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.

On February 19, 2011, BART officially opened the 44th station in its system: The West Dublin/Pleasanton station, a $106 million project that bridges the long 10-mile gap between the Dublin/Pleasanton terminus and Castro Valley.  Like Dublin/Pleasanton, its sibling station 1.5 miles to the east, West Dublin/Pleasanton was built in the median of Interstate 580.  Pedestrian bridges connect the station to parking garages on each side of the freeway, and they can also function as a new path providing pedestrian access between Dublin and Pleasanton over the freeway.  The new station was included in the original EIR for the Dublin/Pleasanton extension, certified by the BART Board of Directors in 1990.  The station was postponed, however, and the extension opened in 1997 without it.  An agreement was later negotiated to finance the station with a mixture of public and private funds.  Construction of the station finally commenced in 2006, but the planned opening date was delayed a year when it was determined that the pedestrian bridge welds were unsafe.

BART’s press release and some news reports describe West Dublin/Pleasanton as the first “infill” station since Embarcadero opened in 1976 — in the sense that the station was built along existing track, rather than by the usual procedure of extending track and creating a new terminus.  While it does fit the technical definition, filling in a gap between two existing stations on a fully operational line, use of the term “infill” is slightly misleading here — not just because the station had already been conceived and developed as part of the original extension, but also because the word creates certain expectations in terms of station area planning.

I have long been a supporter of constructing infill BART stations, at least in those promising locations where there could be substantial benefit to doing so.  Despite the long distances that separate adjacent BART stations, there are relatively few such locations, in part because of technical feasibility and the fact that much of the track outside of downtown stations follows path-of-least-resistance rights of way that maintain a measure of distance from the neighborhoods they serve.  When infill station treatment is warranted, the benefits principally take the form of reinvigorating a neighborhood on or near the line while improving access for current and future transit-dependent residents — even if that means slightly increasing the commute time of a rider who boards the train at an outer ring suburb.  A quality infill station site presents the opportunity to transform a neighborhood into a regional destination by improving urban design, increasing density, and making transit the most natural and desirable way to access the neighborhood for residents and visitors alike.

As much as I would like to praise BART for recognizing the wisdom of pursuing infill stations over far-flung extensions, the West Dublin/Pleasanton station cannot truly be cited as a welcome first example in that vein, even if the BART press release has portrayed it that way.  That West Dublin/Pleasanton can even be termed “infill” at all is mere chronological happenstance, and is not reflective of an encouraging shift in BART’s approach to capital projects.  The station is the late arrival of an older concept that does not closely fit the infill station model described above.  Perhaps more importantly, the station falls flat in its execution, which I had the opportunity to explore first-hand when journeying to the station site on this cold, rainy weekend with intrepid urban explorer SF Cityscape.

Dublin/Pleasanton station, origins by mode in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. Modes: walk (purple), bicycle (green), transit (blue), solo drive/carpool (red), dropoff (orange). Map courtesy of BART.

Dublin/Pleasanton station, origins by mode in San Joaquin County. Map courtesy of BART.

We should recognize first that although the new station has been praised as a catalyst for smart growth, its principal purpose is not to create a new livable community where residents can walk to the station, but rather to augment parking supply for commuters that drive to the station.  The Dublin/Pleasanton terminus sits at the eastern edge of the region and therefore has a large catchment area that includes not just Dublin and Pleasanton, but also Livermore, Tracy, and southern Contra Costa County (see maps above and to the right).  This helps to make Dublin/Pleasanton the busiest suburban station, as well as the busiest terminal station, in the BART system.  But approximately 70 percent of riders who access the station from home arrive in a vehicle hunting for a parking spot, and the station’s roughly 2,800 parking spaces can fill up quickly in the morning.

Enter the West Dublin/Pleasanton station, which adds 1,190 new parking spaces in two garages to supplement that existing supply, with 722 spaces on the Dublin side and 468 spaces on the Pleasanton side.  Because the two stations are only about 1.5 miles apart, they can function as a single unit with increased parking capacity.  They could even have similar catchment areas as existing riders redistribute their travel patterns, although more Contra Costa commuters will be attracted to the new station because of its proximity to Interstate 680.

Courtesy of Ampelon.

The fact that parking is the priority at West Dublin/Pleasanton is evident from the design of the station area.  The land available for transit-oriented development (TOD) would be limited, even in the best-case scenario, by existing nearby uses and the station’s location in the median of Interstate 580.  What has been built, however, is not even the best-case scenario, because parcels immediately adjacent to the station have been devoted to the two parking garages.  Moreover, the garage is placed at a distance from the station, creating awkward angular leftover parcels that are not ideally suited for more productive use, wasting the most valuable land that is closest to the station.  The garages anchor the walkways, but it is unfortunate to see that this overall method of design persists when best practices call for office and retail uses to be closest to the station, residential units beyond that, and parking at the periphery of the walkable radius.

