To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net
SOUTH PASADENA>>
Caltrans revealed the addresses of 53 state-owned properties in the path
of the 710 Freeway that can be sold starting as early as fall.
Forty-two
of the 53 lots contain homes, which range from full-sized mansions to
modest ranch-style affairs. All are among more than 500 that have been
off the Los Angeles, South Pasadena and Pasadena property tax rolls for
decades.
They would have been demolished had a long-debated design extension of 710 Freeway from Alhambra to Pasadena gone forward.
For many who have been living in the path of the now-dead surface freeway plan, the notice came as welcome news.
“For
us it’s a great opportunity,” said Gloria Contreras, who has lived in
her house on Prospect Avenue in South Pasadena for three years.
“Hopefully now the dream can come true of buying the house.”
For
others, it’s a bit nerve-wracking. Joel Alvarez said he’s excited about
the possibility of owning the home he’s lived in for almost three years
but he wasn’t necessarily saving up for a down payment.
“I would
love to buy but it’s happening so fast so I do have concerns,” Alvarez
said. “I’ll give it my best try to buy it. We love the area and I don’t
want to move. We’re excited and scared at the same time.”
Charles
Purnell, 95, said he’s not sure what he’ll do. He’s too old to buy the
house he’s lived in for more than 40 years, so he may have to move.
“I’d like to stay here,” Purnell said. “I don’t know how long Caltrans is going to keep me here.”
The
53 properties were selected for sale and listed online on July 3
because they fall outside the “footprint” of the five remaining options
that the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and
Caltrans are studying to complete the freeway. The options are “no
build,” traffic management solutions, light rail, bus or a freeway
tunnel. A draft environmental report is due to be released in February,
with a final project to be selected in 2016.
Once the environmental report is released, remaining homes can slowly be sold off.
Eleven
of the properties that are vacant lots can be sold right away. They
will be offered to the cities of Pasadena and South Pasadena first, then
opened up for auction.
South Pasadena City Manager Sergio
Gonzalez said the city has reserved $750,000 in next year’s budget to
buy the vacant properties to be used as parks, affordable housing or
other beneficial uses for local residents.
“We certainly want t
o
be able to determine or help determine what happens to these vacant
properties. Some may be ideal for pocket parks or community gardens,
some may not. At least we want to have some control,” Gonzalez said.
“What it presents is opportunities and options for the city council.”
According to a draft set of rules Caltrans
released last month for the sale of the houses, tenants who owned the
house before Caltrans bought it through eminent domain will get the
first shot. They will be asked to pay a fair market value.
Next in
line will be current tenants who have lived in the house for more than
two years and qualify as having low to moderate income. Then come
tenants who have lived in the house for five years and do not earn more
than 150 percent of the area median income, which is $64,800, according
to the federal government.
Both of those situations would have
the tenant purchase the home at an affordable rate or the “as is” fair
market value, which is derived from the comparative home sales.
After
that, a public or private affordable housing organization could
purchase the home at a reasonable price. Then the current tenant — if
they make more than 150 percent of median income or have lived in the
house less than 2 years — can buy at fair market value. Last in line are
former tenants at fair market value. After that, if the house is still
on the market, it will go up for auction for anyone to buy.
The
draft regulations are available for public comment until July 31. Public
hearings will be held at Cal State Los Angeles and the Pasadena
Convention Center next week.
Caltrans spokeswoman Lauren Wonder
said the regulations will be finali
zed in the fall and then the first 20
homes, which are not historic and have no community impact, can be
sold.
Once an environmental impact report has been completed in 2015 for the remaining 22 houses, they can also be sold.
“We want to make sure we do this properly and legally, so we are trying to be very careful and very transparent,” Wonder said.
Pasadena
realtor Ramiro Riva
s, of the John Aaroe Group, said he thinks the
return of the houses to private owners will be a positive step for the
neighborhoods, especially in filling houses that have been vacant for
many years.
“Overall, it will actually give a
good positive impact
to the neighborhood because you can see the houses have just been
completely just let go and nothing has happened to them because they are
owned by Caltrans,” Rivas said. “Also, the whole question of are these
homes going to get knocked down will be phased out, so it will increase
buyer confidence in that neighborhood, which has been ... a little cloud
that has been hovering over that neighborhood for many years.”
Fifty-three properties owned by Caltrans have gone back on the market
after years of being state-owned rentals. The properties were once
reserved to be demolished for the possible 710 freeway extension, but
Caltrans now says they are outside the footprint of the five remaining
options being studied by the agency to complete the freeway. Caltrans
was also prompted to sell the homes by a state law passed last year.
