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From: Dan Quirk To: Clerk of the Board Subject: Public Comment for
8/7/2020 Transportation, Regional Planning, and Borders Committees
Joint Meeting Date: Monday, August 3, 2020 8:09:55 PM
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of SANDAG. Do not click links or open attachments unless you are expecting the content.
Please submit the following comment for the public record for this meeting. Thank you.
To the Transportation, Regional Planning, and Borders Committees,
SANDAG’s Big 5 Moves are deeply misguided, will cost billions, and fail to account for rapidly changing and improving technology transportation trends driven by the private sector. The two most important trends are the rise of zero-emission electric vehicles and autonomous vehicle technology. Notably, California-based Tesla, which is a leader in both trends, has quickly become the most valuable auto/mobility company in the world. There is a strong probability that the future of transportation and mobility is heavily dominated by transportation-as-a-service (TaaS), driven primarily by private companies. Rather than waste billions on the Big 5 Moves, SANDAG would be far better off pausing and waiting for the private sector to further advance these technologies, while looking for smart opportunities to amplify their efforts. Renowned speaker and Stanford lecturer Tony Seba has given many speeches on this future, including to the North Carolina Department of Transportation in early 2020. The fascinating video link can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y916mxoio0E
In the debate of cars versus transit, SANDAG’s own data and reports clearly indicate that transit usage in San Diego County is very small and has seen significant declines over the past several years, as have most other cities in the United States. Specifically, in the north part of the county, where the population has much lower density, the ridership numbers of the Coaster train are shockingly low, accounting for just 1/20th of 1% of overall commuter volume in the County. It is the least utilized line in the County by a significant margin. Given that the tracks run along the eroding coastal bluffs in Del Mar, this particular line has taken on a more urgent priority for many who live nearby. A group of us have put together a website that clearly lays out the data and low ridership numbers and poses the possibility of converting the train tracks into what one day could become the most popular trail in the country. Learn more at https://coaster-rail-to-trail.org/.
Respectfully,
From: Craig Jones To: Clerk of the Board Cc: Clough, Jane Subject: SANDAG Transportation/ Committees Aug. 7, 2020 - Agenda Item 2 - submittal of comment and questions Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 2:33:29 PM
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Please accept this submittal for this Friday's Transportation, Regional Planning, and Borders Committees public meeting, Agenda item 2:
ref. staff report Attachment 1, Figures 8 and 10; and text, Attachment pages 11, 12 et. seq. - it looks like the complete corridors to be developed are planned to use the existing freeway/highway rights of way? Are there services and routes (whether rail or true BRT) that would not follow existing freeways/highways? If existing auto freeways and highways are exclusively to be used, I see this as a significant barrier to an effective system since automobile freeways do not interface efficiently or effectively with either residential communities or employment centers ref. staff report Attachment 1, Figure 13 and related text - is there any really true BRT involved in this proposal? What is "next gen rapid" bus - again, on the existing freeways - not really exclusive BRT travel ways?
Thank you, I look forward to these questions being addressed.
Craig Jones
From: Rick Bates To: Clerk of the Board Cc: Duncan McFetridge Subject: PUBLIC COMMENT re August 7, Joint Meeting, Item number 2. The Vision for the 2021 Regional Plan Date: Thursday, August 6, 2020 10:33:47 AM Attachments: Letter to SANDAG re Transportation Scenarios for the 2021 RTP.PDF
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Public Comment from Duncan McFetridge (Cleveland National Forest Foundation, Save Our Forest and Ranchlands) and Rick Bates (Cleveland National Forest Foundation) on Item number 2. The Vision for the 2021 Regional Plan of the August 7, Joint Meeting:
We have 2 questions for your committee today: 1) How does the initial SANDAG plan quantitatively meet the State and local benchmarks for housing and climate progress and 2) How does the initial SANDAG plan compare to the Climate Housing and Transit alternative submitted by SOFAR and CNFF?
Save Our Forest and Ranchlands (“SOFAR”) and the Cleveland National Forest Foundation (“CNFF”), two organizations dedicated to progressive land use planning and the protection of vital natural resources, are submitting comments for the draft transportation network scenarios for the 2021 Regional Transportation Plan Update.
The purpose of this letter is to urge the SANDAG Board of Directors to begin the RTP update dialogue with a Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative in the 2021 RTP that is focused on meeting the housing and greenhouse gas (“GHG”) reduction goals that have been set collectively by the state of California, the City of San Diego, and SANDAG:
• 40% reduction in GHG below 1990 levels by 2030 (California AB 32 and SB 32) • 80% reduction in GHG below 1990 levels by 2050 (Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown) • 25% reduction in per capita GHG from passenger cars and trucks relative to 2005 by 2035
(California SB 375; California Air Resources Control Board1) • 14.3% reduction in total daily VMT per capita, and 16.8% reduction in total light-duty VMT per
capita, relative to 2015-2018 average by 2050 (California Air Resources Board2) • 50% transit, walk and bike mode share for commuters within ½ mile of a major transit stop in
City of San Diego by 2035 (Climate Action Plan, City of San Diego)3 • 150% increase in transit mode share (SANDAG’s Urban Area Transit Study4) • Adequately plan to meet the housing needs of everyone in the community (California5).
1https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/carb-2017-scoping-plan-identified-vmt-reductions-and- relationship-state-climate 2https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2019-01/2017_sp_vmt_reductions_jan19.pdf 3 https://www.climateactioncampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/CAP-Report-Card-2nd-Edition.pdf 42050 RTP/SCS Appendix U.17 Urban Transit Strategy, San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) and Parsons Brinckerhoff, October 2011. 5http://www.hcd.ca.gov/community-development/housing-element/index.shtml
Meeting these goals is not only reasonable, it is urgently required if we are going to solve some of the unrelenting challenges faced by residents of San Diego. Indeed, SANDAG’s prior RTP was found to be deficient for failing to discuss an alternative which could significantly reduce total vehicle miles traveled(“VMT”) (Cleveland National Forest Foundation v. San Diego Association of Governments. (17 Cal.App. 5th 413, 435-437 (2017)). Heretofore, the San Diego region has met these challenges with clever words, not deeds. These goals are achievable only if land use and transportation are addressed together.
