SFpark meter in Hayes Valley, San Francisco. Image: courtesy of SFMTA.

Although programs like SFpark demonstrate progress and provide valuable case studies, opportunities abound to improve parking management in both major cities and suburbs throughout the United States.  But parking is also a touchy and controversial topic; proposals to increase parking fees are generally not greeted warmly and can be vociferously protested.

Learning from Mistakes

One barrier to implementing effective parking policy is the context in which government officials propose changes to parking fees.  Particularly during the recession, municipalities have been strapped for cash and seek to increase parking fees as a means of generating revenue to help balance the budget.  The result is that the sound policy reasons to raise the price of parking become drowned out by loud opposition from members of the public, who claim to be victims of an unfair budget that is balanced on the backs of citizens.  Cities that wait until a budget crisis knocks at their door to increase the price of parking are not doing themselves a favor because the underlying motivation for the adjustment will be transparent.  Moreover, the substance of the changes that are proposed may also reveal that underlying motivation, in that they involve simplistic blanket fee hikes — rather than a truly dynamic, market-based approach where the price of a particular parking spot changes with demand.  In short, it becomes all too clear that the purpose of the higher parking fees is not to enact sound policy, but to generate revenue.  When a city tries to do the right thing for the “wrong” reason — to the extent that increasing parking fees to avoid cutting municipal services can be deemed “wrong” — it makes it all the more difficult to try it again later for the right reason.

The marquee of the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, which proudly displays progressive political messages, adopted a conservative stance on parking in 2009 -- an all-too-common knee-jerk reaction among many merchants. Image: courtesy of Fragmentary Evidence.

Another barrier to implementing effective parking policy is the perception that higher parking fees diminish a city’s competitiveness, as compared to nearby cities, by making it more difficult for merchants to attract customers.  This point emerged during the backlash in 2009, when the Oakland City Council considered higher fees and extended meter hours as one measure to address the city’s budget deficit.  The underlying assumption here is that the cost of parking is a significant, perhaps even the predominant, factor at play when someone is deciding where to eat dinner, see a movie, or go shopping.  And while this concern was perhaps an especially sensitive point in Oakland because of retail leakage, it overlooks several more important considerations, including: (1) that most people probably won’t travel long distances just to find cheaper parking, particularly when paying more for gas eliminates any potential savings; (2) that the increase in parking price is often minimal compared to the cost of a meal or movie; (3) that many customers seek a unique merchant, neighborhood, or experience that cannot be replicated elsewhere; and (4) that increasing the cost of parking does not necessarily make the city or neighborhood a less compelling destination, but rather, provides an incentive for customers to use transit to travel to neighborhoods they would otherwise access by car.

There are many reasons to question the assertion that higher parking fees make a city less competitive.  But whether or not this is true in fact, the mere existence of this perception suggests that rational parking reform will be an uphill battle — one in which common arguments opposing higher fees will be aired again and again, in city after city.  It is this situation that helps frame the role that regional governments can play in the conversation about parking.

A Role for Regional Participation

Involving regional entities in parking management may, at first glance, seem like a strange idea.  Traditionally, parking management has been left to cities.  Cities control how streets are used within their respective jurisdictions, and they retain the power to charge (or not) for public parking.  In California, regional entities like metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) cannot simply swoop in and force a city to change its parking policies.

And yet the above discussion suggests that a regional directive on parking could be beneficial.  An MPO can provide valuable direction by identifying best practices, assembling useful case studies, and establishing a policy framework that explains and justifies the benefits of parking demand management.  This readily available resource would provide cities with a more constructive way to frame the public discussion about parking, while educating citizens that parking reform has benefits beyond providing the city with more revenue.  Establishing a regional consensus on parking demand management could also help eliminate the popular perception that increasing the price of parking makes a city a less desirable place to do business when compared to nearby cities that retain low parking fees.  Geographically proximate cities, perhaps with the assistance of the MPO, could cooperate in developing harmonious parking policies.

MPOs can provide grants to cities that demonstrate interest in implementing smart parking demand management strategies, and in this respect, there is a useful precedent.  The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) in the Bay Area has been able to take advantage of its control over funding to leverage improvements in land use — particularly in terms of planning transit-oriented development within walking distance of stations planned along new transit extensions.  Land use, like parking, is firmly within the dominion of local control.  And yet regional influence over land use is possible, despite the fact that MPOs like MTC have no statutory authority to make land use approval decisions.

A similar approach could be taken for parking reform, in which a regional policy directive both guides local planning efforts and provides the funding incentive needed to get the job done.  MTC has taken tentative initial steps to investigate what role regional governments should play in the parking arena, and in the future, I hope to discuss in more detail ways to improve regional oversight of parking.

Senate Bill 375 provides metropolitan regions in California with a compelling reason to do so now.  Parking — whether it is abundant or scarce, cheap or expensive — has tremendous influence on shaping travel choices.  Parking demand management could be an effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, both by (1) encouraging drivers to switch to transit, particularly for peak hour trips, and (2) reducing the emissions associated with drivers circling city blocks on the hunt for parking.  Rational parking policies, when combined with smart land use decisions, are a powerful tool for reducing vehicle miles traveled, and, in turn, for achieving SB 375′s regional emissions reductions targets.  One of the core lessons we take away from the Initial Vision Scenario prepared by MTC and ABAG for the Bay Area is that compact growth alone is not sufficient.  The Sustainable Communities Strategy will need to incorporate additional techniques in order to achieve the target.  A strong regional consensus on parking policy, coupled with robust implementation at the local level, could be just such a technique.

