CITY COUNCIL STAFF REPORT
Meeting Date: September 21, 2026
TO: THE HONORABLE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCILMEMBERS
TITLE: STUDY SESSION TO REVIEW A PRELIMINARY DRAFT OF THE PLEASANT HILL SAFE STREETS FOR ALL (SS4A)
COMPREHENSIVE SAFETY ACTION PLAN AND CONCEPT
DRAWINGS
SYNOPSIS
The Safe Streets for all (“SS4A”) Safety Action Plan provides a foundation for a decision-making framework for the City to identify, prioritize, and implement safety countermeasures in future citywide transportation projects. Additionally, an adopted SS4A Safety Action Plan will enable the City to apply for federal funding to improve roadway safety. The Draft Safety Action Plan is now complete and ready for review and feedback from the City Council.
The SS4A Ad Hoc Committee reviewed the draft plan on September 2, 2026, and September 10, 2026, and recommended staff present the plan to the City Council for review and feedback.
The purpose of this study session is for the City Council to review and provide staff with input on the Draft Safe Streets for All Safety Action Plan and Concept Plan Drawings, prior to its final adoption by the City Council.
DISCUSSION
Background
The Safe Streets for All (“SS4A”) Grant Program was created by the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) in 2022 to support its goal of eliminating roadway fatalities. The SS4A program provides funding to local governments nationwide for both roadway safety planning and implementation projects. Completion of a Safety Action Plan is a prerequisite for obtaining the grant funding necessary to construct the safety projects and strategies identified through the planning process.
During Fiscal Year 2022-23, the City of Pleasant Hill was awarded a $240,000 grant to develop a comprehensive Safety Action Plan. On October 6, 2025, the City entered into an agreement with Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc. to prepare the SS4A Safety Action Plan. Over the course of approximately a year, the City and Kimley-Horn have worked collaboratively to develop the Draft Safety Action Plan.
The development of the Safety Action Plan has included community and stakeholder outreach, analysis of historical crash data, and identification of proposed safety countermeasures targeting areas of the City with the highest concentrations of fatal and serious injury crashes. The Plan includes the following components:
Community Engagement - Summarizes public outreach efforts conducted by Kimley-Horn and City staff to gather community feedback, including in-person engagement with residents and stakeholders and an interactive project website. Safety Analysis - Provides an analysis of local crash trends, roadway conditions, and community safety challenges. The High Injury Network (HIN) identifies locations within the City that would most benefit from safety improvements. Countermeasure Toolbox – Presents proven engineering safety countermeasures supported by Crash Reduction Factor (CRF) data to reduce the frequency and severity of crashes.
Recommended countermeasures were vetted through public engagement and review by key stakeholders, including the City Council SS4A Ad Hoc Committee and Pleasant Hill Police Department. The section also includes non-infrastructure strategies such as sobriety checkpoints, enforcement, and education.
Safety Projects – Highlights 10 selected corridor improvement projects along the HIN. Actions and Strategies – Identifies policy and program recommendations to streamline and improve the implementation of traffic safety improvements, enforcement, and educational outreach.
Review of Existing Policies, Programs, and Plans – Summarizes the City's existing policies, programs, and practices and recommends enhancements. Examples include the Complete Streets Policy, Safe Routes to School funding, and crash activity review procedures.
Implementation and Evaluation – Identifies priority focus areas for implementation and ongoing evaluation, including specific age groups, bicyclists, and other key populations.
Analysis
Community Outreach
The community engagement process provided an opportunity to gather input from a broad crosssection of the community. A project website was developed to collect public input through a safety feedback survey and an interactive City map, which allowed residents to identify transportation safety concerns at specific locations throughout the City. The website was promoted through the City's website, LED billboard, social media platforms, and the City's electronic biweekly newsletter, and bimonthly Outlook publication. Flyers were also distributed at various public locations, including bus stops, the Library, City Hall, and the Police Station.
