CP&DR

It's SB 743 Time! By: Josh Stephens on Jun 29, 2020 CEQA, LOS, SB 743, Traffic, VMT: New traffic analysis mechanism finally takes effect this week. >>read more

SB 743 Stands Up In Court By: William Fulton on Dec 21, 2019 LOS, SB 743, VMT: Challenge to Sacramento General Plan EIR rendered moot by new CEQA guidelines. Court also upholds city's general plan language. >>read more

Updated CEQA Guidelines Finally Go Into Effect By: Josh Stephens on Apr 15, 2019 CEQA, LOS, OPR, SB 743, VMT: SB 743 regulations are the highest of the latest update, six years in the making. >>read more

OPR Finally Finishes SB 743 Guidelines By: Josh Stephens on Dec 26, 2017 CEQA, Infill, LOS, SB 743, Traffic, VMT: VMT will soon replace LOS as standard traffic analysis tool. >>read more

Pasadena Ushers in Era of VMT Metrics By: Josh Stephens on Apr 6, 2015 California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA, LOS, Los Angeles County, SB 743, smart growth, VMT: Perhaps fittingly, one of the state's oldest, stateliest cities will be the first to institute one of the most sophisticated advances in planning tools since the slide rule. Not long ago, the City of Pasadena implemented metrics that measure projects' impacts under the California Environmental Quality Act in terms of vehicle miles traveled rather than level of service.

Pasadena is not only the first city in the state to adopt VMT metrics but may also be the first in the nation.

Pasadena's switch both responds to and precedes the adoption of Senate Bill 743. Passed in 2013 as an amendment to the California Environmental Quality Act, SB 743 will require cities to evaluate traffic impacts according to vehicle miles traveled, not to traditional level-of-service thresholds.

LOS to VMT: the arguments have begun By: Martha Bridegam on Aug 27, 2014 California, California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA, LOS, OPR, VMT: It can sound like a simple step, to end Level of Service (LOS) metrics in CEQA transportation analysis. The more conceptually elegant Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) metric is easy to welcome in the abstract, with its incentives for shared and active transportation, its arguably simpler calculation methods, its potential to realign CEQA analysis with state climate protection law – and most of all, its escape from the addictive spiral of induced demand for broad, free-flowing highways that, under the logic of LOS analysis, always need widening again.
But in early August the Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) published a detailed discussion draft setting out an alternative transportation impacts metric in compliance with last year's SB 743 mandate. And alongside the big-picture discussions of environmentally conscious innovation, the technical arguments began.

Insight: What comes next after LOS? By: William Fulton on Jul 31, 2014 Insight, LOS, OPR, Transportation, VMT: The Governor's Office of Planning & Research is a month late in issuing its final recommendation on whether to replace "level of service" as the measurement of significant transportation impacts in transit priority areas under the California Environmental Quality Act. But there's not much mystery: OPR has sent clear signals that it is going to propose replacing LOS with vehicle miles traveled, or VMT.