Moving Together Imperial
Organization: Comité Cívico del Valle (CCV)
Funding Request: $499,703.77
Project Summary
“Moving Together Imperial” is an electric vehicle rideshare feasibility project led by Comité Cívico del Valle (CCV), a community organization with over 30 years of experience in Imperial County. The project responds to severe transportation and environmental challenges in a county of nearly 200,000 residents, where small, sparsely populated communities are separated by long distances and served by limited, unreliable transit. CCV’s long-term vision is a multi-pronged strategy to increase EV use across the Imperial Valley while reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, delivered through a community-centered EV rideshare program open to all residents.
The grant itself funds a feasibility assessment for an EV rideshare and microtransit service across the Imperial Valley and Salton Sea perimeter, designed to be administered by CCV in partnership with local government agencies and community service providers. The work spans community engagement, geospatial analysis, and hub siting, economic and labor modeling, and a final feasibility report. The intended deliverable is a grant-ready implementation roadmap that reduces inequities, improves access, and supports clean, reliable, affordable mobility, building on CCV’s existing EV charging infrastructure and its outreach work for state programs like the Driving Clean Assistance Program and Access Clean initiative.
Project Descriptions and Transportation Equity
Imperial County faces compounding transportation and environmental burdens. Although buses are free, residents rarely use public transit because of poor reliability, limited routes, and the absence of late-night, early-morning, same-day, and door-to-door service. As a result, people rely on personal vehicles, employer transportation, raiteros, or taxis, options that are often unaffordable given fuel, maintenance, and cost, and many residents report that having a car is effectively essential to getting and keeping a job. These challenges are intensified by extreme heat and serious environmental hazards, including vehicle-idling pollution at the Calexico border and toxic dust from the receding Salton Sea, with over half of the county’s census tracts ranking in the top 25% statewide for pollution and health burdens under CalEnviroScreen. Community interviews and a 2024 CCV training report (funded by the California Workforce Development Board) consistently identified unreliable transit, lack of vehicle access, high transportation costs, and poor road infrastructure as key barriers.
The project addresses these inequities by assessing a community-centered EV rideshare model tailored to local realities. CCV plans to use only electric vehicles and to recruit and extensively train community residents as drivers, contributing to the local economy. Under the proposed model, CCV offices would serve as headquarters for storing and charging vehicles, drivers would be paid hourly from pickup to return (including wait time up to four hours), and riders needing longer stays, such as for a work shift, could schedule a separate return pickup. CCV has set a goal of including at least one mobility-accessible vehicle to serve residents with disabilities. By treating transportation insecurity as a critical social determinant of health, the project aims to expand access to essential services, reduce air and carbon pollution, and improve transportation equity and public health in one of California’s most overburdened regions.
Community Benefit
The project will primarily benefit low-income residents, seniors, youth, farmworkers, people with disabilities, Spanish-speaking households, and residents of rural communities most affected by border congestion and Salton Sea pollution. The county’s demographics underscore the need: most working-age residents are Mexican-American, three out of four speak Spanish at home, and there is a growing senior population that is disproportionately low-income, more likely to face disability and chronic health conditions, and especially dependent on affordable, reliable transportation for healthcare, food access, and social participation. With multigenerational households on the rise, transportation is both a key unifier and a point of financial strain in low-income families.
Beyond improving daily access to work, school, medical care, and services, the project delivers capacity-building benefits by intentionally involving residents typically excluded from transportation planning. CCV will train residents in transportation planning, data collection, and program evaluation, and will increase community understanding of clean transportation and EV rideshare options, their costs, and their air-quality benefits. An additional benefit is dispelling myths around EVs, which supports broader state electrification goals. Engagement is supported through trusted partners, bilingual and culturally appropriate outreach, and stipends and transportation assistance that make participation genuinely accessible.
Partnerships and Structure
The project is built on a multidisciplinary partnership in which decision-making power is designed to rest with the community. As lead applicant, CCV manages the grant deliverables and leads community engagement and outreach logistics, contributing deep community trust, local cultural expertise, and a long track record advancing environmental justice and health equity. Notably, 100% of CCV’s board and staff are bicultural and multilingual and come from the communities they represent, with experienced leaders overseeing implementation and community outreach.
The partner roles are organized as follows:
CCV (Lead Applicant): Grant management, community engagement, and outreach.
Tracking California (Sub-Applicant): A program of the Public Health Institute, leading geographic information services (GIS), geospatial optimization, and fleet duty-cycle modeling, bringing epidemiological, environmental science, and public data expertise.
EzraConzult (Sub-Applicant): Project management, meeting facilitation, and report development, with strengths in research, communications, and governmental relations.
Contracted economist (to be identified): Economic analysis including pricing and uptake, labor model evaluation (employee drivers versus contractors), and multi-scenario OPEX/CAPEX modeling and sensitivity testing.
Community decision-making is anchored by a Community Advisory Committee composed primarily of low-income residents, elders, youth, Tribal members, and community-based partners, holding authority over service areas, hours, affordability and subsidy policies, accessibility features, and safety practices. Equity is reinforced through bilingual engagement, stipends, transportation assistance, and meeting times scheduled around shift workers and caregivers. To manage potential power imbalances among partners, the structure centers community input through a decision framework with regular check-ins, a partner MOU for transparency, and defined dispute-resolution protocols.