Director's Corner

Join us in honoring our fallen workers

Please make plans this spring to attend, in person or virtually, at least one of Caltrans Workers Memorial ceremonies being held in each of our 12 districts.

The statewide Workers Memorial ceremony will be held Thursday, April 27, on the west steps of the Capitol building in Sacramento. You can find out more [link to story] in this issue of CT News.

I want to thank all those who were involved – as organizers, presenters or participants – in this year’s Black History Month (February) and Women’s History Month (March) events. Our Equal Employment Opportunity Program did a fantastic job of compiling a compelling series of activities for both months. It is a wonderful thing when we as a department promote and celebrate diversity and equity.

I also would like to repeat some good news I shared with you earlier this month, because it involves Caltrans’ top priority: safety.

We have just released our Road Safety Action Plan 2023-2024 (RSAP). This plan is integral to implementing Director’s Policy for Road Safety (DP-36) and achieving our goal of zero fatal and serious injury crashes by 2050. It marks the beginning of Caltrans’ ongoing, biennial effort to align our business practices with the Safe System Approach.

The 2023-2024 RSAP was developed collaboratively with the Safe System Leads representing all twelve districts and major headquarters divisions to achieve a sharper focus of our policies, plans, procedures, processes, and guidelines on eliminating the most severe road crash injury outcomes for all road users. It includes actions that have the greatest potential to shift the road safety culture that will help get us to our road safety goal quickly and equitably. The actions have been grouped into four categories:

• Integration of safety into Caltrans policies
• Best practices update
• Data collection and database management
• Public outreach

I congratulate all our statewide Safe System Leads in developing this RSAP. And I urge all 22,000 of you to seek out your respective Safe System Leads and discuss how you can get involved in not only delivering this plan, but also in developing ideas for the next two-year RSAP.

Achieving the goal of eliminating fatal and serious injury crashes on our roads requires a comprehensive effort across the board from all of you, our partner agencies, roadway users, and the private sector. I know that together, we can make it happen!