San Jose Emerging Mobility Action Plan

SAN JOSÉ

EMERGING MOBILITY ACTION PLAN Final Report

April 2022

CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 01 | AN EQUITY APPROACH TO EMERGING MOBILITY 02 | LOOKING BACK TO MOVE FORWARD 03 | PLAN DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 04 | EXISTING CONDITIONS WITH AN EQUITY FOCUS 05 | EMERGING MOBILITY IN SAN JOSÉ TODAY 06 | HOPE & HARM OF EMERGING MOBILITY 07 | DATA, COMMUNITY & THE CITY 08 | RECOMMENDATIONS 09 | LESSONS LEARNED

This report was made possible through grant funding from the California Department of Transportation

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CITY STAFF Laura Stuchinsky, DOT Emerging Mobility Program Lead (Project Manager) Jessica Zenk, DOT Deputy Director, Planning and Project Delivery Ramses Madou, DOT Division Manager, Planning, Policy and Sustainability John Brazil, Transportation Options Program Manager Emily Breslin, DOT Climate Smart Lead Grasielita Diaz, DOT Associate Transportation Specialist Jonathan Yuan, DOT Shared Micro-Mobility Program Manager Sarah Abroff, DOT Emerging Mobility Special Projects Xiomara Aguirre, DOT Emerging Mobility Intern Colin Heyne, Public Information Manager Nicole Ortega, Public Information Representative II Natasha Opfell, DOT Associate Transportation Specialist, Planning

COMMUNITY PARTNERS LaToya Fernandez, YouthHype Lavere Foster, African American Community Service Agency Alan Gouig, LEAD Filipino Helen Kassa, African American Community Service Agency Adrienne Keel, Caminar, Inc. Peter Ortiz, Santa Clara County Board of Education Mayra Pelagio, Latinos United for a New America MyLinh Pham, Asian American Center of Santa Clara Paris Scott, Pars Equity Center Kiyomi Yamamoto, Law Foundation of Silicon Valley

PUBLIC ADVISORY COMMITTEE Alisa Arce, Santa Clara County Public Health Department Greg Beverlin, Santa Clara County, Fleet & Facilities Department Melissa Cerezo, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) Aiko Cuenco, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) Lidia Doniz, Santa Clara County Public Health Matias Eusterbrock, formerly City of San José Planning Rebecca Fischer, formerly Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) Jacklyn Joanino, San José Housing Department Zulma Maciel, San José Office of Racial Equity

Jesse Mintz-Roth, DOT Vision Zero Sabrina Parra-Garcia, San José Office of Immigrant Affairs Dan Provence, Caltrain Shannon Simonds, Caltrans ITP Krute Singa, MTC Wilson Tam, DOT Planning

TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE Adam Cohen, UC Berkeley Mariko Davidson, Ford Mobility West Coast Andrew Dick, ElectrifyAmerica Anna Dietrich, Community Air Mobility Initiative (CAMI) Yolanka Wulff, Community Air Mobility Initiative (CAMI) Colin Hughes, Lyft Bay Wheels Chris Pangalinan, Uber Danielle Harris, Elemental Excelerator David Rodriguez, Kiwibot Heidi Guenin, MobilityData.io Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Open Mobility Foundation (OMF) Josh Johnson, Spin Ryan Westrom, Ford Mobility East Coast Andrew Dick, ElectrifyAmerica Ryan McCarthy, ElectrifyAmerica Peter Slowik, The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) Shaz Umer, formerly GrubHub Tina Hu, ProspectSV

CONSULTANT TEAM Nelson\Nygaard Winter Consulting Sam Schwartz Engineering Toole Design Tamika Butler Ellis & Associates

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Shane Curtin, San José Public Library Joshua Ishimatsu, San José Housing Department Kristen Clements, San José Housing Department

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EXECUTIVE

SUMMARY

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

WHAT IS THE EMERGING MOBILITY ACTION PLAN? The City of San José (City) wants all people to have safe, affordable, reliable, and sustainable transportation options to access the opportunities and resources necessary to thrive, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, age, or income. To that end, the Department of Transportation1 seeks to leverage its limited regulatory power to nudge emerging mobility companies to fill gaps in existing transportation services, complement and enhance public transit, and make their services accessible to the city’s communities of color and low-income neighborhoods.

our hope is that this process and the issues it raises will catalyze greater change, coordination, and collaboration on topics beyond emerging mobility within San José, and between the City, other public agencies, and the city’s communities.

Our challenge is to center the diverse communities of San Jose and their experiences, needs, and priorities—specifically Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), such as Latino/a/x, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities, and communities that have been historically disenfranchised, and their experiences, needs, and priorities as we prepare for unknown shifts in transportation technology and business models.

Prior to this plan, there was no overarching strategy for addressing equity in emerging mobility. In partnering with the community to produce this plan, we (City staff and the consultant team) came to more fully appreciate how interconnected transportation is to many other pressing community needs, such as access to affordable housing, public safety, and healthcare. Even as we implement a focused plan,

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Source: Sheila Fitzgerald

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

EMERGING MOBILITY WHAT IS EMERGING MOBILITY? Emerging mobility, also called new mobility and technologyenabled mobility, includes numerous types of transportation services and technologies. Examples that may be familiar include micromobility (e.g., electric scooter share and bike share rental services), ride-hailing (e.g., Uber and Lyft), and courier services (e.g., Instacart or DoorDash). Emerging mobility can connect people to places, goods, and information using new services, products, and technologies.

WHY EMERGING MOBILITY? Emerging mobility technologies and services offer many potential benefits. They could provide a convenient means of getting around at a lower cost, emit fewer emissions than traditional transportation options, and fill public transit service gaps.

However, some emerging mobility services, such as automated vehicles, could increase drive-alone trips and consequently pollution, and potentially compete with public transit.

Without intervention, these typically privately owned and operated services could be priced and located so they exclude many potential users, such as unbanked or underbanked1 populations; limited English speakers; Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC ), including Latino/a/x, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities; people with moderate and low incomes; and seniors and people who are mobility-impaired.

Public agencies are trying to figure out what levers they can exercise to foster the positive and reduce the potential negative

impacts of these services. Working with community members to understand, address, and design programs that address their needs may help ensure services are useful and more widely utilized.

TRENDS Emerging mobility is expected to continue to change. The following trends are anticipated over the next five to eight years.

• Electrification and Mobility. To meet its climate goals, California is accelerating its transition to zero emission vehicles. Electricity makes more sense for smaller vehicles, from pick-up trucks to scooters, as it will drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution, particularly as California’s electricity gets increasingly cleaner. However, the shift to electrification poses several equity issues that must be proactively and thoughtfully addressed.

• Public Space. The public right-of-way (roads) is shifting away from private vehicle storage toward people-oriented spaces.

Cities are repurposing metered parking spaces for parklets, outdoor seating, plazas, shared micromobility parking corrals, and electric vehicle charging equipment.

• Rise of E-commerce. Shortened guaranteed delivery windows and the expansion of demand-responsive delivery services have greatly expanded consumer choice and convenience.

Now, consumers who can afford these services can purchase just about anything, including hot meals, groceries, and everyday items, and have it delivered to their door within

1 People who do not use mainstream financial services, and may primarily conduct financial transactions using cash are unbanked. People who have a bank account but may rely on alternative financial services such as money orders, check-cashing services, and payday loans rather than on traditional loans and credit cards to manage their finances and fund purchases are underbanked.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

hours. The downside of hyper-convenience is increased curbside congestion and vehicle miles traveled on neighborhood streets.

• Integrating Emerging Mobility with Transit. Transit agencies have traditionally focused on providing rail and rubber tire services. But the economics and the rapid growth of new technologies and modes of transportation are prompting many transit agencies to consider offering new mobility services to extend the reach of public transit.

• Plan-Book-Pay. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a concept that makes shared mobility and public transit available at the click of a button. MaaS enables people to plan, book, and pay for their transportation in a centralized, often app-based, platform. It makes it easier for individuals to travel without needing a personal vehicle. Achieving MaaS is an incremental process that requires coordination between multiple agencies and private providers.

• Automation and Mobility. Continued research and testing of automated vehicles suggest their deployment may be inevitable; the key question is how long it will take. Many cities are piloting self-driving shuttles to support first- and last-mile connections and neighborhood circulation, ondemand goods delivery, and the collection of traffic-related data on vehicle movements. Widespread adoption of automated vehicles - whether by purchasing and owning a vehicle or renting a vehicle from a private or public fleet - will occur gradually. It will likely start in low-density areas that have limited pedestrian and cycling activity, a supportive regulatory environment, and agreeable weather.

• Contactless Mobility. When cities across the country implemented shelter-in-place orders in response to the San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

COVID-19 global pandemic, people largely avoided nonessential trips. That resulted in significant travel behavior changes. Mobility options that allowed for contactless payment and rides, such as shared scooters, bikes, and mopeds, proved to be an attractive option, particularly for essential workers who needed commute options that allowed them to maintain physical distance from others.

• Impacts on Local Jobs. Historically, the development of new technologies has transformed the workforce and created new and different types of jobs. There is currently much debate on whether automation and electrification will lead to a large-scale loss of jobs and displacement of workers or whether it will modify existing jobs or create new jobs.

It’s likely that as automation expands and intensifies, jobs resulting from these changes will require different skills than those possessed by displaced workers.

• Congested Curbs. Curb space is at a premium in most city centers, especially during times of peak demand. Changes in the way people use and access the curb create new conflicts and a constant level of demand that is difficult to predict and plan for. Because new mobility modes are typically on-demand, most of the entering and exiting of the vehicle occurs on the street, impacting curbside access and congestion.

• Urban Aerial Mobility. There is an increasing amount of interest, investment, and hype around Urban Aerial Mobility—automated, self-driving helicopter-like vehicles that can deliver goods and offer humans another way to avoid roadway traffic. Urban Aerial Mobility, along with e-cargo bikes and small electric vehicles, could transform last mile delivery logistics for smaller and lighter packages ES-4

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

by replacing trips currently made by traditional delivery vehicles.

They could also exacerbate existing inequalities if the flight path these vehicles take is over lower-income or communities of color.

• Revenue. To the extent that new mobility options facilitate people’s ability to travel without a car and new services require space for docking, revenue from on- and off-street parking, ticketing, and vehicle registration fees are likely to decline.

While the main purpose of these charges is to cover related program costs—or, in the case of ticketing, to encourage compliance—this shift provides an opportunity to rethink strategies and better align them to the City’s goals.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

PLAN DEVELOPMENT PROCESS This project sought to create a racial equity-focused action plan to guide emerging mobility in San José. The project team (City staff and its consultant team) recognized this as an important but challenging goal. We sought to co-create solutions with the community to move beyond traditional models of decisionmaking. Through this process, we uncovered community needs and necessary process changes far beyond the scope of our work. We learned how to communicate more effectively, how to share technical information in digestible chunks, and take in the community expertise we were being offered. We learned to be nimble, flexible, and iterative, to not only ask the community to lead, but to give them the tools and resources needed to do so.

HISTORICAL RESEARCH We conducted historical research on mobility, development, housing, land use, and labor policies to better understand how past local, state, and federal policy decisions shaped the experiences of San José’s BIPOC communities and their relationship with the City. This analysis helped guide our community engagement efforts and the development of our goals.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT We solicited guidance from local community leaders, community-based organizations, human service providers, and others representing and serving BIPOC and other marginalized communities—people who have traditionally been left out of planning processes. Through community leader interviews, focus groups, in-person and virtual community meetings, social media posts, and online surveys, we gathered ideas on San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

how to make emerging mobility work better and in service of our communities and then truth-tested ideas with those communities.

Equity Task Force. The Equity Task Force (ETF) was created with nine community leaders associated with organizations representing the City’s diverse communities, particularly historically marginalized BIPOC communities. Members were key project and thought partners who provided insight into the concerns and priorities of their communities, facilitated and led community engagement in their communities, and helped set the direction and goals of the plan.

Public Advisory Committee. The Public Advisory Committee (PAC) consisted of public agency representatives. Members provided technical advice and collaborated with the project team to develop an outcomes-driven, implementable plan.

Technical Advisory Committee. The Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) consisted of private mobility providers currently operating or planning to operate in San José as well as academics, investors, and non-profits focusing in this area.

They shared insights on technology needs, partnership models, and tactics that could help realize selected program and pilot concepts.

Communitywide Engagement. Throughout the course of this project, we used a variety of strategies to reach and collect feedback from underrepresented communities, individuals lacking digital tools or a stable internet connection, and nonEnglish speakers. They included: • Hosting digital workshops in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• Facilitating digital focus groups led by CBO partners and other community groups

LEADING WITH RACE Our philosophy and approach were rooted in racial equity. Our definition of racial equity was consistent with the City’s adopted definition:

• Tabling at community pop-up events throughout the city • Hosting a community resource fair • Updating the project website and the Department’s website • Conducting an online survey

EXISTING CONDITIONS AND CASE STUDIES RESEARCH Building on our historical research and community engagement, we conducted background research, held discussions with industry experts, and reviewed existing research on emerging mobility.

We used this information to analyze emerging mobility trends and their potential impacts on racial equity, jobs, transportation, gentrification, and other issues identified by the community.

We complemented the trends analysis with a review of academic literature and case studies research to help identify impacts of electrification, and automated passenger and delivery vehicles on job loss and opportunities.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Both a process and an outcome, racial equity is designed to center anti-racism, eliminate systemic racial inequities, and acknowledge the historical and existing practices that have led to discrimination and injustices to Black, Indigenous, Latino/a/x, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities. The racial equity processes explicitly prioritizes communities that have been economically deprived and underserved, and establishes a practice for creating psychologically safe spaces for racial groups that have been most negatively impacted by the City’s policies and practices. It is action that prioritizes liberation and measurable change, and focuses on lived experiences of all impacted racial groups. It requires the setting of goals and measures to track progress, with the recognition that strategies must be targeted to close the gaps. As an outcome, racial equity is achieved when race can no longer be used to predict life outcomes, and everyone can prosper and thrive.”

With the acknowledgement that the systems that create inequity affect multiple identities, our focus on racial equity targeted the disparities created by historic planning practices and systemic racism, while creating a framework that tackles the complex inequities across gender, age, ability, income, and other individual and community needs. Leading with racial equity provides the opportunity to proactively integrate racial justice in our decision-making, and ultimately our policies, practices, and institutional culture.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

RECOMMENDATIONS The project team took the following steps to develop recommendations: 1.ETF initiated. As with all the major project milestones, the project team began the process of developing recommendations with the Equity Task Force (ETF). The project team provided analysis, examples, and technical support for the ETF and facilitated a series of structured discussions to help the ETF generate the recommendations.

2.PAC and TAC weighed in. The team then asked the PAC and TAC to respond to the ETF’s preliminary recommendations, by highlighting potential barriers–such as cost, feasibility, and anticipated political challenges–as well as opportunities in the form of innovative partnerships and funding mechanisms for community members and implementors to consider.

3.ETF reviewed. We looped back to the ETF to discuss the input from the PAC and TAC and to prioritize the recommendations.

4.Community members prioritized. Finally, we shared the refined recommendations with the broader community via a variety of means, including focus groups, a community resource fair, and tabling at existing community events.

Community members’ input helped to prioritize the recommendations.

The top priority recommendations are presented below: • Tailored Strategies: Create targeted emerging mobility options and programs, such as ones tailored to seniors and working families with kids.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

• Easy to Pay: Create affordable, easy-to-use options for services that are available and used by low-income communities, undocumented people, non-English speakers, seniors, and persons with disabilities. Options may include pay stations or kiosks, partnerships with local businesses, and card-based systems that allow cash filling and can be used across mobility providers.

• Collaborate with Community: Identify funding and engage with community organizations to conduct racial equity analyses. Engage with CBOs prior to major program, policy, and project decisions like deployment requirements.

Work in partnership with community groups to identify evaluation criteria to assess alignment between emerging mobility program and pilots and community needs. Establish minimum service levels by geography for all services.

Evaluate the performance of emerging mobility providers in meeting community needs at the midpoint and end of a project or pilot in partnership with CBOs. Make evaluation reports publicly available to community members.

• Public Education and Promotion: Create funded, City-led public education and promotion programs, in partnership with paid community members, to educate and spread awareness about emerging mobility services. Provide vouchers and discounts to CBOs to give to community members to help familiarize people with emerging mobility services and programs. Engage with local neighborhoods, school districts, and universities to educate students on how to safely use emerging mobility services (particularly shared bikes and scooters). Tailor services to specific age groups.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• Community-Driven Solutions: Create a community-designed program to better integrate transit and emerging mobility, ensuring emerging mobility complements other transportation options. Create community programs connecting services to transit, including a community rideshare program managed by CBOs. • Workforce Development: Establish workforce development programs to connect low-income residents and youth to emerging mobility-related job opportunities. Establish local hire requirements targeting underserved communities.

Source: City of Las Vegas

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

KEY LESSONS LEARNED AND BEST PRACTICES Through the course of this project, from scoping through finalization, we learned many lessons and created recommendations from them.

Below are some of the key takeaways from this process, noted as considerations and recommendations for future equity-centered work.

LESSONS LEARNED

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE-EQUITY WORK

Scoping and Setting Expectations

• Expectations from community members and City partners around the project outcomes were not initially aligned. ETF members felt the issues their communities were struggling with were much larger than transportation.

• The grant was written without community involvement, which made it difficult to make substantive changes that reflected community input.

• Integrate considerations beyond the primary topic of the plan. For example, this plan addresses issues beyond emerging mobility such as housing, personal and community safety, transit, land use, and economic opportunities.

• Be transparent about the expectations and constraints at the onset and conclusion of every project.

• Identify ways to work with community leaders and organizations, whether through an advisory group or informal collaboration, to gather input during project conceptualization.

• Encourage grant administrators to require City agencies to partner directly with CBOs on grant applications.

Data Analysis • Quantitative data is not always comprehensive or intuitive.

• Many datasets generalize people’s experiences and ignore the nuances between communities.

• Data may misconstrue the reality experienced by community members on the ground.

• Challenge conventional forms of analysis and integrate people’s stories shared through interviews, focus groups, online surveys, and virtual meetings as part of existing conditions analysis.

• Gather community insights at the outset of a project in partnership with or delegated to community-based organizations who have established relationships with their community and a deep understanding of their experiences.

Equity Task Force Engagement • Not all task force members knew each other and as a result they did not feel comfortable being vulnerable with each other at the project outset.

• Prioritize relationship-building from the outset and integrate throughout the process.

• Not all task force members were familiar with the plan subject matter.

• Dedicate time for capacity building.

• Expectations and accountability were outlined on a high-level, but this was not enough.

• Clarify expectations and establish project team accountability measures.

• Task force members’ preferences for materials review and meeting facilitation varied.

• Task force members said it was difficult to absorb and respond to the volume of information at the pace and complexity it was presented after a full day of work.

• Task force members wanted to know where and how their feedback was integrated into stakeholder conversations and project deliverables.

• Tailor facilitation and content to different learning styles.

• Identify ways to break material down into digestible chunks using accessible language.

Use breakout groups to review and discuss the material wherever possible.

• Formalize a feedback loop between the task force, City, and project team.

• Encourage regular self-assessment.

Communitywide Engagement • Community leaders are in the best position to gauge how project content will be received.

• Lean on community leaders to vet content and ensure it is digestible and culturally sensitive.

• People engage in the community in different ways.

• Use a variety of engagement methods for different forms of feedback.

• Task force members were not representative of the full spectrum of diverse community members.

• Extend outreach and engagement beyond ETF network.

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CHAPTER 01

AN EQUITY APPROACH TO

EMERGING MOBILITY San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

01 | AN EQUITY APPROACH TO EMERGING MOBILITY

INTRODUCTION: AN EQUITY APPROACH TO EMERGING MOBILITY The City of San José wants all people to have safe, affordable, reliable, and sustainable transportation options to access the opportunities and resources necessary to thrive, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, age, and/or income.

To that end, the Department of Transportation2 seeks to leverage its regulatory power to encourage emerging mobility companies to fill gaps in existing transportation services, complement public transit, and make their services accessible to communities that have been historically marginalized, particularly people with low incomes and Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), including Latino/a/x, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities. The City is building an action plan to understand, adapt to, manage, and guide new modes of transportation in service of community objectives. Our challenge is to center the diverse communities of San José and their experiences, needs, and priorities as we prepare for unknown shifts in transportation technology and business models.

2 The San José Department of Transportation is a municipal agency that oversees transportation planning, design, construction, maintenance, and operations within the city of San José.

Source: City of San José

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01 | AN EQUITY APPROACH TO EMERGING MOBILITY

This plan aims to do this by addressing the following six objectives:

Centering racial equity to ensure that the needs of communities are heard, and solutions are developed in partnership with communities;

Understanding San José’s transportation investment history to identify areas that have been historically underinvested in and institutionally underserved and learn how this has shaped individual and community experiences;

Evaluating the current distribution of emerging mobility options and who they serve and do not.

Using available data to track the performance and equity impacts of existing mobility services;

Connecting historic trends in community investment, emerging mobility access to date, and potential risk factors that could exacerbate displacement;

Gathering community insights on how to best engage with diverse communities on emerging mobility; and

Working with the community to identify if, where, and how emerging mobility might serve their needs.

The purpose of this plan is to position the City to guide emerging mobility services to better meet its communities’ needs. The insights gleaned from this planning process will also help the City center racial equity in other areas of its work, community engagement, outreach project scoping, and design for transportation projects.

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01 | AN EQUITY APPROACH TO EMERGING MOBILITY

GLOSSARY OF COMMON EMERGING MOBILITY TERMS Automated and Autonomous Vehicles

Automated and autonomous vehicles (AVs), also known as self-driving vehicles or driverless cars when fully automated, are capable of sensing and moving through an environment with little or no human input. AVs are equipped with sensors that collect and process information to identify travel routes, obstacles, and roadway signs.

Bike Share

Bike share provides customers with on-demand access to a fleet of bicycles at various pick-up and drop-off locations. Bike share can be offered citywide, within a neighborhood, at employment centers, and on university campuses. Systems may be station-based or dockless.

Car Share

Car share offers on-demand access to a fleet of vehicles that are maintained by a car share organization. Vehicles are often located within neighborhoods, near transit stations, employment and shopping centers, or universities. The car share organization can provide insurance, gasoline, parking, and vehicle maintenance.

