BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 779
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Date of Hearing: May 13, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Jimmy Gomez, Chair
AB
779 (Cristina Garcia) - As Amended April 14, 2015
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| |Natural Resources | |9 - 0 |
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: NoReimbursable: No
SUMMARY:
This bill delays, until July 1, 2017, the effective date of
revised CEQA guidelines establishing criteria for determining
the significance of transportation impacts of projects within
transit priority areas, i.e. within one-half mile of major
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transit stop.
FISCAL EFFECT:
The guidelines are to be finalized this year, thus the bill will
delay their adoption by at least six months and likely longer.
Two staff at OPR are currently working on the guidelines, and
delaying implementation will extend this process and create
uncertainty, resulting in over $150,000 of additional staff
resources toward this effort. In addition, Caltrans, which is
gearing up to implement the guidelines, will incur delay-related
fiscal impacts.
COMMENTS:
1)Background. SB 743 (Steinberg), Chapter 386, Statutes of 2013,
among other things, directed OPR to propose revisions to the
CEQA Guidelines to establish new criteria for determining the
significance of transportation impacts of projects within
transit priority areas that are not based on level-of-service
(LOS). (LOS is a measure of vehicle delay at intersections and
on roadway segments and is expressed with a letter grade
ranging from A (free-flowing traffic) to F (congested
conditions).) LOS has been criticized as an outdated metric
because it does not consider person delay and neglects
transit, pedestrians, and bicycles. Many believe that an
over-reliance on LOS considerations by planners has led to
widening intersections and roadways to move automobile traffic
faster at the expense of other modes of transportation. LOS
has also been criticized as a barrier to infill and
transit-oriented development.
In response to SB 743, OPR published a preliminary evaluation
of potential alternatives to LOS in December, 2013. Based on
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comments received in response to that document, the office
released draft revisions to the CEQA Guidelines in August,
2014, and accepted comments on the draft through November,
2014. The draft proposed to replace the LOS analysis with an
analysis of the vehicle miles traveled (VMT) generated by a
project as a measure of the significance of a project's
transportation impacts.
2)Purpose. This bill delays any revisions to the CEQA Guidelines
adopted pursuant to SB 743 from becoming effective prior to
July 1, 2017. The sponsor, the Infill Builders Federation, is
concerned that the revisions, as currently drafted, while
intended to benefit infill development, may actually put
infill at a greater disadvantage by requiring infill projects
to undergo an untested VMT analysis that initially will not
apply to development projects in non-transit-oriented areas.
The sponsor is concerned that this places both an added
analysis burden and potentially an added litigation burden on
infill rather than making it easier to move these types of
projects forward.
OPR has indicated that it is likely to issue a revised draft
of the guidelines, although the timing and extent of changes
to the first draft are uncertain. It is also not clear when
OPR expects that final revisions will be formally adopted.
Analysis Prepared by:Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916)
319-2081
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