Okay, it's 1 30, so we're going to call today's meeting of the Transportation Environment Committee to order.

Let's start with roll call, please.

Councilmember Tordillos.

Here.

Compos absent Ortiz.

Foley.

Vicemair Foley.

And Cohen.

Here.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Let's jump right into it.

We are moving straight on to our reports to the committee, and the first report today is our community forest management plan and urban forestry annual report.

And I see everybody's ready.

So uh John, take it away.

Thank you, Chair Cohen and Committee.

John Ristow, Director of Transportation, and we are here to present an update on the community forest management plan and our forestry annual report.

So with me today is Jennifer Sagan.

She's our deputy director for infrastructure maintenance division and Sarah Davis, our city forester.

So I'm gonna get right into presentation and take it away, Jennifer.

Thank you, John.

Jennifer Sagan, Deputy Director of Infrastructure Maintenance and DOT.

We're gonna start by just a quick reminder.

The community forestry management plan was uh adopted in 2022, and it's got five major themes.

Uh the strategic work plan has a number of different things under each theme, and we're gonna focus today on what we accomplished during this current fiscal year.

And clicker.

That's me.

Hi.

Council, my name is Sarah Davis.

I am your city forester.

I was going to okay.

Do you want to go ahead?

Sure.

Okay.

Um, so of the the five themes of the plan were again reminding you of streamlining governance, ensuring the sustainability of the urban forest, support for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, efficient and effective tree management, and then standardization of our planning and development process practices.

We're gonna focus on the middle three today because those were the areas where we made the most progress this year.

So now I'm gonna turn it over to Sarah Davis.

Hello again.

I'm Sarah Davis, your city forester.

Let me advance our slide.

There we go.

So a part of ensuring sustainability of our urban forest is to make sure that we keep it going.

Uh tree is not something that just happens once.

You have to keep the community growing and thriving.

So a part of that in the CFMP, the plan, we were asked to look at the different pallets of trees that we have available to plant.

So this last year we went through and updated our approved street tree list with the mind on looking at is this a tree we can plant today that will survive today, and will it also survive in a future climate, say 30 years from now.

So keeping that in mind.

So if a tree gets really large, we're going to plant that in a large planting space, and vice versa.

So we'll have fewer disruptions to the hard infrastructure like curbs and sidewalks.

And our plan has been vetted.

It's covered up here, but the urban forestry institute, environmental institute at the uh San Luis's bispo, Cal State has reviewed our list and it's been completely vetted.

So we are good to go with the species we have chosen.

So as you can see in the diagrams, there's different ways that looking at different types of infrastructure, and you'll notice power lines are highlighted there.

So our partners at PGE has also vetted our species list.

So we've met our goal this year of planting over 2,000 trees each year in combination with parks and rec.

We try to reach that goal.

That number is what the community forest uh action plan pointed out is the number we would need to plant to get our goal in place in by 2020 30.

So that's what we shoot for every year.

When we can exceed that, we try our hardest.

Um, this year we also uh pruned over 4,000 street trees.

So that was another part of sustaining the forest that we focused on.

So moving on to our theme area of sustainability of the urban forest, um, diversity, equity, inclusion.

We put a lot of effort in focusing on where can urban trees be the most useful.

So there on the right, you can see something we call the tree equity score.

That's something that's used nationally and is put out by American Forests.

So you can see that arrow is pointing to a census track in the city.

So we can use that equity score to set a goal.

So in that census track, we should be trying to add 668 new trees.

So we're trying to really focus on those neighborhoods that need the most help.

And as part of that, we are offering free trees to all streets in San Jose.

The property owners need to request those trees, and we will plant them for them.

So property owners are able to capitalize on this project partly from our mitigation fees and partly from a forest service grant, which is our community forest investment project.

And that area is also refined down to our disadvantaged neighborhoods.

I'll show you in a moment.

That is live, and this week we will be sending you easy to use and repost messages for your newsletters and social posts.

So keep an eye on your inbox for that.

And let me add that anybody who's in the grant project area will also be eligible for ongoing sustainable watering and pruning.

So in addition to the tree, they get the additional services if they're in the grant project area.

Yeah, and on the map, the areas in blue, those are where we're offering that free watering service.

So again, that's the inflation reduction act community forest investment project.

And that goal, we have two years to finish up this grant.

So in those blue neighborhoods, we are shooting for 2,800 new trees, as well as doing a one-time maintenance task of pruning 5,000 existing street trees.

Takes a little bit of that burden of having a street tree off of everyone's plate.

Also, as part of our equity work, we work with, I keep saying work, workforce development groups.

We partner with our city forest as well as the San Jose Conservation Corps, showing young people that there are urban careers in forestry that are available to them.

So highlighting one of our partners, our city forest was able to engage with 2,500 volunteers this year, as they hosted 57 events, and that's where that workforce development comes in because those events are led and hosted by those young people.

We also did a little work this year to update some of our print materials.

So the door hangers we leave behind for people when we're doing tree work, flyers about invasive pests, those sorts of things.

We updated those to the five most popular languages we've been asked to do.

So another part of keeping our sustainable urban forest is really looking how can we be most effective.

How can we keep our trees in good health and safe to be around?

So a part of that, we had a 30-year pruning cycle originally before the plan was adopted.

So that meant we touched a public tree.

So that's a tree in a median or a tree behind a sound wall once every 30 years.

That's a long time.

So our goal was to get that down to 12 years, and this year we've been able to surpass that, and we're down to 11 years.

So we're going to keep after that and see if we can't get that down to once every seven years.

So we'd be visiting every public tree once every seven years.

And by doing that, we have less storm damage.

So if we keep the trees in good structure, um, they're less of a problem in the future.

So I may have already talked to you about this.

There's nothing more exciting for decision makers than to listen to a scientist talk about insects.

It's awesome.

I can see the thrill on your faces.

So we have an invasive pest called the shot hole.

Invasive shot hole borer, and it carries a fungal disorder with it, so it's a complex disease.

It is from Asia.

We're the first location outside of Southern California to identify the pest.

That means one in every five street tree and private property tree are at risk of circumbing to the fungus that the border carries.

So we've done some proactive work.

All of the literature shows us that pesticides can be effective.

So we've been surveying all of the trees that are infested.

So all the little yellow dots on that map have a low level of infestation.

And if you zoom in, this is all on our website if you'd like to dive in deeper.

All of the trees that show up as red, those are heavily infested trees that we've removed.

So we're trying to limit the spread of the pest.

And of that, we've treated another 90 trees.

So it basically acts as a sentinel.

So if one of those insects decides to chew on that tree, it dies, so that it can't go on to reproduce hundreds of thousands more beetles, speeding up the whole process.

So I'm hopefully you're pleased with the work that we've been able to do in three of our five themes this year, and we are happy to take any questions.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much, uh Jennifer and Sarah for the report.

We'll start and see with public comment.

Yes, Tara and Jordan.

Please make your way down to the podium.

You will have two minutes to speak.

Thank you.

Thank you to Chair Cohen and committee members.

I'm speaking on behalf of our city forest and their president and CEO Rhonda Berry.

And first, want to thank the city and council and committee for your continued partnership in advancing San Jose's urban forestry goals, and especially Chair Cohen recently championing us in the city budget.

And I know all of the council members here have been out to community plantings and have hosted community plantings with OCF.

And so you know that OCF's been supporting the city's urban forest for over 30 years, and want to share OCF has reached its annual planting goal of 1,765 trees planted this fiscal year, and was mentioned in the report, engaged over 2,500 volunteers and contributing over 7,500 service hours.

At the same time, want to provide some context.

So in the memo out of the 2013 trees referenced, about 300 of those trees are from our city forest.

It's supported through city funding.

But the rest of our work comes through a mix of federal funding, state funding, philanthropic funding, private funding.

And so, as many council members know, some of that federal funding is now uncertain due to federal cuts, cuts to AmeriCorps.

OCF was is the nation's first urban forestry AmeriCorps program.

So that's created real challenges for us.

And so definitely that matters within this context.

And as folks know, tree planting is only one piece of OCF's work.

There's also watering stewardship, volunteer coordination, our city forest nursery, and workforce development through AmeriCorps Climate Action Corps.

And so we're respectfully asking the committee to use this discussion to as an opportunity to help continue to strengthen that implementation moving forward forward as we navigate a lot of challenges.

Hi, Jordan Moldow District 3 resident.

Thank you for the presentation and thanks for managing the ShaPor infants infestation so well.

I think some of those yellow dots are probably in my neighborhood, and I don't think any trees have had to be cut down yet.

And I'm glad how many yellow dots there are compared to how many red dots there are.

So thank you so much.

I was really worried a few years ago about how many trees might have to be cut down because of this.

And we all know how good trees are for equity in terms of better health outcomes and higher property values and stuff like that, but they're also really good for active transportation as well.

And we know that uh transportation is a big household expense, and if we can get people to want to walk or bike places, you know, they can reduce that household expense and also have better health outcomes.

Uh I listened to an interesting presentation a few weeks ago that was talking about how trees are a very important aspect of biking, especially for underrepresented communities.

Uh, you know, we often think, oh, people will bike if we put in a class four protected bikeway.

That's only part of the story.

For some people, you know, if it is really sunny and hot and there's no shade along their route, they're not gonna want to bike.

So in order to make sure that we are making good on our active transportation investments, we need to plant trees next to those bikeways so that people have shade.

Um, and I also learned in that same presentation that trees have an air conditioning effect around them.

So it's not just the shade that they cast, but they also additionally cool the air around them because of the biological processes they go through.

So definitely want to see more trees planted along bike corridors.

Um, and I think in the Muni code it says that we need to prune trees up to at least 14 feet next to roads, which seems excessive if there's not a travel lane underneath it.

It would be nice to consider maybe a shorter amount.

Back to the committee.

All right, thank you.

And we'll start with Councilmember Ortiz.

