To the January 15th, 2026 regular meeting of the Transportation Commission.

Would the secretary please call roll?

Commissioner Ash here.

Commissioner Patch?

Here.

Uh Student Commissioner Kirsch here.

Vice Chair Krelling.

Absent.

Chair Brightman.

Present.

And I want to thank everyone for your patience.

We were just having a quick tech glitch as we got ready here, but happy to get the meeting started.

Let's move on to item number two on the agenda.

That's public communications.

This portion of the meeting is reserved for comment on items not on the agenda.

Under the Brown Act, the commission cannot act on items raised during public communications, but may respond briefly to statements made or questions posed, request clarification, or refer the item to staff.

At this time, I'll open it up for public comment.

Do we have any members of the public wishing to comment on items not on the agenda?

Looks like there's one.

Yes, thank you, but uh Jan Warren from the Woodlands.

Uh I want to thank whoever was responsible for the nice uh pictures and uh on the e-bikes and and all the writer and all the information.

Uh what I would like to suggest, and I don't know who uh would be in charge of this, but it would be helpful if we actually had someone ride some of these down our streets being videotaped because you know we have kids come out of our neighborhood, wide streets, so they can ride it you know anywhere on the street or uh because there's no you know, markings.

They get up to the intersection, there's a marking to cross.

Technically, I guess they shouldn't be on the sidewalk, but that's the safest thing.

Otherwise, they'd have to be in the left turn lane to turn left.

Then there's basically you've got you go from streets that have nothing you can ride to the right or in the middle.

Uh if you have a lane you're supposed to ride in the bike lane, and you know it it just you just go from one thing to another, and so the easiest thing to do is just stay in the street because you're changing too many times.

And as I'm driving down here, I don't know who goes from uh 20 miles an hour to 28 or 15 miles an hour uh on Ignacio with the cars going forty-45.

Uh how you would uh safely do a U-turn on Ignacio.

I just think visually it would be really helpful because it's hard enough to distinguish and I don't understand why the E scooters need a permit.

They're all wearing helmets, uh, if you're under 18, most of them are under 18 for everything.

Uh why they're the ones that need a permit because most of them are driving and don't have old enough to have a license.

So anyway, I just um like you all to continue to work on this and improve it because maybe you tweak a little bit.

Thank you for being here.

Are there any other members of the public who have comments on items not on the agenda?

Doesn't look like it.

We have no others.

All right, great.

Um, let's move on to item number three.

This is the consent calendar.

Um, first approval of the minutes.

Um let's um adopt the 2025, November 20, 2025 meeting minutes.

Um, is there a motion for approval of these minutes?

So moved, seconded.

Lovely.

Would the secretary please call roll?

Student commissioner Kirsch.

Aye.

Commissioner Ash, aye.

Commissioner Patch.

Aye.

Vice Chair Krelling, absent.

Chair Brightman.

Aye.

Okay, that's done.

We will move on to number four.

That's items for consideration.

And we have a couple items tonight.

The first is the application for Transportation Development Act Article 3 funds for Newell Avenue Improvements.

At this time, I invite staff to make their presentation.

Commissioners, hello.

My name is Rashad Cover.

I am an associate engineer with the CIP department, and today I'm here to speak about the Newell Avenue Improvements, a project we are considering to submit for the Transportation Development Act grant.

Just a little background information.

The Transportation Development Act Grant or TDA, TDA grant, is distributed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, also known as MTC, and these are funds for pedestrian and bicycle projects allocated annually on a per capita basis to the nine counties and incorporated cities under MTC's region.

Each jurisdiction may submit one project per cycle.

And typically in Warner Creek, we apply when this is offered to us, and historically, we received between sixty thousand and a hundred and twenty thousand of grant funding.

Project considerations.

How do we pick a project?

City staff explore locations with the potential for vehicle and pedestrian or cycle cyclist conflicts.

Based on our previous experience, we determined that a competitive project would need community support through project outreach, significant progress in design, and needs to be fully funded.

With that being said, we landed on bicycle improvements on Newell Avenue.

A little project background.

The plan improvements are from City Limit to Broadway.

Some of the destinations off of Newell Avenue include Kaiser Hospital, Whole Foods is just a Newell, office space, residential homes.

Provides connection to our regional trails, including the Iron Horse Trail and Lafayette Moraga Trail.

And just on the right, we have a screenshot from Google showing local bicycle networks.

And it's mostly in the north-south direction, with gaps in the east-west direction.

And we have Newell Avenue circled in red, and this project will help close that gap.