Other than the parking garages, land adjacent to the station remains empty for the time being:

There will be some TOD built on these parcels, including 210 residential units in Dublin, 350 residential units in Pleasanton, and additional hotel, office, and retail space that is planned.  But the garage placement precludes maximization of high density uses on parcels closest to the station.  In truth, this is a mild amount of development for a rapid transit station, and it falls well short of what would be built if this station were part of a newly constructed extension.

Given the station’s constraints, the connections provided to local bus service are not that bad.  A comfortable shelter served by LAVTA’s recently launched Tri-Valley Rapid bus service, located on the Pleasanton side, is reasonably accessible from the station, although one must walk past or through the parking garage to reach the stop.  On the Dublin side, a line of shelters was installed along the edge of the parking garage within a reasonable walk, although the number of shelters overstates the level of transit service provided; currently only one bus stops there.

As SF Cityscape (an ever observant and insightful commenter on wayfinding) pointed out on our excursion, there are opportunities for the new station’s signage to convey information more simply and intuitively — which became comically clear when one of the few people we encountered inquired how one might get to the station from the far side of a parking garage.  But a particularly egregious design error on the Pleasanton side was the lack of a crosswalk linking the station and the Rapid bus stop to Stoneridge Shopping Center.  Given that the shopping center is one of few walkable destinations from this station, this is a natural location to provide a crosswalk to facilitate pedestrian passage.  Instead, pedestrians sprinted frantically across a five-lane arterial to access transit from the shopping center.

Bottom Line: To the extent that it encourages commuters who now drive to ride BART instead, West Dublin/Pleasanton will be a positive development.  The station has been characterized in fashionable terms as an innovative infill station spurring smart growth — which it will, to a certain extent.  But this project is at heart the postponed arrival of an older concept that does not epitomize good urban design.  Expectations that this station will prove to be a model of 21st century transit-oriented development should be tempered accordingly.

BART has released its 2008 Station Profile Study, updating its last study from 1998. The data, which is collected from rider surveys, is BART’s version of the census. It reveals the demographic profile of BART riders, and it provides valuable information on how riders use the BART system: where they are coming from, where they are going, how they travel from their home a nearby station, and how they travel to their destination after riding BART. The data, which is available both system-wide and for each individual station, confirms what we know anecdotally about the role of urban vs. suburban stations: 81% of riders at 16th/Mission walked to BART, while merely 3% walked to Orinda; 72% of riders drive to North Concord/Martinez, but a miniscule 1% drive to Powell. I plan to do some number-crunching on the data in the future; but for now, I wanted to share some interesting results and initial impressions. In addition to clarifying how BART riders currently make use of the system, the survey data reveals how the Bay Area could better take advantage of this critical regional asset than we do today. The lesson we learn from the data is the lesson that we already knew: we need to do a better job of linking transit and land use, particularly along BART’s heavy rail metro lines. This is something that we are always talking about, and the BART surveys do suggest that the region is moving in the right direction in terms of promoting transit-oriented development. Bicycle trips from home to station bumped up from 3% to 4%, while transit trips declined from 23% to 15%. Nearly half (49%) of riders access stations by car (34% solo, 10% dropoff, 5% carpool), the same as in 1998. However, more people are now walking to BART stations from their home than they were a decade ago: 31% in 2008, compared to 26% in 1998. More people are also walking from BART to work or other destination: 74% in 2008, compared to 67% in 1998. Furthermore, at 6 major CBD stations (12th St, 19th St, Lake Merritt, Berkeley, Montgomery, Powell) and 5 other mostly urban stations (Ashby, North Berkeley, El Cerrito Plaza, Colma, and Balboa Park), home origin points increased by 10% or more, while car and transit origins decreased. More home-based pedestrian trips at downtown stations reflect a trend toward urban/downtown infill housing, epitomized by Jerry Brown’s 10K housing initiative in Downtown Oakland and San Francisco’s Rincon Hill plan.

Better Stations, Better Neighborhoods

But the survey data also shows that we can still do much better on both ends of the stick — both by augmenting service where it is needed, and by increasing density on valuable parcels adjacent to stations, in places where land use is currently not as intense as it should be. Contrast home origin locations for riders using 16th Street Mission with home origins for riders using North Concord/Martinez Station. The map on the left for 16th Street shows a dense residential population walking, biking, or taking transit to the station (median of 0.46-mile trip); the map on the right for North Concord/Martinez shows a dispersed ridership that mostly drives to the station (median of 6.04-mile trip):

Home origin locations, by mode. Left: 16th/Mission (circle = 1/2 mile radius).
Right: North Concord/Martinez (outer circle = 1 mile radius). Purple = walking,
green = bicycle; blue = transit, orange = drop off; red = car. Courtesy of BART.