Thank you.

Uh Chairman Cohen.

Uh, I want to thank uh Department of Transportation, our staff for the um uh the present presentation that they've um provided to us.

Trees are uh definitely an important topic.

Uh there, especially for my district.

I know District 5 is one of many districts in the city that lack its fair share of um uh tree tree canopy, and they've been our discussions around it have uh been quite contentious.

Unfortunately, we had to cut cut some trees near Hillview Park this year, and it turned into a big fight.

But luckily, we were able to get um, I think it was 60 trees uh to replace those sick trees, and so um my community.

I think our city forest was involved in some of the that planting as well, and maybe uh the um conservation corps, and so want to thank uh definitely thank the staff for that for that work.

Um wanted to you know touch a little bit on I'm sure, you know, the the elephant in the room, which was the May 19th civil grand jury uh report that raised concerns about our urban forestry approach and if we'll meet our long-term canopy goals.

We have a goal of 20% canopy coverage by 2051, I believe.

Uh and then we have annual, I guess, bulge benchmarks of uh planting 20,000 trees, uh 2,000 trees per year, not 20,000, which would be nice, but two thousand trees per year.

Um, and I understand all this costs money.

Um we need labor and uh a lot of volunteers, um, and so I know that there are cost constraints that that eliminate us as well.

But um, I guess uh at the the crux of the report, it said that uh our annual goals of 2,000 trees um uh just won't meet the overall ongoing requirement to reach that uh overall 20% coverage.

They're saying we would need to plant anywhere between four uh four point four thousand five hundred trees per year to twenty-two thousand trees per year.

And so can we just touch on on that?

Like, are we setting our goals to too low, or is this just more realistic?

And then if that's the case, then should we set expectations that we won't be at 20%, or how how can we invest in this at a way that shows that we're we're taking this serious?

Thank you, Councilmember John Russell, Director of Transportation.

Yes, the grand jury's done a review of the uh our community forest management plan.

We will be responding to that formally in August.

So you're gonna get a chance to see actually a formal response, and we do think that there was some things that they kind of missed and left out.

So we'll I'll leave that response to the formal one that we will bring back through council.

But in terms of the goal, our plan does talk about the 2,000 per year, and we're meeting that goal, and those are annual numbers, and so we're meeting that.

So we think we're on track and on pace for that.

We would love to be able to plant 20,000 trees, but uh but that's not uh realistic with the current funding.

As we talked about in the reporting, we we receive funding through that uh forestry grant that we got, and we do get some funding from development projects that actually pay into an in loop fee for removal.

So those combinations are what go into that 2,000 tree uh factor.

What else happens out there is uh there is planting going on in the private sector, and that's a good thing in their own uh private lands, whether they be residential or commercial as well.

So that does happen, not to the degree that we want it to, but uh we're on track for that goal of trying to meet the two thousand per year.

Great.

Um, I guess my next question would be two thousand.

How did we get that number?

Uh what is the bigger picture with that?

Is do you are you confident that if we at least hit this two thousand uh annual goal that we will reach the 20% coverage?

Yeah, that's the that was the the goal that came out of the actual plan that we went through a couple of years ago that council approved.

So that that goal came from that estimate of what it would take to get to that goal of the whole canopy.

Okay, it came out of the report.

All right, well, I'll look forward to um you know the the conversation in regards to what your your the department's response um will be I appreciate you may need some time to to prepare that.

I know that tree tree planting throughout the city is one thing, but I know you also touched on equity and that some of these districts I know that district five, district four, and some other ones have aren't necessarily starting at the same starting line that some of our other districts are are focused on.

So do we have individual district goals or like region goals at the city?

How do we make sure that like you know, 2000 throughout the city?

If we're still planting them in the same areas, how are we really moving the needle?

Yeah, Sarah Davis City Forester.

Um, going back a couple of slides, uh, we had that map of that equity score.

That can give us a target per census track, so we can roll that number up into uh council districts if you would like to see that.

I think I just think so because I think that's part of the the picture, like if we're only putting the tree canopy in one side of the city, then the other side of the the community is not gonna get that benefit.

And so I just I think we need to have a little bit more intentional goal levels outside of just citywide.

You know, I'm not saying I want to dictate what that is, but I would just like to see something like that.

Yeah, and I'll add one thing.

Um, Jennifer Sagan, Deputy Director.

Um, the grant that we got is focused on some of those areas that are lower in canopy that are more challenging, and what we're trying to do with the grant is to make it easy for somebody to accept the tree because they don't have to necessarily do all the establishment period work for the first three years.

We're gonna give them the tree and care for the tree for them until it kind of gets established on its own without a lot of um care needed after that establishment period.

So we're hoping that that's gonna take off and help us uh do more in those areas.

Are we seeing, you know, because I I'll be on, I mean, in my district we got the VTA tree grant, we got the I believe uh some of those funds I think are are dedicated to district five or areas similar to district five, but it's still a tough conversation to get people to accept the trees.

And so are we looking are we keeping a metric of even with all these these you know incentives to take these trees?

Is it moving the needle?

Are we looking at that?

Yes, so I would put that into a conversion rate.

So we'll be looking at offering people the trees and the service, how many requests we're getting, and how many of those requests convert over into a tree planted.

Um in a previous location to get 3,000 trees planted, we would take in 6,000 requests.

So there are things that happen in the real world that can kind of negate the desire for the tree, like the placement of utilities and things like that.

So we'll be looking at that conversion rate, and where those conversion rates are low, we'll have to be asking ourselves what's what's the barrier?

Why aren't people asking for trees and why aren't they getting conversions into planting from requests?

When do you think we could see some of those like uh some of that analysis?

Yeah, we'll do that as we go along each month.

Um, just because we need to be nimble and figure out what the barrier is.

Um in some places it could be that someone doesn't have a garden hose.

So getting that garden hose means a trip to somewhere to buy the hose, as well as thinking about okay, well, this hose is gonna cost me $30, is that $30 I'm not spending on new school supplies.

So by taking away some of those hindrances, yeah.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah, affordability is a major concern.

Yeah, um, great.

Another question is I want to just make sure that we are working with um available resources to the best of our ability and not duplicating, you know, some of this work.

And so I wanted to ask how many trees do we have on record how many trees did our city forest plant this fiscal year?

And then if we could look at the next number, what would be how many of those were funded by the city?

Great question.

I believe Tara mentioned that earlier, yeah.

Um the total number, I've for let's see, I have the number.

The total number in San Jose is 1300, and I believe the total number was 1765.

So a good portion of them were planted in San Jose that they planted this.

Oh, I see.

And how many of those did we fund?

So our city forest did plant around 3,000 300 trees that the city directly funded.

The rest of the balance of the trees that were planted were using city contractors.

So, I just want to understand city contractors, our city forest who could probably do it for a lot cheaper.

And so, what's the thought process?

I guess one thing I would like to see is are we fully utilizing our partnership with our city forest to the best of our ability?

Do we have like a formal partnership with them?

Is there like a private uh city private partnership that we can review, how it's saving costs, and if it's if it would assist with the our goals for the canopy, the tree canopy.

Does that exist?

Or could you make that?

Yeah, we do have a specific partner with the partnership with our city forest, and um we partner in on several levels.

Uh they're our primary partner for community engagement and outreach.

So they do a lot of events where they're bringing volunteers in to plant trees, and they also are doing the workforce development that we mentioned, um, working with um groups and teaching folks about forestry, and then in addition to that, they have a fee-for-service um partnership with the city where if they do a certain thing, if they uh provide watering services or plant a tree or do both, or something else, we also can pay for service.

Um over time, I would say that's the area where we probably could grow because we're willing to fund as much as they're able to plant, and so the the more that they do to reach that maximum would be great.

If I could just one thing, one thing I'd like to see is if we could just have um in a future report what that formal partnership looks like in an analysis from staff on ways in which we can improve it because as a time where we're we're stretching our our pennies, you know.

You know, I just want to make I want to make sure we're being innovative and not you know sh what is it cutting our foot off the spider favorite?

I don't know what the term is, but I want to make sure we're we're doing our our best to stretch a dollar.

Alright, thank you.

Unless you have a foot on your face, I guess it's a nose off the spider face, yeah.

Thank you.

Um, good questions, council member.

Um, and I'll turn to Vice Mayor Foley in a second after I've asked a couple just to follow up on that.

There were some questions that came to my mind from his questions, and some are related to some of that funding sources because you said city funds our city forest to plant, and I'm curious of what city funded means because like when we have grants when our office is has raised money and had our city forest two plantings, is that included in the city funding, or is that separate funding?

I'm not sure I fully understand how that's accounted for.

We would count that separately because it's a unique project.

So when we say city funded, it's the value add that our city forest provides.

So they could be our contractor, they could put trees in the ground and water them and step away, or we're finding the advantages of working with the nonprofit is they're having those one-on-one conversations with individuals, and they are doing those workforce development tasks.

So they're a little bit different from our regular contractors because they are so in tuned and have so much so many touch points with the community.

And just to be clear, the number you said about 2100 trees, whatever it was that was planted.

That's city funded trees that doesn't include all the other partnerships that our city forests might be involved in, or correct private trees or a lot of other things.

So I'm just wondering if there's going is there's a way for us to roll up that all of that so that we do it when we get this report know how many really were planted, and that also helps inform the civil grand jury response because it we're we're not those two thousand are not the extent of trees being planted in San Jose.

Anyway, okay, thank thank you.

I'll move on to Vice Mayor Foley now.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, Councilmember Ortiz, for lifting up your community and the needs of your community.

I think some areas in this city it's easy to plant trees, and some areas it's it's not so easy.

And you represent a district that is more dense and may have more difficulties, but I think it's really important that we focus on the equity of uh where those trees are located and get them out there as as much as we possibly can.

So I have a uh question for you.

You and I'm not sure I caught this or not.

