BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 779 Page 1 ASSEMBLY THIRD READING AB 779 (Cristina Garcia) As Amended June 1, 2015 Majority vote ------------------------------------------------------------------ |Committee |Votes |Ayes |Noes | | | | | | | | | | | |----------------+------+--------------------+---------------------| |Transportation |15-0 |Frazier, Achadjian, | | | | |Baker, Bloom, | | | | |Campos, Chu, Daly, | | | | |Dodd, Eduardo | | | | |Garcia, Gomez, Kim, | | | | |Linder, Medina, | | | | |Melendez, O'Donnell | | | | | | | |----------------+------+--------------------+---------------------| |Natural |9-0 |Williams, Dahle, | | |Resources | | | | | | | | | | | |Cristina Garcia, | | | | |Hadley, Harper, | | | | |McCarty, Rendon, | | | | |Mark Stone, Wood | | | | | | | |----------------+------+--------------------+---------------------| |Appropriations |12-0 |Gomez, Bonta, | | | | |Calderon, Daly, | | | | |Eggman, | | AB 779 Page 2 | | | | | | | | | | | | |Eduardo Garcia, | | | | |Gordon, Holden, | | | | |Quirk, Rendon, | | | | |Weber, Wood | | | | | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------ SUMMARY: Authorizes the Office of Planning and Research (OPR) to determine, for the purposes of CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) review, that transportation impacts from residential and mixed-use projects in transit priority areas do not meet the threshold of "significant." FISCAL EFFECT: According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, negligible fiscal impact. COMMENTS: SB 743 (Steinberg), Chapter 386, Statutes of 2013, among other things, directed OPR to propose revisions to the CEQA Guidelines (California Code of Regulations Title 14) 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). This bill additionally authorized, but did not require, OPR to apply the new criteria outside of transit priority areas. LOS is a measure of vehicle delay at intersections and on roadway segments and is expressed with a letter grade ranging from A to F. LOS A represents free-flowing traffic, while LOS F represents 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 LOS has been criticized as an outdated metric because it does not consider person delay and neglects transit, pedestrians, and bicycles.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 AB 779 Page 3 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. A traffic study using LOS might find that greenfield developments perform well because there are so few other cars around. An urban infill project, on the other hand, might perform poorly because it would contribute to an already congested condition, even though residents and consumers associated with infill projects are less likely to rely on cars for their transportation needs. In response to SB 743, OPR published a preliminary evaluation of potential alternatives to LOS in December 2013. Based on 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 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. OPR took a phased approach to implementation in the first draft, proposing that the new analysis procedures would apply immediately upon the effective date of the revised CEQA Guidelines to projects located within one-half mile of major transit stops and high-quality transit corridors, and statewide after January 1, 2016. OPR additionally proposed allowing jurisdictions to opt in to the new procedures regardless of location from the time of adoption. 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 other areas. The sponsor is concerned that this places both an added analysis burden and potentially an added litigation burden on infill rather AB 779 Page 4 than making it easier to move these types of projects forward. To address this concern, this bill clarifies that OPR may determine that residential and mixed-use projects in transit priority areas do not meet the threshold of "significant" for the purposes of CEQA, particularly when the VMT metric is used. Analysis Prepared by: Victoria Alvarez / TRANS. / (916) 319-2093 FN: 0000778