Richmond’s Yellow Brick Road Project Wins $6.2 Million State Grant
Richmond, CA, November, 2015—The city of Richmond secured a $6.2 million Active
Transportation Program (ATP) grant from the California Transportation Commission (CTC) to build the first leg of the Yellow Brick Road in Richmond’s underserved Iron Triangle neighborhood.
Conceived of by local youth in 2008, the Yellow Brick Road (YBR) is envisioned to be a network ofbrightly stenciled, yellow bike and walking routes that connect key assets (schools, parks, churches, community centers, BART, Kaiser Hospital) of the Iron Triangle community together.
In a fiercely competitive statewide competition of 617 applications, the Yellow Brick Road proposal was 1 of only 86 projects selected by the CTC for funding. Richmond’s $6.2 million Yellow Brick Road grant was the third largest grant awarded in the State.
What set Richmond’s Yellow Brick Road proposal apart was the level of participation by Iron Triangle residents to create a new transportation vision for their neighborhood. Pogo Park, a Richmond-based nonprofit that works with local residents to transform little-used city parks into vibrant play spaces for children, spearheaded the effort to write Richmond’s winning ATP grant.
The city of Richmond and transportation engineers Fehr & Peers helped Pogo Park assemble the key data needed to make the Yellow Brick Road grant a success. The Yellow Brick Road was conceived by a grass-roots planning effort that involved hundreds of residents working in concert with city planners, community designers, health advocates and neighborhood activists over the past eight years.
The creation of the YBR is an answer to the poor and dangerous street conditions in the onesquare-mile Iron Triangle neighborhood, one of the most under-served neighborhoods in California.
In comparison with other Bay Area communities, bicyclists and pedestrians in the Iron Triangle have suffered a disproportionate rate of collisions with cars. According to Statewide Integrated
Traffic Records System (SWIRTS) data, between 2008-2012 there were 50 incidents of vehicular collisions with cyclists and pedestrians in this neighborhood. Local residents and the Richmond Police Department believe the actual number is significantly higher due to many unreported incidents. Local residents often can only travel safely in the Iron Triangle by car rather than walking or biking due to the dangers of local streets.
Contact
Toody Maher, Founder and Executive Director, toody@pogopark.org; 510-590-1716
Adrian Maher, Communications Director, adrian@pogopark.org; 310-922-3080
Chadrick Smalley, Capital Projects Manager–City of Richmond, Chadrick_smalley@ci.richmond.ca.us;
510-412-2067