2017 Newsletters

Joint Venture & Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition unveil regional bike vision

Joint Venture Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition have released a study that lays out a vision for the bicycle to become a major mode of travel in Silicon Valley.

The report, developed in partnership with Nelson\Nygaard Associates, asks why, in the face of such debilitating traffic congestion, Silicon Valley isn't taking full advantage of bicycling as an alternative to the automobile. Google, Facebook, and Stanford provided funding for the effort.

Read the news release.

Download the report.

Read Scott Herhold’s Mercury News column on the report.

Read our Mercury News guest column.

Four Peninsula cities agree on bike corridor planning

Four Peninsula cities – Redwood City, Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Mountain View – have launched an exploratory process to develop a high-quality, safe, north-south bicycle corridor linking those communities from end to end.

All four city councils adopted an identical resolution kicking off a collaborative process on the interconnected route. The four cities and their managers are members of the Managers Mobility Partnership facilitated by Joint Venture. The partnership also includes Stanford University.

Read more in the Mountain View Voice.

Read the news release.

Joint Venture board adds A’s, Earthquakes, Water District leaders

The Joint Venture board of directors has elected Oakland Athletics President Dave Kaval, San Jose Earthquakes Chief Operating Officer Jared Shawlee and Santa Clara County Water District Board Chair John Varela as its newest members.

Kaval previously served on the Joint Venture board as President of the San Jose Earthquakes. Shawlee has been with the Earthquakes since 2008 and previously served management roles in ticket sales and strategy and corporate partnerships. Varela was appointed to the water district board in December 2015 to fill a vacant seat and was subsequently elected last November to serve the remainder of the term through December 2018.

Read the news release.

See who's on our board.

Joint Venture's Witkowski speaks to International Wireless Communications Expo

David Witkowski, Executive Director of Joint Venture’s Wireless Communications initiative, addressed the International Wireless Communications Expo in Las Vegas last month on the topic, “Preparing Local Governments for the HetNet Revolution – A Practical Perspective.”

The IWCE Expo is an annual gathering of industry professionals including government, military, public safety, utility, transportation and business.

Earlier last month, David spoke at the United Nations Humanitarian ICT Forum, hosted by Google in Mountain View. The topic for this year's HICT Forum was "The Participation Revolution: Empowering Affected People."

Read more about the Wireless Communications Initiative.

2017 Silicon Valley Water Conservation Awards

Winners of the 2017 Silicon Valley Water Conservation Awards have been announced in seven categories - business, government agency/water utility, organization, greenscape management, organization, innovation, education and water champion. Recipients include Oracle, the San Mateo Resource Conservation District, Ecology Action, Stanford University’s Residential & Dining Enterprises, Ouroborus Farms, Frank John and Rich Gordon.

Joint Venture is a member of the coalition of ten organizations and cities that supports the awards program.

Read the San Mateo Daily News coverage of the winners.

Fast Company magazine honors Joint Venture’s Fair Value Commuting Project

Fast Company has honored Joint Venture’s Fair Value Commuting initiative as one of twelve recipients of the magazine’s first World Changing Ideas Awards. The awards honor “the best combination of creative problem solving and potential to change our world for the better.”

The magazine calls FVC “an ambitious, overarching plan” …that involves cities, transit agencies, mobility service providers and businesses. The plan aims to aggregate public transit; mobility services like Lyft Line, Waze Carpool, Scoop, Chariot and Bridge; biking; and electric bikes/scooters into a single platform, and incentivize employees to make use of those single-occupancy vehicle alternatives.

Joint Venture was among 192 finalists from more than 1000 entries around the world.

Read about the awards.

Learn more about our Smart Mobility Initiative.

Report of the Month: “Community Plan to End Homelessness in Santa Clara County, 2015-2020” – Destination Home

Destination Home’s newly released 2016 annual report reflects groundbreaking progress toward ending homelessness in Santa Clara County. Over the past two years, the community has taken concrete steps to build a system with the housing capacity to meet its needs and highly effective interventions to permanently end homelessness for individuals and households.

As a result, the community has measurably increased the rate of connection to permanent housing out of the homeless response system, and the percentage of those persons who remain stably housed.

Read the report.