The data also conveys another idea: while commuters are willing to travel a longer distance from their home to a station, they prefer their place of work to be more immediately located to a station. This principle should influence how we design transit-oriented development, and it should be taken into account in all station area specific plans that cities might prepare. To the extent that a “transit village” houses both commercial space and significant residential stock, the parcels immediately adjacent to the station are best reserved for significant office space with ground floor retail (perhaps destinational in nature, or of regional appeal), while outer parcels are well-suited for residential or mixed use, with ground floor commercial space that serves the neighborhood. All or most of this development should be located in a one-half mile radius of the station. This suggests that BART’s current practice of reserving station-adjacent land for large above-ground parking garages should be corrected at existing stations and avoided for any new stations that are built.

Filling In the Urban Core

We can also infer from the data prime locations to augment service and increase the value of the system by constructing infill stations. An infill station is under construction at West Dublin/Pleasanton, filling the long gap between Castro Valley and Dublin/Pleasanton, and that station will anchor a transit village. But we can also build infill stations to bring under-served urban neighborhoods (where there is already a transit-dependent population) into the fold of the system.  BART stations are closely-spaced in the San Francisco and Oakland CBDs, but they are usually at least a few miles apart in the suburbs. This has prompted the observation that the BART system is not quite a proper urban subway, nor quite commuter rail, but rather is a hybrid of the two. Within the urban core, but outside of the CBDs, the stations are more closely-spaced than in the suburbs — but not as closely-spaced as they really ought to be to properly serve the corridor. BART’s data confirms the rule of thumb that most people are willing to walk to a station within one-half mile but become disinterested in walking distances greater than one-half mile. Ideally, then, BART’s urban stations would be spaced so that mostly everyone living on the corridor is within one-half mile of a station. That is often not the case, because the system was originally designed to facilitate quick trips from suburbs to urban CBDs that would be competitive timewise with freeway driving. The result is that many urban areas outside the CBDs, even those neighborhoods on the right-of-way, lack convenient (i.e. easy non-vehicular) access to BART.

Courtesy of BART.

Nowhere is this more true than in Oakland, southeast of the lake, where a roughly 7-mile segment of the BART corridor parallel to Interstate 880 and East 14th Street is served by just two BART stations, Fruitvale and Coliseum. The fabric of East Oakland grows increasingly suburban as you move toward the high-numbered avenues; but the area is still denser than most other places in BART’s domain, and it deserves better service. There is no station in the 3-mile stretch between Lake Merritt and Fruitvale, which means that BART trains whisk right past the Eastlake and San Antonio neighborhoods. This is one the densest sections of the East Bay, but the local residents are in large part not riding BART. This can be inferred from the survey data. Check out the map excerpted above; orange dots represent residential points of origin. There is a gray hole with no orange dots, roughly midway between the Lake Merritt and Fruitvale stations, indicating a lack of rider surveys from that area. A more fine-grained analysis shows that the highest density of riders using Lake Merritt Station live north of 8th Avenue; similarly, the highest density of riders using Fruitvale Station live south of 25th Avenue. The transit-dependent population that lives in the middle zone currently relies on AC Transit to get around rather than BART; but high population density, coupled with the presence of nearby commercial districts, suggest that this would be a successful infill station.

Courtesy of BART.

Another natural location for an infill station is 30th Street/Mission, which would close in an almost 2-mile gap between 24th Street and Glen Park, the longest stretch of BART track in San Francisco without a station. As shown at the map at right, the survey data demonstrates a hole in ridership near 30th/Mission. The hole is less pronounced than that near San Antonio — in part because of the shorter distance to nearby stations, and in part because this intersection is already a nexus of several Muni routes, many of which connect directly to 24th Street or Glen Park. Indeed, the fine-grained data shows that the densest ridership at 24th Street lives north of Cesar Chavez; similarly, the densest ridership at Glen Park lives south of Holly Park. Residents near 30th/Mission that use BART generally choose 24th Street station, but they mostly access the station via Muni or drop off, rather than by walking. The station at 30th Street would have the benefit of drawing riders from neighborhoods like Bernal Heights and Baja Noe, further removed from Mission Street, thus opening up a new cross-section of residential neighborhoods (and an additional commercial segment of Mission Street) to BART service. The station site also presents nice opportunities for transit-oriented development, both at the large Safeway parking lot and at smaller vacant lots scattered throughout the area.

