Climate Change

Last week, State Senator Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) introduced legislation that takes aim at how California's municipalities think about parking and parking requirements.  What SB 518 (PDF) is missing in co-sponsors it makes up for in chutzpah.  If enacted, the legislation would require that every municipality in the state earn at least "20 points" in parking reforms.  These reforms range from eliminating a city's parking requirement for development, which is worth 20 points to requiring that employers offer transit passes en lieu of parking worth only 2 points.

Far be it from us to take political sides on Livable Streets issues--you don't have to be a donkey or an elephant to appreciate pedestrian safety, traffic calming, and quality public space--but why is it that two of the best columns connecting transportation policy reform, land use, and energy independence have come from conservative pundits? 

Though David Brooks might argue in his New York Times column that Americans want to live in small towns and suburban dreamscapes, the fact is more and more of us live in metropolitan areas, and discussions about what we want should have to do more with the context of those metropolitan areas.  Brooks should be looking at the quality of the public spaces where people live, and the walkability and ease of transit in those neighborhoods.

File the following in the "Can't Believe My President Gets It" category. 

Transportation consultants and planners associated with the San Francisco Transportation Authority's (TA) ATG working group sent excited bursts of email to each other earlier this month about a new development coming from the state Office of Planning and Research (OPR), the body responsible for writing and amending the CEQA guidelines related to transportation and traffic.  The OPR had adopted much of the spirit of the working group's recommendations and proposed an amendment (PDF) to CEQA guidelines that de-emphasized LOS and indicated that it would be much better to use measures for vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reductions such as ATG.

One of the unintended consequences of San Francisco’s bicycle injunction, which Rob Anderson and fellow NIMBYs will likely rue for some time to come, is the arduous thought and labor that advocates and professional planners have invested in doing away with LOS all together.  

The idea that the speed and free-flow of cars is the proxy that is being used across the state of California to measure whether a project is [environmentally] impactful is in the long run undermining the very quality of life [we] are working to protect.

The plan proposes reducing carbon dioxide emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels, and relieving freeway congestion by 20 percent below 2006 levels. It outlines a carbon or vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) tax, parking surcharges, congestion tolls, encouraging new residential projects to be built close to jobs, transit, shopping and services; and various bicycle, pedestrian and transit projects.

The Municipal Transportation Agency's "Climate Action Plan," a 96-page draft [PDF] released Thursday, strikes some hopeful notes but will it produce results? It calls for a reduction of the agency's overall carbon footprint to meet the city's goal of reducing carbon 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Muni would like to achieve zero emissions by 2020 and thinks it can do it but so far there are no budget or implementation timetables.