California's mandates pressing large urban regions to reduce vehicle travel are tough. They possibly just got tougher with a recent San Diego appellate court ruling.

But spare a thought for the planners of the upper San Joaquin Valley. They're struggling to apply smart-growth principles in places not known for lavish public budgeting or love of urban density. They must all meet the same greenhouse gas emissions reduction standard – easier for some than for others. And now they're facing a suit, Sierra Club v. Merced County Association of Governments (MCAG) (Merced County Superior Court Case No. CVM 019664) that has lawyers and allegations in common with the much-noted San Diego case, Cleveland National Forest Foundation v. SANDAG.

The San Diego region's 2011 transportation plan – the one that was slapped hard in a recent Fourth District appellate ruling – actually met its state-imposed goals for reducing per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars and light trucks as of 2020 and 2035. The ruling called for the environmental impact review (EIR) to look beyond those numbers, toward more possibilities for environmental improvement. If upheld by the State Supreme Court (SANDAG's board has voted to seek review of the ruling), it could limit lead agency discretion in preparing EIRs and impose more pressure to work toward deeper GHG reductions in planning years after 2035.

Merced and Madera Counties should be so lucky.

Out of California's 18 Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), all but the Shasta and San Luis Obispo regions have adopted Regional Transportation Plans/Sustainable Communities Strategies (RTP/SCSs) as required under SB 375. And of the 16 adopted plans, only Merced's and Madera's do not fully meet the per capita GHG reduction targets that the state Air Resources Board (ARB) set for them in 2010.

Merced's plan meets its 2020 target but not its 2035 target. Madera's meets neither. Meanwhile some of the other San Joaquin Valley MPOs, notably Stanislaus and San Joaquin Counties, have managed to adopt RTP/SCS plans that go far beyond the assigned Valley-wide targets: a 5% reduction in 2020 and a 10% reduction in 2035.

Missing a target carries no direct penalty, but when an MPO misses a target it must prepare an Alternative Planning Strategy (APS) explaining hypothetically what actions could help meet the target.

The CEQA writ petition filed against MCAG in October was brought by attorneys from the environmentalist team that won the SANDAG ruling, including Rachel Hooper and Erin Chalmers of Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP and Kevin Bundy of the Center for Biological Diversity. In echoes of their SANDAG contentions, they alleged the MCAG plan did not call for enough changes in transportation policy, that the EIR failed to analyze and mitigate "the human health risks caused by expanding highway capacity" and that it "fails to analyze the Project's greenhouse gas emissions in light of scientifically relevant long-term climate stabilization targets contained in Executive Order S-3-05 and the AB 32 Scoping Plan."

The petitioners also contend the MCAG board erred by adopting a "Scenario B" model that called for moderate density increases, when a Scenario C, calling for greater density, was identified as "the environmentally superior alternative" in the EIR and "MCAG did not adopt this alternative or make any findings as to why it was infeasible." (The RTP/SCS as prepared for the September 25 meeting is here.) The complaint further alleges the analysis improperly used a supplemental rather than a full EIR, relying in part on environmental review work prepared before SB 375 became law.

Terry Roberts, manager of the ARB's Sustainable Communities Policy and Planning Section, said at least for 2014 RTPs adopted by the Valley MPOs, with the excecption of Merced, EO S-3-05 wouldn't necessarily be an issue. She did say the Valley MPOs would have to consider the executive order the next time around in their four-year RTP/SCS preparation cycle if the court ruling stands.

Roberts said when the ARB has taken up the issue of SB 375 publicly, board members have often expressed a desire for regional RTP/SCS plans to show how GHGs can continue to be reduced beyond 2035. So she said the SANDAG ruling reinforced a previously expressed need to look at continuing emissions reductions beyond 2035.

MCAG officials have declined to comment directly on either the SANDAG litigation or their own, but public reports and comments suggest their answering argument would be that they're not bad, they're just drawn that way.

In an interview soon after the MCAG plan's adoption in September, Matt Fell, transportation planning manager with MCAG, said when the targets were set in 2010, "the valley didn't have some of the modeling capabilities that we have now." He said some San Joaquin Valley MPOs were able to supply data to the ARB about travel patterns, but MCAG was unable to do so in the same way, so targets were "set somewhat arbitrarily." (The eight San Joaquin MPOs have since upgraded their modeling of travel and land use patterns with grants from the Strategic Growth Council's Model Incentives Grant Program.)

During the 2010 target-setting process under SB 375, there was early talk of assigning the San Joaquin Valley MPOs "placeholder targets" of 1% to 7%. The final determination that year assigned each Valley MPO individually to plan for the same per capita GHG reduction targets:  5% below 2005 levels in 2020 and 10% below 2005 levels in 2035.

In comments during the ARB's October 2014 meeting on SB 375 target-setting, Roberts referred to the 5%/10% goals as "placeholder targets" as well, saying they "were intended to be revised once transportation modeling improvements were completed and alternative scenario analyses could be provided." At that time she said ARB staff would recommend new Valley targets in 2016 for Board adoption by 2018 – though some Valley administrators at the meeting were asking that target updates be made in the third round of SCS development.

Fell said interregional travel issues, especially involving long-distance commutes leading out of the region, tended to create variations in travel as measured from one county to the next. For example, he said 30% of travel in Merced County remained within the county, another 30% began or ended there, and 40% passed through and kept on going. He said if the jobs/housing imbalance persisted or worsened, that could mean more long commuter car trips, hence fewer GHG reductions. With limited revenue for "smart growth" incentives, he suggested MCAG was running out of levers it could pull.

Meanwhile Bill Higgins, executive director of CALCOG, advocated for more funding to make changes, and more flexibility: "While a tech worker in Silicon Valley may seek an infill unit within biking distance to her office, employees at Tulare County's dairy farms are likely to opt for a van pool rather than proximity."

Executive Director Andy Chesley, of the San Joaquin County MPO, has brought up the possibility of a three-county North Valley model (Merced, Stanislaus and San Joaquin) – an approach that might take more inter-county journeys into account as "local". (See MCAG's September 25 agenda packet). The report notes that the nine Bay Area counties are held to a single standard as members of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) region, without asking each county to meet the same standard separately, as in the Valley.