Director's Corner

Make your voice heard with strategic-plan survey

Greetings everyone. I hope you are settling into 2024 and, like me, are looking forward to all the important and rewarding work we will accomplish this year. Today I would like to touch briefly on three of our department’s current hot topics.

As you might already be aware, we are initiating an extensive effort to refresh our Strategic Plan for the next four years. The Strategic Plan serves as our shared roadmap, establishing our priorities and guiding our decision-making.

To ensure that it remains relevant and responsive to California’s evolving needs, Caltrans’ Executive Board is reviewing and amending the existing content in our Strategic Plan to simplify and align priorities.

Your voice and participation are critical to the success of this endeavor, and one helpful thing you can do is to take the 2024-2028 Caltrans Strategic Plan - Employee Survey.

Every February, we celebrate the incredible contributions made by the Black community in the United States as part of Black History Month.

Today, diversity and inclusion are fundamental Caltrans values, and we have made tremendous strides at the leadership level and throughout our organization. But as part of this month-long celebration, we also acknowledge the past inequities that the Black community has experienced and recommit ourselves to eliminating barriers and providing more equitable transportation throughout California.

The 2024 theme of Black History Month is “African Americans in the Arts.” Find links – many of them archived – to special activities related to this month’s events and other history and heritage celebrations on Caltrans’ Equal Employment Opportunity’s (EEO) website.

Finally, I turn to Caltrans’ top priority: the safety of employees and the traveling public.

Close to 4,000 people on average lose their life and nearly 14,000 are seriously injured every year while traveling on California’s public roads. That tragic reality fuels our Vision Zero goal of eliminating all fatalities and serious injuries by 2050. The concept of “shared responsibility” is central to the Safe System Approach, which is why I’m proud that divisions and districts around the state are working hard to create a safe transportation system for all.

Even in the face of challenging winter storms, Hurricane Hilary, and earthquakes, last year we maintained the safety of highway system users by repairing or replacing 63 miles of guardrail, 23 miles of safety barriers, 1,112,956 square feet of pavement markings, 337,686 pavement markers, 71,336 roadway signs, 101,398 roadside delineators, and restriping 26,637 linear miles of highway.

There is safety in those numbers – literally. Let’s all continue to do our part to make California’s transportation system safer for all.

P.S. Learn more about Caltrans’ strategies regarding safety by reading our first-ever Road Safety Action Plan (pdf).