Safe Routes To School in Sunnyvale

Call To Action

What: Speak at the Sunnyvale Budget Workshop

When: Tuesday, May 19, 2026, at 11 AM (morning)

Where: City Hall or by zoom

Email Council by May 14, council@sunnyvale.ca.gov 

Talking points:

• Say, "I support Proposal 2026-13, Re-inventing Sunnyvale's Safe Routes To School Program."

• Provide personal anecdotes and opinions about why a SRTS program is important to you.

For generations, many children commuted to school by walking or biking. Over the last 50 years, however, walking and biking have declined so that today only 14% of children walk and bike, shifting to using private vehicles instead. This trend has had drastic negative consequences on children and the community at large. Because children don’t have a means to get around independently, their rates of depression, obesity, and diabetes have increased. Motor vehicles have become the largest generator of greenhouse gases in cities including Sunnyvale. The crush of cars at school drop off and pick up times makes anybody trying to walk or bike to/from school less safe than it should be. 

Safe Routes To School (SRTS) is a national program working to reverse these negative trends. Each city, county, and school district chooses whether to implement the program and to what degree. Parents and children of today may not know that, a decade ago, Sunnyvale's SRTS program was thriving. Today, the program is struggling, with a lack of community involvement, activities, and progress monitoring. 

In 2008, Sunnyvale contracted with the Santa Clara County Public Health Department (SCC PHD) to roll out a SRTS program. By 2015, it was an active program involving all 4 school districts and a majority of schools serving the city's children. Parent and community volunteers were active participants. In 2015 as the contract with SCC PHD was coming to an end, the SCC PHD held a meeting to educate the City about how to continue this successful program. In 2016, City Council acted on SCC PHD's advice by hiring an SRTS Coordinator, whose role was to continue the work which had been carried out by SCC PHD up to that point. An SRTS Collaborative, composed of volunteers, school administrators, and city staff, was formed. The Collaborative was led by a 5-person Board of local luminaries in the sustainable transportation space: Kristel Wickham, Kevin Jackson, Tim Oey, Doug Kunz, and John Cordes. 

However, despite the Council direction and volunteer enthusiasm, the management transfer of the SRTS program from the County to Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety (DPS) in 2017 was the beginning of the program's precipitous decline. In 2018, Sunnyvale DPS unilaterally stopped all work with the SRTS Collaborative, resulting in the group ultimately disbanding in 2019.  DPS has not given reasons for this break. 

Kevin Jackson says, "If you ask anyone who was involved with the Collaborative how they view the City's current SRTS efforts, I am confident they will lament the City's takeover as squandering an opportunity to continue a thriving program that was making tremendous progress in promoting student safety and active transportation, in addition to advancing the City's environmental and livability goals."

Since the City took over SRTS, Tim Oey has devoted substantial effort to try to get the SRTS program back on track, but to little effect.  He regrets that Sunnyvale abandoned the work that SCC PHD accomplished in forming the SRTS Collaborative and creating the SRTS maps.

Though the SRTS Coordinator position is still funded by the City of Sunnyvale, the program has not lived up to the plan set forth by the City Council's direction in 2016. The SRTS Coordinator's responsibilities were stated in the 2016 budget proposal for the position like so:

The SRTS Coordinator will implement the program by engaging with local schools and utilizing parent volunteers and school staff to: collect data at the beginning of the school year to assess the school’s needs; develop a plan to educate students and parents in bicycle and pedestrian safety; encourage the school community through ongoing programs such as “Walking School Bus” and large events such as National Walk and Bike to School Day and bicycle rodeos; and evaluate the success of programs by collecting data at special events and at the end of the school year.

At the March 2026 update on SRTS, however, little activity and no quantitative assessment of the overall state of the program were reported.  The update indicated that school participation was low but did not specify how low.  An attempt was made to report travel mode shift, but the isolated walking and biking counts were uninformative without student enrollment normalization and without how other travel modes simultaneously shifted. SRTS proponents in the community have been disappointed by the lack of progress. Eight years after the transfer from County to City oversight, the Sunnyvale SRTS program has remained largely quiescent.

Meanwhile, neighboring cities have created and sustained thriving programs. The Cupertino SRTS program, run by the City of Cupertino’s Transportation Division in the Department of Public Works, currently puts into practice everything  Sunnyvale's SRTS was meant to. By its 10-year anniversary in 2025, Cupertino had rolled out education and encouragement activities to all 13 schools in the city and continues to hold a popular and growing annual Bike Fest. A vital part of Cupertino's success is the support and partnership of community members and the local elementary and high school districts.

At the upcoming Sunnyvale City Budget Workshop on May 19, Council will be deciding whether to fund a study to re-invent the SRTS program. Sunnyvale was a SRTS leader 10 years ago, and we can regain that status. This study will be a big step toward achieving that goal. If you value empowering children to independently travel to school and other destinations, be sure to speak in support of a vibrant Safe Routes To School program at the Budget Workshop.

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About the Author

Sharlene Liu is Founder and Chair of Sunnyvale Safe Streets. She is dedicated to making Sunnyvale's streets safe for walking and biking. She believes children deserve the freedom to move around independentlly.