Corridors like Telegraph Avenue, which are well-served by transit and have plenty of room for urban infill, will be targeted for growth. Image: Flickr account.

SB 375 now calls for a blend of the RHNA with the Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS):

It is the intent of the Legislature that housing planning be coordinated and integrated with the regional transportation plan. To achieve this goal, the allocation plan shall allocate housing units within the region consistent with the development pattern included in the sustainable communities strategy.

The final allocation plan shall ensure that the total regional housing need, by income category … is maintained, and that each jurisdiction in the region receive an allocation of units for low- and very low income households.

The resolution approving the final housing need allocation plan shall demonstrate that the plan is consistent with the sustainable communities strategy in the regional transportation plan.

(Government Code, §§ 65584.04(i)(1), 65584.04(i)(2), 65584.04(i)(3).)

SB 375 leaves open the question of exactly how the two ought to be blended.  But if you acknowledge that growth should be targeted in transit-oriented locations rather than simply allowed to sprout at random, then it is almost a direct corollary that an “unfair share” distribution of housing will result.  Perhaps because it is still early in the process, ABAG and MTC thus far have not emphasized the fair share distinction.  It was not surprising, then, to find some initial pushback in a report prepared by Berkeley city staff.  This piece in the Berkeley Patch, written by Livable Berkeley, summarizes the conclusions of the staff report as follows:

City staff’s “educated guess” is that the level of growth posited in the scenario exceeds what can be feasibly accommodated in Berkeley.  Staff is also concerned that other communities are not being asked to do as much as Berkeley.

Staff’s remarks were offered in response to the Initial Vision Scenario, which included a preliminary estimate of the new housing Berkeley should plan to accommodate: 15,730 additional units under ABAG’s aggressive growth projections, concentrated in the downtown and along more robust transit corridors like San Pablo, University, and Telegraph Avenues.  Interestingly, even though staff offers its “educated guess” that this level of growth cannot be feasibly accommodated, the report admits that “staff has not generally quantified the capacity of these areas to accommodate new units” and that “staff has not begun to test the feasibility of the numbers generated for the [Initial Vision Scenario].”  (PDF of staff report)

In short, Berkeley city staff has offered an “educated guess” that is ostensibly based on little education.  Which would make it … just a plain old guess?  The report proposes that the guess is based on the City’s Housing Element work, but that is an iterative process, and it does not terminate just because a city claims it has no more space after completing the last iteration.

The staff report illustrates the tension between SB 375 and fair share.  Hypothetically, if all cities were served by transit equally well, it would be reasonable to expect each city to absorb its fair share of housing need in the traditional sense.  In reality, though, transit service is not provided uniformly throughout the region, and a principal objective of the SCS is to bring transit networks and housing distributions into alignment.  This means that a city like Berkeley — which is home to the University, a major trip generator, and is served by three BART stations, the Capitol Corridor, and major bus transit corridors — is a natural place for growth.  Clayton (to pick one example), which was assigned just 124 new households, is not.

That disparity may seem “unfair” to some, but the Initial Vision Scenario arguably does not go far enough.  If one goal of the SCS is to increase the share of the Bay Area’s population living in places that resemble Berkeley, the Initial Vision Scenario does not accomplish that goal with respect to Berkeley itself — because the growth it describes in Berkeley closely mirrors the regional trend and is actually slower than Alameda County as a whole.  Indeed, in 2010, 1.728 percent of Bay Area households called Berkeley home; in 2035, if the Initial Vision Scenario’s allocation were to become reality, that share would barely increase to 1.732 percent.  In contrast, the allocations for other East Bay cities like Oakland, Emeryville, Fremont, Livermore, Dublin, and Pleasanton pick up the slack with growth that outpaces both Alameda County and the region as a whole.  Notably, the Initial Vision Scenario does not take into account unmet demand for more housing in walkable, centrally-located neighborhoods like those in Berkeley.

To the extent there is a break from fair share as it has traditionally been implemented, the concerns of the Berkeley staff report will resonate with other cities in California, and it will be interesting to see how fair share is ultimately folded into the SB 375 framework.

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.

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.

Prop 26 is a topic that I was planning to write about before the election, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to get to it.  We know it passed — though it wouldn’t have, if only Prop 26 were subject to the same voter approval requirements that it seeks to impose.  Anyway, now we’re stuck with yet another set of amendments to the California Constitution that tie the hands of state and local governments, make it more difficult to raise necessary revenues, and make California even more of a broken state than it already was.  There will be far-reaching implications in many areas, including the state budget, but I thought I would go into some more detail here about the exact changes that Prop 26 has made, and what those changes might mean for the always challenging task of funding transportation in California.  At this early point in the process, some guesswork is required, and there are still open questions that may eventually be clarified in the courts.

What is a tax?

Prop 13 and related propositions have created a few decades of confusion over when a government charge is a tax requiring a 2/3 vote and when simple majority approval is good enough.  Part of the reason for the confusion is that until Prop 26, the word “tax” was not defined.  Proposition 218, which voters approved in 1996, changed voter approval procedures for local government charges, among other things.  Prop 218 defined “special taxes” requiring a supermajority vote and differentiated them from “general taxes,” for which a simple majority is sufficient.  But we didn’t really know what a “tax” was.  Now, thanks to Prop 26, we do.

