Linda Clean & Safe Transportation Initiative
Organization: California Health Collaborative
Funding Request: $414,999.60
Project Summary
The Linda Clean & Safe Transportation Initiative is a community engagement and planning project led by the California Health Collaborative (CHC), with First 5 Yuba County as co-applicant. It focuses on the Linda area of unincorporated Yuba County, a rural, working-class community of about 22,300 people across the agricultural Yuba-Sutter region. The project responds to documented transportation barriers, missing sidewalks, unsafe crossings, poor lighting, and unreliable transit that make everyday trips to school, work, healthcare, and services difficult for residents who walk, bike, or rely on transit.
Rather than building infrastructure, this planning grant centers on community voice and capacity. Its core activities are establishing a resident-majority Linda Community Advisory Board, conducting two phases of multilingual community engagement and data collection, and producing documented community data summaries alongside a prioritized list of 1–2 community-supported transportation projects. Those deliverables are designed to position Linda to compete for future planning and implementation funding, while the leadership development built in along the way leaves residents better equipped to shape transportation decisions over the long term.
Project Descriptions and Transportation Equity
Linda faces compounding transportation and safety challenges. Commonly used streets such as North Beale Road, Lindhurst Avenue, Arboga Road, and Linda Avenue lack continuous sidewalks, safe crossings, lighting, and connected bike lanes, and these gaps are especially visible near Linda Elementary School during pick-up and drop-off. State Route 70 runs directly through the community and acts as both a safety and access barrier, separating homes from essential services and transit while exposing nearby residents to heavy traffic and air pollution. Transit access is limited and unreliable: Yuba-Sutter Transit runs mainly along major corridors, often only once per hour with minimal evening and weekend service, and many stops lack shelters, seating, or safe crossings, with missed transfers causing delays of one to two hours.
The project addresses these inequities through structured, resident-led planning rather than top-down technical work. It begins with early outreach, education, leadership development, and traffic and pedestrian safety education, then builds a resident-majority Community Advisory Board that serves as the primary decision-making body. From there, the project carries out a two-phased, multilingual engagement effort, conducted in Spanish, Hmong, and English, using surveys, pop-ups, workshops, community events, and tools like maps, visuals, and ranking exercises. Equity is built into the process itself: nearly 90% of the project area falls within disadvantaged and low-income census tracts, about 66% of residents are people of color, and the engagement is deliberately designed to center low-income families, youth, elders, and others historically excluded from transportation decisions, ensuring those most affected have real influence over which projects rise to the top.
Community Benefit
This project benefits the Linda residents most affected by transportation barriers, especially families with children, people who walk or bike due to a lack of a reliable car, seniors, and those who depend on transit or rides from others. Because it is a planning grant with no construction during the grant period, the near-term benefits are practical and informational: residents gain safety knowledge, such as how to navigate high-traffic crossings, how to advocate for safer routes to school, and bike safety, and they gain easier ways to understand and take part in the transportation decisions shaping their neighborhood. A central benefit is access to leadership and decision-making, as residents selected for the Community Advisory Board receive additional training and a genuine seat at the table where priorities are set, and projects are chosen for future funding.
The Advisory Board also connects residents directly to public agencies and local partners, including County Public Works, the Yuba County Office of Education, Harmony Health, the Feather River Air Quality Management District, and Yuba College, giving them a regular forum to ask questions, raise concerns, and influence what gets pursued next. By the end of the grant, residents will have clearer information about clean transportation options, stronger local leadership, and a documented, community-supported set of next-step projects ready for implementation funding. Taken together, these outcomes help reduce inequities in who gets heard and who benefits from future transportation investments, and they leave behind durable tools and relationships that can be reused in later grant applications and planning efforts.
Partnerships and Structure
The partnership is intentionally designed to keep decision-making rooted in the community, with agencies and organizations providing coordination, outreach, and technical support rather than driving the agenda. At the center is the resident-majority Linda Community Advisory Board, which includes Linda residents, youth, parents, elders, and tribal members alongside select community partners such as Harmony Health Medical Clinic, the Yuba County Office of Education, Linda Elementary, and Yuba College. The Board reviews community input, sets priorities, and votes on project selection, and its participation is supported through multilingual access, stipends, accessible meeting locations, and flexible formats that reduce barriers and power imbalances.
The supporting roles are organized as follows:
Lead Applicant: California Health Collaborative (CHC): Founded in 1982, CHC manages the grant, including coordination, reporting, project administration, and delivery oversight, drawing on established grant-management systems and experience with multi-partner state-funded planning grants.
Co-Applicant: First 5 Yuba County: Serves as the Community Engagement Backbone, leading resident and family engagement, cross-sector convening, leadership development, and participation supports through its long-standing relationships with families, schools, clinics, and agencies.
Community Partners: Help share information, host or support engagement activities, and bring community perspectives into Advisory Board discussions, keeping the work grounded in trusted local spaces (without responsibility for grant administration).
Technical and feasibility partners: Yuba County CDSA and the Air Quality Management District: Provide input on feasibility, infrastructure, and environmental considerations for community-identified ideas.
Evaluation and data partner: Applied Survey Research: Supports evaluation by designing data collection tools and preparing clear summaries of community input for both residents and funders.
CHC and First 5 already have an established working partnership from the Mobility Zones project, with local, language-ready staff (Spanish, Hmong, Punjabi, and more) and most team members living in Yuba and Sutter Counties, including one First 5 staff member who lives in Linda, which reduces start-up time and keeps the effort genuinely local