For this installment of Stories from the Field, UC Berkeley SafeTREC’s Karen Nguyen Vo chatted with Mario Anaya, community development director of the City of Tulare. In this installment, he talks to us about his work to improve safety for those who walk, bike, and roll in Tulare, including with the Comunidades Activas y Seguras (CAyS) program. Read his Safety Story below!
Can you describe your current role at the City of Tulare? What drew you to work for the city?
I currently serve as the community development director at the City of Tulare. In this role, I oversee and lead the Planning, Building, and Housing & Grants Divisions that comprise the Community Development Department
I was hired as a principal planner for the City of Tulare in 2018. After 10 years of working in the private sector as a consultant, I wanted to work in a role less in the background and more directly connecting with members of the community. I am grateful for my time in consulting as I learned a lot, worked with great people, and was able to work on many cool projects for clients like the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), LA Metro, cities, counties, the Veterans Administration, and school districts. Some of my favorite aspects of working in planning were speaking to community members about projects, urban planning, and the planning process. I felt I could do more of that and also be involved in more areas of urban planning by working for a city, and I especially liked the possibility of working in the community I grew up in, so when the Tulare opportunity came about, it seemed like just what I had been looking for.
What led you to study and work in urban planning?
Growing up in rural central California on dairy farms I had no knowledge about urban planning as an area of study or career. It was while I was an undergrad at UCLA that I took a public policy course I enjoyed that touched on urban planning, and then there was a new Urban and Regional Studies minor that had just started. The courses were taught by the excellent faculty at UCLA’s Urban Planning Department, and almost immediately I was hooked on the subject matter.
The theories and concepts I learned in class helped me think about the communities I grew up in, and while at UCLA I was also fortunate to travel within Los Angeles, to other cities, to Mexico growing up, and to Europe. Seeing how different communities are built and how mobility works in different areas really interested and motivated me to learn about best practices. As a capstone to my minor program, I was an intern for the LA County MTA (LA Metro) and was able to see firsthand the planning, construction, community outreach and various components of bringing major transit projects from concept to opening day. The internship gave me a small taste of urban planning as a potential career.
I subsequently sought employment and was able to start a career in planning, primarily environmental and transportation planning, for a private consulting firm.
How is the City of Tulare working to prioritize the safety of people walking, biking, and rolling?
Tulare is a rapidly growing community. Mobility challenges vary depending on the neighborhood. In older parts of town, we are looking at addressing missing infrastructure for non-motorized mobility (pedestrians, bikes, strollers, skateboards, scooters, etc.) in order to encourage and provide safe routes to schools, as well as for daily trips to destinations in the neighborhood without a car. In newer neighborhoods, we are looking to extend non-motorized networks of trails, sidewalks, bike lanes, and safe crosswalks as the neighborhood shifts from rural to more developed.
What inspired you to apply for UC Berkeley SafeTREC’s Comunidades Activas y Seguras (CAyS) program this year?
The communities around Roosevelt Elementary and Mulcahy Middle School have a large share of Spanish-speaking community members, and there are unique challenges for mobility in the neighborhood. The streets surrounding the schools lack sidewalks, bicycle lanes, or stop signs in some locations. In addition, Inyo Avenue is State Route 137 and traverses the neighborhood. It is a four-lane state highway with limited marked crossings and adjacent to the school campus. Students and parents have to cross this busy highway traveling to and from school.
The CAyS program seemed like a great way to engage the school and community, and items such as the Radionovela and presentations in Spanish are culturally and linguistically relevant to a large share of this community.
How will your work with the CAyS program encourage safety for people that walk, bike, or roll in Tulare?
The CAyS program encourages the awareness and continued conversations regarding the concerns and needs in the community for those that walk, bike, or roll. In addition, it provides a good example and useful data for the city in preparation of creating an Active Transportation Plan and seeking grant funding for projects that can address the identified needs and concerns that were highlighted through the CAyS program.
Your CAyS site focused on creating safe routes for students walking to and from Roosevelt Elementary School and Alice Mulcahy Middle School, as well as looking for opportunities to implement infrastructure and safety improvements to State Route 137 (SR-137). What lessons or valuable takeaways did you gain from taking part in the CAyS program this year?