Customers who use this service may pay a fee each time they use the service or may pay a membership for regular access to the service

Docked/Station-Based

Service model that requires people to rent and return vehicles or devices at a designated station where vehicles are parked and locked.

Courier Network Services

Courier network services are on-demand delivery services where drivers deliver goods to customers who place their order via an online app or platform. Drivers typically use their own personal vehicles, bicycles, or scooters to make deliveries within a short time period. Goods that may be delivered include prepared meals, groceries, and essential household items. Customers pay for the goods and the delivery service. Some courier network services today use automated delivery robots to deliver goods.

Demand Response

Shared transportation services where travel routes change “on demand,” based on when are where people want to travel to.

Dockless

Service model where people can pick up and drop off vehicles or devices anywhere in a given area.

Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicles (EVs) use one or more electric motors for propulsion. Vehicles can be charged via self-contained special batteries or through off-vehicle sources such as at-home or public EV charging stations. Electric vehicles can be used as part of ride hailing and car share services. Electric vehicles can be used as part of ride-hail and car share services.

Emerging Mobility

Emerging mobility, also known as new mobility and technology-enabled mobility, is an umbrella term that includes numerous types of transportation services and technologies that offer different ways of moving people and goods. Common examples of emerging mobility include e-scooter share, bike share, ride-hail, autonomous vehicles, and mobility-as-a-service.

Micromobility

Low-speed, light vehicles that may be shared or personally owned, including electric bikes, bike sharing, scooter sharing, or electric skateboards, and others.

Microtransit

Microtransit is a more flexible form of transit, often provided on demand through an app or website. Service is generally curb-to-curb within a set zone, and trip routes and times are often based on requests rather than set schedules. Vehicles tend to be smaller than traditional buses, and are shared with other passengers traveling to and from similar pick-up and drop-off locations.

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS)

Combines various forms of transportation options (e.g., bus, taxis, ride-hailing) into a single service that can be accessed on demand through a digital app, where people can plan, book, and pay for trips.

On Demand

Type of service that is provided on an as-needed basis.

Scooter Share

Scooter share allows individuals to access a fleet of scooters at various locations. Companies managing the service charge and maintain scooters and provide the digital app for renting vehicles and paying for rides. Customers pay a fee each time they use a scooter and trips can be roundtrip or one-way.

Shared Mobility

Transportation services that include a range of multimodal transportation options where people share publicly or privately-owned vehicles and devices with others.

This includes emerging services like ride-hail and car share and traditional services like public transit.

Transportation Network Companies (TNCs)

Transportation network companies (TNCs), also known as ride sourcing and ride-hailing, are on-demand transportation services where drivers and passengers connect via a digital app. Drivers typically use their own vehicles to pick up and drop off passengers, who pay the driver for the trip.

Urban Aerial Mobility

Urban aerial mobility includes on-demand personal air vehicles that customers can book for trips. Common examples include air taxi services or the use of drones to deliver packages.

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01 | AN EQUITY APPROACH TO EMERGING MOBILITY

WHAT IS EMERGING MOBILITY Emerging mobility, also called new mobility, and technology-enabled mobility, includes numerous types of transportation services and technologies. Examples that may be familiar include micromobility such as electric scooter share and bike share rental services, ride-hailing (e.g., Uber and Lyft), and courier services (e.g., Instacart or DoorDash).

Emerging mobility may also be automated, such as on-demand shuttles, or self-driving vehicles on the road or in the sky. It can also be the technology and data that facilitate travel, such as an app that allows you to plan and pay for a trip using multiple services— like shared bike, train, and ride-hail—in one seamless trip. Emerging mobility may also be transportation options and services that we cannot yet predict. Emerging mobility can connect people to places, goods, and information using new services, products, and technologies. It can also provide a wider variety of more adaptable means of moving people and goods, as well as bridge gaps in the existing transportation system, improving the system’s overall utility. Our hope is that this plan presents policies, programs, and processes to prepare for equitable implementation of future options, regardless of what they look like.

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01 | AN EQUITY APPROACH TO EMERGING MOBILITY

WHY EMERGING MOBILITY? Climate change, traffic congestion, limited public transit, and racial equity disparities are causing cities to consider how an expanding array of new transportation technologies and services might be of use. All offer potential benefits and burdens.

Some emerging mobility services may provide a convenient means of getting around at a lower cost—financially and environmentally, due to lower emissions—than driving alone. Others may fill public transit gaps, providing reliable transportation options where few previously existed. On the other hand, some services, such as automated vehicles, could increase drive-alone trips and consequently pollution and traffic. Without intervention, these typically privately owned and operated services could be priced and located so they exclude many potential users, such as unbanked or underbanked populations, BIPOC communities, limited English speakers, moderate and low-income people, seniors, and mobilityimpaired people. Public agencies are trying to figure out what levers they can exercise to foster the positive and reduce the potential negative impacts of these services.

Some forms of emerging mobility—such as ride-hailing and shared cars—have become commonplace around the world. But, simply providing more and newer options does not guarantee community needs will be met. In many cases, the direct needs of the community are an afterthought in the deployment of such services, resulting in backlash or unintended negative impacts. Working with community members to understand, address, and design projects that respond to their needs may help ensure services are useful San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

and more widely utilized. Empowering communities through education, engagement, collaboration, and co-creation will support community ownership of mobility decisions and provide proactive rather than reactive processes for future investments. In some cases, emerging mobility may not be an appropriate solution.

Emerging mobility programs, such as the City’s bike share and scooter share (micromobility) programs, have evolved from pilot projects to permanent programs. But prior to this plan, the City had no overarching strategy for addressing equity in emerging mobility. In partnering with the community to produce this plan, we (City staff and its consultant team) came to fully appreciate how interconnected transportation is to many other pressing community needs, such as access to affordable housing, public safety, and healthcare. The impact of transportation investments and programs on the unsheltered must also be considered, both in how these options may impact access to services and their potential implications on the public right-of-way. Even as we implement a focused plan, our hope is that this process and the issues it raises will catalyze greater change, coordination, and collaboration on topics beyond emerging mobility within the city and between the Department of Transportation, other public agencies, and the city’s communities.

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CHAPTER 02

LOOKING BACK TO MOVE

FORWARD

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

02 | LOOKING BACK TO MOVE FORWARD

LOOKING BACK TO MOVE FORWARD Throughout our nation’s history, power exercised through policy, laws, opportunity, and resources, has been organized to enrich some at the expense of others.

The wealth seen today in San José and throughout California was built on a foundation of stolen land, slavery, and the exploitation of immigrant labor. American Indians, Blacks and other people of color were denied legal standing, the ability to own land, and the right to vote. Even as our nation has adopted laws protecting the civil rights of these groups and others, systemic racism and sexism remain deeply embedded in our society. To create a transportation system, and by extension a society, where all can flourish, we need to understand how things came to be as they are. What follows is a small strand of that story, woven around the development of our interstate system.

Source: Our Lives Our Photographs

Alfonzo Salazar’s mural “We Are Still Here” near the Guadalupe River Trail.

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HISTORY OF SAN JOSÉ In 1955, California authorized the construction of Interstate 280, a 57.5-mile-long highway paralleling U.S. 101 between San Francisco and San José. The project was designed to relieve traffic on Highway 101 and El Camino Real – traffic fueled by rapid population growth, rising car ownership, and suburban sprawl. The highway provided temporary traffic relief in San José, but at the expense of the city’s BIPOC and low-income residents.

Between 1950 and 1969, San José grew at an aggressive pace through annexations and by zoning large swaths of land for single-family residential developments. The city’s population increased more than five-fold, from 95,280 to 495,000 residents.

Its total land area grew eight-fold, from 17 square miles to 136 square miles. Car ownership was key to this growth. With a car, people were able to live farther from their work and services.

The freeway made it easier for auto owners to make those trips.

The improvement benefited many, principally white middle- and upper-income residents who had access to Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration-backed mortgages that allowed them to buy single-family homes in the suburbs. But it imposed a high cost on those who could not.

Highways as barriers: The construction of I-280 in the early 1960s, as well as that of Route 101 in 1926, destroyed numerous homes and businesses in low-income neighborhoods populated primarily by BIPOC communities. Many of these neighborhoods had seen decades of disinvestment in large part because they had been “redlined”3 in the 1930s, classified by the FHA as high-risk investment areas because they were populated by BIPOC communities. The FHA also supported the 3 Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.

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construction of boulevards and highways to separate Black neighborhoods from whites to prevent “the infiltration of...lower class occupancy, and inharmonious racial groups.” As a result, credit-worthy residents of these redlined areas could not get loans to purchase homes or commercial properties and those who already owned property could not get loans to renovate or repair them. The building stock gradually declined, causing these neighborhoods to be viewed as “blighted,” and hence ripe for redevelopment, compounding harm. Today, neighborhoods that are immediately adjacent to the I-680/I-280/US-101 interchange are experiencing early or ongoing gentrification, which may lead to displacement if not accompanied by efforts to retain and support existing communities. These communities also face higher environmental justice impacts, including poor air quality and increased localized air pollution from the neighboring highways, and higher levels of vehicle-related fatalities and injuries.

Source: U.S. DOT Federal Highway Administration

Aerial photo of Interstate 280 and Interstate 880/Bay Shore Freeway Interchange in San Jose.

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In August 2021, a study commissioned by the County of Santa Clara found that the use of leaded aviation fuel contributed to increased blood lead levels, especially for children living within a half-mile of the Reid-Hillview Airport in East San José. A high proportion of residents in this area are Latino/a/x and/or low-income.

Source: Ian Kluft

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kluft-photo-Reid-Hillview-Airport-Mar-2008-Img_0444.jpg

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Exclusionary Zoning: San José’s decision to zone much of its residential land exclusively for single-family housing also exacerbated inequity. Today, 94% of the city’s residential land is zoned for single-family. That means that apartments, condos, duplexes, and triplexes can only be built on 6% of the city residential land. According to San José’s 2020 Fair Housing analysis, 65% of the City’s housing stock is single-family homes.

This imbalance restricts the supply of housing in the city, which increases its costs.4 Affordable housing is also hard to come by in the city: nearly half (47%) of San José’s renters live in housing that is considered unaffordable; one in four spend more than half their income on housing-related costs; and Black, Hispanic, and Pacific Islanders face disproportionately greater barriers to securing affordable housing.5 In a recent study,6 UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute found that “cities with high levels of single-family zoning have greater resources (even relative to the generally wealthy and expensive Bay Area) in virtually every statistic we are able to measure. These cities have higher incomes, higher home values, better-performing schools, and the evidence indicates they are high opportunity in the broadest sense: children who were raised in these cities 30 years ago have better outcomes in their adulthoods. However, this is also consistent with a troubling pattern of social, economic, and racial exclusion in cities with high levels of single-family zoning… people who are excluded from these neighborhoods have fewer well-performing schools nearby, have lower incomes, and have less access to opportunity.”

Source: Google Maps

Source: Google Maps

The Citywide Anti-Displacement Strategy identified Spartan Keys as a neighborhood that is at risk of displacement. The top image shows the 5th St and E Virginia St intersection in 2007. The bottom image shows the same intersection in 2020, following the construction of the Foundry Commons development.

4 City of San José. Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice. 2020. Accessed via https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/departments/housing/memos-reports-plans/hud-reports/analysis-of-impediment-to-fair-housing-choice 5 Ibid.

6 Menendian, S., Gambhir, Samir., French, K., Gailes, Arthur. “Single-Family Zoning in the San Francisco Bay Area: Characteristics of Exclusionary Communities.” Othering and Belonging Institute, UC-Berkeley, 2020. Accessed via: https:// belonging.berkeley.edu/single-family-zoning-san-francisco-bay-area

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Source: Othering & Belonging Institute

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Cars key to access: San José’s historical land-use decisions were supported by and promoted car ownership, which rapidly became the dominant form of transportation not only in San José but across the nation. Those who could afford to own a car could more easily access better jobs, housing options, schools, and services. Those who could not, did not. Faced with this stark choice, many BIPOC and low-income residents, then and now, have stretched their finances to get a car, despite the financial vulnerability it creates. According to the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, 45% of San José households spend more than 45% of their income—the benchmark for affordability— on housing and transportation costs.7 As a result, these residents have less income available to support their daily needs. The burden of car ownership costs in gas, insurance, vehicle registration, and repairs tend to weigh more heavily on people with low incomes who simultaneously grapple with rising rents and increased cost of living, a burden not experienced to the same degree by residents who are comparably more affluent.

Investments prioritize driving: For 50 years, San José was served by an extensive electric trolley service. But in 1938, the trolley was removed to make way for cars. Buses were brought in to take the trolley’s place. Both services were run by multiple private companies, until the County bought out the bus services and established County Transit (now the Valley Transportation Authority, VTA). But, the proliferation of vehicles, sprawling growth, and massive public investment in car-focused roadway improvements undermined the economics of transit. These

factors also increased the challenges faced by those dependent on public transit, who typically are BIPOC residents.8 Fewer riders meant less income for the operators and consequently less service, which reduced ridership and impacted those who had no other choice. Since the late 1980s, federal funding has apportioned 80% of transportation funding for highways and 20% for public transit, maintaining a system that is inequitable as well as unsustainable. Due to the limited availability of federal funding for public transit, agencies like VTA and Caltrain9 heavily rely on local and state sales tax, grants, and fares to operate and maintain service. Though sales tax receipts have continued to show positive growth, the rate of growth has slowed as expenses continue to increase. In contrast to previous administrations, the Biden administration is seeking to increase funding for public transit as a means to reduce auto-related greenhouse gas emissions.

These examples provide a thin slice of a much longer and more complicated story. Today, as housing costs continue to rise, more people are moving to bedroom communities like Tracy and Stockton while continuing to work in San José, resulting in longer commutes that necessitate a car. Housing insecurity has also resulted in large numbers of unhoused people in San José, who directly and indirectly interact with transportation options and infrastructure on a daily basis. Many unhoused people live near or in transportation structures (underpasses, bus stations, parking lots, or in the public right-of-way), but have limited to no access to the potential benefits mobility options may provide as their mobility needs are often not considered.

7 https://htaindex.cnt.org/map/ 8 American Public Transportation Association, “Who Rides Public Transportation.” (2017). Accessed via: https://www.apta.com/research-technical-resources/research-reports/who-rides-public-transportation/ 9 The primary source of funding for the VTA Transit Fund, responsible for delivery of the bus and light rail service in the county, is sales tax. Sales tax based revenues account for roughly 75% of the VTA Transit Funds budgeted revenues for FY 2020 and 2021. Caltrain relies heavily on passenger fares to maintain service, though their capital budget is funded through a combination of federal, regional, and state grants.

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It is essential for the City of San José to recognize this history to address challenges in a manner that facilitates the success of all. “Systems that are failing communities of color, are actually failing all of us,”10 notes the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE). This is particularly true given the accelerating and devastating impacts of climate change, which disproportionately impacts communities of color who, compared to others, are

more likely to be exposed to environmental hazards and more likely to live in areas with heavy pollution.11 We need to act swiftly and boldly, but in partnership with all our communities at a pace that facilitates trust and enables collaboration. This is the context in which the City of San José is developing San José’s Emerging Mobility Action Plan.

10 Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE), Why Working for Racial Equity Benefits Everyone. Accessed via: https://www.racialequityalliance.org/about/our-approach/benefits/ 11 Patnaik, A., Son, J., Feng, A., Ade, C., Racial Disparities and Climate Change. August 2020.

Source: VTA

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CHAPTER 03

PLAN DEVELOPMENT

PROCESS

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PLAN DEVELOPMENT PROCESS This project sought to create a racial equity focused action plan to guide the growth and development of emerging mobility in San José.

The project team (City staff and its consultant team) recognized this as an important but challenging goal. We sought to co-create solutions with the community to move beyond traditional models of decision-making. Through this process, we uncovered community needs and necessary process changes far beyond the scope of our work. We learned how to communicate more effectively, how to share technical information in digestible chunks, and take in the community expertise we were being offered. We learned to be nimble, flexible, and iterative, to not only ask the community to lead, but to give them the tools and resources needed to do so.

But as we dove into the work, we realized how difficult it is to shape a new process while constrained by existing systems. For example, the timeline, steps, and deliverables for this grantfunded plan were defined well before consultants were hired

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and the Equity Task Force was convened. Grant restrictions permitted little leeway to modify the timing and design of the process in discussion with the community.

Part of the issue is the disconnect across systems—land use, housing, climate planning, economic development, and transportation all happen in parallel, but are not always coordinated, and rarely with community at the helm. Thus, we try and solve housing problems with transportation solutions.

We try to mitigate harm caused by land-use decisions through environmental policies. And we ask busy community members, who have lives and jobs and families, to add to their workload by becoming experts in the technical parts of each planning process. Finally, we sometimes destroy trust by not responding, maintaining relationships, or continuing growth and evolution with community members.

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Source: Winter Consulting

Veggielution First Saturday pop-up event.

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HISTORY AND STORIES FIRST As noted earlier, we conducted historical research to better understand how past local, state, and federal policy decisions shaped the experiences of San José’s BIPOC communities and their relationship with the City. While primarily focused on mobility and developmentrelated policies, we also conducted research and community engagement to understand how the City’s history intersected with landmark housing, land use, and labor policy decisions that informed the design of the City’s transportation system and residents’ experiences of it.

We disaggregated data on the City’s disadvantaged communities by race to learn about existing racial inequities in the communities this plan impacts.

We also conducted a spatial analysis of the City’s current demographic characteristics and existing mobility conditions to understand needs and gaps in San José’s transportation system. This analysis helped guide our community engagement efforts and the development of our goals.

Source: Winter Consulting

Veggielution First Saturday pop-up event.

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COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT APPROACH We solicited guidance from local community leaders, community-based organizations, human service providers, and others representing and serving BIPOC and other marginalized community members who have traditionally been left out of planning processes. These communities experience disproportionate barriers to transportation and mobility in San José. We listened to and learned from their experiences. We sought to understand the barriers and burdens they and their communities face and the future they were reaching for as it relates to self-determination and mobility.

Through community leader interviews, focus groups, in-person and virtual community meetings, social media posts, and online surveys, we gathered ideas on how to make emerging mobility work better in service of our communities. We then truth-tested ideas with those communities.

While the team worked with the city and community members to reach targeted populations, we recognize and acknowledge the limitations of the engagement process. We invited members of the senior citizen, disability, Indigenous, and unhoused communities to review and provide comments on draft documents, for example, but did not target them for inclusion in the co-creation of drafts. We have incorporated some of those omissions into our lessons learned and hope the city will continue to evolve in engaging directly with marginalized communities as it implements this and other plans.

EQUITY TASK FORCE (ETF) The ETF was created with nine community leaders affiliated with community organizations that represent the City’s diversity, particularly historically marginalized BIPOC communities.

Members were key project and thought partners who provided insight into the concerns and priorities of their communities, facilitated and led community engagement in their communities, and helped set the direction and goals of the plan.

In addition, ETF members played a pivotal role in: • Pushing the City’s thinking on how to thoughtfully and genuinely center racial equity in a city planning process; • Defining and refining racial and social equity strategies and tactics in the context of this plan; and • Determining how to keep the project accountable to the community once it is completed.

In line with current best practices, ETF members were compensated for their expertise and time in guiding the development of this plan. Paying community members, specifically members from BIPOC and underrepresented communities, increases the diversity and quality of participation in projects and processes. Often, factors such as time, transportation, childcare, and other obligations create barriers for meaningful engagement from communities, allowing only those with resources to participate.12 Deep involvement from the ETF and the communities they were connected to was essential to the realization of this plan. They co-created strategies that prioritize and reflect the mobility needs of San José’s culturally diverse communities and neighborhoods.

12 https://www.up-partners.com/news/2020/10/16/does-it-pay-to-pay-exploring-what-it-means-to-compensate-outreach-participants-cyfz2-jwgn6-x8srm

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During the course of the project, two members of the ETF left the area and consequently the task force, and two stepped down due to other obligations. One new member joined the ETF from an organization previously represented on the body.

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PUBLIC ADVISORY COMMITTEE (PAC) The Public Advisory Committee (PAC) consisted of public agency representatives. Members provided technical advice and collaborated with the project team to develop an outcomes-driven, implementable plan. The PAC included staff from San José’s Department of Transportation, Housing Department, Planning Department, Office of Immigrant Affairs, and Office of Racial Equity as well as staff from Caltrain, the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the County Public Health Department, and Caltrans’ Integrated Travel Project. PAC members met four times during the project at key decision points. They shared insights from their agency’s work, as well as ones gathered from their own equity-driven processes. Their input helped shape the recommendations and implementation plan.

TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE (TAC) The Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) consisted of private mobility providers currently operating or planning to operate in San José as well as academics, investors, and non-profits focusing in this area. Company representatives provide services such as scooters, ride-hailing, electric vehicle charging, courier services, urban aerial mobility, and automated delivery robots. As with the PAC, the TAC met four times at key decision points in the planning process. They shared insights on technology needs, partnership models, and tactics that could help realize selected program and pilot concepts. Their input helped shape the recommendations and implementation plan.

COMMUNITYWIDE ENGAGEMENT Throughout the course of this project, we collaborated with the Equity Task Force to engage with the broader community to learn about their transportation challenges and needs, spread awareness about the project, and gather feedback on recommendations. We San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

used a variety of strategies to reach and collect feedback from underrepresented communities, individuals lacking digital tools or a stable internet connection, and non-English speakers. Our strategies varied as COVID infections peaked and waned. They included hosting virtual workshops in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese; facilitating digital focus groups led by CBO partners and other community groups; tabling at community pop-up events throughout the city; and hosting a community resource fair. We complemented the community meetings with a project website, updates on the Department’s website, and an online survey. Details of engagement activities conducted throughout this project are provided in the Appendix.

EXISTING CONDITIONS & BACKGROUND RESEARCH Building on our historical research and community engagement, we conducted background research, held discussions with industry experts, and reviewed existing research on emerging mobility.

We used this information to analyze emerging mobility trends and their potential impacts on racial equity, jobs, transportation, displacement, and other issues identified by the community. We looked at anticipated changes over the next five to eight years associated with emerging mobility trends, technologies, and business models to understand potential opportunities for and impacts to the transportation network and disadvantaged community members.

We complemented the trends analysis with a review of academic literature and case studies research to help identify the potential positive and negative job impacts of electrification, micromobility services, and automated passenger and delivery vehicles.

