VMT

After more than five years of discussion and delay—and long after the construction of the stadium it was attached to—S.B. 743's rules on measuring environmental impacts from transportation have been adopted

New rules called for by S.B. 743 will require development projects to estimate the vehicle miles of travel they will produce, instead of the amount of traffic delay they might cause. But as currently proposed, the rules will not apply to transportation projects.

The South Bay city joins Pasadena, San Francisco, and Oakland in moving away from a focus on vehicle delay and towards induced car trips to measure of environmental impacts of development.

Yesterday the California Office of Planning and Research released a comprehensive update to CEQA. It marks a milestone in efforts to align transportation performance metrics with community values

Increasing road capacity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will backfire.

Cross-posted from the Frontier Group.

SCAG sent a last-minute letter attempting to delay progressive updates to California's outdated environmental standards.

Late last week, the San Francisco Planning Commission unanimously adopted a resolution to replace "Level of Service" (LOS) with "Vehicle Miles Traveled" (VMT). That's bureaucratese for measuring a project's overall effect on moving people, instead of just counting automobiles. As explained in a previous post, environmental law has long forced transportation planners to grade projects by how they impact traffic flow. "This will streamline California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review for projects that are designed to encourage public transit, promote pedestrian safety and help reduce the need for traveling long distances by car," said John Rahaim, Director of San Francisco Planning, in an official release. "We are pleased to be the first city in California to adopt these new guidelines."

The Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) recently issued long-anticipated changes to a provision in California law that currently ranks traffic congestion as an environmental impact. For more details, see recent Streetsblog coverage here. The new guidelines are under a 45-day review period, with public comment being accepted until February 29.