So what's our vision for Newell Avenue?

We will like dedicated bike lanes, both at street level with a raised buffer, as well as raised bike lanes, which put the cyclists at sidewalk elevation, intersection treatments at South Broadway and Newell, including a scramble phase, which will allow pedestrians and cyclists to cross diagonally safely.

We like to reduce travel lane width in efforts to reduce vehicular speeds.

And we would like we also like to maintain all on-street parking where currently where it's currently at existing.

And here we have an image of the Broadway and Newell intersection.

We have Broadway Plaza Parking Garage.

Just to the left there, we have the Whole Foods parking lot and the Iron Horse Trail.

And here we have our design for the Newell and Broadway intersection.

This project is currently funded and in design, and it's funded by the OBAC 3 grant.

And you can see the scramble phase I mentioned before, allowing pedestrians and cyclists to cross diagonally.

We're removing the right-turn slip lane and installing bull bouts, narrowing vehicular travel lanes, and you can see the raised bike lanes in front of the Whole Foods parking lot.

So the OBAC 3 grant is for intersection improvements only, which is why we would like to submit this project for the TDA grant so that we can have grant funding for the full corridor.

Street level bicycle lanes with raised buffers, as well as high visibility pavement markings.

This is on Newell Avenue facing west between Maria Lane and South Main Street, just adjacent to the Chase Bank parking lot, and as you can see, we are converting one eastbound travel lane to a buffer bike lane.

So the estimated cost we anticipate this project costing around a hundred and eighty thousand with a hundred and forty-five thousand being uh towards construction cost and thirty-five thousand for design admin and contingency soft costs.

We are seeking a hundred a hundred thousand dollars through the grant, and as I stated before, this project is fully funded through traffic impact fees.

However, if we are awarded the grant, this will free up funds for future bicycle and pedestrian projects.

So why am I here?

We request that the commission recommend to the city council that staff submit the Newell Avenue Improvements Project for the TDA 3 grant call for projects, and with that I'll open to questions.

Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation.

Do any of the commissioners have questions?

Student Commissioner Kirsch.

Um, what's your timeline for completing this project?

Well, the timeline uh depends on the if we're awarded grant funding or not.

However, we are currently designing and we would like to see these improvements at least started within the next year or so.

Okay.

That's it, thank you.

Um I just I think you said this.

I just wanted to make sure I heard it right.

There's no impact to on-street parking in that area and to the flow.

There's just enough room there to add all these bike lanes sort of by narrowing the lanes and redesign everything, right?

Correct.

We we plan to keep on-street parking.

Uh we will be reducing the travel lanes uh eastbound down from two lanes to one, however, we are we're right sizing the corridor.

Uh, historically, uh, this was this provided access to 680.

There was an on off ramp off of Newell.

However, that's not the case anymore.

And based on our studies, we believe that providing converting one through travel lanes to a bike lane wouldn't affect operation negatively.

And yes, we are keeping parking where on street parking is present.

Yes.

Thanks.

Do you have any questions?

Sorry.

I was looking at the diagram.

Um okay.

So you did answer one of my questions, uh, which was why only the eastbound was getting rid of a lane.

Um my other question is why are you considering multiple types of bike lane and not just making it consistent for the whole length?

Um our design was based on um existing conditions, uh geometric constraints, and funding that's currently available now.

So based on those factors, we believe this is the best approach for the corridor.

Okay.

And then if the project is gonna cost 180, why are you only asking for 100?

So the TDA funds are for construction only, and uh previously uh per commission's recommendation, we upped our request amount, and we actually received the requested amount, which was about 66% of the construction cost, and we believe that this hundred thousand is an appropriate amount to request for us to be competitive, and it's in line with that sixty-six percent from last year.

Great.

Thank you.

And uh my fellow commissioners covered my questions.

I I don't think I have anything else.

Um, so uh at this time we'll open up this item for public comment.

Do we have any members of the public wishing to comment on this item?

Looks like there's one.

Please feel free to come forward.

I have you filled out a card yet to comment.

Excellent.

Okay.

And you'll have two minutes, please.

I'll try and squeeze it in.

It'll be easy.

Uh my name is Tony.

Tony Almeida.

I live on Newell Avenue on the other side of the freeway by uh Park Meet Elementary and uh the other elementary school on Tice Creek.

And um I've traveled down, I've commuted down Newell on my bicycle for over 10 years.

I continue to commute on Newell Avenue, and uh it's pretty good in the eastbound direction.