In 2013, MTC will publish an update to the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP).  The 2013 RTP, consistent with previous RTPs, will outline the Bay Area’s transportation needs and priorities in relation to the funding that is expected will be made available for investment in the region through the planning horizon.  This time, however, the RTP will include and be coordinated with the SCS.  The essence of the SCS, as described in Senate Bill 375, is

a forecasted development pattern for the region, which, when integrated with the transportation network, and other transportation measures and policies, will reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles and light trucks to achieve, if there is a feasible way to do so, the greenhouse gas emission reduction targets approved by [ARB] …

The SCS will essentially serve as a blueprint that calls for focused growth in the region, preferably in established urbanized areas that are accessible by transit and are designed to encourage walking and biking.  The Initial Vision Scenario, which is a preliminary step in the process toward developing the SCS, compiles information on those urbanized areas and estimates their capacity to absorb new growth.  The Initial Vision Scenario asks the region as a whole to accommodate a population increase of 2,081,600 people (in 902,600 households) and 1,222,000 jobs by the year 2035.  These totals are based on aggressive annual growth averages that outpace historical trends (e.g. +48,800 jobs/year for the next 25 years compared to about +10,000 jobs/year for the past 20 years).

MTC’s calculations at this stage suggest that the Initial Vision Scenario achieves 11 percent per capita emissions reduction by 2020 (exceeding ARB’s 7 percent target) but only 12 percent per capita reduction by 2035 (falling short of ARB’s 15 percent target).  This represents a slight improvement over the existing RTP, but these numbers are preliminary.  The Initial Vision Scenario is not a comprehensive analysis of all relevant factors, and its suggested distribution of growth does not represent the final housing allocation that will ultimately be adopted.

The Initial Vision Scenario’s suggested distribution attempts to minimize sprawl by housing 97 percent of new households in the Bay Area’s existing urbanized areas.  Most growth is allocated to Priority Development Areas (PDAs), which include areas that local governments had previously identified (before SB 375) as preferred growth zones within their respective jurisdictions.  By incorporating into the SCS these local land use plans, which are already approved or at least have some local support, MTC and ABAG seek to develop an SCS that is a collaborative product supported by regional consensus.

PDAs and Growth Opportunity Areas identified in the Initial Vision Scenario. Courtesy of MTC/ABAG.

Local “Planning Assumptions”

During the legislative negotiation in Sacramento that led to the passage of SB 375, local government advocates lobbied to have concessions inserted into the bill ensuring that cities and counties would retain full authority to regulate land use within their respective boundaries.  More generally, the SCS may not contravene the federal requirement that regional decisions conform to recent local “planning assumptions” (for example, general plans).

Local governments in the Bay Area have already enshrined in their general plans the broad principle that it is desirable to grow through transit-oriented infill growth rather than sprawl, and many jurisdictions have taken concrete steps to implement that broad principle — by developing transit villages and specific plans that support higher densities at transit nodes, by rezoning downtown areas to accommodate more growth, and by setting urban growth boundaries.  Indeed, as noted above, the PDAs reflect the areas that local jurisdictions themselves identified as the best places to grow.  The fact that local planning activities are generally consistent with the framework that SB 375 envisioned would be advanced by regional governments suggests that the Bay Area may be well-situated to meet SB 375′s demands.

Yet even so, MTC and ABAG are walking a tightrope, and generalities notwithstanding, the devil is in the details.  One cannot help but wonder, for instance, how the Initial Vision Scenario’s statement that the area around the future Berryessa BART station in San Jose “will have grown into [a] vibrant residential communit[y]” housing 8,024 households and a mixture of neighborhood amenities will be reconciled with what has been planned for the flea market site — about 2,800 units, including low density single-family homes and a gas station approved by the city in 2009.  Although the Initial Vision Scenario is grounded in local planning efforts, MTC and ABAG allocated additional units to some PDAs that exceed local growth estimates — only “for discussion purposes” at this point, of course.  The Initial Vision Scenario also distributes growth throughout the region based on the uses and characteristics of each locality, without evaluating whether the market would support the suggested number of units in those places.

Moving forward, MTC and ABAG will need to correct the Initial Vision Scenario’s many limitations and complicate its simplifying assumptions.  Doing so will reveal the challenges the Bay Area faces in developing and implementing a realistic SCS.  The Initial Vision Scenario assumes new transit improvements, which include sixty miles of dedicated transit lanes and substantially increased capacity through higher frequency service, particularly for light rail, heavy rail, and commuter rail lines.  It does not deal with the technical and financial challenges associated with making that assumption a reality, including the existing regional funding shortfall for transit operations.  But the SCS must ultimately be consistent with the prevailing financial constraints in the RTP.  The SCS, unlike the theoretical Initial Vision Scenario, should not simply assume that transit capacity will be increased unless the RTP anticipates that the funding will be made available to provide that higher level of service.