You said that if someone asks, we'll give them a free tree and that you'll water it for three years.

Can you tell me a little?

Is that what I heard?

It kind of depends.

It kind of depends.

That goes into that equity question.

So within that grant area, we can come and plant the tree and then we'll water the tree for three years.

In the rest of the city, we'll come and plant the tree, but the property owner is responsible for the watering and establishment.

Makes perfect sense.

And that is what I heard that it wasn't citywide that you were going to be watering, that it was in a specific area areas, and I think that's really important.

If you could send us the link to uh obtaining those trees, that would really be helpful because then we could push it out to our community.

And I do want to thank you.

I'm not sure we've had this meeting since you were out in my district where we were having um trees under threat to be removed because we were repaving, but we were able to you were able to meet with the community and figure out how to save the trees in that neighborhood.

I know they were grateful, and and I was grateful too, so I wanted to thank you for that.

So uh with that, I will move approval of the item.

Okay, thank you.

And I have I just have a few more questions I want to ask.

Um I know that there was that in LU reserve.

So when we started this plan, when we updated the plan in 2022, one of the issues was that we had been collecting in LU fees, but there had been a long period of time where we weren't using the INLU fees.

Have we now spent that?

Is there still a reserve?

Are we still spending it down?

How where is that stand?

Um, yes, we are actively spending it since those funds came over to DOT.

Um, we've been able to spend 73% of those funds, including new ones that have come in since then.

So, and I have a breakdown if you're interested, of where the revenue was created and where it was spent, because we're being very mindful that some districts have more development than others.

So we're taking half of the monies generated through fees in one council district, spending it in that generating district, and then taking the other half and putting it into a kitty, if you will, so that we can um work in those neighborhoods that don't have heavy development fees coming in.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

I mean it's a I it was this is we it's working the way we envisioned it when we worked worked on this plan four years ago.

Um it's important to have that split.

Obviously, yes, we want to we want this to be spread citywide, but the reason these fees are coming into certain districts is because trees are getting removed, so we also want to make sure we have that fund to replace trees within the areas where they were removed, so I appreciate that.

It would be great at some point to understand that now that we're spending this down and we spent 73% of it, this is a 20-30-year project.

I presume at some point in the near future the fund will run out.

Is that going to cause us trouble in being able to continue this project, this whole process moving forward?

Possibly.

It depends on what the development community is going to do.

So we'll review plans and we work out the mitigation ratios if the property can't accommodate the required number of new trees, and then they pay that fee.

So when we see that plan, we might see 200, 300, 500,000 worth of mitigation money that would be coming in, but we can't always guarantee that that project is gonna get built.

So anticipating how much money is going to go into that fund is a little bit of a moving target.

And we want to, and ideally, we don't want to encourage developers to take out trees.

Correct.

Although they do, we get funding for planting other trees, but that's not the ideal way to keep to preserve a tree canopy.

Alright, thank you.

Um we were talking about um your your census tracked review.

I assume that that's informing us on where we should focus on planting trees.

It would be interesting to see at some point a plot of the canopy cover versus the poverty index or whatever measures you're using, so we can sort of understand how are we doing and maybe track that over time so we can see is the work we're doing changing those ratios a little bit, so just for the future.

Um back to the question of where some people there's less uptake on on household trees.

Are we seeing a difference between renters versus homeowners?

I mean, I would imagine a homeowner is more likely to request a tree and want to take care of it than renters.

Is there we do we have a process by which we can involve renters in this?

Yeah, so that's one of the questions that we ask.

Are you the owner of the property and if you're a renter of the property?

If you're the renter, we ask that they have permission from their landlord.

Um we haven't gotten up to full speed yet.

We're just kind of trickling into some neighborhoods now, but that will be something that we're looking at as we go along.

Okay, great, thank you.

Um, you know, I know we're planting the 2100 trees, but a certain percentage don't survive.

And I know I drive around and I see you know, 30 trees have been planted and six of them are not are not alive the following year.

So are we including that in our metrics?

About how, or every tree that eventually that doesn't make it gets replaced.

Is that part of the process and that doesn't get counted twice?

Correct, it doesn't get counted twice.

So they're living things, so we do experience mortality for a myriad of different reasons.

But if that tree doesn't succeed, our contractors have to replace it until it does succeed.

So we don't double count, it's still just a one-for-one.

Okay, great.

Um you mentioned bringing the goal of bringing our pruning down from 11 years to seven years.

Is there a do we have a funding roadmap for that?

What is it that we would take for us to achieve that?

Yeah, so that's in our general operating fund.

So we use those dollars as efficiently as we can to move across the city to prune.

Um, in previous times when the pruning cycle was 30 years, it was more of a scatter shot of let's remove all of these, and if we have money left, we can prune this street.

But instead, now we're finding efficiency and cost savings and doing it systematically and like working one street at a time, just like the uh pavement resurfacing would work.

So it's just better operations being able to allow us to improve.

Okay, great.

And then on the tree invasive uh tree borer um issue.

We've we there's a lot of trees who are susceptible to it.

Are we planning to treat almost all of them so that we can prevent this expansion?

I mean, what's our because we don't want to have untreated trees that still are susceptible, right?

Yeah, so the trees in the public right-of-way, so street trees as well as people's private property trees are their responsibility.

We're treating some street trees to slow the infestation down, but we can't as a city control the entire population of trees because they don't all fall within our jurisdiction.

So that's our trying to tell people about the issue and move people into action.

Um, it's really expensive to treat all of the trees.

So, right now of our population of street trees, that's about 50,000 trees.

And if we include all of the trees in the entire city, it's 310,000 trees.

So that would be private property as well.

So not just that's not total trees, but trees that are susceptible to this.

That's trees are who are susceptible.

Um, everybody wants to be really zealous and kind of get excited about treating trees and cutting down trees, and we can make this stop.

We have the luxury of this pest, it doesn't move super fast.

What we've been seeing in Southern California isn't as devastating as some of the pests in the Midwest have been.

So it moves a little bit slower.

So as trees are declining because of the pest complex, um, it won't be as noticeable as it could be because of the speed.

So we would find out where they are and then treat within a vicinity around there to prevent spread.

Is that the approach?

Okay.

Thank you.

I see some little clusters around in like in my district, but all across the city.

So we would go and treat in the vicinity around those clusters.

Okay, thank you.

Um, all right.

Well, thank you so much.

And I I, you know, um we've been working hard.

Obviously, district four had our own goal to plant a thousand trees.

If you go to Pennington Creek Park, you'll see the little plaque next to our tree that represents our thousandth tree.

So we're over, we're proud of that.

But I want to thank you for um the work that you're doing across the city, and it's really it's really important.

Uh I think that's it for comments.

So let's vote to accept the report.

All right.

Motion carries five zero.

Thank you so much.

All right, uh John, you're staying for the next item.

The next item is our vision zero traffic safety status report.

I'm here all week.

Uh yeah, as the team makes our way down.

Uh let me just introduce them again.

John Risto, Director of Transportation.

Uh, Jim Bittner is our division manager for uh safety division for the Department of Transportation.

Hopefully, Lieutenant Hanson Bueller will be able to make it.

He leads the traffic enforcement unit of San Jose PD.

Hopefully, he can be here because a key partner.

And Jordan Moldow, our bicycle of pedestrian advisory committee member representing the city's uh bicycle and pedestrian communities.

And so I'll let me turn it over to Jim.

You get ready to get started.

All right, thanks, John.

Uh good afternoon, Transportation Environment Committee members.

I'm Jim Bittner, and I'm the acting division manager of the Vision Zero and Traffic Safety Division.

That's overseeing the Vision Zero, school safety, quick build, walk and roll, and the neighborhood traffic management systems.

Um I will be presenting today the latest and greatest vision zero Program Status report as part of our biannual updates.

Might help if I put my eyes on.

All right.

As we uh discuss crash data, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that these are just not just simple data points, they represent human beings, our neighbors, our loved ones, and that's really what drives this vital work forward.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Vice Mary Foley.

Sorry, I didn't know I was doing my part yet.

But okay, thank you.

So we always start uh the Vision Zero discussion by centering on what this is about and why this is important, and this is about saving lives of people on our streets from crashes.

And every Vision Zero meeting, we always start by talking about who those individuals are, their names, and these individuals, they're not data points, they're mothers, fathers, children, neighbors, there are loved ones.

So with that, I will read the names of the individuals who were killed in a traffic crash since the last our last meeting.

Jerome Michael Castro, a passenger, unidentified pedestrian, unidentified pedestrian, Ellen Orcutt, Christian Herbert Heigelund, unidentified motorist, unidentified pedestrian, unidentified pedestrian, unidentified driver, Lauren Badillo, unidentified pedestrian, unidentified bicyclist, unidentified pedestrian, Daniel Martinez, driver, unidentified pedestrian, unidentified driver, unidentified pedestrian, unidentified bicyclist, unidentified pedestrian, Kong Bui, bicyclist, Beninho Blas, passenger, unidentified motorcyclist, motorcyclist, unidentified driver, unidentified driver, unidentified pedestrian, Tuyep Noang T Nguyen, passenger, unidentified pedestrian, unidentified driver, Olivier Carmelo Scarlata, pedestrian, unidentified pedestrian, Kimberly Sarah Rose, driver, McKenzie Carnes, driver.

Some of these were killed by speeding crashes, others were killed by drunk drivers.

I'll have more later.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Foley.

Today, to go into some of the details, I want to give a brief overview of the trends in the traffic fatalities and severe injuries in the past 10 years, followed by program updates over this last fiscal year.

As a reminder, the 2025 Vision Zero Action Plan has very ambitious goals of 30 by 30, meaning a 30% reduction in KSI by 2030, and zero by 40 and elimination of all KSI by 2040.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NITSA, traffic deaths in America went down about 7% between 2024 and 25.

Here in San Jose, we're seeing a similar but steeper decline.

