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Planning commission backs ATP priorities, adds safety tech and school proximity changes
Summary
Commissioners received the Active Transportation Plan update, suggested edits to project prioritization, and unanimously approved a motion to add targeted safety projects (red‑light/speed cameras), expand school proximity scoring, and adjust the prioritization rubric.
The Cupertino Planning Commission on Sept. 9 received an update on the city’s Active Transportation Plan and unanimously endorsed a set of commissioner amendments to the plan’s draft project prioritization criteria and implementation recommendations.
Staff and the consultant team from Alta Planning and Design presented findings from phase 1 outreach and technical analysis. Matthew Schrader and Alta consultant David Wasserman described an analysis that combined origin‑destination trip data with pedestrian and bicycle “level of traffic stress” (LTS) scoring to identify gaps where short car trips and high stress routes overlap. The team reported nearly 30% of trips that start or end in Cupertino are five miles or shorter — distances that could be served by walking, biking or e‑biking if low‑stress routes were available — and showed maps of “gap scores” that prioritize locations where demand is suppressed by stressful conditions on the roadway.
Petra Reyes and Matthew Schrader reviewed public outreach: about 3,000 comments and more than 1,300 people engaged in phase 1. Participants ranked safety and accessibility as top goals and requested connected networks and better pedestrian facilities. Staff said the draft ATP includes nearly 40 program and policy recommendations, a menu of intersection and bicycle facility typologies, and a prioritized list of candidate projects to fund and design.
During discussion commissioners pressed staff on funding, the relationship between the ATP and other city programs such as Vision Zero, and how the proposed scoring treats connectivity, schools and parking impacts. Staff said the project is funded with the city’s TDA‑3 allocation from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and noted the MTC requirement that the plan be completed and adopted within a specified timeframe for reimbursement.
Public commenters — including students, parents and Walk by Cupertino representatives — asked the commission to increase the school proximity weighting from a quarter mile to a longer radius and to prioritize safety over parking and vehicular level of service. Multiple speakers urged the commission to remove so‑called "balance" penalties that would subtract points from projects that remove parking or vehicle lanes.
Chair Rao offered a motion that combined several commissioner requests into a package the commission could forward as formal feedback on the draft prioritization: add a project (or project set) to address the high‑injury network intersections using technology and other countermeasures (examples cited included red‑light cameras and speed‑detection cameras); increase the school proximity score to a half‑mile and add senior‑facility proximity to the access metric (pedestrian weighting); add a connectivity metric (replacing the sustainability label) that awards points for projects within a quarter‑mile of an existing trail or a Class 4 protected bike lane; rebalance the “balance” deductions so modest parking removals do not unduly penalize projects but more substantial parking or lane removals are reflected in scoring; retain technical approaches for adaptive right turns (restricting right on red where sensors detect bicyclists/pedestrians) rather than blanket no‑turn restrictions; and add language supporting partner bicycle education programs and baseline bicycle counts for key projects.
After brief debate and several friendly amendments, the commission approved the motion unanimously. Commissioners and staff agreed that the ATP would return to the commission and ultimately to the council as a draft plan after phase 2 outreach; staff will incorporate the commission’s edits into the scoring matrix and the draft implementation packages.
Staff emphasized the ATP’s next steps: phase 2 outreach this fall (pop‑ups, workshops and an updated web map), incorporation of public feedback, application of the prioritization criteria to produce a ranked project list, and production of implementation packages and cost estimates in advance of a draft plan for early‑year review and a targeted council adoption next spring.
