San Luis Obispo - Caltrans - State of California

SAN LUIS OBISPO REGION
COORDINATED HUMAN SERVICES-PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION PLAN
2.2 APPROACH TO THE LOCALLY-DEVELOPED PLAN FOR THE SAN LUIS OBISPO REGION
This coordination plan for the San Luis Obispo region builds upon its own history of coordination
planning, as expressed in the Social Service Transportation Action Plan of April 2002 with an
update in 2004. That plan established the framework for Ride-On Transportation services
provided through the Consolidated Transportation Services Agency (CTSA) and articulated
expectations for those from the San Luis Obispo Council of Governments (SLOCOG) in
response to identified needs.
The SLOCOG, as the Regional Transportation Planning Agency and the Metropolitan Planning
Organization (MPO), has the lead in preparing the required coordination plan for the San Luis
Obispo region. SLOCOG issued a competitive proposal process in the summer of 2006 and
selected the transit planning firm A-M-M-A to prepare this locally developed plan. In response
to the Request for Proposals, A-M-M-A identified three general purposes to guide the plan
development:
1. To identify and promote partnerships among transportation providers, including
existing transit providers who may be public or private non-profit transportation
programs, social service agencies and advocacy groups working with the target
populations;
2. To identify the roles and responsibilities of partners for projects identified, including
the lead and support partners in implementation;
3. To establish cost and project-element parameters over a four-year time horizon
which are consistent with potentially available resources.
The specific approach undertaken involved the following activities:
• A Local Outreach task which included a stakeholder survey, outreach
meetings and on-site and telephone interviews;
• A Background Information task to summarize relevant work already done in
the San Luis Obispo region;
• A 2007 Target Populations’ Needs Assessment working paper; and
• Development of a draft list of candidate improvements
Since the project began in November 2006, the final circular guidance for the Section 5316,
5317 and 5310 programs was released and gave more detail for preparing the final planning
documents. Among the elements clarified were selected performance measures by which the
region as a whole is to measure progress towards improvement of transportation for seniors,
persons of low income and persons with disabilities.
Some flexibility in approach was utilized with regard to the public outreach efforts, in order to be
most responsive to the opportunities presented. For example, a second round of survey mailing
was conducted to increase the response rate. And public meetings in the south and north
county were sufficiently successful at garnering input from various representatives that a
community-wide workshop was scheduled as follow-up, rather than working exclusively in
smaller group settings.
An organizing theme, throughout this project, was to utilize this planning process to identify
agencies and organizations that were interested, willing and able to support coordination
efforts that will improve the mobility of the target population groups (seniors, persons with
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OCTOBER 2007