Bayview Community Based Transportation Plan

Bayview Community Based Transportation Plan
By Bradley Dunn

We are thrilled to share the draft Bayview Community Based Transportation Plan – the culmination of two years of collaboration and partnership with the Bayview community to improve transportation. The Bayview transportation plan represents a commitment to a new approach to addressing transportation planning in the Bayview district. The actions and strategies we’re planning to implement in the neighborhood bring to bear a wide variety of agency resources to address long-standing concerns in the community. As we share this plan, we’re eager to get public feedback and excited to present the plan at our first February SFMTA Board meeting.

Over the past two years, we interacted with more than 4,000 residents, attended  more than 50 community meetings and events, collected more than 2,300 surveys and worksheets, and spent almost 300 SFMTA staff hours in the Bayview. This has resulted in a draft plan that spells out actions and strategies for tackling the issues that are affecting people’s access to and from Bayview, with $3.63 million worth of programmed and prioritized transportation investments from the SFMTA, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission for the Bayview community. The Plan identifies:

• Quick-Build Projects - We are committing $600,000  to Quick Build projects that can be built in the 2020 calendar year. An example is Williams avenue, where we will calm traffic and increase pedestrian safety around the Bayview’s only grocery store. You can learn more about project locations and details here.
• Participatory Budgeting -  We ran a $750,000 Participatory Budgeting process in the Bayview. In this democratic process, residents come up with ideas, turn them into proposals, and vote on what to fund. The process will fund three new Transit Assistants that will provide an unarmed safety presence on the 29 Sunset, 44 O’Shaughnessy, and T-Third.
• A 5-year Investment Plan - We are committing $2,280,000 to a 5-year investment plan that was developed and prioritized using resident input only. More than 40 pedestrian safety improvement and more than 10 projects to improve access to transit.
• Policy Recommendations – Our policy recommendations try to give voice to community needs and support future community advocacy when they could not be included in the plan.

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To implement this new approach, we needed to map out ways to improve access for Bayview residents – but when planning has been at the root of so much damage to the Bayview, how do we use planning as a remedy?  We started with deep conversations with leaders and elders across the Bayview. Here is what they said to us: 

• The Bayview is over-planned and under-delivered – There have been more than 20 transportation-related plans in the last 10 years in the Bayview. People are tired of being asked about what they need when they’ve already been asking for years. They want results.
• People feel like their voices don’t matter - Residents too often feel like they’re being shoehorned into a pre-determined process. Or, even worse, that projects in their community aren’t being done on their behalf, and that increasing displacement pressure means they might not be around to enjoy the benefit once delivered.
• The most vulnerable are the first left out – The Bayview residents  most vulnerable to transportation challenges (youth, seniors, residents with disabilities, and residents in affordable housing) are often the hardest to reach and the least represented when gathering resident input.
• The SFMTA shouldn’t expect to reach people on its own - Bayview’s residents rarely have the extra time to come to a Tuesday evening open-house workshop. For residents to trust our plan, they needed to define it, and the SFMTA needed to find convenient and accessible ways for the community to generate and consider ideas.  

A truly community-based plan required the SFMTA to learn and address these points. Our community outreach strategies to develop an inclusive, responsive, and representative plan included:

• Statement of Intent - We needed a clear and concise promise to the public to  demonstrate our commitment to a different approach with the Bayview CBTP. We took what we learned from our community interviews and held a facilitated dialogue with SFMTA leadership; this became our Statement of Intent, with the key promises of Accountability, Transparency, Preserving the Community’s Voice, and City Coordination.
• The Community’s Voice Comes First - Throughout our work, we sought to emphasize the voices and lived experiences of Bayview’s residents. Just as important as finding solutions for the future is making sure that the people experiencing the problem are the ones defining it . All our proposed projects were conceived, developed, and prioritized by resident input and voices.
• Community Partnerships - We directly contracted with five community-based organizations for the Bayview CBTP: BMAGIC, Hunters Point Family, CYC, El Centro, and BAYCAT. Our public outreach strategy, our planning process, and all of our project materials were developed jointly with this team. For our best example check out the Next Stop documentary filmed by the Girls 2000 program & BAYCAT.
• Community-defined Equity Index - To help represent those we couldn’t reach, we developed an Equity Index – a map showing the concentration of vulnerable residents across the Bayview that could be used to prioritize projects. The community defined how “vulnerable residents” was measured, ensuring the priorities of the community determined the Equity Index scores.

What’s Next? 

The SFMTA Board of Directors will consider adopting the draft plan in February. Between now and then, we welcome all invitations to present the plan before community organizations, events, and meetings in the months of January and February. To have an SFMTA staff member attend your group meeting, please contact project manager Christopher Kidd. At these meetings, we hope to continue the conversation with Bayview residents to ensure the plan is fully representative of the community’s voice and needs.

Our work in the Bayview will be ongoing, as we implement the Bayview CBTP. We have a Bayview CBTP survey to provide feedback on the draft plan. The feedback the survey will be incorporated to these projects as they move forward.

Published January 16, 2020 at 12:31PM
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