The rows indicate the percentage of travel modes by school level, and at the bottom, what our citywide average is for each mode. One of the most important pieces of information for our program is the rate of alternative travel, which is everything but the family car. This year we added that column to our survey results in red, and discovered that Cupertino students have a citywide Alternative Travel mode of about 50%. This year we’ve also added the response rate to our survey results, as requested by a resident, which we calculate by comparing the number of students who responded, against the number of students enrolled. Citywide, our average response rate is 56%. In the next few slides, I’ll give you some highlights form our fall student travel tally. 6 Highest Response Rates: Two schools had 95% response rate: Eaton Faria Two of our elementary schools tied for the highest response rate in the city. ----- Extra information: Citywide response rate: 56% Elementary School average rate: 86% Middle School average rate: 72% High School average rate: 28% Collins: 75% Eaton: 95% Faria: 95% Garden Gate: 82% Lincoln: 80% Regnart: 84% Sedgwick: unknown Stevens Creek: 70% Hyde MS: 78% Kennedy MS: 70% Lawson MS: 69% Cupertino HS: 17% Homestead HS: 32% Monta Vista HS: 34% 7 Highest Walking Rate Garden Gate Elementary School had the highest walking rate out of all 14 schools What you’re looking here is the travel tally results over time from Garden Gate elementary school. The bottom of the second column shows a 39% walking rate this past fall, which is the highest percentage of students walking out of all 14 schools in Cupertino. ---- Extra information: Fall 2018 response rate is 82%. 8 Most Consistent Increase Lawson Middle School cycling rate growing This table display’s Lawson Middle School’s travel rates over time. The third column shows how their biking rate started at 3% and has grown to12%. This is the most consistent rate increase we’ve seen at a Cupertino school. We will be conducting our Spring student travel tallies at the end of this month. 9 Engineering Spot Improvements Bicycle Transportation Plan Implementation Regional Collaboration To increase the alternative travel percentage, we start with our roads. Through Engineering, we modify the built environment to create safer routes for students to get to school. We do this through very localized, then citywide, and finally cross-jurisdictional improvements. We’re currently working with several schools on spot Improvements that are low-cost, but provide high benefit. For example, Public Works installed a pop-up bulb-out recently near Cupertino High School. This was a quick and inexpensive way to make the intersection of Finch and Calle de Barcelona safer for students to cross the road, by shortening their crossing distance, and narrowing the roadway, to slow drivers. This picture illustrates our public works staff designing the bulb-out with input from the community. We decided to place white bollards far enough away from the curb to give cyclists traveling along Finch enough space so they can choose to cycle behind the bulb-out, or go around it in the travel lane. The pop-up is working so well, that Public Works plans to install another bulb out in the next couple weeks to make this intersection safer on both sides. Many other low-cost, high benefit improvements were identified in Walk Audits conducted at each school in 2016 and ’17, such as high visibility crosswalks and ADA curb ramps, which Public Works has started installing as part of their ongoing road resurfacing projects. As you know from the April 2nd City Council meeting, Apple has offered the City a donation to cover the cost of Walk Audit improvements at 77 locations. The Apple donation will come back to council for approval on May 21st. Other spot improvements schools have approached us about this school year are potential bike paths along school property that would directly connect the bike network the City is building, to the bike cages at Lawson Middle School and Cupertino High School. We’re also looking at possible improvements at the Hyannisport/Fort Baker intersection in the tri-school area, which gets very busy with morning traffic converging from Lincoln, Kennedy and Monta Vista schools. On a City-wide level, we’ll begin construction next month on the robust bicycle network identified in the 2016 Bike Transportation Plan, starting with a separated bike lane on McClellan Road which will make it safer for students to get to Monta Visa, Lincoln, and Kennedy Schools. This summer, the City will also build a separated bike lane on Stevens Creek Boulevard and bicycle boulevards in the Greenleaf and Portal neighborhoods. Bids for the bike boulevard projects were opened today, and on May 7th Council will have the opportunity to accept the bid. These are just the first of many improvements to come citywide. Once completed, the bicycle network will provide a comfortable way for students and people of all ages to bike around the City. As we prepare to rebuild our roads, we’ve been working closely with Cupertino Union School District and Fremont Union High School District both to minimize