Transportation Impacts

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The Third District Court of Appeals recently weighed in on the interpretation of Public Resources Code section 21099(b)(2) (“Section 21099(b)(2)”) and newly enacted CEQA Guidelines section 15064.3, which govern the consideration of traffic impacts under CEQA. In Citizens for Positive Growth & Preservation v. City of Sacramento (2019) 43 Cal.App.5th 609 (“Citizens”), the Court determined that although Guidelines section 15064.3 does not become effective until July 1, 2020, Section 21099(b)(2) already prevents lead agencies from relying on impacts to vehicle delay to determine that traffic impacts are significant.

The Petitioner challenged the environmental impact report (EIR) prepared for an amendment to the City of Sacramento’s General Plan, alleging, among other things, that the project would increase congestion on city streets and would therefore have a significant impact on the environment. The Court disagreed, finding that level of service (LOS)—a method of determining traffic impacts based on congestion and wait times at intersections—is no longer valid under CEQA.

On January 3, 2019 the Natural Resources Agency (“Agency”) announced that the long awaited comprehensive amendments to the CEQA Guidelines are now in effect.  The last major update to the Guidelines was in the late 1990s.  As a result, the Agency and the Office of Planning and Research (OPR) had a significant amount of material to synthesize in preparing these amendments, including several legislative changes and over two decades of CEQA case law.

The amendments include two new sections and revisions to 29 existing sections and three appendices.  Many of the revisions merely reflect holdings from previous case law and will not generate new requirements in preparing CEQA documents.  Some revisions, however, do constitute substantive changes in impact analysis and it will be important for public agency staff, environmental consultants, and attorneys to review these amendments carefully.  To access a complete copy of the revised CEQA Guidelines click here.

Urban TrafficIn late January, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) released its revised proposal to update the CEQA Guidelines with respect to the analysis of transportation impacts. OPR has not backed off from the main thrust of its original proposal: abandonment of “level of service” (LOS) in favor of “vehicle miles travelled” (VMT) as the primary metric of significance. However, the revised proposal recognizes that implementation of this sea-change in one of the most complex (and heavily litigated) areas of impact analysis cannot happen overnight, and lead agencies and consultants will benefit from some technical assistance up front.

Currently, the most common metric used in evaluating a project’s transportation impacts is LOS, which measures the delay that vehicles experience at intersections and on roadway segments. However, as OPR noted in its original proposal, focusing on a project’s impact on LOS often has unintended consequences, including the imposition of mitigation measures – such as increased roadway capacity – that can exacerbate poor traffic conditions over the long term. It can also discourage infill development, because adding traffic to urban areas increases the likelihood of a finding of significance that would trigger the need for an environmental impact report (EIR).