The chapters that follow summarize our findings, our work with the community, the steps we took, what we learned, and the recommendations generated through this collaborative process.

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PLANNING CONTEXT The City has adopted several foundational planning documents that established the overarching goals that informed this planning process:

ENVISION SAN JOSÉ 2040 GENERAL PLAN13 Envision San José 2040 is San José’s General Plan.14 Adopted in 2011 by City Council, it sets forth a vision and comprehensive roadmap to guide future development in San José through 2040. The plan establishes policies on topics that impact the city as a whole, including economic development, environmental stewardship, land use, and transportation. To reduce traffic congestion and pollution and increase public safety, the plan seeks to substantially increase the share of trips taken by walking, biking, and using public transit, and reduce those taken by driving alone.

CLIMATE SMART SAN JOSÉ15 Climate Smart San José outlines how San José can do its part to address climate change. Strategies to tackle climate change include transitioning to renewable energy and increasing access to renewable energy sources for people with limited incomes, densifying parts of the city to make walking, and biking more viable and expanding infrastructure that supports transit and active modes to reduce car dependency. It is a communitywide initiative for reducing air pollution, saving water, and improving quality of life. It is one of the first detailed city-led plans for reaching the international Paris Agreement’s16 emission reduction targets. It establishes ambitious goals for renewable energy, water, transportation, and local jobs. Its transportation strategies include, among other things, shifting to electric-powered vehicles and accelerating the General Plan‘s goals to reduce drive-alone trips.

MOVE SAN JOSÉ The Move San José Plan provides a path to realize the bold transportation goals set out in Envision San José 2040 and Climate Smart San José. It identifies projects, policies, and programs that will make it easier for residents to walk, bike, ride buses and trains, and share rides with others. Move San José is being developed concurrently and in coordination with the Emerging Mobility Action Plan.

13 Envision San José 2040 General Plan: https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/departments/planning-building-code-enforcement/planning-division/citywide-planning/envision-san-jos-2040-general-plan 14 A general plan is a local government’s blueprint for meeting the community’s long-term vision for the future. This vision guides long-range goals and objectives for all activities that affect local governments. Under California law, General Plans must be updated periodically (typically every 10 to 15 years) and within a specific timeframe 15 Climate Smart San José: https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/environment/climate-smart-san-jos 16 The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted in 2015. It covers climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance.

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LEADING WITH RACE

Our philosophy and approach are rooted in racial equity. With the acknowledgement that the systems that create inequity affect multiple identities, our focus on racial equity targets the disparities created by historic planning practices and systemic racism, while creating a framework that tackles the complex inequities across gender, age, ability, income, and other individual and community needs. We recognize that racial inequities are deeply ingrained in governmental processes that often unintentionally perpetuate harm. Leading with racial equity provides the opportunity to proactively integrate racial justice in our decision-making, and ultimately our policies, practices, and institutional culture.

To achieve this, we used the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE)17 racial equity toolkit as the foundation for how we approached this work. The toolkit presents a clear process for developing and implementing plans and projects that measurably advance racial equity. The framework, highlighted here, includes historical research and learning with the City, collaboration and co-creation with the community, and continued evaluation and iteration of outcomes. In pursuing racial equity, the City is seeking to improve conditions for all San José residents. To be effective, the strategies must address the reality that historically oppressed groups often have far less access to opportunities and resources. If we offer the same solution to all (equality) we will miss the fact that some groups may require different strategies to help them reach the same outcome (equity), due to historic factors. Definitions for key terms used throughout the plan include: 17 Government Alliance on Racial Equity. Racial Equity: Getting to Results. 2020.

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RACIAL EQUITY “Both a process and an outcome, racial equity is designed to center anti-racism, eliminate systemic racial inequities, and acknowledge the historical and existing practices that have led to discrimination and injustices to Black, Indigenous, Latino/a/x, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities. The racial equity process explicitly prioritizes communities that have been economically deprived and underserved, and establishes a practice for creating psychologically safe spaces for racial groups that have been most negatively impacted by the City’s policies and practices. It is action that prioritizes liberation and measurable change, and focuses on lived experiences of all impacted racial groups. It requires the setting of goals and measures to track progress, with the recognition that strategies must be targeted to close the gaps. As an outcome, racial equity is achieved when race can no longer be used to predict life outcomes, and everyone can prosper and thrive.” - City of San José (February 2022)

Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

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RACE “Socially and politically constructed category based on pseudo science “eugenics” which was assigned upon physical characteristics, such as skin color or hair type. Perceptions of race influence our beliefs, stereotypes, economic opportunities, and everyday experiences.”

- Hollins and Govan: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Source: From the Collections of the Boston Medical Library San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

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RACISM “The marginalization and oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people. Racism occurs at the individual, interpersonal, institutional, and structural levels, resulting in systemic racism.”- Hollins and Govan: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

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CHAPTER 04

EXISTING CONDITIONS WITH AN

EQUITY FOCUS

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EXISTING CONDITIONS WITH AN EQUITY FOCUS One of the first steps in this planning process was gathering background information and data on existing conditions from the City, project partners, and public data sources—standard first steps in a planning process. However, in this case, the project team also took several additional steps: • The racial equity leads on our project team gave the remainder of the extended team—City staff and consultant partners—a training on racial equity to establish shared definitions as well as explain why and how we were centering racial equity in this process.

• We gathered information on the City’s history from a racial equity perspective, including the history of communities whose stories are rarely considered in city planning processes: Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized communities.

One of the things we quickly learned was that quantitative data does not tell the full story. Understanding where different populations live, and the level of investment found in those communities, provides a baseline understanding of the resources, benefits, or hazards people in different parts of San José are exposed to. However, conversations with community members provided a richer understanding of their lived experience and added context not evident in the charts and maps. We’ve integrated stories and insights shared in interviews, focus groups, online surveys, and virtual meetings throughout our analysis.

• And, we gathered information on existing conditions with an eye toward racial equity, asking questions about how existing transportation systems as well as new ones are serving the city’s most vulnerable residents.

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KEY POPULATIONS The following sections include maps that show the location of key populations and their distance to transportation infrastructure. Each map is accompanied by a chart that summarizes the demographic characteristics for each impacted area (e.g., the number of people or households that live within a certain distance of a bike share station)—this is calculated using a weighted average for each demographic group for comparison. Charts and maps were produced using U.S. Census, American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimate data. Key populations from this analysis include:

of unhoused populations and those in permanent supportive housing will be needed to further understand the specific challenges and opportunities that emerging mobility may address moving forward. Like many communities engaged throughout this process, the concerns and needs of the unhoused will extend beyond the scope of this project.

However, a deeper focus and analysis of how emerging mobility may impact the unhoused is necessary.

• Households experiencing poverty; • Households with limited educational attainment (Less than high school education); and • Households with limited English proficiency (LEP) Below each map is a description of its purpose and the insights gleaned from that analysis and conversation with community members. The purpose of this analysis was to understand how past policy and planning decisions influenced the current design of these communities of San José’s transportation system. And, how that design has impacted the City’s BIPOC communities.

Details on the methodology underlying the charts and maps can be found in the Appendix.

A note on populations examined: This analysis began with available quantitative data and attempted to fill in gaps through engagement with the ETF and targeted communities. We recognize that we did not hear from every community through this process and note that the unhoused in particular are not included in this analysis. Coordination with and consideration

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Source: VTA

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POPULATION DENSITY What is population density?

The map to the right shows where the city’s key populations are located in San José. Knowing where communities are located provides insight into what resources they have access to and how that might compare to other communities.

Source: San José Mercury News

See following pages for zoomed in map.

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What did we find?

The city’s Latinx community is primarily in East San José.

The Black community is distributed across a number of neighborhoods. San José’s diverse Asian community is scattered throughout the city, mostly in North and East San José—residents of the Vietnamese community are primarily north of Capitol Expressway and south of Tully Road and in neighborhoods like Silver Creek and Evergreen while residents of the Korean and Japanese communities are in West San José in neighborhoods bordering Cupertino and North San José. Residents of the Filipino and Chinese communities are mostly in North San José, East San José, and neighborhoods like Berryessa and Vinci South. The Indian community is primarily located in North San José, West San José in neighborhoods bordering Cupertino, and Evergreen.18 Households in poverty are concentrated in and around the greater Downtown and East San José. The majority of households with limited proficiency in English are in East San José, although there are pockets in West San José. Areas with low densities of BIPOC communities are those with high densities of white people (not shown).

Source: Pmlydon 18 U.S. Census, American Community Survey (ACS), Demographic and Housing Estimates, 1-Year Estimates (2019). Note: ACS 1-year datasets is typically the most current, but not the most reliable dataset--it includes information collected over a 12-month period versus an ACS 5-year dataset, which includes data collected over a 60-month period. ACS 5-year datasets are therefore more statistically reliable due to the larger sample size and smaller margin of error, however, some 5-year datasets do not provide disaggregated information that is available for 1-year datasets.

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HIGH CRASH AREAS What is collision mapping?

Mapping traffic collisions helps illustrate where they occur most frequently. This map uses collision data obtained from the City and is based on the San José Police Department’s traffic crash reports from the past five years.

This enables the City to determine where investments are needed to improve safety.

However, this map only illustrates a portion of the story as many crashes and near misses, especially for people walking and bicycling, go unreported. Some key demographic information such as income, race, and ethnicity are also not captured.

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What did we find?

As noted in San José’s Vision Zero Action Plan, there are multiple collision hotspots in East and Central San José, revealing a concentration of high-crash streets. These areas likely contain several collision hotspots because residents in these areas are more likely to travel on foot, on bike, or use transit. All key population groups in this analysis are overrepresented in areas adjacent to Vision Zero corridors,19 high-speed arterials,20 and high crash areas. Also, age, access to safe driving education, high speed roads, and lack of safe and connected bicycle infrastructure are factors in collisions.

Except for age, these factors are not included in the collected data.

Source: SPUR

19 Vision Zero corridors are roadways within San José that account for a high proportion of crashes that result in fatalities and severe injuries. These roadways are the focus of the City’s major safety projects and outreach campaigns.

20 A high-speed arterial is a road or street intended to move high volumes of traffic over long distances at high speeds.

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EXPOSURE TO FREIGHT-RELATED POLLUTION What are freight-related impacts?

Residents who live near freight routes (designated roadways or railways used to transport goods in bulk by truck and train) and industrial land are exposed to higher levels of noise and air pollution.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

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What did we find?

Freight routes run north - south along U.S. Route 101 through the middle of San José, with concentrated pockets in the industrial areas south and north of downtown and in East San José. All key population groups are overrepresented in areas close to freight routes and industrial land uses, and thus are disproportionately exposed to freight noise and air pollution. For example, 50% of the city’s Asian residents, who make up 32% of the city’s total population, live within the freight impact area.21 Similarly, 50% of the city’s Black residents, who make up around 3% of the total population, live within the freight impact area.

21 The freight impact area includes a half-mile buffer from designated freight routes.

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Source: Nelson\Nygaard

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TRANSIT ACCESS What is transit access?

Transit access is defined as the time required to walk or drive to a bus stop, light-rail station, or park and ride station. Walk access is a 3-minute walk to a bus stop or 5-minute walk to a light-rail station and auto access is a 1-mile drive to a park and ride station. Distance is measured as a straight line, an industry standard used for this type of analysis, rather than how long it might actually take to walk the distance given streetlights, placement of crosswalks, and winding streets.

Source: VTA

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What did we find?

In general, there is relatively even coverage across the city, and the key populations typically appear to have more access than the general population. Access, or proximity to a bus stop, light-rail station, or park and ride station, however, does not mean that public transit is available when you need it or travels where you need to go. Mapping and analyzing rapid and frequent bus service and light rail service, as shown in the map below, creates a more complete picture of the access provided to key populations, because it illustrates proximity to more reliable, higher-quality transit service.

Source: VTA

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TRANSIT SERVICE What is Transit Service?

The map to the right shows transit service organized by frequency and service type.

Rapid bus routes come every 15 minutes or less, frequent routes come every 30 minutes or less but are less frequent than rapid bus routes, and local routes have frequencies of 30 minutes or more. Rail service is primarily concentrated in downtown and in North and South San José where it connects to regionalserving transit. Likewise, rapid and frequent bus routes are concentrated in downtown but extend into West San José and East San José in neighborhoods such as Alum Rock.

In San José, students and many people in the Vietnamese and Latinx communities who are low-income, seniors, and immigrants tend to rely on public transit service. Many students use the VTA SmartPass program, which offers discounted fares for institutions, including colleges in San José; for this reason, transit is an appealing transportation option for students.

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What did we find?

The map of transit services shows that bus service is relatively evenly distributed, and the data suggests that key populations have greater access to regular and high frequency bus service than white residents. But Equity Task Force members and residents shared that transit is inadequate: it is far from their homes, isn’t available when they need it, and doesn’t go where they need to go. VTA’s Line 25 operates along Story Road, through the predominantly Latinx and Vietnamese Alum Rock neighborhood. Though it’s considered a high-frequency route (the bus comes every 12 minutes), community members said that it tends to be crowded and is one of just a handful of bus lines offered in this high transit-demand neighborhood. Service cuts resulting from a combination of ongoing ridership decline, funding shortfalls, bus driver shortages, and the COVID-19 pandemic have led to major changes that have significantly disrupted people’s daily travel needs, particularly older adults and people with disabilities who rely on transit. These changes include less frequent service, elimination of several bus routes, limited operating hours, and truncated bus routes.

on or waiting for the bus, due to indirect service and limited operating hours. In some cases, trips from East San José to downtown can also be expensive: people without access to a Clipper card can pay up to $5.00 one-way when traveling from Silver Creek to City Hall. Despite these obstacles, people said they continue to use transit because more direct, ondemand alternatives like Uber or Lyft are too expensive.

Community members also said the absence of adequate shelter and lighting made them feel unsafe, particularly women, seniors, people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ people waiting at bus stops. All equity priority residents said they had limited access to light rail service.

Maps and charts do not capture the experience of using transit—the time required to make multiple transfers, how safe people feel waiting for a bus or train, whether they can afford the fare, wayfinding, or how frequently full busses skip their stop—all of which impact people’s experience.

Transit trips to Downtown and West San José from other parts of the city are also challenging. One community member shared that a bus ride from Alum Rock to San José City College takes 90 minutes due to transfers. Getting to a 9 a.m. class on time required them to leave home around 6 a.m. In West San José, people may need to take multiple buses to get to school or work, even if they’re traveling short distances. People from neighboring cities who travel regularly to Downtown San José said they spent hours riding San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

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BIKE INFRASTRUCTURE What is bike infrastructure?

San José has been decisively expanding its bikeway network for the last decade.

Bike infrastructure refers to the roadway improvements made specifically to support biking and in some cases walking. Bikeways vary in their level of comfort depending on the separation between bikes and vehicles.

Multi-use paths are off-street, fully separated facilities that may be used by pedestrians as well as bikes, such as the Guadalupe River Trail. Bicycle lanes (Class 2), as seen on White Road south of McKee Road, use pavement striping and signage to dedicate a portion of the road for bikes. Bicycle lanes can be found in downtown and the Berryessa and Alum Rock neighborhoods along major arterial streets like McKee Road and Tully Road. Both corridors experience higher rates of fatal bicycle- and pedestrian-involved crashes. Bicycle routes (Class 3), as seen on East St. John Street east of North 10th Street in downtown, use bike icons to designate a preferred route for bicyclists on streets shared with vehicles. When on lowspeed neighborhood streets with traffic calming features, these are called bike boulevards.

Protected bicycle lanes (Class 4) like Class 2 facilities are also on the road, but use physical

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materials such as parked cars, posts, curbs, or planters to separate bicyclists from car traffic. Protected bicycle lanes are primarily found in downtown near City Hall and San José State University. Examples of protected bicycle lanes can be found on San Fernando Street west of 10th Street in downtown.

Class 1 (Off-road Trail) - Guadalupe River Trail

Class 2 (Basic and Buffered) - White Road and McKee Road

Source: NRT Database

Source: Google Maps

Class 3 (Bike Blvd) - East St. John Street

Class 4 (Cycle Track) - West San Fernando Street

Source: Google Maps

Source: Google Maps

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What did we find?

Access to multi-use trails and Class 3 facilities is generally evenly distributed across the city, but access to the larger bicycle network is dependent on Class 2 facilities. Although Class 2 facilities are available in Downtown and East San José, many people are likely to be wary of riding on such facilities due to chaotic traffic conditions, high rates of collisions, gaps in the bicycle network, and speeding cars. There are many higher-speed roadways in East San José, many of which are also Vision Zero priority corridors. Other factors such as concerns around theft, personal safety, and lack of clear signage or unfamiliarity with using upgrade bicycle lanes also deter people from using available facilities. Latinx community members expressed interest in riding bikes, particularly for commute trips. However, they generally live and work in areas with comparably fewer bike lanes. Age, physical ability, and education about safe cycling practices also play a role in people’s comfort with bicycling.

Source: NRDC

We also heard that infrastructure beyond bikes and stations is key to usage of shared systems. For example, we heard that providing lockers for storage of bikes and associated bags may increase access for the unhoused.

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CHAPTER 05

EMERGING MOBILITY IN

SAN JOSÉ TODAY San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

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EMERGING MOBILITY IN SAN JOSÉ TODAY After we established existing general transportation conditions, we honed in on emerging mobility. The following section presents a series of maps analyzing the distribution of emerging mobility services, and their availability to equity priority groups. As in the prior chapter, we focused on BIPOC residents and households experiencing poverty, with limited educational attainment, and limited English proficiency. The purpose of this analysis is to understand who is being served and who is not to identify opportunities to bridge the gap between community needs and emerging mobility services.

As seen in Chapter 4, emerging mobility services are generally more accessible to those in higher-income and predominantly white neighborhoods.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

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SHARED MOBILITY WHAT IS SHARED MOBILITY? Shared mobility services are a range of transportation options that require people to share publicly or privately-owned vehicles and devices with others. Share mobility include emerging services and traditional ones, such as public transit. There are a variety of shared mobility services operating in San José today, including:

The vehicles are typically owned by a company but in some cases, such as Getaround, the operator enables individual car owners to rent their vehicle through their platform, much as Airbnb does for homes. This analysis focuses on services owned and operated by a private company.

• VTA light rail and bus • Uber and Lyft shared ride-hail options • Zipcar and Getaround car share • Bay Wheels bike share • Shared electric vehicle charging infrastructure • Several scooter share companies.

The co-existence of these services allows people to use one of the services, or a combination of them, to get where they need to go.

Shared mobility vehicles and the infrastructure that might support them, such as electric vehicle charging stations, are made available to the public for short term use for a fee. Shared mobility vehicles can be checked out via an app and are available for pick up and drop off in a number of neighborhoods. Users must meet age requirements and have a driver’s license. To participate, users’ driver’s records are screened and, depending on the service, they may be required to complete a safety training.

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SHARED MOBILITY OPTIONS What did we find?

San José’s bike share system, which is operated

by Lyft and is part of the regional bike share system known as Bay Wheels, is both stationbased and dockless. The map to the right focuses on station-based bike share and car share services. Bike share stations and carshare services are largely concentrated in the greater Downtown. These services may provide cleaner mobility options for individuals and families.

However, only 4% of the city’s population lives within an eighth of a mile22 of a bike share or car share station limiting their access.

San José’s bike share system allows customers to reserve a bike parked on the sidewalk (dockless) or docked at a designated bike share station (station-based) and ride anywhere. Bikes must be returned within the service area. The relatively small service area, which excludes parts of Berryessa and Alum Rock limits the utility of the service, which may present challenges particularly for customers who live at the edge of the service area but need to travel destinations beyond the service boundary area. Although bike share has been deployed and expanded in many Equity Priority Communities,23 community members felt there are not enough bikes and stations available.

23 The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s regional transportation planning agency, defines Equity Priority Communities for the Bay Area, which involves communities that are or have historically been underserved Factors used to identify Equity Priority Communities include people of color, low-income, limited English proficiency, seniors 75 years and older, zero-vehicle households, single parent families, people with a disability, and rent-burdened households. https://mtc.ca.gov/sites/default/files/images/2021-06/Equity_Priority_Communities.jpg

The barriers in accessing car share, bike share, and scooter share are similar because the terms of service across these services are generally the same: they often require access to smartphones, credit or debit cards, and government-issued IDs to operate.

San José’s bike share operator accepts alternative payment options such as prepaid cards and cash but only for its low-income membership program. Two of San José’s three scooter operators allow users to use the app PayNearMe to pay for rides with cash. Users can load their money onto their PayNearMe account at a variety of local chain stores, including 7-Eleven.

22 The analysis involved creating an eighth of a mile (0.125 mile) buffer from bike share, car share, and EV charging stations as the propensity to walk to these destinations is fairly low.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

San Jose has over 800 public chargers; for the sake of clarity, charger location clusters are grouped in this map.

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ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING INFRASTRUCTURE What is electric vehicle charging infrastructure?

Transitioning to electric vehicles will help reduce the amount of emissions produced by vehicles.

San José’s Electric Mobility Roadmap (2020) provides direction on how the City can achieve its Climate Smart emission targets and expand mobility options for all by electrifying vehicles and expanding access to both privately-owned and shared electric services. Among other things, the roadmap analyzes where electric vehicles (EVs) are currently located; determines the number of electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE), including charging stations, needed to realize Climate Smart’s electric vehicle adoption targets; and identifies priority areas for siting additional chargers that would expand access to electric vehicles.

in Downtown and North San José, and most of the fast chargers25 (480+ volts) were in Downtown, West San José, and near Willow Glen. As of early 2022, there were approximately 1,600 publicly accessible charging ports in the city according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center. That’s far short of the City’s 2022 goal. The City will need even more chargers to achieve its recently adopted net zero emissions by 2030 goal.

For all vehicle owners to be able to shift to electric vehicles, the Roadmap noted that the City also needs to significantly expand the geographic areas where charging is publicly accessible, including in low-income areas, BIPOC communities, and neighborhoods with high concentrations of rental and multi-family housing.

