By Niki Cervantes
Staff Writer

April 27, 2016 -- Intensifying its efforts to make Santa Monica a new model for transportation, the City Council on Tuesday voted to reorganize the City's Department of Planning and Community Development to better focus on making the beach city more conducive to walking and less reliant on the car.

The plan reshuffles and adds positions to create a new “Mobility Division” and hires a City Urban Designer and a principle planner, according to a staff report to the Council.

Under the reorganization, the City’s Department of Planning Community Development, which has a staff of 121, will add a division to focus on a new model of transportation including adding two positions.

The plan also creates a City Urban Designer position dedicated to the “integration of buildings, streets, landscaping, whole neighborhoods, districts, and public spaces to ensure functionality, connectivity, diversity, aesthetics, and sustainability,” according to Salvador Valles, the department's assistant director.

With the arrival of the Expo Light Rail next month, the City is girding itself for a surge in visitors, particularly to its already congested downtown. Metro’s extension into Santa Monica is expected to bring some 64,000 riders a day to the city when the new line opens for regular service on May 20.

Valles' report, which was on the Council’s consent agenda Tuesday, also called for the addition of a Principal Transportation Planner.

The position will juggle a series of new initiatives the City has launched, help conduct further studies concerning congestion in neighborhoods and help discern how to better address how people get around in the proposed Downtown Community Plan.

It also will oversee taxicabs and other vehicle-for-hire policies, as well as the management of the Santa Monica Travel and Tourism Shuttle program contract. All of those functions are now managed directly by Valles, the report noted.

At its August 23, 2015 meeting, the Council decided one of its goals would be to create a model that other municipalities could look to as they deal with traffic jams and streets that are less than pedestrian friendly.

Santa Monica's “mobility” division will be tasked with developing policies much like the City’s “action plans” for pedestrians and bicyclists.

It also will focus on the City’s first-of-its-kind bike share program – Breeze – and car sharing, taxicabs and other modes of transportation that move away from single-occupant vehicles.