Steer contracted with the City of Santa Monica in 2016 to start the Santa Monica Transportation Management Organization (GoSaMo TMO).
GoSaMo TMO serves as Santa Monica’s one-stop shop for transportation resources and information. Now in our third year, Steer continues to expand the TMO’s reach, increase engagement and foster behavior change among commuters, residents and visitors in Santa Monica.
How we helped
In the first few months of GoSaMo’s existence, Steer engaged in the following work to establish a strong foundation for the TMO:
- Stakeholder meetings: held with representatives including Santa Monica residents, employers, sustainability advocates, bike advocates, elderly programs advocates, local and regional transit service providers, and many more. We collected input and ideas on how the TMO could be helpful and identified the transportation needs and gaps in the community.
- Advisory Team: many of those who attended stakeholder meetings were invited to join our Advisory Team. We currently have 23 Advisory Team members.
- Work Plan: we worked with the Advisory Team to create a work plan to inform our work. The TMO continues to refine the work plan with direction from the Advisory Team.
- Brand Identity, Website and Logo: Steer worked with the City to establish the GoSaMo TMO brand identity and website, www.gosamotmo.org, that could be used as a transportation resource along with a strong identifiable logo; this built on the already existing strong GoSaMo brand.
The TMO’s approach combines best practices and implementation strategies which have proven to be successful for commuters across Southern California and beyond. TMO staff are practitioners of Steer’s customized motivational interviewing technique, an engagement model for in-person outreach that helps to influence travel by empowering individuals to understand their transportation challenges and identify alternatives to single-occupancy vehicle (SOV) travel.
Unlike most other TMOs, the GoSaMo TMO is unique in that it is fully funded by the City of Santa Monica for the first three years. The TMO works on reducing drive alone trips in Santa Monica by approaching each segment of the target audience differently.
- Employers: The TMO staff take an active outreach approach to engage employers. In year one they reached out individually to over 150 of the 462 employers with over 30 employees, to introduce the TMO and offer assistance with their transportation-related needs. In year two the TMO has provided information to 225 employers through drop-in stops and calls. The TMO has also begun to provide services to employers for a fee, including creating detailed TDM plans or serving as consultant Employee Transportation Coordinators (ETCs) for employers.
- Residents: The TMO has engaged Santa Monica residents through a number of outreach events and piloted a New Resident Welcome Packet for the Downtown neighborhood that includes all the relevant transportation information a new resident needs in order to get around. The goal is to reach them before the driving habit is formed.
- Visitors: The TMO engages visitors through several high visibility outreach events where staff ask about how they got to Santa Monica and how they plan to get around the city. TMO staff use motivational interviewing to provide information and encourage sustainable traveling choices.
Accomplishments
Since officially launching in late 2016, the TMO has been hard at work conducting active outreach and engaging the Santa Monica community about sustainable transportation.
- Met with or provided information to over 376 employers representing over 26,000 employees.
- Organized over 20 Lunch & Learn and other TDM events attended by over 400 individuals.
- Participated in over 40 City or community events.
- Created and distributed monthly newsletters, with an average open rate of 26%.
- Expanded the City’s existing Safe Routes to School Program to private schools.
- Partnered with Waze Carpool to provide discounted rides to commuters in Santa Monica, reducing 100,626 VMT and diverting 79,863 lbs. of CO2.
- Created detailed commute maps for 9 employers, representing 1,200 employees.
- Launched a Twitter account in January 2018 with impressions increasing monthly.
- Started a LinkedIn group to connect directly with ETCs.