25 Direct Current Fast Chargers (DCFC) are the fastest chargers available and are designed to fill an EV battery to 80% within 20 to 40 minutes. Due to their high cost, DCFCs are intended for commercial or industrial locations

To meet California Energy Commission recommendations for the appropriate ratio of charging points to electric vehicles, San José would need 4,091 charging ports by 2022 and an additional 5,496 charging ports by 2025 to support the City’s Climate Smart EV growth goals. As of early 2020, there were 900 publicly accessible charging ports (connectors) installed around San José and another 340 planned. Most of the Level 2 (220 volt) chargers24 were concentrated 24 Level 2 (L2) chargers operate at 208-240 volts, which translates to 18 to 28 miles of range per hour. An average EV can be fully charged in 8 hours or less using an L2 charger. L2 chargers are commonly used for at-home charging and can be found in parking garages, grocery stores, and workplaces.

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What did we find?

The San José metro area, which includes Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, has the highest rate of electric vehicle (EV) adoption in the country. In 2019, EVs comprised 20% of new vehicle registrations, about 20,000 vehicles, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. Two percent of all registered vehicles in the City were all-electric in 2019, 4% including plug in hybrids, according to Department of Motor Vehicle data. Many of the San José residents who responded to our citywide survey expressed interest in electric vehicles, including people with very low incomes and people of color. But there are significant barriers to EV adoption, including the cost of EVs, the small supply of used EVs, and access to charging. Three percent of the City’s population lives within an eighth of a mile of a public EV charging station. That’s not as much of a problem if people can charge at home or at work, but for those who rent, it’s a major obstacle. EV charging stations are scattered throughout the city, but there are far fewer in East and South-central San José.

Source: Getty Images

Private EV charging companies have prioritized the installation of chargers in neighborhoods with high EV ownership or retail and commercial areas that serve those neighborhoods. Oftentimes, these are installed on private property. Occasionally companies have sought to install chargers in the East Side, but local organizations and businesses were not interested in hosting them as they didn’t see their value to their community.

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BICYCLE AND SCOOTER SHARE (MICROMOBILITY) What is shared micromobility?

Shared micromobility refers to small, personal mobility devices such as scooters or bikes that people can rent typically from privately-owned companies. Shared micromobility providers such as Bird, Lime, and Spin, operate scooter share services in San José. Lyft operates Bay Wheels, the Bay Area’s bike share system. The City requires scooter and bike share operators to deploy 20% of their devices in the City’s Equity Priority Communities, as defined by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.26 Scooter companies have deployed nearly 50% of their devices in these neighborhoods while the city’s bike share operator has deployed 60%.

Most of the devices have been stationed in the greater Downtown, which is considered an Equity Priority Community, as is evident in the Devices Deployed by Council District map.

26 Formerly called ”Communities of Concern,” Equity Priority Communities are census tracts that have a significant concentration of underserved populations, such as households with low incomes and people of color. A combination of additional factors, such as limited English proficiency, seniors, zero-vehicle households, helps define these areas.

DEPLOYMENT

TRIP ORIGINS

This map uses 2021 district boundaries.

This map uses 2021 district boundaries.

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What did we find?

Scooter share activity is concentrated in Downtown San José and surrounding communities. Although North and East San José neighborhoods see higher rates of deployment (companies put more scooters here), scooter usage is low.

Highways and arterials are likely barriers to activity beyond Downtown. Even if bike and scooter share devices were distributed more equitably, cost can be a barrier. So can limited access to banking, smartphones, physical ability, language, and government-issued IDs, particularly for San José’s Latinx, Vietnamese, and immigrant communities. As required by the City, scooter operators and Bay Wheels Bike Share offer low-income discount memberships. Nearly five percent (4.6%) of scooter users have signed up for the discount. Compared to Bay Wheels’ other service areas, San José has the highest rate of people using Bike Share for All, the program’s low-income discount program. The Bike Share for All Program allows eligible residents to pay for rides with a prepaid card or cash. In 2021, Bike Share for All trips made up 38% of all bike share trips within San José.27 Many community members we engaged throughout this project showed interest but were previously not aware that this program existed, highlighting the need and opportunities for expanded outreach.

Although both discount programs provide alternative payment options, community members say these alternative

options are still cumbersome. In 2017, 13% of San José’s population was underbanked. According to interviews with community leaders within the Vietnamese community, many are unable to access internet service to book rides. One Black community leader noted that many Black youth were using scooters to get to school quickly, with assistance from their parents. However, the age requirement and need for an ID continues to be an obstacle.

Community leaders within the Latinx and other communities expressed a need to educate the public on how to use these services safely. But many did not see micromobility as a viable alternative for many people, especially for those traveling with children or carrying items such as groceries.

This sentiment is also reflected in the communitywide survey administered by the project team. Only a small portion (14 to 17%) of respondents felt shared bikes, scooters, cars, or mopeds would be useful to them. Community members also expressed concern that stationing shared bikes and scooters in their neighborhoods might drive up housing prices and exacerbate displacement pressures. This sentiment stems from a deep mistrust of privatized services and the perception that micromobility devices are designed less for current residents than for future ones who may be more affluent and white. Residents said they wanted the City to consult them before allowing services to be deployed in their neighborhoods.

27 City of San José, Bike Share for All 2021 data.

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MOBILITY PILOTS & PROGRAMS San José continues to find new ways help residents get to where they need to go through pilot projects and programs that leverage new technology, partnerships, and business models.

SHARED MICRO MOBILITY PERMIT PROGRAM The City of San José’s Shared Micro Mobility Permit Program allows permitted companies to operate shared electric scooters in the public right-of-way under specific terms. The City developed its regulations in 2018, based on extensive community engagement and best practices research. As noted earlier, operators in San José are required to offer a low-income membership or discounted fee, provide information in at least English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, and maintain 20% of their operations in MTC’s Equity Priority Communities. The City also prohibits people from riding scooters on sidewalks. This was the primary and strongest objection residents raised when the program first launched. Initially, technical constraints made it difficult, if not impossible, for companies to restrict sidewalk riding or for the City to monitor compliance. The City has required operators to develop technologies to address sidewalk riding. It is working with operators to road-test their solutions’ ability to sense when a scooter has been driven onto a sidewalk, alert the user that they have done so, and gradually slow the device to a walking pace if they do not exit the sidewalk. Once it is proven, the City intends to work with its operators to deploy the technology on a broader scale.

BAY WHEELS/LYFT PROGRAM Bay Wheels, the Bay Area’s bikeshare operator, offers a lowincome discount membership as well as one for healthcare and critical workers during COVID-19. As part of this effort, Bay San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Wheels also expanded its service area in San José to include Kaiser Permanente San José (Santa Teresa) Medical Center and surrounding medical offices. Other major healthcare facilities (Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, Kaiser Permanent Skyport, Santa Clara County Health offices, and more) were already in the existing service area when this program was implemented.

ONE-WAY VEHICLE SHARING PROGRAM In 2021, the City authorized the creation of one-way shared moped and/or car services in San José to expand mobility options. This effort, spurred by Climate Smart San José, the City’s climate action plan, seeks to expand clean transportation options for those who don’t or can’t afford to own a car. The program, which has not yet launched, will require a lowincome discount membership program and at least 30% of the operators’ initial service area (and at least 17% of subsequent expansions) to encompass all or parts of census tracts designated as Equity Priority Communities.

MERCEDES-BENZ AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE (AV) PILOT In 2019, San José partnered with Mercedes-Benz and Bosch to test autonomous vehicles’ potential to address safety and quality-of-life concerns in an urban environment and to develop an app-based AV ridesharing service. The program intended to shuttle a small group of passengers between West San José and Downtown with a safety driver present to monitor operations.

The program was halted in early 2020 due to COVID-19 and changing business priorities around automated vehicles. The companies have indicated they have no plans to resurrect the pilot.

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TRANSFORM MOBILITY HUBS PILOT WITH FIRST COMMUNITY HOUSING The Metropolitan Transportation Commission and TransForm, an advocacy organization that advances transportation equity through an environmental and social justice lens, received a $2.25 million grant from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to design mobility hubs that include electric carsharing and EV chargers in neighborhoods in three cities – Oakland, Richmond, and San José – that serve low-income families. The goal is to increase access for low-income residents to economic opportunities, medical facilities, schools, parks, and grocery stores while reducing vehicle trips and greenhouse gas emissions. The San José project is sited at Betty Ann Gardens, a 76-unit multifamily affordable housing development owned by First Community Housing located in Berryessa, next to the new Berryessa BART Station.

Source: Apartments.com

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URBAN DELIVERY, LOGISTICS, AND E-COMMERCE Urban delivery, logistics, and e-commerce spaces have expanded in San José. Many of these services, such as on-demand food and goods delivery services, expanded substantially in San José during the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-in-place order. Examples include: Kiwibot: The City recently partnered with Kiwibot, a delivery robot company, to test on-demand, semi-autonomous delivery robots that primarily travel on sidewalks to understand how the City can maximize the potential transportation, environmental, and equity benefits of this technology or eliminate potential adverse impacts. The City collaborated with Kiwibot to test, among other things, whether the service is suitable for all city streets and if it might address the needs of low-income and senior residents, populations who do not typically use ondemand delivery services.

Micro-fulfillment centers: Several businesses are testing the use of micro-fulfillment centers in San José. Micro-fulfillment centers are small warehouses designed to fulfill online orders quickly and efficiently. Unlike traditional large warehouses, micro-fulfillment centers may be located closer to where people live. In 2019, a Safeway grocery store in south San Francisco partnered with Takeoff Technologies to retrofit the backroom of its store with automated technology to expand its capacity for fulfilling on-demand grocery deliveries. Micro-fulfillment centers increase efficiency by mitigating some of the logistical barriers associated with the last mile of grocery delivery and may provide additional benefits in air quality improvements within local neighborhoods. They combine a store’s proximity to customers with the automation of a large warehouse.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Amazon: Most recently, Amazon purchased more than 17 acres of industrial land along San José’s Monterey Road corridor near downtown, which will serve as a distribution hub and fulfillment center. The company also leased the Little Orchard Distribution Center, a warehouse on Little Orchard Street, and plans to use it as a delivery station. While these recent acquisitions can spur meaningful job growth in the region, the Amazon expansion may have consequences for freight congestion, curbside management, and workforce development that remain unaddressed. Amazon also relies heavily on independent contractors to facilitate the last mile of its deliveries.

Source: Kiwibot

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EMERGING TRENDS This section presents changes expected over the next five to eight years associated with emerging mobility services, technologies, and business models. An understanding of these trends informs how to handle potential impacts to the transportation network, individual users, and disadvantaged community members. While tracking these trends, technologies, and potential impacts is important, creating processes that center community needs, as this plan endeavors to do, will allow the City to respond to new services, vehicles, and business models proactively, regardless of their particularities. Anticipating change enables policymakers to prepare for the future: to develop policies and strategies to ensure that new services align with citywide initiatives and community goals. As many agencies learned with shared e-scooters and ride-hail companies, services that appear without warning on city streets and sidewalks without permission can be disruptive. Preparation won’t ensure that the City won’t be surprised again. However, creating clear goals, community partnerships, assessment and evaluation metrics connected to goals, and effective processes will enable the City to more effectively and inclusively respond to the unexpected.

Because new mobility modes are typically on-demand, most of the entering and exiting of the vehicle occurs on the street, impacting curbside access and congestion.

For shared scooters, bikes, and cars, the curb is not only an access point, but also serves as an area for vehicle storage, charging, and occasionally travel within curb-adjacent bike lanes.

At the same time, e-commerce and courier services are also competing for curb space for food and package pick-up and delivery, temporary parking, and occasionally storing packages prior to or post loading or unloading. This amounts to highly contested spaces, as seen on streets W Santa Clara Street near San Pedro Square, where the efficiency, comfort, and financial impact on multiple transportation providers rely on active management of curb space.

Nearly all curb space in San José is public property owned by the City. As such, uses that advance the public good (for example, providing emerging mobility options that serve underrepresented communities) should be prioritized over private uses.

CONGESTED CURBS Curb space is at a premium in most city centers, especially during times of peak demand. Changes in the way people use and access the curb create new conflicts and a constant level of demand that is difficult to predict and plan for. Decisions about how to manage the curb and provide access for automotive and non-automotive forms of transportation shape the way a street is used and can either help reduce congestion or contribute to it.

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ELECTRIFICATION AND MOBILITY To meet its climate goals, California is accelerating its transition to zero emission vehicles. For larger vehicles, such as tractor trailers and buses, hydrogen fuel may ultimately be more efficient than carting around a large number of heavy batteries.

But electricity makes more sense for smaller vehicles, from pickup trucks to scooters. Shifting to electricity will drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution, particularly as California’s electricity gets increasingly cleaner. However, the shift to electrification poses several equity issues that must be proactively and thoughtfully addressed.

To date, the vast majority of electric vehicle buyers have been higher income. In California, plug-in electric vehicle buyers have a mean income of $190,000 per year, 81% own their home, 81% are college graduates, 75% male, and 55% white.28 This is understandable given the high cost of electric vehicles and the need to reliably access charging at home and/or at work. Electric vehicles costs are declining, and federal, state, and regional agencies are providing rebates and incentives to reduce the cost still further. However, many obstacles remain to broader adoption of electric vehicles.

People with lower incomes are more likely to purchase less expensive, typically used vehicles; however, the market for used electric vehicles is quite small. While rebates and incentives are helpful, the application process to secure them is onerous, the waiting list can be long, the incentives may not be deep enough, and marketing programs have not been particularly effective at getting word out to low-income and communities of color.

Publicly accessible chargers are even more essential in lowincome and communities of color, where the perception is that electric vehicles are for people with high incomes and where more of the housing stock is older, multi-family, and rental. It is more difficult to install charging in these types of buildings. Installing chargers in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color where there are few electric vehicles, without having done extensive community engagement, can exacerbate mistrust and concerns about gentrification. At the same time, private EV charging companies tend to install their chargers in areas where they expected high usage: retail and commercial areas that serve high-income neighborhoods.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

28 Lee, J. H., Hardman, S. & Tal, G. Who is buying electric vehicles in California? Characterising early adopter heterogeneity and forecasting market diffusion. Energy Research Social Science 55 (2019).

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PUBLIC SPACE The public right-of-way (roads) is shifting away from private vehicle storage toward people-oriented spaces. Cities are repurposing metered parking spaces for parklets, plazas, shared micromobility parking corrals, and electric vehicle charging equipment. Repurposing the public right-of-way for these uses works well where people can travel via ways that do not require parking a vehicle. As new uses and demands continue to vie for limited space, cities are taking a more active role stewarding their streets. The COVID-19 pandemic has also inspired communities to rethink public space, prompting opportunities to use traffic lanes to accommodate people walking and biking. These programs have become impromptu pilot projects for reimaging streets as human-centered spaces for gathering.

FREIGHT

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

RISE OF E-COMMERCE Shortened guaranteed delivery windows and the expansion of demand-responsive delivery services have pushed the boundary of consumer choice and convenience. Now, consumers who can afford these services can purchase just about anything, including hot meals, groceries, and everyday items, and have it delivered to their door within hours. App-based delivery services like goPuff, DoorDash, UberEats, GrubHub, and Instacart, and third-party logistics companies like UPS, Amazon, and FedEx, are introducing innovations such as driverless delivery vehicles, driverless sidewalk robots, ground-based drones, route optimization tools, and e-cargo bikes to increase delivery efficiency in urban centers. The downside of hyper-convenience is increased curbside congestion and vehicle miles traveled on neighborhood streets.

The hyper-convenience of on-demand delivery services has also had residual impacts on land use, resulting in the rise of ghost kitchens. Ghost kitchens refer to restaurants or industrial kitchens that are built specifically to fulfill online orders— they do not offer dine-in services and their menus are available to customers using a delivery service. Small businesses and culinary professionals unable to afford commercial rent for their own brick-and-mortar establishment may use ghost kitchens to expand their business. There is growing concern, however, that the rise of ghost kitchens in places like San Francisco and New York are contributing to neighborhood change and turnover of street-level businesses.

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Source: LA Times

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URBAN AERIAL MOBILITY There is an increasing amount of interest, investment, and hype around Urban Aerial Mobility—automated, self-driving helicopter-like vehicles that can deliver goods and offer humans another way to avoid roadway traffic. In the past decade, technology and third-party logistics companies like UPS and FedEx have partnered with cities all over the world to test autonomous drone delivery of small packages, food, and medical supplies in urban settings. Urban Aerial Mobility, along with e-cargo bikes and small electric vehicles, could transform last mile delivery logistics for smaller and lighter packages by replacing trips currently made by traditional delivery vehicles.

TRANSIT AGENCIES AS MULTIMODAL MOBILITY PROVIDERS INTEGRATING EMERGING MOBILITY WITH TRANSIT

Source: Alamy Stock Photo, Contributor: Michael Goetz

Transit agencies have traditionally focused on providing rail and rubber tire services. But the economics and the rapid growth of new technologies and modes of transportation are prompting many transit agencies to consider providing new mobility services to extend the reach of public transit. With the ability to trip plan and potentially integrate fares, on-demand services, such as bike and scooter share, are increasingly becoming integrated with other transit offerings. Specifically, micromobility can play a vital role by providing first- and last-mile trip options, which can help to facilitate a seamless experience for the rider by extending the reach of traditional bus and rail networks.

Some transit agencies have already begun to integrate other mobility services into their portfolios. For example, agencies like the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) are testing partnerships with mobility providers, such as ride-hailing companies or microtransit (on-demand shuttles, which in some cases are automated) to augment their services and increase ridership. Others, such as VTA, have partnered with data aggregators like Transit App to enable travelers to plan their trips by linking several transportation options such as shared bikes or one-way car sharing with a bus or train.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

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PLAN-BOOK-PAY Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a concept that makes shared mobility and public transit available at the click of a button.

MaaS enables people to plan, book, and pay for their transportation all in one place, typically on an app-based, platform. It also provides individuals control over their mobility without needing a personal vehicle. For instance, if someone needs to go from point A to B without a car, a MaaS platform could plan and generate different routes to get them from A to B using a combination of mobility options (e.g., transit and bike share or transit and ride-hail). Not only would they be able to choose the mobility options that best suit their needs, but they’d also be able pay for the entire trip on one app rather than paying separately for each mobility option. It would enable people using the app to make well-informed and more efficient travel choices in response to real-time conditions in the transportation system.

Achieving the goals of MaaS is an incremental process that requires coordination between multiple agencies and private providers. MaaS relies on open data between both public and private providers, a strong public transit system, and interoperable trip planning and payment systems. The City of Pittsburgh recently launched the country’s first integrated MaaS project that connects traditional and emerging mobility options within a single system at several mobility hubs. The initiative integrates e-scooters, share services, electric mopeds, carpool matching services, and real-time transit information within a single mobile application.

Since existing MaaS models are primarily app-based, there is growing concern that it would exclude people who do not have or cannot access a smartphone. To overcome the digital divide, cities will need to adopt creative solutions, such as installing kiosks or lending out hot spots or smartphones, to extend the benefits of MaaS to certain communities.

Source: Capital Metro

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AUTOMATION AND MOBILITY Continued research and testing of automated vehicles suggest its deployment may be inevitable; the key question is how long it will take. Many cities are piloting self-driving shuttles to support first- and last-mile and neighborhood connections, on-demand goods delivery, and the collection of data on vehicle movements. As of December 2021, Waymo, formerly the Google self-driving car project, was in the process of launching an app-based autonomous ride-hailing service in several U.S. cities, similar to Uber and Lyft, with service expected to launch soon in San Francisco.29 In June 2021, the California Public Utilities Commission granted Cruise a permit to provide the first driverless automated vehicle passenger service to the public in the state. Its goods delivery and ride-hailing services will initially be offered in San Francisco, where Cruise is based.

The company projects it will expand service to the South Bay within a few years. Many of these pilot projects involve private companies and automobile makers who are heavily involved in shaping automated driving technology (e.g., on-vehicle sensors, cameras, short-range radar), regulations, and safety standards.

Widespread deployment of fleet-based and ownership models will occur gradually and will likely start in low-density areas that have limited pedestrian and cycling activity, a supportive regulatory environment, and agreeable weather.

behavior changes. Mobility options that allowed for contactless payment and transportation, such as shared scooters, bikes, and mopeds, proved to be an attractive option, particularly for essential workers who needed commute options that allowed them to maintain physical distance from others.

Generally, people using micromobility are taking more trips in the afternoon and evening hours and for longer distances, which suggests the services are being used for non-commute trips, such as running errands, or for recreational trips. It may also reflect increased adoption by essential workers with nonconventional work schedules, who have been provided free or reduced costs memberships by operators in many cities, including San José.

CONTACTLESS MOBILITY As cities across the country implemented shelter-in-place orders in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, people largely avoided non-essential trips, resulting in significant travel Source: Getty Images 29 Future Car, Waymo Has Tens of Thousand of San Francisco Residents on a Waitlist to Take a Ride in One of its Robotaxis, December 2021. Accessed via: https://m.futurecar.com/5039/Waymo-Has-Tens-of-Thousands-of-San-FranciscoResidents-on-a-Waitlist-to-Take-a-Ride-in-One-of-its-Robotaxis

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IMPACTS ON LOCAL JOBS Historically, the development of new technologies has transformed the workforce and created new and different types of jobs. There is currently much debate on whether automation and electrification will lead to a largescale loss of jobs and displacement of workers or whether it will modify existing jobs or create new jobs.

Source: Supply Chain Brain

It’s likely that as automation expands and intensifies, jobs resulting from these changes will require different skills than those possessed by displaced workers. This may increase the skills and wage gap between different groups of employees. Manufacturing, one of the largest industries in San José (16% of the workforce), will likely experience changes as automation and driverless trucking expands. As electrification expands, the auto industry—companies involved in the design and construction of motor vehicles as well as those who sell and maintain them—will also need to change and adapt.

REVENUE

Source: Brydon McCluskey

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To the extent that new mobility options facilitate people’s ability to travel without a privately-owned car and new services require space for docking, revenue from on- and off-street parking, ticketing, and vehicle registration fees are likely to decline. This provides an opportunity to rethink strategies and better align them to the City’s goals. Many cities are already experimenting with converting parking spaces to alternative uses. Washington D.C., for instance, recently completed a pilot project that allows a variety of on-demand commercial uses—including ride-hail, food delivery drivers, and commercial deliveries—to pay for and reserve curb space. In San Francisco, local businesses can pay a permit fee to install a parklet30 adjacent to their place of business. In some cases, the city may convert metered parking spaces to install a parklet.

30 A parklet is a sidewalk extension that provides more space and amenities for people using the street. Usually, parklets are installed on parking lanes and use several parking spaces. They serve as community spaces and are extension of the local business that sponsors the parklet.

