Wiener Introduces Legislation to Continue CEQA Exemption for Sustainable Transportation

Earlier this month, Senator Scott Wiener (D-SF), introduced “SB-71 California Environmental Quality Act: exemptions: transit projects” a bill that seeks to streamline the state-mandated environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for public transportation and bike and pedestrian infrastructure projects that reduce car dependency.

“We’re excited to see Senator Wiener continue his leadership on active transportation with SB 71, which makes permanent a bill he authored to exempt biking, walking, and public transit plans and projects from CEQA review,” said CalBike Policy Director Jared Sanchez. 

As noted, SB 71 would make permanent a series of exemptions from the state’s environmental law that were put into place in 2020, but would expire in 2029. The bill also adds bus stops, bus shelters, and new ferry service and infrastructure to the list of transportation projects that will be exempted from CEQA review.

But why is ending the sunset for the CEQA exemptions important to do now instead of closer to the old legislation’s expiration? SPUR’s (a smart growth organization based in the Bay Area) transportation policy director, Laura Tolkoff, explains in a post to their blog.

“This change provides certainty to sponsors of projects with long lead times, who would become more hesitant to claim the exemption as 2030 approaches. Because CEQA is just one part of the permitting and project development process, it can be risky to claim a CEQA exemption in 2029 if a project won’t have all its permits and funding in place before 2031,” Tolkoff writes.

SB 71 will extend 2020’s SB 288 (also introduced by Wiener), which has been considered a success. In four years, this exemption has streamlined nearly 100 transit projects across California delivering them more quickly and at a lower cost as expected. SB288 exempted the following types of projects from CEQA: 

• Pedestrian or bicycle facilities like sidewalks or bike lanes
• Transit priority projects like bus-only lanes and transit signal priority
• Bus rapid transit (BRT) and other bus projects – including stations
• Light rail and other passenger rail projects – including stations – within public rights-of-way
• Zero emission transit vehicle infrastructure projects, including zero-emissions ferry charging infrastructure
• Converting general purpose lanes to carpool lanes or bus-only lanes, or converting highway shoulders to part-time transit lanes
• Planning decisions to reduce or eliminate minimum parking requirements, remove or restrict parking, or implement transportation demand management programs

In 2022, SPUR conducted a review of projects approved for a CEQA exemption under the rules set by SB 288. It found several examples of projects, most of them smaller bicycle projects, that had been built that would still have been tied up in the review process. The report noted concerns that sometimes the CEQA process is the only chance that communities have to weigh in on proposals before they are built but, “SPUR’s outreach to environmental justice organizations regarding S.B. 288 projects did not reveal any instances in which lead agencies used the exemption to skirt the public process.”

In addition to SPUR, SB 71 is sponsored by the California Transit Association and the Bay Area Council. Move LA and Calbike are some of the other groups that have publicly supported the measure.

“California has a Complete Streets deficit. CalBike strongly supports this bill, which will help us build the safe streets we need more quickly,” Sanchez concluded.