Our presentation will focus on the collaborative approach being taken to increase bicycling rates (to reduce energy consumption and emissions) in South Santa Barbara County. The team includes MOVE Santa Barbara County, the City of Santa Barbara, UCSB’s Department of Geography, and BCycle which represents a non-profit organization, a municipality, an educational institution, and a for-profit organization. Each entity plays a different role in the partnership including building infrastructure, providing access to bicycles, leading education and encouragement programs, and collecting data to assess program and policy deficiencies and successes. The presentation will highlight the role of each partner and how we are all working together.
Speakers
Heather Deutsch is the Executive Director of MOVE Santa Barbara County where she oversees a team offering bicycling and walking education and encouragement programs, three community bike shops, and an advocacy program. She has worked on bikeways, walkways, and transit projects for the past twenty years. Prior to working for MOVE, she worked for Washington, D.C.’s Department of Transportation, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, and in the private sector managing and providing training on acquisition, engagement, design, construction, management, and maintenance of sustainable transportation projects with a focus on working in under-served communities in redeveloping neighborhoods. She holds a master’s degree in urban and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a BA in the History of Math, Science, and Philosophy.
Jessica Grant is the Supervising Transportation Planner with the City of Santa Barbara’s Public Works Department. Ms. Grant oversees the Transportation Planning team, which helps acquire grant funding for active transportation projects; programs, designs, and constructs capital infrastructure projects; and aids in transportation-related land development. She is a passionate advocate for sustainable transportation options while recognizing the need for our city streets to be safe and accessible for all road users. She is an alumni of the UCSB Bren School (and undergrad), a League Certified Instructor (LCI), and has worked with the City for over two decades.
Sam Furtner is the Mobility Coordinator with the City of Santa Barbara’s Sustainability and Resilience Department, where he focuses on identifying, designing, and implementing active transportation projects. In addition to working with bike and pedestrian infrastructure, he developed, implemented, and helps manage the Bike Share Pilot Program. He is an alumni of the UCSB Bren School, a daily bike commuter, and lives in Santa Barbara.
Dr. Nelson’s current research focuses on active transportation and the use of big data and analytics to better plan cities. Nelson led the creation of BikeMaps.org, a web map and App to gather volunteered geographic information on bicycling collisions and near misses. With her team, she has developed new ways of using fitness app data (like Strava) to map bicycling volume useful for transportation planning. Trisalyn Nelson joined the Department of Geography at UCSB as Jack and Laura Dangermond Endowed Chair of Geography in 2020. From 2016-2020 she was Director of the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. Prior, she was the Lansdowne Research Professor and Director of the Spatial Pattern Analysis and Research Lab at the University of Victoria, Canada.
Jesse Rosenberg is the General Manager of the Santa Barbara BCycle bike share system who launched the program in partnership with the City of Santa Barbara in 2021 and secured an additional 3-year contract in May. Previously, she was the Senior Market Manager at Zagster, a micro-mobility start-up based in Boston. She holds a bachelor’s degree in advertising from Syracuse University and an MBA degree in Business Administration from Boston College.