These synergies are recognized in SANDAG’s Urban Area Transit Strategy and the City of San Diego’s General Plan Housing Element which includes this goal:
Ensure the provision of sufficient housing for all income groups to accommodate San Diego’s anticipated share of regional growth …in a manner consistent with the development pattern of the Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS), that will help meet regional GHG targets by improving transportation and land use coordination and jobs/housing balance, creating more transit-oriented, compact and walkable communities, providing more housing capacity for all income levels, and protecting resource areas.6
The Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative would pick up where SANDAG’s Urban Area Transit Strategy left off in 2011. Housing + Transportation Affordability (H+T) There is a huge amount of attention on housing affordability but too little focus on housing and transportation (“H+T”) affordability. Outlying housing may be cheaper in the short run than housing in the region’s core because of supply and demand – but any savings often are eaten up by increased transportation costs. Dispersed housing requires more cars per household and more VMT and GHG emissions per household.
The Center for Neighborhood Technologies has modeled H+T costs relative to income for the entire U.S. with support of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Figure 1 shows the H+T affordability results for the San Diego region for households with the regional typical household income of $64,309.
Figure 1: H+T Costs as a Percent of Income7
Figure 1 shows that, on average, transportation costs are about two-thirds as large as housing costs. However, transportation costs vary greatly across the region. Figure 2 maps H+T affordability.
Figure 2: H+T Costs as a Percent of Income8
7 Center for Neighborhood Technologies. https://htaindex.cnt.org/fact-sheets/?focus=cbsa&gid=42 8 Center for Neighborhood Technologies. https://htaindex.cnt.org/
As shown in Figure 2, the most affordable areas are in the light-colored areas primarily in the region’s core and along major transit corridors. The housing affordability problem cannot be solved by building new housing in the darker-colored areas because high transportation costs make those areas inherently unaffordable. The areas in the more remote locations in San Diego County (i.e., even further from the City center) are not shown in order to make the map more readable, but these areas also tend to be more unaffordable when taking into account H+T.
The answer to housing affordability is H+T affordability. It is building more housing in the H+T affordable light-colored areas and in expanding the supply of H+T affordable area through increased transit service.
As shown in Figure 3, the San Diego region currently scores extremely low on location efficient neighborhoods which are defined as “compact, close to jobs and services, with a variety of transportation choices.”
Figure 3: Location Efficiency Metrics for the San Diego Region9
Increasing this score will require more housing and jobs in areas served by transit today. It will also require a significant expansion of transit infrastructure and a substantial increase in service. The State of California, SANDAG and the County’s municipalities are working towards increasing the supply of housing in location efficient neighborhoods, but more can and should be done.
The Regional Housing Needs Allocation (“RHNA”) Determination, provided by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (“HCD”) in July 2018, requires the San Diego region to plan for
9 Center for Neighborhood Technologies. https://htaindex.cnt.org/fact-sheets/?focus=cbsa&gid=42
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171,685 housing units in the 6th Housing Element Cycle (2021-2029). This 6th Element Cycle gives significant weight to transit availability. As shown in Figure 4, the 6th Element Cycle makes a substantial shift relative to the previous 5th Element Cycle away from the unincorporated areas and into the cities served by transit including San Diego, Escondido, La Mesa, and National City.
Figure 4: RHNA Allocations 2020-2029 and 2010-201910
The City of San Diego’s share of the total has risen from 54% of the total in the previous cycle to 63% in the new cycle. The City has ample capacity for this housing. It has identified capacity to construct 164,142 housing units or 56,241 more than required.11 A large percentage of this capacity is in transit corridors.
These are positive changes. However, in the past, the housing allocations have been aspirational but not enforced. The State has signaled that it plans to be more aggressive about enforcement during this cycle. SANDAG can help the municipalities achieve their housing goals by shifting all transportation spending towards transit and non-motorized (walk and bike) infrastructure. These investments, which will facilitate getting people out of the cars, will also help the region increase density without large impacts on neighborhoods.
10 Center for Neighborhood Technologies. https://htaindex.cnt.org/ 11 City of San Diego General Plan Housing Element 2021-2029 (March 2020 Draft), p. HE-38.
- 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 140,000 160,000 180,000
Previous Cycle
2021-2029
Previous Cycle 2021-2029 San Diego 88,096 107,901 Escondido 4,175 9,607 La Mesa 1,722 3,797 National City 1,863 5,437 Unincorporated 22,412 7,000 Other 43,712 37,943
San Diego Escondido La Mesa National City Unincorporated Other
In addition to personal savings on car ownership (e.g., acquisition, registration, and insurance) and costs associated with driving (e.g., gasoline, replacement parts, and repairs), municipalities are beginning to recognize that neighborhoods served by transit require fewer parking spaces. Last year, the City of San Diego passed a parking reform package that eliminated parking requirements for sites located within 1/2-mile of a transit stop. This is a tremendously important reform for housing affordability because construction of parking can cost as much as $90,000 per space in structures.12
Building a Real Regional Transit System - the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative SANDAG’s Executive Director Hasan Ikhata said:
I don’t buy the debate that transit doesn’t work. Transit doesn’t work now because it’s not designed to work. You know, if you come from the border to downtown and it takes you, you know… it’s about 20 some miles… it takes you an hour in transit, that’s not real transit, as far as I’m concerned.13
The San Diego region’s transit system performs much more poorly than its west coast peers. As shown in Figure 5, a much smaller share of the region’s workers commute by transit than other west coast regions.
Figure 5: Transit Work Mode Share in Four West Coast Regions
12https://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2019/03/04/san-diego-city-council-votes-to-repeal-minimum-parking- requirements-for-new-housing/ 13San Diego Tribune, February 27, 2019. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sd-utbg- sandag-ikhrata-transit-interview-20190227-story.html
M et
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Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey
Those who do commute by transit in the San Diego region suffer an enormous travel time penalty relative to the other large regions in California (Figure 6).
Figure 6: Ratio of Average Transit Commute Time to Average Auto Commute Time
Source: California Household Travel Survey
Improving the regional transit system is not a new idea in the San Diego region; there just has not been enough follow through. Almost a decade ago, SANDAG prepared the Urban Area Transit Strategy(“UATS”) as part of its 2011 RTP to connect regional housing needs with transit infrastructure:
The overarching goal of the UATS was to create a world-class transit system for the San Diego region in 2050, with the aim of significantly increasing the attractiveness of transit, walking, and biking in the most urbanized areas of the region.
The vision called for a network of fast, flexible, reliable, safe, and convenient transit services that connect our homes to the region’s major employment centers and destinations. Achievement of this vision would make transit a more appealing option for many trips, reducing the impact of vehicular travel on the environment and on public health. Other key goals included:
• Making transit more time-competitive with automobile travel; • Maximizing the role of transit within the broader transportation system; and
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• Reducing vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions in the region. (p. TA 7-5)14
The UATS showed a high potential for transit ridership in the region’s urban core (Figure 7).
