Consultant Services for Trails Technical Assistance Program

Interested firms should be able to demonstrate experience with:

• Implementation of trail infrastructure, including planning, design, or construction;

• A strong understanding of the complexities associated with implementation that involves multiple regulatory agencies, tribes, railroad constraints, landowners, and jurisdictional boundaries; and

• Strong and demonstrated technical assistance skills including successful grant writing, active transportation facility planning and design, and community engagement (planning and strategizing). Consultants should demonstrate examples of work done in disinvested communities and the results that may have come from developing implementation strategies or any of the technical assistance examples listed above.

The ideal team will demonstrate a multidisciplinary approach, have broad depth of knowledge in active transportation planning and implementation strategies, understanding of the challenges and opportunities of trails planning, design, and implementation, an understanding of prioritization methodologies, and a strong background in technical assistance.

SACOG serves as a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) of city and county governments in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties. As the only public agency with members from all 28 jurisdictions in the greater Sacramento region, SACOG plays a unique role as the place where local governments can come together to take on critical issues facing the region and to tackle problems that are too big for any one jurisdiction to solve on its own. SACOG is tasked by state and federal law with long-range planning for the region but also plays an important role in working with local partners to advance more immediate solutions to some of the region’s shared challenges of transportation, housing, air quality, climate change and the protection of the region’s agricultural and natural resources. Starting with the development of the 2024 Blueprint, SACOG has committed to three strategic goals of equity, economy, and environment. For more information, please visit our website: https://www.sacog.org .

In 2022, SACOG’s Board of Directors adopted a comprehensive regional trails plan, which lays the groundwork for a 1,000-mile-long regional trail network that links the Sierra Nevada, Sacramento, and the Delta regions. A priority for the SACOG region, the trails network focused on equitably creating regional trail connectivity and increasing access to the destinations that support the vitality and livability of the region. Most recently, SACOG developed a Strategy that focuses on developing the next steps for implementation – with both partner and SACOG recommendations. This project also included a robust and trail-focused technical assistance program that supported agencies through their implementation efforts.

The majority of the identified connections in the Regional Trail Network (over 250 miles of existing trails and more than 800 miles of planned trails) were selected from local plans for their potential to make connections across boundaries in the region. Over 300 miles of trail study corridors— connections identified for further study in future planning documents, planned connections with known implementation challenges, and high-concept connections— were also identified for their potential to connect via trails or trail-like facilities across the region, including 50 miles of on-road separated bikeways. In the 2026 Trail Strategy, SACOG identified priority actions to support trail implementers, which includes the continuation of the Trail Technical Assistance Program and formalizing the trail working group - a body of professionals meant to provide peer-to-peer support and learn collectively about trail implementation.