The California Transportation Commission kicked off 2019 by releasing its staff recommendations for the Active Transportation Program (ATP) Cycle 4 Statewide and Small Urban and Rural competitions. Even with new funding available, the program remained extremely competitive: fewer than 10 percent of applications were selected funding (54 in total), and the lowest scoring application to receive funding in the statewide competition received a score of 90. At first glance, applications to create plans and applications with non-infrastructure components seem to have outperformed other application categories, while almost half of the awarded money will go to just 10 large infrastructure projects. Applications that did not receive funding from the state will now be considered by the Metropolitan Planning Organizations for their portion of ATP funding; we hope that many more high-scoring applications will be funded.

With our partners, we are currently undertaking a more detailed analysis of the results to identify larger trends and improvements for the next cycle. We’ll have more to share on that analysis in the next newsletter.

Looking to our geographic focus areas, we were pleased to see several projects in Northern California selected by the state. Among the proposed awards are over $300,000 for planning in Fresno County, nearly $5 million for Safe Routes and more in the Airport Neighborhood in Modesto, another $700,000 for another Safe Routes project in Stanislaus County, $7 million for projects in Stockton, and nearly $2 million for a project in San Francisco. In Southern California, Riverside County is receiving $19 million in state funding for five projects, including two Safe Routes to School projects. San Bernardino projects will receive $9 million for two projects, and Orange County will receive more than $11 million for three Safe Routes to School projects.