Posted in BART, East Bay, Oakland, Regional Rail, San Francisco, Transit Villages ]]> http://transbayblog.com/2009/05/10/bart-2008-surveys-tell-the-story-of-bay-area-regional-growth/feed/ 16 transbay bart_home-work-origin 16st_north-concord_home-origins lakemerritt-fruitvale-countywide_origin 24st-glenpark-countywide_origin http://transbayblog.com/2009/02/04/unlocking-schlage/ http://transbayblog.com/2009/02/04/unlocking-schlage/#comments Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:37:30 +0000 Eric http://transbayblog.com/?p=2677 Continue reading »]]> Last night, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency unanimously approved a plan to redevelop the Schlage Lock site in Visitacion Valley, in the southeastern corner of San Francisco. The planning process for this site, combined with myriad delays, have occupied the better part of a decade. Schlage Lock’s operations at the factory were a major source of manufacturing jobs in Visitacion Valley since 1926, and in 1974, Ingersoll Rand Corporation acquired the operation. The plant formally closed in 1999, and in 2000, a controversial proposal for a Home Depot on the site was opposed by community members, who thereafter were encouraged to step up and have a say in how this substantial chunk of vacant land in their neighborhood would be developed. Interim zoning was established to prevent big box retail from settling into the property, and a community planning process for the site was initiated that ultimately led to the creation of a Strategic Concept Plan in 2002. But an obstacle remained — and not the neighbors, who, in the case of Visitacion Valley, actually eagerly welcomed the opportunity to revitalize their often overlooked corner of San Francisco with an influx of housing and reinvestment. No, the obstacle this time was Ingersoll Rand, who was embroiled in protracted litigation with Universal Paragon Corporation. At that time, Ingersoll Rand owned the 12.3-acre Schlage Lock site, and Universal Paragon owned the the adjacent six-acre former Southern Pacific rail yard; their dispute was centered on the groundwater and soil contamination resulting from Schlage Lock’s operations.

The planning process was stuck in limbo once the Strategic Concept Plan was adopted — until 2005, when Supervisor Sophie Maxwell pushed for the initiation of a Visitacion Valley redevelopment survey area that was in turn established in June 2005. Community workshops continued through 2007, and the conceptual design for the redevelopment area evolved into the current form of the plan. June 2008 was a landmark timepoint for the redevelopment — for not only had the Redevelopment Agency completed a draft Environmental Impact Report, but Ingersoll Rand finally agreed to sell the Schlage Lock property to Universal Paragon for $450 million. Under the agreement, Universal Paragon assumed most of the $25 million costs for cleaning up the site, and Universal Paragon terminated a long-standing contamination lawsuit it had filed against Ingersoll Rand. Ultimate buildout of the redevelopment plan lies on the other side of this economic downturn and the costly cleanup of toxic contamination — but can we just say finally? A full decade after Schlage Lock operations ceased, the dream to redevelop this land revitalize Visitacion Valley moves closer to being realized. The Redevelopment Agency has now adopted environmental findings, approved the Design for Development, and approved the Redevelopment Plan. The next steps in the process will be to seek approval from the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor.

Aerial view of Schlage Lock site. Courtesy of S.F. Redevelopment Agency.

Schlage Lock plan area map. Courtesy of S.F. Redevelopment Agency.

The 46-acre Visitacion Valley Redevelopment Plan Area is divided into two zones: Zone 1, which is the main 20-acre Schlage Lock site (owned by Universal Paragon) under the purview of the Redevelopment Agency, and Zone 2, 26 acres consisting of adjacent segments of Bayshore and Leland Avenue. The plan may be the perfect embodiment of what one might hope to achieve with city planning. The site epitomizes transit-oriented development, bounded as it is on the north and west by the T-Third Muni Metro line on Bayshore, and on the east by the Caltrain tracks; the southern boundary is the San Mateo County line. Local trips along the Third Street corridor originate from Arleta and Sunnydale T-Third stations, which are both located on the border of the site. Bayshore Caltrain provides regional connections, and it will one day be refashioned into an intermodal when the T-Third is extended from its current Sunnydale terminus. As other redevelopment plans in this section of the city take shape, notably that planned for Hunters Point, Bayshore is poised to become an important southside hub if bus rapid transit is constructed via Geneva Avenue to connect Balboa Park to the Hunters Point Shipyard, which may also be a natural light rail link. In addition, the contaminated Schlage Lock site is a substantial barrier that separates Visitacion Valley from Little Hollywood. Filling in and developing this site would result in a through-extension of the street grid, strengthening connections to adjacent neighborhoods. It would also furnish a direct, apparent, and intuitive pedestrian and bicycle link from the Leland Avenue commercial strip to Bayshore Caltrain. Such a link is synergistic with the Better Streets plan to improve the Leland Avenue streetscape, which would be funded using the proceeds from the Visitacion Valley Community Facilities and Infrastructure Fee.

Leland Avenue streetscape. Courtesy of S.F. Planning Dept.