Figure 7: SANDAG Urban Area Transit Study Figure TA 7.8
14 SANDAG. Urban Area Transit Study. http://www.sandag.org/index.asp?projectid=368&fuseaction=projects.detail
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For transit to become time-competitive with the automobile, the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative will require much more than a few isolated projects. It will require comprehensive investments at each of the four levels shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8: Complete Transit System
At the top level, improving rail service in the Los Angeles to San Diego (“LOSSAN”) corridor is a top priority. To this end, an important study by Caltrans and CNFF has just been completed regarding the potential transit ridership on the LOSSAN rail corridor between San Diego and Los Angeles. This study arose as a result of litigation filed by CNFF challenging the planned expansion of the I-5 freeway between La Jolla and Oceanside as inconsistent with California’s GHG emission targets. CNFF and Caltrans reached a settlement that focused on the potential to improve rail service on the LOSSAN corridor. In particular, the parties agreed to study the feasibility of constructing a double-track rail tunnel through Miramar Hill to facilitate transit on the corridor. The parties believed that the Miramar tunnel could reduce travel times and provide improved connections to local transit services in the University Town Center (UTC) area.
The recently-completed study concludes that the Miramar tunnel and rail line straightening would add a critical link to the LOSSAN rail corridor. See Exhibit #1 (Miramar Tunnel Feasibility Study).Critically, it finds that the feasibility criteria for the Miramar tunnel have been satisfied. Its specific findings include the following:
1. The project would increase discretionary passengers by 1,300 to 1,700 per day, thereby reducing annual VMT 200 million to 240 million miles and GHG by 70,000 to 84,000 tons.
2. The project would provide competitive travel times, including a transit system average clock time that is approximately 3% faster than the automobile.
3. The project would be cost competitive, with transit riders cost at $180/month versus automobile costs of $507/month.
4. The project has no fatal engineering flaws.
Highest speed commuter/intercity rail
Local transit (bus or streetcar) and shared mobility
Walkable compact land use
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The study further acknowledges a prior federal study that found construction of the Miramar tunnel along with other corridor improvements would reduce travel time between San Diego and Los Angeles to two hours. In short, construction of the new tunnel, which would provide enhanced access to downtown and the airport, would be a key transportation improvement for the region and the state. As the study notes, the LOSSAN rail corridor– together with the I-5 freeway – is the second-most traveled route in North America. The Miramar tunnel must be considered a key component of the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative.
At the next level is a network of higher-speed, high frequency transit lines with separate rights of way and fewer stops. In many regions, a light rail service fills this niche, but in the San Diego region the Trolley has not filled this niche well. It operates too slowly and service is not frequent enough. Improvements are needed in both these dimensions. Achieving the required level of service in this higher-speed tier will require a rethinking of the system. As part of the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative, SANDAG should evaluate speeding up the existing lines through grade separations and eliminating stops, as well as creating new higher-speed lines.
Express buses on managed lanes currently do not serve this higher-speed niche well because they connect freeway interchanges instead of land uses. A typical trip using these express buses will be unattractive because it also will involve connecting bus service on one or more circuitous routes. Express buses and managed lanes can work well for some park-and-ride travelers traveling to major destinations but cannot serve a significant portion of the region’s population well.
Both the regional rail and higher-speed high-frequency tiers need to be well connected. The Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative must include an inter-modal terminal (Grand Central) connecting San Diego’s urban core, the Airport, the LOSSAN corridor, the Sprinter corridor, and the Trolley system.
The Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative must also include efficient connections with frequent local buses (which could possibly be automated in the future).To this end, SANDAG must grapple with the first mile/last mile issue as this reflects a failure in land use and the existing transit system. While higher income travelers may have a choice of Uber-type services to solve this problem, this should not be viewed as a remedy for the average traveler.
Finally, the goal of a functional transit system is to serve compact bike and walkable land use because no trip begins or ends on a transit vehicle. Most transit trips begin and end with a walk trip. In regions with high transit use, there are generally about twice as many walk trips as transit trips. Investments in walk and bike infrastructure should be a top priority. Consistent with the City’s Climate Action Plan, the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative must model a 50% transit, walk and bike mode share for residents in the central core.
Stop Expanding Freeways Building a real regional transit network will require all the region’s transportation investment dollars for the foreseeable future. The Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative must not include any freeway expansion.
The billions of dollars spent on freeway expansion the past 20 years have A) failed to reduce congestion, B) caused a substantial increase in VMT and GHG emissions, and C) resulted in a severe housing shortage. The transportation models used to justify these freeway expansion projects have been wrong
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on all counts. These models - both in the San Diego region and in regions throughout the U.S. – forecast dire increases in travel time if freeways are not widened, and substantial increases in travel time even if they are widened. In fact, as shown in Figure 9, travel time has stayed remarkably constant in the U.S. for decades.
Figure 9: Average Time Driving (minutes per day) 1990-2017 by MSA Population (NHTS)
Source: National Household Travel Survey.
Figure 9 shows the “average time spent driving a private vehicle in a typical day.” There was an increase during the 1990s, a time when many women were joining the labor force, but since 2000 there has been little change. Time spent driving also is very similar across differently sized regions. There is evidence that people have a “travel time budget”. If travel speeds drop, they (on average) will adapt to travel a shorter distance.
In contrast, if travel speeds increase, people (on average) will travel longer distances. This phenomenon is known as “induced travel”. In work for the California Air Resources Board (“CARB”), researchers at the University of California and the University of Southern California reviewed the literature on induced travel and concluded:
Thus, the best estimate for the long-run effect of highway capacity on VMT is an elasticity close to 1.0, implying that in congested metropolitan areas, adding new
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Rural, Not in MSA < 250,000 250,000 to 499,999
500,000 to 999,999 1 million to 2.9 million 3 million+
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capacity to the existing system of limited-access highways is unlikely to reduce congestion or associated GHG in the long-run. 15
The SANDAG regional transportation model fails to account properly for induced travel although there now are newer algorithms that could address this deficiency.16
Senate Bill 743 establishes VMT as the criteria for determining the impacts of transportation projects. This has made properly accounting for induced VMT critical in the regulatory process. The Office of Planning and Research’s (“OPR”) Technical Advisory on Evaluating Transportation Impacts in CEQA recommends:
Whenever employing a travel demand model to assess induced vehicle travel, any limitation or known lack of sensitivity in the analysis that might cause substantial errors in the VMT estimate (for example, model insensitivity to one of the components of induced VMT described above) should be disclosed and characterized, and a description should be provided on how it could influence the analysis results. A discussion of the potential error or bias should be carried into analyses that rely on the VMT analysis, such as greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, energy, and noise.17
The National Center for Sustainable Transportation at the University of California at Davis has produced an Induced Travel Calculator18 to help address the deficiencies in the models. Recently, Caltrans also has issued new draft guidance on accounting for induced travel. It recommends following the OPR recommendations:
Caltrans recommends using the VMT analysis approaches recommended in OPR’s advisory when evaluating the transportation impacts of projects on the State Highway System (SHS).19
Neither expanding freeways nor not expanding freeways will have any effect on regional congestion or average travel times. However, expanding freeways will cause significant increases in VMT and GHG emissions, and will continue to starve the transit system of needed investments.
