Sustainability Action Plan 2022

The district is conducting post-COVID transportation surveys for students and employees to better understand VMT to and from campuses, commuting patterns, EV charger usage and carpooling behaviors as a baseline for improvement. In addition, an analysis of continued remote learning and working is being evaluated as a means of VMT reduction. ESAC should engage with students to participate in this project as both a learning opportunity and foundation for solutions.

Public transportation and ridesharing are options to reduce VMTs and greenhouse gases. The district should work with Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to improve routes, increase campus bus service, reduce costs, and explore programs and best practices to help encourage and enhance public transportation ridership and facilitate carpooling and ridesharing. Other strategies that should be considered will be a continuation of SmartPass discounts for students and employees or other incentives to increase ridership, preferred campus parking for carpools, networking resources for carpools and vanpools, and engagement of car-sharing services. The district should also work with VTA to improve connections from De Anza College to Caltrain.

The campuses should work with local municipalities to improve student and employee bicycle and pedestrian commuting options. Bicycle master plans adopted by local municipalities include the Cupertino Bicycle Transportation Plan, the Town of Los Altos Hills Pathways Project, and the city of Santa Clara Bicycle Master Plan. The colleges should also review existing bicycling routes, bike racks, free or low-cost access to bikes, and public showering facilities to accommodate bicycling on campus more effectively.

To comply with the BOG Framework, the district should adopt programs to reduce emissions from the campus vehicle fleet. This would include purchasing zero-emission fleet vehicles and other rolling stock to achieve 50% of total vehicles by 2030 and 100% by 2035.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a crash course in remote learning and working in society. In a post-COVID world, there is an opportunity to improve and institutionalize these practices to benefit students and staff and reduce GHG emissions as an added benefit. The district already has many online courses but may need to improve student services in counseling, financial aid, mental health, tutoring, food resources, and tech resources and support to ensure equitable outcomes in online forms of education. Arizona State University is a leader in this area and could be a resource for program development.

The district has installed significant electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure in the past, including 10 Level 2 chargers on the De Anza campus and 13 at Foothill. The percentage and type of chargers required based on total parking spaces are included in the energy code and DSA requirements. The district should apply this guidance in planning for additional charging stations. In addition, the district should evaluate technologies and install autonomous vehicle fast- charging stations anticipating their future deployment.

The district should evaluate the criteria and benefits of a green parking permit program as the BOG Framework

recommends. A green parking permit could provide preferential location or free parking for low-GHG vehicles qualified through scoring criteria such as the U.S. EPA SmartWay Vehicle rating system. In addition, the equity issues surrounding such a program should be evaluated.