Traffic fatalities peaked at 65 in 2022, but steadily declined to 41 in 2025, which results in a 37% decrease.

In fact, 2025 had the lowest number of traffic fatalities in San Jose since 2012.

But we are now seeing an upward trend with impaired driving fatalities.

Looking at the pie chart at the top, in 2025 and through 2020, April of 2026, over 20% of traffic fatalities have involved DUI related crashes, the highest percentage in the past decade.

Switching to kill and severe injury crashes or KSI.

These stayed about the same in 2024 and 2025, with those numbers being the lowest since 2018.

Even with San Jose's recent drop in fatalities, dangerous driving behaviors remain a major concern in the city.

Speeding and red light running continue to play a role in about a third of all KSI crashes as seen in the pie charts on this page.

So while we're still making progress in reducing traffic deaths, the KSI numbers have remained relatively flat because risky behaviors by drivers are still persistent on our streets.

Now I'll focus on some of the highlighted accomplishments for this past fiscal year.

Aligning with the Vision Zero Action Plan's short-term strategies.

Our team recently launched an updated Vision Zero website at Vision Zero SJ.org, designed to serve as a one-stop shop for all traffic safety information in San Jose.

The site brings together information on the city's traffic crash landscape, high injury networks, crash data dashboards, ongoing projects, enforcement programs, education efforts, and other initiatives focused on reducing traffic deaths and severe injuries.

The website has two main sections, the first being Vision Zero Action Plan and Data Dashboards, and the second being supporting a safe system approach.

The Vision Zero Action Plan and Data Dashboard section includes the 2025 Action Plan, two newly created crash data dashboards, and a priority safety corridors map.

The supporting a safe system approach section presents all traffic safety efforts in the city as shown on the right.

The goal is for transparency, making it easier for the public to understand what's happening on our streets, what the city is doing to improve safety, and to stay informed and engaged in San Jose's Vision Zero efforts.

We also now have a dedicated Vision Zero email address so community members can more easily reach the team with questions, feedback, or concerns, and that's at Vision Zero Vision.gov.

The website includes these two new public-facing crash data dashboards.

The first is the all traffic crashes dashboard here, an interactive map that shows all crashes reported to the San Jose Police Department.

Filters include time period, location, age group, crash type, crash severity, council district, and equity priority areas.

The dashboard also allows users to explore crashes by street user type and severity, making it easier to identify trends and high-risk locations.

This dashboard is now publicly available at the website shown at the bottom of the slide.

The second new dashboard focuses specifically on KSI crashes, aligning with one of the main goals of our KSI reduction in the Vision Zero Action Plan.

This dashboard helps highlight the city's most critical traffic safety concerns where the highest risk crashes are happening and which types of road users have been involved.

The filters are similar to the all traffic crashes data dashboard, and this dashboard is also now publicly available at the website shown at the bottom of this slide.

The Vision Zero program continues to strengthen partnerships with key local, regional, and national partners.

With the San Jose Police Department, staff continue coordinating targeted enforcement efforts and collaboration to improve and automate crash data reporting and data sharing.

We've also started coordinating with regional trauma centers and public health centers to really explore secure data sharing opportunities to help support a more public health-informed approach to traffic safety.

And this also includes identifying e-bike and e-scooter crashes where they may not be reported to the police department.

At the regional and national level, we continue collaborating with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's Regional Vision Zero Working Group and the National Vision Zero Implementer Peer Exchange.

These partnerships allow San Jose to learn from other cities, share our best practices, and stay connected with dozens of Vision Zero programs across the region and across the country.

Another area we focused on is school safety coordination during ongoing school closures and consolidations.

Unfortunately, San Jose had 11 school closures in 2025, and there are seven more in 2026, with Toyota Elementary School being added onto the list above.

In response, the school safety team has been working proactively with our walk and roll program, school staff, school district leadership to address the changing traffic patterns and circulation needs at these consolidated schools that will be now be taking even more kids.

The goal is to help students and families continue getting to school safely as traffic travel patterns shift.

As part of DOT's ongoing roadway safety efforts, the city continues updating speed limits to better align with state law and with engineering best practices.

Last year, council approved speed limit reductions on 18 roadway segments in August and another 19 in December.

And DOT plans to go to council later this month for an additional 14 speed limit reductions.

This fiscal year, we will complete 470 Vision Zero projects across the city as shown on this slide, sorted by project type on the left and by council district on the right.

The distribution across council districts is data driven based on the community's needs.

In March, DOT constructed a roundabout at Daniel Melania and Neiman to improve safety at that intersection.

It's designed for slow overall vehicle speeds and reduce conflict points, helping improve safety for everyone using that intersection.

We also installed a traffic signal at Branham and King's Park to improve both safety and traffic operations for all road users with a new pedestrian connection from King's Park directly to Marshall Cottle County Park.

This fiscal year, DOT used several pavement projects as golden opportunities to also deliver quick build safety improvements along priority safety corridors.

These improvements were completed on corridors including Jackson, Meridian, Camden, Blossom Hill, and Tenth Street.

Additionally, DOT expects to complete 53 pedestrian safety and traffic calming projects around the city this year.

Full details about all of these projects can be found in the memo as well as in the attachment C.

To better understand how these new quick build safety projects are performing in San Jose, the Vision Zero team conducts before and after corridor evaluations.

Since launching this effort last fiscal year, our team has completed the five corridor evaluations listed here.

Additional year one evaluations are currently underway for Branham and Moore Park.

The school safety program continues its focus on improving safety and improving safety at and around K-12 schools across San Jose.

This fiscal year, we completed 38 school access and circulation studies, evaluating traffic flow around schools and their parking lots, pedestrian and bike access for students, and overall traffic safety in the school areas.

In addition, 138 high visibility school crosswalks have been installed this year.

To date, this team of two has upgraded nearly 1,500 school crosswalks citywide in collaboration with the pavement program and other projects, as well as completed 87 school access and circulation studies.

The walk and roll program continues to provide active transportation safety education at schools across San Jose through activities like school assemblies and bike rodeos with a staff of four.

They have accomplished all of the activities listed in this slide for just this fiscal year.

I think it's really awesome that they have 774 bike helmets that they'll be able to give out to students this year, too.

The city is currently piloting red light running cameras at four key intersections in San Jose.

Citations began being issued on January 9th, and the pilot program is to run for a year.

In the program's first two months, over 2100 citations have been issued.

And in the first four months, nearly 5,000 have been issued.

Really highlighting the extensive red light running that is predominant at these intersections.

Staff have completed the vendor selection process for the speed safety camera pilot program and have identified a preferred vendor.

Once the contract is executed, staff will move forward with the implementation and coordination for 33 speed safety camera systems across the city.

Installation of the cameras is anticipated to be completed by September.

This fiscal year, DOTs submitted five grant applications, totaling about two million dollars to support Vision Zero related projects.

As of May 20th, two Measure B bike and PED planning grants were awarded along Oakland Road and Stevens Creek for studies.

Two applications are currently under review by the funding agencies.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Jordan Muldau to share a few of the comments for BPAC.

Thank you.

The Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee appreciates the opportunity to present to TE.

I'm Jordan Mulnow, Chair of BPAC.

We submitted a memo with committee accomplishments and recommendations aligned with San Jose's Vision Zero goals.

First, our accomplishments.

This fall, our partnership with integrated waste management reached a milestone as IWM fixed reflectors to carts along six streets.

This pilot serves two purposes improving cart visibility to cyclists at night and prominently displaying keep cart out of bike lane to the property owners.

Anecdotes suggest that compliance improved following installation, though more work is still needed as a point of observation.

Almost every empty cart was in the bike lane on my way here today.

BPAC duties include community engagement.

We table at Viva CA most recently in April.

We see enthusiasm for safer streets and cycling in our engagement with residents from throughout the city.

Now our recommendations.

BPAC fully supports council's direction to deploy quick builds as quickly as possible and believes that more progress on this front is essential.

We urge improving the median speed of quick builds from conception and identification to delivery, reinvesting savings into delivering more quick builds each quarter.

We recommend that delivery metrics be shared via public dashboards.

Post-delivery reports and photos posted online would help build support for future investments.

BPAC urges more quick builds near schools, including holistic treatment of daylighting and no-reun red measures.

In the picture, you'll see two of the intersections that the team worked on with the high visibility crosswalks as well as the daylighting implementation with the plastic delineators, and we'd like to see that holistically around all of our schools.

We also recommend reducing school speed limits to their lowest legal thresholds and request a staff report on current school speed limits.

BPAC recommends treating trail underpass cleanup as a transportation priority.

Flooding along San Jose's river trails is short in duration but long in impact.

While river levels typically recede within 24 hours, poor drainage and delayed post-storm cleanup leave slick residue in undercrossings for weeks or months, effectively disabling large large portions of the trail network.

At our December meeting, BPAC held a discussion with PRNS to learn about trail maintenance.

The discussion highlighted structural and organizational constraints contributing to extended underpass hazards.

The cumulative effect is a perception that trails are deprioritized relative to roadways, despite their function as transportation corridors.

We recommend that the city treat underpass cleanup as a transportation reliability issue, comparable in priority to roadway flooding.

We recommend benchmarking response protocols against pure cities, evaluating the cost-benefit of owning specialized equipment, and pre-budgeting the PRNS DOT collaboration for predictable winter workloads.

These challenges are concentrated in a handful of underpasses for a few months each year.

So meaningful improvements are achievable with minimal budget impact.

Briefly, some other priorities we have regarding reimagining Santa Clara Street.

BPEC strongly and unanimously champions the linear park concept with transit lanes, but modified to include a far a car-free promenade for cyclists and pedestrians.

Regarding the airport's effort to close the public assets points for cyclists to get from Central Expressway to Airport Boulevard.

At our most recent meeting, BPAC voted unanimously to adopt the following two statements.

BPAC urges the City Council, DOT, and Airport Department to amend the relevant plans to ensure bikes are permitted on Ewart Road in perpetuity.