15 Handy, Susan and Marlon G. Boarnet. “Impact of Highway Capacity and Induced Travel on Passenger Vehicle Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Policy Brief” prepared for California Air Resources Board, September 30, 2014. 16Marshall (2018). Forecasting the impossible: The status quo of estimating traffic flows with static traffic assignment and the future of dynamic traffic assignment. Research in Transportation Business & Management. 29, 85-92 (2018) 17 California Office of Planning and Research. Technical Advisory on Evaluating Transportation Impacts in CEQA, p. 29, December 2018. http://opr.ca.gov/docs/20190122-743_Technical_Advisory.pdf 18https://ncst.ucdavis.edu/research-product/induced-travel-calculator 19 Caltrans. Draft Transportation Analysis Framework: Induced Travel Analysis, March 2020. https://dot.ca.gov/- /media/dot-media/programs/transportation-planning/documents/sb-743/2020-04-13-taf-a11y.pdf
Figure 10: StreetLight U.S. Transportation Climate Impact Index Ranking
Given that transit in the San Diego region has been and continues to be severely under-funded and under-built compared to roadway projects, as discussed above, the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative must exclude roadway/freeway funding and expansion. Heretofore, SANDAG’s planning has arbitrarily segmented freeway and transit projects. This artificial segmentation is not only irrational, it is fatal in achieving sustainable housing goals because transit, bike, and walk mobility and auto-based mobility serve contradictory land use purposes. SANDAG’s failure to historically recognize this fundamental truth is the Achilles heel of its planning and lies at the doorstep of the agency’s on-going inability to deliver a plan that truly unites our community on an ecologically sustainable foundation.
It is abundantly clear that SANDAG’s past planning efforts have not only been deficient but have repeatedly failed to heed the ominous warnings from the courts, the public, and the planet itself. With California literally on fire due largely to climate change induced drought and high temperatures, SANDAG has failed the public by not aggressively pursuing a transportation scenario that would meet the State’s GHG and VMT reduction goals.21 The Climate, Housing,
20https://www.streetlightdata.com/2020-u-s-transportation-climate-impact-index/ 21 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/climate-change-make-wildfires-spread-factor/story?id=56937704
Transportation Alternative would help achieve targets set in legislation, the California Air Resources Board’s Climate Change Scoping Plan, and relevant Executive Orders.
Similarly, with regard to the local housing crisis, it is inconceivable that SANDAG’s prior RTPs have not called for a 50% transit, bike, and walk mode share alternative necessary to activate infill housing, especially since the urban core is already zoned for such housing. Here too, the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative would facilitate this infill housing and help the City of San Diego achieve the targets set forth in its Climate Action Plan.
Faced with these pressing social and environmental challenges, SANDAG must follow established judicial, executive, and local legislative guidelines designed to meet the housing and climate crises. The public urgently deserves to see what it would take for the region to build a world-class transit system and to develop reasonably priced infill housing. Common sense dictates that the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative would necessarily begin with a complete, first phase transit, bike, and walk system with an inter-modal terminal connecting the Airport, the Central Core, the LOSSAN Corridor, the Sprinter corridor, and the Trolley system. It is important to note that the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative would not only be the “environmentally superior alternative,” it would also be the socio-economically superior alternative because a true transit, bike and walk system reduces both the cost and shortage of housing and the cost of driving.
In conclusion, in the face of a severe, entrenched housing crisis endangering the public welfare and the severe climate crisis endangering the planet, SANDAG owes the public nothing less than a transit alternative that immediately meets these life threatening challenges rather than artificially prolonging them.
Duncan McFetridge
Director, CNFF
President, SOFAR
Building a Real Regional Transit System - the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative
Figure 5: Transit Work Mode Share in Four West Coast Regions
Figure 6: Ratio of Average Transit Commute Time to Average Auto Commute Time
Figure 7: SANDAG Urban Area Transit Study Figure TA 7.8
Figure 8: Complete Transit System
Stop Expanding Freeways
*Benchmarks:
• 40% reduction in GHG below 1990 levels by 2030 (California AB 32 and SB 32)
• 80% reduction in GHG below 1990 levels by 2050 (Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown)
• 25% reduction in per capita GHG from passenger cars and trucks relative to 2005 by 2035 (California SB 375; California Air Resources Control Board1)
• 14.3% reduction in total daily VMT per capita, and 16.8% reduction in total light-duty VMT per capita, relative to 2015-2018 average by 2050 (California Air Resources Board2)
• 50% transit, walk and bike mode share for commuters within ½ mile of a major transit stop in City of San Diego by 2035 (Climate Action Plan, City of San Diego)3
• 150% increase in transit mode share (SANDAG’s Urban Area Transit Study4)
• Adequately plan to meet the housing needs of everyone in the community (California5).
From: Joan Rincon To: Clerk of the Board Subject: August 7, Joint Meeting, Open Public Commentary Date: Thursday, August 6, 2020 3:00:38 PM
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As a resident of National City, I would like to apologize to the members of the Board whom our mayor insulted at the recent meeting about the RHNA numbers. You will recall that when the choices of 14 leaders were about to be obliterated by yet another weighted vote, Ms. Solis chimed in with comment implying that those who were considering exiting the meeting were being petulant, using the juvenile phrase, "....well frankly this just says something about you!"
Some of us in National City understand that the whole point of SANDAG is to be a collaborative regional body that respects each jurisdiction.
Ironically, Ms. Solis has a history of trying to censure, accuse of racism, and in some cases get restraining orders against anyone who says things which displease her. In other words, as kids say on the playground, she loves to dish it out but can't take it.
Additionally, we regret that Ms. Solis continues to open comments to SANDAG with "Hola, buenos dias", or other phrases in Spanish. We have tried explaining to Ms. Solis that the other elected officials on the board are very intelligent, often hold masters or doctorate degrees, and are not impressed by her knowledge of conversational Spanish. Given that the Mexican consul addresses the Board in English you would think that Ms. Solis could do likewise.
