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Mobility: Vehicle Miles Traveled Reduction

 
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Why is this a Climate Smart indicator?

  • Transportation generates over half of city-wide greenhouse gas emissions, according to the 2024 communitywide inventory. Reducing the number of miles driven by cars in San José is key to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

  • This is why one of the four key strategies in the 2025 Climate Smart Plan Update is to move to reduce the miles we travel in our vehicles by at least 20%.

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

To reduce webpage clutter, some progress related to this metric is not included on this webpage but can be found on other dashboard webpages. Visit our Public Transit or Complete Streets dashboard pages for information on progress specific to each of these types of strategies.

Completed

  • Complete public bike share system with 83 stations and 1,100 bikes, including 100 dockless electric-assist bikes (2018-2019)

  • Transportation Analysis Policy to shift the focus of developments’ transportation improvements to pedestrian, bicycle and transit facilities (adopted in 2018, updated in 2022) 

  • Ordinance and permit system to address safety and operational issues of e-scooters while facilitating their growth; 1,000 scooters currently permitted (2019-2025)

  • Move San José, a new transportation strategy for San José (adopted August 2022)

  • Downtown Transportation Plan, which includes 17 transportation strategies to assist the city in designing, securing funding, and delivering key downtown improvements (adopted November 2022)

  • 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 December 2022)

  • Parking and Transportation Demand Management Ordinance update, which removed minimum parking requirements for new development proposals and supports other modes of transportation (December 2022)

  • 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 (2022)

  • Employee Commute Survey for all City employees to analyze commute patterns across the City (2024)

  • Connect North San José: The North San José Multimodal Transportation Improvement Plan (adopted April 2026)

In Progress / Ongoing

  • Implementation of the following:
  • Development of the following:
    • Update to the City’s Travel Demand Model to better reflect post-pandemic travel behavior
    • Update to the City’s Transportation Analysis Policy to align with recent changes to the California Environmental Quality Act and current State guidance
  • LED Streetlight Conversion Program to make streets feel safer for pedestrians
  • Walk n’ Roll program to increase the number of kids walking and biking to school
  • Bikeshare Subsidy Program for City employees
  • Bikeway network expansion: 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
  • East San José initiatives:
    • The 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).
    • 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
  • Climate Smart Challenge and GoGreen Teams programs for San José residents, which encourage walking, biking, carpooling, and other alternatives to driving or driving alone 

Planned

  • Electric microtransit pilot in East San José (expected 2026)

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

Evaluating

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

  • Consider strategies, including pricing and policy approaches, to ensure that automatic vehicles support vehicle miles traveled reduction and discourage single-occupancy travel

  • Explore opportunities to improve transit affordability, including discounted programs and targeted subsidies, for students, seniors and lower income residents

  • Prioritize active transportation projects to leverage local and regional funding opportunities

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

About the data

Sources & Methods

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

Data on daily VMT come from Replica. Replica VMT data is generated by modeling individual trip patterns using a synthetic population informed by US Census data, land use, mobile location data, and other “ground truth” observations—such as traffic counts, transit ridership, economic activity reports, and other public datasets. Each trip is assigned a travel mode and route, allowing Replica to simulate and calculate total vehicle miles traveled across time periods and geographies.

Population data are from the US Census.

VMT per capita per day is calculated by dividing daily VMT by population data; this figure is pulled from the San José Department of Transportation’s decision support system, which measures and tracks a number of the City’s transportation-based performance indicators.

Limitations

To align with methodologies used across City departments, the population data used to calculate this metric is taken from the US Census. As a result, the data may differ from population data used in other metrics, which is typically obtained from the California Department of Finance.

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

Last updated

May 2026