Safer Streets & Public Transit Fleets

Thursday, February 24, 3:30 - 5:00 pm, Zoom Recording & Slides

MEETING RECAP

On February 24th, Thrive brought together six speakers working in the transportation sector to discuss the current state of transportation, what programs currently and will exist, how these programs include equity, and what we can do to ensure climate change and climate justice are a part of these conversations. A year ago, Thrive held an event focusing on transportation and plans for a more equitable and sustainable transit system for the Bay Area. In addition, transportation was one of the primary climate issue areas brought up in our Collective Climate Goals in our meeting in December. Before we began, we asked the audience "What modes of transportation do you currently use?" The majority of the audience chose car and walking, followed by EVs (electric vehicles), then bikes, and then Caltrain and bus.

To start off our panelists, we had Emma Shlaes, the Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Program Manager of Commute.org, a government agency with its own joint powers authority board focused on reducing the Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and Single-Occupant Vehicles (SOV) trips taken by commuters in San Mateo County. Commute.org offers support for various, sustainable, transportation options for the diverse workforce, including telework, shared rides, microtransit, micromobility, and public transit to reduce the VMT and SOV rates. Their strategic objectives include: to ensure organizational sustainability, integrate equity principles across all programs, develop programs and services to meet emergent challenges and opportunities, and expand participation in core programs. Through their second objective, Commute.org has been focusing on integrating equity in their programs by creating stakeholder groups with board members and external stakeholders, performing analysis of the county's geographic, demographic, and industrial diversity, documenting existing program metrics based on equity principles, and training their staff. One example of a newer program is their GoPass donation program. As Caltrain had an abundance of 700 unused GoPasses, they selected Commute.org and several organizations to assist in finding income-eligible commuters and distribute the passes to the community. In addition, they are currently surveying Coastside residents to learn more about their travel patterns and transportation choices. Commute.org also performs studies on transportation trends and though their platform, they received data in 2021 (shown below) showing that more than half of trips to work were telework at 61%, transit was around 7%, and carpool and bike trips made up around 12% separately.

Picking up from where Emma left off, we had Adina Levin who discussed opportunities for change in public transit as we move into the recovery phase from the pandemic. As the Project Director of Friends of Caltrain as well as the Advocacy Director of Seamless Bay Area, we were able to see the two perspectives and strategies being implemented in the transportation field. The current public transit network is fragmented, with 28 different agencies and challenges exacerbated by COVID. Thus, Seamless works to create a well connected and affordable transit system, an important strategy to restore the public transit system in a way that is rider friendly, equitable, and addresses the environmental and equity goals for the region. One aspect that has a lot of actionable opportunities is the Regional Fare Integration Study Recommendations which was adopted by the Fare Integration Task Force and looks at methods to integrate more affordable fares in the region. Some changes that are moving forward from this study include: a pilot for all-agency passes for organizations such as colleges, housing, employers, and more (rolling out in August), free transfers (in 2023), and standardizing regional fares. If you would like to join the support letter, please email Adina your name and logo. Another strategy to improve seamless transit is the Blue Ribbon Task Force which, as a part of the Bay Area Transit Transformation Action Plan, has developed actions towards areas such as integrated fares, wayfinding, service, accessibility, and new funding for transformation. To accelerate this Transformation Action Plan, State Senator Becker has announced the Seamless Transit Transformation Act that sets deadlines to move forward on connected network plans, integrated fairs, wayfinding, and real time information standards. Support Senator Becker's Act by submitting a letter of support by March 14 and sending a copy to Nicole and Ian! To recover public transportation, funding is also critical and the Voices For Public Transportation coalition advocates for a regional funding measure by 2024 as well as opportunities through the California state budget funding for transit service In addition, through Adina's Friends of Caltrain perspective, Caltrain electrification is well under way and is expected to be completed by 2024. Submit a letter of support to California Assembly Member Mullin by March 14 and send a copy to Daniel and Adina. Finally, Friends of Caltrain will be working with the Caltrain grade separations for the Peninsula corridor which will provide greater reliability and safety.

As a break, we took another poll, asking the audience "What modes of transportation would you like to use but lack the time/money/access/etc.?" The results are shown below:

Poll results of the second survey. Most of the audience would like to use EVs!

After the quick poll, we had Diana Crumedy as our next speaker. Diana works with the Silicon Valley Bike Coalition (SVBC) as their Santa Clara County Advocate. At SVBC, their main goal is to get 10% of trips be taken by bikes by 2025 and centers on two aspects-people, focusing on cultural and behavior changes, and places, focusing on safe bike infrastructure and bike lanes. Through a study performed pre-COVID, they found that people do not enjoy riding in bike lanes located next to high-speed traffic and instead, feel more comfortable on trails and protected/separated bike lanes. In addition, SVBC also found that speed (how fast it takes to get anywhere) is the top factor in how people choose to get around, followed by ease of use, and safety from crime and crashes. Thus, SVBC works to create bike infrastructure to make biking faster, easier, and safer. They have been engaging and collaborating with the youth and communities of color, working with groups such as Live in Peace and Youth Leadership Institute, as they make the shift to work more with local teams composed of concerned and engaged residents that want to see changes to make biking safer. One recent win was the approval of the North Central Bike Lane Project in the City of San Mateo. To achieve the 10% goal, there are three main objectives: getting everyone on-board (including stakeholders, council members, city staff, and community groups), changing the mindsets of those who come from a system that prioritizes cars, and promoting bicycling as a safe and viable transportation option. Join SVBC as a member or volunteer and participate in their monthly Biketivist forums, monthly workshops and online classes, and to learn more on how to make biking safer in your area!