The Initial Vision Scenario also forecasts a complete reversal of previous decades of sprawl by concentrating 97 percent of new households “within the existing urban footprint.” But as laudable as that goal is, being within the existing urban footprint is not the same as being close to reliable transit service.  Many parts of the Bay Area, although “urbanized” in the sense that they are not rural, are still not dense and remain quite auto-oriented.  It would be an error to assume that new residents of these neighborhoods will forgo driving simply because they didn’t move to an exurban greenfield development.  Thus, one task moving forward will be to determine how pedestrian and bicycle amenities can fill the gap in places where it’s not feasible to provide frequent transit — as well as to improve our ability to model how effectively these types of improvements translate into reduced emissions.  Another task will be to determine what additional measures, like pricing mechanisms, will be needed to achieve the 15 percent reduction target by 2035.

SB 375 creates a slippery balance of power between local and regional governments.  Metropolitan planning organizations are responsible for producing an SCS and may need to rely on locally unpopular measures to achieve the regional target assigned by ARB.  But at the same time, MPOs should collaborate with cities to ensure that the SCS has local support and creates actual changes on the ground.  Carefully crafted language in the Initial Vision Scenario suggests that MTC and ABAG are cognizant of this, but at this preliminary stage, the most interesting and difficult questions have not yet been addressed.

Orange Line BRT, at Warner Center. The Orange Line corridor has been identified as a demonstration project to receive SB 375 funding from the Air Resources Board. Photo courtesy of Flickr user resedabear.

On September 23, 2010, the State Air Resources Board (ARB) assigned greenhouse gas reduction targets to California’s regional metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), moving Senate Bill 375 forward into its implementation phase and setting in motion the first regional planning cycle required under the legislation.  ARB adopted final targets that express each metropolitan region’s goal as a percent reduction in per capita emissions from the year 2005.  Regional targets will be revisited in four years but were provided for the years 2020 and 2035 to guide long-term planning.  The target-setting process (see generally the posts from 2010 in the archives for more discussion) focused principally on California’s four largest MPOs, which were assigned the following targets:

There were strings attached to the Southern California targets.  Voting 29-21, the SCAG Regional Council had rejected these proposed targets on September 2, prior to their being adopted by ARB.  The Regional Council instead supported milder targets of -6 percent in 2020 and -8 percent in 2035, maintaining that targets any more ambitious than these would be appropriate only if several conditions were met.  But ARB, which had a September 30 deadline to meet, affirmed its commitment to the more ambitious targets of -8 and -13 percent proposed by agency staff.

That commitment was, however, accompanied by a compromise facilitated by Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge, who sits on ARB.  SCAG capitulated on the -8 percent target for 2020, but final acceptance of the -13 percent target for 2035 was conditioned on the outcome of further discussion between ARB and SCAG.  The issue remained unresolved until recently.  What is interesting is not so much the fact that a resolution was reached, but the manner in which it was reached and how it reflects the challenges moving forward.

SCAG region. Original map courtesy of Caltrans.

The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) is the analogue in the Los Angeles area to the  Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), but SCAG is notable for the sheer size and population of its jurisdiction (marked in green in the map at right).  SCAG governs more than 38,100 square miles extending from the Nevada state line and the Colorado River to the Pacific Ocean, and almost half of California’s population calls the SCAG region home.  At quadruple the land area of the nine-county Bay Area, the region includes about 190 cities and 6 counties — Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Imperial.

SCAG, in other words, is a key player in this business.  ARB has an interest in seeing that each of the “big four” MPOs, including SCAG, is able to adopt a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) that will actually achieve the targets assigned to each region.  It is adoption of the SCS that aligns each region’s transportation network and funding with a transit-oriented distribution of housing that will help reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT); an Alternative Planning Strategy (APS) simply does not carry the same benefits.  But it would be difficult to name this effort a success if SCAG, the state’s largest MPO, did not meet its regional target.  The SCAG region generates about half of the total greenhouse gas emissions statewide that are the focus of SB 375 — which means that if the legislation is to have maximum effect, ARB needs to have SCAG on board as a fully cooperative partner.

The Quest for Funding

At least the more strategic members on the SCAG Regional Council must have realized that this dynamic could give Southern California an edge in its dealings with ARB.  Perhaps, then, it’s not surprising that of the “big four” MPOs, it was SCAG that opposed ARB and even went so far as to place conditions.  In particular, the Regional Council indicated that it could not support ambitious targets unless certain conditions were met.  Those conditions included: (1) restoration of State transit funding; (2) acceleration of Measure R transit projects under the 30/10 initiative; (3) providing more money that SCAG can grant to local government planning efforts; (4) commitment by ARB to pursue more funding for SB 375 in the Legislature; (5) commitment to obtain more federal, state, and local funding sources that can be devoted to transportation demand management and pedestrian, bicycle, and transit projects; and (6) continued cooperation from ARB, regional entities, cities, and county transportation commissions.

These conditions manage to be both unreasonable and logical at the same time.  Unreasonable — because ARB does not have the authority to meet these conditions even if it wanted to, nor was it required by the Legislature to meet them in any case.  And yet also logical — in that the conditions collectively recognize the longstanding mismatch in California planning, where state leaders in one breath encourage the construction of transit-oriented development, and then in the next breath deprive transit of the funding it needs to survive, let alone thrive.

The SCAG conditions emphasize that there are at least two distinct categories of funding that are crucial to the success of SB 375, and yet are currently in short supply.  The first category is transit funding, which includes both capital dollars to extend high-quality transit to new places and operating dollars to keep the system running.  The bottom line here is that if we want to reduce driving by encouraging “TOD,” we need to have enough “T” to support that TOD.  Proposition 26 complicates the task of setting up new revenue streams for transit, but as Damien Newton recently reminded us at Streetsblog Los Angeles, an additional challenge will be coping with already existing revenue streams that are now reduced in magnitude thanks to the economic downturn.