The westbound direction, especially from uh South Maine to California is pretty hairy and there's a lot of traffic, they're going fast.

Most of the people are in the right lane, gonna turn right, so um riding my bicycle in the right lane is not really a good consideration.

If you go into the next lane, the middle lane, it's fine because that's the way I want to go.

I want to go uh keep going past California into Saranap, but if I go into that lane too early, the cars coming behind or going very fast.

So I hope you take um those comments into consideration.

I think the city has done some previous uh improvements um over by CVS on and going south on California, other things like that that I appreciate.

Um if there is any chance for me part or any members of the community could to contribute to this, rather than just looking at it at an engineering or a uh city management perspective, I'd be happy to join those discussions.

Alright, thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Are there any other comments?

I don't think so.

Okay.

Did you want to add something before we go to commissioner comments?

Thank you for your time.

Any comments from the commissioners?

I guess just the only comment I have is uh just to make sure that the stakeholders are involved.

Um, like Lawson Miss High School, Kaiser, and then also just the general public as the project moves forward.

Thank you.

Commissioner Ash.

Great.

Um I think this is exactly what we've talked about and been working on.

And um, yeah, I just appreciate this because it fits into an improved downtown, making it easier multimodal, um, making it safer to encourage multimodal slowing traffic, but not um not altering that traffic pattern, right?

And so I think it's just a win-win and on the grant.

Um I've represented us on the CCTA Citizen Advisory Committee.

And every time somebody talks about a grant for something, um I think Walnut Creek does a lot better than a lot of other cities uh that are smaller or less sophisticated, and you guys as staff do a great job on getting that compared to what I understand, those other cities around this.

So I really just want to give you guys a shout out on that.

Uh thank you for your presentation.

Very good and to the point.

Uh I'm love this project.

Uh, glad that we are looking for a different source of funding so that we can open up the other funds for other projects.

Cause I know we all have a lot that we want to accomplish.

Um, and yeah, I think the amount that you're seeking is a good amount, especially given that we were awarded the amount that we were asked last time.

So thank you for remembering that.

Um, yeah, good to go.

All right.

Um I second pretty much all of what they said.

Um, thank you for your work on this.

Um it's been really fun to see over the course of the years us connect all the different pieces um to help out our, you know, folks who are traveling on wheels or or pedestrians.

And so I think this is a really great project that will help um close a gap there in an important area.

Um, and I look forward to seeing what else is going to come.

Um, and thank you, yes, for asking for as much as we can.

Um I think that's important to just shoot for the moon.

Thank you for doing that for us.

Um, and with that, is there a motion um to recommend to the city council that staff submit the New Well Avenue Improvements Projects for Consideration by the county's TDA subcommittee for 2627 TDA article three funds?

So moved.

Second.

Secretary, please call roll.

Uh student commissioner Kirsch.

Hi.

Uh Commissioner Ash.

Hi.

Commissioner Patch.

Hi.

Uh Vice Chair Curling's absent and Chair Brightman.

Aye.

Thanks.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Commissioners.

Uh-huh.

All right.

Our next item for consideration is um CCTA's walk and roll program update.

At this time, I invite staff to make their presentation.

Good evening.

My name is Kara DeYoung, and I am thrilled to be here.

Um I have my my notes right here.

Um sharing about the walk and roll program that's kind of gaining speed in the TransPack um area.

Just as an overview, this is the second year that this program um noted by school years has been random.

We piloted it in 2024-25 school year, so with seven initial schools that joined.

And this is the second year of the program, and we currently have 11 schools rolling as of today, with five more coming on in the next couple of weeks, including two in Walnut Creek.

So let's take just a quick step back.

Here we go.

Um I am relatively new to the 501 Contra Costa team, um, but I've been working in school programming for a long time.

First as a parent, volunteer and community bicycle advocate, and then now hired by advanced mobility Group to work on the 501 Contra Costa team with in Street Smarts and to expand the weekly walk and roll program that I created into a more regional program.

So our team we manage all the vehicle trip reduction programs that the CCTA offers in the TransPEC and Transplan regions, as well as a few programs throughout the entire Contra Costa County, including Street Smarts, which is our elementary school traffic safety assemblies, and walk and roll, which we're going to be talking about today, and then 511 Contra Costa, which offers a load of programs to encourage commuters, alternatives to driving in single occupancy vehicles.

Alright, with that, let's talk about walk and roll.

All right, so what is walk and roll?

Walk and roll is a customized encouragement program that motivates the entire niche community to use active transportation or carpool.

