Council Policy 5-1 passed unanimously on February 27, 2018.
Policy Documents, VMT Evaluation Tool, and Other Links
Vitreomacular traction (VMT) syndrome is an eye condition involving the vitreous, the clear gel that fills the inside of the eyeball.
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Virginia's Rail Heritage Region Rail Cam. Roanoke, Virginia looking east under 2nd Street Bridge (Commerce St). Vehicle miles of travel (VMT) is a measure of all the miles driven within a specified area and timeframe. Most traffic counts are reported in terms of annual average daily traffic (AADT) and represent an estimate of the number of vehicles traveling along a given.
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San José is a unique place, playing a vital economic and cultural role within North America. San José is fortunate to be the largest city in Santa Clara County and Northern California.
Intended Outcomes for the City of San José
- Promote environmental sustainability
- Support transit, bicycle and pedestrian mobility
- Simplify the environmental review process
- Facilitate the implementation of the City's General Plan
In 2013, the State of California passed Senate Bill 743 (SB 743), which mandates that jurisdictions can no longer use automobile delay – commonly measured by “level of service” – when doing transportation analysis under CEQA. Rather, the State has issued guidelines suggesting using a more holistic metric that can better support smart growth – called “vehicle miles traveled.” The City of San José began crafting new policy to implement this change in January 2017. After months of research, analysis, modeling, and community outreach, the City Council voted on a new Transportation Analysis Policy, 5-1, on February 27, 2018
San José is a unique place, playing a vital economic and cultural role within North America. San José is fortunate to be the largest city in Santa Clara County and Northern California.
The Envision San José 2040 General Plan advanced longstanding policies of growth management and environmental sustainability. It established a framework to enhance job growth and create great places throughout San José oriented for people, not just automobiles. Like many large U.S. cities, San José is in transition from its suburban development past to a future that includes opportunities for a more robust public life. The General Plan also envisions development in places that are next to amenities (e.g. restaurants, grocery stores, parks, entertainment, etc.) and transit and away from well-established neighborhoods where cars are a necessity.
Traditionally, the City of San José has measured vehicle delay at intersections to determine a new development’s transportation impact on the environment. When intersections were impacted, the solution often involved expanding intersections. Today, San José’s roadway network is largely built out and there is no room to expand roads. We need new measurements and tools to enhance mobility and help realize the General Plan’s vision of a vibrant and livable city.
The State has recognized the limitations of measuring and mitigating only vehicle delay at intersections and in 2013 passed SB 743, which requires jurisdictions to stop using a Level of Service (LOS) measurement for CEQA transportation analysis. The State’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) has issued guidelines for jurisdictions to consider using Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) instead.
Vehicle Miles Traveled, or VMT, measures the amount and distance people drive by personal vehicle to a destination. Typically, development projects that are farther from other, complementary land uses (such as a business park far from housing) and in areas without transit or active transportation infrastructure (bike lanes, sidewalks, etc.) generate more driving than development near complementary land uses with more robust transportation options.
The City of San José is now implementing this change as part of a larger effort to realign how we measure transportation impacts with the kinds of transportation investments we encourage.
We welcome your feedback and input on this change. Please fill out our comment form, email us at vmt@sanjoseca.gov, or join us at a community meeting.
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What is SB 743?
Under CEQA, cities, counties, and other public agencies must analyze real estate and transportation projects to determine whether they may have a significant impact on the environment. One key determination under CEQA is the transportation impact of these projects. Traditionally, transportation impacts have been evaluated by examining whether the project is likely to cause automobile delay at intersections and congestion on nearby individual highway segments, and whether this delay will exceed a certain amount (this is known as Level of Service or LOS analysis).
SB 743, which was signed into law in 2013, initiated an update to the CEQA Guidelines to change how lead agencies evaluate transportation impacts under CEQA, with the goal of better measuring the actual transportation-related environmental impacts of any given project.
According to the Legislature: 'New methodologies under the California Environmental Quality Act [were] needed for evaluating transportation impacts that are better able to promote the state’s goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and traffic-related air pollution, promoting the development of a multimodal transportation system, and providing clean, efficient access to destinations.”
Starting on July 1, 2020, agencies analyzing the transportation impacts of new projects must now look at a metric known as vehicle miles traveled (VMT) instead of LOS. VMT measures how much actual auto travel (additional miles driven) a proposed project would create on California roads. If the project adds excessive car travel onto our roads, the project may cause a significant transportation impact.
Agencies have used VMT as a concept and metric for some time. Prior to SB 743, VMT was already being used in CEQA to study other potential impacts such as greenhouse gas, air quality, and energy impacts.
Why was the change needed?
Auto delay, as measured by LOS, was never an ideal metric for evaluating the actual environmental impacts of a given project. This narrated slideshow describes the challenges with using LOS as the measure of transportation impacts in CEQA. These include:
- Burdens last-in infill development with costly mitigation that undermines neighborhood quality.
- Leads to more sprawl instead of encouraging more walkable neighborhoods.
- Forces cities to prioritize cars over people walking, biking, and taking transit, which leads to more car travel and exacerbates regional congestion.
- Causes development to be more spread out, ironically making it harder for residents to reach their daily destinations without driving long distances
- By generating more vehicle travel, LOS leads to an array of environmental impacts and impacts to human health.
What are the benefits of moving to a VMT metric?