The second category, which interfaces directly with SB 375 implementation, is the funding that governments need to do planning.  Whether taking the form of general plan updates, neighborhood specific plans, or corridor plans, cities and regions need money to do this work.  It is, after all, these very planning efforts that will be incorporated into the SCS and will ultimately create the desired land use changes on the ground.  Unless local governments have the resources to plan and zone for the sustainable communities envisioned in the SCS, SB 375 will fall flat on its face.

It is this second category of funding that was the focus of SCAG’s recent discussions with ARB.  SCAG has now agreed to accept the more ambitious -8 and -13 percent targets that ARB adopted in September.  But in exchange, SCAG was able to extract at least a little funding from ARB.  The SCAG Compass Blueprint is a program providing competitive grants to local governments that propose exemplary sustainable planning projects.  Because the program has attracted a great deal of interest, SCAG can fund only a fraction of the applicants.  ARB, to fulfill its agreement with SCAG, will provide contract funds for three Compass Blueprint demonstration projects, two of which could serve as models of statewide interest: (1) a specific plan to examine how existing industrial land uses can be adapted for mixed use development; and (2) a corridor plan for stations along the Orange Line, a 14-mile bus rapid transit corridor running from the North Hollywood Red Line station to Warner Center.  The latter plan, which would study both the existing BRT corridor and the extension under construction, was selected to examine TOD and multimodal access in the context of an important transit corridor.  No similar demonstration projects were selected from other regions of the state.

The money that ARB is contributing, which looks to be just shy of a half million dollars, is really just a tiny fraction of the funding that local and regional governments throughout California will need to do more SB 375-related planning.  This isn’t to say that no other funding has been made available.  The Strategic Growth Council is distributing three cycles of Proposition 84 money to fund these efforts, and has in fact already distributed over $7 million to MPOs to fund their work on SB 375.  Moreover, federal grants, including those sponsored by the USDOT-HUD-USEPA Sustainable Communities partnership, have been awarded to projects nationwide in furtherance of goals that are harmonious with SB 375, and California projects could be competitive to receive these grants.  Yet the future status of these funding sources is uncertain.  Although the ability to fund planning is critical to SB 375′s success, we lack a dependable revenue stream that is adequate to meet the demand for these funds throughout California.

Interstate 405 in Los Angeles. Courtesy of Ian Edwards.

At its meeting yesterday, the State Air Resources Board (ARB) had a full agenda.  For one, it approved an important regulation requiring that one-third of electricity sold by utilities in California be derived from renewable sources by the year 2020.  But for the purpose of this blog, we will only discuss the Board’s other major action of the day: the adoption of final regional targets under Senate Bill 375 for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles and light duty trucks.

Although ARB staff’s proposed targets were released well over one month ago, there has been, not surprisingly, some drama playing out in the eleventh hour.  Protests claiming that these proposed targets are dangerous and unachievable have appeared in California newspapers this week — from the builders, naturally, but also from Jim Spering and Bill Dodd, Bay Area county supervisors who sit on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (the same body that supported the more ambitious Bay Area targets back in July).

At the ARB meeting, Santa Clara County supervisor Ken Yeager, who is also an MTC commissioner and ARB member, publicly disdained his fellow commissioners Spering and Dodd for misrepresenting the Bay Area’s preferred targets as “extreme” and “unrealistic” in their Mercury News opinion piece.  Compounded by the fact that builders have specifically misused preliminary Bay Area scenarios (developed to inform the target-setting discussion at ARB) in order to “prove” that more ambitious targets are infeasible and would wreak havoc during the recession, Yeager called upon Steve Heminger, MTC’s executive director, to testify specially in defense of the Bay Area’s preferred targets.  ARB ultimately adopted those same targets.

SB 375 has been a recurring topic on this blog, and newer readers interested in this topic are encouraged to peruse the archives.  Briefly: last month, staff at ARB released its proposed targets.  These were mostly the direct product of a collaborative “bottom up” process, in which ARB based its recommendations on data submitted by metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) indicating what targets would be achievable and/or ambitious in each region.

The Board has now unanimously adopted the following regional targets for the years 2020/2035, expressed as a per capita GHG reduction from 2005 levels:

There were a couple refinements of the staff proposal.  Some smaller MPOs, including Monterey Bay and Santa Barbara, stepped up to the plate and volunteered to do better than business as usual, in order to participate more fully in this statewide effort; ARB was happy to oblige.  In addition, ARB resolved to resume discussion with SCAG in February over its disputed targets (see discussion below).  But by and large, the adopted targets closely mirror the staff proposal.

The Debate Over Targets

Caught in the middle of the maelstrom of technical modeling exercises, political will, legal concerns, and persistent stakeholder advocacy is the debate over SB 375 targets.  The targets are essentially goals, not regulations, and they are certain to evolve over time.  Indeed, ARB already plans to revisit the targets in four years’ time.  Moreover, a metropolitan planning organization is not subject to sanctions if it determines that it cannot achieve its target.  Perhaps, then, it seems that the debate isn’t even worth all the fuss — particularly because even the targets that have so far been termed “ambitious” likely aren’t good enough to realize the desired overall emissions reduction.

