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The Active Transportation Community of Interest (AT COI) seeks to increase access to safe, healthy, and affordable active transportation options for people living in the Puyallup Watershed in Pierce County, Washington by:
The Puyallup Watershed spans 1040 square miles of land stretching from Mount Rainier to Commencement Bay. The Puyallup Watershed Initiative expands its focus area slightly beyond the natural watershed boundary to include the entire City of Tacoma. For the purposes of this grant, we will focus on the portions of the Puyallup Watershed Initiative boundaries that fall within Pierce County. This includes the following cities and towns: Bonney Lake, Buckley, Carbonado, Edgewood, Fife, Orting, Puyallup, South Prairie, Sumner, Tacoma, and Wilkeson. We also work with Pierce County and the Puyallup Tribe.
The Puyallup Watershed includes 1,000 square miles, 316,000+ people, 2 Tribal nations, 17 cities and towns, pristine forests, rich agricultural lands and one of the busiest ports on the West Coast. As the region continues to grow, it must address the consequences that come with widespread development such as polluted storm water, the loss of farmlands, forests and recreation areas, and greater social and economic inequities.
We are working to address these issues head on. We have a wide array of public outreach and engagement programs that includes transportation, education, public health, local food, natural resources, environmental stewardship, social justice and much more. We expect these efforts will produce tangible outcomes reflected in land use decisions, improved water quality, new public works and greater public stewardship of our green and urban spaces.
To some, our far-reaching work may sound risky because there are many unknown factors. Yet those are the very reasons why we need community-centered change. We believe that the people who live and work in a place understand it better than anyone else does; and when given proper resources they will come up with the best solutions. After all, if there were simply technical solutions, then we would have solved many of our problems long ago.
We understand that broad-based solutions take time to develop and even more time to take hold. Therefore, we encourage listening, compromise and learning from each other in pursuit of shared long-term goals. The AT COI is committed to ongoing learning and continuous improvement and has solicited feedback from our partners throughout the Plan4Health project. While we have plans to refine our processes based on that input and lessons learned (i.e. trying a different meeting time, prioritizing events with the biggest impact, testing new outreach strategies), overall we feel pleased with our Plan4Health approach.
Check out the resources below and visit the Active Transportation Community of Interest website to learn more.
Success story: April 2017 Success story: October 2016 Fact sheet: April 2016
Coalition Members
2nd Cycle Community Cycle Center
Alchemy Skateboarding and Education
Cascade Bicycle Club
City of Tacoma
Coalition for Active Transportation
Daffodil Valley Volkssport Association
Downtown on the Go
Foothills Rails to Trails Coalition
ForeverGreen Trails
Pierce County Parks and Recreation
Pierce County Public Works and Utilities
Pierce Transit
Sierra Club – Tatoosh Group of Pierce County
Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department
Tacoma Wheelmen’s Bicycle Club
Transportation Choices Coalition
American Planning Association Washington Chapter
Washington State Public Health Association
The Russell Family Foundation
The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation
The American Planning Association’s Planning and Community Health Center has partnered with the American Public Health Association at the national level. This key partnership ensures that the conversations, lessons learned, and experiences of towns and cities across the country are part of the national agenda to prevent chronic diseases.