And we use community development and behavior change strategies, including investing in local leaders at the elementary school level and customizing the look of the program through an individualized walk and roll logo that matches their school mascot.

These strategies encourage not only students but also their parents to use active transportation.

And it's had some great effects, which I'm excited to share with you tonight.

So the way that it works is that every student is given a barcode scanning tag, as you can see on the screen.

And we I have some examples.

And once a week, with the help of school volunteers, a school hosts walk and roll day.

So let's say it's Wednesday, walk and roll Wednesday, and volunteers check in students as you can see in the picture using an app called Active For Me, which tracks trips, CO2 saved, and miles traveled.

The motivation for students comes from the fact that every fourth trip a student completes, they're given a charm.

So you can see the trip charms there on the right, the smiley faces, and additionally, weather charms are given on rainy days, and there are five special days to celebrate school holidays and encourage those who can't participate on a regular basis to be able to participate a few times a year, and those are on the left side of the picture.

We like to say that this is an all-inclusive program because carpooling and busing are also included.

So parents can register their child's tag, they don't have to in order for a child to participate, but if they choose to, they can receive student stats by text and email, like you see here on the picture.

And it also serves as an alert that students made it to school, especially for those older kids who start coming by themselves sometimes after the program begins to be rolled out.

We asked the school to do three things.

The first is to find volunteers, and this is you can imagine is the most difficult part of starting a program, but through successful publications and mini talks like this one to various stakeholders, schools are now coming to us to start programs.

We ask the volunteer team to count bikes every day, bikes and scooters, and this helps us to know the hard data and see the change that is happening at a school, for instance.

This is at Pleasant Hill Elementary School, the school that I created and started the program at in 2022.

And at that time, the average count of bikes and scooters was around 10, but we'll pretend it was 20 to give like a huge margin of error.

Three years later, this uh is the data.

So walk and roll Wednesday, you can see averages 90 bikes and scooters, but the effect is throughout the entire week, with the rest of the week averaging around 70 bikes and scooters.

So we know the program's having an effect over the whole week, even though it's only run once per week.

And we also know that with this bike count data that it's assuring us that even though people might be cheating and not accurately reporting what their transportation mode is, we're still seeing a significant change.

Okay, the last thing that we ask schools to do is to advertise the program and get the word out, and we help them do that by providing easy to use templates and graphics, and we also run an Instagram account for walk and rolls so schools don't have to create their own content, but they can just use ours.

In return for all these things that the school does, we provide the funding for everything that you can see here, including like a little storage bin, so it's a turnkey situation for the school, and we as well we provide training from our team so that their team can feel confident that running a weekly program with hundreds of people every single week won't be intimidating, but in fact, feels super fun and important.

Here's a more in-depth list of the items that we provide, including the one year subscription to the app, scan tags, graphics for their particular school, the charms, all of the marketing material.

We provide a promotional video that we make for them so that they can show that in the school in order for everyone to know what's going on and get behind the program.

So that's the program.

That's how it works.

And in response, what are we seeing?

We're solving a lot of problems.

One of the reasons why the program is becoming so popular is because it does have a huge effect on attendance, and this is why the schools are buying in.

Well, in part.

So on walk and roll day, you have a far less long car line.

And that's one of the reasons why we like to say this program is for everyone.

So even if people are driving, they're benefiting as well.

So let's like we're all on the same team, look out for each other, and let's all work together.

Another great uh side effect of this program has been community building.

So participation improves my child health.

90% of people say yes, below that, the program improves my community.

90% of people agree and strongly agree to that.

And in the top right, I'm meeting more families by participating.

Um, more than 50% of people say yes, yes, I am.

And then, of course, we also have kids' well-being.

Children's well-being is improved through this program as noted in research that after 20 minutes of walking, students can complete learning tasks more quickly and accurately, and I think we just know it's common sense.

Good job exercising, getting to school, getting your wiggles out, etc.

Um, and then another thing that we're seeing with this program is that with more walkers and bikers, we're normalizing active transportation and making it safer for those who must use this mode by heightening awareness and creating more empathetic drivers.

And in surveys that we've done, a lot of parents have reported becoming more empathetic drivers because their kids are now walking and biking to school.

Okay, let's look at some more data charts before I finish.

This is the first year, 24-25.

We had seven schools enroll, and so you can see by week 22.

So the weeks of school on the bottom, the number of participants up the top, and then the colors are each school.

So by week 22, we were hitting over a thousand students walking and biking and carpooling school every week, and then getting to its highest over 1,200 students.

