Community Pedestrian Safety Engagement Workshops in California

The Community Pedestrian Safety Engagement Workshops are a community capacity building program to involve local residents in community pedestrian safety. The focus of these workshops is to engage, educate and empower residents to ensure they have the skills, knowledge and resources they need to become active in improving pedestrian safety in their neighborhood, district, city or county. This program uses pedestrian planning and community engagement curriculums as a framework for the content, and goes beyond this to tailor each workshop to the individual community needs, ensuring genuine resident engagement and continued involvement. This paper highlights the processes and strategies used to engage community residents with local professionals in pedestrian safety workshops throughout California. Several case studies are highlighted focusing on a variety of engagement techniques from obtaining elected official’s participation, outreaching and working with existing collaboratives and groups, working with youth volunteers, Video Voice, and peer learning and sharing. All of the workshops result in group-identified pedestrian safety priorities and actions for continued resident involvement and have connected previously inactive community members (both adults and youth) with community pedestrian activists. Subsequent relationships have resulted in enhanced community pedestrian safety efforts and programs that continue long past the workshop dates.