So, sorry about that. We'll try to do better in 2022.
-Joan Rincon, National City
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Please submit the following comment for the public record for this meeting. Thank you.
To the Transportation, Regional Planning, and Borders Committees,
SANDAG’s Big 5 Moves are deeply misguided, will cost billions, and fail to account for rapidly changing and improving technology transportation trends driven by the private sector. The two most important trends are the rise of zero-emission electric vehicles and autonomous vehicle technology. Notably, California-based Tesla, which is a leader in both trends, has quickly become the most valuable auto/mobility company in the world. There is a strong probability that the future of transportation and mobility is heavily dominated by transportation-as-a-service (TaaS), driven primarily by private companies. Rather than waste billions on the Big 5 Moves, SANDAG would be far better off pausing and waiting for the private sector to further advance these technologies, while looking for smart opportunities to amplify their efforts. Renowned speaker and Stanford lecturer Tony Seba has given many speeches on this future, including to the North Carolina Department of Transportation in early 2020. The fascinating video link can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y916mxoio0E
In the debate of cars versus transit, SANDAG’s own data and reports clearly indicate that transit usage in San Diego County is very small and has seen significant declines over the past several years, as have most other cities in the United States. Specifically, in the north part of the county, where the population has much lower density, the ridership numbers of the Coaster train are shockingly low, accounting for just 1/20th of 1% of overall commuter volume in the County. It is the least utilized line in the County by a significant margin. Given that the tracks run along the eroding coastal bluffs in Del Mar, this particular line has taken on a more urgent priority for many who live nearby. A group of us have put together a website that clearly lays out the data and low ridership numbers and poses the possibility of converting the train tracks into what one day could become the most popular trail in the country. Learn more at https://coaster-rail-to-trail.org/.
Respectfully,
From: Craig Jones To: Clerk of the Board Cc: Clough, Jane Subject: SANDAG Transportation/ Committees Aug. 7, 2020 - Agenda Item 2 - submittal of comment and questions Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 2:33:29 PM
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Please accept this submittal for this Friday's Transportation, Regional Planning, and Borders Committees public meeting, Agenda item 2:
ref. staff report Attachment 1, Figures 8 and 10; and text, Attachment pages 11, 12 et. seq. - it looks like the complete corridors to be developed are planned to use the existing freeway/highway rights of way? Are there services and routes (whether rail or true BRT) that would not follow existing freeways/highways? If existing auto freeways and highways are exclusively to be used, I see this as a significant barrier to an effective system since automobile freeways do not interface efficiently or effectively with either residential communities or employment centers ref. staff report Attachment 1, Figure 13 and related text - is there any really true BRT involved in this proposal? What is "next gen rapid" bus - again, on the existing freeways - not really exclusive BRT travel ways?
Thank you, I look forward to these questions being addressed.
Craig Jones
From: Rick Bates To: Clerk of the Board Cc: Duncan McFetridge Subject: PUBLIC COMMENT re August 7, Joint Meeting, Item number 2. The Vision for the 2021 Regional Plan Date: Thursday, August 6, 2020 10:33:47 AM Attachments: Letter to SANDAG re Transportation Scenarios for the 2021 RTP.PDF
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Public Comment from Duncan McFetridge (Cleveland National Forest Foundation, Save Our Forest and Ranchlands) and Rick Bates (Cleveland National Forest Foundation) on Item number 2. The Vision for the 2021 Regional Plan of the August 7, Joint Meeting:
We have 2 questions for your committee today: 1) How does the initial SANDAG plan quantitatively meet the State and local benchmarks for housing and climate progress and 2) How does the initial SANDAG plan compare to the Climate Housing and Transit alternative submitted by SOFAR and CNFF?
Save Our Forest and Ranchlands (“SOFAR”) and the Cleveland National Forest Foundation (“CNFF”), two organizations dedicated to progressive land use planning and the protection of vital natural resources, are submitting comments for the draft transportation network scenarios for the 2021 Regional Transportation Plan Update.
The purpose of this letter is to urge the SANDAG Board of Directors to begin the RTP update dialogue with a Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative in the 2021 RTP that is focused on meeting the housing and greenhouse gas (“GHG”) reduction goals that have been set collectively by the state of California, the City of San Diego, and SANDAG:
• 40% reduction in GHG below 1990 levels by 2030 (California AB 32 and SB 32) • 80% reduction in GHG below 1990 levels by 2050 (Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown) • 25% reduction in per capita GHG from passenger cars and trucks relative to 2005 by 2035
(California SB 375; California Air Resources Control Board1) • 14.3% reduction in total daily VMT per capita, and 16.8% reduction in total light-duty VMT per
capita, relative to 2015-2018 average by 2050 (California Air Resources Board2) • 50% transit, walk and bike mode share for commuters within ½ mile of a major transit stop in
City of San Diego by 2035 (Climate Action Plan, City of San Diego)3 • 150% increase in transit mode share (SANDAG’s Urban Area Transit Study4) • Adequately plan to meet the housing needs of everyone in the community (California5).
1https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/carb-2017-scoping-plan-identified-vmt-reductions-and- relationship-state-climate 2https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2019-01/2017_sp_vmt_reductions_jan19.pdf 3 https://www.climateactioncampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/CAP-Report-Card-2nd-Edition.pdf 42050 RTP/SCS Appendix U.17 Urban Transit Strategy, San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) and Parsons Brinckerhoff, October 2011. 5http://www.hcd.ca.gov/community-development/housing-element/index.shtml
Meeting these goals is not only reasonable, it is urgently required if we are going to solve some of the unrelenting challenges faced by residents of San Diego. Indeed, SANDAG’s prior RTP was found to be deficient for failing to discuss an alternative which could significantly reduce total vehicle miles traveled(“VMT”) (Cleveland National Forest Foundation v. San Diego Association of Governments. (17 Cal.App. 5th 413, 435-437 (2017)). Heretofore, the San Diego region has met these challenges with clever words, not deeds. These goals are achievable only if land use and transportation are addressed together.
These synergies are recognized in SANDAG’s Urban Area Transit Strategy and the City of San Diego’s General Plan Housing Element which includes this goal:
Ensure the provision of sufficient housing for all income groups to accommodate San Diego’s anticipated share of regional growth …in a manner consistent with the development pattern of the Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS), that will help meet regional GHG targets by improving transportation and land use coordination and jobs/housing balance, creating more transit-oriented, compact and walkable communities, providing more housing capacity for all income levels, and protecting resource areas.6
The Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative would pick up where SANDAG’s Urban Area Transit Strategy left off in 2011. Housing + Transportation Affordability (H+T) There is a huge amount of attention on housing affordability but too little focus on housing and transportation (“H+T”) affordability. Outlying housing may be cheaper in the short run than housing in the region’s core because of supply and demand – but any savings often are eaten up by increased transportation costs. Dispersed housing requires more cars per household and more VMT and GHG emissions per household.
