Managers Mobility Partnership

This partnership emerged from the Bill Lane Center's City Managers Initiative. Working as the academic partner to Stanford's neighboring cities, the Center seeks to advance the study of connectivity across the West's broad landscapes.

As economic expansion fuels population growth in Silicon Valley, the importance of connectivity between and within cities is paramount. The Managers Mobility Partnership is an unprecedented collaboration among the cities of Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City and Stanford University. These five partners have committed to a set of guiding principles to jointly address the transportation and mobility challenges facing these communities. 

Signed in May 2016, the partnership acknowledges: 

• Many challenges, including congestion, are regional in nature and cannot be addressed if each individual jurisdiction works in isolation
• A desire to pursue forward-looking and innovative solutions
• A collective willingness to be experimental and collaborative with pilot programs 

President and CEO Russ Hancock of Joint Venture Silicon Valley convenes the partnership on a regular basis, with executive leadership from Dan Rich (City of Mountain View), Alex McIntyre (City of Menlo Park), James Keene (City of Palo Alto), Melissa Stevenson Diaz (Redwood City) and Bill Phillips (Stanford University). A working group of senior transportation planners meets consistently to ensure collaboration on mobility issues, such as bike sharing. 

History and Context

The partnership emerged from the Bill Lane Center's City Managers Initiative. Working as the academic partner to these neighboring cities, the Center seeks to advance the study of connectivity across the West's broad landscapes.

The Center is particularly interested in solutions to "last mile" transportation challenges, linking transit riders to and from transit hubs to their final destination. Together with Joint Venture Silicon Valley, the Precourt Institute for Energy, and the Stanford Public Policy Program, the Bill Lane Center hosted the annual Stanford City Managers Forum in May 2016. Entitled "Moving on Mobility: Last Mile Transportation Solutions," the forum convened Stanford experts with municipal leaders from more than 23 agencies.

Presentations from the event can be found below: 

• Landscape of Last Mile Problems and Solutions
  Stefan Heck, Consulting Professor, Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy
• Transportation Demand Management in Stanford Research Park
  Jamie Jarvis, TDM Manager, Stanford Research Park
• How Cities Have Successfully Addressed Last Mile Problems
  Jeff Tumlin, Principal & Director of Strategy, Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates
• Audience Polling Results and Discussion
  Moderated by Stefan Heck 

Current Research Efforts

Through the City Managers Initiative, the Center serves as a bridge between municipal government and Stanford faculty and students who share an interest in tackling these policy and infrastructure challenges. Interdisciplinary teams of students are currently working as consultant researchers through the Public Policy Practicum and the Stanford Future Bay Initiative. Through project-based learning, these teams are focused on understanding key sub-regional travel patterns and devising cross-jurisdictional bicycle routes. As their work progresses, the student reports will be posted to this site.