Charles Purnell 95, has lived in his home for
more than 40 years and may have to move if Caltrans sells his home at
540 Prospect in South Pasadena. Fifty-three properties owned by Caltrans
have gone back on the market after years of being state-owned rentals.
The properties were once reserved to be demolished for the possible
710 freeway extension, but Caltrans now says they are outside the
footprint of the five remaining options being studied by the agency to
complete the freeway. Caltrans was also prompted to sell the homes by a
state law passed last year.
A property in the 500 block of Meridian Avenue in
South Pasadena is one of 53 properties owned by Caltrans have gone back
on the market after years of being state-owned rentals.
Joel Alvarez standing in front of a Caltrans home
that he has rented for three years at 532 Meridian Avenue in South
Pasadena. Alvarez who like the City of South Pasadena and its excellent
schools is looking forward to having the opportunity to purchase that
home from Caltrans.
Glorida Contreras in front of a Caltrans home at 533
Prospect Avenue in South Pasadena Tuesday, July 8, 2014. Gloria and her
husband are very happy that they will finally have a possible
opportunity to purchase the home that they have rented from Caltrans for 3 years.
x
Get ready for it because here it comes again like a bad migraine
headache. Alhambra will once again try to solve the traffic problem by
creating one big massive one on 710 Day. Everyone can thank Barbara
Messina, Steve Placido & Luis Ayala from the Alhambra City Council
for this, the other council members are too dimwitted & clueless,
they are just going along to get along. Can't really blame the dumb ones
for wanting to belong to the click.
Warn your respective cities of the coming backup from the south.
1:45PM Mission westbound.
1:50PM Fremont & Mission ahead.
1:50PM Fremont & Mission ahead.
2:00PM 7/8/2014
2:15PM 7/8/2014
2:20PM 7/8/2014
2:30PM 7/8/2014 Fremont Ave southbound.
2:30PM 7/8/2014 Fremont Ave southbound.
2:35PM 7/8/2014 Fremont Ave southbound.
2:40PM 7/8/2014 Valley Blvd eastbound.
2:45PM/8/2014 Valley Blvd eastbound.
2:50PM 7/8/2014 Valley Blvd eastbound.
Parking
next to the event site On Shorb will be restricted. Even if your are a
resident you are getting screwed by the Alhambra City council.
I keep stumbling across a great transportation visualization project from the Social Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab, most recently in this Washington City Paper post.
In a series of interactive maps, covering a dozen cities, the Media Lab
has mapped the most efficient mode of transportation — by car, bike,
foot or transit — between any two points in a city.
This is what
such a map looks like in Washington, D.C., if, say, you're beginning
your trip from Capitol Hill, inside the green block:
Leaving
from that part of town, more than half of Washington is reached faster
by bike (yellow) than any other mode of transportation. The same is true
of less than 1 percent of the city by transit (in blue). Here's the
lab's method of figuring this out:
To make this map,
we gridded up the city at the block-group level, and then computed the
time using each mode of transport from the centroid of the source block
group to the centroid of the destination block group using the Google
Maps API. For driving, we added a buffer time for parking and walking,
and then we compared the four resulting times and colored the
block-group based on the minimum.
As a tool for
planning your travel routes, or even picking a neighborhood to live in,
this is a fascinating platform (albeit a limited one: yes, it doesn't
touch on comparative costs, the existence of bike lanes, or the impact
of road congestion at different times of day). But beyond personal
applications, this type of map has some policy implications, too.
Two
things are particularly striking about the above picture: Cycling is a
much more efficient mode of transportation than many people realize. And
transit is startlingly not so. Seldom will it get you farther, faster,
than a bike will. Here's a picture of your transit prospects from the
other side of the Anacostia:
Very
little of the city — just one tiny patch of it — is accessed fastest by
transit. This picture would no doubt look different if we removed bikes
from the calculation entirely and simply compared cars and transit. But
even then, the city would still look more broadly accessible to you
from behind the wheel of a car. The same is true even if you live on a
transit line:
Look
across the other cities in the collection, and transit appears equally
inefficient, relative to both cars and bikes. Here's a sample from
Philadelphia:
From Chicago:
From San Francisco:
You
can look at these maps and conclude that more people would be better
off biking, and that cities should invest in the infrastructure that
encourages them to do so. This is true. But, when about half of one percent of all commuters nationwide
currently cycle to work, it's probably unrealistic to expect that most
people in those yellow blotches will regularly travel that way.
Another
takeaway is that these maps illustrate why people make rational
calculations to drive so much of the time, even in cities where decent
transit does exist. The total financial cost per trip of driving
somewhere is likely higher than taking transit (or biking), once you
factor in car payments, insurance, and maintenance. But we tend to treat
those as sunk costs. And so we often make travel decisions with a time
budget in mind, not a financial one. By that metric, it's clear here why
people who can afford to drive often chose to. It's also clear on these
maps that people who can't afford a car pay a steep penalty in time to
get around.