With this result, we were able to um sorry there were over 2,800 people participating in the program with almost 1500 gallons of gas saved, over 30,000 total trips from walk and roll days.

So there were the numbers were huge.

But additionally, we were able to show that 417 tons of CO2 emissions were reduced throughout the entire school year on all the days, and 1.2 million total school year vehicle miles reduced.

So it's a very practical result to this little simple program.

Okay, and this is exciting because this is this school year.

This school year we have 11 schools, like I said, and over 2,000 children walking biking and carpooling school, with five more coming on in the next couple of weeks.

So I'm hoping my personal goal is to see those numbers at 3,000 by the end of this school year, which is then exciting when you think about what that's gonna translate to in terms of CO2 emissions and vehicle miles reduced.

Another fun statistic to look at is the average bike count.

So if we look at all the schools and what their average bike count was, we have we they start counting the bicycles like one or two months before walk and roll starts.

So together it's about 121 bikes parked at school, but after walk and roll starts, it'll it doubles that number.

Another um knock-on effect that we've seen in Pleasant Hill, because that's the city that's had this going the longest, as of this year, all three feeder schools that go into Pleasant Hill Middle Um have walk and roll programs from one to three years, and so this year their bike racks just busted open.

And so 501 Contra Costa was able to buy purchase them seven new ones, which they have filled, and um parents were installing it.

That's what you see there.

So if one one side note is we can purchase bike racks for schools, which is great, and we love seeing this, and we're interested to see what happens in the next three years when this same cohort gets into College Park.

So who's enrolled?

Your favorites, Murwood Mustangs, and Park Mead Panthers, they're starting up Murwood is going to be having a walk and roll Friday program starting on January 23rd, and Park Mead starts Wednesday, February 4th.

You're invited to come on down any Friday or Wednesday, Fridays at 7 30 a.m.

and Wednesdays at Park Meet at 8 30 a.m.

We'd love to see you at the launches.

You can see this program up close and personal.

And here's just a list of all of the programs that are running throughout the TransPac area, and um we hope to we we have more coming actually, but we're so busy that we're we're just kind of pushing them off till after February.

All right, and I think that brings me to the end of my presentation, and I would love to answer any questions if you have some.

Okay, do commissioners have questions?

Uh yeah, I just have a few questions.

Um first, is active transportation just like walking and biking or yeah, well, and scooting, skateboarding, skating, and we do talk about that um in our promotional materials.

But yeah, anything that's human-powered, when it comes to like electric bikes and scooters, that's where um we do it's nice that we're the same program with Street Smarts, and we do a lot of education around that at the schools, so that comes hand in hand.

Um, and that isn't typically what we run, we don't typically run into problems with that at elementary school level.

It's more middle school and high school that are dipping into the electric vehicles.

Okay, and um, is this program geared more for like elementary school students or also are you also looking to include high schoolers and older kids?

So at the minute, this program walk and roll is an elementary school program and paid for by TFCA.

Um, and we are hoping that in time we can create something off of this for middle school and high school because it would be silly not to.

And then uh my last question is uh going back to the graphs, um, maybe we can go back to the slide.

Tell me which one.

Um, the one of the box diagrams, um, and it had the days of the week.

Um, this, yeah.

Um, do you know why there's um like a significant increase on Wednesday, or is that just a coincidence?

That's walk and roll day.

So this whole program is once a week, walk and roll Wednesday.

So at this, well, walk and roll day.

At this school, it's walk and roll Wednesday.

So you would expect on the day where the program is running, like you're getting charms, you're getting excited.

We have a uh much bigger intake of bikes and scooters.

But my point with this was that the rest of the week is also affected, even though you're only checking children in and giving reward on one day a week, the rest of the week, because habits are building, and parents are now comfortable with the idea of going with their children or maybe letting their children go on their own.

Now, not everybody.

That's why we have carpooling and busing involved as well.

Because maybe you can't, but if you can, even if I I always say in Holland that it's like 30% of transportation is bikes, so if a school can hit 30% of their enrollment, then which this school has, that's an incredible number that's success, and that's gonna have a knock-on effect for the rest of your um community because then they're gonna see what's happening, and then more people do it, and that's also what we've seen at this school.

Thank you.

Sorry, so much more than you wanted to hear.

Yeah, can I I'll I'll build on I think this slide.

Um, trying to figure out how to ask what I'm trying to get to.

So is the bottom like the bottom single line?

Is that what you're saying it was before the program?