The redevelopment plan is rather ambitious, and the concept is a fine one, informed by a desire to generate local construction and retail jobs, and to revitalize the area with facade improvements and better marketing of the commercial district. Given the wealth of nearby transit, and the promise for creating a new hub and destination in the southeastern corner of the city, the plan may fall somewhat short in that it could be even denser. Zone 2, Leland Avenue and Bayshore — which contain almost 200,000 square feet devoted to retail and PDR (production, distribution, and repair) uses, but fewer than 200 residential units — make up the neighborhood’s commercial spine. The plan would emphasize this role through infill of underutilized parcels with 26,000 square feet of additional retail, and a modest increase of a few hundred housing units. The majority of the development is planned for Zone 1, on Universal Paragon’s property. The plan contemplates a one-acre Schlage Greenway lined with residences, in the spirit of the Hayes Green, along with three additional parks. The development plan for Zone 1 would add 1,250 new homes and 105,000 square feet of retail, with at least 25% affordable (as either stand-alone or inclusionary). Mixed-use buildings would be constructed along the extensions of Visitacion, Leland, and Sunnydale Avenues through the Schlage Lock site, and the site at the corner of Bayshore and Sunnydale (the southwest corner of the project) has been identified as a promising corner for a 40,000-50,000 square foot neighborhood grocer in the ground floor of another mixed-use building. The plan contemplates structures of 55 foot height limit in most parts of the plan area, and 65 feet at important gateway points. Only two parcels just west of the Caltrain tracks would support taller buildings (85 foot limit) that would act as visual cues. Lastly, the plan would retain an historic resource: an office building from the Schlage factory, to be reused as community space.

Courtesy of S.F. Redevelopment Agency.

Earlier this week, we spent some time delving into SB 375, the landmark Senate Bill that recently passed through the legislature and, at the time of writing this post, awaits only the Governor’s signature. The bill unifies transportation and land use planning, housing, and global warming into one package, with the ultimate aim of encouraging dense growth near good transit. The bill would leverage transit oriented development as a crucial tool in the struggle to fulfill AB 32′s mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. The very brief two-sentence version of the bill: SB 375 requires that each region in California create a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) that details where it makes sense to accommodate new growth near transit. If a new development, appropriately located, is classified as a Transit Priority Project (TPP) — meaning that it is sufficiently dense and close to a transit route that receives frequent service — that project would be exempt from studying certain environmental impacts under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). If you haven’t already done so, please read this earlier post for full details on SB 375.

SB 375 is a pretty exciting piece of legislation, but we still have a lot of work to do. Certain individuals who occupy seats in the California legislature — McClintock, we are looking at you — are eternally captivated by the suburban non-planning of the 1950s, opining that:

Most people don’t want to live in dense urban cores. Most people want a little elbow room – they want a yard for their children to play in. They want a little grass, a little garden, a little breathing room they can call their own. And who the hell are you to tell people they can’t?

Based on McClintock’s remark, you might think SB 375 is all about burning single-family homes to the ground and replacing them with high-rises. This is of course completely untrue: suburbs are not going anywhere. Rather than thinking of this as removing the option of the traditional suburb, SB 375 is properly viewed as adding a new option, by making the increasingly desirable transit-oriented lifestyle more widely available. But the trick lies in lining up the commitment to implement it.

It’s important to keep in mind both what SB 375 requires, and what it does not require. Even when the Governor signs the bill into law, it would not necessarily be an automatic panacea for the poor land use planning that has turned California into the congested, auto-oriented place it is now. Under SB 375, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) — which is the state agency responsible for implementing and enforcing AB 32 — would oversee the planning activities of all metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in California by: (i) informing each MPO about what the emissions targets are for its region, and (ii) evaluating the SCS that each MPO produces, to determine whether the SCS actually realizes those emissions targets. In the earlier post about SB 375, I raised, but postponed the answer to, the following question: what if an SCS fails to meet CARB’s emissions reduction targets? If that happens, the MPO who produced that SCS must provide what the bill calls an Alternative Planning Strategy (APS). The APS would document what changes would need to be made — in terms of infrastructure, development patterns, and so forth — to achieve the emissions reduction targets. Unlike the SCS, an APS would remain separate from the Regional Transportation Plan. Although California’s MPOs would be required under SB 375 to produce an APS (assuming that the SCS fails to meet the targets), they are not actually required to implement the APS, because doing so may go beyond the scope of what funding will become available. So, for regions whose SCS does not meet CARB’s targets, the APS is less a plan adopted with the intent of being carried out, and more of a goal to ideally work toward achieving.

