CITRUS HEIGHTS, CA (MPG) - At a special City Council study session this month, Council heard updates about the Multi-Modal Transportation Safety Program (MMTSP), which is now in its final phase. The MMTSP is funded by a CalTrans planning grant to develop a community-driven, transparent, and equitable process for prioritizing and addressing neighborhood traffic safety issues.

City Engineer Leslie Blomquist explained that each year the city receives a significant number of requests for traffic calming measures on local neighborhood streets. The number of resident requests has continued to rise over the last decade, indicating increased demand for safety improvements throughout the city. But without a process in place for prioritizing those requests and allocating the limited funding resources available for these improvements, a significant backlog occurred.

To remedy this, the City started working on the MMTSP last fall. Because the program is all about safety on local neighborhood streets, public engagement has been critical—including workshops, online surveys, social media outreach, and webinars. The input from residents was used to identify community preferences and priorities. Combining community priorities with a systemwide traffic safety analysis led to the development of an automated process for prioritizing and evaluating resident requests—and the interactive online portal is under development now. Priority ranking will be assigned based on location context, such as proximity to schools, parks, libraries, emergency access routes, government services, senior housing, etc.  The rankings will be weighted based on responses from the community survey.

Mary Poole of the General Services Department explained that when the portal officially launches, residents will be able to identify problem locations on the map and submit a request form with up to three issues they want to see addressed—including speeding, cut-through traffic, stop sign violations, crossing safety issues, reckless driving, inadequate street lighting, lack of sidewalks, etc. Residents can also submit requests over the phone or through the mail, and City staff will input those requests into the same system. All submitted requests will be shown on a public-facing interactive map where residents can see the ranked priority level and track the progress of their requests.

Requests that are marked as high priority will then undergo site-specific analysis and data collection—such as traffic volume, speed, and cut-through rates—to determine the need for countermeasures. Countermeasures will be implemented through a “progressive application,” said Blomquist. For example, if the issue is high vehicle speeds, they would initially implement cost-effective measures such as updated striping to narrow the traffic lanes and encourage slower speeds. The area would then be monitored for improvement. If the problem persists, then other more aggressive, and expensive, measures would be implemented, such as speed humps. “The goal here is really to maximize the use of the limited funding and to be able to address more and more concerns and get to the lower portions of the list as soon as possible,” said Blomquist.

The goal is to facilitate a transparent, community-driven process in which residents have contributed directly to the prioritization of projects. Staff will input the backlog of previously submitted requests into the online portal. For any requests over five years old, they will reach out to the submitter to determine if the issue is still occurring. The new process will ensure that community members have a clear understanding of the process and how their requests will be handled.

Another feature of the MMTSP is the promotion of a culture of traffic safety in the city. This is a call to action to Citrus Heights residents to build a sense of community responsibility. Neighborhood Champions have been “critical to the success” of the program, said Poole, thanking Chad Singleton, Aimee Pfaff, Susan Pointer, and Melanie Steffens for their active role working with their neighbors and promoting public engagement in the MMTSP process. Poole said that anyone can be a Champion, and the MMTSP Toolbox will offer yard signs and stickers as a way promote a sense of citizen ownership over street safety.

The MMTSP will come to the City Council for a final vote at the December 10 meeting. If approved, the program will launch in spring 2021.