Transit advocates spend a lot of time worrying about
the lack of appeal of transit for "choice riders," or commuters who have
other options for getting around. It's important to recognize that the
decisions they make are often weighed in time.
That means that a
big part of the challenge here for cities is to make transit a more
efficient travel mode, relative to cars, for more people. The balance
between the two options is notably different in Manhattan:
But
outside of New York — with its extensive subway system — this is an
extremely difficult task, particularly given that most of these maps
reflect the fact that we've built cities to be traveled by cars
(by, for instance, routing highways through them). But it's possible to
increase the relative efficiency of transit by creating dedicated lanes
and signal priority for buses at stoplights, or increasing forms of
express transit service. Transit networks could even compress what feels
like the time cost of riding transit by adding cell service and WiFi
that enable passengers to use time spent commuting productively — and
in ways that aren't possible from the driver's seat of a car.
It's also possible to increase the number of people for whom transit is an efficient option if we add housing and offices to those parts of any city where transit already exists.
More density wouldn't change the shape of these maps. But it would
change the number of people who stand to benefit from the parts of the
map that are blue.
GETTING THERE FROM HERE-This
will bear repeating, both to the cities and the county of Los Angeles:
while I can only speak for myself, I very strongly doubt that I'm the
only person in favor of a "Measure R-2", which would help fund more
operational transit/transportation funds as well as create a Metro
Rail/LAX connection, extend the Green and Foothill Gold Lines, and
create north-south transit lines that connect the SF Valley to the
Westside and Hollywood to LAX.
But I also doubt I'm the only person who will OPPOSE Measure R-2 if
we don't have better parking and transit access for those of us who are
paying for our growing transit network.
Because we really do NOT have to pass a Measure R-2 if the first Measure R isn't implemented appropriately.
That means slapping away the clutching, grasping and law-breaking
developers who are creating oversized projects which will make our
traffic worse, and which are NOT transit-oriented (to say nothing of
providing barriers to transit stations and paying a
woefully- insufficient amount of mitigation expenses to enhance transit
access).
That means making doggone sure we've got bicycle, pedestrian and bus
access to our transit stations, including key transportation centers
with bus bays, restaurants, restrooms and covered/comfortable stations
at key sites such as the future Exposition/Sepulveda rail station, and
at/near the future Century/Aviation rail station.
...and that ALSO means creating enough parking spaces so that the
residents of our far-flung city and county of Los Angeles could access
the Expo Line and other lines (even Rapid Bus Lines, in certain
locations) to which car commuters really don't have a good choice of
accessing.
For those of us who remember when the Red Line accessed Universal
City and North Hollywood, and learned that the parking (especially at
North Hollywood) was rapidly filled early in the morning, that was an
automatic message of "Success!" and which should have been followed up
with some more parking lots (even if it was a private/public partnership
arrangement).
To be fair, we should all be aware of the way light rail is funded in
this nation: we fund L.A. and New York the same way we do for
medium-sized cities like Salt Lake City and Portland, which are smaller
and more compact and less over-developed (and with lots of free space,
to boot). This means that the federal government does NOT fund LA and
New York rail line projects sufficiently ... not by a long shot.
In contrast, our federal and other government’s funds our freeway
projects just fine, such as when we build an I-405 widening project and
upgrade/redo all the connecting off/onramps and overpasses.
Our local governments therefore deserve a little bit of sympathy when
they underfund rail projects, such as when Metro decided against
funding parking for the Wilshire Subway in order to get the Subway
extended to west of the I-405.
Gutsy moves merit brave and decisive decisions, with the hope that
the local governments and private sector will fill in the gaps later
down the proverbial road. Yet when those local governments (and we can
include Sacramento, which has been derelict and distracted on funding
local city/county transit projects for decades) don't come through, we
have the right as taxpayers to rebel.
So whether it's a lack of parking (with bicycle, bus and pedestrian
amenities as part-and-parcel of any structure or lot) at the North
Hollywood Red Line station, a lack of a Westside Regional Transit Center
at Exposition/Sepulveda, or the loss of some several hundred parking spaces
at the Venice/Robertson Expo Line station, it's a painful and
inappropriate slap in the face of the county-wide voters who passed
Measure R.
Just as it's tough for Sacramento legislators to budget for more jail
facilities for inmates and avoid overcrowding (which will remain a
problem even after we've removed the nonviolent inmates to local
prisons), when it comes to parking the "poormouth" approach just won't
cut it.