Sorry, no, that's the range.

So these this chart is showing you from the 24 25 school year what the range was.

So, like on the lowest day of that year on the Wednesday, let's say, they had like 42 bikes and scooters.

Probably it was freezing or raining or something was happening.

The fifth graders were at outdoor education camp, and then at the top the highest number is the top bit of the thing.

So they had almost 120 bikes and scooters parked one day.

So uh help me understand, and I think you were talking to it, it might be on a different spot.

What's like the base, right?

Like, so we know, hey, at Pleasant Hill Elementary, it was 30 bikes on an average day last year, and now our average is the 75, right?

I'm just I think I don't understand what the base is to see the overall increase.

Okay, I have a beautiful slide, and I did not put it in this one because I was feeling like I always say it, and Matt's seen it like four times.

Um so I'm really sorry, but yes, we can look at the increase year on year on year.

So if we you're just gonna have to believe me, I can send this to you later, but let's say Pleasant Hill Elementary, their average in the first year 22-23, I think was 120 participants, and then in the second year it was a hundred and fifty, and then in the third year a hundred and sixty, and this year they're in their fourth year, and it's close to two hundred participants.

So we can also do the same with the bike count and look at the average bike count.

The problem with the bike count, I will tell you, is that it relies on the uh volunteer team to input it.

And so some of the volunteers, you know, don't, which is totally normal and fine.

But this particular school, because it's been going for so long, they do have a very good um system in order for us to be able to look back at all the counts.

So we do have a good average where we know that at the beginning before the program started, it was like 10, and then it was 35, 55, and now 70.

But you'll have to believe me, I can send you, I can follow up with some with some charts.

Yeah, if you can, that's great.

Because I just was curious, like how I mean I I know in my neighborhood, which isn't on this, there's a ton of kids riding already.

So I'm just trying to understand what's that base and yeah, how does this build upon the base?

But yes, okay, are is your one of your schools on the no?

Is it Indian Valley?

Is it bike drivers?

It's a good school.

It was 10 bikers before pre-program, before the program, like before, because I was just a mom who was like, I want to make some change here.

So m we we were counting bikes in 2019, and there was 10, 10 people, five were me and my kids and friends, and then five more.

And then now this is four years later.

Uh you can see that it's much more than that.

Okay, thank you.

I think you're getting to to where I was.

So thank you for helping.

No, those are just my questions and my comments are for later.

Okay.

Um, but this was helpful at understanding what I was trying to understand.

Okay.

All right.

Um, so you mentioned a bunch of the things that they get uh and the first line was the one-year subscription to the app.

What happens afterwards?

We keep we keep well, as long as the program's funded, then we keep renewing the the app for the school doesn't have to know for it.

Like so those that are in the second year of the program, they're provided with the app and the charms and extra tags and stuff to keep the program rolling year on year.

Um as as long as there's the programs funded, then they get to stay in and keep going.

Brings me to my next question.

Where are you getting your funding from?

Is it just from 511 or so our this program is funded by um the T the TFCA grant?

So through Barry Air Bay Area Air District, and um that's part of the reason why.

Well, I'll just leave it at that.

It's a TFCA grant.

Yeah.

Um, and then you had one slide that I believe it was for this year with the weeks.

What happened week 10?

Oh, Martinez was in school, but Mount Diablo Unified wasn't.

And so though that was to Martinez schools alone, still hitting like 400 students, though.

I was just curious what happened there.

I really need to just put that on the slide.

Um has there been any problem with thefts like helmets getting stolen or um tires or anything of that nature being reported?

No, I mean, so our Street Smarts program provide has funding to provide helmets and locks.

So we provide those to the schools if needed.

Uh there's never been a report of uh yeah, vandalism.

There has been a few, a couple, I would say less than five, maybe even less than three reports of bikes being stolen.

Um, but that's why we then added the locks, so because that shouldn't be a reason why people aren't biking to school.

I think one of them was a mistake, like a kid grabbed a similar looking bike, but two of them they weren't found.

Um I had another question now for I forget what it is.

So I will pass it over to our chair.

All right, we'll come back to you if you remember.

Um so e-bikes can or cannot participate.

They can.

It's not illegal for type one or class one e-bikes, right?

So they can.

It's just that it's typically not an issue at elementary school.

Right.

So it hasn't really been something that we've had to deal with much.

Okay.

