Expanding Clean Mobility Access in the San Joaquin Valley
Organization: San Joaquin Valley Community Shared Mobility, dba Miocar
Funding Request: $500,000
Project Summary
The proposed initiative aims to offer technical support to enhance community capacity and facilitate planning efforts that enable residents to express their travel needs, objectives, and solutions. The expected result is community backing for viable clean mobility projects that cater to the unaddressed travel requirements of the community’s most disadvantaged populations. To guide the technical assistance, community advisory groups will be formed, comprising a diverse range of underrepresented members.
Project Descriptions and Transportation Equity
The proposed project aims to enhance community capacity in California’s San Joaquin Valley (SJV) to identify and advocate for their travel needs and solutions, while also providing technical assistance to develop actionable plans that can secure funding. The project partners, with a decade of collaboration, have previously introduced various clean mobility services in underserved areas, including electric carsharing and ridesharing.
The initiative targets communities lacking resources and engagement for planning clean travel alternatives, addressing significant transportation disparities faced by low-income residents. It focuses on building community resilience through affordable clean travel options and workforce training, with an emphasis on hiring local residents for project activities. The planning will involve clean transportation and land use strategies to improve access to essential services and opportunities for low-income households. Research indicates that similar past projects have successfully met the travel needs of low-income residents in the region.
Community Benefit
The project focuses on communities in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV) across both rural and urban areas, including cities like Modesto, Merced, and Bakersfield. The average CalEnviroScreen (CES) percentile for the area is 82%, indicating environmental challenges. The population is predominantly people of color (75%), with 16% facing linguistic isolation. High poverty (56%) and housing burden (20%) rates hinder access to personal vehicles, and AllTransit reports poor transit quality, with an average performance score of 3.38 out of 10. Additionally, 33% of the population lacks education, and 12% are unemployed, highlighting the need for improved transportation access to essential services and opportunities.
Partnerships and Structure
SJVCSM will lead the administration and implementation of a grant, coordinating with partners like the SJV Air Pollution Control District and ITS-Davis to engage the community and support data collection and analysis. Community partners, SHE and UPholdings, will leverage their local trust to ensure diverse representation in advisory groups. These groups will empower community members with decision-making authority and will receive technical support to document perspectives for funding plans. All partners will collaborate on community events to enhance engagement and education.