Yet the targets are mandated, and if they do their job, they should have some effect on how planning is carried out in California.  SB 375 is written so that most of its benefits are conferred when an MPO demonstrates that it actually can achieve its assigned target — and that’s enough to convince some that the top priority should be simply to produce an achievable target, even if it’s not especially ambitious.  For others, stopping anywhere short of ambitious undermines the urgency of the need to take action on climate change.  So the debate has taken a life of its own.

Aside from the MTC scuffle described above, government officials elsewhere in California had also urged ARB to reject its staff’s proposal and instead adopt milder targets.  At its meeting on September 2, 2010, the SCAG Regional Council (on a divided vote of 29-21) rejected the ARB staff proposal, and instead supported targets of 6% reduction in 2020 and 8% reduction in 2035.  Moving forward on anything more ambitious was conditioned on a list of eleven other actions being taken — including acceleration of Measure R projects under the 30/10 initiative, and restoration of transit operating funds from the State — actions over which ARB itself has no control.  But the Regional Council’s decision should not be taken to mean that all of Southern California is uninterested in taking SB 375 seriously.  Not only have individual local governments in the SCAG region embraced the challenge posed by ambitious targets, but the Los Angeles MTA has snubbed SCAG (PDF) by indicating its support of ARB’s more ambitious recommendation.

Meanwhile, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District determined at its meeting on September 16, 2010 that ARB’s placeholder targets (5% reduction in 2020 and 10% reduction in 2035) should be scrapped and replaced with less ambitious targets (PDF) of 2% reduction in 2020 and 5% reduction in 2035.  The MPOs in the San Joaquin Valley were quick to line up behind this milder alternative, but ARB stuck to the staff-recommended -5%/-10% target.  In spite of the substantial and unique challenges posed by the San Joaquin Valley, the Valley Air District’s alternate proposal is quite frankly a pitiful showing from California’s fastest growing region, and arguably this anti-sprawl statute’s true testing ground.

Next Steps

Moving forward, ARB will continue to exchange technical information with the MPOs, and in particular, ARB has committed to further target discussion with both SCAG and the eight San Joaquin Valley MPOs.  In preparing their upcoming regional transportation plan updates, MPOs will quantify the greenhouse gas reductions that can be realized through compact development, infrastructure expansion, pricing, and transportation demand management.  The goal for each region will be to demonstrate how implementing a combination of such measures will achieve its assigned target — if the target can indeed be achieved — by preparing a Sustainable Communities Strategy that aligns regional transportation with housing need.

Setting targets is not the end of the story, but rather, the beginning.  In adopting final targets, ARB has set in motion a new process for regional planning in California.  Although it’s easy to become entangled in emissions reductions and modeling assumptions, it’s important to remember that SB 375 is also about improving quality of life and public health, by changing the way that California thinks about and builds its cities.  Only time will tell how effective these efforts are — but the fun has just begun.

Bay Bridge toll plaza. Courtesy of gohsuket.

Earlier this month, agency staff at the State Air Resources Board (ARB) recommended a set of targets, which quantify how much regions throughout California should plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles and light duty trucks.  Those targets will soon be evaluated by the Board, which is required under Senate Bill 375 to adopt a final set of regional targets next month.  The proposals suggest per capita targets measured from a year 2005 baseline: 7-8% reduction in 2020 (13-16% in 2035) in California’s urban areas by 2020, and 5% reduction in 2020 (10% in 2035) in the San Joaquin Valley.

In a previous post, we asked whether these targets would be good enough to put California on the path to achieving its stated goals: (1) Assembly Bill 32′s requirement that emissions be reduced to 1990 levels in 2020, and (2) achieving emissions 80% below 1990 levels in 2050.  By estimating combined GHG reductions from SB 375, the Pavley standards, and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, a few calculations suggested that although ARB’s proposed targets for 2020 were good enough, the targets for 2035 may be too restrained to realize the desired reduction in emissions.  But if the ARB target isn’t good enough, then what is?  How much would we need to reduce driving in California in 2035?

Following the reasoning in the previous post, another calculation suggests that a 37% per capita VMT reduction target will achieve the desired greenhouse gas reductions in 2035:

(1 – 0.37)(1.36)(1 – 0.1)(1 – 0.32) = 0.524

In other words, there would be a 48% combined reduction, which is good enough to keep California on track in meeting its 2050 goal (assuming a linear model of emissions reduction between 2020 and 2050).  But this 37% target represents a weighted statewide average.  In reality, there would be distinct regional targets.  ARB’s regional targets are based on the analysis supplied to it by California’s metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs).  But as we have seen, MPO suggestions may not be good enough — so what is an alternative approach?

Growth-Based Regional Targets

One possible way to distribute the responsibility among regions is by growth rate: The faster a region is growing, the more it could be held responsible for reducing its vehicle emissions.  Please note that this is not the approach ARB has adopted to date.  The rapid growth of San Joaquin Valley is expected to outpace the rest of the state by far, and yet, the Valley MPOs have been assigned a target that is less ambitious than those assigned to urban MPOs.  That said, the Valley placeholder target is essentially a ballpark estimate, offered so that ARB can comply with the legislative deadline.  It is subject to change in the next few years, but it is too soon to tell whether it will ultimately be more ambitious, less ambitious, or simply stay the same.

