WeDriveU congratulates Genentech’s gRide employee transportation team on being awarded “Best Overall Commuting Program” in 2021 from the Association for Commuter Transportation (ACT).

ACT’s awards honor outstanding achievements in transportation demand management (TDM), a field that improves mobility, reduces congestion, and lowers vehicle emissions through strategies that inform and encourage travelers to maximize transportation system efficiency. WeDriveU proudly operates gRide shuttles serving the biotech company’s SF Bay Area employees.

Best Overall Commuter Benefits

In an announcement, ACT’s Executive Director David Straus said, “These awards provide us an opportunity to recognize the hard work, creativity, and ingenuity within the industry. Congratulations to all of our winners for their excellent work during a challenging year.”

On ACT’s webinar highlighting winners, Genentech’s head of people transportation solutions, Andy “AJ” Jefferson, described how traffic congestion and the lack of direct transit service “makes commuting a significant challenge for the ten to fifteen thousand people who travel to and from our campus every day.”

These challenges inspired commute programs that address three goals: sustainability, employee productivity and well-being. To address these goals, gRide offers employees:

• Shuttles to and from public transit stations and ferry terminals
• Long-haul motorcoaches serving a 60-mile radius
• Vanpools and private ferry service
• Other incentives include carpooling, biking, and walking, plus transit reimbursements up to 100%

Pre-COVID, at least 40% of its workforce was commuting using one of these alternative modes.

Shared Mobility

Genentech continues to reimagine the gRide program in areas such as shared shuttles.

AJ said: “It became apparent years ago that there [were] some benefits to the larger community if we could share some of these, so we opened up our transit shuttles to a number of companies in the neighborhood. Today, we make them available to everyone in the broader business district and the cost is shared with other large property owners.”

AJ’s team evolved the sharing model through Oyster Point Mobility, a coalition of employers “advancing strategies and solutions for a better commute experience.” The group offers a suite of transportation options for employees commuting to and from the Oyster Point business district in South San Francisco, provided by Genentech’s gRide team. Genentech is also providing surplus bus and ferry capacity to other local companies at cost.

“This is a big win for their employees but also allows us to reduce the growing local congestion, and of course, allows us to reduce our local vehicle emissions,” he added.

Business Continuity

ACT’s award reflects the team’s passion for serving essential workers throughout the pandemic, an effort WeDriveU is proud to support.

“Several thousand employees still came to the campus on a daily basis. Our goal going in was to keep everyone healthy and safe while still providing solutions for those who don’t have access to a car and still have arduous commutes. We focused on evolving our bus program to provide clean, low-risk rides,” AJ said.

WeDriveU collaborated with the gRide team to institute special cleaning protocols, reinforce new rider behaviors, and reduce capacity for greater social distancing.

AJ described other ways the team evolved gRide throughout COVID-19 by focusing on themes such as learning, sculpting, and building.

With intensive training on diversity, equity and inclusion, the team’s learning focused on new ways to make the transportation programs more equitable and ensure they reach more people. The team is also mining and analyzing data to drive insights and strengthen the programs.

Early in the pandemic, the team wondered if employees would reject alternative commute modes and drive alone instead.

“We decided to climb back into driver’s seat and focus on how we can influence employees to make good, sustainable choices when they returned to the office,” he said.

Those efforts, which AJ calls sculpting the commute, led to reshaping incentives around biking, vanpools, and walking. The team also found creative ways to support flexible schedules, including adding mid-day shuttle service for people to come and go throughout the day as an alternative to traditional work hours.

Engaging Commute Partners

During the building phase, AJ said “It’s really important we do this in a sensible, cost-effective manner,” by sharing programs and building partnerships with property owners and companies. “As a result, we’ll have a significantly larger number of individual program participants when everyone returns to the office.”

The team has also been busy advancing its electrification strategy.

“Electric buses are here. We’ve electrified about 35 percent of our motorcoach fleet,” said AJ. “We’ve spent our time over the pandemic evaluating new products and building out our charging infrastructure.”

WeDriveU is excited to be accelerating the sustainable commute and serving gRide employee shuttles! We congratulate Genentech and all of ACT’s 2021 winners.

A webinar replay of AJ’s presentation is available to ACT members (registration required).

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