Staffing Up for Sustainable Mobility
Level of Effort: 5 minutes, at home in your PJs
Deadline: Mon 12/20 at 11:59pm
As sustainable mobility advocates, we are often focused on the County’s capital budget (the budget that pays for infrastructure projects), but the operating budget is also critically important to ensure the County has sufficient staff to build, manage, operate and maintain our streets. As the County gears up to set their Fiscal Year 2023 budget there are two important staffing needs we think need to be addressed.
First off – we need a full-time Vision Zero Coordinator to keep the Vision Zero program moving along. The Vision Zero Program is working to fundamentally re-orient County processes, across multiple departments, to put safety first and foremost. This requires a lot of coordination; tacking Vision Zero Coordinator duties onto an existing full-time position isn’t sustainable or efficient.
Second – we need more internal maintenance capacity. The way our streets are designed has changed drastically over the years, from quick-build curb extensions to protected bike lanes to quick-build on-street sidewalks and protected intersections. We have a lot of new and different bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, we need to make sure we can maintain it – replacing bollards on our quick build curb extensions, sweeping leaves from our protected bike lanes, etc. We think our “Water Sewer Streets” department should have funding for two additional employees to make sure we have the capacity to maintain the new bike and pedestrian infrastructure that we’ve built in the last few years and are planning to build over the next few years.
See suggested talking points & take action via the Sustainable Mobility for Arlington County (SusMo) website
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