BPAC also affirms that a bicycle connection around the north side of the airport, south of 101 and De La Cruz Boulevard is important to the bicycling community, regardless of any other connections that are built in any other locations.

This concludes our recommendations.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to us on all matters of street safety.

I'm available for questions, and now back to Jim and John.

Thank you, and we'll open it up to questions and comments.

All right, thank you.

Do we have any members of the public?

Yes.

Jeff, please make your way down to the podium.

You will have two minutes to speak.

My name is Jeff Englander.

I'm uh resident of District One.

Um, I am on the BIPEC committee, but I'm representing my own views.

Um, I've also been a rehab physician at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center for 40 years, have taken care of many people who've had catastrophic injuries, uh, who have survived their injuries.

So it isn't just the people that die that are problematic, but people who have severe injuries are also living with those injuries, usually lifetime.

Um I want to commend the Department of Transportation on lowering the speed limit by Prospect High School.

I don't know if that has anything to do with the Costco project that is nearby, but it's in my neighborhood, and I can I I notice right away that people are driving more slowly by Prospect High School.

I don't know why all schools could have a 20 mile per hour speed limit.

I grew up in Ohio.

I never saw 25 miles per hour speed limit in the Midwest.

So, you know, why can't we do that?

I also think that around libraries, because young people as well as older people use the libraries quite a bit, and those should be considered safe zones or safer zones to drive by.

Those are the main comments that I have.

I want to commend Jordan for doing such a great job and leading the BIPAC over the last year.

It's been a pleasure to serve on that committee as well.

Thank you.

Back to the committee.

All right, thank you.

And we will start with Vice Mayor Foley.

Thank you.

This is always a real important uh program for me to hear about and for us to learn about, and and particularly because as I started off talking about the fatalities, but thank you for also also elevating that these are not just the fatalities, they are serious uh uh injuries that have occurred to uh that affect people lifelong.

So um we need to we need to do better.

Um thank you for the presentation, Jim, and thank you, Jordan, for the presentation from BPAC and for your involvement there.

I'm the liaison to BPAC and uh Kyle Lavaroni goes regularly and reports back to me what's going on, so I appreciate your advocacy.

There's um a lot of good work that you're doing as far as the quick builds and and creating bike lanes, but there's always more.

What can we do?

Because we know that the fatalities and the serious injuries are the number one cause is speeding.

We are doing, we are creating quick builds and slowing down traffic, but some of the fatalities of the names I read are DUIs.

So speeding wasn't what caused that.

Drunk driving did.

What can we do to as an education component or an infrastructure component to slow down more traffic for speeding and from education?

How can we continue to remind people not to get behind the wheel if you're impaired?

Thank you, and a very important question.

Well, you are correct that unfortunately over this last couple of months we've actually suffered a lot of DUI crashes that resulted in terrible fatalities.

So while our in infrastructure improvements don't necessarily perfectly match up with trying to resolve that, we have been reaching out to both the Calpoint Highway Patrol and San Jose PD to see if there's anything else we can be doing on the behavior part of that, and that would be bold enforcement.

Um the operations that CHP and PD will do for DUI checks, which they're going to be increasing, is my understanding.

We're working with them on that, and then overall some of the education that both of those agencies can do and do do.

So both of them are aware of this as a uh what we've been through this year, and it's not just here, it's elsewhere as CHP is describing.

So we're trying to reach out on that side of the the um the issue as well.

So it's enforcement and education, and um both those agencies are gonna be key to that.

So we're trying to see if we can do some more on that side.

Well, it's I I appreciate that, and and as I look through this list, I see two names.

One of them both were fatalities on a street in my district.

One woman, innocent driver, was on Foxworthy, a street that is very narrow.

You couldn't have really done much more to narrow that street, where uh a man was very much impaired and flipped her van over.

She passed away immediately.

He died later from his injuries, um, and then just recently, uh near one of my schools, there was a drunk driver who hit two pedestrians who were walking on the sidewalk.

Um they are don't have didn't suffer serious injuries, but they were injured.

So as a result, and and people are saying well, why don't you do more, why don't you slow down the traffic at the or uh post slower speed signs around schools, which I completely agree?

But when you're drive working with an impaired driver, that doesn't matter.

After the accident or the crash, I should say, over by uh one of my schools, I asked my captain, police captain to send traffic enforcement unit over, and he did.

And he issued a lot of citations to people who were running the stop signs, speeding.

90% of them were either teachers or parents.

So it it's um it's behavioral.

We need to, that's the education piece.

I am completely supportive of reducing the speed limit as our schools.

What are we doing?

Have we considered reducing our the speed at all of our schools?

And how would we go about doing that?

Um I don't think we've really gone to that level of detail because there's about 250 schools in the city.

Um it's pretty cumbersome.

So trying to figure out how to do that.

It's also I don't believe we're allowed to do it everywhere, because if you're on a 40 mile per hour street, 35 mile per hour street, that's a pretty huge reduction to ask, and I'll be perfectly honest, 25 is a pretty high bar to ask on some of those streets, so that's where those digital radar signs come in to really grab the driver's attention.

Um are time of day, so they're only on during those pickup and drop-off times when people might not realize it's a school zone on that street.

Um, but in the residential areas, uh, it could be considered, but one of the things to keep in mind is it gets much more complicated than changing one sign because in a school zone in a residential street, it's just a house-shape sign that says school, but if you make it different than the 25 posted, now you have to put a 25 when children 20 when children are present, you have to move that school zone sign behind it 150 feet, so add that up times probably two-thirds of the approaches to our schools.

Um, and the reason why I know that is because we had done the 15 mile per hour pilot 15-ish years ago.

Um, and it turned out to be a whole lot more work than we had bargained for going into it.

And we had done before and after studies at those schools.

I think there were four roadways, two of them went up a mile per hour, one went down half a mile per hour, and one was unchanged.

So we can consider it, of course, we'd be totally open to doing that, but there is not the greatest of track records that 25 versus 20 really would change too much of the driver characteristics, and keep in mind when it's um those congested kind of areas like Dana and the Rose Garden area.

You can't do 25.

You just can't.

There's too much going on there.

There's too many students walking, biking, pickup, drop off, double parking that we have enforcement issues with, all of those things make it that 25 versus 20, they're probably going 10 at best on that street.

So case by case, we could certainly consider it, but it could be a pretty overwhelming task to look at for 260 streets.

Thank you.

I will add that to my colleagues that every budget season, as we go through uh how I would like to request the mayor to allocate some funds.

I first look at traffic traffic safety and where I can put in enhanced cry swalks or the radar uh cars that uh signs that you're talking about because they they do they do work.

So I would encourage my council members when they're looking at that next year, look at your budget and see if you have any money.

And I know council member uh campos and I both put in for road improvements, and if the council approves it tomorrow, those will go through.

So that's that's great.

Um I know I just have a short time, so but I don't want to forget a couple of things that Jordan brought up, and one was the trail maintenance underneath the in the underpasses.

What can we do to address those issues more readily?

What's the process now?

And how can we make it safe for bicyclists under the uh who are riding under the underpasses?

Yeah, great question.

Um, well, that is not an area that the Department of Transportation maintains, it is the city, it's parks that does that, or the water district.

So that's where it gets a little complicated.

Just sitting here today, I don't think I have a perfect answer for you in terms of how to speed up that cleanup, but it is definitely something that causes those bicyclists that use it every day to now have to find a uh a reroute.

A couple of months ago, we did bring that reroute plan to council, but that's not the answer, that's just uh get them off wall.

There's uh no way to get through that area.

I think we're gonna have to come back to you and actually see if what between DOT, Parks MREC, and the water district, how we can actually have that so to be something that's more promptly taken care of.

Great.

I don't have an answer today, but we'll have to.

Great.

Thank you for considering it and seeing how you can move it forward.

The other thing, Jordan, do you didn't talk about the leaf piles.

I'll just throw it out there that people continue to put their leaf piles in the bike lanes.

Not a good place to put them, and I want to get rid of the leaf piles.

I want to give out the regular garbage cans so they could just put them in their trash and or their gar their leaf it leaf piles in there, but that's a whole different discussion.

And the other thing is regarding the stickers and the pilot program.

Any consideration for increasing the pilot program and putting those stickers on either all of our garbage cans as we replace them, what what's the process that we would go through for that?

We will have to get back to you because I don't know how um that would be an ESD.

They're they're in charge of all that.

So I don't think anyone is opposed to that.

It's just getting it to implement.

Stickers don't cost a lot of money, probably the getting them on everyone.

How they do it.

If I could add to that.

So I know that there's a survey out right now that uh IWM has put out to bicyclists and residents for them to give their feedback.

Um I imagine that next time they come to BPAC in the fall, they'll probably have an update.

Great, because it was implemented in October.

I will say I volunteered for a couple hours to put some of the stickers on the trash cans.

Uh, and it's surprisingly more work than I imagined.

So luckily, it doesn't need to go on every cart in the city because not every street in the city has a bike lane.

Yeah, so it does narrow the scope a bit, but it is still um a pretty big scope.

Yeah, uh so I don't know what they'll come back with, but I'm also interested in knowing.

Okay, thank you.

I will move approval of the report.

Second, okay.

Um, I just want to ask a question about the red light camera.

I saw the the comment about the pilot for red light cameras.

Um, unlike the speed cameras, it's not something that we have to pilot.

I mean, red light cameras are implemented uh, but this pilot ends and then what happens?

I mean, do we have an ongoing plan for continuing to have red light cameras at certain intersections?

Possibly.

The the funding that was provided a number of years ago by council was just for one year and to to give it a uh hard look and see if these are would be something that would actually be effective at one of our big problems red light running.

We can see in the our early data that there's a lot of citations.

These are ones that still have to go through the superior court for processing because they are moving violations, so there's a lot of work that the court still has to do.

