Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program

The Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program (CPBSP) was launched by UC Berkeley SafeTREC (SafeTREC) in collaboration with California Walks (Cal Walks) to reduce pedestrian and bicycle fatalities and serious injuries in communities across California. The CPBSP prioritizes working in communities that are at disproportionate risk for road traffic injuries and addressing the safety needs of people who are underserved by traditional transportation resources and planning, e.g., older adults, people with lower incomes, people with disabilities, immigrant or refugee populations, and more. This year, the CPBSP continues to offer two tracks to better support communities’ safety needs. 

1. Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Training

2. Comunidades Activas y Seguras (Active and Safe Communities)

Applications are now closed for the 2025 CPBSP. If you would like more information about the program, or have questions, please contact us at safetrec@berkeley.edu.

Our team will work in the following communities this year: 

Follow-up support 

Former CPBSP participants are eligible for follow-up support to help their community’s implementation of programs, projects, and recommendations outlined in their community action plan. Email us at safetrec@berkeley.edu for more information. 

New this year! The CPBSP pilot follow-up program

On March 4, 2025 we launched our new follow-up webinar series as part of the Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program (CPBSP), aimed at educating and empowering community agencies, organizations and advocates working to advance safer walking, biking and rolling across California! The two-part virtual webinar series included:

• Webinar #1: How to build and strengthen a positive traffic safety culture (March 4, 2025). In this session, participants improved their understanding of traffic safety culture and its relationship to advancing safer roadways for all through Vision Zero goals and the Safe System Approach, and discussed tangible next steps to grow a positive traffic safety culture.
• Webinar #2: How to build and strengthen a coalition (March 18, 2025). In this session, participants learned how a coalition can help them achieve their safety goals, and identified two to three traffic safety issues to coalesce around, as well as potential stakeholders to engage in building their coalition.

Our approach

The CPBSP team adapted the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Safe System elements and principles to make it more impactful for grassroots community engagement. Specifically, we emphasize the role of community-based expertise and strengthening collaboration between transportation professionals and communities to create lasting safety and mobility improvements. Within the Safe System framework, the team: (1) reviews pedestrian and bicycle crash data and safety strategies; (2) facilitates a walking and biking assessment; (3) strategizes with participants to define specific community pedestrian and bicycle safety goals and actionable next steps; and (4) empowers participants to strengthen collaborations to implement specific walking and biking safety recommendations. 

The program engages residents and non-traditional partners in active transportation planning and strengthens the capacity of community partners to create safer and more accessible streets for those walking and biking in their neighborhoods. We do this by: 

• Educating participants on pedestrian and bicycle safety strategies and best practices, including an adapted Safe System Approach and Safe Routes to School;

• Training communities to conduct walking/biking safety assessments to identify community concerns and opportunities for improvements and other data collection to advance their safety goals;

• Providing site-specific support, including traffic crash data analysis, outreach, pedestrian/bicycle safety research, and activities to develop a community-driven safety action plan; 

• Sharing resources on open source mapping technology and crowdsourced data strategies;

• Engaging communities with large monolingual Spanish-speaking populations in active transportation safety discussions and creating shareable educational content;

• Developing a detailed report summarizing the community’s challenges and opportunities for improvements and context-sensitive recommendations informed by community feedback; and

• Offering follow-up technical assistance to communities that previously received training to support their pedestrian and bicycle safety efforts.

CPBSP projects

The Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Training (CPBST) Program

The Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Training Program (CPBST) works with local residents, agency and organization staff, and transportation safety advocates to understand a community’s walking and biking safety concerns and advance their pedestrian and bicycle safety goals. We work to strengthen collaboration between all safety partners, discuss transportation safety information and local crash data, and collectively develop a community-driven safety action plan. Our team works with a local Planning Committee to customize the workshop to fit the unique needs of each community. Learn more here

Comunidades Activas y Seguras (Active and Safe Communities)

The CPBSP team developed Comunidades Activas y Seguras (CAyS) to better serve communities with a large monolingual Spanish-speaking population. This program takes a culturally and linguistically sensitive approach to engaging communities in active transportation discussions and decision-making. Through collaborative work within a Safe System Approach framework, the CAyS program helps strengthen rapport between residents, local officials, agency staff, coalitions, and other stakeholders. Our team works with a local Planning Committee to customize the workshop to fit the unique needs of each community. Learn more here

Past projects

Peer Exchange Series

From 2022 to 2024, SafeTREC hosted a peer exchange training series each spring designed to support communities as they worked to implement the recommendations developed during their Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program (CPBSP) workshops.

During each 90-minute peer exchange, participants were introduced to the discussion topic, networked with peers, and shared about their successes and challenges as they work to make walking and biking safer in their communities. Visit the Peer Exchange Series webpage to learn more and access presentation slides and session summaries from prior year sessions.

Focus Regions Program

The Focus Regions program was a joint project of SafeTREC and Cal Walks. In 2015, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) designated seven Pedestrian-Bicycle Focus Cities in California based on their disproportionately high number of pedestrian and bicycle deaths. The goal of the project was to provide support to professional and community stakeholders in these cities in order to reduce pedestrian and bicycle fatalities. The California Focus Cities were San Francisco, San Jose, Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, Santa Ana, and San Diego. 

In 2021, the FHWA updated their Focused Approach to Safety to separate the pedestrian and bicyclist focus areas, feature speed management across all emphasis areas, and shift local stakeholder engagement to the regional level through metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs). Because of disproportionately high pedestrian and bicycle fatalities, California continued to be identified as a Focus State.  

Through September 2023, SafeTREC's Focus Regions Program supported local advocacy as well as community and agency partner efforts to engage and educate residents on pedestrian and bicycle safety in their city. We also provided customized technical assistance, regular support for data collection and analysis, and educational/outreach efforts. Learn more here

The Safe Routes to School Launch Program

The Safe Routes to School Launch Program was a joint project of SafeTREC and the Safe Routes Partnership. It was designed to assist communities in creating or strengthening Safe Routes to School programs by providing assessments, trainings, and technical assistance to increase the safety and health of their students. Learn more here

Impacts of the CPBSP

Research and program evaluation

The CPBSP team reviews the program and its impact on a regular basis. Please see below for a list of recent follow-up surveys, research briefs, and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the CPBSP:

• Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Training (CPBST) Program Workshop Follow-Up Survey Highlights: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020

• Connecting Public Health and Transportation - Applying Crowdsourcing and Community Engagement Principles to Traffic Safety. Jarah Crowner, Katherine L. Chen (2024).

• Equitable Transportation Planning for Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety through the Use of the Safe System Approach. Noelani Fixler, Lucia Ornelas, Kris Leckie (2024).

• Mobility Safety for California's Affordable Housing Residents: Co-locating Improvements. Kyler Blodgett (2024).

• Peer Exchange Series 2024: My community is eager to collaborate and grow! Where do we go from here? Areli Ariana Balderrama (2024).

• 2023 CPBSP Annual Report. Katherine L. Chen (2023).

• Toward a Better Understanding of Best Implementation Practice for the Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Training Program. Aqshems Nichols, Areli Ariana Balderrama, and Katherine L. Chen (2023)

• Conducting Community Engagement with a Safe System Lens. Katherine L. Chen and Jill F. Cooper (2021).

• How effective are community pedestrian safety training workshops? Short-term findings from a program in California. Jesus M. Barajas, Kate M. Beck, Jill F. Cooper, Ana Lopez, Amanda Reynosa (2019).

• Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Training Program Evaluation Report. Sarah Doggett, Kate M. Beck, Ana Lopez, Jill F. Cooper (2019).

Funding for this program is provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).