It’s not that SB 375 is altogether free of requirements. Each MPO must undergo the process of producing and reviewing its SCS, which will basically be a growth blueprint that responds to the region’s transportation plan. But the language in SB 375 is careful to expressly point out that it will in no way encroach upon the authority that local governments have traditionally enjoyed to regulate land use — so, despite the requirements, it is likely that the extent to which SB 375 is successful in transforming land use patterns will be based more on incentives, rather than mandates. Starting in 2012, regional funding will be targeted toward transit-oriented development that is consistent with the SCS. In addition, projects that fall under the TPP classification are exempt from the need to review certain types of environmental impacts under CEQA. This would encourage more transit-oriented development, by streamlining the time-consuming and expensive CEQA process only for the type of dense, compact growth that is consistent with the SCS. And then there is the overriding, less tangible incentive: as Californians are hit harder by gasoline prices that will rise in the long-term, and as the need to push back against climate change continues to press into our minds, it becomes increasingly apparent that we must take steps to correct the planning mistakes of previous generations.

It is critical that all public entities involved in this process — cities, counties, and MPOs all over the state of California, as well as CARB itself — take this especially seriously, until enough time has passed to add some perspective illuminating how beneficial smart growth will be in the long-term. CARB, as the agency that both issues regulations and provides state oversight of local transportation planning, is entrusted with a great deal of discretion — but this is not necessarily a cause for comfort, at least not yet. This past summer, CARB released a draft scoping plan, which basically describes strategies that should be implemented to move California towards AB 32 compliance. These strategies include: energy efficiency, solar roofs, green buildings, the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, implementing and expanding Pavley standards for vehicles, and high speed rail. However, the draft scoping plan falls short in that it understates the importance of land use planning. It fails to provide any criteria by which to judge whether a new development project brings us closer to or further from AB 32 compliance, particularly in terms of whether the development is most naturally accessed by car or by transit/on foot. (Is the project a multiple-story mixed-use development that activates the street and is within walking distance of a train station, with limited parking hidden under and behind the buildings? Or is it a strip mall with a free parking lot fronting directly onto the street, distant from transit and hostile to pedestrians?) Basically, the report gives lip service to the idea that smart land use could be related to reducing emissions, but it provides no clear policy direction. The final scoping plan should be amended to address this deficiency. It could start with SB 375′s definition of Transit Priority Project, but a more nuanced set of criteria would be preferable.

Reducing transportation emissions cannot stop with setting more stringent standards for vehicles. We must adopt smarter growth patterns that place density near transit, so that Californians will be encouraged to adapt their auto-centered lifestyles accordingly. Call it “social engineering” if you must, but one only need familiarize oneself briefly with major urban centers — where car ownership is low, and transit ridership and pedestrian activity are high — to realize what a powerful tool dense, well-designed, transit supportive land use can be for reducing vehicle miles traveled, and in turn for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is a statewide issue, and most parts of California are behind the Bay Area in this respect — so the directive to cities and counties to pursue compact growth should come from the State, even if if the details are most appropriately worked out on the local level. But the main point here is that while SB 375 includes many useful, thought-provoking changes, this is not the end of the story. Only time will tell whether the incentives that SB 375 provides will prove strong enough to significantly transform the landscape of California’s cities.

In August 2006, the California legislature passed the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), and the Governor approved it one month later, on September 27, 2006. AB 32 aims to transform California into a global leader in the climate change battle, requiring that greenhouse gas emissions levels be reduced to 1990 levels by the year 2020. AB 32 charges the California Air Resources Board (CARB) with several tasks, including: (1) adopt and enforce regulations that require the reporting of emissions; (2) create a scoping plan to provide a strategy for reducing emissions; and (3) adopt and enforce regulations that achieve AB 32′s emission reduction mandates. AB 32 requires that CARB adopt such regulations via an open public process. It further requires CARB to consult other state agencies, particularly the Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Commission, and it encourages CARB to study other emissions reductions programs, both domestic and foreign, when crafting its own plan.

We will need to implement a varied array of programs to achieve AB 32′s targets, but transportation accounts for over 40% of greenhouse gas emissions statewide, and almost 30% of emissions come from automobiles and light trucks — so reducing transportation emissions is a major piece of the puzzle. Of particular interest here is how smart land use and transportation planning can be implemented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the face of California’s projected population growth. Legal challenges will provide the mechanism by which CARB’s AB 32 regulations can be enforced, so the momentum has been building to enact state legislation that will strengthen the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to make it a more effective tool for enforcing AB 32.

Enter SB 375, authored by Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). First introduced in February 2007 and passed just last week by the state legislature, SB 375 now awaits the Governor’s signature. SB 375 is a complicated, multifaceted bill, but its overall message could not be clearer: transportation, housing, and land use — although traditionally placed in different thought boxes — are, in fact, closely intertwined, and the intersection area should be leveraged as a powerful tool to protect the environment and reduce emissions. In that sense, SB 375 is rightly hailed as a landmark piece of legislation.

