BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND HOUSING
Senator Jim Beall, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular
Bill No: AB 779 Hearing Date: 8/25/2015
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|Author: |Cristina Garcia |
|----------+------------------------------------------------------|
|Version: |8/19/2015 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|Urgency: |Yes |Fiscal: |Yes |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|Consultant|Alison Dinmore |
|: | |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
SUBJECT: Transportation: congestion management program
DIGEST: This bill deletes the traffic level of service
standards (LOS) as an element of a congestion management program
and would delete related requirements, including the requirement
that a city or county prepare a deficiency plan when highway or
roadway LOS standards are not maintained.
ANALYSIS:
Existing law:
1)Requires congestion management programs to be used by a
regional transportation planning agency (regional agency) to
meet federal requirements for a congestion management system
and incorporated into the congestion management system.
2)Requires a congestion management program to be developed,
adopted, and updated biennially for every county that has an
urbanized area. Urbanized area means the same as the 1990
federal census for urbanized areas of more than 50,000
population.
3)Requires a congestion management program to include the
following elements:
a) Traffic LOS standards established for a system of
highways and roadways designated by the regional agency,
including at a minimum all state highways and roadways.
AB 779 (Cristina Garcia) Page 2 of ?
Requires that in no case shall LOS standards fall below a
specific level or the current level. When the LOS on a
segment or at an intersection fails to attain the
established LOS standard outside an infill opportunity
zone, a deficiency plan shall be adopted.
b) A performance element that includes performance measures
to evaluate current and future multimodal system
performance for the movement of people and goods. These
performance measures shall support mobility, air quality,
land use, and economic objectives.
c) A travel demand element that promotes alternative
transportation methods, including, but not limited to,
carpools, vanpools, transit, bicycles, and park-and-ride
lots.
d) A program to analyze the impacts of land use decisions
made by local jurisdictions on regional transportation
systems, including an estimate of the costs associated with
mitigating those impacts.
e) A seven-year capital improvement program to determine
effective projects that maintain or improve the performance
of the multimodal system for the movement of people and
goods to mitigate regional transportation impacts.
1)Requires the congestion management programs to be submitted to
the regional agency and for the regional agency to evaluate
the consistency between the program and the regional
transportation plan.
2)Requires the regional agency to monitor the implementation of
all elements of the congestion management program. The
regional agency shall determine if the county and cities are
conforming to the congestion management program, including but
not limited to:
a) Consistency with LOS standards;
b) Adoption and implementation of a program to analyze the
impacts of land use decisions, including the costs
associated with mitigating these impacts; and
c) Adoption and implementation of a deficiency plan when
AB 779 (Cristina Garcia) Page 3 of ?
highways and roadway LOS standards are not maintained on
portions of the designated system.
1)A local jurisdiction shall prepare a deficiency plan when
highway or roadway LOS standards are not maintained on
segments or intersections of the designated system.
2)The analysis for the cause of the deficiency shall exclude:
a) Interregional travel;
b) Construction, rehabilitation, or maintenance of
facilities that impact the system;
c) Freeway ramp metering;
d) Traffic signal coordination by the state or
multi-jurisdictional agencies;
e) Traffic generated by the provision of low-income and
very low income housing; and
f) Traffic generated by high-density residential
developments located within one-fourth mile of a fixed-rail
passenger station and traffic generated by mixed-use
developments located within one-fourth mile of a fixed-rail
passenger station, if more than half of the land area, or
floor area, of the mixed-use development is used for
high-density residential housing.
1)Defines "infill opportunity zone" as a specific area,
designated by a city or county, that is within one-half mile
of a major transit stop or high-quality transit corridor
included in a regional transportation plan. A major transit
stop is defined in existing law, except that it also includes
major transit stops that are included in the applicable
regional transportation plan. A high-quality transit corridor
means a corridor with a fixed bus route service with service
intervals no longer than 15 minutes during peak commute hours.
2)Defines "level of service standard" as a threshold that
defines a deficiency on the congestion management program
highway and roadway system, which requires the preparation of
a deficiency plan.
AB 779 (Cristina Garcia) Page 4 of ?
This urgency bill:
1)Deletes the traffic LOS standards as an element of a
congestion management program and would delete related
requirements, including the requirement that a city or county
prepare a deficiency plan when highway or roadway LOS are not
maintained.
2)Requires the performance element measures include greenhouse
gas emission reductions.
3)Removes the requirement that an infill opportunity zone be
within one-fourth mile from a major transit stop or
high-quality transit corridor included in a regional
transportation plan.
4)Adds to the list of exclusions from a deficiency analysis:
a) Traffic generated by any transit priority project; and
b) Improvements to facilities for bicyclists, pedestrians,
and public transportation.