The voters and taxpayers will, to a very large degree, respond with a
"shut up, shut up, shut up and BUILD IT") that our elected ignore at
their (and our) peril.
With respect to the loss of Expo Line parking at Culver City, it's
particularly painful and certainly to be hoped that the planned
Transit-Oriented Development there will create a sufficient number of
replacement spaces, but it's also to be reminded that:
1) There is a woefully-insufficient number of parking spaces at the
Los Angeles and Santa Monica stations (again, to our elected leaders,
please SHUT UP about the expense and come up with a solution).
2) There's a reason why entities such as the CD11 Transportation
Advisory Committee and Westside LA Neighborhood Councils have advocated
for more Expo Line and regional transit/parking facilities, even if it
means the end of free parking in Metro stations.
3) There's no Metrolink in the Westside, so that the Expo Line is a
quasi-freeway-alternative which should have rail stations to be treated
like Metrolink stations (which have plenty of parking).
Santa Monica residents want more parking, West LA residents want more
parking, and Culver City residents want more parking. Ditto for Valley
and South Bay residents who will have to drive to the Expo Line. The
Expo Line was NOT to be built for regular transit users only, but was to
be a fine and excellent option to attract new riders to the Metro Rail
and connecting bus network.
And for Metro to thumb its nose and come up with a lame list of excuses and distracting paradigms as a lousy response to demands for parking is the same managerial malpractice that got this region and nation into our transportation/infrastructure shortfall.
The "you should take a bicycle or bus to the train" or whatever
libertarian canard fits the bill for the moment is just a bunch of hooey
that almost no one but the fringes are buying.
It's "majority rule" in this country, right?
So build the bleepity-bleep parking and just SHUT UP with all the
reasons and excuses as to why it's not being built, particularly on the
Expo Line--which is supposed to be an alternative to the I-10 freeway
(which people do not use bicycles on, and which has no bus-only lanes).
ONE MORE TIME: I doubt I'm the only person who will OPPOSE Measure
R-2 if we don't have better parking and transit access for those of us
who are paying for our growing transit network.
Because we really do NOT have to pass a Measure R-2 if the first Measure R isn't implemented appropriately.
SAN FRANCISCO—The report that Michael Schwartz sets down on the table
is truly enormous. It looks like it has eaten several smaller reports
and laughed as they tried to run away screaming. The document is some
700-pages long and several inches thick; that's not counting the second
volume or the thousands of pages of technical supplements. Schwartz has
posted a photo series showing his newborn son alongside the report on
the door of his office at the San Francisco County Transportation
Authority. "I finished this two weeks before he was born," says
Schwartz, with a look of tired pride. The baby doesn't appear markedly
bigger than the document until the photo labeled "five months."
The photo series is titled "BRT
Baby." It's not immediately clear whether the name refers to the child
or the report. It's safe to say both required significant labor.
The tome in question is the environmental impact report
for a bus-rapid transit line that will run two miles down Van Ness
Avenue in downtown San Francisco. When finished, the Van Ness BRT will
be a transit marvel.
Passengers will board from a central median and travel in an exclusive
lane with traffic-signal priority. Even now, sharing lanes with cars,
buses carry a third of all trips in the corridor (roughly 16,000 riders a
day), and with BRT that figure
could soar. "It's sort of the first of its kind to say, we're doing
full-feature BRT in a dense urban right-of-way with cross-streets," says
Schwartz. All told, the line will anchor a $126 million street upgrade.
San Francisco has been waiting for Van Ness BRT a long time. The line
was a signature project in the half-cent sales tax referendum,
Proposition K, that city voters approved in 2003. The original plan
called for Van Ness to be up and running by late 2009.
The latest timeline has BRT beginning operations in 2018—a full decade
and a half after the Prop K vote (which itself came years after the route concept emerged).
Big city infrastructure projects get pushed back for countless reasons,
but in the case of Van Ness BRT, a major source of the delay was the
need to produce this massive report. It didn't receive final approval until late 2013, and was part of a preparatory phase that, all told, took 6 years and cost $7.6 million.
Understanding the delay requires a quick primer on the California
Environmental Quality Act, the state's environmental law. Under CEQA,
major planning projects like Van Ness BRT are analyzed for their
potential impact on 18 areas of life—air quality, water quality, noise,
land use, traffic, and so on. If an initial analysis shows that a
project will have no significant negative impact on any of these areas,
its leaders can prepare a short report. If a negative impact is
unavoidable, project leaders must prepare a slightly longer report
explaining their plans to mitigate or offset the damage. And if a
negative impact is unavoidable but can't be offset, they must prepare a
full environmental report like the one on the table.
