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作者

Jamey M. B. Volker;Amy E. Lee;Dillon T. Fitch

来源

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION,Vol.85,Issue2,P.114-132

语言

英文

关键字

CEQA,development,housing,level of service,vehicle miles traveled

作者单位

摘要

AbstractProblem, research strategy, and findings: Local governments across the United States have for decades relied on the autocentric level of service (LOS) metric to analyze and impose exactions for the transportation impacts of land use developments. In California, LOS has dominated transportation impact analysis under the state’s project-level environmental review law. In that role, LOS has exacerbated the state’s notoriously tortuous development approval processes, particularly in urban areas. But LOS is on its way out. The state recently replaced LOS with vehicle miles traveled (VMT) as the primary measure—and basis for mitigation—of transportation impacts under the California Environmental Quality Act. Local governments must make the switch by July 1, 2020. We use a historical counterfactual approach to assess how replacing LOS with VMT could have affected the approval process for 153 land development projects over 16 years in the city of Los Angeles. We find that most projects could have benefited from at least some environmental review streamlining under the VMT-based framework recommended by the state, including more than 75% of residential-containing projects.Takeaway for practice: Our results suggest that swapping LOS for VMT could reduce the environmental review burden for development in low-VMT urban areas and provide at least some of the approval process streamlining necessary to increase housing production in California. Similar impacts from an LOS-to-VMT switch could also potentially accrue outside of California under the right conditions, but more research is needed.Keywords: CEQA, development, housing, level of service, vehicle miles traveledAdditional informationAuthor informationJamey M. B. VolkerJAMEY M. B. VOLKER (jvolker@ucdavis.edu) is a PhD candidate in the Transportation Technology and Policy (TTP) graduate group at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), and a practicing environmental attorney.Amy E. LeeAMY E. LEE (aelee@ucdavis.edu) is a PhD student in the TTP graduate group at UC Davis.Dillon T. FitchDILLON T. FITCH (dtfitch@ucdavis.edu) is a postdoctoral researcher at the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSMany thanks to Joseph Kaylor for his tireless research assistance, to Susan Handy for her always trenchant feedback, and to the Editor and the three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive suggestions.Notes1 According to a recent survey of 46 cities and counties, the exemption most frequently applied to housing projects between 2015 and 2017 was the small infill exemption, which limits projects to 5 acres (Smith-Heimer & Hitchcock, 2019; Guidelines Section 15332). The exempted projects averaged 37 units in size.2 The SB 743–implementing regulations became effective on December 28, 2018. They include a new CEQA Guidelines section (15064.3) and revisions to Appendix G of the Guidelines and are complemented by OPR’s informal 2018 Technical Advisory on Evaluating Transportation Impacts in CEQA (California Natural Resources Agency, 2019 California Natural Resources Agency. (2019). 2018 amendments and additions to the state CEQA guidelines. Retrieved from http://resources.ca.gov/ceqa/docs/2018_CEQA_FINAL_TEXT_122818.pdf [Google Scholar]; Office of Planning and Research, 2018 Office of Planning and Research. (2018, December). Technical advisory on evaluating transportation impacts in CEQA. Retrieved from http://opr.ca.gov/docs/20181228-743_Technical_Advisory.pdf [Google Scholar]).3 None of the 76 respondents to a recent SB 743–related survey of city and county planning departments in California reported that they do not plan to use OPR’s recommended screening thresholds (Volker, Lee, & Kaylor, 2019 Volker, J., Lee, A., & Kaylor, J. (2019). LOS to VMT and SB 743 implementation—Survey results from local planning departments in California. On file with authors. [Google Scholar]).4 Pasadena was the first to adopt a VMT-based policy in 2014 (City of Pasadena Department of Transportation, 2015 City of Pasadena Department of Transportation. (2015). Transportation impact analysis: Current practice & guidelines. Pasadena, CA: Author. [Google Scholar]), followed by San Francisco and Oakland in 2016 (City of Oakland, 2017 City of Oakland. (2017). Transportation impact review guidelines. Oakland, CA: Author. [Google Scholar]; San Francisco Planning Department, 2016 San Francisco Planning Department. (2016). Executive summary: Resolution modifying transportation impact analysis (report prepared for March 3, 2016 San Francisco Planning Commission hearing). San Francisco, CA: Author. [Google Scholar]), and San Jose in 2018 (City of San Jose, 2018 City of San Jose. (2018). Transportation analysis policy. Retrieved from http://www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm129.htm [Google Scholar]).5 Los Angeles is frequently cited as the poster child for sprawl. However, the city is actually one of the most compact urban areas in the United States according to recent metrics, even when combined with adjacent areas (Ewing & Hamidi, 2014 Ewing, R., & Hamidi, S. (2014). Measuring urban sprawl and validating sprawl measures. Report prepared for the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the Ford Foundation, and Smart Growth America. Retrieved from https://gis.cancer.gov/tools/urban-sprawl/ [Google Scholar]; Laidley, 2016 Laidley, T. (2016). Measuring sprawl: A new index, recent trends, and future research. Urban Affairs Review, 52(1), 66–97. doi:10.1177/1078087414568812[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).6 Our data set includes seven petitions challenging projects whose draft EIRs were published before 2013, the earliest two from 2007.