The first section of SB 375 focuses on transportation planning — specifically, on the activities of California’s metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs). Here in the Bay Area, our local MPO is the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. SB 375 requires each MPO to create a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) component to its Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). Based on the RTP’s planning vision, the SCS for a particular region would evaluate where housing growth in that region can be accommodated in a way that encourages people to spend more time on transit and less time in the automobile, thus reducing emissions from automobiles and light trucks. CARB will provide each MPO with region-specific targets for reducing emissions by a certain amount by the year 2020 and by 2035. CARB will then review the RTP-SCS adopted by each of California’s MPOs to determine if the emission reduction targets are met. Starting in the year 2012, transit-oriented development that is consistent with the SCS would then be eligible for regional funding; and in order to incentivize smart growth, these funds would not be available for non-compliant projects. But what happens if a particular SCS does not meet CARB’s emission reduction targets? More on that in an upcoming post.

The second section of SB 375 is about housing. State law requires cities and counties to include a housing element in their general plans, which describes how each local jurisdiction plans to rezone its land so that it can house its fair share of projected regional growth at different income levels, as set forth in the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). SB 375 would enact a number of technical changes, including a different schedule for carrying out the RHNA process. The main goal underlying these amendments is to coordinate transportation and housing planning — in particular, to allocate housing in a way that is consistent with the growth blueprint that each MPO lays out in its RTP-SCS.

The third and last section of SB 375 concerns the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). This is my personal favorite section of the bill, because CEQA reform is absolutely central to this discussion. CEQA demands that study of environmental impacts be carried out before going through with major projects, and that the studies be released in the form of an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) that is made available for public commentary; the EIR is then to be revised to respond to that commentary. Producing (and in many cases, defending the validity of) an EIR requires a lot of time and expense. Making the EIR process less time-consuming for the type of projects we would like to see more of — dense transit-oriented development — will provide an incentive to build more TOD, and to stop building the isolated exurban residential subdivisions that generate more automobile trips. One of the great things about SB 375 is that it does exactly that.

Cities and counties, when pursuing developments that comply with the SCS that has been prepared for their region, should focus on constructing “transit priority projects” (TPPs) that are sufficiently dense and close to transit. TPPs must meet several criteria, including: (1) at least half the square footage must be residential use; (2) floor area ratio (FAR) no less than 0.75; (3) at least 20 units per acre; and (4) within a half-mile of a major transit stop or a high quality transit corridor, which can include a bus line with peak headways of no more than 15 minutes. In other words, what we think of as solid transit-oriented development would likely qualify as a TPP. So what is the point of laying out this definition? The point is that SB 375 would implement the following change: if a TPP is consistent with a region’s SCS, and if it satisfies other necessary conditions (such as no interference with wetlands or the habitat of an endangered species), then a TPP may be approved with less rigorous environmental review.

In particular, two major types of impacts need not be reviewed: growth-inducing impacts, and greenhouse gas emissions from new automobile trips that the project will generate. It may seem ironic that a bill whose entire point is to help implement emissions reduction would authorize less rigorous environmental review of any greenhouse gas emissions at all. These impacts could be taken into account generally in the SCS, which provides a blueprint for where to focus housing growth so as to encourage transit use and and reduce emissions. But the point is to incentivize the right type of growth, by streamlining environmental review for development projects that are TPPs and are consistent with the SCS (i.e. is reasonably dense and near good transit). Low-density residential subdivisions built on farmland, which would likely be accessible only by car and would thus increase emissions, would not enjoy these exemptions. The exact requirements are more technical than what I have described here. But hopefully this summary fleshes out SB 375 in a more meaningful way, without jumping too much into the minutiae of CEQA.

Check back soon for another post on this topic. Until then, readers are encouraged to contact the Governor to encourage him to sign SB 375 into law once a state budget is finally approved. Also, my apologies for the mess of acronyms in this post. You can blame your senator for that!

But the most revealing part of the article was not the part glorifying San Francisco, but rather, the part indicating that the Bay Area, taken as a whole, could be much more walkable than it is now. The Bay Area region fell in third place, “well below the greater Washington, D.C., and Boston regions,” according to the Chron. This reflects the fact that while the Washington, D.C. area has allowed Metro to shape dense land use patterns near stations (even for stations outside of the central core), the Bay Area has been slower to allow BART to have the same effect. We should be careful about discussing density and walkability in the same breath, as they are not equivalent. An older suburban downtown whose buildings front directly onto the street is quite walkable, if not particularly dense, and on the flip side, high-rises alone cannot make a neighborhood truly walkable if the street level fails to provide safety and amenities for pedestrians. But well-planned density that is sensitive to the street provides the extra bodies that make a walkable district that much more bustling and successful.

Courtesy Beyond DC.

