Metropolis Council on Thursday gave the inexperienced mild to creating a singular “highway customers” group to its lineup of citizen-led advisory commissions.
The Multimodal Transportation Fee will advise town’s Transportation Division director on design tips for the Full Streets coverage and different transportation plans.
That coverage was up to date in 2024 to deprioritize motor automobiles and design and construct neighborhoods not just for the protection of those that drive, but in addition for individuals who stroll, bike, use a wheelchair or public transportation.
The fee, which is able to meet quarterly, additionally will overview and replace insurance policies, procedures, plan metrics, benchmarks and amendments to metropolis code and obtain common updates on Transportation Division plans, insurance policies and initiatives.
Joey Pawlik, government director of the transportation advocacy group ActivateSA, known as the creation of a fee a milestone for town and teams working to create safer streets for all.
“That is one thing that the neighborhood has been asking for for fairly a while,” he mentioned. “I feel folks desire a everlasting seat on the desk for having these conversations about transportation, transportation insurance policies, plans and implementation of those nice concepts.”
The fee springs from the Bike Community Plan that Metropolis Council adopted in January, the 2024 Imaginative and prescient Zero Motion Plan and the Transit-Oriented Coverage Framework.
The Bike Community Plan contains greater than 600 extra miles of motorbike paths for San Antonio and will value between $3 billion and $8 billion over the following 25 years.
Knowledgeable by neighborhood enter and surveys, the plan goals to repair insurance policies which have “created a barrier to cyclists of all ages and skills” and establish attainable funding alternatives, in response to metropolis paperwork.
The town’s 2025 finances contains $3.5 million to start out work on the plan.
Pawlik mentioned the fee might additionally advise on the entire streets design information, which is now in improvement.
A council committee really helpful that the brand new 13-member fee embody district representatives “delicate to the targets of town for a secure, related, multimodal transportation community,” in response to metropolis paperwork.
It additionally desires appointed “at massive” members from organizations that signify the aged, individuals with disabilities and low-income people.
The fee could be addressing points for motorists as properly, Pawlik mentioned.
“This focuses on all highway customers,” he mentioned. “All of us are affected by roadway questions of safety in our neighborhood …. By having conversations about roadway design and different measures and making streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists, we’re additionally going to be making our [roads] safer for everyone, and make it possible for all of us get to the place we have to go.”
