Although I have not had time to read the SCPD grant proposal in detail (a two-day public comment period is ludicrous), I agree whole-heartedly with the comments made by De Clarke as posted at http://www.daclarke.org/AltTrans/SCPD/Written.Comments.txt
In case she did not make her point strongly enough, let me make a few points:
1) There is no evidence that the sort of bicyclist and pedestrian education that SCPD is proposing will be effective in reducing the accident rate in Santa Cruz.
2) The SCPD has shown an all-too-common bias against bicyclists and pedestrians in taking accident reports.
3) Until the extremely bad motorist behavior in Santa Cruz is improved, pedestrian and bicyclist safety will not improve. Perhaps the grant should be aimed at enforcing the most frequently violated part of the Vehicle Code:
California Vehicle Code 21950: (a) The driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, except as otherwise provided in this chapter.This would do more for pedestrian safety than any other single measure. It would be trivial to enforce--have a non-uniformed officer step into a crosswalk, then ticket the last of the platoon of cars that fails to yield. This approach has been used in other cities to reduce pedestrian-involved accidents.
The failure of the SCPD grant to even mention the illegal behavior that most endangers pedestrians (violation of 21950(a)) makes me suspect that this grant is NOT about safety for bicyclists and pedestrians, but is simply a tool to get more officers for totally unrelated purposes. If so, the grant should be more honest about its purposes, and should be pursued or not based on the worthiness of those purposes.