1 Alby Calles
From: David Hunt
Sent: Monday, June 1, 2026 1:14 PM
To: City Council (San Mateo)
Subject: Annual Transportation Review and Climate Action Plan Progress Report — June 1, 2026 Hello council, a lot here but I tried to summarize up top here if you're short on time. I appreciate your time on these high-priority topics.
These two important agenda items read together reveal a gap. The Climate Action Plan Progress Report measures progress against the city's adopted 2024 Climate Action Plan, which establishes that on-road transportation is the city's largest and growing emissions source, making better travel alternatives a priority. The Transportation Review shows the city is giving away peak-demand parking for free while the highest-priority safety projects are stalled for lack of funding and staff. Right-pricing parking won't solve emissions on its own, but it is a logical local source to help fund the alternatives, and both items overlook the metric needed to track whether any of it works. The requests below connect them.
Summary of requests:
1. Study evening parking pricing. Downtown lots hit 90% occupancy at dinner while free. The city should ensure it keeps the majority of any new revenue working in downtown and dedicate a defined subset to Quick Build safety projects and other unfunded transportation safety projects in our extensive Master Plans.
2. Bring on-street occupancy data (lunch and dinner, by time of day) before setting pricing.
The city collected this for the 2014 Downtown Parking Management Plan and I believe has plans to do another parking study in the near future. Collecting this data should be explicitly included in that future study.
3. Track VMT in both reports. Neither the Transportation Review nor the Climate Action Plan Progress Report measures vehicle miles traveled, the variable the city's largest emissions source depends on.
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Mayor and Councilmembers,
Thank you to Public Works staff for a thorough review. My comment connects two items on tonight's agenda that the city presents as unrelated: the Annual Transportation Review and the Climate Action Plan Progress Report. The 2024 Climate Action Plan establishes that on-road transportation is the city's largest and growing emissions source and the Transportation Review shows the city giving away revenue and overlooking the metrics needed to understand climate progress.
Price evening parking, and use it to close the safety funding gaps.
The utilization slide shows downtown dinner-hour demand (6-8 PM) reaching 90% at the two main downtown garages, and the slide notes this is outside the parking enforcement window, meaning it is free. The key-takeaway slide presents this as a success: occupancy "remains strong, even after 6pm." But 90% occupancy at a price of zero is not a success. It is unpriced peak demand, which produces cruising for spaces, double-parking, and a less pleasant downtown, while leaving money on the table.
2 Council should also ask staff to look beyond the garages and lots. The data presented covers off-street facilities, but the on-street spaces, the most convenient and sought-after, are likely fuller still at lunch and dinner. The city collected on-street oc
cupancy for the 2014 Downtown Parking Management Plan, so refreshing that data is no new lift, and pricing can't be set sensibly without it. The spaces drivers compete hardest for are exactly where pricing does the most good.
Downtown parking already generates roughly $3.6M a year, but the bigger win from right-pricing the busiest hours is a better downtown. Keeping a space or two open on every block means drivers find parking quickly instead of circling, which cuts congestion, idling, and the cruising and double-parking that create safety conflicts. It improves turnover so more customers reach businesses over an evening, rather than a few cars holding the best spaces for hours. And the revenue can be reinvested directly into the downtown people are paying to park in.
To be clear about how that revenue should be used: the majority should stay in the area it was collected, reinvested in the downtown parking program and in beautifying and improving the downtown itself. That is both good policy and what builds public support for pricing.A defined subset of the new revenue be dedicated to two things the Transportation Review itself flags as unfunded:
Community engagement and design capacity for the high-priority projects that require reallocating street space.
Further funding for supporting and implementing Quick Build solutions on our streets. The three example CIP projects identified with "Critical QB Gap Funding," including the Delaware Safe Routes to School protected bike lane, the Hillsdale/Alameda intersection safety improvement, and LRSP Priority Package 1.
This matters because the highest-priority projects are the ones being deprioritized.
The Bicycle Master Plan slides sort projects by whether they "don't reduce vehicle lanes or remove parking." Only about 48% of High-priority projects avoid touching lanes or parking. Read plainly: nearly half of the High-priority projects, and a majority of the work overall, requires reallocating space, and the Challenges section frames that as a constraint rather than the core of the assignment. The progress slide confirms the result: only about 22% of the High and Med-High network is complete.
The presentation also identifies what is actually blocking these projects. It is not engineering. It is funding and staff capacity. The staffing slides show Transportation Planning positions downgraded and the half- time Safe Routes to School coordinator gone, and Private Development/Right-of-Way cut from seven positions to three. Priced evening parking is a logical, locally controlled source to help rebuild that capacity for the projects Council has already made a priority.
Finally, direct that VMT be tracked across both of these reports.
This is where the two items most need to talk to each other. The Progress Report includes no updated inventory or VMT measure, despite its own 2024 inventory naming on-road transportation as the largest emissions source. The Transportation Review, across 55 slides, likewise never measures VMT or ties transportation to climate targets, and its mode-share slide titled "More Balanced Network" actually shows walking and biking commute shares declining. Both count outputs, EV ports, bike-lane miles, grant dollars, but not whether driving is going down. We cannot manage what we do not measure.
Council should direct staff to add a per-capita VMT indicator to both reports going forward. 3 In short: price the downtown parking that is currently free at peak demand, keep the majority of that revenue working in downtown while dedicating a defined subset to the safety and bike projects staff have flagged as unfunded, and track VMT in both the Transportation Review and the Climate Action Plan Progress Report so we know whether we are moving the needle.
Thank you for your time and for considering these requests. - Dave
David Hunt