The online engagement platform received 911 comments. Listed below are the primary concerns identified through the public engagement process, listed in order of most frequently mentioned:
1. Speeding and Aggressive Driving Near Schools and Neighborhoods
2. Unsafe Pedestrian Crossings
3. Sidewalk Gaps and Pedestrian Infrastructure Deficiencies
4. Bicycle Safety and Connectivity
5. Intersection Safety, Traffic Operations, and Visibility Some common themes among these traffic safety concerns included traffic safety near schools, requests for traffic calming near campuses, and safer drop-off and pick-up areas. The desire for bike lanes, sidewalk gap closures, and improved bicycle connections also referenced safer routes to schools. Another frequent concern was safety at larger city intersections, particularly those adjacent to I-680, such as Contra Costa Boulevard and Monument Boulevard.
In addition to the online engagement, the project team conducted in-person outreach at Light Up the Night 2025 in downtown Pleasant Hill and the Earth Day Celebration 2025 in front of City Hall. During the Light Up the Night tabling event, the project team received feedback from 128 participants on what they perceived to be key safety challenges within the City. These challenges specifically included the need for speed reduction, improved pedestrian crossings, and improved bicycle infrastructure. The Earth Day event was intentionally conducted further along in the project to allow for feedback on the proposed safety countermeasures and the High Injury Network, which were both developed in response to crash data analysis and comments from the first round of public engagement. The project team engaged with 70 individuals on Earth Day.
The project team also conducted a virtual public meeting on February 17, 2026, to provide an overview of the Safety Action Plan and its development process. The meeting was attended by 23 residents. An in-person public workshop was subsequently held at City Hall on May 19, 2026, to obtain additional community feedback.
Stakeholder Engagement
A stakeholder working group was established to review the Safety Action Plan and provide input throughout the plan’s development. The group included key City staff, the City Council Ad Hoc Committee, first responders, neighboring jurisdictions, local transportation agencies, and representatives from local schools. The project team met with the stakeholder working group virtually on January 13, 2026, and conducted an in-person workshop on April 21, 2026, to provide project updates, solicit feedback, evaluate proposed strategies, and build stakeholder support for the plan.
Following the second stakeholder meeting in April, City staff met with the Pleasant Hill Police Department to review and vet the proposed countermeasure toolbox and assess the feasibility and applicability of the recommended safety measures within the community.
Separately, City staff met with the City Council Ad Hoc Committee following each stakeholder engagement meeting to provide project updates and ensure that development of the Safety Action Plan remained consistent with the City's overall goals and priorities.
City Collision Data
Crashes within the City’s limits were analyzed over a five-year study period from January 1, 2019, through December 31, 2023, utilizing the University of California, Berkley’s, Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS) website. This specific time frame was chosen because the TIMS website takes approximately a year to collect, process, and publish crash data from when the incident occurred. Therefore, any crash data from an accident that occurred within a year before the study began would not be available. During this five-year period, a total of 360 collisions were reported within the City, including three fatal collisions and 43 collisions resulting in severe injuries. This dataset included motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians. Combined, fatal and severe injury collisions accounted for approximately 13 percent of all reported collisions.
Among these incidents, a broadside collision was the most common, making up for about 20% of all fatal and serious injury collisions; 15% of all fatal or serious injury crashes involved a pedestrian, while 13% involved a cyclist. Analysis revealed the primary factor in fatal and serious injury crashes was unsafe speed, which aligns with much of the resident feedback gathered during the public outreach events. The commonality among the crashes recorded in the data reflect unsafe driving behaviors, which this Safety Action Plan seeks to address.
High Injury Network
As part of the safety analysis, the project team identified a High Injury Network (HIN) consisting of roadways where a disproportionate number of fatal and severe injury collisions occurred. The HIN helps staff and the consultant prioritize locations where safety improvements may have the greatest potential to reduce serious and fatal crashes. Approximately 98 percent of Pleasant Hill’s fatal and severe injury collisions occurred on approximately 10 percent of the City’s roadway network. This concentration of serious and fatal collisions presents an opportunity for the City to focus limited safety resources on the HIN and implement targeted, effective countermeasures. By prioritizing proven safety improvements along the HIN, the City can make meaningful progress toward its goal of eliminating traffic-related fatalities and severe injuries by 2050.