How would growth-based targets compare to ARB’s proposals?  We first make the simplifying assumption that regions uniformly achieve the state’s overall reduction objective.  Then, taking into account each individual region’s projected growth, we can calculate a new set of per capita regional targets for the year 2035. In the table below, the growth-based targets are listed in the middle column, and ARB’s proposed targets are provided in the right column:

Using a growth-based methodology, the table quantifies approximately how much, on average, citizens of each metropolitan region would have to reduce their driving in order to keep California on track to meet its stated climate change goals.  The table suggests that very substantial reductions in driving will be necessary.  The growth-based targets are significantly more aggressive than the ARB proposal — unrealistically aggressive under current practices — because rather than passively accepting MPO data, this approach is specifically designed to be more proactive in achieving emissions 40% below 1990 levels.  In other words, these growth-based targets are “top down” rather than “bottom up.”

Comparing the absolute reduction in emissions for these growth-based targets vs. ARB’s proposed targets is also rather dramatic.  According to ARB, its proposed targets would realize a 15.1 MMTCO₂ (million metric ton) reduction per year from 2035 baseline emissions.  In contrast, the growth-based targets would realize a 51.9 MMTCO₂ reduction from the 2035 baseline.

The next post will consider some implications of developing growth-based targets.  For now, we note only that achieving these targets would require an unwavering commitment to crafting smarter land use patterns, expanding high-quality transit networks throughout the state, calling a moratorium on the construction of new roads, and implementing aggressive pricing mechanisms that encourage motorists to shift travel modes.  At the present time, MPOs might conclude that such measures are politically unpalatable, and thus decline to pursue some of them.  But they may ultimately prove to be necessary if California is to be successful in achieving its climate change goals.

Interstate 80 in Berkeley. Courtesy of Time.

The State Air Resources Board (ARB) has now proposed regional targets for California’s eighteen metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), and Senate Bill 375 requires that the Board adopt the final targets by September 30, 2010.  As previously discussed, the proposed targets are the product of a “bottom-up” approach, in which ARB has relied heavily on technical analysis carried out by the MPOs — especially California’s four large urban MPOs.

But are these proposed regional targets — suggested by MPOs and, for the most part, endorsed by ARB staff — sufficient to achieve the desired reduction in transportation sector emissions?  These targets are sometimes termed “ambitious” by ARB and the MPOs.  However, some additional analysis suggests that these so-called “ambitious” targets may actually be too restrained to achieve California’s climate change goals.

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Scoping Plan

First, there is the matter of the Scoping Plan for Assembly Bill 32.  Reform of regional planning (to be implemented through SB 375) was included among the numerous and diverse emission reduction strategies described in the Scoping Plan.  Smarter land use practices would lead to a reduction in vehicle miles traveled (VMT), so this strategy was assigned an estimate placeholder of 5 MMTCO₂E (million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent).  The regional targets proposed by ARB staff would, however, achieve only a 3.4 MMTCO₂E reduction by 2020.   On the surface, then, the targets appear to fall short.  But ARB has indicated, albeit without further explanation, that this 3.4 MMTCO₂E reduction is actually sufficient under the most recent forecast for emissions in 2020.  Before coming to a conclusion on the land use placeholder, let’s take a step back and examine transportation emissions generally.

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Reducing Transportation Emissions

SB 375 is one of three primary strategies that ARB will apply to make a dent in transportation sector emissions — more precisely, the emissions generated by passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks.  While SB 375′s objective is to reduce driving, the other two strategies focus on clean vehicles and clean fuel.  The Pavley standards for vehicles are estimated to contribute 31.7 MMTCO₂E of reduction, while the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) is expected to contribute 15 MMTCO₂E of reduction, both in 2020.  It is expected that in the next decade, these latter two techniques will have a greater impact than will land use changes.  But VMT-reducing land use changes are still needed, if California intends to meet its long-term emissions reduction objectives, as illustrated in this graph:

Courtesy of Center for Clean Air Policy.

It is necessary to consider all three strategies at once, rather than individually — because even if one strategy falls short of the Scoping Plan’s reduction estimate, it is possible that other strategies could pick up the slack.  Thus, when evaluating whether the proposed SB 375 targets will be effective, we should look to see whether SB 375 + LCFS + Pavley will together realize California’s emission reduction goals on different timescales.  Note: A few calculations are necessary at this point, and if you would rather not read through number-crunching, you may want to skip ahead to the “Conclusion” heading below.

Adjusting ARB’s 2020 and 2035 Targets for Population

ARB established different targets for different regions of the state.  Assign a weight to each region’s contribution to reduced VMT (based on that region’s population), and then sum those values.  This yields a single statewide average for each target year:

ARB’s regional targets are expressed in terms of per capita reduction from a 2005 baseline.  In contrast, the Scoping Plan discusses reduction of MMTCO₂E — that is, as an absolute quantity.  After adjusting for population, these two quantities are proportional, where the constant of proportionality converts between the units.  Here, we’ll avoid unit conversion by calculating changes in target years.  Multiply through by population projections:

This calculation reveals that the proposed per capita reductions in emissions will yield absolute increases. In every region of California, the per capita reduction target is sufficiently small to be overwhelmed by projected increases in population, as demonstrated in this table:

Pavley and LCFS

These absolute increases will, however, be reduced when we take into account Pavley and LCFS.  The Scoping Plan and other documents from ARB suggest that these are reasonable reduction estimates:

Combining the adjusted SB 375 targets, LCFS, and Pavley, we obtain:

To conclude, we compare these estimated reductions to California’s goals under AB 32.