The Center for Neighborhood Technologies has modeled H+T costs relative to income for the entire U.S. with support of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Figure 1 shows the H+T affordability results for the San Diego region for households with the regional typical household income of $64,309.
Figure 1: H+T Costs as a Percent of Income7
Figure 1 shows that, on average, transportation costs are about two-thirds as large as housing costs. However, transportation costs vary greatly across the region. Figure 2 maps H+T affordability.
Figure 2: H+T Costs as a Percent of Income8
7 Center for Neighborhood Technologies. https://htaindex.cnt.org/fact-sheets/?focus=cbsa&gid=42 8 Center for Neighborhood Technologies. https://htaindex.cnt.org/
As shown in Figure 2, the most affordable areas are in the light-colored areas primarily in the region’s core and along major transit corridors. The housing affordability problem cannot be solved by building new housing in the darker-colored areas because high transportation costs make those areas inherently unaffordable. The areas in the more remote locations in San Diego County (i.e., even further from the City center) are not shown in order to make the map more readable, but these areas also tend to be more unaffordable when taking into account H+T.
The answer to housing affordability is H+T affordability. It is building more housing in the H+T affordable light-colored areas and in expanding the supply of H+T affordable area through increased transit service.
As shown in Figure 3, the San Diego region currently scores extremely low on location efficient neighborhoods which are defined as “compact, close to jobs and services, with a variety of transportation choices.”
Figure 3: Location Efficiency Metrics for the San Diego Region9
Increasing this score will require more housing and jobs in areas served by transit today. It will also require a significant expansion of transit infrastructure and a substantial increase in service. The State of California, SANDAG and the County’s municipalities are working towards increasing the supply of housing in location efficient neighborhoods, but more can and should be done.
The Regional Housing Needs Allocation (“RHNA”) Determination, provided by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (“HCD”) in July 2018, requires the San Diego region to plan for
9 Center for Neighborhood Technologies. https://htaindex.cnt.org/fact-sheets/?focus=cbsa&gid=42
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171,685 housing units in the 6th Housing Element Cycle (2021-2029). This 6th Element Cycle gives significant weight to transit availability. As shown in Figure 4, the 6th Element Cycle makes a substantial shift relative to the previous 5th Element Cycle away from the unincorporated areas and into the cities served by transit including San Diego, Escondido, La Mesa, and National City.
Figure 4: RHNA Allocations 2020-2029 and 2010-201910
The City of San Diego’s share of the total has risen from 54% of the total in the previous cycle to 63% in the new cycle. The City has ample capacity for this housing. It has identified capacity to construct 164,142 housing units or 56,241 more than required.11 A large percentage of this capacity is in transit corridors.
These are positive changes. However, in the past, the housing allocations have been aspirational but not enforced. The State has signaled that it plans to be more aggressive about enforcement during this cycle. SANDAG can help the municipalities achieve their housing goals by shifting all transportation spending towards transit and non-motorized (walk and bike) infrastructure. These investments, which will facilitate getting people out of the cars, will also help the region increase density without large impacts on neighborhoods.
10 Center for Neighborhood Technologies. https://htaindex.cnt.org/ 11 City of San Diego General Plan Housing Element 2021-2029 (March 2020 Draft), p. HE-38.
- 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 140,000 160,000 180,000
Previous Cycle
2021-2029
Previous Cycle 2021-2029 San Diego 88,096 107,901 Escondido 4,175 9,607 La Mesa 1,722 3,797 National City 1,863 5,437 Unincorporated 22,412 7,000 Other 43,712 37,943
San Diego Escondido La Mesa National City Unincorporated Other
In addition to personal savings on car ownership (e.g., acquisition, registration, and insurance) and costs associated with driving (e.g., gasoline, replacement parts, and repairs), municipalities are beginning to recognize that neighborhoods served by transit require fewer parking spaces. Last year, the City of San Diego passed a parking reform package that eliminated parking requirements for sites located within 1/2-mile of a transit stop. This is a tremendously important reform for housing affordability because construction of parking can cost as much as $90,000 per space in structures.12
Building a Real Regional Transit System - the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative SANDAG’s Executive Director Hasan Ikhata said:
I don’t buy the debate that transit doesn’t work. Transit doesn’t work now because it’s not designed to work. You know, if you come from the border to downtown and it takes you, you know… it’s about 20 some miles… it takes you an hour in transit, that’s not real transit, as far as I’m concerned.13
The San Diego region’s transit system performs much more poorly than its west coast peers. As shown in Figure 5, a much smaller share of the region’s workers commute by transit than other west coast regions.
Figure 5: Transit Work Mode Share in Four West Coast Regions
12https://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2019/03/04/san-diego-city-council-votes-to-repeal-minimum-parking- requirements-for-new-housing/ 13San Diego Tribune, February 27, 2019. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sd-utbg- sandag-ikhrata-transit-interview-20190227-story.html
M et
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Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey
Those who do commute by transit in the San Diego region suffer an enormous travel time penalty relative to the other large regions in California (Figure 6).
Figure 6: Ratio of Average Transit Commute Time to Average Auto Commute Time
Source: California Household Travel Survey
Improving the regional transit system is not a new idea in the San Diego region; there just has not been enough follow through. Almost a decade ago, SANDAG prepared the Urban Area Transit Strategy(“UATS”) as part of its 2011 RTP to connect regional housing needs with transit infrastructure:
The overarching goal of the UATS was to create a world-class transit system for the San Diego region in 2050, with the aim of significantly increasing the attractiveness of transit, walking, and biking in the most urbanized areas of the region.
The vision called for a network of fast, flexible, reliable, safe, and convenient transit services that connect our homes to the region’s major employment centers and destinations. Achievement of this vision would make transit a more appealing option for many trips, reducing the impact of vehicular travel on the environment and on public health. Other key goals included:
• Making transit more time-competitive with automobile travel; • Maximizing the role of transit within the broader transportation system; and
2.40 2.35
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• Reducing vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions in the region. (p. TA 7-5)14
The UATS showed a high potential for transit ridership in the region’s urban core (Figure 7).