Um, so you haven't uh has so there has has there been much of a need for education around safety on e-bikes, then a little bit, and to be honest, mostly to parents, and so we've been able to send information to principals and to the walk and roll coordinator to distribute to parents about what the law is and how wearing a helmet, even though you're over 18 could help and things like that.

Yeah, cool.

Um, you mentioned that you're funded by a grant with an acronym that I can't remember to repeat.

Um is that grant time limited?

Yeah, it's a one-year grant.

We were reapply for it repeatedly.

Okay.

The TFCA is transfer transportation fund for clean air.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah.

And um, do all schools do just one day a week?

Okay, because of the time intensity of the I mean, like we said at the beginning, and if you're parents, you know, like bandwidth is low.

And at schools, it's already difficult to get volunteers.

So typically uh in the first year, the reason why we only had seven is in part because when you approach a school and say, hey, start a new program, you need volunteers.

Everyone's like, I don't have volunteers.

I don't even have volunteers for like lunch duty.

But what happens is typically this program recruits different volunteers than the average volunteer and who's been involved previously.

And so that's part of the reason why it's I I think been successful, because it's dipping into a different parent group who then gets on boarded with helping at the school.

So it's a win-win uh for everyone.

And all that said to answer your question, it's kind of a lot to ask for to do it more than once.

And once we saw the data that it's affecting the whole week, then it was like, well, we don't need to do it more than once.

Yeah.

Um do you coordinate with um like bike to work and school day to help promote the program?

Yeah.

So our, so like I said, we're the same group, but we do all these different things.

511 Contra Costa, um, still me, still our group.

We are the ones who coordinate for um part of Contra Costa's bike to work day, and we do all of the bike to school day stuff, so we bring like um incentives to schools for that.

So yeah, it's all overlapping all together.

Great.

Did you remember your question?

I did.

Um do the students get to choose their own charms, or is it like this is the charm you get for your first one?

This is the second one.

This is the No, where we're doing thousands of people every week.

So it's pretty standardized at this point.

Let's be honest.

When I was doing it as a mom, I'm like, yeah, choose.

But um now we have trip charms, which are the which are the um oops, sorry, which are the little circles, the little smiley faces.

And then also the special charms are given on a particular day.

So it's like Valentine's Day charms will be given out on the week before Valentine's Day, which is a Saturday.

And so part of the training that we do is to talk about these sorts of things, like how to handle hundreds of children.

So for instance, not giving choice, but just good job, you got one and being excited no matter what.

Okay, any further questions before I go to public comment?

Okay, at this time I'll open it up for public comment.

Do any members of the public have any comments on this item?

Okay, our one member of the public does not have a comment.

Thank you for being here still, though.

Um, okay, at this time, are there any commissioner comments?

I mean, I think it's a great program, and there's clearly like benefits like better attendance and performance and just overall well-being.

So yeah, that's it.

Uh I've heard from parents and kids who go to the schools that have had this and they love it.

Their responses how excited it is, and I do hear that the tangential, now they're like, Oh, let's just ride every day, Dad.

And um, and it's having that my big piece of feedback is regardless of like how the money is coming, the 511 program is through CCTA, and there's no this is a program that is literally touching people.

Uh I mean, I know it's only in a couple of cities now, but as it continues to expand, this is a good way to promote where our tax dollars for transportation and Contra Costa are going to.

And I would encourage you guys to have a conversation that somehow can we brand none of these tags and charms are branded.

Well, they are.

Okay.

So just yeah, I would encourage this as a great way to to show where does all that where does it come from?

How does it go?

You know, it's why cities put up signs that says this program is funded, this construction program is funded by X, right?

And so um I would just encourage you to use this to promote the great work that CCTA and and you guys are doing.

Do I get to comment back or no?

I have to be quiet.

Okay, yeah.

You could do whatever, yeah.

Oops, sorry.

Yeah.

Here it's on.

So I saw that, but yeah.

Okay, I want to comment back.

Yes, you're absolutely right, and we do have opportunities to do that.

We do have branding on everything that we have, the banners, the stickers, uh, the tags, actually.

If you look at the bag of these tags, and the great thing is exactly as you say, because I go into every school and give a presentation, I get to talk about what the CCTA is to most people who don't even know.

So it is um we're trying to do exactly what you said.

But I I I take your comment very intensely.

Thanks.

That's great work.

Thanks.

Uh yeah, I love this program.

I wish it existed when I was still in school.

Um I did not like taking the bus all the time.

Um I would be really excited to see how we can transition it into middle school and high school, um, but particularly middle school because those students still can't drive.