A rendering of the Van Ness BRT line, scheduled to begin operation by 2018 (SFCTA); top, the project's environmental impact report. (Eric Jaffe)Here's
the sad thing about the Van Ness BRT report: The only area where it had
an unavoidable negative impact that couldn't be offset under CEQA was
traffic. "So this whole document was prepared because of the traffic
impact," says Schwartz, nodding at the enormous report. And here's the really sad thing about CEQA traffic impacts: They're determined using a car-friendly metric known as "level of service"
that bases a project's transportation performance on driver delay. In
other words, Van Ness BRT required all the trouble of preparing this
massive report because, in the twisted eyes of California law, public
transit is considered a greater enemy to the environment than car
travel.
That's the bad news. The encouraging news is that this law is about
to change. California will soon reform traffic analysis under CEQA by
replacing "level of service" with another metric more in line with its
environmental and urban mobility goals. So transit projects and
transit-friendly development are about to get much, much easier in
California cities—and some think the shift in mindset will spread across
the country.
"For a project like this," says Schwartz, tapping the report, "it's huge, CEQA reform." Five-month-old baby huge.
• • • • •
Level of service was a child of the Interstate Highway era. The LOS
concept was introduced in the 1965 Highway Capacity Manual, at the very
moment in American history when concrete ribbons were being tied across
the country, and quickly accepted as the standard measure of roadway
performance. LOS is expressed as a letter grade, A through F, based on
how much delay vehicles experience; a slow intersection scores worse on
LOS than one where traffic zips through. Planners and traffic engineers
use the metric as a barometer of congestion all over the United States.
In California, LOS has an especially high-profile. As the primary
arbiter of traffic impacts under CEQA—adopted in 1970 by Governor Ronald
Reagan—the metric not only determines the fate of many transportation
and development projects, but has the awkward role of promoting car use
within a law designed to protect the environment. "We have one section
of CEQA saying we've got to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," says
transportation consultant Jeffrey Tumlin of Nelson\Nygaard, "and another
section of CEQA saying we need to accommodate unlimited driving."
In late May, just a short walk from where that Kings arena will one
day reside, I met Chris Ganson of the Governor's Office of Planning and
Research to discuss which way the state was leaning.
Ganson is just the person to be involved in mobility reform; in
addition to being a Sacramento native and lifelong Kings fan, he has
degrees in environmental science as well as planning and transportation
engineering. He showed up in grad school right when An Inconvenient Truth came out. "My interests lined up nicely with the timing in the world," he says.
Ganson told me OPR was planning to recommend "vehicle-miles traveled"
as the new "central metric" under CEQA. He says VMT meets all the
state's major criteria for a traffic evaluator: fewer greenhouse gases,
more multimodal networks and urban infill developments, a general boost
to both the environment and public health. Where LOS encouraged public
projects to reduce or eliminate driver delay at city intersections, VMT
would encourage them to reduce or eliminate driving at all.
"If we're using delay metrics to rate our progress, we're going to
look like we're doing bad, even as we're doing exactly what we're trying
to do," says Ganson. "Even as we're meeting not just our environmental
goals, but our goals for the fundamental purpose of
transportation—providing access to destinations. Getting people places."
By
passing S.B. 743 in September 2013, California made it much easier for
transit and transit-oriented development projects to gain approval.
(Above: the state house). (Eric Jaffe)The most
obvious advantage that VMT provides over LOS as a CEQA metric pertains
to public transportation projects. In the eyes of LOS, street elements
like crosswalks, bike lanes, and transit lines downgrade a project by
increasing driver delay. In that sense, says Ganson, LOS
mischaracterized multimodal projects as impediments to
transportation rather than legitimate modes in their own right. In the
eyes of VMT, projects that give street space to pedestrians, cyclists,
or transit riders will score well even if—especially if—that means less room for cars.
Transit-oriented development should benefit right alongside transit
in California. LOS favors sprawl to smart growth, because the traffic
generated by remote development creates little delay at any single
intersection when dispersed over a full road network, especially
compared to compact infill placed right at a city corner. VMT favors the
reverse pattern: while a single-family development in the exurbs
generates a great deal of driving mileage, a new mixed-use building near
major transit lines and walkable cores should generate very little.
"People want to live in what are essentially low-VMT neighborhoods,"
says Ganson. "People don't want to have to get in their car and go far
for everything. In a lot of ways, we're ripe for it."
Specifics of the shift are still being determined. (Legislation
required a draft recommendation by July 1, but OPR has delayed its
formal announcement; until then, some details are subject to change.)
There will be room for technical derivatives—say, VMT per capita for a
residential building, or VMT per employee for an office—and ultimately
local governments set the precise parameters for CEQA metrics. In other
words, cities themselves decide how many vehicle miles constitute a
project failure. But if the current direction holds, a new CEQA metric
with VMT at its core will be adopted sometime in 2015.