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CHAPTER 06

HOPE & HARM OF

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The evolution of the emerging mobility industry has captured the imagination of transportation officials, the media, technology entrepreneurs, and individual travelers, while raising complicated questions about accessibility and the racial and economic equity implications of these services. This chapter examines the ways in which emerging mobility services and practices perpetuate economic and racial inequities as well as how they might further economic and racial equity goals.

Source: City of San José

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POTENTIAL HARM OF EMERGING MOBILITY Despite their potential benefits, emerging mobility services and existing business practices have the potential to expand existing racial and economic disparities in the absence of proper planning and policies.

DIGITAL DIVIDE AND RESTRICTIVE USER REQUIREMENTS Common features of emerging mobility services, including contactless payment systems and the need for internet and cell data for mobile applications, present significant barriers to the equitable adoption of emerging mobility. Limited access to internet service or wireless data in certain communities may prevent people from reserving rides using a mobile app or website. This disproportionately affects BIPOC, low-income, unhoused, and formerly unhoused communities. As of 2017, Black, Latinx, and low-income families were more likely to lack internet access compared to other groups.31 Even those with digital access may not feel comfortable interacting with technology for mobility services, due to unfamiliarity, mistrust, or concern over privacy and personally identifiable information.

For example, older adults are less likely to use the internet than younger people—between 2000 and 2013, the percentage of Americans using the internet increased from 50 to 86%, while internet usage among seniors rose from 14 to 59% in part due to lower levels of computer literacy.32 Similarly, people who do not have access to a credit card or traditional financial services or are unbanked may be unable to use emerging mobility

services, as they usually require a credit card for payment.

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), in 2017, unbanked and underbanked rates were higher among the unhoused community and households with the following characteristics: lower-income, less educated, Black and HispanicLatino, with disabled working-age household member, and with volatile income.33 City regulations are requiring more emerging mobility services to offer alternative payment options including cash-based options, PayPal, money orders, and prepaid cards.

But processes to use these alternatives are not always userfriendly and differ among providers.

People without driver’s licenses or state IDs also face challenges in accessing emerging mobility services such as shared bikes, scooters, and cars that require proof of identification. These requirements are particularly challenging for undocumented individuals, youth, and individuals experiencing housing insecurity.34 In the future, licensing may be less relevant as emerging mobility services may become automated, which would reduce the need for individuals to drive themselves.

31 City of San José (2017). Digital Inclusion Strategy Report.

32 McDonough, C., The Effect of Ageism on the Digital Divide Among Older Adults. Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Lowell. February 2016.

33 Figliozzi, M., & Unnikrishnan, A. (2021). Home-deliveries before-during COVID-19 lockdown: Accessibility, environmental justice, equity, and policy implications. Elsevier, Transportation Research Part D 93, 15–16.

34 Golub, A., Satterfield, V., Serritella, M., Singh, J., & Philips, S. (2019). Assessing the barriers to equity in smart mobility systems: A case study of Portland, Oregon. Case Studies on Transport Policy, 7(4), 689-697. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. cstp.2019.10.002.

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INEQUITABLE VEHICLE DEPLOYMENT Underserved communities, particularly people with low incomes and BIPOC communities, are less likely to be able to afford reliable vehicles or have access to frequent, fast, useful public transit service, bicycle facilities, and other transportation options, which presents major barriers to economic success.35 Geographic inequities are exacerbated when services are not available where they live.

For example, early iterations of carshare and bikeshare programs across the nation did not emphasize siting in lower-income communities and BIPOC communities.36 Bikeshare stations were implemented in “densely populated, higher income, mixed-use areas with good bicycle infrastructure” to support utilization targets and generate sufficient revenue to cover operating expenses.37 The City has taken steps to ensure wide distribution of bike share and shared scooters.

It requires scooter companies to deploy at least 20% of its vehicles in equity priority areas and has worked with the region’s bikeshare provider, Bay Wheels, to ensure that station-based and electric bikes are deployed in low-income areas and BIPOC communities. While some providers have made efforts to site stations in low-income neighborhoods, failing to create connections between the new stations and the broader transportation system limits their usefulness.38 Simply having a station available will not expand a community’s mobility if that station is located too far from the rest of the network or if there is not supportive infrastructure, like bike lanes, to enable connections to other transportation services and destinations they want to travel to.

The City’s efforts to deploy shared scooters and bikes more broadly is a good first step.

But usage is unlikely to increase without targeted community education designed and executed in partnership with communities.

35 Allen, J. (2019, May). Equitable E-Mobility. 32nd Electric Vehicle Symposium (EVS32), France.

36 Fleming, K. L. (2018). Social Equity Considerations in the New Age of Transportation: Electric, Automated, and Shared Mobility. Journal of Science Policy & Governance, 13(1).

37 Schmitt, Angie. (2012). Why Isn’t Bike-Share Reaching More Low-Income People? StreetsBlog USA. Accessed 2 Feb 2016.

Source: Bay Wheels

38 Ibid

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NEED FOR INCLUSIVE MARKETING AND OUTREACH San José’s community-based organizations and community leaders cite the lack of culturally inclusive marketing and outreach as a key barrier for emerging mobility use among low-income households and historically marginalized populations. Although these groups may be able to access and reserve vehicles, there is a perception that services were not designed to meet their needs.39 Marketing materials, which historically display users who are young and white, reinforce that perception. Recent research has found that people who

are non-English speaking highlight the lack of outreach in languages other than English as a reason they are less likely to use emerging mobility.40 41 Although only 42% of California’s population is white, nearly 70% of hybrid and alternative fuel vehicle owners are white. This suggests cleaner vehicles, supportive incentives, and outreach campaigns meant to reduce barriers to access, such as affordability, have not been designed for low-income households and people of color.

39 Shaheen, S., Bell, C., Cohen, A., & Yelchuru, B. (2017). Travel Behavior: Shared Mobility and Transportation Equity (pp. 16–20). U.S. Department of Transportation.

40 Ibid 41 Fleming, K. L. (2018). Social Equity Considerations in the New Age of Transportation: Electric, Automated, and Shared Mobility. Journal of Science Policy & Governance, 13(1).

Source: Winter Consulting

Veggielution First Saturday pop-up event.

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EXPANSION OF THE GIG ECONOMY AND INDEPENDENT WORKFORCE In the early years of emerging mobility, app-based industries like transportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft, recruited part-time drivers who valued flexible work hours and wanted to take advantage of their cars to generate additional income. These drivers typically held other jobs, were in school finishing degrees or were working from home. Since then, the driver profile has diversified; some drivers drive full time, work for multiple emerging mobility providers, and make substantial investments in their vehicle to perform this work.42 Hiring independent contractors for TNCs has also become a widespread practice amongst emerging mobility providers.

Despite rapid industry growth in the past decade, hourly driver pay is still low. Many emerging mobility providers, particularly ride-hailing companies, courier network services,43 and micromobility companies, heavily depend on the availability of large pools of independent contractors to minimize customer wait times for trips, deliveries, and charged scooters. In the case of ride-hailing, when there are more drivers available than people needing rides, people experience reduced wait times. At the same time, having more drivers than passengers needing rides also means many drivers must compete for rides. This business model, which prioritizes the passenger’s convenience and access to the service, reduces driver trips per hour, making it difficult to earn a reliable income. Rides (and income) are not guaranteed, and take-home pay can be less than what is advertised or promoted when accounting for the company’s

commission, gas, and vehicle maintenance. While studies on driver wages have been mixed, net income is notably less considering independent contractors - not emerging mobility providers - are responsible for registering, insuring, fueling, and maintaining their own vehicles.

Independent contractors are not provided benefits such as employer-provided health insurance, retirement savings plans, unemployment insurance, and paid sick leave that are typically extended to full-time employees. With the passing of California’s Proposition 22, app-based transportation and delivery companies (including emerging mobility providers) must provide some benefits to independent contractors, such as higher minimum wages, compensation for vehicle maintenance, and a health care stipend. These benefits, however, may not be accessible to all independent contractors on a given platform.

For example, drivers must be reimbursed 30 cents per mile for expenses (notably lower than the state and federal rate of 56 cents per mile), but that benefit does not apply to delivery workers on bike or foot.

As of August 2021, a state Superior Court judge ruled Proposition 22 to be unconstitutional and unenforceable for two reasons: 1) The proposition was determined to infringe on the state legislature’s power to regulate compensation for workers’ injuries; and 2) language aimed to prevent drivers from forming a union also violates a provision in the state constitution that requires laws to be limited to a single subject. Ride-hailing company Uber has said it will appeal this decision. As of the writing of this document, the decision of the Superior Court stands.

42 Parrott, J., & Reich, M. (2018). An Earnings Standard for New York City’s App-based Drivers: Economic Analysis and Policy Assessment. The New School Center for New York City Affairs.

43 Courier network services are on-demand delivery services that use online applications or platforms to facilitate the delivery of goods. This may include heated meals, groceries, and home supplies.

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AUTOMATION AND ELECTRIFICATION IMPACTS TO LABOR FORCE While many studies agree vehicle automation will substantially change employment options and the economy, there is a lack of consensus on when that change will occur and at what scale. The outcome depends on a variety of factors, such as the pace of technical development, adoption of vehicle sharing, and its impact on personal mobility and freight.

Source: Getty Images

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Though the timing remains uncertain, automation will likely cause some job loss, expand some existing jobs, and create new jobs.44 People who “are employed to design, manufacture, sell, and service vehicles (approximately 3 million jobs) and related infrastructure” represents almost 5% of all GDP.45 These jobs will continue to exist in the future with automation and may grow, though the nature of the work may change. For example, ride-hailing and courier network service companies, which have heavily invested in automation in recent years, may need people to monitor and maintain automated fleets and respond to maintenance or operational issues in the same way that micromobility service providers do now.46 Mechanics will need to be retrained to inspect and repair advanced sensors and other components that are absent from conventional vehicles. If AVs are electric, mechanics will also need to learn to install and maintain batteries and charging infrastructure.

In addition to manufacturing jobs, automation is also expected to significantly impact the goods movement industry.

Automated trucks have been available since the early 2000s and were quickly adopted by third-party logistics companies because they dramatically reduce labor costs associated with hiring driving staff.47 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 1.9 million people work as heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers in the U.S. Jobs in this sector are expected to grow in the near-term due to anticipated increases

in freight volumes. In the long-term, however, driving jobs are expected to decrease. Some studies suggest that all segments of a delivery trip, from jobs at the origin (e.g., preparing and packaging items at a warehouse facility) and delivery ends of the supply chain (e.g., delivering the package from a warehouse facility to a person’s door) to the long-haul driving portions, will see automation eventually displace human workers.48 AVs are also expected to negatively affect the competitiveness of small, independent trucking and distribution companies.

Workers most vulnerable to job displacement as a result of automation, namely those in manufacturing, warehousing, and trucking, may not currently have the skills needed for new jobs or might not live in the areas where new jobs arise.49 While automation is expected to affect workers at all levels to some degree, low-income workers in particular have the least financial capacity to successfully adjust. Cities, labor representatives, community advocates, and the automotive industry need to identify strategies to achieve a just transition to an automated and electric future. Likewise, more research is needed to understand the potential residual impacts of widespread automation, job displacement, and economic change on housing.

44 Groshen, E., Helper, S., MacDuffie, J. P., & Carson, C. (2018). Preparing U.S. Workers and Employers for an Autonomous Vehicle Future. Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE).

45 Wang, X. (2019). Preparing the public transportation workforce for the new mobility world. In Empowering the New Mobility Workforce (pp. 221–243). Elsevier Inc. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ B9780128160886000109?via%3Dihub 46 Ibid 47 Brown, A., Safford, H., & Sperling, D. (2019). Historical perspectives on managing automation and other disruptions in transportation. In Empowering the New Mobility Workforce. Elsevier Inc. 48 Ibid 49 Fleming, K. L. (2018). Social Equity Considerations in the New Age of Transportation: Electric, Automated, and Shared Mobility. Journal of Science Policy & Governance, 13(1).

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HOPE OF EMERGING MOBILITY Emerging mobility’s success in addressing economic and racial disparities will rely on effective policies, partnerships, and community engagement.

As noted by TransForm’s Framework for Equity in New Mobility (2017), “The new mobility conversation has focused too much on technology and too little on human impact. We must humanize the role of emerging mobility technologies by addressing the current and historically unaddressed needs of those left out of transportation improvements.” To do so, pilot and demonstration projects can be implemented that test concepts and encourage practices that strive to meet the needs of underserved communities. Pilot and demonstration projects, such as those described in Chapter 5 and in the following sections, can help to identify and address barriers for underserved communities and establish mutually beneficial partnerships between emerging mobility companies and public agencies.

CONNECTIONS TO TRANSIT, JOBS, AND PUBLIC SERVICES The broad range of emerging or new mobility services and technologies offers promising opportunities to increase transportation options and, by extension, access to jobs and essential services, including education, health services, grocery stores, and discretionary travel for social purposes.50 51 52 Interactions between new mobility and public transit are complex. Literature on this topic is mixed in terms of whether the share of trips taken on transit or by bicycling and walking is reduced by the introduction of new mobility. The literature generally indicates that in urban environments, ride-hailing probably reduces transit ridership overall. In more suburban

environments such as San José, ride-hailing has been shown to support public transit by serving as an effective feeder system.53 More affordable options could also potentially compete with personal vehicle ownership and encourage public transit trips over other trip types.54 Some transit agencies and social service agencies are partnering with ride-hail companies to provide on-demand paratransit and subsidized non-emergency medical transportation, in an effort to improve service for users and decrease costs for agencies.55 Others have partnered with ride-hailing companies in pilot programs that connect major job centers such as airports to transit services.

50 Fedorowicz, M., Bramhall, E., Treskon, M., & Ezike, R. (2020). New Mobility and Equity (pp. 10–27). Urban Institute.

51 Ricci, A. (2019). Socioeconomic Impacts of Automated and Connected Vehicles. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 78–90. https://doi.org/10.17226/25359 52 Greene, Solomon, Graham MacDonald, Olivia Arena, Tanaya Srini, Ruth Gourevitch, Richard Ezike, and Alena Stern. 2019. Technology and Equity in Cities. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

53 Stiglic, Mitja and Agatz, Niels A.H. and Savelsbergh, Martin and Gradišar, Miro, Enhancing Urban Mobility: Integrating Ride-Sharing and Public Transit (July 5, 2016).

54 Rodriguez, G., Bailey-Campbell, P., Bittner, J., Shriber, J., Constantine, S., & Coyner, K. (2020). Prioritizing Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion Around the Deployment of Automated Vehicles (NCHRP Project 20-113F; Preparing for Automated Vehicles and Shared Mobility: State-of-the-Research Topical Paper #5, pp. 6–20). Transportation Research Board.

55 Greene, Solomon, Graham MacDonald, Olivia Arena, Tanaya Srini, Ruth Gourevitch, Richard Ezike, and Alena Stern.

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FILLS GAPS IN THE TRANSPORTATION NETWORK During the COVID-19 pandemic, service providers helped address transportation challenges by offering free and/or reduced pricing and partnerships with essential services to support critical workers, seniors, and people with disabilities.

Policymakers and emerging mobility providers should continue to think creatively about how to provide accessible transportation options, especially for people who have been left out in the past.

Emerging mobility has also been used to fill gaps by supplementing, or in some cases, wholly replacing, existing transportation systems. In both rural and urban areas, city agencies and transit providers leverage ride-hailing services and their dispatching technology to provide on-demand nonemergency medical transportation trips. By providing increased access to medical appointments and easing the demand for ambulances for non-emergency medical transportation, ride-hailing or on-demand shuttles can help reduce stress on emergency response services and healthcare costs for persons with disabilities. A study found that ride-hailing for non-emergency medical transportation likely helped reduce wait times for ambulances for emergencies.56 57 Another study found that if emerging mobility were to help people with disabilities miss fewer medical appointments, $19 billion annually in healthcare expenditures would be saved.58 For emerging mobility services like ride hailing or microtransit to adequately address community needs, particularly for seniors and people with disabilities, education and training are necessary.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

56 Moskatel, L., & Slusky, D. (2017). Did UberX Reduce Ambulance Volume? Department of Medicine, Scripps Mercy Hospital.

57 Though the study argues ride-jailing for non-emergency medical transportation trips likely helped to reduce wait times based on their modeling, it did not provide an estimate of how much wait times were reduced because the data used in this study as provided by a national agency did not catalogue wait times for ambulances.

58 Claypool, H., Bin-Nun, A., & Gerlach, J., (2017). Self-Driving Cars: The Impact on People with Disabilities. The Ruderman Family Foundation. Accessed https://rudermanfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Self-Driving-Cars-The-Impacton-People-with-Disabilities_FINAL.pdf.

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EXPANDING SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY OPTIONS Emerging mobility modes are often more sustainable options than personally owned combustion engine vehicles because they often are shared and/or electric. The shared model allows people to travel without having to own a personal vehicle, bike, or scooter, which, with increased adoption, can help reduce the amount of land dedicated to parked vehicles. Electrification of all forms of transportation substantially reduces transportation related GHG emissions. As electric mobility options and their supporting infrastructure become more accessible and affordable, sustainable travel options may become more commonplace and can be a critical tool in advancing local and state climate initiatives.

POWERING DATA-INFORMED DECISION-MAKING Mobility data is essential for planning, regulating, and actively managing complex, interconnected transportation networks. Mobility data may be gathered using traditional methods like field observations or surveys, or through technology-driven methods like sensors, cameras, and data shared by private mobility providers.

Collecting mobility data, while a significant upfront investment, enables increased, long-term efficiencies. With the ability to actively monitor existing conditions and trends, cities can identify problems and adopt policy changes more quickly. Cities and mobility providers can also establish public-facing portals with aggregated data to share information with their communities about what is happening on their streets.

This helps cities increase transparency, build understanding within communities, and promote accountability for ongoing projects.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

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WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES In recent years, several cities, such as San Francisco, New York, and Sacramento, have created workforce development programs geared toward upskilling workers, particularly within vulnerable communities, to mitigate the impacts of anticipated job loss and job displacement that are driven by an increasingly technology-driven economy. While some examples of such programs exist in San José, more is needed. In Santa Clara County, work2future, which operates as a workforce development board, provides residents with coaching and professional skill building training. SJ Works, a strategic initiative of the San José Mayor’s Office, creates employment opportunities for at-risk and underserved youth. In 2020, work2future and SJ Works also offered a paid internship program that focused increasingly on private-sector placements with employers in high-growth sectors such as manufacturing, financial services, and information technology. In general, workforce development programs and focus areas vary depending on local needs. Technology-focused workforce development programs generally fall into three categories: • Independent contractor support where organizations provide targeted training and guidance to independent contractors who engage in online, on-demand work; • Work-based learning programs where workforce development organizations partner with private mobility companies and public agencies to prepare K-12, career technical, and higher education students for transportation technologyfocused jobs; • Digital upskill programs where public agencies partner with third-party education companies to subsidize and develop training courses focused on advanced data analytics, coding, or IT support.

While not as common as the categories described above, there are opportunities for private mobility companies to collaborate directly with community partners to develop new models for workforce development. Additional information and specific examples of workforce development initiatives, including lessons learned and outcomes, can be found in the Appendix.

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Source: Getty Images

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MOBILITY WITHOUT DISPLACEMENT Emerging mobility services create options that can help people complete the trips they need.

However, there is a perception and real fear of emerging mobility and transportation infrastructure investments being a catalyst for displacement. While a connection between emerging mobility and displacement has not been confirmed through research, throughout this process community members have expressed mistrust toward private mobility companies. They see these services as tailored to white, affluent users, as well as tourists and employees who visit but do not live in the city.

These services are typically placed in their neighborhoods without their consultation. This mistrust stems from longstanding cycles of disinvestment and sudden investment in neighborhoods experiencing change.

Disinvestment over long periods of time can lead to disconnected and segregated communities that have less access to critical resources in their neighborhoods. But sudden investments can also have harmful, lasting impacts. These investments, sometimes seen as “helping” or “revitalizing” communities by planners, policymakers, and elected officials, often do not involve or consider people already living in the community. Studies have shown that in dense coastal cities, a sudden injection of public dollars in historically disinvested communities can result in notable shifts in cost of living, increased density, and, depending on the type of investment, displacement of current residents.59 In the case of investment-

driven residential displacement, studies have consistently demonstrated patterns of wealthier, more educated, and whiter residents moving into previously disinvested neighborhoods, while people who move out are often renters, poorer, and/ or people of color.60 Examples of this phenomena are seen in places like the Hayes Valley neighborhood and the Mission District in San Francisco, and South Gate, a city just southwest of downtown Los Angeles. This is harmful to the people who move away as well as the communities they leave behind. It can also increase greenhouse gas emissions by forcing those who leave to commute long distances to retain better paying jobs in Silicon Valley.

“ YOU SEE A SCOOTER OR A LYFT

BIKE IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD AND YOU KNOW IT DOESN’T BELONG THERE. WE’RE NOT USED TO SEEING THIS KIND OF STUFF IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. ” – San José Community Leader

59 National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Shifting neighborhoods: Gentrification and cultural displacement in American cities, March 2019.

60 Derek Hyra, The Back-To-The-City Movement: Neighborhood Redevelopment and Processes of Political and Cultural Displacement, June 2014.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

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06 | HOPE & HARM OF EMERGING MOBILITY

INVESTMENT WITHOUT DISPLACEMENT To reduce the risk of displacement, policymakers, planners, and private mobility providers must consider who is burdened and who benefits from future investments in transit, highways, street repaving programs, bikeways, and the expansion of emerging transportation options. Fear of displacement, of not being able to afford to remain in their homes due to rising housing costs, may prevent investment in BIPOC communities entirely, resulting in a continued cycle of funding infrastructure and programs in predominantly white communities. To stop this negative cycle, government agencies can adopt the following strategies to counteract displacement.61 62 63 64 • Encourage inter- and intra-agency collaboration. For example, consider how emerging mobility can support greater access to “high quality transportation options,” to meet Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) requirements and allow the development of affordable housing in wealthier, more resourced neighborhoods.

• Institutionalize meaningful, sustained community engagement to co-create solutions and commit to funding services that meet community needs.

• Understand the difference between investment and displacement.

• Understand what systems and policies need to be in place to allow investment in existing communities to occur safely.

• Acknowledge, own, and leverage power to enact desired outcomes.

