Santa Ana, CA Gets $3 Million Towards Bicycle & Pedestrian Infrastructure

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Residents of Santa Ana, CA will soon see more bike lanes and improved traffic signage thanks to $3 million in grant funds from the California Transportation Commission.

According to a news article from the Orange County Register, the city applied for 11 grants of which it was awarded 6, to improve bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

With support from these funds, Santa Ana residents can expect to see:

• Bicycle boulevards on Bishop Street, Pacific Avenue and Shelton Street
• Bicycle lanes on Newhope Street, Civic Center Drive and Grand Avenue
• A Complete Streets Plan for five residential neighborhood corridors
• Three Safe Routes to School projects at Heninger, King and Washington elementary schools involving upgraded signs, traffic-signal modification and an educational student outreach.

“This is definitely a step in the right direction,” Zed Kekula, the city’s senior civil engineer said in the Orange County Register news article. “In the past four, five years, there’s been a change in direction and desire to start focusing more on bicycle facilities.”

Members of the Santa Ana Active Streets Coalition, which includes: Latino Health Access, KidWorks, The Bicycle Tree, El Centro Cultural de Mexico and others held community meetings and worked with city staff to discuss which streets needed improvements.

“It’s really exciting that Santa Ana is one of the communities that went for more grants,” Nancy Mejia of Latino Health Access said. “Santa Ana is such a dense city. We need more multimodal opportunities because not everybody has a car.”

Pete van Nuys, executive director of the Orange County Bicycle Coalition stated that once the success of these projects become apparent, other cities will hopefully follow suit.

To help implement and manage these projects, the city of Santa Ana will hire a its first active transportation coordinator.

Read more about this change here.

See what else Latino Health Access is doing to improve the health of Latinos in Santa Ana by reading our Salud Hero stories:

Residents Bring First-Ever Park to California’s 92701 Zip Code

Group Creates ‘Wellness Corridor’ to Promote Active Spaces in Santa Ana, Calif.