But how will we get there? ECOS on the draft Sustainable Communities Strategy

Thanks to ClimatePlan for featuring the Environmental Council of Sacramento’s response to the Sacramento region’s draft Sustainable Communities Strategy!

ClimatePlan Blog
November 19, 2015

Guest post by: Matt Baker, Land Use and Conservation Policy Director, Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS)

Sacramento has released a draft of its 2016 Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS)—its second plan, after its first in 2012 led the state toward better planning. The plans should coordinate land use and transportation, to help make communities healthier and reduce greenhouse gases.

Comments on the new draft plan were due Monday, November 16th, 2015

Below is a quick summary of our comment letter on Sacramento’s draft 2016 plan. Read the full letter here.

(For more background, see Baker’s previous post on the plan here.)

Quick take

Sacramento’s draft SCS shows leadership and innovation. It offers a path to healthy, socially equitable, economically thriving, and environmentally sustainable communities.

But we are concerned: there are big disparities between the regional plan and the plans adopted by the region’s cities and counties.

The region’s jurisdictions must overhaul their growth plans to align with the regional plan. Otherwise, its many benefits—including more housing and transportation choices for residents, biodiversity and farming resource protections, and reducing greenhouse gases—may never come to life.

Overall, much to applaud

We applaud the Sacramento Area Council of Governments’ (SACOG’s) innovations: its excellent travel forecasting, performance assessment of projects (and cutting those that don’t perform well), rural-urban connections, and the region’s first climate adaptation analysis.

We’re pleased to see these steps forward in the draft plan:  – Substantial projected increases in transit service, ridership, and access  - Improved access to transit in disadvantaged communities  - Funding to rebuild streets to allow safe and pleasant walking and biking -A “fix-it-first” initiative to favor road maintenance before new road construction

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the plan is that its growth scenario reduces vehicle miles traveled, or VMT, through true land use and transportation behavior change—putting destinations closer together and reducing the need to drive.

A few more things to fix

Here’s more detail on where we’d like to see improvement:

Compare scenario performance

We support the recommended scenario. But the region could do even better, and we were disappointed to see Scenario 3, the most sustainable, dismissed. Now we’d like to see:

– The real picture: Compare performance (on VMT/GHG) between the preferred scenario and a “business-as-usual” scenario that reflects cities’, towns’ and counties’ existing plans. “Business as usual” will put the region far beyond its required greenhouse gas targets; let’s confront that reality.

– Focus in existing communities: Look at the performance of an “all-infill” land use scenario in which twenty- year growth is constrained solely to existing “Established Communities.” There’s plenty of room; the region’s current density is extremely low.

Shift from sprawl to infill

Despite the growing demand for walkable neighborhoods near good public transit, current and planned development continues to churn out car-oriented suburbs far from services. Sixty percent of jurisdictions’ planned growth is greenfield development.

The regional and local plans are hugely out of joint: for example, current general plans estimate eight times more growth in “Rural Residential” areas than in the SCS.

At the same time, major infill proposals are not capitalizing on their potential. For example, the Sacramento Railyards–one of the largest contiguous infill opportunities in the nation–is currently amending its proposal to reduce its residential capacity by half.

Peripheral low-density greenfield growth imposes a triple negative on the regional plan:

1) There’s a direct increase of VMT and GHG emissions from the development itself.
2) The regional government must allocate funding to more roads to service those communities, further limiting funding that could be used for transit.
3) Finally, that peripheral growth prevents the density needed to provide the ridership and fare recovery to maintain the transit system.

Build for transit and fund it earlier

The 2036 transportation plan offers many benefits, but it relies on more compact development. The jurisdictions must commit to more compact development or the much-improved transportation system envisioned for 2036 will never be built.

Much more funding is needed for transit operations earlier in the plan. Early investment will help guide development around transit—with the walkable neighborhoods that more people want.

SACOG can help incentivize better development, by funding only projects that comply with the regional SCS, following the model of the “One Bay Area” grant program. Jurisdictions should have to show performance on VMT/GHG and air quality, as well as equity, public and ecological health.

Rounding is an error: Hit the greenhouse gas target

The SCS nearly meets the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) reductions targets imposed by the CA Air Resources Board. However, 15.58% does not equal 16%. Saying so sets a bad precedent.

It may sound like a small amount but it means many tons of air pollution.

We strongly urge the Board to adopt a scenario that achieves that extra .42% reduction, or better, goes beyond the 16% target.

We appreciate the GHG analysis that SACOG provides, but would like to it go further: a 2050 scenario would help show whether the current trajectory will keep the region on track.

Track implementation

SACOG is dedicated to public participation, but its travel modeling and investment strategies are hard to understand. We need better tools to understand where investments are going from cap & trade and for disadvantaged communities.