• Build wealth in the community through every decision.

• Employ culturally and context-sensitive engagement tactics to share resources and gather insights from the disability community and those experiencing language access barriers.

Similarly, private mobility partners can adopt the following strategies to better align service offerings with community goals and help reduce the risk of displacement: • Hire local residents—at all levels, not just in street team positions.

• Market to BIPOC and immigrant communities and collaborate with these communities on the design and execution of those marketing programs.

• Enact internal equity policies and accountability measures.

• Partner with community members and community-based organizations.

• Include payment options that expand access among unbanked or lower-income community members.

• Understand demographics of users.

• Be transparent with data when working with government.

• Support policies that allow people to stay in their current neighborhoods.

61 Greater Communities. Prevent Displacement Policy Fact Sheet. 2007.

62 PolicyLink. Equitable Development Toolkit. 2018.

63 Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition (MAC). http://medasf.org 64 The Chicago Rehab network. The Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement.

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CHAPTER 07

DATA, COMMUNITY &

THE CITY

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

07 | DATA, COMMUNITY & THE CITY

DATA, COMMUNITY & THE CITY Data is the common thread underpinning emerging mobility services and technologies. Data is used to connect people to places and make informed decisions about where and how to serve communities. Mobility data is a new kind of infrastructure that San José manages, protects, and leverages for the public good.

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN COMMUNITY NEEDS, EQUITY, AND EMERGING MOBILITY The City is regulating and partnering with mobility providers in both its scooter, its bike share and semi-autonomous delivery robot programs and will use mobility data to help measure overall program outcomes with a focus on equity. Key areas of consideration for mobility data as it relates to equity include:

PAYMENT

FIRST/LAST MILE

Is there a cash option?

Are emerging mobility services being used to increase access to transit-poor communities?

EDUCATION AND OUTREACH Is there a requirement for education and outreach?

LANGUAGE Are mobile apps and marketing materials offered in different languages?

ADA ACCESSIBILITY Do emerging mobility services provide options for people with disabilities? Do the services and/or vehicle impede mobility for people with disabilities?

ENFORCEMENT

Can local-hire be required?

Are there plans to increase enforcement around emerging mobility services and conflicts with other modes? Do these plans consider inclusivity, racial equity, and policing reform work?

DEPLOYMENT

DIGITAL DIVIDE

Is racial and economic equity core to deployment strategy?

Does emerging mobility address the digital divide and some communities’ lack of access to technology to utilize service?

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

A detailed explanation and analysis of data policy, mobility data specifications (MDS), and city practices surrounding data is provided in the appendix.

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07 | DATA, COMMUNITY & THE CITY

DEFINING POLICY LANDSCAPE At the core, a city has three street stewardship functions which revolve around policy: Plan and Express Policy: Determining what and where to invest and while factoring land use Regulate and Enforce Policy: Ensuring all those operating in the public right-of-way align with policy-based outcomes Operate and Achieve Policy: Orchestrate the public right-ofway to ensure safety and balance among different users This stewardship is traditionally viewed as stewardship of the public realm. For the last century, beginning with the first stop sign, local governments have performed this stewardship using devices and instruments from the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). The MUTCD, issued by the Federal Highway Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation, specifies standards for signs, road markings, and signals. Technology companies show the limitations of

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

this approach. The fundamental issue is that tech companies operate in both the physical realm and the digital realm. This then leads to the idea that city stewardship is needed in the digital realm as it is present in the physical realm.

The digital public realm is a less fixed, more dynamic medium for the exchange of information with potential to address the dynamic demand for our limited physical environment. Cities have long been working to manage and regulate the public right-of-way, embedding information in the built environment for a very long time. Markers on buildings, pavement striping, curbside signs, and wayfinding, for example, serve as either a temporary or permanent record of public policies, rules, and regulations. These are guides to the expected use of our physical world. How the physical public right-of-way is used is a good model as we consider what a real digital public right-ofway might be like.

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07 | DATA, COMMUNITY & THE CITY

THE MOBILITY DATA SPECIFICATION & DIGITAL POLICY The Mobility Data Specification (MDS) is a digital tool and notification system that allows cities and service providers to share information and express digital policies. MDS conveys information and regulations in a standard format, similar to a common language. The specification was originally developed by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) and is now governed by the Open Mobility Foundation (OMF), an open-source software foundation that is led by public agencies who manage the public right-of-way.

As private mobility providers increasingly rely upon locationbased and vehicle status data65 for decision making, digital policy transitions policy making from the analog realm of road signs and lights to the digital realm. The process for creating digital policy includes taking the written regulation, codifying it, digitally publishing it to providers, and allowing regulating authorities to gather and visualize information for planning, enforcement, and operations. For example, the City’s written Shared Micro-Mobility Permit Administrative Regulations requires permitted micromobility companies to offer a minimum of 50 devices for public use. This written policy is codified and digitally communicated to permitted micromobility companies. In the case that a micromobility company offers less than 50 devices at any given time, that gets recorded digitally and is communicated back to the City for follow up.

By regulating with digital policy rather than physical policy (like street signs), regulators can easily adjust to address the needs of the city and minimize the time, staffing, and resources needed for compliance, enforcement, and performance monitoring.

Source: Lloyd Alaban

65 Private mobility providers share data to cities on the number, location, status (e.g., vehicle is in use or vehicle is parked), and ride history of devices that are in use. This data allows private mobility providers to monitor its operations and respond to real-world changes the in real-time.

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07 | DATA, COMMUNITY & THE CITY

At its core, MDS is a set of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) which are protocols that allow data to flow securely between cities and mobility providers. APIs are like channels of communication that allow different entities, in this case cities and mobility providers, to talk to each other through data.

There are three primary APIs that allow local governments and mobility providers to communicate in different ways: • PROVIDER API: The Provider API allows private mobility companies to report data to cities on the number, location, status, and ride history of devices in use.

• POLICY API: The Policy API allows cities to set rules for how and where different vehicles can operate, how many can operate, and other high-level policy initiatives.

• AGENCY API: The Agency API allows real-time updates and collaboration between city officials and providers when complex city transportation problems demand dynamic solutions.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Implementing MDS can help public agencies actively address and measure against their overarching agency and transportation goals, which may include challenges such as improving equity, reducing congestion, and increasing safety, among many others. In terms of the Emerging Mobility Action Plan goals, there are a number of areas that MDS can support. The goals related to access can be supported through MDS’s ability to better monitor metrics like the availability of micromobility devices in traditionally underserved areas as well as providing tools to allow for equity-based pricing incentives and structures. Reliable information on vehicle locations can help keep sidewalks free of obstructions, improving safety and quality of life for those with limited mobility. From a sustainability perspective, micromobility vehicle data from MDS can help support analysis around needs for bike lanes, connection to transit hubs, and other behaviors that impact travel choices. Lastly, MDS can be a key tool helping to support the management of emerging forms of mobility, such as sidewalk delivery robots. Details regarding San José’s approach to MDS and how it’s used for existing programs and pilots can be found in the Appendix.

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CHAPTER 08

RECOMMENDATIONS

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

08 | RECOMMENDATION

RECOMMENDATIONS As with all the major project milestones, the project team began the process of developing recommendations with the Equity Task Force (ETF). The project team provided analysis, examples, and technical support for the ETF and facilitated a series of structured discussions to help the ETF generate the recommendations. We reviewed the goals the ETF had established, the experiences and concerns they had raised about currently available emerging mobility services, and asked members how they thought emerging mobility services could be improved to better serve their communities.

Since access to services was a major impediment to use, many of the recommendations generated by the ETF focused on education and information about, ease of payment for, and access to more useful versions of mobility services, rather than specific services. Through this project, we heard ETF and community members express lack of information about, limited access to, and frustration with mobility services. The team then asked the Public and Technical Advisory Committees to respond to the ETF’s preliminary recommendations by highlighting: (1) potential barriers such as cost, feasibility, and anticipated political challenges; and (2) opportunities in the form of innovative partnerships and funding mechanisms for community members and implementors to consider.

‘Revised/Combined Recommendations’ column) that share similarities in content, theme, and intent to emphasize key areas for the City to focus on. As a result, some recommendations that were not initially ranked by the ETF are included as part of the combined recommendation. Finally, we shared the refined recommendations with the broader community via a variety of means, including focus groups, a community resource fair, and tabling at existing community events. In these forums, community members had the opportunity to ask questions about the project, share feedback, and indicate their priorities for the recommendations. The community’s ranking of the recommendations closely mirrored that of the ETF. Those prioritized recommendations are provided in the table below. Recommendations that include the ETF’s and community’s top priority recommendations are included under the ‘Recommended Now’ category, which are followed by non-ranked ‘Recommended Later’ recommendations. The prioritization methodology for these recommendations is provided in the Appendix.

We looped back to the ETF to discuss the input from the Public and Technical Advisory Committees and to prioritize the recommendations. We also combined recommendations (see

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

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08 | RECOMMENDATION

REVISED / COMBINED RECOMMENDATIONS Many of the preliminary recommendations share similarities. For this reason, where appropriate, the project team consolidated several recommendations. The matrix identifies both the original and combined recommendations. This had no impact on the rankings of the original recommendations—the top ten are still included in the combined version. Top ranked recommendations are marked “Recommended Now,” meaning these are recommendations the community would like the City to focus on in the next two to five years.

FEASIBILITY AND COST ASSESSMENTS Each recommendation is assigned an estimated cost and level of feasibility. Shown as planning level costs, the project team considered multiple factors including start-up costs, resources (e.g., software, hardware, marketing and outreach collateral) and staff needed for implementation. The different levels are defined as: • Low ($) - $0 to $150,000 • Medium ($$) - $151,000 to $500,000 • High ($$$) - $500,000 Feasibility, or how easily a recommendation can be implemented, considers political buy-in, legal hurdles, and level of complexity. Levels of feasibility include: • High (H) - Involves generally simple actions the City can take. These are actions that set the foundation for more intricate processes.

• Medium (M) - Includes actions that require collaboration with external groups such as community-based organizations (CBOs), other city agencies, and external stakeholders.

• Low (L) - Involves actions that require new technology, data, legal input, or new studies to be conducted.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

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08 | RECOMMENDATION

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS AND POTENTIAL LOCATIONS To both assess proposed locations for recommended actions and evaluate performance after implementation, the project team and ETF considered numerous key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs are quantifiable measures of performance over time, allowing decision makers to gauge progress toward stated goals and anticipated outcomes. For example, a KPI for a bike plan may be “number of bike trips” or “mode-shift, measured as reduction in car trips.” KPIs tend to be data driven and quantitative, allowing for simple measurement towards targets or goals.

For this work, we recognized, and the ETF reiterated, that traditional KPIs were not enough. As we saw the limitations of quantitative data to tell the story of transportation in BIPOC communities, we recognized the same limitations in using that data to measure progress. To ensure iteration of existing methods and data towards more inclusive and qualitative methods, while balancing the desire and need for the City to understand what existing data demonstrates, we took an evolutionary approach to KPIs and performance management.

First, we worked in parallel with Move San José (MSJ), a larger multi-modal planning process the City is undergoing, to help guide decisions across mobility options into the future. While the MSJ is not focused on emerging mobility or equity, the plans were developed concurrently, and the two teams have worked together throughout our respective processes to ensure alignment and coordination across plans. The mobility ecosystem should be holistic for it to work best for all, and we heard this reiterated in conversations with communities and the ETF.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Using the KPIs in the MSJ, we identified some that aligned with EMAP goals determined by the ETF. Since many of the prioritized recommendations are process- and program-based versus project-based, some of the identified KPIs are more useful than others for measuring community needs. From there, we worked with the ETF to determine what KPIs were missing—what are we not measuring and should? This gave us a list of more qualitative KPIs—such as feeling safe on a bike—that we then shared with the MSJ. While the City may not currently have the data or processes to collect the more qualitative KPIs created by the ETF, both plans recognize their significance in determining equitable outcomes and have included them as new methods and data streams for decision makers to utilize over time.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

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08 | RECOMMENDATION

We also used the quantitative KPIs for both the EMAP and the MSJ to understand which Council Districts would be ideal locations for implementing some of the prioritized EMAP recommendations. Only the quantitative KPIs that correspond to both plans were used as part of the initial assessment.

KPIs are used within the MSJ to help determine which Council Districts have the highest need and therefore should be prioritized for future investments. We applied the same reasoning to determine potential locations for implementing EMAP recommendations. Note that KPI results for each district were indexed against each other, with a lower score meaning worse performance against the desired direction for that KPI compared to other districts.

For example, Goal 1 of the EMAP, which emphasizes the need for greater collaboration with the community to ensure services are inclusive, accessible, and affordable, has two associated quantitative KPIs: Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income and Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income. Within the Move San José Plan, Council Districts 3 and 7 scored low in both KPI categories, which makes Districts 3 and 7 an ideal location for recommendations that fall under Goal 1. Residents who live in Council Districts 3 and 7 spend a high proportion of household income on transportation and housing costs. Car ownership per household is high, EV adoption rates are low, and coverage of public charging infrastructure for neighborhoods within this district are low. This makes Council Districts 3 and 7 an ideal location for four of the top prioritized recommendations. We cross referenced these recommendations with the ETF, and the community, through further engagement.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Finally, in collaboration with the ETF and the MSJ team, we created additional, qualitative KPIs focused on the intended equity outcomes for recommendations. While these KPIs may take longer to implement and track, requiring new forms of data gathering and analysis, our goal is to address the gaps identified as we reviewed existing conditions and issues with community members throughout this project. Qualitative KPIs, which can be applied globally across all appropriate recommendations, include: • Understanding of how and where to use emerging mobility safely (collected via survey) • Frequency of maintenance of emerging mobility modes by neighborhood (collected via provider reporting) • Reductions in emissions and pollutants, including resources for renewable energy • Number of neighborhood amenities (e.g., parks, grocery stores, healthcare clinics, high-frequency transit stop) within a 15 to 20-minute e-scooter, e-bike share, or microtransit ride • Attendance at community engagement activities for projects and programs by priority communities

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08 | RECOMMENDATION

The suggested KPIs for each recommendation are listed in the table below and on the following pages.

ETF Ranking (Equity Weighting)

Original Recommendation

Recommendation Type

Engage with local streets (neighborhoods, school districts, and universities to educate students on how to safely use emerging mobility services. Tailor to specific age groups.

Program

9

Creating emerging mobility options and programs tailored to seniors and working moms taking kids to school.​​

Pilot

--

Ensure services are accessible for individuals who do not have an ID/driver’s license, including youth, undocumented individuals, and people experiencing housing insecurity.

Policy

2

Create annual membership for low-income individuals and families to access suite of EM services.​​

Program

3

Implement easy to use pay stations or kiosks that are available at local stores to support cash-based payment options for emerging mobility services.

3

Create a card-based payment option that can be used across emerging mobility services and public transit. Cards should be refillable at common stores.

4

Provide cash and non-smartphone options that are accessible to low-income communities, undocumented people, seniors, persons with disabilities. Existing options are too complex, likely deter people from using the service, and are not accessible to non-English speakers.

1

LEGEND:

Program Program Policy

Program

Recommendation Types

Revised / Combined Recommendations

Feasibility (L,M,and H)

Cost ($, $$, $$$)

Recommended Timeframe

Proposed Funding Source

Key Performance Indicators

Potential Locations

Creating emerging mobility options and programs tailored to seniors and working families with kids.

• Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income • Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income • Total Trips made by Emerging Mode per Capita • Quantity of Emerging Modes by Area • Affordability of Emerging Modes

District 3 and 7 scored low on both Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income and Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income.

H

$

Now

Grant funding, such as Transportation Fund for Clean Air, The California Climate Investments Clean Mobility Options Grant, or CARB grants

Create easy to use options for services that are available and easily understood and used by low-income communities, undocumented people, seniors, persons with disabilities.

Options may include pay stations/ kiosks, partnerships with local businesses, and card-based payment systems that allow cash filling and can be used across providers.

• Cost of Transportation as a Percent of • Household Income • Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income • Total Trips made by Emerging Mode per Capita • Quantity of Emerging Modes by Area • Affordability of Emerging Modes • App Accessibility by Mode • Accommodations for Unbanked by Mode

District 3 and 7 scored low on both Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income and Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income.

H

$$$

Now

Administration of permit program funded through permit fees

Feasibility

Program

L

= LOW

Pilot

M

= MEDIUM

Policy

H

= HIGH

Project

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

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08 | RECOMMENDATION ETF Ranking (Equity Weighting)

Original Recommendation

7

Ensure equitable distribution of devices and regular maintenance in neighborhoods like East San José.

Conduct racial equity analyses, and engage with CBOs prior to major program, policy, and project decisions like deployment requirements. Establish minimum service levels by geography for all services.

8

Engage with CBOs and community groups to identify evaluation criteria to assess alignment between emerging mobility program and pilots and community needs.

Make evaluation reports publicly available to community members. Evaluate the performance of emerging mobility providers in meeting community needs every X months/ years in partnership with CBOs.

17

Co-create deployment strategies and identify barriers with the community.

15

Require emerging mobility providers to distribute devices across many geographies and give them reasons to comply.

10

Create promotion program in partnership with paid community members to educate and spread awareness about emerging mobility services. Fund and deliver a public education campaign in partnership with community members.

Recommendation Type

Key Performance Indicators

Potential Locations

Engage with CBOs to conduct racial equity analyses, and engage with CBOs prior to major program, policy, and project decisions like deployment requirements. work in partnership with community groups to identify evaluation criteria to assess alignment between emerging mobility program and pilots and community needs.

Establish minimum service levels by geography for all services. Evaluate the performance of emerging mobility providers in meeting community needs at the midpoint and end of a project or pilot in partnership with CBOs. Make evaluation reports publicly available to community members.

• Cost of Transportation as a Percent of • Household Income • Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income • Total Trips made by Emerging Mode per Capita • Quantity of Emerging Modes by Area

District 5 and District 9 scored low on both Transportation Injury and Fatality Crash Number for both bike and walk.

District 3 and 7 scored low on both Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income and Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income.

Create funded public education and promotion program, in partnership with paid community members to educate and spread awareness about emerging mobility services. Include vouchers and discounts to CBOs to give to community members to help familiarize people with emerging mobility services and programs.

Engage with local neighborhoods, school districts, and universities to educate students on how to safely use emerging mobility services. Tailor to specific age groups.

• Total Trips made by Emerging Mode per Capita • Quantity of Emerging Modes by Area • Affordability of Emerging Modes • App Accessibility by Mode • Accommodations for Unbanked by Mode

District 3 and 7 scored low on both Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income and Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income.

Feasibility (L,M,and H)

Cost ($, $$, $$$)

Recommended Timeframe

M

$$

Now

Administration of permit program funded through permit fees

Now

Grant funding, such as Transportation Fund for Clean Air, the California Climate Investments Clean Mobility Options Grant, or CARB grants

Proposed Funding Source

Program Policy

Program Policy

Program Policy Policy

Project

5

Provide vouchers and discounts to CBOs to give to community members to help familiarize people with emerging mobility services and programs.

Program

12

Eliminate misleading emerging mobility marketing practices and ensure that emerging mobility providers are creating culturally sensitive marketing materials for Black and immigrant communities.

Policy

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Revised / Combined Recommendations

H

$

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08 | RECOMMENDATION ETF Ranking (Equity Weighting)

Original Recommendation

Recommendation Type

--

Create a community rideshare program managed by CBOs.​​

Pilot

Better integrate transit and emerging mobility. Ensure emerging mobility complements other transportation options.​​

Policy

Create employment opportunities for youth.

Program

11 --

Establish local hire requirements targeting underserved communities.

Policy

--

Establish workforce development programs to connect low-income residents and youth to emerging mobilityrelated job opportunities.

Program

--

Engage with community in participatory budgeting to determine how emerging mobility provider fees will be spent

Program

6

6

Create community benefits programs funded by fees charged to emerging mobility providers. Types of benefits will be informed by the community but may include discounts for CBOs, funding/sponsoring education programs and engagement efforts, funding promotions programs, and investments that support multimodal travel.​​

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Pilot

Program

Revised / Combined Recommendations

Key Performance Indicators

Potential Locations

Create a community program to better integrate transit and emerging mobility, ensuring emerging mobility complements other transportation options. Create community programs connecting services to transit, including a community rideshare program managed by CBOs.

• Accommodations for Unbanked by Mode • Total Trips made by Emerging Mode per Capita • Quantity of Emerging Modes by Area • Affordability of Emerging Modes • Percent Household Living Within 1/2 Mile of High-Quality Transit • Jobs Accessible within 30-Minutes of Walking, Biking, and Transit • Complete Streets • Bike Stress Levels • Pedestrian Stress Levels

District 3 and 7 scored low on both Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income and Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income.

Districts 3, 5 and 6 scored low on Percent Household Living Within ½ Mile of High-Quality Transit District 3 scored low on Jobs Accessible within 30-Minutes of Walking and Transit District 1 scored low on Jobs Accessible within 30-Minutes of Transit District 4 scored low on Jobs Accessible within 30-Minutes of Walking District 10 scored low on both Bike and Pedestrian Stress Levels.

District 2 and 9 scored low on Bike Stress Levels.

District 4 and 7 scored ow on Pedestrian Stress Level

Establish workforce development programs, in partnership with Work2Future, to connect low-income residents and youth to emerging mobility-related job opportunities.

Establish local hire requirements targeting underserved communities.

• Percent Household Living Within 1/2 Mile of High-Quality Transit • Jobs Accessible within 30-Minutes of Walking, Biking, and Transit • Total Trips made by Emerging Mode per Capita • Quantity of Emerging Modes by Area

District 3, 5 and 6scored low on Percent Households Living within 1/2 Mile of High-Quality Transit.

District 3 scored low on Jobs Accessible within 30-Minutes of Walking and Transit District 1 scored low on Jobs Accessible within 30-Minutes of Transit District 4 scored low on Jobs Accessible within 30-Minutes of Walking

• Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income • Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income • Complete Streets • Bike Stress Levels • Pedestrian Stress Levels • Total Trips made by Emerging Mode per Capita • Quantity of Emerging Modes by Area

District 5 and District 9 scored low on both Transportation Injury and Fatality Crash Number for both bike and walk.

District 3 and 7 scored low on both Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income and Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income.

District 10 scored low on both Bike and Pedestrian Stress Levels.

District 2 and 9 scored low on Bike Stress Levels.