So we don't have we've got the front end numbers over these couple of months.

We don't have the back end numbers how many have made it through, either paying a citation or being dismissed or whatever.

So we've got to get some more information so to answer your question.

After one year, we're coming back to council to describe all that and see if it was a valuable program or not to continue that.

So we'll find out how many citations.

So how many citations?

We've made it through the courts, what kind of fees and fines were paid, um, and whether or not it's made a difference in terms of reducing the numbers over time now that somebody might be uh actually have to pay or have uh points against their license.

Can we tell in one year?

I mean, I guess the question is could we be able to is one year enough to do that?

Do our best, it's you know, the it the the backlog right now is in the court system, so hopefully we can get enough of the data out to see if we can read into what those trends and that results would look like.

But we wouldn't be removing camera.

I mean, cameras are in store.

We're gonna leave them there as long as uh this was city funded, so we're not using anyone else's money, and it's right now currently legal to be doing this in the state, so we took advantage of it.

So we'll we will see in a year and we'll present that whether or not we want to continue that or not.

Okay, and did you want to add something?

I will just add that the number one intersection for those citations are is in my district, Camden and Bascom.

Oh, I see another hand is going to be careful.

And there's one in your district.

I see I see another hand that's going up by Councilmember 30.

Yeah, I just wanted to thank uh staff and Jordan for the presentation here, all of this important work.

Uh, one quick question for John.

If you could just speak a little bit more on uh the issue that Jordan raised around that specific road near the airport, it's Ewart.

Uh if you could provide more context on what options we may have moving forward.

So you if anyone is not familiar, there's a uh roadway that's actually on airport property.

It's actually called Ewert Road, however, it's not a public street, it's actually just airport property and has been used by the airport to access previous parking areas and other facilities in there.

The airport um deems it necessary to close that road for various reasons, and they would be the best to answer that.

Uh, there is still some discussion about how to do this with Airport and the other city city of Santa Clara and the county that have facilities uh Trimble de la Cruz right along that part of the airport site.

So there's still some discussion going on with that, but I don't have uh an answer as to whether or not the airport would could or should leave it open.

That is it's a decision that they would need to make, and I believe it's surrounded mostly around security, but that is my understanding.

Thank you.

That is very helpful context.

Uh, beyond that, just want to thank also BPAC for their uh you know comprehensive report.

Uh, agree with a lot of the recommendations in here, trying to get uh you know faster throughput on our quick builds, more reporting, seeing if we can scale that network up, and then also just want to highlight again, reimagining Santa Clara Street, big proponent also of the linear park concept there, trying to get dedicated transit lanes and to the extent possible given the limited space, seeing what we can do to better accommodate bikes on Santa Clara as well.

I know we have a bike network that kind of runs on some of the parallel streets, but every day out on Santa Clara when I'm walking, I still see bikes on Santa Clara, even lacking any infrastructure.

Uh so it's clear to me that moving forward, there will always be demand for you know some bike access on Santa Clara.

How we can best accommodate that given all of the other goals that we have for that corridor, I would be good to understand.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And seeing other hands, let's vote on the acceptance of the report.

Okay, motion carries 5-0.

Um we're we're coming on to our third of four items.

I've made an executive decision about postponing item four on the agenda.

Um, we since we have a budget hearing tonight and a lot of us have some preparation we want to do before that.

Um, I think we're good because we only have two items on the August 12th agenda, and we we've confirmed that there's there's not a time sensitive need.

So thank you, Lori and your team for waiting it out.

Um, we will see you back here in on August 12th at our next T and E meeting.

And we will now move on to the third item, which is our Move San Jose annual report.

Oh, you want me to sit here and call it back?

Uh, I'll jump back.

Okay, staying okay, yeah.

We're gonna get started, but I'm gonna jump to the back to stop all my talking.

All right, good afternoon.

Yes, I'm gonna give John's voice a break.

I'm Jessica Zank, Deputy Director for the Department of Transportation.

I am here today for our annual Move San Jose plan report, um, alongside Ramsays Madou, Wilson Tam, Lance Knox, and of course John.

Uh the purpose of our Move San Jose plan, which was adopted in August of 2022, is to uh have a citywide plan with accompanying strategies and key performance indicators that helps us understand our city, the areas uh in most need of improvement, and then really annually monitor and report transparently on how we're doing against those goals.

So there is a ton of information uh in the report in the memo in the attachments.

We will not go through all of it today for the sake of time, etc.

But we will highlight some of the key findings and information, and with that, I will pass it to Ramses.

Thank you so much, Jessica.

Uh Ramses Medoo, Division manager, Planning policy and Sustainability for DOT.

Um, so as Jess was already starting here with uh is the larger context of transportation planning.

Here's a sampling of the major policies and uh plans that we have adopted or are working on uh that guide what we're doing uh transportation wise across the city.

Many of you up there have helped us get some of these done, and many of you up there are trying to help us get more of them done.

These basically define what are the different projects across the city we're trying to get done.

Move San Jose as a plan is the umbrella plan that helps us prioritize what comes out of all of these different plans.

As Jess said, this plan is our kind of overall prioritization system.

It helps us use data-driven uh metrics to drive where those decisions should or help drive those decisions to good places for us, and it makes sure that we're continuously listening to community feedback.

I'll remind us the general plan has set out incredibly ambitious goals for transportation in the city.

And we as staff, our job is to implement the goals that we're given by council.

You can see here the pie charts, the dark part is the drive-alone rate versus non-drive alone rate.

And you can see when us as staff are pushing for more bike lanes, more transit pieces, more uh pedestrian environments, this is what we're driven by by the things that council has told us to do.

Um Move San Jose, which was uh yeah, adopted in 2022, um, boiled down the long, long list of transportation policies in the city into these nine goals.

Um, and then uh there's 26 strategies that implement those goals.

They are in appendix B, I believe, of the report.

Um, and they turn those importantly into these key performance indicators, and these are what drive our our data systems to help us track what's going on there.

Um we've recently uh finally got a big data subscription, which helps us feed that this uh what's called the decision support system.

I'll touch on that in a second.

But importantly, out of those plans, um, as well as other elements uh in the city, we have over 500 different projects in the city, and that number is does not yet incorporate everything we've been asked to do.

Right.

And so, how do we now prioritize across that massive list when we're choosing that next best project to put our effort into?

And so that's what the decision support system helps us do.

It puts all of those different projects on the same playing field data-wise to help us evaluate them and get a sense for how those different projects uh change the transportation system uh to move towards our goals, right?

Um the decision support system is our kind of it's our AI brain that we've been developing.

It's a cutting edge piece of software that we've gotten both uh local as well as state funding to develop, helps us track current behavior, does the evaluation I just talked about, helps monitor the system performance and estimate where things need to get done, and helps us, like I said, uh inform prioritization decisions.

Um now moving into some of the uh results that we're actually getting.

I'm not gonna talk very much about this one, as uh you just heard from Jim and team about transportation safety, but I will say transportation safety is the foundation of multimodalism.

You don't get somebody to bike, you don't get somebody to walk, you don't get somebody to take transit if they don't feel comfortable out on the street outside of their car.

Um and so as we uh continue to try and bend into multimodalism the system, this is priority number one.

There's no way to get somebody to take that light rail without them feeling like they can get out of the light rail and walk to their job or home on the other side without that.

All right, um, another big one uh is environmental progress, right?

One of the big driving forces behind uh transportation is trying to reduce what we're doing out there environmentally.

It's continues to cover around 50% of all of emissions in the city.

Now, the way we're measuring this uh through our data systems, is multifold, but the most important ones we're tracking is the uh the drive, the parts of the system that are continue to drive, we want them to become green, right?

And we're really seeing this is the place we're seeing probably the most progress in all of these different metrics.

We're seeing a huge increase in both uh uh the amount of chargers are out there, and if you look at the memo, the vehicles as well.

Um, so we're really seeing uh huge increases in these ports, and we're seeing uh uh if I remember the number right, it's about 18% per year increase in the number of registered electric vehicles.

I think we're up at around 80,000 in San Jose, which is a huge number.

Um, another thing that's worth talking about just for a minute is vehicle miles traveled because I know this is being carried around in a lot of different discussions.

So vehicle miles traveled is a um metric that the state of California has required of us to measure in sequence circumstances.

Um but it's also a very good measure of understanding how an individual site um uh how much travel by vehicle is being produced through that site.

So if you think about a downtown site where there's great transit and there's great walkability and all that, you're gonna have a low vehicle miles traveled, even though you might have more trips coming out of that building.

But in a very suburban place, you might have something like 95% vehicle uh travel coming out of that, right?

And so that's the basic measurement.

There's a lot more to it, but just trying to give a quick link into that because I know it's coming up in other discussions around development.

Um, from state rules, we're supposed to be reducing it overall.

We also adopted this as a uh a rule in our city uh to reduce it, and we want to see it reduced.

We are seeing an increase on the longer term of things and a decrease uh in the shorter term, and a lot of that has to do with uh return to office policies coming in.

Um with that I'm gonna pass it off to Wilson.

Thank you, Ramses.

Uh Wilson Tam, transportation planning manager as DOT.

So I'm going to talk about the next category uh called the multimodal access and equity, which is one of the goal areas in Move San Jose.

Multimodal access and equity focus on how easily people across the city can reach destinations using different modes of transportation uh options.

Um, when we evaluate the transportation network, um we continue to see important connectivity gaps.

Um, connectivity between low-stress bicycle facilities remains limited citywide, and uh around two-thirds of the street segments um have been designed to support the complete streets initiatives that we uh have set up to to accomplish.

At the same time, uh there are encouraging signs of progress.

Um, one notable accomplishment is that we've been able to implement transit signal priority or TSP, which is a technology to um to force the signal traffic signal to turn green light whenever a bus arrives uh in front of the intersection.