Address gentrification and displacement with more affordable homes near transit

SACOG is making continued improvements in its public health and social equity inputs and analyses, but more is needed.

Right now, lower-income communities are poorly served by transit. That needs to change for many reasons, including meeting the region’s required GHG reductions targets, because the data show that lower-income residents will use transit more—if it is available.

More homes in transit-rich areas must be affordable. All jurisdictions must adopt strict mixed-housing ordinances and anti- displacement measures that preserve existing affordable and work-force housing, and build new affordable homes. Meeting the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) housing goals should be required for transportation funding.

Map and protect rural lands, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and water

SACOG’s Rural-Urban Connections (RUCS) program is helping support the agricultural sector. We’re also glad to see the plan and environmental analysis consider ecosystem services, such as flood control, groundwater recharge, and carbon sequestration.

The biological impact analysis in the 2016 update is much improved. We’d still like to see maps that show how growth would affect regional connectivity and ecosystem viability, as well as local species needs.

The plan estimates development of 47,563 acres of wild or agricultural lands in the next 24 years—that’s a lot less than the 214,000 acres consumed in the previous 24 years. While we think the region could do better, given the current growth behavior of the region, we fear the impact will be much worse.

Looking ahead

We applaud SACOG’s progress in development of the 2016 MTP/SCS update. We call on all of the region’s jurisdictions to support it, with serious changes to their growth patterns and policies.

We thank our partners and SACOG and look forward to continuing to work together to improve the region’s plan—and its future.

Mind the Gap: the Sacramento Region’s 2016 Sustainable Communities Strategy

August 13, 2015, on the ClimatePlan blog

Guest post by: Matthew Baker, Land Use and Conservation Policy Director, The Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS)

Link: http://www.climateplan.org/mind-the-gap-the-sacramento-region-and-its-2016-sustainable-communities-strategy/

Leading, and lagging

Right now, the Sacramento region is updating its Sustainable Communities Strategy for 2016.

The region’s 2012 plan really set the standard for the state, and we believe that leadership will continue.

But there’s a big disconnect between the region’s governing agency—the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, or SACOG—and the region’s cities and counties, which are lagging far behind.

The scenario: fact or fiction?

The update is well under way. In April, Sacramento’s draft “preferred scenario framework” came out. The full draft plan comes out in September. There will be a 60-day review period, and the final plan should be adopted in February 2016.

Based on what we’ve seen so far, the plan looks promising. The new SCS looks like it plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through true land use and transportation change to significantly reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT). The Sacramento region, we believe, is doing this—exactly what these plans are intended to do—to a greater degree than any other region in the state.

In the plan, SACOG achieves its reduction in driving, or VMT, largely by reducing sprawl development. That is, if the region’s footprint does not continue expanding, its residents won’t have to keep driving more and more. This is a laudable goal, and for this, we applaud SACOG and its leadership.

But will the strategy actually be implemented? Right now, it looks very unlikely.

The region is planning to dramatically reduce sprawl. But the cities and counties that make up the region—and make the land-use decisions—aren’t. There is a big gap between vision and implementation here. Too many jurisdictions are headed in the wrong direction.

Overall themes of the plan: fix it first and get it done

Because the plan’s major parameters have not changed much—the greenhouse gas reduction targets are the same, and growth projections are only slightly down—the SACOG Board chose to focus instead on two overall themes: a “fix-it-first” initiative, and the implementation of the 2012 plan.

These themes make sense. Implementation is the key. Here’s how those are playing out, with some improvements in the 2016 plan over 2012:

To “fix it first,” SACOG has increased funding for maintenance and rehabilitation of the existing road system by 4% to total 36% in the 2016 plan. These funds have largely been moved from the “new road and highway capacity” category. As we hear more and more about deteriorating infrastructure regionally and nationally, this makes sense, to fix roads now and prevent much higher costs later.

But what about transit? Despite this step in the right direction for road funding, we are concerned that the plan largely funds public transit with new revenues; that means transit funding will drop from current levels if these new revenues (from cap and trade, or from local measures) don’t actually materialize. That’s going in exactly the wrong direction.

To “get it done,” SACOG sees its role largely as providing information and tools to help jurisdictions, who make the decisions. The agency has made significant innovations in modeling, performance assessment, and tools to inform decision-making. It has developed its first-ever Climate Adaptation Plan. Its Rural Urban Connections Strategy (RUCS) is impressive: it takes a close look at the impacts on the agricultural economy of differing growth scenarios. SACOG has also improved the plan’s consideration of public health, equity, and natural resource conservation. You can find SACOG’s summary of anticipated performance outcomes of the Draft Preferred Scenario here.

The real concern around implementation, however, is that despite SACOG making it a theme for the past three years, there is still a yawning gap between the plan’s projections and jurisdictions’ actions.

