On January 20, 2016, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (“OPR”) released revised guidelines for analyzing transportation impacts under the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”). The revised proposal was initiated to comply with the 2013 legislative requirements from Senate Bill 743 (“SB 743”), and requires that the level of service metric in a transportation impact analysis be replaced with a vehicle miles traveled metric (“VMT”).

Current Law

Section 21099 of CEQA, as amended by SB 743, requires OPR to develop revisions to the CEQA Guidelines establishing criteria for determining the significance of transportation impacts of projects within transit priority areas that promote the “…reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the development of multimodal transportation networks, and a diversity of land uses.” Section 21099 states that upon adoption of the revisions to the CEQA Guidelines, automobile delay, as described solely by level of service or similar measures of vehicular capacity or traffic congestion, shall not be considered a significant impact on the environment under CEQA.

Under the current transportation analysis, agencies typically determine the project impacts based on increased level of service on each roadway or traffic congestion. The congestion based approach often requires road expansion to mitigate the impact. This can be very costly and extremely burdensome on urban and infill projects, but often results in suburban or rural residential projects having less than significant traffic congestion. Thus, such projects avoid having to mitigate for potential transportation impacts.

In 2013, the California Legislature passed SB 743 to shift the focus of transportation impact analyses from congestion to greenhouse gas emissions resulting from trip length, encourage public transit use, and promote a mix of land uses that will reduce travel demand. The bill requires that the OPR amend the CEQA Guidelines to target these goals by providing an alternative to the level of service test for evaluating traffic impacts. This allows the CEQA process to more efficiently measure the increased greenhouse gas impacts of development on transportation patterns.

Draft Guidelines

Since December 2013, OPR has published three documents for public comment to implement SB 743. These are: (1) Preliminary Evaluation of Alternative methods of Transportation Analysis (December 30, 2013); (2) Preliminary Discussion Draft of Updates to the CEQA Guidelines Implementing Senate Bill 743 (August 6, 2014); and the current draft, (3) Revised Proposal on Updates to the CEQA Guidelines on evaluating Transportation Impacts in CEQA.

The OPR draft guidelines are consistent in several points from the previous version. First they continue to identify VMT as the most appropriate measure of project transportation impacts. Further, the recent proposal continues to recommend that development be located near transit, roadway rehabilitation, and include bicycle and pedestrian projects. The guidelines clarify that such projects should be considered to have a less than significant transportation impact. Finally, OPR maintains that implementation of the new strategies and measurements should be phased in over time to allow local agencies to prepare for the new analyses.

In the new draft guidelines, there were several changes to improve the version from the Preliminary Discussion Draft. First, to clarify what in the proposal is a requirement versus a recommendation, much of the detail originally proposed for the new Guidelines section was moved to a new draft Technical Advisory. Second, the recommended thresholds of significance were refined to better align with the state’s climate policies and recognize the diversity of California’s communities. Third, the threshold recommendations allow better access to relevant data like outputs from the Caltrans’ Statewide Travel Demand Model. Finally, OPR recommends that the new procedures remain optional for a two-year period to enable agencies that are ready to make the switch from level of service to VMT to do so, but gives time to other agencies to adapt to the new procedures.

Implications

The new guidelines are likely to take effect and require the use of VMT as the calculation of transportation impacts. Rural cities and counties will likely see the biggest impact from the new analysis requirements because suburban and rural projects which would likely not have had a significant impact under the congestion analysis, may have much greater impact measurements under the VMT standard. Urban areas and infill projects, will also likely see a change and find fewer significant transportation impacts under the new analysis. These changes will affect the procedures used by local agencies to comply with the updated requirements, and may require extensive staff time and training to get the agency up to speed on the new process.

We will continue to keep you updated on developments related to CEQA transportation analysis requirements.  If you have any questions regarding the draft guidelines, please contact Douglas L. White at (916) 468-0950 or doug@whitebrennerllp.com, or Katie R. O’Ferrall at katie@whitebrennerllp.com.