Figure 7: SANDAG Urban Area Transit Study Figure TA 7.8
14 SANDAG. Urban Area Transit Study. http://www.sandag.org/index.asp?projectid=368&fuseaction=projects.detail
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For transit to become time-competitive with the automobile, the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative will require much more than a few isolated projects. It will require comprehensive investments at each of the four levels shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8: Complete Transit System
At the top level, improving rail service in the Los Angeles to San Diego (“LOSSAN”) corridor is a top priority. To this end, an important study by Caltrans and CNFF has just been completed regarding the potential transit ridership on the LOSSAN rail corridor between San Diego and Los Angeles. This study arose as a result of litigation filed by CNFF challenging the planned expansion of the I-5 freeway between La Jolla and Oceanside as inconsistent with California’s GHG emission targets. CNFF and Caltrans reached a settlement that focused on the potential to improve rail service on the LOSSAN corridor. In particular, the parties agreed to study the feasibility of constructing a double-track rail tunnel through Miramar Hill to facilitate transit on the corridor. The parties believed that the Miramar tunnel could reduce travel times and provide improved connections to local transit services in the University Town Center (UTC) area.
The recently-completed study concludes that the Miramar tunnel and rail line straightening would add a critical link to the LOSSAN rail corridor. See Exhibit #1 (Miramar Tunnel Feasibility Study).Critically, it finds that the feasibility criteria for the Miramar tunnel have been satisfied. Its specific findings include the following:
1. The project would increase discretionary passengers by 1,300 to 1,700 per day, thereby reducing annual VMT 200 million to 240 million miles and GHG by 70,000 to 84,000 tons.
2. The project would provide competitive travel times, including a transit system average clock time that is approximately 3% faster than the automobile.
3. The project would be cost competitive, with transit riders cost at $180/month versus automobile costs of $507/month.
4. The project has no fatal engineering flaws.
Highest speed commuter/intercity rail
Local transit (bus or streetcar) and shared mobility
Walkable compact land use
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The study further acknowledges a prior federal study that found construction of the Miramar tunnel along with other corridor improvements would reduce travel time between San Diego and Los Angeles to two hours. In short, construction of the new tunnel, which would provide enhanced access to downtown and the airport, would be a key transportation improvement for the region and the state. As the study notes, the LOSSAN rail corridor– together with the I-5 freeway – is the second-most traveled route in North America. The Miramar tunnel must be considered a key component of the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative.
At the next level is a network of higher-speed, high frequency transit lines with separate rights of way and fewer stops. In many regions, a light rail service fills this niche, but in the San Diego region the Trolley has not filled this niche well. It operates too slowly and service is not frequent enough. Improvements are needed in both these dimensions. Achieving the required level of service in this higher-speed tier will require a rethinking of the system. As part of the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative, SANDAG should evaluate speeding up the existing lines through grade separations and eliminating stops, as well as creating new higher-speed lines.
Express buses on managed lanes currently do not serve this higher-speed niche well because they connect freeway interchanges instead of land uses. A typical trip using these express buses will be unattractive because it also will involve connecting bus service on one or more circuitous routes. Express buses and managed lanes can work well for some park-and-ride travelers traveling to major destinations but cannot serve a significant portion of the region’s population well.
Both the regional rail and higher-speed high-frequency tiers need to be well connected. The Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative must include an inter-modal terminal (Grand Central) connecting San Diego’s urban core, the Airport, the LOSSAN corridor, the Sprinter corridor, and the Trolley system.
The Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative must also include efficient connections with frequent local buses (which could possibly be automated in the future).To this end, SANDAG must grapple with the first mile/last mile issue as this reflects a failure in land use and the existing transit system. While higher income travelers may have a choice of Uber-type services to solve this problem, this should not be viewed as a remedy for the average traveler.
Finally, the goal of a functional transit system is to serve compact bike and walkable land use because no trip begins or ends on a transit vehicle. Most transit trips begin and end with a walk trip. In regions with high transit use, there are generally about twice as many walk trips as transit trips. Investments in walk and bike infrastructure should be a top priority. Consistent with the City’s Climate Action Plan, the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative must model a 50% transit, walk and bike mode share for residents in the central core.
Stop Expanding Freeways Building a real regional transit network will require all the region’s transportation investment dollars for the foreseeable future. The Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative must not include any freeway expansion.
The billions of dollars spent on freeway expansion the past 20 years have A) failed to reduce congestion, B) caused a substantial increase in VMT and GHG emissions, and C) resulted in a severe housing shortage. The transportation models used to justify these freeway expansion projects have been wrong
11
on all counts. These models - both in the San Diego region and in regions throughout the U.S. – forecast dire increases in travel time if freeways are not widened, and substantial increases in travel time even if they are widened. In fact, as shown in Figure 9, travel time has stayed remarkably constant in the U.S. for decades.
Figure 9: Average Time Driving (minutes per day) 1990-2017 by MSA Population (NHTS)
Source: National Household Travel Survey.
Figure 9 shows the “average time spent driving a private vehicle in a typical day.” There was an increase during the 1990s, a time when many women were joining the labor force, but since 2000 there has been little change. Time spent driving also is very similar across differently sized regions. There is evidence that people have a “travel time budget”. If travel speeds drop, they (on average) will adapt to travel a shorter distance.
In contrast, if travel speeds increase, people (on average) will travel longer distances. This phenomenon is known as “induced travel”. In work for the California Air Resources Board (“CARB”), researchers at the University of California and the University of Southern California reviewed the literature on induced travel and concluded:
Thus, the best estimate for the long-run effect of highway capacity on VMT is an elasticity close to 1.0, implying that in congested metropolitan areas, adding new
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Rural, Not in MSA < 250,000 250,000 to 499,999
500,000 to 999,999 1 million to 2.9 million 3 million+
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capacity to the existing system of limited-access highways is unlikely to reduce congestion or associated GHG in the long-run. 15
The SANDAG regional transportation model fails to account properly for induced travel although there now are newer algorithms that could address this deficiency.16
Senate Bill 743 establishes VMT as the criteria for determining the impacts of transportation projects. This has made properly accounting for induced VMT critical in the regulatory process. The Office of Planning and Research’s (“OPR”) Technical Advisory on Evaluating Transportation Impacts in CEQA recommends:
Whenever employing a travel demand model to assess induced vehicle travel, any limitation or known lack of sensitivity in the analysis that might cause substantial errors in the VMT estimate (for example, model insensitivity to one of the components of induced VMT described above) should be disclosed and characterized, and a description should be provided on how it could influence the analysis results. A discussion of the potential error or bias should be carried into analyses that rely on the VMT analysis, such as greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, energy, and noise.17
The National Center for Sustainable Transportation at the University of California at Davis has produced an Induced Travel Calculator18 to help address the deficiencies in the models. Recently, Caltrans also has issued new draft guidance on accounting for induced travel. It recommends following the OPR recommendations:
Caltrans recommends using the VMT analysis approaches recommended in OPR’s advisory when evaluating the transportation impacts of projects on the State Highway System (SHS).19
Neither expanding freeways nor not expanding freeways will have any effect on regional congestion or average travel times. However, expanding freeways will cause significant increases in VMT and GHG emissions, and will continue to starve the transit system of needed investments.