Um, and so I'm hopeful that these cohorts that you're training now will take the lesson to middle school um and then maybe demand it there.

Um, hopefully.

I'm very excited that it's expanding in Walnut Creek.

That's great.

I do kind of echo the branding.

Yes, I see it here.

Um, but like I have friends that every time they take their kids to the library, they're like, this is what your tax dollars are paying for.

And so if you just kind of like make sure that that's in the education portion for the kids themselves so that they learn too that like this is this is why you engage in government at a young age, that would be really cool.

Um I spent my first two years of college at Santa Barbara, which is a bike campus.

Um, and that's kind of why I asked about the bike theft and whatnot, because that was a problem.

We had to register our bike so that if something got stolen, the police actually like had a little registration number with your bicycle.

And um, so even if you aren't having problems, I'd hope that some of the education stuff is like, what do you do with your bike when you're in public and not just in your safe middle, like portion of your hometown, right?

Like, um, that's so great that you're providing locks and everything, and just like do they carry their helmets into the school with them?

And if they leave it on the bike, are they being taught that you can't do that if it's not at school?

That that kind of education will be really good for them as well.

Um as they grow, because you know, I had a lot of friends who lost their bikes when we were in college.

Yeah, seats.

The the one wheel that's like you know, if you don't wrap it to the bike frame, it's really easy to steal that kind of stuff.

Um, like we ended up having two locks most of the time for our bikes.

Um, but great job.

Love this.

Very excited to see it come to Walnut Creek.

Yeah.

Great job growing this program.

Um I think getting on a bike or trying to pick some form of active transportation that's not easy, like getting into a car and going to school is something that takes a little bit of a nudge.

And I think that making it fun gives folks a nud.

So thank you for doing that.

Looks like it's effective and um getting folks to be more active.

Um so yeah, thank you for all of your work and thank you for being here tonight to do this presentation to us.

It was nice to learn about the program.

Um with that, if there are no other comments, um, then this was just an item to receive the presentation and provide comments to you.

Um so thank you again for being here.

There's no action that we need to take necessarily.

Um so with that we'll move on to our next item.

And we do have some stuff to give back to you.

Thanks for bringing these for us to do thank you for having me.

Very cool, very fun.

Noted all the feedback.

Appreciate it.

Okay, so we will move on to item number five.

And um, this is uh, I'd like to invite our commissioners on staff to provide their reports on activities um and or any announcements that you have.

Any uh announcements or reports?

No, no.

Commissioner Ash.

Um I guess this may not to be determined last day.

So um I just want to.

I don't know if I'm supposed to then say something or not, or what?

Give me some guys.

But I just want to shout out to the city staff.

Like over the the either way, like the six years that I've been here, we've had three secretaries, but a whole lot of people throughout the streets and public works team, and they do a great job.

Um I know that I work with a lot of cities in the day to day, and I think Walnut Creek is just really well run and it is a special place.

And a shout out to all my commissioners because I have learned from your perspectives and appreciate them along the way.

Um yeah.

So just thank you, everybody.

Thank you for all of your expertise, and hopefully maybe you can get an extension.

Do I want one?

If you want one, hopefully you can get one.

I don't really have anything to report on.

Okay.

Great.

And I'll just say yes, thank you.

The last six years have been really fun.

And I've really appreciated staff's patience and your willingness to educate us along the way as we take up um various issues and just general education around, you know, how our street systems work.

And um, so I I'm grateful that you're you all are here to make our community better.

Thank you for all of the work you do.

Um, do you have any reports for us?

Yeah.

Um, first the the curb plan, which you saw many times is passed uh in 2025, um, that did pass through council.

So thank you for many of your comments and input on that.

Um we had a study session with council and then we were able to pass it on consent with some minor comments.

So thank you.

Um and then yeah, I'll I'll say for Jared, um Commissioner Ash, thank you for all your input, many of it very direct and very helpful.

So uh thank you for your participation on the council for the last six years and and I hope you I hope you uh consider an extension if that allows for your schedule.

Uh Commissioner Brightman, thank you.

I think you've chair served for chair for three different times.

I remember presenting, and you've always been very supportive.

Um when I was a we lad presenting and uh appreciate that, all your positive comments.

So thank you both.

Thank you.

I even remember when our chair had a different name.

Right.

Okay.

So I think that's uh all our report outs for the evening.

So with that, we'll go on to item number six.

I hereby adjourn the January 15th, 2026 regular meeting of the Transportation Commission.

Uh the next regular meeting is scheduled for March nineteenth, twenty twenty six.