Why is this a Climate Smart indicator? 

• Jobs located near transit make it easier for people to commute to work using transit instead of driving. This helps reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. It also reduces traffic, air and stormwater pollution and crashes.  

• One of our Bold Goals is to reduce the number of drive-alone commute trips to only 40 percent of all commute trips by 2040. This is only achievable if other ways of commuting, such as public transit, become more common. 

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

Completed 

• BART Silicon Valley Phase I (began service in 2020)

• Downtown West Mixed-Use Plan (approved 5/25/21) 

• Parking and Transportation Demand Management Ordinance update (adopted 12/6/22, effective 4/10/23) to eliminate parking minimums, giving businesses more flexibility to choose locations near transit and incentivizing measures like providing employees with transit passes 

In Progress/Ongoing 

• Advance long-range transit projects that serve growth areas by developing plans and implementing them in conjunction with the VTA and other cities 

• Promote Transit Oriented Developments (TOD) through implementation of the Envision San José 2040 General Plan and urban village plans 

• Partner with regional agencies on regional transportation solutions 

• Develop the Diridon Integrated Station Concept plan with regional partners 

• Facilitate the development of Downtown West, a massive new mixed-use corporate campus within the Diridon Station Area. The project would include retail and offices near the Diridon train station and bring as many as 20,000 jobs to the downtown over the next decade or two 

• Plan to locate new commercial development and 85 percent of new jobs near transit 

• Business outreach, including focused retention and expansion visits with companies located within, or appropriately suited to locate in, key employment areas  

• Partner with local companies, associations and agencies to identify unique attributes of the local economy that enhance San José’s value add in attracting new companies and investment  

• Promote the key attributes of areas experiencing significant development to businesses looking to expand in or move to San José, the brokerage community and property owners and developers working in the area  

• Economic Recovery Workplan to strengthen the resiliency of small businesses within the city  

• Participate in the Bay Area Urban Manufacturing Initiative  

Planned 

• BART Silicon Valley Route Phase II (expected 2029-2030) 

About the data 

Sources  

Job numbers are based on data on number of employees per business and business license begin and end dates from the City’s Business License database. Data were included both for businesses that are currently active and those that are currently inactive. 

Transit stop locations include both existing transit stops based on General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data and transit stops that are planned as part of Plan Bay Area 2050. High quality transit stops are defined as those where wait time is less than 16 minutes in the morning and night time. 

Limitations  

The Business License database is missing some needed data for a small percentage of businesses. Jobs at these businesses were excluded.  

Data were collected for this metric for the first time in 2022. For businesses that were active in 2022, job numbers for 2012-2021 are based on the number of employees that those businesses had in 2022, as historical data on number of employees per business were not available. 

Numbers for 2012-2021 are based on 2022 transit stop locations, which are likely slightly different from transit stop locations in previous years.  

Last updated 

August 2023