"We think it's going to really facilitate where many cities want to go," says Ganson.
• • • • •
Michael Schwartz is explaining how a BRT Baby is made. To be fair, I
asked. I wanted to know how a project like Van Ness BRT might have
developed in a California where VMT, and not LOS, determined traffic
impacts under environmental law. I wanted to know if the same process,
done sometime in the future, would have given birth to the same enormous
report.
Schwartz opens the report to the traffic section.
Back in 2007, as part of its preliminary CEQA analysis, the San
Francisco County Transportation Authority estimated level of service
grades at 139 intersections on and around Van Ness Avenue. Even without a
BRT project, some of these intersections experienced LOS failures by
the year 2015 simply based on city growth patterns, says Schwartz. The
failures are shown on the map as partially black (for LOS E) or full
black (LOS F) dots.
A
diagram of Intersection LOS, from the Van Ness BRT environmental impact
report, shows that four intersections will fail by 2015 even if the
project doesn't get built. (EIR) Schwartz
then turns the page to the LOS estimates at the same intersections
assuming the Van Ness BRT project got built by 2015. Even though the BRT
will claim one existing travel lane for its buses, congestion didn't
get worse at many intersections, according to the analysis. In fact, car
traffic found a way to disperse itself such that there were only two
spots where LOS failed in ways that couldn't be avoided. The biggest
failure was at Franklin and Market (below, toward bottom), where cars
routing off Van Ness clogged the intersection.
A
close-up of the Intersection LOS analysis for 2015 in a scenario where
Van Ness BRT does get built; it's similar to the no-build scenario,
except LOS also fails at Market and Franklin. (EIR)The
visuals demonstrate the limits of LOS as a traffic measure, let alone
as an environmental measure, with striking clarity. Van Ness BRT would
produce barely any significant car delay by 2015 in the entire
139-intersection area—to say nothing of the mobility benefits it would
provide for transit riders. And yet the entire project fails under CEQA
using an LOS traffic metric. (In a 2035 estimate, also required under
CEQA, the project failed at several other intersections.)
That left SFCTA with two choices. One was mitigating or offsetting
these failures. That would have meant widening the roads or adding turn
lanes at the critical intersections, something that, if it were even
physically possible, would go against both the city's transit-first
policy and environmental logic. With that option off the table, there
was only one way forward: a full environmental impact report.
"Not a huge difference," says Schwartz, flipping between the maps. "But this is the CEQA thing: If there's potential for any significant and unavoidable impact, where you can't mitigate it to less than significant … then you have to prepare an EIR."
Under a VMT-based metric, it's pretty safe to assume that Van Ness
BRT would have performed better in its traffic analysis. (No one can
tell for certain until the new metric is finalized and cities, including
San Francisco, set their exact VMT failure thresholds.) The BRT project
might add a bit of mileage to some car trips, in the form of drivers
routing around Van Ness more than before, but the increased transit use
among riders who once drove would more than make up for that. On
aggregate, BRT would almost certainly pull vehicle mileage off the
transportation network.
More
simply put, it's hard to see how the very same project, proposed once
LOS reform is in place, would have triggered the need for a full
environmental report. ("We all sit here and say, I can't believe we just
did all this," says Schwartz.) That doesn't mean the entire six-plus
years and seven-plus million dollars spent on the Van Ness BRT report
would have been saved; that process included some of the careful
preliminary vetting, unrelated to CEQA, that goes into every major
project. But Schwartz ballparks the savings, in this hypothetical case,
as somewhere in the range of "multiple years and likely millions of
dollars."
Later on, we met with Viktoriya Wise of the San Francisco Planning
Department, which handles most of the CEQA preparation for city
projects. Wise agrees that the planning process should speed up
noticeably in a post-LOS era. "We hope—and that's the intention—that the
new metric will be easier to calculate, more transparent, and faster,"
she says. It's rare for a project to need a full environmental report
for just one CEQA failure, as was the case with traffic for Van Ness
BRT, but Wise thinks planners could save several months on the initial
transportation impact study—about a third of the average time. And if a
project avoids a full environmental report, the time savings will be
even greater.
"To that end, perhaps the transportation system will look like what
we plan a little bit faster than otherwise," says Wise. "At the end of
the day, when I go home, that's kind of my sincere hope."
She laughs.
"That it wouldn't take seven years for BRT, basically."
• • • • •
The way it works right now, you might say public projects born into
California cities grow up in a broken home. The planning profession,
which looks favorably on dense mixed-use environments and multimodal
networks, has long since been separated from the environmental law under
LOS, which looks favorably on remote development and more road
capacity. With VMT as the CEQA traffic metric, the marriage of urban
planning and environmental policy should be a more harmonious one.
