Bicycle And Pedestrian Advisory Board

City staff is submitting a Complete Streets Checklist to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to apply for grant funding to improve 42 bus stops throughout the South Santa Rosa Avenue area, including amenities like shelters and benches along with ADA accessibility upgrades and better wayfinding. This project stems from a community-led transportation plan adopted in December 2025 that identified transit improvements as a priority for the southeast Santa Rosa equity community, which currently has limited pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure along dangerous high-injury corridors. The bus stop improvements will be coordinated with a separate city project to add bike lanes, pedestrian crossings, and traffic-calming measures on Santa Rosa Avenue and Petaluma Hill Road, with no impact to the General Fund.

This is an informational update to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Board on the status of bike and pedestrian projects in Santa Rosa's Capital Improvements Program, with no action requested. The update covers recently completed projects like the Fulton Road HAWK crossing and Sonoma Avenue rehabilitation, along with projects currently under construction or in design phases, all aligned with the city's 2025 Active Transportation Plan. The staff intends to provide these updates multiple times yearly to increase transparency, with funding coming from various sources that do not impact the General Fund.

SCTCA staff is asking the Technical Advisory Committee to review and provide feedback on draft funding recommendations for transportation projects across Sonoma County using $118 million in available funding from federal, state, and local sources for fiscal years 2026-2031. The recommendations come after evaluation teams scored 72 project applications requesting nearly $800 million, and staff balanced the highest-scoring projects with geographic distribution across all county jurisdictions and alignment with regional goals for equity, climate resilience, safety, and housing affordability. The draft recommendations include major projects like SMART's rail and pathway extension ($409.8 million), transit bus purchases for zero-emission buses, and multimodal safety improvements, with final approval by the SCTCA Board scheduled for September 14, 2026, pending public and tribal input.

The Sonoma County Transportation and Climate Authority has recommended funding five of Santa Rosa's nine submitted transportation projects for a total of $23.1 million in Go Sonoma and local Measure M grants over the next five years, targeting infrastructure improvements on Stony Point Road, Farmers Lane, Joe Rodota Trail, Cleveland Avenue, and Southeast Santa Rosa corridors. The selections were made from 72 regional applications requesting nearly $800 million, with priority given to projects best addressing regional planning goals and multimodal transportation needs. The City will need to contribute approximately $7 million in local matching funds from its Transportation and Public Works Department budget to receive the state and county grants.