City staff’s professional assessment and Kimley Horn’s data analysis concluded that the following segments and intersections are priority corridors within the HIN:
1. Contra Costa Boulevard – 2nd Avenue to Viking Drive
2. Contra Costa Boulevard – Harriet Drive to Doray Drive
3. Golf Club Road – Paso Nogal Road to Contra Costa Boulevard
4. Paso Nogal Road – Morello Avenue to Golf Club Road
5. Morello Avenue – Chilpancingo Parkway to Paso Nogal Road
6. Pleasant Hill Road – City Border to Taylor Boulevard
7. Taylor Boulevard – Apollo Way to City Border
8. Gregory Lane – Pleasant Hill Road to Helen Road
9. Gregory Lane – Kahrs Avenue to Contra Costa Boulevard
10. Geary Road – Larkey Lane to Putnam Boulevard
The two concepts along Gregory Lane listed above will be incorporated into the Gregory Lane Complete Streets Improvement Study, which was approved and funded within the FY24/29 Capital Improvement Plan. The public outreach and data collection that was already performed as part of the Safety Action Plan will also be incorporated into the study to avoid redundant work.
Certain major arterial roadway segments identified in the HIN were not selected to move forward with concept drawings for one of two reasons: First, some segments have already included capital improvement projects that incorporated safety measures since the study period ended on December 31, 2023. For example, safety improvements have already been implemented along Contra Costa Boulevard between Viking Drive and Harriet Drive with the Contra Costa Boulevard Complete Streets Project. Second, the City has already produced concept drawings for segments, such as Monument Boulevard, and is pursuing funding for implementation. Developing additional concept drawings for these areas through the SS4A program would duplicate previous efforts.
Concept Plan Drawings
The draft concept drawings were reviewed with the Ad Hoc Committee during two meetings held on September 2, 2026, and September 10, 2026. The following sections were discussed:
Contra Costa Boulevard and Golf Club Road Intersection: The concept drawing proposes the removal of the median and landscaping along the entrance to Golf Club Road. This would result in the removal of the existing palm trees and landscaping that were previously installed for beautification purposes.
Morello Avenue: The roadway will be reduced to a pair of travel lanes - one in each direction - with the potential for a raised or striped median along the centerline. Additionally, parallel parking spaces will be removed in order to accommodate a new two-way cycle track. These improvements will also be adjacent to a housing opportunity site on the northwest corner of the intersection of Morello Avenue and Paso Nogal Road (Netherby Drive).
Morello Avenue and Paso Nogal Intersection: City staff and the Ad Hoc Committee is exploring the option of placing a traffic circle in lieu of the proposed signalized intersection.
Norse Drive and Paso Nogal Intersection: The concept drawing proposes to signalize this intersection.
Road Diet on Gregory Lane: The roadway will be reduced to two travel lanes to accommodate bike lanes and a two-way left turn lane. Off-street parking will be removed in front of singlefamily homes that currently abut Gregory Lane.
As these are preliminary concept drawings and not construction documents, staff advises that the proposed safety improvements may be refined or subject to change based on the results of future studies and public feedback.
FISCAL IMPACT
Adoption of the SS4A Safety Action Plan is necessary for the City to qualify for the pursuit of federal grant funding for future transportation projects along the identified priority corridors. If the Safety Action Plan is not adopted by the City Council, the City would need to identify alternative funding sources in lieu of federal dollars to advance these projects.
PUBLIC CONTACT
Public Contact was made through posting of the City Council agenda on the City’s official notice bulletin board, at the Pleasant Hill Senior Center, and at the Pleasant Hill Police Department. The agenda and staff report are posted on the City’s web page.
RECOMMENDED CITY COUNCIL ACTION
Review the preliminary Draft Safe Streets for All Safety Action Plan document and associated conceptual drawings and provide staff with feedback and direction, if any. Staff will return at a later date for the City Council‘s consideration of plan adoption.
ALTERNATIVES TO RECOMMENDED ACTION
None recommended.
ATTACHMENT(S)
Attachment A – Draft City of Pleasant Hill Safety Action Plan Attachment B – Draft SS4A Concept Drawings
Prepared by: Laetitia Porta, Senior Civil Engineer
Reviewed by: Ann James, Public Works Director
Approved by: Ethan Bindernagel, City Manager