Um, and uh TSP has been implemented across the city, and early results have shown that travel time savings um have been accomplished of up to three minutes on some frequent routes or 20% improvement in travel time.

Um, however, despite these improvements, um many destinations remain significantly uh more accessible by car uh than by transit.

Um, roughly speaking, in 2025, as you can see, um, only 40% of the jobs uh reachable by car within 30 minutes can also be reachable by transit.

So there's a gap in terms of how many jobs we can reach within 30 minutes of transit versus car.

So these findings reinforce the need for us to improve uh network connectivity across all modes and strengthen the first and last mile connection.

Um in terms of um the final uh category here is uh is about travel behavior trends.

Um, this focuses on the travel behavior and what it tells us about the opportunities uh in mode shift.

Um the data shows that approximately one-third of all trips in San Jose are now two miles or less in length, thanks to uh potentially uh uh remote working or working from home, um, an increase of uh 6.5% from 2024.

We also see similar growth in non-commit trips.

Um, these shorter uh non-work trips represent some of the strongest opportunities for walking, biking, micromobility, and transit to compete with driving if safe and convenient facilities are available.

Um the city is looking to capitalize on this trend by expanding its bike share network with 32 new stations beginning later this year, and most of which will be located in East San Jose.

These investments provide residents with additional transportation choices and can help reduce resilient uh and reliance on driving for short trips.

Um, this is the last slide of the presentation.

So the previous slides focused on performance, showing how the city is tracking across various goals like safety, environmental sustainability, access and travel behavior.

Equally important is how the DSS uses those performing find performance findings to help identify project candidates that are well positioned to address the gaps and the challenges we have highlighted.

When we evaluate the projects across through the DSS, there are 500 projects that have been planned through different initiatives.

We found that the highest performing projects frequently occur along the high crash corridors.

Areas with limited multimodal access and corridors that strengthen first and last mile connections.

In other words, the projects that rise to the top are often located in the same places where the performance monitoring shows the greatest need.

And have the potential to advance safety, access, equity, and environmental objectives at the same time.

So folks can play with that.

And that concludes our presentation.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much.

It's a great body of work, and I'm struck by um the complexity of this citywide transportation system and all the variations of what needs to be done in various parts of the city.

The work that you do is impressive.

We, you know, compared to what a small city might do, where there's a lot more uniformity across a small city and a city of a million people and having to, you know, balance and prioritize.

Um, just want to thank you for for that work.

Do we have any public comment?

Yes, Jordan, please make your way down to the podium.

Thank you, Staff, for the presentation.

And I have to say I love the amount of detail that was added into this presentation compared to last year and the amount of attachments, so thank you.

Um, I know the data is probably proprietary, even though it's taken from our cell phones, but to the extent that you could put um uh an aggregated JS map of all those things, that would be great to have to be able to zoom in and see which areas are the high levels of stress versus the low area, low areas of stress.

Um I'm glad to see that VMT is decreased from last year, but it's still higher than where it should be and not on a trend line to meet our goals.

Uh so I'd like to know what can we change about how we operate in order to get us back on track to meet our goals despite our small budget.

Um a third of all trips being less than two miles.

Uh not great that people are still relying on their cars for such things, but that does mean it should be really easy to make improvements uh if we get people on Bay Wheels and online scooters, then that's a third of all VMT that we could, well, not a third of all VMT, a third of all trips that we could get rid of.

Uh Bay Wheels changed their pricing model last year, and it's now cheaper than it used to be for short trips.

So I think we should really lean into advertising that price change and get more people on the Bay Wheels.

Uh Park SJ also has a contract with the downtown association to advertise all of our plentiful parking downtown, and we need to start advertising transit and biking just as much as car driving so that people are aware of it every time they see an ad for an event downtown.

Uh finally, there was a question on the last presentation about drunk driving.

And if we have better access to transit, more density, easier to walk and bike places, there'll be less people in cars in general, and therefore there should be less drunk driving.

So we really need to keep investing in that.

Back to the committee.

Okay.

I'll start with Councilmember Ortiz.

Thank you, Councilmember Cohen.

I want to thank staff for their presentation as well.

Appreciate the robust amount of information and data that was presented to us.

It's good to see the expansion plan for the multimodal transportation.

Especially, I represent District 5, so that's really good.

And I would previously I was on the emerging mobility transportation committee that the city had.

Right.

And it seems like vast majority of our uh e-bikes and e-scooters there in downtown San Jose.

Is that correct to say?

Currently, the service area for the bikes themselves is basically downtown plus a bit, and now it is expanding towards your district, right?

So all those new stations that expand that area.

I mean, truly they could ride anywhere and just come back.

Um and then scooters um have currently mostly downtown and they're expanding to different neighborhoods as the kind of rides show up for them.

Yeah, then I guess it may be a little bit hard to you know examine this at the at the data level, because given they're all placed in downtown, um, but when we start reaching into East San Jose or more into North San Jose, I don't know if there's some in that in that area, it'd be good to see where they're actually taking the bikes to if it's to work.

If it's to, as you know, one of the speakers, Jordan had mentioned.

Are they going out to eat and in downtown that way we could you know get more uh uh be more intentional with our our placement of these um of these e-bikes and e-scooters?

Uh, because it'd be good to know.

Like, all right, the ones that are being in place in East San Jose, are people taking them to work, or are they taking them when they're gonna go out to a bar or or vice versa?

Even though, you know, drinking and driving a scooter is probably not as, you know, not safe.

Not any more safer than a car either, but um, uh, but you know, just be just be good for us to get an understanding that way we get our bang for our buck based off of placement of these.

And have we looked at that level of usage at this point?

Are we looking at where they were taking the the bikes to?

We we have uh like trip information at a high level.

Uh we don't have trip purpose information kind of by default.

You know, don't people don't tell us, hey, I'm going to the bar or I'm hey, I'm gonna go see my grandma, right?

Uh, what we know is they're traveling from this place to that place, right?

And so you can kind of infer some of that information.

Well, I mean, like if people are taking it to the Eastridge, you know, transit center, then we know, okay, they're going, that's why they use an award to the you know, um penitentia creek uh transit jump on there and stuff like that.

Are we are we looking at that yet?

Or are we going to North San Jose?

We know they're taking it to employment hubs.

Yeah, so we can look at some of that information.

I don't have any insights off the top of my head about that, but we do have uh access to some of that information in a uh a larger data system that helps us track that, plus scooters.

Yeah, the only thing I would add is that as you mentioned, you know, most of the uh locations are currently within the greater downtown.

So I think it will be really interesting and helpful as both scooters and bike share expand, we'll be able to match destinations to purpose a little bit better because right now, if you're traveling within downtown, your purpose could be a lot of different things without a clear way of understanding what you're asking for.

But I think we can look at it better when we have uh bigger geographies.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Campos.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, staff and um members of the public who um presented this information and for all the information today that is all very interconnected and relevant, and incredibly important.

And I um just wanted to ask a question about the multimodal access and equity work.

Um in South San Jose, I learned through the West Valley Community Services that a lot of my residents are reaching out through WVCS to use their VI program, which allows them to call a vehicle to pick them up and get them to their community services.

And I noticed that some of the key words in the multimodal access and equity, walking, biking, and transit.

So I'm curious about where the possibility for micro mobility like smaller multi-passenger vehicles that VTA doesn't offer because VTA is focused on mass transit, and yet there are pockets throughout the city and throughout the county, where those large vehicles don't really make sense, but we still need people to get to the transit stations from their neighborhoods, especially older adults who might have walkers, people with disabilities who might need a wheelchair, or families with one young children who want to get their stroller pretty easily on there, and you can't do that on a bike or a scooter.

So where would that fit in, or what would it take for the city of San Jose to explore opportunities like that for our residents?

Yeah, great wonderful question.

And something we've been trying to tackle for quite a long time, actually, right?

VTA went to a core lines model where they're really investing their dollars and making sure their big trunk lines are getting as much service as possible, and they've moved away from what they call the coverage model where they were sending mid-sized vehicles into neighborhoods because they're basically weren't getting the ridership to support it.

Um that's really hurt us uh to say our transit basically is not accessible through a lot of the city.

Um so uh we are launching actually uh by the end of this year uh uh Palenda, which is a uh uh on-demand shuttle service, uh pretty much exactly like what you're saying.

Um it's uh uh serving much of uh D5.

Um D7, yeah.

Um and what it is is an on-demand shuttle.

So folks are gonna be able to call it.

Um they'll get picked up at or very near their home and at or very near their destination, and it is trying to aggregate rides, or seeing a lot of these systems.

Um there's there's one in Cupertino, uh, one in Milpitas, um, and um the thing that took us so long to get one going is the sustainability of such a thing.

Um it costs a lot of money to run these things, and um uh showing up in people's neighborhoods, especially uh when when uh when you're thinking about equity and money and all these kinds of things, and saying, hey, we have this really cool thing for you for a year or two, and then it disappears.

One, it's not gonna have as much effect, and two, um, it's really uh uh it's a little bit of uh you know pull the rug out from under you kind of thing.

And so we're really trying to work out a system that would make it into a community-run system, hopefully, in the longevity of it, or purchasing the vehicles versus renting them, all these kinds of things.

Um, and so uh we're continuing to see that.

So hopefully that pilot will be launching at the end of this year.

Uh by the end of this year, everything seems to be uh green uh for that to happen by the end of the year, and uh, if it's really successful, one we hope VTA will take it over and run it instead of us because we are not a transit agency that we seem to be taking more and more transit work on uh because we basically need to.

Um, and um uh two, we're really hoping that sustain sustainable funding patterns uh merge as as the program matures.

Thank you.

What did you want to add any?

Two really quick things.

I think um the local investment plan that VTA is working on, microtransit and expanding that is definitely one of the things that's been talked about to complement the core service via bigger transit vehicles.

And then the second thing is just um I I think that the VTA access program also, you know, it does a pretty good job of first-hand experience this year of of how it works, and uh it does work pretty well for people with disabilities and certain older adults if they qualify.