Next, we had Phillip Kobernick from Peninsula Clean Energy (PCE). As their Programs Manager, Phillip works to make the electricity we use greener and to electrify all buildings, transportation, and distributed resources to reduce harmful emissions. In September, PCE released their new objective to adopt a goal of 100% greenhouse gas free by 2035, 10 years earlier than their previous goal, and directed staff to return with a plan for achieving that goal. This in turn will push PCE to move more quickly and aggressively to reach this target. One of the best methods is through reach codes for cities which ensures that everything newly built will be all-electric and zero-emissions. This includes creating all electric buildings, including multi-family homes and EV charging requirements for these homes. PCE is also working on the 2022 Reach Codes (as they must be renewed every year by each city) and are increasing the EV component in it as well as targeting new cities. Another program is their EV Ready Program, partnering with the California Energy Commission. This program targets the EV charging infrastructure, aiming for 3,500 ports to be installed by 2024. As these will be retrofits to existing building, this will have a major impacts on those already living in multi-family homes. Other programs include their Used EV Rebate program, which provides all EV users rebates up to $1,000 and income-qualifying users up to $4,000, and their EV Rental Rebate program, which encourages people to try out EVs by providing up to $200 off of EV rentals. Finally, PCE is planning to relaunch their E-bikes For Everyone program which was a huge success last year and provided income-qualifying users rebates and helped bridge the gap to access to e-bikes.

After Phillip, we had our last quick poll asking the audience "What is your biggest barrier to using more climate friendly transportation?" The top barriers were money and distance (to location or to the transportation alternative), followed by safety, then time, then no other forms of transportation available.

Our next speaker was Amy Linehan, who spoke on behalf of the San Mateo County Transit District as their Public Affair Specialist. The Transit District manages four different agencies: SamTrans, Caltrain, the San Mateo County Transportation Authority, and the San Mateo County Express Lanes Joint Powers Authority (JPA). The first program Amy discussed was Reimagine SamTrans, which takes a holistic look at the SamTrans bus system and is trying to make it work better for those who take the bus as well as attract new ridership. As nearly 80% of their riders stated they do not have another method of transportation and around 85% of their riders were low-income, the District works with a transit dependent, low-income customer base, an aspect they must keep in mind as they work to redo their bus system. Throughout the Reimagine SamTrans process, they have kept four guiding principles in mind as they make decisions: customer focus, workforce delivery,

Multilingual Reimagine SamTrans public outreach flier

effective mobility, and social equity. In addition, as part of the Reimagine public outreach, SamTrans partnered with Community Based Organizations that have ensured multilingual outreach in underserved communities, organized pop-up events, and collected survey responses. The District is also proposing a new network which prioritizes quality, frequent, 7-days a week service to Equity Priority Area, and service to new places. Another aspect SamTrans is working on is their Zero-Emission bus fleet. The District's Board of Directors has adopted a goal for zero-emission bus fleet by 2038, starting with a bus connecting East Palo Alto, employers along the US-101 corridor, and the San Bruno BART station. One final new program, launching in March 2022, is the Community Transportation Benefits Program. This program is sponsored and funded by the JPA and helps income-qualifying San Mateo County residents cover a part of their transportation costs.

To conclude our panel of speakers, we had Julio Garcia, Director of Rise South City, a new nonprofit in South San Francisco working on local transformation with the most vulnerable communities bearing the impacts of environmental degradation and social segregation. Rise South City creates dialogues within frontline communities around climate change and social equity issues. One aspect they are working on is the expansion of US 101. According to CalEnviroScreen, South San Francisco is in 96% percentile of most-polluted census tracts in California. Thus, expanding the highway will damage the nearby communities, typically composed of lower-income and people of color. They inform frontline communities on the harmful consequences and health effects of living near US 101. Part of the reason these communities may not know about these effects is due to a complete lack of translations or poor translations of current materials. Julio works to fix this issue by having conversations with community members to inform them and gain a deeper understanding of the people living in these areas. Rise South City also works with the bicycle lanes in South San Francisco. As these lanes are recreational, they look at how make them more practical by connecting them to streets people use to go to places such as markets, schools, and stores while concurrently creating safer streets for the bikers. Julio encouraged the audience to have more conversations with frontline communities in order to create relationships with community members, listen to their needs, and hold themselves accountable in contrast to simply checking off a box in their equity goals. In addition, he pointed out the need to have more collaboration across sectors, have further conversations on what the future holds and how it will affect low-income communities, and provide stipends to community organizations offering their help and time to partner with other organizations.

After the speakers, we took questions from the audience and created a space for the speakers and organizations to speak freely among each other. One question raised was the reason behind expanding the 101 vs simply replacing a lane with an HOV lane. Coming from Amy and her JPA perspective, they are currently in an environmental phase, studying the impacts of what they can do to ease congestion north of I-380. As they do not know how that will look like, they are currently letting the science play out, studying traffic models to decide ultimately, if anything will be done there. Until the environmental phase is complete, it will be hard to determine right now what that action will be. One way for community input in this process is through their Environmental Impact Report (EIR) draft expected to be released in 2023. There, they will have an official comment process led by Caltrans where the community can provide their inputs and feedback.

Coming up, on March 17th, we will be discussing legislative updates, environmental bills introduced in California, and the best ways to get involved. See you there!