In addition to speedier completion, that union should have numerous
indirect benefits. Take, for one, the so-called "last-in" problem that
exists with LOS under CEQA. Let's say a developer wants to plan a
building at an intersection that's already on the verge of an LOS
failure. If the project tips the scale to failure, its leaders are on
the hook for offsetting a problem largely caused by developers who came
before them. The potential to trigger a last-in failure might lead a
developer to water down a project, or to move it somewhere else, or to
scrap it all—an invisible negative impact on a growing city.
Another rendering of the Van Ness BRT corridor. (SFCTA)Questionable
lawsuits should decline, too, say advocates of LOS reform. The most
infamous example is the case of San Francisco's ambitious bike plan,
which was entangled in years of litigation
on the grounds that its traffic impact under CEQA should require a full
environmental impact report. "All transit and bike projects get greatly
delayed because of the 'dire effect' they might impose to the
environment," says Tumlin, the transport consultant. Once CEQA's traffic
metric and modern planning ideas fall into step, such counter-intuitive
legal attacks will lack a solid standing.
It's not just that a new metric should encourage transit and
transit-oriented development, it's that it should discourage car-first
planning, says Amanda Eaken, deputy director of urban solutions for the
Natural Resources Defense Council, who pushed strongly
for S.B. 743. Projects that previously scored well under the LOS
framework of CEQA—a highway expansion, say, or an exurban
development—may now grade out as detriments to the environment.
And even though CEQA is unique to California, Eaken believes the
spirit of LOS reform will have an effect on planners across the United
States. "I think probably, if you looked, you'd see LOS as a barrier to
sustainable communities in every state in the country," she says. "It's a
conversation that's long overdue and I'm very pleased we're leading the
way toward coming up with a replacement metric. I hope and do expect
our efforts will have some traction elsewhere and help others to make
similar change."
Some of the country's more progressive cities have already started to
leave LOS behind. The New York City Department of Transportation has
used "reliability,"
rather than delay per se, to evaluate some of its street performance.
What matters is not so much that traffic might average 10 miles an hour,
but that sometimes it travels at 20 m.p.h. and sometimes it travels at 2
m.p.h. Jamie Henson of the District Department of Transportation in
Washington, D.C., says LOS can come in handy even for transit
projects—intersection delay hurts buses as much as cars, after all—but
that it's best seen as part of a broader toolbox of planning measures.
"I think it's a measure, as opposed to the
measure," says Henson. "We're like every other place: It ends up being a
central element of what we do. But we do at least try to keep it in its
appropriate context."
"LOS is not a perfect measure; it doesn't cover everything," he says. "Let me know when somebody creates one that does it all."
• • • • •
As a kid, says Michael Schwartz, "I was a transit geek." He rode the
elevated train around Chicago and grew obsessed with maps; later on, he
quit a job in advertising to bicycle across the country. The journey
took 10 weeks, traveling east to west, and when he and the group
finished in San Francisco, he knew he wanted to move there. He joined
SFCTA in the fall of 2008, excited to enact the big transportation ideas
he'd dreamed of in his younger days. "We're actually looking at these
things," says Schwartz. "We want to build BRT. We're studying congestion
pricing."
Changing the CEQA metric from LOS to VMT will help put those big
ideas in motion, he says. That's especially true in San Francisco, whose
longstanding "transit-first" policy clashes by nature with a car-first
metric like LOS. And contrary to some fears that urban planning agencies
will now impose their ideology on city residents, the public feedback
process means projects will always need to address local concerns, says
Schwartz. If an environmental impact report is appropriate, of course
planners will do one. But it will be planning for the sake of planning,
not the sake of litigation.
"This is why I'm in this field," says Schwartz. "To be able to
explain important concepts to people who care and get input and make
this the best project it can be."
A diagram of Van Ness BRT, showing its central median alignment and exclusive lanes. (SFCTA)
One
morning, I rode the No. 49 Muni bus from its origin, at North Point
Street, south along Van Ness Avenue. The No. 49 was not a bad ride, as
far as city bus rides go. Travelers could board from the rear door. Stop
names were displayed on an overhead LED sign. The bus smelled like a
bus, as one rider loudly declared upon boarding, but the seats
themselves were clean.
Still, there was clear room for improvement. Sharing the right lane
with regular traffic meant the bus often waited for cars to turn or
maneuvered around those that were double-parked. By O'Farrell Street the
bus had standing room only, despite the trip occurring well outside of
rush hour. After a 12:02 start, we reached Market Street at 12:26, two
minutes behind schedule. That's roughly 2 miles in 24 minutes—or 5 miles
an hour. And that felt like a good performance.