construction impacts to the schools, and to communicate with school families about what to expect. We will be holding a Construction Kickoff Ceremony on May 17th at 1pm in front of Lincoln Elementary School, which the public is welcome to attend, and we hope the Council will join us. On a more regional scale, we’ve been working on two multi-jurisdictional projects along Homestead Road. One is the Homestead Road Corridor Study, which has identified near-term improvements to Homestead Road that will make it easier for students from Cupertino, Sunnyvale and Los Altos to get to and from Homestead High School, Cupertino Middle School and West Valley Elementary School. Second, Sunnyvale just kicked off the design phase of a VERBS grant we are collaborating with them on, which will make improvements directly in front of Homestead High School. 10 Engineering Crossing Flags Crossing Guards Map Distribution In addition to roadway improvements, Engineering provides families a few other ways to navigate their routes to school. We provide crossing flags at intersections near schools to make students more visible to drivers, as illustrated in this photo. We’ve expanded our crossing flag program this school year to now include 22 intersections. We also have 16 crossing guards throughout the city, funded through a cost sharing between the City and FUHSD. We’ve received requests for guards at several other locations for which we do not currently have funding. We also recently conducted a study looking at the hours of three crossing guards who serve the tri-school area of Monta Vista, Kennedy and Lincoln schools. We found that if we make minor adjustments to the guard schedule, we can dramatically increase the percentage of students served by the crossing guards, with little to no additional cost to the City. We are finalizing the adjustments, and will implement them starting with the new school year. Finally, the program has Suggested Routes to School maps for all of our schools. With all the engineering changes happening, we’ll be updating our maps this summer. Then in the fall, we plan to implement a new, yearly distribution of printed Suggested Routes to School maps to all new, incoming elementary school families. --- Exclude: We do periodic crossing guard warrant studies to make sure the 16 crossing guards that serve our city are placed at the locations they’re needed most. Following our most recent warrant study, we identified several intersections not currently being served, which see more foot traffic than some of our guarded intersections. To rectify this for next school year, we are looking at moving a crossing guard from our least utilized intersection (Bubb and Regnart Rd) to a location which gets 5 times the amount of foot traffic, (Ainsworth and Bahl). Three additional unserved locations have been identified as seeing a higher volumes of foot traffic than other highly utilized intersections that are served by a crossing guard. In an attempt to find funds to cover three additional crossing guard locations, we offered to share the cost with CUSD, but they declined our offer. 11 Education Bike Workshop Pilots Pedestrian Education Pilot Palo Alto-Style Bike Rodeo Pilot Middle School PE Bicycle Curriculum Though our education programs, we teach students and their families how to be safe on our roadways. One new way we’re doing this is through a variety of Bike Workshops we are piloting and refining. All of them include a classroom presentation of safe biking information, followed by skills drills on a blacktop, where kids practice skills such as stopping at a mock intersection and using hand signals. The workshops end with a bike ride, where students put their new skills into use on the road. Our first pilot was a family bike workshop last summer at the YMCA. That went well, and we learned a lot. Last month we improved upon the idea by hiring the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition to run a similar pilot for Lawson Middle School students at the YMCA. This was successful, and we’ve gotten several requests for more of them. Finally, we’ve been working with a company called Wheel Kids to offer a similar, more in-depth bike workshop series this summer called Middle School Bike Skills, geared toward rising 6th, 7th and 8th graders and their parent. Assuming the pilot goes well, we intend to offer this as a regular part of our summer programming moving forward. We are targeting middle schools with this pilot because it’s an age where students start biking without their parents, their middle school tends to be farther from home than their neighborhood school so if they are going to get out of the car, they are more likely to bike than walk, and they are getting close to being too old to ride on the sidewalks. It’s a great age to learn the rules of the road. One thing that’s missing from the Cupertino SR2S program is pedestrian education. There are a variety of ped ed models to choose from, and we plan to pilot a couple models next school year, to see what works best for the Cupertino community. Another addition to the Cupertino SR2S program I’m interested in piloting at the elementary school level is an in-school, Palo Alto-style bike rodeo, where students cycle through six or seven stations, getting hands-on (or feet-on, if you will) experience with important cycling skills. Finally, I’ve been working with CUSD and a company called BikeSafe to see if we can implement a bicycle curriculum as part of middle school PE classes. Pedestrian education, in-school bike rodeos and pe bicycle curriculum will all require support from our schools and the district, which I hope to garner. 