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Mobility: Vehicle Miles Traveled

 
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Why is this a Climate Smart indicator?

  • Transportation generates almost half of city-wide greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing the number of miles driven by cars in San José is key to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.   

  • Reducing the number of miles driven by vehicles in San José will reduce traffic and the number of crashes.  

  • Reducing the number of miles driven by vehicles in San José will reduce air pollution. This could make a big difference in health for households living near large roads, which are often low-income households. 

What is the City doing to make progress on this indicator?

Completed

  • Complete public bike share system with 83 stations and 1,100 bikes, including 100 dockless electric-assist bikes

  • Move San José, a new transportation strategy for San José (adopted 8/9/22)

  • Transit First Policy (adopted 8/9/22) 

  • Downtown Transportation Plan, which includes 17 transportation strategies to assist the city in designing, securing funding, and delivering key downtown improvements (adopted 11/15/22)

  • West San José Multimodal Transportation Improvement Plan, which includes short-term quick-build street re-design improvements to be completed by 2027, and mid/long term critical street improvements to be completed by 2040 (adopted 12/6/22)

  • Parking and Transportation Demand Management Ordinance update, which removed minimum parking requirements for new development proposals and supports other modes of transportation (adopted 12/6/22)

  • Hired the City’s first Transportation Demand Management coordinator to manage the City’s existing employee commute programs, such as VTA’s Smart Pass Program, as well as expand and improve the program

  • Walk Safe San José Plan (completed 2024) 

In Progress / Ongoing

  • Develop the Diridon Integrated Station Concept plan with regional partners  

  • Climate Smart Challenge and GoGreen Teams programs for San José residents, which encourage walking, biking, carpooling, and other alternatives to driving or driving alone 

  • LED Streetlight Conversion Program to make streets feel safer for pedestrians (2009-present) 

  • Walk n’ Roll program to increase the number of kids walking and biking to school

  • Bikeshare Subsidy Program for City employees

  • East San Jose Bikeway Expansion: Working with Lyft, MTC, and Clean Air Resource Board to deploy 500 new e-bikes, 32 new stations, and promote ridership in East San José

  • Bikeway Network Expansion: Since 2020, the City of San José has installed 100 miles of new on-street bikeways and upgraded 82.1 miles of existing bikeways—totaling 182.1 miles of bikeway improvements across the City.

  • Transit-priority complete streets projects, along the Story Road – Keyes Street corridor and Monterey Road, as part of the implementation of the City’s Transit First Policy

  • East San Jose Mobility Equity Project: Launched in 2025 to support various programs, including a $1.3M Mobility Wallet Pilot for 350 low-income families, school-based bike programs, Viva Calle and Viva Escuela events, workforce development (Promotoras) and electric microtransit planning.

  • North San José Multimodal Transportation Improvement Plan (expected completion by 2026)

Planned

  • Mobility hubs along East San Fernando Street, making it easier for people to walk, bike, scoot, or ride transit (expected 2028)

  • Transit-priority complete streets plan(s) for Stevens Creek-San Carlos corridor, Santa Clara Street, and King Road

  • Diridon Station to Airport Connector, which would use electric, automated transit to carry people across San José and neighboring cities without interruptions from traffic (construction anticipated to begin in 2027)

  • BART Silicon Valley Route Phase II: Will extend BART regional rail service six miles from the Berryessa/North San José Station into downtown San José (expected 2037)

Evaluating

  • Consider increasing maximum acceptable densities so that land resources are not locked into low-density patterns of development 

  • Regulate to get the most benefits from autonomous vehicles (AVs) by making driving alone in AVs more expensive 

  • Explore discounted or free transit for students, seniors and lower income residents 

  • Evaluate the potential for new logistics and commercial delivery models such as drone delivery, cargo bikes and pickup lockers 

  • Microtransit co-op feasibility study

About the data

Sources

Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per service population per day measures the amount of daily mileage traveled in a passenger vehicle by an average resident or worker in the City of San José.  

Service population is calculated by adding the number of San José residents to the number of jobs in San José. Population data are from the California Department of Finance’s Demographics Unit (Table E-5). Jobs data are from the California Employment Development Department (workers that are not self-employed) and American Community Survey (self-employed workers). 

VMT data for 2008 and 2015 were obtained from the City of San José’s Travel Demand Forecasting Model (San José Model). The San José Model was originally created using the Santa Clara County regional travel demand model maintained by the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA Model). The San José Model maintains the general inputs (roadway network, land use, trip generation rates, and other factors), structure and process of the VTA Model but with a finer level of detail within the City of San José. The model has been calibrated and validated based on traffic counts and transit ridership levels from 2008 and 2015. 

VMT data for 2018 onward are from the Google Environmental Insights Explorer tool. 

Limitations

 VMT data from the San José model and Environmental Insights Explorer are modeled estimates, not exact counts.  

VMT was unusually low in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-in-place orders. 

Last updated

July 2025