District 4 and 7 scored low on Pedestrian Stress Level

Determine feasibility of creating a community benefits programs funded by fees charged to emerging mobility providers. Types of benefits will be informed by the community and the ability of the services to support them, but may include discounts for CBOs, funding/sponsoring education programs and engagement efforts, funding promotions programs, and investments that support multimodal travel.

Feasibility (L,M,and H)

H

H

H

Cost ($, $$, $$$)

$$

$$

$$

Recommended Timeframe

Proposed Funding Source

Now

California Climate Investments (CCI) program, Sustainable Transportation Equity Project, Transformative Climate Communities Program, Clean Mobility Options, Transportation Fund for Clean Air, or CARB grants

Now

Facilitation of local hire requirements could be funded through permit fees. Partnerships may be a source of shared funding if objectives align. Community Benefits Funds from large projects may also be able to be utilized.

Now

Permitting fees to cover the cost of program administration.

Alternatively, Community Benefit Funds could be established for large development projects in San José.

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08 | RECOMMENDATION ETF Ranking (Equity Weighting)

Original Recommendation

Recommendation Type

Revised / Combined Recommendations

Key Performance Indicators

Potential Locations

Feasibility (L,M,and H)

Cost ($, $$, $$$)

Recommended Timeframe

Proposed Funding Source

14

Increase transparency around emerging mobility and City use of user data and give users control over how the data collected is used. Establish safeguards to protect user data from being sold.

Policy

--

--

Citywide

H

$$$

Now

Data sharing could potentially be funded through permitting fees designed to cover program administration.

Some aspects of this may be able to be incorporated into existing city workflows.

Data training program could potentially be funded with Community Benefit Funds, in alignment with other recommendations.

18

Consider requirements or incentives for safety equipment.​​

Policy

--

--

Citywide

H

$

Now

Administration of permit program funded through permit fees

--

Create a pilot program to report clutter on sidewalks.

Pilot

--

• Compliance of mobility providers with regulations for operating in the public realm

Citywide

H

$

District 3 and 7 scored low on both Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income and Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income District 3 scored low on Jobs Accessible within 30-Minutes of Walking and Transit District 1 scored low on Jobs Accessible within 30-Minutes of Transit District 4 scored low on Jobs Accessible within 30-Minutes of Walking

M

$$

Later

Administration of permit program funded through permit fees

13

Including emerging mobility options in new housing developments to help reduce parking.​​

Policy

--

• Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income • Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income • Jobs Accessible within 30-Minutes of Walking, Biking, and Transit • Quantity of Emerging Modes by Area

--

Partner with emerging mobility providers who treat employees well, pay workers well, and promote diverse hiring at all levels.

Policy

--

--

--

M

$

Later

--

--

Promote emerging delivery services to reduce traditional freight vehicles and freight-related congestion/emissions.

Pilot

--

--

--

H

$

Later

--

--

Create a community-run enforcement program to oversee services at transportation hubs.

Program

--

--

--

H

$

Later

--

--

Establish minimum service levels by geography for all services.

Policy

--

• Total Trips made by Emerging Mode per Capita • Quantity of Emerging Modes by Area

--

H

$

Later

--

--

Establish flex lane definitions to inform curb management policies.

Policy

--

--

--

H

$$

Later

--

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Incorporation into existing City workflows.

Now

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08 | RECOMMENDATION ETF Ranking (Equity Weighting)

Original Recommendation

Recommendation Type

Revised / Combined Recommendations

Feasibility (L,M,and H)

Cost ($, $$, $$$)

Recommended Timeframe

Proposed Funding Source

Key Performance Indicators

Potential Locations District 3 and 7 scored low on both Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income and Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income

H

$

Later

--

--

Establish a fine, penalty, incentive, and /or enforcement framework and thresholds to hold emerging mobility providers accountable to serving disenfranchised communities (ex: Obama’s Race to the Top Program).

Policy

--

• Cost of Transportation as a Percent of Household Income • Cost of Housing and Transportation as a Percentage of Household Income • Total Trips made by Emerging Mode per Capita • Quantity of Emerging Modes by Area

--

Create a customer bill of rights.

Policy

--

--

--

H

$

Later

--

--

Create a digital interface that displays real-time information of emerging mobility services that are available, plus public transit times.

Pilot

--

--

--

M

$$$

Later

--

--

Create a mobility wallet that is compatible with transit and emerging mobility options.

Program

--

--

--

M

$$$

Later

--

--

Establish a clear data access plan for community members to retrieve open data on emerging mobility.

Policy

--

--

--

H

$$$

Later

--

--

Ensure emerging mobility services are environmentally sustainable (e.g., electric.

Policy

--

--

--

L

$$$

Later

--

--

Establish a multimodal prioritization framework to inform use of the space on the streets.

Policy

--

--

--

L

$$$

Later

--

PROPOSED ACTIONS FOR PRIORITIZED RECOMMENDATIONS The following section outlines proposed near-term actions for prioritized recommendations, organized under overarching themes.

Detailed descriptions of all recommendations, actions, and implementation steps for city officials and mobility providers can be found in the Appendix.

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COMPREHENSIVE ENGAGEMENT AND MARKETING STRATEGY COORDINATE REGIONALLY

for consistent emerging mobility requirement for engagement

Create list of universities, K-12 schools, and K-12 schools that participate in Walk n Roll programs and other priority schools Create list of CBOs and social service organizations to partner with to organize and conduct trainings Determine what K-12 training programs for students and families should look like

EDUCATION AND TRAINING PROGRAMS

Develop curriculum with CBOs and private mobility providers, integrate with Walk and Roll and SRTS curricula and VTA travel trainings Determine if existing emerging mobility safety trainings can be adapted Collaborate with emerging mobility companies to determine feasibility of providing incentives for completing trainings. See LADOT/Santa Monica program example Create contract with emerging mobility companies outlining types of discount vouchers that can be created and terms in which they can be used

COMPREHENSIVE ENGAGEMENT AND MARKETING STRATEGY

WEBSITE/ ADVERTISING

Advertise marking materials, customer service info, website, discount programs in city’s core languages on City website for all providers (including Chinese and Tagalog which are not currently listed as part of the City’s multilingual requirements). Continue push to compliance with these requirements Engage with City staff to identify appropriate location on City website Establish location on City website for sharing emerging mobility performance data at midpoints and endpoints of pilot projects

FOR INDIVIDUAL PROJECTS AND PROGRAMS San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Include coordination with established training programs in protocols or requirements for pilot projects and launch new services Create process to identify projects that could be funded from permit fees and identify greatest priorities 8-11

08 | RECOMMENDATION

SECURING FUNDING FOR ENGAGEMENT

Build staff capacity for tracking grants with a new hire PROACTIVE GRANT AND FUNDING TRACKING

Identify funding to support building out grant team Create comprehensive list of relevant grants with submission deadlines. Include health, parks, climate/sustainability grants, as well as Measure B, ATP, OBAG, and BAAQD. Consider low carbon transit operations program. Value capture is also being discussed in relation to ride-hailing strategies for BART Phase 2 Collaborate with SJ DOT grant team to formalize an internal grant tracking process for emerging mobility-specific opportunities (including funding for long term implementation and outreach) Educational outreach with CBOs, schools, and universities

SECURING FUNDING FOR ENGAGEMENT

Develop and compensate members of the community advisory board IDENTIFY FUNDING SOURCES to support:

Promotional and training programs with funding covering training, hiring, and compensation of community ambassadors; materials development; and event logistics Consider strategy for moving from pilot to program

DETERMINE whether permit

fees from pilot program can be used

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

If permit fees can be used, identify how much money would need to be raised and translated into a per-trip fee

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CREATE A COMMUNITY ADVISORY BOARD

PLAN FOR LOGISTICS

(e.g., time, meeting location, meeting structure)

Draft job description and scope of equity role Develop templates for outreach, and grant proposals Draft one pager on the Advisory Board’s mission, priority areas for deployment and evaluation criteria

DEVELOP A MODULAR PROPOSAL FOR AN ADVISORY BOARD that

can be included in projects with relevant funding

Collaborate with community leaders to vet all modular proposal materials, including but not limited to templates for outreach and grant proposals, job descriptions and scope of equity role, one-pager on the Advisory Board’s mission and priority areas for deployment and evaluation criteria

CREATE A COMMUNITY ADVISORY BOARD

ESTABLISH PROCESS TO FORMALIZE THE BOARD as an ongoing body,

if long-term funding can be identified

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Develop framework for community-led input on the development of the Advisory Board as well as formalizing pre and post study engagement with community

Identify desired number of members and types of representation Identify process for selecting a chair person Identify goals and desired outcomes for the board

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UPDATE MICROMOBILITY PERMIT REQUIREMENTS IDENTIFY SPECIFICATIONS

for emerging mobility permits in adjacent jurisdictions to coordinate for regional consistency to the extent feasible

Alternative devices or prototypes tailored to seniors and working families Explicitly state that AB-60 licenses are an allowable form of state ID

DOT DIRECTOR TO UPDATE MICROMOBILITY PERMIT LANGUAGE to include:

IDENTIFY OPPORTUNITIES

UPDATE MICROMOBILITY PERMIT REQUIREMENTS

to include language, ID, and alternative payment requirements for services not tied to permits

DETERMINE PATHWAYS

to allow alternative payment methods

ENGAGE WITH CITY ATTORNEY’S OFFICE to identify

pathways for expanding use of permit fees beyond administrative costs

Require providers to submit a community outreach plan describing how they will engage with the community, encourage usage in low-income areas, share information on their discount and alternative payment options, and integrate community feedback into future deployment strategies Incentives for providers that offer internship programs or hire locally

Work with City Attorney’s office on appropriate pathway to mandate alternative payment options through an ordinance or permitting requirements (e.g., cash-based, prepaid cards, PayPal) Discuss alternate payment methods with companies and determine whether these options could be provided without a mandate Engage community on which alternative payment methods would be most useful. Once these methods are in place make these options known to users

WORK WITH COMMUNITY

to understand concerns around user data, and incorporate opportunities for guidance and/or limitations on data collection and usage into permit process San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

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RECOMMENDED PROJECTS FOR NEAR TERM IMPLEMENTATION Based on the ETF and community recommendations noted above, we worked with the project team to build out three of the top recommendations into projects that could seek funding and be implemented in the near term. Those projects are:

DEVELOP AN EQUITY AND INCLUSION COMMUNITY ADVISORY BOARD Building off the success of the Equity Task Force’s role in this shaping this plan, the City of San José has identified a need for a permanent Community Advisory Board (CAB) that would help shape and inform the Department of Transportation’s projects, pilots, and policies.

FIRST-MILE LAST-MILE EMERGING MOBILITY CONNECTOR During all phases of community engagement, community members expressed a need for better connections to transit service. A first-mile last-mile connector to and from transit was identified as a potential pilot for the City and potential partners like VTA to consider. It was the most popular option selected by community members during the second phase of communitywide engagement. Because they are the lowest scoring on relevant KPIs, potential pilot locations to consider include Districts 3, 4 and 7. Determining the mode, location, and appropriate use case for the pilot, however, will ultimately depend on future analyses and outreach efforts.

Potential use cases can include connecting communities after dark, connections to major local and regional employment centers during off hours, or providing consistent access to high-capacity transit. Identified modes may include electric or non-electric micromobility, an on-demand shuttle, or ride-hail based solutions, depending on the geography and communityidentified need.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

Source: LA Metro

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SHARED ELECTRIC MOBILITY SERVING COMMUNITIES WITH LOW INCOMES Through the EMAP process, an initiative to provide affordable electric shared mobility at an affordable housing site and/or at key destinations within a community with low incomes was highlighted as a potential project. The scope of work should be developed through a community-driven process that potentially expands clean transportation options at affordable housing sites, building on the Betty Ann Gardens mobility hub and electric car share pilot.

The Betty Ann Gardens pilot is a partnership between the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), TransForm, and First Community Housing (FCH), the affordable housing developer for Betty Ann Gardens. As part of this pilot, the project team conducted a mobility needs assessment of the site’s residents. The assessment informed a pilot that included electric car share, on-site electric vehicle chargers, and bike share that was offered adjacent to the development. Some of the lessons learned from this pilot include: • Time-sensitive project management is needed to deliver this type of project.

• Work with a partner who can provide both electric vehicle charging and car share, rather than having separate providers.

• Identify ongoing operating subsidies.

• Designate paid, on-site staff or community member to coordinate the program.

• Lean on the expertise of a resident advisory group.

• Build resilience into the project (e.g., build a bike room so residents can also store their own bikes in addition to, or as an alternative to, bike share).

• Collect data about resident’s mobility access to identify barriers to proposed services.

More detail on these recommendations, including proposed scopes of work and implementation steps, is available in the Appendix.

Source: TransForm

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PREPARING FOR EMERGING AND UNEXPECTED MOBILITY TRENDS The following recommendations include internal steps the City should take to prepare for and respond to new emerging mobility services and technologies. Many of the process recommendations created in partnership with the ETF and community will help San José prepare for the unexpected. But, we recognize that there are technical steps the City should take in parallel to improve its capacity to anticipate and respond effectively. Based on our research and analysis, and building on some of the recommendations from the community, these are steps San José can take to prepare for whatever is just over the horizon: • Institutionalize an Equity Framework for decision-making in developing new service permits and programs.

• Hire personnel or shift existing roles to meet future needs, which may include a data analyst to oversee MDS and provider compliance and staff to support micromobility and sidewalk robot permit program.

• Hire personnel to oversee and manage the City’s long-term vision for emerging mobility, including ongoing engagement with private mobility providers and other public agencies, attending national emerging mobility conferences, and working closely with DOT’s government affairs/legislative liaison and grant team to position DOT for future emerging mobility initiatives and funding opportunities.

• Expand capacity of existing DOT grant staff and government affairs/legislative liaison to support and manage emerging mobility-specific initiatives and grant funding.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

• Expand MDS to other use cases, including delivery bots, car share, shared mopeds, bike share, taxis, and urban aerial mobility.

• Expand existing data dashboard to include other use cases including Kiwibot, bike share, taxis, and curb management to allow DOT to glean insights across multiple modes of transportation.

• Continue engagement with TAC members to understand new developments within their respective industries– Community Air Mobility Initiative (CAMI), Cruise (AVs), Uber/ Lyft, etc.

• Attend and participate in major EM-focused conferences such as LACoMotion, Urbanism Next, National Shared Mobility Summit.

• Create a proof-of-concept permit, similar to the City’s Sidewalk Riding Prohibition Technology Demonstration Pilot, but for new modes and devices, to invite and test innovation.

• Create curb management strategy and pilots to inventory curb space, prioritize usage, and test technology for implementation, including working with San José DOT’s Parking Team to identify opportunities for digitizing curb management and collaboration with third party data platforms (e.g., Coord, Populus, Automotus).

• Create and implement a mobility wallet program that is compatible with transit and emerging mobility options and aligns with state Integrated Transportation Plan (Cal-ITP).

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08 | RECOMMENDATION

• Ensure new services are integrated into mobility wallet as they arrive • Consider implementing a Universal Basic Mobility program, taking lessons learned from peer cities (e.g., Oakland, South Los Angeles, Pittsburgh).

• Create ordinance or requirements for sustainable mobility services within City (electric).

• Analyze data to create policies for aerial devices, including flight paths and zones, noise impacts, and regulatory authority.

• Implement VMT requirements or goals for new services (thresholds to not exceed, reduction targets to hit), to ensure automation (including electric automation) does not negatively impact GHG through land use changes.

Similar policies have created VMT reduction targets and thresholds at regional levels, with mitigation requirements for exceeding them and incentives for reducing them (such

as SB 743). County or citywide goals could be broken into segments for each mode of service, similar to Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) processes. Conversely, incentives could be provided for services that reduce VMT beyond the recommended threshold.

• Create workforce development and local hire requirements or goals for services requiring funding, partnership, or permits from the City.

• Build on success of Bikeshare For All program to expand access to other services; potentially by requiring similar programs or integration into existing programs for other services.

• Create targeted public charging infrastructure, accessible for multiple vehicle types (cars, bikes, scooters), in low-income communities, multi-family developments (where possible), and shared community spaces, such as grocery stores and community centers.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

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08 | RECOMMENDATION

FUNDING STRATEGY The project team identified funding strategies that can be applied either to specific recommendations or across a range of recommendations to inform implementation. Where possible, funding strategies are tied to other aspects of the transportation system, either as a means to discourage activities that do not align with broader city goals or through mechanisms allowing higherincome and/or well-resourced communities to subsidize programs and improvements for BIPOC and low-income communities.

GRANTS Several grant funding options exist that could support implementation of listed recommendations. Local, state, and federal funding opportunities are detailed below.

LOCAL FUNDING TRANSPORTATION FUND FOR CLEAN AIR (TCFA)

ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION PROGRAM (ATP)

Distributed by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), TCA funds are awarded to Air Districts through the TCFA Regional Fund. TFCA is funded through a $4.00 surcharge imposed on motor vehicles registered within the Bay Area. Sixty percent of TFCA funds is awarded by BAAQMD through a grant program named the Regional Fund, and 40% is managed by Valley Transportation Authority and called the County Program Manager Fund. Eligible project types include ridesharing, clean air vehicles and infrastructure, bicycles, arterial management, and engine replacement (repower) and retrofit.66

Distributed by the State and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the ATP uses state and federal funds to support programs for active transportation such as walking and biking.

Approximately $220 million is available each year for bike and pedestrian projects across California. Eligible projects include building bicycle/pedestrian paths, installing bike racks, and paying for projects that will make active transportation easier, safer, and more convenient.67 In the 2021 cycle the largest ATP funding request for a project was approximately $32 million.

While emerging mobility pilots and programs do not meet program requirements, the City should continue to pursue this funding to build supportive infrastructure, such as bikeways and sidewalk improvements. The City can also consider pursuing ATP funding for non-infrastructure programs focused on safety education and engagement at schools.

66 The Bay Area Air Quality Management District 67 Metropolitan Transportation Commission

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

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08 | RECOMMENDATION

STATE AND FEDERAL FUNDING CALIFORNIA AIR RESOURCES BOARD (CARB) The CARB has several grant opportunities focused on protecting public health and combatting air pollution. AB 617 is a community air grant which includes provisions for technical assistance to community-based organizations to support their efforts towards improving air quality and climate efforts.

TRANSPORTATION NETWORK COMPANIES (TNC) ACCESS FOR ALL PROGRAM Distributed by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the TNC Access for All Program was established to support programs related to accessibility for persons with disabilities, which includes wheelchair users who require wheelchair-accessible vehicles (WAV). CPUC requires TNCs to collect an access fee of $0.10 for each TNC trip. The fees collected are then deposited into the TNC Access for All Fund and are distributed to access providers to meet the needs of persons with disabilities including users who require a WAV within each geographic area. Access providers as defined by the CPUC include any entity that directly provides or contracts with a separate organization to provide on-demand WAV transportation. This can include TNCs and third-party companies who operate their own WAVs. The fund for each geographic area is determined by the percentage of fees originating within the geographic area.68

CALIFORNIA CLIMATE INVESTMENT (CCI) CCI is a statewide initiative that supports reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy, improving public health, and improving environmental conditions, with a focus

on disadvantaged communities. This program uses greenhouse gas cap-and-trade proceeds to invest in projects that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The following grant opportunities are funded through the CCI initiative: • California Climate Investments Clean Mobility Options Grant – The Clean Mobility Options Voucher Pilot Program (CMO) awards voucher-based funding for zero-emission mobility programs that provide service in California’s historically underserved communities. CMO is funded by California Climate Investments and administered by a collaboration between CALSTART, the Shared Use Mobility Center, GRID Alternatives, and Local Government Commission. CMO has made a concerted effort to center equity in its awardee process.

– Under this grant program, the City of Richmond was awarded $1 million to implement the City’s first citywide, on-demand shuttle program. Other examples of funded projects in Northern California include the Oakland Department of Transportation $1 million grant for an Oakland E-bike Library. Oakland also received approximately $500,000 for an on-demand Oakland Unified Student Transportation program.

• California Climate Investments Sustainable Transportation Equity Project Grant (STEP) – The STEP grant program seeks to address community transportation needs for access to important destinations such as schools, grocery stores, workplaces, medical facilities, community facilities and more while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The overall purpose of STEP

68 California Public Utilities Commission. TNC Access For All Program Guidelines for Access Fund Administrators (AFAs). June 2020.

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08 | RECOMMENDATION

is to increase transportation equity within disadvantaged communities and low-income communities through two grant types (1) Planning and Capacity Building Grants and (2) Implementation Grants. A total of $19.5 million has been received and implemented through the grant.

– Through this grant program, the City of El Monte received approximately $200,000 in funding for the Rush Street Corridor Enhancement Plan, a plan to improve the safety of Rush Street, which is a multi-modal corridor that connects to schools, business, and other destinations.

• California Climate Investments Affordable Housing Sustainable Communities (AHSC) Grant – The AHSC grant aims to make California residents less reliant on driving by ensuring that housing, jobs, and other destinations are more accessible by walking, biking, and transit. Approximately $1.1 billion has already been invested across the state on 104 projects. The San José Market – Almaden TOD project was awarded approximately $19 million in funding from AHSC. The project would support affordable housing for artists in downtown San José and would include transportation components such as key bike and pedestrian gap closures, protected bikeways that would connect neighborhoods south to the Convention Center, and urban greening improvements to a proposed active transportation corridor.

• California Climate Investments Transformative Climate Communities Program Grant (TCC) – The TCC program supports communities impacted by pollution to choose their own goals, strategies, and projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The program funds community-led infrastructure projects that San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

accrue environmental, health, and economic benefits to disadvantaged communities.

– In 2018 the City of Fresno received approximately $70 million through the TCC program to support a variety of community benefits including bicycle pathways, active transportation and complete streets components, electric vehicles, vanpool, and bike share programs, and more.

REBUILDING AMERICAN INFRASTRUCTURE WITH SUSTAINABILITY AND EQUITY (RAISE) GRANT Within the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), this program is focused on investment in roads, rail, transit, and port projects that would support national objectives. Congress has dedicated approximately $8.9 billion for twelve rounds of National Infrastructure Investments funding projects that will have a significant local or regional impact.

INFRASTRUCTURE FOR REBUILDING AMERICA (INFRA) GRANT Distributed by USDOT, INFRA grants are awarded based on criteria such as improving local economies, job creation, addressing climate change, environmental justice, and racial equity. USDOT will award approximately 44% of proposed funding to rural areas that have historic underinvestment.