Consider Bethesda, Maryland, pictured at right. Located on the D.C. Metro Red Line, Bethesda is a great example of how dense, walkable districts can bloom around rail nodes, even in an otherwise suburban setting. (Check out this Google satellite map of Bethesda. It shows how the densely urbanized streets that are within easy access of a Metro station are very clearly delineated from the suburban neighborhoods further from the line.) The Bay Area, by contrast, is adamantly low-rise, not just in the suburbs, but also in most neighborhoods in San Francisco and Oakland. In general, only the urban downtown districts make any attempt to reach for the sky — so we have not truly leveraged the potential inherent in most of the rail nodes scattered around the Bay Area. The idea of mid-rises or even shorter high-rises at places like San Leandro and Millbrae BART stations might seem unthinkable — but the Bay Area’s conception of cities, walking, and transit would be quite different if even suburban cities had permitted miniature skylines to sprout at their rail stations. It is also interesting to note that the different development patterns have given rise to contrasting effects on transit ridership. Both BART and Metro are slightly over 100 miles long, and the two systems are of comparable age (Metro is just a few years younger). And yet, while BART reported an average of 367,570 daily riders last quarter, Metrorail set a record last Friday, July 11 of 854,638 riders — a higher ridership than BART can even support as long as its service patterns require operation of four routes through a single transbay tube. What explains the pronounced difference? The fact that Metro has twice the number of stations as BART for approximately the same amount of track certainly goes a long way toward making the system accessible to more people. But another factor (though certainly not the only other factor) that explains the difference must be that Metro has helped give rise to dense, walkable cities, which feed the system with a natural ridership base that is largely missing from BART because the land use around BART stations (already too few to begin with) is often not that intense.

Courtesy City of Union City.

Efforts have been made all around the Bay Area, with varying degrees of success, to transform rail-accessible downtowns into greater and denser places, including at BART’s Richmond, El Cerrito del Norte, Hayward, and South San Francisco stations. A 450-unit TOD with retail just broke ground today at Pleasant Hill BART, and still another phase of the project will add about 300,000 square feet of office and conference space. Meanwhile, one station south of Pleasant Hill, a transit village at Walnut Creek BART proposed by BRE Properties would include a mixed use development featuring about 600 residential units, office and retail space, fourteen bays for County Connection buses, and the implementation of market-rate pricing in the BART parking garage; the project, which the City Council has greeted with some skepticism, is up for environmental review. San Leandro has compiled a strategy for transit-oriented development, and one of the largest transit village plans — including about 75,000 square feet of retail and commercial space and close to 2000 units of housing — will crown a confluence of BART, commuter rail lines, and bus routes at an intermodal Union City Station, a rendering of which is pictured directly above. On the Peninsula, Redwood City has grand plans of downtown renewal centered on its Caltrain station, but despite plans to add about 2500 homes, residential development has been somewhat slow to trickle in. Further east, along the congested Interstate 580 corridor, a few projects in the pipeline will add hotel rooms, retail space, and close to 900 rental and condo units near the infill West Dublin/Pleasanton BART station currently under construction.

Transit villages have also been planned at Oakland BART stations, but here I am more critical — in part because the potential is greater, but also because when discussing these developments in Oakland, the conversation is at least as much about urban revitalization as it is about TOD. At the 19th Street Station in downtown Oakland, a couple thousand new homes (provided through several projects discussed on this blog in the past) will help breathe new life into the neighboring Uptown and Valdez downtown subdistricts — but such a transit-rich downtown location would ideally support much denser housing than the collection of Forest City low- to mid-rises currently under construction. Meanwhile, at the Fruitvale BART station, plans to build retail and over a thousand combined units at Fruitvale Gateway and Phase II of the transit village project — both of which would supply some of the new residents and additional vitality needed to fulfill the historical prophecy of the Fruitvale District as Oakland’s second downtown — have not moved forward, leaving just the 47 residential units and a substantial amount of commercial space included in Phase I of the transit village. At MacArthur Station, plans have long been in the works to build densely over BART’s surface parking lots, but they have morphed from the originally envisioned 800 units, including a 20-story tower and a 22-story tower — to 675 units in four- to six-story buildings, joined by retail and a seven-story parking garage. Here is a rendering of that project:

Courtesy MacArthur Transit Community Partners.

In the past couple of years, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has done a better job of encouraging cities to pursue dense growth near transit nodes — although these plans, as the above discussion indicates, have not nearly risen to the level of my personal dream of miniature skylines dotting the Bay Area, linked by high-quality, frequent rail transit service. But there has been some progress, and some mixed results as well. Increasing density within walking distance of BART and Caltrain stations will make central downtown districts more walkable, successful public spaces, and ultimately, we should go further than we have to date toward maximizing the potential of these rail connections. This whole discussion began with the announcement that San Francisco proper is America’s most walkable city. We certainly can and should celebrate this fact, but let us not stop there. Regional problems have regional solutions — and we cannot overlook the importance of reproducing San Francisco’s success, to the extent that we can, in cities across the Bay Area.