The great thing about the CAyS program is that we were able to engage and hear directly from parents and school site staff about what the biggest needs and areas of concern are when it comes to creating an environment where families and staff feel more comfortable, capable, and secure in traveling to, from, and around the school sites and surrounding neighborhood. These are the folks that utilize the public spaces every day and notice patterns throughout the school year.
City and Caltrans staff have a certain level of technical training, but it is really the folks in the neighborhoods and school sites who are the best source of information regarding existing conditions, as well as what types of solutions and improvements will actually be of use in the community. It was rewarding and inspiring to have folks volunteer their time to help strategize and plan for solutions alongside staff.
Caltrans District 6 was also a partner throughout the process. Can you share how your collaboration with statewide entities like Caltrans can serve as a blueprint for other city planners who are planning traffic safety improvements on and/or near our highways?
Caltrans District 6 has been a great partner with the City of Tulare. Philosophies have changed at Caltrans and among city planners on how best to view and work with state highways—particularly those that traverse directly through residential and local commercial neighborhoods, such as SR-137.
In my career, multi-agency partnerships are always the most effective at planning and delivering great transportation projects. It starts with our agencies collaborating on the needs and challenges, then finding solutions that both agencies can support. Then there is the hard work of planning, designing, cost estimating, and acquiring the resources to implement a good project. Cities typically handle the local land use planning and Caltrans handles the state highway planning, but in order to build great communities, we need to continue collaborating and coordinating our efforts so that they are complementary.
In your perspective, what are the key elements required to create a successful active transportation project or program in Tulare?
One of the most critical elements is community engagement, such as the participation facilitated by the CAyS program. We need the ultimate users of our active transportation systems to be involved early on in helping the team identify existing needs and challenges, as well as making sure the users have direct input into possible proposed solutions to ensure they align with the actual needs and desires of the community. Otherwise it will be futile to plan and build an active transportation system that would not be useful to our community.
Another key element is education. We are a city that does not have a large, visible user base of pedestrians and bicyclists, aside from recreational users. Some of it is lack of infrastructure, but some of it is lack of awareness and seeing that active transportation can be for recreational purposes. We also need a viable way to increase mobility in our community on a daily basis to get from point A to point B. So the city will have to play an active role and also look to partner with the Tulare County Association of Governments (our local Metropolitan Planning Organization), Southern Sierra cyclists, and other bicycle groups, running groups, etc. to really encourage the community at large that we can become a place where it is safe, convenient, and enjoyable to walk, bike, and roll.
Some of it starts early with our youth and creating programming for them, all the way to adults and how it is never too late to start walking, biking, and rolling to get around Tulare. We have a great Rails to Trails project (Santa Fe Trail) that traverses the city from Northeast to Southwest, but we need to continue building out the rest of the network connecting the whole city.
Pursuing funding and partnerships at the local, regional, state, and even federal level can be a way to implement the projects necessary for the active transportation program.
What are your visions, either short or long-term, for the City of Tulare?
Short-term, we are just about to start a comprehensive Active Transportation Plan (ATP) and are also submitting applications for grant funding, such as ATP. Medium-term would be to pair some successful projects and an adopted ATP with a schedule of projects to be built, alongside educational and community engagement opportunities (bike rodeos and bike workshops, family bike ride, walk and run events, and safety workshops for those looking to walk, bike, and roll in their community in a safe manner). Long-term, I’d love to see more people in Tulare walking, biking, and rolling to get to work, to school, and for recreation throughout the city, and that we have a more comprehensive network of walkways, trails, and bike lanes to connect to the Santa Fe Trail.
If you had a superpower and could change anything, what would the future of active transportation safety look like?
If I had a superpower to instantly change anything as it relates to active transportation safety, it would be to instantly make it so that all (drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians) would practice safety and responsibility and that we would instantly have zero serious crashes or fatalities—particularly for those in our community who walk, bike, and roll. Even without the superpower to make such an immediate change, it is this desire and responsibility to plan for safe and convenient mobility that motivates me to keep doing whatever can be done on a project by project basis to hopefully make things a little better for all who will be living in our community, even after I am long gone.
This Stories From the Field interview was conducted in collaboration with UC Berkeley SafeTREC. The opinions and perspectives expressed are those of the interviewee and not necessarily those of SafeTREC or the Office of Traffic Safety.
