MEMO

DATE: January 19, 2005

TO: ACTIA Pedestrian Plan Working Group

FROM: Victoria Eisen, Consulting Project Manager, Countywide Strategic Pedestrian Plan

Brett Hondorp, Alta Planning + Design, Toolkit Lead

RE: DRAFT TOOLKIT OUTLINE

Background

In addition to preparing the Alameda Countywide Strategic Pedestrian Plan, the Eisen|Letunic/Alta team will also be developing a Toolkit to help Alameda County jurisdictions and others enhance walkability throughout the County. The Toolkit will be aimed at public agencies, non-profit organizations, and individuals interested in improving Alameda County’s pedestrian environment through public policy, planning, design standards, education, and programs to encourage walking.

In general, the information, examples, and best practices contained in the Toolkit will not be developed from scratch; rather, the Toolkit will contain existing good models, either developed previously by the consultant team or in the public domain. Case studies and examples will be from Alameda County jurisdictions whenever possible. Where there are not yet local examples, we will turn to other parts of the Bay Area, California and, when necessary, national examples. The intent is to assemble this information into one easily-accessible resource tailored for an Alameda County audience. Most likely, each agency and other Toolkit users will modify the tools for their own particular environment.

In addition to producing a print version of the Toolkit, our team will also produce an online version. The online version will be essentially the same as the print version; however, it will be formatted for the web in an easily navigable manner and will include active hyperlinks for all listed web resources, email links to public agency staff with responsibility for pedestrian planning and infrastructure, and an online comment box for users to suggest new or updated resources to ACTIA staff.

Outline

Attachment D1 is the final draft of the Toolkit outline. This outline is primarily based on a list of tools developed in a workshop ACTIA held with local agency staff prior to the development of the Pedestrian Plan. At the workshop, participants listed the resources that they would find useful in their efforts to improve the pedestrian environment. Our team organized the tools that emerged from this workshop, as well as ideas that have been suggested at Pedestrian Plan Working Group meetings, into an introduction and seven categories. We also added a number of tools related to studies, research and land use which we feel will be useful in Alameda County.

Next Steps

This item will not be discussed during the January 26 BPAC meeting, due to limited time. Rather, please give written comments about the Toolkit outline to Rochelle by Friday, January 27, 2006. These could include:

· Categories or specific tools missing from the outline;

· An indication of which tools are most important; and

· Specific resources that you have found most useful in your efforts to improve the pedestrian environment.

In February, our team will develop the draft Toolkit – including summaries of and references to the resources and case studies listed in the final outline. We will bring the draft Toolkit to your March 9 meeting. Comments received at this meeting will be incorporated into the final Toolkit, which is scheduled to be completed in early April.