It’s still not clear that the plan will actually be implemented—despite the theme.

Nearing the target

Targets set by the Air Resources Board define how much the region must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions: 7% by 2020 and 16% by 2035. SACOG’s Preferred Scenario comes in at 7.73% and 15.55%, and narrowly meets federal air quality conformity standards.

While this isn’t a final number, we’re concerned that this isn’t quite hitting the target — they’ll need to get that number up to 16% in the final plan.

Only a few months ago, SACOG’s plan wasn’t meeting the targets at all. The agency took decisive steps to fix that.

SACOG’s travel model assumes lower gas prices mean more driving, but since gas prices have been unexpectedly low, the 2012 project list no longer met the 2035 greenhouse gas reduction target. So this spring, SACOG staff worked with individual jurisdictions to revise the plan. Building on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s model for “project performance assessment” and adding its own innovative “phasing analysis,” SACOG was able to demonstrate the poor performance of over 80 road projects. As a result, $400 million worth of poor projects have been delayed or cut out of the MTP, to get the region back on track to meet the 2035 target.

SACOG’s success at getting rid of bad projects that were already part of the plan is truly impressive. It is unprecedented in Sacramento, and is a big step towards SCS implementation.

Housing numbers don’t add up

SACOG is known for doing some of the best planning in the country and leading the way to connect land use and transportation.

But the region is woefully unprepared to successfully implement its 2016 SCS, because the growth plans of individual jurisdictions differ wildly from the regional land-use scenario. They plan for far more homes than the SCS does, and put far more of them outside existing communities.

You can see a comparison of the regional housing forecast totals of the SCS to the “build-out estimate” of the cumulative general plans here.

The total build-out, from all the general plans of the Sacramento region, adds up to 661,211 houses beyond the 2012 existing stock—2.3 times the SCS estimate of 284,896. Of this 661,211 figure, 60% of the growth is greenfield development: with 2.2 times the growth in SACOG’s “developing community” areas, and 8 times more growth in “rural residential” areas than in the SCS. Over 123,000 units are completely outside of the SCS footprint. And these figures don’t even include other major areas that cities and towns still want to expand into.

There is tremendous growth pressure on the region’s fringe, and not much yet, it seems, to stop it.

More transit funding needed, sooner

Transit must be funded far more and far sooner to guide the region’s long-term growth to successfully implement the SCS. That’s what it will take to reduce driving, fight climate change, and create more healthy and sustainable communities.

Investing in major public transit improvements could help, by guiding growth along rail and bus lines to reduce driving. But the SCS puts these improvements off until far too late to change the region’s growth patterns.

The situation is made worse by the region’s inadequate funding for transit. Transit funding and service was severely cut in 2008-2010 amid the economic downturn, and the system has still not recovered. SACOG’s current draft scenario does not anticipate getting back to 2007 transit levels of service until 2020. Some estimate that it will take even longer. That’s an egregious delay.

SACOG gets good GHG/VMT performance in early years of the plan by dedicating substantial funding—8% of revenues—to bike-walk improvements. This is great.

But public transit is the key. In the plan, many major transit improvements don’t happen until its later years, and the financing for these late improvements seems murky.

The success of a planned 2036 transit system depends on significant changes in Sacramento’s growth patterns, but jurisdictions are failing to plan for enough infill to provide the densities and ridership needed to make the system work.

SACOG analysis shows that the proposed transit improvement timeline could work if the region’s jurisdictions were willingly conforming to the land-use footprint of the SCS, but they are not.

More funding is needed soon for public transit, for both expansion and operations, to help guide growth in a more sustainable way. If towns build homes and jobs first, then try to add transit, that’s far less likely to be effective. Especially if those homes and jobs are built far from anything else.

Closing the gap

New transportation funding measures are being considered for the 2016 ballot in Sacramento. It is critical that these put significant percentages toward public transit. Your voice will be needed to help shaping these measures—and so shape the region’s growth, and its future.

For now, ECOS, ClimatePlan, and partners will continue to work together and work with SACOG to improve the plan, and ultimately, help the region live up to its potential.

SACOG to present at ECOS TAQCC cmte mtg 6/4

Join the ECOS Transportation, Air Quality & Climate Change (TAQCC) committee for its regular monthly meeting, featuring a special presentation on the 2016 Metropolitan Transportation Plan/Sustainable Community Strategy (MTP/SCS) by Kacey Lizon, MTP/SCS Project Manager of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG)! A question & answer session will immediately follow the presentation.

When: Thursday, June 4, 2015 6pm
Where: Mogavero Notestine Associates, 2012 K St, Sacramento, 95811

ECOS supports policies aimed towards reducing automobile Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and promoting alternatives such as biking and walking.