VMT is a measure of the transportation system’s impact on the climate, the environment, and human health. VMT also provides an indication of the access to economic and social opportunity, with lower VMT areas requiring less driving and generally providing better access to daily destinations such as jobs and services.
Using VMT to assess transportation impacts will:
Confer substantial health and equity benefits.
- Allow more people to commute by biking and walking—reducing thousands of death in California due to physical inactivity by each year.
- Reduce crash fatalities by allowing people to drive less and reducing distances between destinations. In the US, traffic fatalities are more than twice as high as other industrialized nations, largely because we drive so much more.
- Improve air quality from auto emissions. About 5,400 Californians die each year due to particulate pollution from cars. While electric cars and cleaner fuels will help reduce GHG, particulate pollution coming from tires and brake debris continues to grow with the miles we drive on our streets and highways.
- Create a more equitable transportation system. Residents living near freeways (predominantly low-income communities and communities of color) are five times more likely to have asthma than people living in other locations. These communities are also less likely to have adequate active transportation infrastructure, putting pedestrians and cyclists at greater risk of injuries and fatalities.
- Build community. Reducing commute times lets people have more time with their families, take part in more school and civic engagements, and reclaim the time that was previously spent commuting.
Protect California’s agricultural lands and open space.
- Streamline infill, preserving agricultural lands and open space for growing food, for recreation, and for maintaining ecological biodiversity.
- Conserve lands surrounding cities that make our communities safer and more livable, like important wildfire buffers, wetlands to prevent flooding, and green space to offset the heat and pollution generated by urban areas.
Address regional congestion more effectively by reducing it at the source.
- Add less car traffic onto our roads, which is the only proven way of reducing congestion.
- Reduce the long commutes that clog our highways and limit time spent with families and communities.
- Encourage development that makes Californians’ lives easier by putting destinations closer together, for example by providing residents nearby shopping or dining opportunities.
Does SB 743 only benefit coastal communities or dense urban areas?
No. Every region of the state will benefit from SB 743 and every region can streamline development within their communities using SB 743. While SB 743 includes streamlining around transit stations, every local government can streamline development where residents already access their daily amenities with shorter trips. More than half of future housing will be eligible for streamlining.
Streamlining will be available in cities and towns far from urban centers. These smaller cities typically generate low VMT. Under LOS, roads were often widened and development was spread apart to make room for large parking lots. The character of rural towns was often lost. SB 743 will also help preserve California’s natural and working lands, including forests, rangelands, green spaces, wetlands, and farms, and other key aspects of California’s rural character.
The CEQA process is controlled locally and local governments will determine how best to implement SB 743 to improve their communities.
How will SB 743 reduce housing costs throughout California?
The goal of SB 743 is to reduce time and cost for projects that allow California residents to drive less. Before SB 743, infill projects had to undergo time-consuming and costly LOS analyses, leading to even more costly LOS mitigation (widening roads, adding traffic signals, installing turn lanes, etc.). LOS analysis was complex and often the subject of lawsuits, so added risk to development projects, further increasing costs.
Under SB 743, over 50 percent of development within the state could forego transportation analysis and mitigation entirely. This includes affordable housing, housing within ½ mile of transit, housing projects generating fewer than 110 trips per day, and new housing in existing low-VMT neighborhoods--which are found in every region of the state, including rural and suburban areas.
For projects that need to do a transportation analysis, using the VMT metric saves 80 percent of the cost and time to do the analysis. Because the analysis is simpler, it can reduce the risk of lawsuits. If a project would increase VMT beyond the amount selected by the local government, then changes to the project will be incorporated that improve the design or provide benefits to residents and the environment.
Vmt.com
Future residents of these housing projects will appreciate that they are built to allow residents to drive less, reducing transportation costs. Transportation costs are the second highest household cost after housing.
Will significant VMT impacts prevent housing projects from being approved?
Vmt Traffic Meaning
No. Under CEQA, lead agencies can approve a project even if that project has significant and unavoidable transportation impacts. Moreover, CEQA would not require unreasonable changes to a project that make the project infeasible.
Vmtools
Won’t reducing the amount of driving limit economic growth?
Vmt.org
No. SB 743 will facilitate faster economic growth. Decades ago, it was believed that increased driving was necessary for economic growth. However, we now know that economic growth does not require an increase in driving. Further, recent researchhas shown that the old system based on LOS actually slowed economic growth by creating development patterns that limited residents’ ability to get to their daily destinations.
Vmt Vision
Does SB 743 still make sense given COVID-19?
Californians are living through an incredibly stressful and tragic pandemic—and they have responded with amazing self-sacrifice. These challenging circumstances make SB 743 even more urgent.
- Streamlining more housing in stronger communities will aid our state’s recovery.
- Building more places to walk and bike will help us exercise while accessing our new daily destinations, which are often closer to home.
- Reducing air pollution will keep us healthier now and for years to come. Early research suggests that air pollution has significantly worsened the COVID-19 outbreak.
- Encouraging businesses to retain telework options—which can directly reduce VMT--beyond the pandemic will reduce the amount of driving required of many workers and reduce congestion for those who do drive.
Will SB 743 result in new fees and taxes for California residents?
Vmt Tax
No. SB 743 applies to new development projects, making sure they are built in a way that allows Californians to drive less. SB 743 does not impose any new fees or taxes on California residents based on the amount they drive.