1)States that nothing shall be interpreted to require a local
agency to implement improvements to reduce delay at
intersections or roadway segments that the local agency
determines would impede the development of a balanced,
multimodal transportation network that meets the needs of all
users of the streets, roads, and highways for safe and
convenient travel.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose. According to the author, existing law mandates that
congestion management plans designate minimum LOS for certain
roadways. Additionally, local governments that fail to
maintain minimum LOS risk losing sales tax dollars. As a
result, those LOS are often required in local general plans.
Senate Bill (SB) 743 (Steinberg, Chapter 386, Statutes of
2013) set in motion a process to remove LOS from the
environmental review process under the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). While this change moved
California closer to achieving its environmental goals, it
requires infill developers to conduct two different analyses
for new projects: one using LOS under congestion management
AB 779 (Cristina Garcia) Page 5 of ?
law and another requiring the use of a different metric under
CEQA, likely vehicle miles traveled (VMT). According to the
author, these duplicative analyses are problematic because
they increase the costs for urban infill projects. These
increased costs are associated with traffic mitigation,
high-rise construction, cost of land acquisition, seismic and
sea-level inundation risk, and often increased community
input. This bill will align congestion management law with
the recent changes in CEQA law to allow congestion management
agencies to use a non-LOS metric for transportation planning
and eliminate the need for duplicative analyses.
2)Congestion Management Program. In 1990, the Legislature
established the Congestion Management Program, which requires
congestion management agencies in areas with a population of
50,000 to measure minimum capacity on designated roadways
using the LOS metric. LOS is a measure of vehicle delay at
intersections and on roadway segments and is expressed through
a letter grade ranging from A to F (A indicating free-flowing
traffic and F indicating a breakdown of flow). Because LOS
standards are tied to sales tax dollars, LOS standards are
often found in local general plans and congestion management
plans. Additionally, existing law requires minimum LOS for
certain roadways. If an intersection falls below a threshold,
the regional agency must develop a deficiency plan to improve
the LOS through mitigation, such as expanding roads and adding
lanes, to accommodate more vehicles and allow traffic to move
more freely.
3)Encouraging infill development and state GHG goals.
California's climate change laws seek to reduce transportation
emissions by reducing the amount that people need to drive.
Congestion management law, however, often encourages more
driving. This is because LOS considers delay experienced by
drivers, not passengers, including public transportation
passengers. For example, a bus is given the same weight as a
passenger vehicle in a traffic study. Another example is that
if a project in question includes a bus-only or bicycle lane,
the traffic engineer conducting the study would expect
increased delay for passenger vehicles. The result of an LOS
calculation would indicate that the project degrades LOS even
if the project is a more efficient use of road space and would
promote less-polluting uses. Furthermore, mitigating adverse
impacts of LOS standards often results in more driving by
widening roads to accommodate more cars, at the expense of
AB 779 (Cristina Garcia) Page 6 of ?
alternative transportstion modes.
Additionally, LOS has been identified as a barrier to infill
development and transit-oriented development. A traffic study
using LOS might find that sprawl developments perform well
(i.e., traffic flows more freely) because there are fewer cars
around. An urban infill project, however, 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. Mitigation efforts to increase traffic
flow, such as expanding roads, may not be possible in urban
areas and may therefore prevent a project from moving forward.
This bill would allow local governments to address congestion
using measures of effectiveness other than physical road
capacity, which would encourage other modes of travel such as
biking and transit and permit infill development where it
otherwise would have been precluded.
4)Conforming to recent CEQA changes. CEQA requires new projects
to analyze potential environmental changes created by the
proposed project. Transportation impacts analyzed under CEQA
have typically focused on the impact of projects on traffic
flow using LOS. SB 743, however, required the Office of
Planning and Research (OPR) to develop alternative methods of
measuring transportation impacts to LOS under CEQA, such as
VMT. Developers are still required, however, under congestion
management law to prepare an LOS study. This means that
developers may be preparing two separate studies to satisfy
two separate legal requirements. This bill would provide
greater flexibility for the developer to prepare one analysis,
such as a VMT analysis, to meet the requirements of CEQA and
congestion management law.
Related Legislation:
AB 1098 (Bloom, 2015) - deleted the traffic LOS as an element of
a congestion management program and would revise the
requirements for other elements of a congestion management
program by, among other things, requiring performance measures
to include vehicle miles traveled, air emissions, and bicycle,
transit, and pedestrian mode share. This bill was held in the
Assembly Transportation Committee.
AB 779 (Cristina Garcia) Page 7 of ?
SB 743 (Steinberg, Chapter 386, Statutes of 2013) - requires OPR
to adopt CEQA Guidelines to provide an alternative to LOS for
evaluating transportation impacts.
FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes
Local: Yes
POSITIONS: (Communicated to the committee before noon on
Thursday,
August 20, 2015.)
SUPPORT:
California Infill Federation
OPPOSITION:
None received
-- END --