The mission of the Transportation Team is to accelerate the transition to an equitable, fully connected, multimodal, zero emission transportation system in the San Diego region. An overarching goal of the team is to promote transit solutions that result in reduction of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMTs). The Transportation Team meets monthly on Tuesday evenings and has been led by Rita Clement and Mike Rancourt. After 1.5 years, Rita is stepping down as co-lead but will continue her work as a regular attendee of public SANDAG meetings, and will start work on advocating for the Sweetwater Floating Solar Array. Thank you Rita! The new co-lead for the Transportation Team is Chris Roberts. The team meetings are always fun and stimulating, with approximately 8 to 15 attendees at each meeting.
The major goals of the Transportation Team for 2024, and accomplishments towards those goals, are:
- Let’s Go! San Diego ballot initiative: Generate voter and elected officials support for the November 2024 ballot measure. Emma Rodriguez is the lead.
- Developed presentation materials that individuals can use to present to community organizations. We need volunteers to present at community meetings leading up to the November election!
- Organized the June 8 kick-off event for Let’s Go! San Diego. Please attend the kick-off!
- Microtransit: Accelerate adoption of microtransit (Neighborhood Electric Vehicles) initiatives by cities and transit agencies in the region. Sanjiv Nanda is the lead.
- Working with SANDAG to 1) define the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) data, including demographic data, that need to be collected from multiple on-going microtransit pilot studies (e.g., in National City, Carlsbad etc.); 2) give input to the design of SANDAG’s “Flexible Fleets Dashboard”, which is an accessible platform provided by SANDAG that allows for visualization and analysis of the KPI data; and 3) making sure that the data in the Flexible Fleets Dashboard is accessible for downloading so that others can access and analyze the data.
- Data analysis platform: Recruited graduate student volunteers from UCSD’s Data Science masters program (Tanvi Joshi, Jintong Luo, and Vanessa Hu) to work with Sanjiv and Craig Jones to develop a geographic information system (GIS) platform that can be used to identify ideal locations in underserved communities for deployment of new microtransit systems. Tanvi, Jintong, and Vanessa have made excellent progress and we’re excited to use the GIS platform to help with the design of new microtransit systems!
- Public outreach: Tabled at the Urban Collaborative Project’s April 6th 3rd annual Southeast San Diego Transportation Expo & other earth month events. Also sent representation to Via’s recent symposium, “Improving Access & Equity through Connected Transit”, where we got to meet with local transit leaders that are involved with or interested in establishing microtransit systems in their communities.
- SANDAG outreach: Attend SANDAG twice-monthly public meetings in person and on-line and make public oral and written comments to advocate for the 10 Transit Lifelines and a 25% reduction in VMTs in the 2025 Regional Plan.
- Bee Mittermiller and Rita Clement are regular attendees to the public SANDAG meetings. When important transportation-related items are on the agenda, we need other volunteers to attend the meetings and make public comments!
Steve Gelb works with the San Diego Transportation Equity Working Group, which continues to meet with SANDAG and MTS to advocate for the implementation of the Ten Transit Lifelines.