So just you know, in the spirit of having more awareness that that service is out there and um pretty reliable once you get accustomed to it.

Thank you for that.

So I heard that awareness leads to success.

If we can demonstrate that people are using it, is there anything else that council can be doing to support um, you know, this this being a successful effort.

Well, if you're talking about the one that we're running, um, yeah, I mean, I think it's uh we don't have a big marketing budget.

There's some, right?

Um, and it is one of these things where if a whole bunch of people don't start using it, it's just gonna dry up because we need to prove the value, right?

That's what we have to do.

It's public money, it's got to be as valuable as possible in its use, right?

So the more we can get folks out there knowing what it is and things like that, you guys have a certain level of marketing ability because of of who you are, right?

So if you can help us with that, that'd be great.

And um that and and then help us uh advocate for continuing funding for it.

Thank you.

I imagine there's a an uptake delay, though.

I mean, you can't launch something test it for six months or a year and say no one's using it because it has to be a period of time where people learn of its existence, figure out that it works, and start using it.

So we have to be thoughtful about that.

And I hope that when we're buying um these vehicles, we're buying electric vehicles for the for the system.

I actually uh I'm not sure if we are, I think we are, um, but large vans of that size that are electric are actually hard to find.

Um, so we're we're I think that's what we're doing, but I'm not gonna say yes until I'm absolutely sorry.

So we'll follow up.

I will follow.

I'll make a note to follow up on that.

All right, Councilmember Ortiz.

Great.

Yeah, when um Councilmember uh Compost was speaking, that was exactly what came to mind our conversation in regards to the last mile solution, I think they're called, um, because usually it's that last mile that's hard to solve for for many commuter commuters or um transit uh enthusiasts.

What I believe that that um pilot came from, it came from a committee that was started of neighborhood leaders um from both district five and district eight.

I don't think we had district seven leaders, and then we had um quarterly meetings, and those meetings were staffed by VTA staff and um city, I don't think DOT was too involved, but I think every once in a while DOT would be there.

Um, but mostly VTA in response to the Eastridge Solite region, Eastridge to Bart Regional Connector, uh and the fact that there wasn't going to be enough funds for an Ocala stop.

And so we had some very vocal neighborhood leaders who pushed on both the city and VTA to come up with a solution for families in that area who wouldn't be able to access um the uh light rail uh or the Eastridge Transit Center easily.

And so that kind of was was the overall solution.

And so definitely community organizing, um, finding interested neighborhood leaders and then holding VTA accountable for um, you know, investments uh because I believe the grant came from VTA, right?

The funding is VTA.

It's uh Measure B's innovative transit grant program.

Yeah, and so like you know, VTAP is I don't know if you're on well, I'm on VTAPEC, so nobody else is on VTA PEC, but that's definitely things that people should be watching if they um are interested in accessing or replicating this program.

Thank you.

Would you like to make a motion to accept the report?

Sure, I make a motion to accept the report.

Okay.

Um I have a couple questions.

Can you put that slide back up that was just on the screen a second ago?

The um this the slide of that talks about increased transit time versus geography, a little confusing.

I'd like we'll dig into it a little bit more later.

I see some dark blue dispersed amongst green, and it's kind of hard to understand exactly how that's the case.

Is this based on where people are starting their trips, where they're ending their trips, or just in general, how that are how how is this measure generated?

Yeah, there's a lot going on.

So I'm gonna give Lance a warning that this is gonna come to him because he is our data expert.

Um, but essentially what this metric does is uh compare how well transit will get you from A to B to how well a car would get you from A to B.

So I'm and I'm just asking A being where you start your orange.

Yes, so yes, this is from where you start your trip.

So the dark blue is the uh percent additional time compared to transit.

So the lower the better.

So yeah, so if it's yellow um is taking you longer starting from that specific census track to whichever endpoint.

So if you live in this in in one of these areas, it'll take you this a percentage longer to use transit than to drive.

All of them take longer, no no place takes less time, which which is the concern obviously for off the bat, but some takes significantly more time.

Um, but it's interesting.

I would like, for example, I looked at North San Jose and I see that blue patch.

I'd be curious to know why that patch is better off than the areas around it.

So those kind of things are something to look into it on.

Just understand what is it about these areas that that lead to that.

Um on the next slide, um the just this just to I just wanted to quickly ask the question.

Obviously, we're we have downtown covered with green, the purple is where we're moving, which is out de San Jose, which is great to sort of connect East San Jose into downtown.

When are we thinking about moving north?

Because I would I can imagine that north triangle of North San Jose being an important destination or starting place for all the dense housing that's up there.

Um, well, we're getting requests to go north and south with the system right now, which is good.

We hey demand is great, we love it.

We love it, we love it.

Um we did do a pilot up uh uh uh in in North San Jose with dockless bikes, even um, which are more than if you remember what those were, uh they got taken off because they were very hard to manage.

But um, and they just didn't see the ridership needed uh to sustain them, and this is a little bit of that what we started with.

Um, and I think the the the big narrative point here is we have a long way to go, especially in places like North San Jose, with building the infrastructure to actually get people on their bikes to support a system like this, right?

Because if we had a really great system of bikeways up there that served many more sites, these things would probably get a lot more use, right?

Um, and so I would say uh we're we're always happy to explore.

Uh, we did have to get a lot of grant money, and we're supporting the the operations here in the east on this, um, and so we can try to go that way.

Um, but I will say we've tried, um, and I think we still have some more baseline work to do uh to really make it competitive.

Okay.

Only thing I'd add real briefly is just you can see how close these dots are to each other, and that the redundancy of stations is very important for the bike share system to work reliably for people.

You know, you can encounter issues where um a station is full temporarily or it's empty temporarily, or if it's offline temporarily, and all of this means that it stops being a consistent, reliable system, unless you could get even on foot from one to the other, which I think is another challenge for some parts of North San Jose, certainly not all of them, but that kind of level of of density and breadcrumbs, you do have to really make sure that that can be followed in any system expansion, and so that that's part of the art of citing these and such as well.

I appreciate it.

I'll add one more thing.

Let's get a lot more housing up there, and that will make it work while we need more trips of that lower distance, right?

A lot of people are coming into North San Jose for work, and not that not the jobs housing balance up there is is still needed.

But there's, I mean, we hope that many people who are moving into the denser housing up there are also wanting to work there, but they might be more than half a mile from their office, and having this option might be beneficial.

So, some something to study and think about.

Um, I appreciate that.

And another conversation for later time, maybe it's a little peripheral to this, but how ride share is affecting um these behaviors, this transit times and all that.

Well, you know, VMT might be going up.

People might be using ride share and not the personal vehicles, um, and then thinking bigger about you know how this affects parking needs and other things, you know.

You know, we we've had you know just a lot of conversation recently about the downtown and not building enough parking and what that means, but I'm thinking about how we might collectively understand our parking um inventory and how it's utilized better, um, to be able to allow us to build with less parking but still have parking available.

And you know, as I was thinking, as I was even reading the article in the paper this weekend and thinking through, I was thinking, well, there's a lot of empty parking we know in other locations near places where there's no parking, and if we can figure out how to bundle off site available parking with construction, we can build cheaper but still offer parking for people in a way that better utilizes what we've already built in the city.

So just a lot of stuff I'd love to think about going forward, and perhaps you already are.

I mean, we're definitely thinking about that.

We got a position opening in my team soon if you want to join.

Great thoughts.

Um, so yeah, I mean, the more we can make these things uh efficient in use, the better the land use can be, the better the transportation system is.

We all know that surface parking lots are are basically a waste of space in a lot of ways, though they're needed in a lot of ways too, right?

Uh, but at the same time, yeah, you drive through North San Jose in particular, and there are surface parking lots.

There's seas of them.

Um, and some of them are full and some of them aren't.

Um, when it doesn't always relate to whether those buildings are in use or not, right?

And if we could start sharing that, it would be great.

Though you go talk to some of these tech companies about sharing parking lots, and and it's uh it's pretty intense.

They do not want uh uh their populations mingling, so there's a lot there.

We have to start thinking differently about how these things are used, and uh maybe I'll be available sooner than I had anticipated.

Um, thank you for uh for the presentation, and let's vote.

Okay, motion carries four zero and we are on to open forum.

Jordan, please make your way down to the podium.

Hope to see you all at Viva Kaye this weekend um over in downtown and Japan Town and Monterey Road.

Um I wanted to share a story from BPEC a few weeks ago.

Uh sorry, take a step back for a second.

While you're in downtown, go check out Third and Fourth Street with our new concrete protected bike lanes.

They're really great.

Someone uh a member of the public visited BPAC a few weeks ago uh to say that now that there's those concrete bike lanes have been built in downtown, he's now biking to work uh about three out of five trips a week.

And he lives in South San Jose, I think district 10.

Uh not sure if he's biking all the way up there, if he's taking light rail, but regardless, it it really shows that if you build these things, some people will change their behaviors.

Um, and every study basically shows that the biggest segment of the population is people who are interested in incorporating active transportation into their workflow, but are hesitant and concerned about it.

So the more we build nicer infrastructure, the more people will actually use it.

Um there was a question about things that we can do about drunk drivers.

Um I know we always want to try and do as much as we can in the city as possible, but uh I urge uh you all to get involved in advocating for statewide legislation.

I think there's been three years in a row bills that were trying to enable some kind of speed limiter devices in cars that have not made it through because there's still uh this association of driving and freedom, uh, even though every scooter on the road has a speed limiter that prevents it from going 15 miles an hour.

Um, so definitely get involved in state-level advocacy.

Um, and there's definitely some places in the city where it's faster to bike than it is to drive if you incorporate the time it takes to walk to and from your parking spot.

So keep that in mind.

Thank you.

Back to the committee.

Thank you.

We are adjourned at 3.26 p.m.