12 Encouragement Sedgwick: Dance Party Hyde: Banner Design Contest Cupertino HS: Pogo Carpooling App Garden Gate: Walking School Bus Pilot We support schools in their efforts to encourage students to walk, bike, carpool or bus to school. These program elements are predominantly school-driven. Here are four examples of new initiatives this school year: Sedwick Elementary School organizes a monthly walk and roll to school day, and has recently instituted an additional stretch goal. If the whole school reaches 85% walking and biking, they’ll hold a special, dance party recess. Hyde Middle School is just wrapping up a student banner design contest which we will be judging in two weeks. The winning banner designs will be hung outside the school to encourage fellow-students to walk, bike or carpool on Wednesdays. Cupertino High School is nearing the end of a carpooling pilot with an app called Pogo. While we believe carpooling is an excellent alternative mode of travel, we found the app did not effectively move the needle, so the contract will be terminated when it expires at the end of this school year. Additional information about that pilot can be found in the items of interest. Finally, Garden Gate Elementary School successfully piloted a new walking school bus this year, where they encouraged students to walk to school together in a big group - a walking bus. ---- Extra info: Programs to encouraging walking, biking, and carpooling at 12 of our 14 schools Walk & Roll Days: Weekly, Monthly, and Seasonal School bike rodeos at 9 out of 11 elementary and middle schools Two community bike rides (over 100 participants) The Earth & Arbor Day Pedal for the Planet Rides Fall Bike Fest 13 Enforcement School Traffic Enforcement Requests Our partnership with the sheriff’s department allows us to request traffic enforcement from patrol officers in front of schools. I’ve worked with the Sheriff’s office to develop a standard set of questions that any school can submit to the Safe Routes program if they want to curb a particular behavior on the route to their school. 14 Equity Chinese Hindi Japanese Korean Spanish Telugu Vietnamese Finally, with Equity in mind, in 2018 we translated the majority of our Cupertino Safe Routes to School documents. In addition to safety tips translated into all the languages listed here, schools now have access to Suggested Route to School maps in English as well as the two other most-spoken languages at their school. ---- Additional info: Suggested Routes to School Maps Each school’s 2 most common languages Safety Tips for Cyclists Safety Tips for Motorists Safety Tips for Pedestrians SR2S Guide for Parents Helmet Instructions Quick Guide to Bike Commuting 15 In Summary: Increase alternative travel modes Build out bike/pedestrian network Expand education and encouragement programs Broaden Partnership In Summary, our program is working toward increasing alternative travel modes by building out our bicycle and pedestrian network and expanding our education and encouragement programs by working with the community to broaden our partnerships and making the program available to all. 16 Thank you! 17 Pocket Slides Just in case 18 Cupertino High School Fall 2018 response rate is 17%. 19 Goals & Objectives Reduce traffic accidents Increase rate of walking and biking to school Reduce traffic congestion Reduce city carbon emissions Reduce trend of childhood inactivity and obesity Maybe: Cupertino has localized the larger National Safe Routes to School Program and mirrored successful model programs that have reduced traffic accidents, reversed the decline in students walking and bicycling to school, and lessened the nationwide trend toward childhood obesity and inactivity. Data shows that as much as 30% of morning traffic can be generated by parents driving their children to school, and traffic-related crashes are the top cause of death and major injury for children in the U.S. ages 1 to 17.   Cupertino Safe Routes to School is a collaborative effort that consists of a diverse group of stakeholders (educators, parents, students, the Sheriff’s Department, schools administrators, city planners and engineers, business and community leaders, bicycle and pedestrian advocates, community volunteers, etc.). Having this great diversity of perspectives provides us a better understanding of what is happening throughout the City. Lastly, this approach also allows us to learn in more detail about how we can best improve individual school programs. Through a combination of program encouragement events and infrastructure changes we work to remove barriers that prevent people from traveling actively to and from school.  20