01592725

Component

This research explores transportation impact thresholds of significant environmental impact established by California Senate Bill (SB) 743 and their implications for urban and suburban development. SB 743 mandates that Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) or similar measures will be the main criterion to assess environmental impacts instead of Level of Service calculations. While this is a promising change, there are a host of technical questions concerning how this will be implemented and what effects will occur. There is concern that regional VMT thresholds will present barriers to suburban development by increasing mitigation responsibilities, and result in insufficient traffic mitigation in urban areas by reducing review frequency. The paper shows that a more varied set of outcomes will occur if threshold determination is made by lead agencies at the local level. Furthermore, there are questions about whether this new system will make needed economic and housing developments more difficult. Residential land uses are used as a case study, with travel time to work from the 2013 American Community Survey used as a proxy for VMT. The effect of different spatial thresholds on cities in the region is assessed to determine how they affect environment review responsibilities, and if there are scenarios where transportation mitigation is disproportionately placed on lower income communities. This research finds no equity impacts based on this proxy for current VMT at the city or census tract geographic resolutions with respect to income.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADD20 Standing Committee on Social and Economic Factors of Transportation.

01584066

16-2609

English

16p

2016

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; References; Tables

Environmental impacts; Equity; Land use; Legislation; Low income groups; Suburbs; Urban development; Vehicle miles of travel

Los Angeles County (California)

Environment; Highways; Policy; Society

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016 Paper #16-2609

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 12 2016 5:09PM