15 Handy, Susan and Marlon G. Boarnet. “Impact of Highway Capacity and Induced Travel on Passenger Vehicle Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Policy Brief” prepared for California Air Resources Board, September 30, 2014. 16Marshall (2018). Forecasting the impossible: The status quo of estimating traffic flows with static traffic assignment and the future of dynamic traffic assignment. Research in Transportation Business & Management. 29, 85-92 (2018) 17 California Office of Planning and Research. Technical Advisory on Evaluating Transportation Impacts in CEQA, p. 29, December 2018. http://opr.ca.gov/docs/20190122-743_Technical_Advisory.pdf 18https://ncst.ucdavis.edu/research-product/induced-travel-calculator 19 Caltrans. Draft Transportation Analysis Framework: Induced Travel Analysis, March 2020. https://dot.ca.gov/- /media/dot-media/programs/transportation-planning/documents/sb-743/2020-04-13-taf-a11y.pdf
Figure 10: StreetLight U.S. Transportation Climate Impact Index Ranking
Given that transit in the San Diego region has been and continues to be severely under-funded and under-built compared to roadway projects, as discussed above, the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative must exclude roadway/freeway funding and expansion. Heretofore, SANDAG’s planning has arbitrarily segmented freeway and transit projects. This artificial segmentation is not only irrational, it is fatal in achieving sustainable housing goals because transit, bike, and walk mobility and auto-based mobility serve contradictory land use purposes. SANDAG’s failure to historically recognize this fundamental truth is the Achilles heel of its planning and lies at the doorstep of the agency’s on-going inability to deliver a plan that truly unites our community on an ecologically sustainable foundation.
It is abundantly clear that SANDAG’s past planning efforts have not only been deficient but have repeatedly failed to heed the ominous warnings from the courts, the public, and the planet itself. With California literally on fire due largely to climate change induced drought and high temperatures, SANDAG has failed the public by not aggressively pursuing a transportation scenario that would meet the State’s GHG and VMT reduction goals.21 The Climate, Housing,
20https://www.streetlightdata.com/2020-u-s-transportation-climate-impact-index/ 21 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/climate-change-make-wildfires-spread-factor/story?id=56937704
Transportation Alternative would help achieve targets set in legislation, the California Air Resources Board’s Climate Change Scoping Plan, and relevant Executive Orders.
Similarly, with regard to the local housing crisis, it is inconceivable that SANDAG’s prior RTPs have not called for a 50% transit, bike, and walk mode share alternative necessary to activate infill housing, especially since the urban core is already zoned for such housing. Here too, the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative would facilitate this infill housing and help the City of San Diego achieve the targets set forth in its Climate Action Plan.
Faced with these pressing social and environmental challenges, SANDAG must follow established judicial, executive, and local legislative guidelines designed to meet the housing and climate crises. The public urgently deserves to see what it would take for the region to build a world-class transit system and to develop reasonably priced infill housing. Common sense dictates that the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative would necessarily begin with a complete, first phase transit, bike, and walk system with an inter-modal terminal connecting the Airport, the Central Core, the LOSSAN Corridor, the Sprinter corridor, and the Trolley system. It is important to note that the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative would not only be the “environmentally superior alternative,” it would also be the socio-economically superior alternative because a true transit, bike and walk system reduces both the cost and shortage of housing and the cost of driving.
In conclusion, in the face of a severe, entrenched housing crisis endangering the public welfare and the severe climate crisis endangering the planet, SANDAG owes the public nothing less than a transit alternative that immediately meets these life threatening challenges rather than artificially prolonging them.
Duncan McFetridge
Director, CNFF
President, SOFAR
Building a Real Regional Transit System - the Climate, Housing, Transit Alternative
Figure 5: Transit Work Mode Share in Four West Coast Regions
Figure 6: Ratio of Average Transit Commute Time to Average Auto Commute Time
Figure 7: SANDAG Urban Area Transit Study Figure TA 7.8
Figure 8: Complete Transit System
Stop Expanding Freeways
*Benchmarks:
• 40% reduction in GHG below 1990 levels by 2030 (California AB 32 and SB 32)
• 80% reduction in GHG below 1990 levels by 2050 (Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown)
• 25% reduction in per capita GHG from passenger cars and trucks relative to 2005 by 2035 (California SB 375; California Air Resources Control Board1)
• 14.3% reduction in total daily VMT per capita, and 16.8% reduction in total light-duty VMT per capita, relative to 2015-2018 average by 2050 (California Air Resources Board2)
• 50% transit, walk and bike mode share for commuters within ½ mile of a major transit stop in City of San Diego by 2035 (Climate Action Plan, City of San Diego)3
• 150% increase in transit mode share (SANDAG’s Urban Area Transit Study4)
• Adequately plan to meet the housing needs of everyone in the community (California5).
From: Joan Rincon To: Clerk of the Board Subject: August 7, Joint Meeting, Open Public Commentary Date: Thursday, August 6, 2020 3:00:38 PM
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of SANDAG. Do not click links or open attachments unless you are expecting the content.
As a resident of National City, I would like to apologize to the members of the Board whom our mayor insulted at the recent meeting about the RHNA numbers. You will recall that when the choices of 14 leaders were about to be obliterated by yet another weighted vote, Ms. Solis chimed in with comment implying that those who were considering exiting the meeting were being petulant, using the juvenile phrase, "....well frankly this just says something about you!"
Some of us in National City understand that the whole point of SANDAG is to be a collaborative regional body that respects each jurisdiction.
Ironically, Ms. Solis has a history of trying to censure, accuse of racism, and in some cases get restraining orders against anyone who says things which displease her. In other words, as kids say on the playground, she loves to dish it out but can't take it.
Additionally, we regret that Ms. Solis continues to open comments to SANDAG with "Hola, buenos dias", or other phrases in Spanish. We have tried explaining to Ms. Solis that the other elected officials on the board are very intelligent, often hold masters or doctorate degrees, and are not impressed by her knowledge of conversational Spanish. Given that the Mexican consul addresses the Board in English you would think that Ms. Solis could do likewise.
So, sorry about that. We'll try to do better in 2022.
-Joan Rincon, National City