Approximately $905.25 million will be awarded to 24 projects in 18 states under INFRA. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation received $18 million to put toward a Safe Streets Infrastructure project which included adding approximately 26 new traffic signals and leading pedestrian-level signal enhancements to approximately 90 intersections.

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AREAS OF PERSISTENT POVERTY PROGRAM The Areas of Persistent Poverty program through the Federal Transit Administration provides grants for areas experiencing long-term economic distress. It provides funding for planning, engineering, technical studies, or financial plans that will result in improved public transportation, new routes and facilities, and innovative technologies in communities experiencing a high poverty rate. It also supports coordinated human service transportation planning to improve transit service or provide new services, including paratransit.69

UNITED STATES INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT AND JOBS ACT The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is a bipartisan bill that includes approximately $550 billion in new federal investments in America’s roads and bridges, water infrastructure, resilience, internet, and more. The following programs are adopted elements of the recently passed legislation.

• Carbon Reduction Program – A new formula program that will distribute approximately $6.4 billion over 5 years to states for investment in projects that will help reduce transportation emissions. Eligible projects include transportation electrification, EV charging, public transportation, infrastructure for bicycling and walking, infrastructure that support congestion pricing, diesel engine retrofits, port electrification and intelligent

transportation systems (ITS) improvements. Approximately 65% of this funding will be allocated by population to projects in local communities.70 • Reconnecting Communities – This program will improve community connectivity by identifying and removing or mitigating infrastructural barriers that create obstacles to mobility or economic development or expose the community to pollution and other health and safety risks. Potential projects could include building over or around highways or capping highways. The bill provides approximately $1 billion over five years.71 • Safe Streets & Roads for All Grant Program – This program invests $5 billion over five years ($1 billion per year) to support Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and local governments to develop and implement safety plans to prevent fatalities on streets. The Safe Streets & Roads for All program will fund state and local “vision zero” plans and other initiatives to reduce crashes and fatalities.

• Healthy Streets – The bill authorizes a new Healthy Streets program where eligible projects include those that mitigate urban heat islands, improve air quality, and reduce stormwater runoff.

The grant will prioritize low-income communities and disadvantaged communities.

69 https://www.transit.dot.gov/grant-programs/areas-persistent-poverty-program 70 The Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/2/e/2e879095-7fcd-4f6e-96fd-a4ad85afa0cc/7D48782E0BEB430002A 767AC75961EB0.bif-highway-one-pager-final-2.pdf 71 The Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/2/e/2e879095-7fcd-4f6e-96fd-a4ad85afa0cc/7D48782E0BEB430002A 767AC75961EB0.bif-highway-one-pager-final-2.pdf

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IMPACT FEES An impact fee is typically a one-time payment imposed by a local government on a property developer. The fee is meant to offset the financial impact a new development places on public infrastructure and programs.

The California Mitigation Fee Act authorizes a local agency to establish, increase, or impose various fees as a condition of approval of a development project, if specified requirements are met.72 In 2014 the San José City Council approved the Affordable Housing Impact Fee (AHIF) which aids in addressing the need for affordable housing connected with development of new market rate residential rental units. The AHIF increases by 2% every year.

COMMUNITY BENEFITS FUNDS A Community Benefit Fund is a fund established by a group of donors or through targeted fees to support a charitable cause.

Often these funds are established by developers to benefit the community surrounding a large development project.

Kaiser Permanente provides grants and donations to nonprofit, community-based organizations and agencies for projects that address grantmaking priority areas identified through Kaiser’s Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNA). According to the 2019 San José CHNA report, local experts, and residents within the CHNA service area expressed concern about transportation and traffic, especially issues related to air pollution. They also identified lack of transportation as a barrier to health care.

Google and the City of San José established a $200 million Community Benefits Agreement. City Council priorities for this agreement focus on education and workforce development programs to avoid displacement.

OTHER FUNDING MECHANISMS INCREASE PARKING COSTS WHERE APPROPRIATE Private vehicles in areas well-served by transit do not generally align with broader city goals to reduce vehicle miles traveled and associated greenhouse gas emissions. As such, increasing parking costs for single-occupancy vehicles in high-capacity transit areas could be considered as a potential funding strategy. Increased parking revenues can be redirected to fund other transportation services such as subsidized transit and bike share passes. However, areas well-served by transit are limited in San José, which limits the potential of this funding strategy.

Furthermore, since many low-income and BIPOC community members rely on driving, an analysis should be conducted to assess whether such an increase would result in unintended harm.

CROSS SUBSIDIZE LOW-INCOME DISCOUNTS Shared mobility services, such as bike share, scooter share, and car share, that are heavily used by higher-income communities, could be required to pay a fee to subsidize access by lowincome residents. This strategy can be implemented through a per vehicle fee whereby providers pay a discounted per vehicle fee when deploying in disadvantaged neighborhoods and comparatively higher per fee when deploying in high-utilization (and often higher-income) areas.

72 California Legislative Information

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NEW REVENUE MODELS

PARTNERSHIPS

Expanding transit agency mobility portfolios can help create a seamless trip from home to destination, while extending the reach of traditional bus and rail networks. However, it is unclear if these services can become self-supporting yet affordable to those with moderate means. New finance and revenue share models seek to identify sustainable funding streams that allow private mobility providers to support and complement public services. For example, some private mobility providers, such as microtransit companies and electric vehicle charging companies, are testing revenue share models with cities,73 to mitigate the high costs of implementation and operation of services. While tensions between these needs remain, ongoing pilot programs and partnerships continue to experiment and evolve with different models.

Some recommendations may be able to be accomplished, in part or in whole, through partnerships with organizations, companies, or programs that may have shared objectives and designated funding. In some cases, this may be limited to partnering on outreach or education initiatives to reach specific audiences. In other cases, planned projects or initiatives may be modified to incorporate recommendations or aspects of recommendations from this plan. Some potential partners that may have a nexus with identified recommendations include: • San José DOT’s Walk ‘N’ Roll Program (Safe Routes to School) and safety education program • Churches and Community Based Organizations • Transportation Agencies • Universities • Hospitals • Transportation Network Companies • Neighborhood Associations • Chambers of Commerce and local business associations

73 The City of Jersey City passed a resolution in February 2021 authorizing a cost and revenue sharing agreement between the City of Jersey City, Hoboken, and Lyft as part of its bike share program. Resolution language can be found here: https://cityofjerseycity.civicweb.net/document/43261

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CHAPTER 09

LESSONS

LEARNED

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

09 | LESSONS LEARNED

LESSONS LEARNED Centering equity in a planning and implementation project requires an openness to new ideas, processes, and iterative co-creation to reach the outcomes sought by community and public stakeholders.

Capacity building, working within constraints while pushing boundaries, and understanding the trade-offs and compromises needed to implement actionable plans are prerequisites to any measure of success. Through the course of this project, from scoping through finalization, we learned many lessons, and created recommendations from them. Below are some of the key takeaways from this process, noted as considerations and recommendations for future equity-centered work.

SCOPING & SETTING EXPECTATIONS Despite thoughtful scoping and funding of the project, expectations from community members and city partners around the outcomes were not initially aligned. ETF members felt constrained by the City’s focus on emerging mobility.

The issues their communities were struggling with were so much larger than transportation, and emerging mobility was seen as largely irrelevant. For the many communities experiencing housing and job insecurity, electric vehicles, autonomous shuttles, or micromobility are far down their list of concerns compared to more immediate needs like housing, displacement, and access to social services and stable jobs.

Additionally, current configurations didn’t meet the needs of many residents, were difficult to access, and deployments in their neighborhoods were seen as yet another example of the City pursuing its own aims rather than developing solutions with its communities. It took a lot of listening and discussion for the project team and City to fully appreciate the larger issues communities were wrestling with and for ETF members to see San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

where there might be some utility to emerging mobility if it could be configured to meet their communities’ needs.

Throughout the course of these initial discussions, and through the life of the project, ETF members expressed the importance of greater housing affordability in locations near services and transportation resources. As communities are pushed out of San José, farther from good paying jobs and other resources, and farther from high quality transit, the ability to rely on public services to reach all their daily needs, from schools to jobs to healthcare to recreation, becomes more difficult.

In addition to greater housing choices, ETF members highlighted the importance of transit systems that actually meet their needs, with frequent service to and from locations where they currently live and work or would like to. In the absence of these systems, communities rely on private vehicles for mobility, and expressed concerns over City policies that may impact their already burdened transportation costs. For example, reducing 9-2

09 | LESSONS LEARNED

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

parking in downtown areas benefits the City and its residents through reduced vehicle use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But, for low-income folks who rely on a car to get to work, it may increase the cost of driving without providing viable alternatives. To address these tensions and nuanced tradeoff considerations, this plan has integrated considerations beyond emerging mobility that have come up throughout the project.

These include considerations and issues around housing, personal and community safety, transit, land use, and economic opportunities. Each of these concerns will require nuanced and collaborative policy and planning from the City and its communities.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

In using the GARE framework for this project, we also recognized that iteration is an important component of equitable planning. The linear structure and requirements of the grant proved challenging, as we continued to learn and iterate with the community through the process. The equity framework we utilized, based on GARE but with more cyclical structures, allowed for the Equity Task Force and community to provide greater and more detailed input in shaping the recommendations. Frameworks will generally include similar steps, but may need to be refined for various project and program types, to allow iteration with community through the various steps of policy or project-making.

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Another limitation in this project was the fact that the grant was written without community involvement. To secure the funds, the City configured its project to comply with the funder’s program goals, timeline, and funding restrictions. By the time community members were involved, the goals, scope, and schedule of the project were set; there was very little that could be changed, which understandably generated friction.

The project team and City sought to provide as much room to maneuver within those constraints as possible, but it was too late in the process to make substantive changes.

As grant funding will likely continue to be a major source of support for City plans and projects at a minimum, the City should make these expectations and constraints clear at the onset, and at the conclusion of every project invite community input on how to improve the next project. Ideally, the City should identify ways it can work with community leaders and organizations to get input during project conceptualization or perhaps partner with them in jointly drafting and submitting proposals. As many grant funding cycles happen annually, the time between funding release and application is often limited, making longer community processes difficult to incorporate at the front end. Thus, projects already identified, in plans such as this one, are often the first to be considered. As the City works to improve future planning studies and include greater community collaboration, it can prepare for more immediate funding cycles through continued capacity building with community groups, to ensure the existing processes are well understood and prepared for by community leaders before funding is available. This will allow the City to emphasize

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

the community’s perspective in their discussions with grant administrators and in their applications. Additionally, the City can work with an advisory group, a bench of CBOs, or alternate group of community leaders to receive input and proposed changes to existing plans and to ensure a greater collaborative effort in projects proposed for funding, even if they are not co-created with the community.

The City should also provide feedback to grant administrators to encourage them to consider inclusion of a requirement for city agencies to partner directly with CBOs on grant applications and to provide funding for this. Community members should be involved in scoping, project design, and logistics. Grantees should also document points of friction with grant requirements, to inform future programs. Restrictions around forms of compensation and eligible expenses (e.g., gift cards to encourage participation or compensate focus group participants), for example created challenges for quality and creative engagement. In addition, the City can advocate for the inclusion of community members at the decision-making table in discussions with grant administrators—community members who have applied for grants shared that funding organizations are often open to hearing directly from impacted communities.

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EQUITY TASK FORCE ENGAGEMENT This project presented the City with an opportunity to engage with a dedicated group of community leaders and organizational partners for an extended period. Our partners on the Equity Task Force (ETF) were experts on their communitiesand in many categories, but fairly unfamiliar with transportation planning and working in co-creation with the Department of Transportation. The goal was for the ETF to colead this planning process, but the City and project team quickly realized that we were expecting the ETF members to suggest program and policy solutions without providing them with the baseline understanding and information they needed to make that leap. A third party that understands both city processes and community needs and interests, which for this Plan was helmed by private consultants, may help enhance collaboration, acting as a bridge between the expertise of the community partners and the requirements of city officials, and helping to build a shared understanding and trust. This role can be taken on by community engagement specialists within the city, a consultant, advisor, or trusted community member who works in the field of the project.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

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09 | LESSONS LEARNED

PRIORITIZE RELATIONSHIP BUILDING FROM THE OUTSET AND INTEGRATE THROUGHOUT THE PROCESS. When bringing together community members with different backgrounds and areas of interest, dedicate time and space for members to connect and get to know each other. Having discussions around lived experiences and past harms can be challenging and uncomfortable, so it’s imperative to co-create a space with community members where they can feel vulnerable and know they have the support and trust of their peers.

Dynamics between members also reflect how they speak to each other, how constructive their conversations are, how they take action and make decisions together, and how effectively they can build consensus when differing opinions on a topic arise.

We recommend making team building the primary focus during the onboarding process. Where appropriate, the project team should also participate in these team building activities to create a greater sense of trust and respect. This should be

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

done well before the first project milestone. There was little time between onboarding ETF members and the existing conditions deliverable. This shift in the project, while driven by the project timeline, felt abrupt. ETF members wanted more time to connect with their peers, get to know the project team, and orient themselves to this work. In hindsight, the project team would have liked to onboard ETF members earlier in the project cycle to allow more time for team building, charter development, and racial equity and emerging mobility training.

Finding opportunities to integrate team building activities both within and outside of standing meetings is also key to sustaining engagement and creating a sense of cohesion within the group. ETF members created a practice within meetings to share updates on what their respective organizations are working on and to do an ice breaker before diving into projectspecific content. Several members suggested hosting in-person meetings that involve rotating between their CBO offices or workspaces. However, some members were uncomfortable meeting in person due to the ongoing COVID-19 public health crisis.

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DEDICATE TIME FOR CAPACITY BUILDING. It’s imperative to build this technical capacity early in the engagement process to help community members feel comfortable and confident in talking about how to improve transportation generally and make use of emerging mobility.

ETF members expressed that the transition from onboarding to project tasks was too abrupt, and more time was needed at the start of engagement to unpack the project scope and timeline and approaches for integrating communitywide engagement.

Even in projects that hope to shift existing paradigms, current processes and factors related to program management must be understood and dissected. The ETF recognized this quickly and noted that they would have benefited from greater analysis and technical understanding of the project at the outset, including its relationship to other, connected projects and programs in the city. A more deliberate timeline dedicated to building trust, relationships, and capacity before diving into any specific project work would have benefited the process.

We found some success providing reading assignments and facilitated discussions during meetings but would recommend dedicating time to hosting a series of training sessions that allow for deeper discussions around emerging mobility and the City’s role in regulating these services well before reaching the first milestone of a project.

One tool the project team developed to assist the ETF was to create a primer that included a glossary of common terms used

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

when talking about emerging mobility, as well as examples of different types of emerging mobility options and services. We also dedicated a meeting to discuss the primer and answer any questions ETF members had about emerging mobility. This helped to establish baseline knowledge and shared definitions to help ETF members feel empowered when providing feedback on recommendations. Additionally, providing case studies and best practices of pilot projects, programs, and policies from peer cities can help community members envision how various emerging mobility services might (or might not) work for their communities. An overview of case studies should be provided throughout the technical capacity-building process, but especially before developing recommendations so that community members can build from real-world examples that pique their interest.

City staff, the City’s community engagement consultant, and the ETF were able to secure a capacity-building grant for the ETF through the American Cities Climate Challenge. The grant enabled the ETF members to spend time learning about topics they were interested in, such as the purpose and function of the county and regional transportation agencies and efforts that local organizations (including some of their members) were making to reduce homelessness, increase affordable housing, and improve public safety in San José’s. ETF members said they found the additional information useful, but the additional time required for this was exhausting.

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CLARIFY EXPECTATIONS AND ESTABLISH PROJECT TEAM ACCOUNTABILITY MEASURES. Shortly after forming the ETF, the project team worked with members to establish a community agreement that reflected shared values and expectations for interactions between members as well as a memorandum of understanding (MOU) outlining the number of ETF meetings and communitywide engagement activities members could lead or support.

While these were useful starting points for ETF engagement, a detailed, community-developed charter with support from the project team would have been more effective in setting expectations and creating accountability measures for city staff and the project team.

The ETF updated their community agreement in response to growing frustrations, however, establishing a charter or written document outlining expectations at the outset of engagement well before the first project milestone would have prevented such difficulties. Sufficient time and budget should be dedicated to this process to allow members to workshop and build consensus around internal procedures and models for self-governance.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

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09 | LESSONS LEARNED

TAILOR FACILITATION AND CONTENT TO DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES. Content should be clear, concise, and digestible when discussing technical and unfamiliar topics. We were reminded time and again by the ETF members about the importance of avoiding jargon, breaking down key concepts, and using multiple mediums to convey information. From this process, we learned many ETF members wanted more time to thoroughly review project content in advance of meetings, especially for more technical and dense materials. We found some success providing take-home assignments and reading materials in preparation for upcoming meetings. This not only gave community members more time to review and generate questions around the content, but it also allowed us to discuss those questions in the meeting rather than simply present the content. Breaking up content into smaller chunks also made the material more accessible and less overwhelming for ETF members who are often coming to meetings after a full day of work.

presentations. This felt even more true in a virtual setting, as physical interaction and movement is limited, and reviewing materials on a screen felt more onerous. Providing concrete examples, including using a variety of visual examples like photos, diagrams, charts, and maps, is also helpful in creating understanding around new concepts. Additionally, finding a balance between presenting new materials and designing interactive activities to create understanding helped to increase engagement.

Facilitation of content material should also be tailored to different learning styles. During the COVID-19 pandemic, where much of engagement transitioned from in-person to the virtual, the use of virtual settings to collaborate required even greater attention to the ways people absorb and share information. Many ETF members expressed feeling more comfortable engaging with dense content when in small group settings, and preferred short, simple materials during meeting

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

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09 | LESSONS LEARNED

FORMALIZE A FEEDBACK LOOP BETWEEN THE TASK FORCE, CITY, AND PROJECT TEAM. Co-creating accountability measures and integrating them into a feedback loop between task force members, City staff, and the project team is critical for trust-building. ETF members wanted to know where and how their feedback was being integrated into stakeholder conversations and project deliverables. In cases where their feedback was not incorporated, they wanted to understand why and how those decisions were made. Listing out clear actions, from providing clear documentation of all collected feedback to highlighting sections where feedback was incorporated into final deliverables, ensures community voices are elevated in the work. Other strategies included inviting a senior departmental staff member to meet with the ETF and inviting ETF members to facilitate discussions with technical and public advisory groups who were in a position to review and directly respond to community feedback. This not only helped to create a sense of ownership over the work, but also allowed ETF members to share their concerns and desires directly with City leaders and practitioners and to ask questions about their work.

It’s imperative to provide clear documentation of community feedback—this can be in the form of summarized notes that are distributed to ETF members, the project team, and citywide for people who are interested in and following progress updates on the project.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

ENCOURAGE REGULAR SELF-ASSESSMENT. Regular self-assessment opens communication, improves group dynamics, and creates a sense of trust between community members and the project team. Dedicating times for selfassessments and integrating them into the project timeline ensures adequate time and budget for a thorough assessment.

There should also be some flexibility to allow for ad-hoc assessments in the case that community members express frustrations around process that need to be addressed before moving on to project needs. Tamika Butler, the equity thought partner and strategist for the project team, led the midpoint assessment for ETF engagement by conducting one-on-one interviews with ETF members and the project team. This culminated in a presentation and honest discussion around project objectives, concerns around meeting facilitation styles, compensation structure, and communication blocks within the group. This assessment provided the project team with valuable feedback on how to improve the process and established precedence to allow for difficult, but necessary conversations moving forward. The project team conducted a second, final round of assessment at the conclusion of the project.

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COMMUNITYWIDE ENGAGEMENT LEAN ON COMMUNITY LEADERS TO VET CONTENT AND ENSURE IT IS DIGESTIBLE AND CULTURALLY SENSITIVE. Because they have developed strong relationships with individuals in their communities, community leaders are in the best position to gauge how content will be received. For example, we learned from one ETF member that depending on how terms like ‘city’ or ‘government’ are translated from English to Vietnamese, community members may interpret content negatively due to historical circumstances that involved mistrust of government entities. Working with organizations and translators who are aware of the sensitivities and language access needs of their communities is critical when translating technical information from English to core languages like Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog. We also learned that while maps are a useful tool for practitioners who are trained to use them for analyses, they are not always intuitive to the average community member. If maps are used, work with community members to identify points of interest that are recognizable by the broader community—this can include major landmarks, cultural plazas, or historical buildings—to help individuals orient themselves.

Source: Nelson\Nygaard

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

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09 | LESSONS LEARNED

USE A VARIETY OF ENGAGEMENT METHODS FOR DIFFERENT FORMS OF FEEDBACK.

EXTEND OUTREACH AND ENGAGEMENT BEYOND ETF NETWORK.

People engage in the community in different ways and diversity within communities may require use of different engagement methods to raise awareness and understanding.

Engagement methods should vary based on the type of feedback needed to inform the project. Smaller, more intimate engagement methods like community-led focus groups were better suited when discussing existing conditions, developing recommendations, and engaging with targeted populations for the first time. Larger in-person events such as a community resource fair, Veggielution First Saturday, or the Capitol Flea Market, are effective for disseminating information about the project and prioritizing recommendations. Many community members expressed interest in existing emerging mobility services and discount programs that they previously were not aware of after attending the community resource fair organized by the ETF. Scooter and bike sharing companies provided opportunities for attendees to test out the devices, ask questions, and enroll in discount programs.

The ETF played a pivotal role in connecting the City and project team to communities the City had not previously engaged with. While their reach is extensive, it has been noted by other community leaders that the ETF skews young and is not entirely representative of the city’s residents. Most notably, it lacked representation from senior, disability, unhoused, and Indigenous groups, communities that through no fault of their own must continue to fight for space at the decision-making table. Likewise, individuals who may not be affiliated with a community-based organization or who may not be connected to social services might not have been reached as part of this planning process. While the project team was able to engage with people from the senior, disability, and Indigenous communities through targeted small group discussions and one-on-one interviews, more can be done to foster long-term relationships that allow for ongoing engagement.

San José Emerging Mobility Action Plan

In addition to building relationships with a broader network of community-based organizations, the City should consider partnering with human and social service agencies, schools, universities, community centers, staff at affordable housing sites, and organizations that focus on language access barriers to broaden its reach across its communities.

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EMERGING MOBILITY ACTION PLAN Appendix

2022