By Hugo Salgado, Community Health Program Specialist, County of San Diego 

Making walking, biking and other forms of human-powered transportation (or active transportation) safer in the Townsite neighborhood of Vista is the goal of the Active Transportation Plan that will soon go before the Vista City Council for adoption. An Active Transportation Plan is a comprehensive collection of policies, programs, recommendations, and funding mechanisms that can help increase active transportation, physical activity and improve public health.

The Townsite neighborhood houses a large, low-income Spanish-speaking, immigrant and renter community with corridors that connect residents to public schools, grocery stores, community clinics, parks, and public transportation. However, Townsite has been impacted by poor infrastructure, leading to active transportation challenges. Vehicle collisions with pedestrians, a lack of pedestrian visibility, lack of sidewalks, poor lighting, and improper traffic signage, among other factors, have all been reported by residents.

To address the problems, Vista Community Clinic paired with the Healthy Cities, Healthy Residents program to help create the Active Transportation Plan for Townsite. Residents, city officials, business owners and community-based organizations in Vista came together to work on the plan.

In October 2020, Vista Community Clinic launched and recruited Poder Popular, a community advocacy group under Vista Community Clinic’s Migrant Health Program, business owners, city officials and others, to assemble the Healthy Cities, Healthy Residents Vista Coalition. The coalition quickly began working to determine what was needed by analyzing the data around pedestrian and bicycle-involved collisions. Based on the data, the coalition decided that the best course of action would be to develop an Active Transportation Plan.

Engaging the community was a top priority throughout the planning process. Members of Poder Popular, known as Líderes Comunitarios or Líderes, were a crucial part of the coalition, identifying many challenges of walking and biking in Townsite. Engagement also included extensive coordination with partner agencies and various city departments to ensure the plan met community needs, advanced initiatives of local and regional partners, and included projects and programs that could feasibly be implemented.

The completion of the Active Transportation Plan in August 2022 was the culmination of all of these efforts. Vista’s Health Cities, Healthy Residents program has now shifted to urge the Vista City Council to adopt the plan.

About Healthy Cities, Healthy Residents

The Healthy Cities, Healthy Residents program is funded by the County of San Diego’s CalFresh Healthy Living program and is implemented through a contract with Vista Community Clinic in the cities of Oceanside, Escondido, and Vista. The goal of each coalition is to promote relationship-building, cross-sector partnerships, and community engagement to make sustainable changes in city planning and policies that can help increase physical activity among residents.