Or rather, we know what it isn’t, because it’s defined in the negative.  There is short list of charges that aren’t taxes (more on that later).  And if the charge in question isn’t on that list?  Then it is a tax, and it needs a supermajority vote if levied for a specific purpose.  So if the state or local government wants to pass a charge with only a majority vote (or thinks it will fail to collect a supermajority of votes, as is a regular problem in the Legislature), it will have to try to shoehorn the proposed charges into one of these special categories.  The government also better be able to make a good case for whatever it does, because if the charge is eventually challenged, the burden of proof is on the government.

What was a fee (before Prop 26)?

Before Prop 26, government assessed regulatory fees, which need only a simple majority vote.  These are sometimes also called “Sinclair Paint fees,” named after the Supreme Court case that they’re most often associated with.  What happened there was that the Legislature established a program to provide medical services to children who were potential victims of lead poisoning.  The program was supposed to be funded by fees paid by anyone whose industry contributes to lead contamination.  Sinclair Paint Company was one such entity, but then protested that because Sinclair itself received no direct benefit from the fee, the fee was actually a tax in disguise.  The fee created a benefit for society at large, but no particular benefit accrued to Sinclair or others paying the fee.  

But the fee was still found to be valid, because the proceeds collected from the fee would essentially be used to “clean up” the damage caused by industry.  Regulatory fees could be charged to set up mitigation programs like this, and it wasn’t important that Sinclair didn’t directly benefit from the fee.  What was important?  Mainly this: First, that people paying the fee have somehow contributed to the problem that the fees were designed to solve, and second, that the government didn’t end up collecting more money than it needed to solve the problem.  Sounds pretty logical, right?   Even small children are taught that if they make a mess, they have to clean it up. 

What isn’t a tax (after Prop 26)?

However logical that might sound, it is exactly this type of mitigation fee for the public benefit that Prop 26 is designed to stifle.  Prop 26 says that if the government imposes a user charge for a specific government benefit, privilege, service, or product that is “granted directly to the payor” and that is “not provided to those not charged,” then the charge is not a tax.  The government can also recover the costs of issuing or investigating permits and licenses, and the fees collected are not a tax. 

There are a handful of other things that aren’t taxes, including fees to enter or use government property, and court-imposed fines.  Specific to local governments: development fees, assessments, and property-related fees are also not taxes.

And that’s basically it.  Everything else is a tax.  As you can see, Prop 26 is really a direct response to the Sinclair Paint regulatory fees endorsed by the Supreme Court.  Under Prop 26, those charges are now taxes, not fees, because they do not confer any direct benefit, privilege, service, or product only to the people paying the fee.  Rather, the money collected benefits the environment or society at large. 

Many fees that could once be passed with a simple majority are now classified as taxes under Prop 26 and will require a supermajority to pass.  In spite of voters also passing Proposition 25 this election — which enacts a very good policy, by allowing a simple majority of legislators to pass the state budget — Prop 26 may end up swallowing Prop 25, by making it even more difficult to find revenue sources needed to balance the budget.  It just goes to show that California is so broken that individual one-line bandage fixes, even if they are good ideas in and of themselves, aren’t good enough.  The entire structure of governance needs an overhaul from top to bottom.

A close accounting of benefits and burdens 

In deciding whether a charge is a tax, it’s necessary, but not sufficient, to ask whether the person paying benefits directly.  You also have to ask whether the people paying are the only beneficiaries.  If someone not paying still benefits, then the charge is a tax.  Also, you have to make sure that the fee is fair, taking into consideration the benefit they are receiving or the burden they place on the regulatory program.  And then, you also can’t collect more money than you need to run the program.

Here’s a real-life example.  The State Water Resources Control Board is the state agency that administers water rights and water quality.  The Legislature authorized the SWRCB to collect regulatory fees so that General Fund dollars could be directed elsewhere.  The SWRCB charged the permitholders it regulates — but the many water users in California who don’t have permits or licenses weren’t charged.  And yet, everyone benefitted, including those who didn’t pay the fees, because the fees funded the permit and enforcement work that helps manage the state’s waterways for all users.  This is the type of concern that Prop 26 makes more explicit.  If these charges were assessed now, they would be taxes under Prop 26.  It’s a little different from the Sinclair Paint fee, because here, the people paying the fees do benefit directly.  The problem is that people not paying also benefit, and there were other problems with the fee formula that made it unfair.

This suggests that, practically speaking, Prop 26 will require government agencies to have a strong understanding of the situation when taking the position that a charge is not a tax.  The agency should have a good estimate of how much it costs to run the program, and it should produce a fair, well-reasoned formula to allocate those costs among the entities that benefit from or burden the program.  In addition, the agency should be certain that only those paying the fee benefit from the program.  Otherwise, the agency runs the risk of having revenue cut off, if the charge turns out to be a tax supported only by a simple majority.

What does all this have to do with transportation funding?

I’ve probably rambled enough here already for one post.  Discussion of how all this relates to transportation will be deferred to Part 2, coming soon. 

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.