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Conclusion

AB 32 requires that California reduce its emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020.  In 1990, emissions statewide were roughly 12% below 2005 levels.  Thus, if SB 375 + LCFS + Pavley combined can realize at least a 12% reduction from 2005 levels, then AB 32′s mandate is satisfied (with respect to transportation sector emissions).  The above calculation suggests that in 2020, these three strategies achieve a combined reduction of 19%.  Thus, it appears that despite the Scoping Plan discrepancy we noted earlier, ARB’s 2020 target (when implemented alongside LCFS and Pavley) does meet AB 32 requirements.

The year 2035 is a different story.  Governor Schwarzenegger’s Executive Order S-3-05 provides that by the year 2050, emissions should be 80% below 1990 levels.  Emissions need not fall off linearly, and it’s certainly possible to construct a model in which greater reductions are achieved in later years than in earlier years.  If, however, we make the simplifying assumption that emissions reduction between 2020 and 2050 will follow a linear pattern, then emissions in 2035 should be roughly 40% below 1990 levels, or 47% below 2005 levels.  Glancing above, though, we see that the combined reduction in 2035 is only 27%.  Thus, in 2035, these rough calculations suggest that we will fall short — which implies that the proposed SB 375 target for reduced driving in 2035 is inadequate to meet the state’s climate change goals, and that a more aggressive target is needed to compensate for population increase.

But if ARB’s regional targets for 2035 won’t do the job, then what is good enough?  By how much do we need to reduce driving in California?  More on that question in the next post.

Following up on that process, ARB has now proposed more precise final targets for each region in California.  The Board will review the staff proposal and adopt final targets next month, as required by the legislation.  Having monitored the MPO analysis along the way, ARB’s proposals unsurprisingly track very closely the targets recommended by the MPOs.  These are the 2020 and 2035 targets that agency staff have proposed for the Board’s consideration:

All targets are expressed in terms of percent change in per capita emissions, as compared to a year 2005 baseline.

Small MPOs

Because the six small MPOs at the bottom of the above chart only account for five percent of California’s population and emissions — with no expectation of significant or disproportionately rapid growth — the proposed targets for these regions reflect expected emissions based on business-as-usual planning efforts.  These regions do not have the in-house technical expertise that other MPOs possess.  Rather than exert a large upfront effort to get these less populated, largely rural regions up to speed, ARB made a reasonable decision to concentrate on the Big Four MPOs and the San Joaquin Valley for now — that is, those regions that contribute the vast majority of the state’s transportation emissions and are expected to experience the most growth.  New targets for the six small MPOs will then be established in 2014.

San Joaquin Valley MPOs

The San Joaquin Valley continues to be particularly challenging.  Unlike the six small regions, the Valley is expected to grow significantly in the next quarter century — at over double the pace of the rest of California.  But the eight Valley MPOs do not yet possess the level of technical expertise needed to carry out necessary modeling.  SB 375 also contains a special provision for the Valley, which allows for a collaborative Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) prepared jointly by at least two Valley MPOs.  But it is not yet clear which, if any, of the MPOs will elect to do that, because the Valley regional transportation plans will not be updated again until 2014.

Given this extra time and the need to improve the models, ARB currently proposes placeholder targets of -5% in 2020 and -10% in 2035 for the San Joaquin Valley, with the understanding that these targets would be revisited and potentially replaced in 2012 by “provisional” targets for use in the RTPs.  By 2012, modeling capability will be improved, and the Valley MPOs should have decided amongst themselves whether any joint SCS will be prepared.

Big Four MPOs

The proposed targets for SCAG, MTC, SANDAG, and SACOG are generally in the ballpark of the draft targets.  The final targets proposed for 2020 are all within the -5 to -10% range identified in the draft targets.  Although the 2035 draft target ranges were not that well-defined in June, ARB’s proposed targets for 2035 have been narrowed to the -13 to -16% range.

In arriving at the 2035 targets, ARB matched the MPO recommendations for all regions except the SCAG region, which only recommended a meager -5 to -6%.  ARB ignored that suggestion and instead proposed -13% for SCAG, so that Southern California would be in the same ballpark as the other three major metropolitan regions.  Three months ago, in May, MTC had maintained that a -12% target for 2035 was the most ambitious possible Bay Area target.  But MTC ultimately recommended a -15% target by 2035, and ARB has included that more ambitious recommendation in its proposal.

The next post will examine whether these proposed targets are ambitious enough to achieve the level of emissions reduction required by Assembly Bill 32.

The greenhouse gas targets are expressed in terms of percentage per capita reduction from 2005 levels.  Here are the draft targets:

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¹ San Joaquin Valley counties (Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Tulare) were assigned a collective target.

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The first column of numbers represents MPO projections of what might be achieved in each region by 2020, under currently prevailing regional transportation plans.  The second column is ARB’s draft target, expressed for now as a range.  The third column represents a best guess as to the reductions that are possible by 2035.  At this point in time, though, there is an insufficient technical foundation to produce serious 2035 estimates.  It’s a work in progress.

How did ARB arrive at these numbers, and what should we make of them?  Probably not too much at this point, as they are just preliminary.  But they offer, if nothing else, insight into the upcoming challenges posed by SB 375.

The chart clarifies that ARB has analytically divided California into three groups: (1) the “Big Four” urban MPOs, (2) the San Joaquin Valley, and (3) the six smaller MPOs (Butte, Monterey Bay Area, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Shasta, and Tahoe Basin).