If the Van Ness BRT performs as expected, it will do noticeably
better. The route will absorb the No. 49 (as well as the No. 47) between
Lombard and Market streets when it's finished. The bus stops, which are
now often nothing more than a posted sign, will be high-quality
shelters with rapid boarding procedures; the bus itself will get an
exclusive lane and make only 9 stops. The No. 49 makes 17. Travel time
in the corridor is supposed to fall by a third.
The site of a Honda dealership at the corner of Market and Van Ness has been sold to a residential developer. (Eric Jaffe)I
got off the bus at Market and Van Ness, which is set to become the
final southbound stop on the BRT line. There's already a light rail
station here, and a street-level trolley. Twitter's headquarters is a
block away on Market, and the city's main civic area—with City Hall
adjacent to a performing arts center—is a few blocks north on Van Ness.
On one of the corners, there's a Honda dealership, of all things; the
site was recently sold to a residential developer, and could one day house as many as 700 units.
This was Michael Schwartz's point when he talked about planning for
the sake of planning: San Francisco is already moving in the direction
of transit and transit-oriented development, despite all the challenges
posed by an environmental law with LOS as its traffic metric. So
post-LOS planning isn't going to alter the course of the city; it's
going to help the city travel a course it's already on. It
occurred to me that the difference between transportation planning
before and after LOS reform might be a little like the difference
between the No. 49 bus and BRT along Van Ness. They're both working for
the same purpose, both traveling the same route, both heading toward the
same place, but one will get there quicker than the other.
Caltrans has posted the list of the SR-710 Phase 1
properties on the Caltrans District 7 website. There are 20
residential properties available for sale in Phase 1A, and
22 residential properties will be available in Phase
1B.
Note that the 2014 list does NOT include
"17" vacant lots and "39"
residences, as previously advertised by Caltrans.
Instead, it includes only 11 vacant lots and 42
residences. The list is a total of 53 properties and not
56.
-- Public Hearings --
Caltrans District 7 has also announced the dates and
locations of the Public Hearings on SR-710 Surplus
Property.
July 15, 6 p.m. – 8 pm.
California State University, Los
Angeles, Golden Eagle Building, Golden Eagle Ballroom,
5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles
July 17, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Pasadena Convention Center, Lower
Level, Room 107
300 East Green Street, Pasadena
July 14 at 5 p.m. is the end of the public
comment period. However, the public
comment period will be reopened for these two public
hearings. If you want to comment on the proposed
regulations but can’t attend one of the hearings, you
can submit written comments.
4 - 7 pm - meet at the intersection of
Valley Blvd. and Fremont Avenue in Alhambra
It is critical that we reinforce
opposition to the Tunnels in favor
of better solutions. Please try
to attend and help get the word
out about the truth behind this
project. We have information
cards prepared that address facts
about the project, backed by
references to Metro's own reports,
that we use as starting points for
conversations and to distribute to
Alhambrans.
Wear red or your No 710 T-shirt,
and look for those of us also
wearing red/ No 710 T-Shirts.
You can order a NO 710 T-shirt
for the event by emailing No710store@gmail.com or
call 626-354-4340. Let them
know it's for the "710
Day" event.
Background information:
The City of Alhambra has been
the most vocal proponent of the Tunnels,
believing that the Tunnel Alternative is the
answer to the congestion on Alhambra's
surface streets. Recently, Alhambra hired
the respected PR firm of Englander, Knabe and
Allen (EKA) to help them promote and gain
support for the Tunnels (Yes, for those of you
who are wondering, the "Knabe"
component of EKA is the son of Metro Board
member, Don Knabe). The recent upgrade of the
proponents' website (http://www.710coalition.com/)
and the hanging of pro-tunnel street banners
in Alhambra are two of the products of
EKA's involvement.
From the 710 Coalition's
website: "The goal (of 710
Day) is to raise awareness about the
proposed 710 freeway extension from
Alhambra to Pasadena, while creating a
fun and informative environment where the
community can learn more about the
project. Various booths will be present to
share information about the many
benefits of completing the 710 Freeway.
Learn about the 710-Corridor project and get
answers to your questions at this
family-friendly event!"
The majority of those present last year
at Alhambra's 710 Day were City
employees wearing blue "Close the
Gap" T-Shirts and who knew very
little about the SR-710 North Study.
Members of the No 710 Action Committee
attended, walking around and talking
with those in attendance about the
facts. We discovered that most did not
know that the tunnels would be tolled,
and that City officials had been telling
their citizens that trucks would not be
allowed in the tunnels -- something that
has not been determined and is unlikely
to be true.
