Caltrans’ New Director: Toks Omishakin Has Credentials in Active Transportation
Governor Gavin Newsom just announced the appointment of the new director of Caltrans. Adetokunbo Toks Omishakin comes from the Tennessee Department of Transportation, where he directs its Bureau of Environment and Planning. He has also served on the board of directors for American Walks, and as vice chair of the AASHTO Council on Active Transportation, where biking and walking advocates say he has provided thoughtful leadership.
Before that he directed Healthy Living Initiatives for the mayor of Nashville, where he led the development of a Complete Streets policy for the city.
Omishakin gave a plenary speech at the League of American Bicyclists’ 2018 national bike summit that emphasized his support for and interest in active transportation.
In that speech, he spoke of the importance of having bicycling and walking included in policies, in design manuals, and in engineering guidelines. He pointed out that resurfacing projects offer opportunities to add things such as road diets and bike lanes – something advocates have been fighting for in California with S.B. 127. And, of course, he said: funding is fundamental.
California is in many ways ahead of the curve. The state dedicates funding to biking and walking under the Active Transportation Program; it has rewritten pieces of the California Design Manual; Caltrans has already adopted a somewhat toothless Complete Streets policy.
What Caltrans needs is a leader who understands why these disparate things are important, one who can explain why biking, walking, and transit need outspoken support.
Advocates have reason to be optimistic about this appointment. Dave Snyder, Executive Director of the California Bicycle Coalition, told Streetsblog that “we’ve had other directors talk the talk, but none have walked the walk by putting their energy to promote active transportation in a difficult environment the way Toks has. We are really looking forward to working with him.”
Kevin Mills, Senior VP of Policy at Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, said that Omishakin “has an unparallelled understanding of the importance of active transportation . . . . He is steeped in the details of issues like walkability, from both a local and a state perspective,” and also understands the challenges of moving them forward in an organization as large as a state DOT.
In the bike summit plenary speech, Omishakin mentions a job he had as one of the first bike/ped coordinators in Tennessee. At the time, just getting a single bike lane built was cause for a major celebration. Things have changed, he said, in large part because of the active engagement of advocates, who have pushed government agencies to do better.
There are a number of videos available online of Omishakin talking about transportation, including an interview with Smart Growth America in which he talks about the importance of public outreach and engagement. In another one – it’s no Carpool Karaoke, but he takes a ride with Hytch, a carpool app in Nashville, and plays a trivia game with his driver. But first they talk about transit and funding. Omishakin grades Nashville’s transit system at “about B minus – not where we should be,” he said.
“If you really want to make transit work, you have to invest more,” he said, “and have a dedicated transit lane so people are not stuck in traffic. It’s gotta be convenient for people. It’s gotta be affordable.”
Hear, hear.
Great news! Would some of you be willing to learn about disruptive technologies for elevated fast and slow bicycles, pedestrians, and other active paths, separated to protect the vulnerable? (I could use some help getting to people like him.) They can share columns with elevated, bidirectional, ultralight group rapid transit. The column geometry should be Bosch Captive Column, http://www.CaptiveColumn.com, the ultimate high-strength-to-weight-ratio structure. I’m working toward getting an engineering guide written by an earthquake engineer. That would be poetic, because the founder of earthquake engineering, Bob Mast of Abam Engineers, did a lot of the early analysis. I also have plans for using some advanced materials that will last a very long time in urban and ocean (salt + UV) environments.
He has been on “Perils For Pedestrians” a few times, most recently on Episode 250.
Maybe Eureka CA will now be able to get protected bike lanes along part of Route 101 through town.
I hope he is successful in addressing how some key Caltrans staff will not allow 10.3′ lanes on urban arterials that are state highways when doing so would allow for the quick implementation of low-cost safety improvements. How is Caltrans to meet its goal of tripling bicycling by 2020 if it won’t approve 10.3′ lanes and bike lanes that could have easily been installed in 2018? This particular arterial is Sloat Blvd in San Francisco and leads to 19th Ave/Highway 1, which has 10′ lanes right up next to a concrete median and a parking lane.
Wow–super exciting. For someone with his background to head up a giant state DOT is a serious breakthrough. It’s going to be a tough job to crack the whip and drag a lot of the staff engineers with a 1950s mentality kicking and screaming into the present day. Credit where credit is due to Newsom for a bold choice, and best of luck to Omishakin.
This could be phenomenal for progress! Perhaps we can get some real progress done like requiring trails on expansion projects in rural parts of the state (e.g. US-395 in High Desert) and getting the bike/ped master plans done for ALL the remaining districts within the next year or so instead of the current four-per-year approach.
Great news. Caltrans, as an organization, invested decades into freeway expansion and fairly recently turned up the volume on active transportation, mostly following, rather than leading, in bike/ped/transit policy. Maybe the new director will put the same level of funding and enthusiasm into active mobility and transit that the organization put into freeway building in the ’50s and ’60s. Fingers crossed.