The Sebastopol Downtown Plan was first created in 1990. State Route (SR) 116 and SR 12 have always been a core part of the Downtown area. As development has blossomed, freight has grown, and commuting has become a part of our everyday lives, the City sees a lot more traffic through their downtown area. For many years, there has been a longing to re-envision Sebastopol's Downtown.

In 2013, community members spearheaded a grant-funded effort to have the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Sustainable Design Assessment Team visit Sebastopol and make recommendations for improvements. Since then, over 10 years have passed, and the way we think about the downtown space may have changed - there is a renewed focus on safety for people walking and biking, and creating areas that are comfortable and connected.

In 2022, the City applied for the Caltrans Sustainable Communities Grant to reevaluate the downtown segments of SR 116 and SR 12 to address multimodal transportation, safety, sustainability, accessibility, and economic development.

The Caltrans Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant program is intended to encourage communities to plan for climate-related projects that includes zero emissions vehicles planning, sea level rise studies, evacuation studies, heat resiliency studies, sustainable transit studies, vision zero and safety studies, vehicle miles traveled (VMT)/greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction studies, complete streets, and managed lanes.

This project fell under the Sustainable Community Grant, which encourages communities to support the state goals identified in the Regional Transportation Plan's (RTP) Sustainable Communities Strategies (SCS), and to ultimately achieve the State's GHG reduction target of 40 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and 2050, respectively.

The grant's objectives for this project include:

• Enhancing Multimodal Safety, Accessibility, and Comfort
• Encouraging Mode Shift and Support Greenhouse Gas Reductions Goals
• Mitigating Negative Impacts of Regional Through Traffic
• Engaging Downtown Business Community for Revitalization