Not much is expected of the six smaller MPOs at this point, since they have limited resources and oversee less populated regions.  For these MPOs, ARB did not propose a distinct target range as it did for the Big Four and the San Joaquin Valley.  Instead, the target will based on current greenhouse gas projections, updated to take into account the effects of the economic recession and any other reductions that may be realized.  This is basically a shortcut — and it’s not unexpected, given that these regions collectively only account for about 5% of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) statewide.  They are also expected to grow slowly.

It’s no surprise that ARB has preferred instead to concentrate its energies on the Big Four — MTC, SCAG, SACOG, and SANDAG — the regions that generate about 87% of VMT.  But beyond meeting greenhouse gas targets, SB 375 is about building better cities.  The Big Four include the majority of California’s largest cities, their established transit networks, and countless infill opportunities to house the state’s future population near transit and employment.  The Big Four have worked collaboratively in this process by modeling different future scenarios and studying how they reduce transportation emissions.  ARB’s 5 to 10% draft target for the Big Four reflects this initial analysis.  The 2035 ranges are taken directly from the MPOs as scenario outputs.  In addition to the 2035 ranges listed in the table, SCAG was the only agency to suggest an actual target for 2035 (5 to 6% reduction).  But as mentioned above, these numbers are too rough to be taken at face value.

And what are we to make of the 1 to 7% reduction target for the San Joaquin Valley?  We might as well just come out and say it.  Nobody really knows what to do about the Valley.  There are opportunities to do good land use planning there, particularly in downtown districts that will be served by high-speed rail.  For instance, Fresno — California’s fifth largest city, with about a half-million residents — was able to project some reductions, by analyzing scenarios that included bus rapid transit and increased density on mixed use corridors.  But other parts of the Valley have projected increases in emissions, which we know we don’t want.  And that is, more or less, the sentiment that is captured in the 1 to 7% reduction target.  A reduction of 1% might not be ambitious, but at least it’s not an increase.  Given the unique challenges in the Valley, more analysis is needed to pin down a suitable target.  I would only note that an anti-sprawl campaign in California cannot be deemed truly successful unless it addresses the rapid, unchecked growth of sprawl  in the Valley.

ARB’s draft targets are basically a consolidation of the collaborative work that the agency has done thus far with California’s MPOs.  But that is not the end of the story.  This summer presents a key opportunity for MPOs to refine their technical work before the fall deadline.  As they do so in the coming weeks, these draft target ranges will ideally be honed into more precise ambitious-yet-achievable targets.

In light of the connection between Senate Bill 375 and AB 32, a blog reader wrote in with a question, asking whether suspension of AB 32 would also require suspending SB 375.  I believe that even if AB 32 is suspended, it should not be necessary to also suspend SB 375.  Supposing that other readers might be interested in this question, I have added the question and a more detailed answer to the SB 375 page — you can click here to jump straight to discussion of the AB 32 question.

One particular characteristic of the Bay Area is its expensive real estate market.  This creates an imbalance of housing and jobs at the regional scale, thereby generating interregional commutes from Central Valley cities like Tracy and Manteca, where upwards of 70% of residents commute to Bay Area jobs.  Higher relative household incomes in the Bay Area also diminish sensitivity to user fees and other changes in price — though we shouldn’t forget that in the Bay Area, as elsewhere, higher gas prices in 2008 noticeably increased transit ridership.

In order to get a sense of what an ambitious GHG target would be for the Bay Area, MTC has relied primarily on aggressive pricing and land use assumptions.  In light of the region’s comparably higher household income level, MTC modeled a pricing assumption much more ambitious than those employed by its peers in the “Big Four”: a 460% increase in the cost of automobile use.  This translates to an automobile usage cost of over $1.15 (2009 dollars) per mile driven in 2035.  That cost increase incorporates new revenue sources, particularly congestion pricing, increased parking charges, and a carbon tax.  It can be difficult to gather political support for these types of measures, particularly in the current economic downturn — but it also seems clear that we will need to turn to these revenue sources in the future.  Their inclusion in this model is therefore appropriate.

MTC also modeled land use assumptions that are much more aggressive than current projections.  These assumptions decrease the population at the fringe of the Bay Area (particularly in Solano and Contra Costa counties), and they correspondingly increase the population of the urban core — including a 22% increase in San Francisco’s population above existing, already optimistic projections.

These assumptions translate into the following per capita GHG reductions (compared to 2005):

• Implementing the Bay Area’s most recent Regional Transportation Plan yields GHG reductions of 5% by 2020 and 3% by 2035.
• Adding either land use or pricing assumptions to the RTP yields GHG reductions of 7% by 2020 and 10% by 2035.
  
• Adding both land use and pricing assumptions to the RTP yields GHG reductions of 10% by 2020 and 12% by 2035.

Other scenarios were considered as well, but the bottom line is that the 12% figure represents the current ambitious target for Bay Area GHG reduction by the year 2035.  It is questionable whether this target is achievable in light of its aggressive underlying assumptions.  Nonetheless, inputting less aggressive assumptions into more robust models could potentially yield more reduction than anticipated.  This preliminary analysis suggests that there is room for the Bay Area to achieve a more ambitious target that goes beyond business as usual.  An ambitious GHG target presents an excellent opportunity for the Bay Area to develop a Sustainable Communities Strategy that demonstrates the benefits of coupling infrastructure investments with creative land use and pricing strategies.