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A Traffic Mitigation Fee
Ordinance enables local governments to collect fair-share participation fees
for needed roadways and public transportation improvements from new
development projects that generate traffic.
The main reason, by far, that
we have roadway congestion today is lack of accountability of developers
(and planners). There is little control on development's affect
on roadways and there is no correlation between freeway funding and the
development that congests it. Mitigation fees need
to be implemented in all communities where the freeway is affected, no
matter how far the development is from the freeway. Counties have to collect
mitigating fees to be allocated to 3 separate pools.
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One for local Roadways,
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another for Freeway and a
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third for everything
else including Transit, roadways and freeway.
Transit has
been historically proven to do little to relieve freeway
congestion Cost-Effectively, compared to Roadway Expansion, (with perhaps
the exception of
BRT and BUSWAYs).
So the 3 pools ensure that freeway is not left out.
The third pool goes to transit or any other transportation related cause
deemed necessary or reallocated to perhaps more needed roadway or freeway.
In addition, a fixed % of the
state's share of sales taxes collected on motor vehicle sales AND a
fixed % of gas tax should be
allocated to roadways and transportation ONLY,
we need to establish a similar correlation between roadway funding and
the DRIVING that congests it.
(If Prop51 had not been full of dumb projects, including
cost-Ineffective RAIL, it could have been
a logical way of funding transportation and roadways by those who drive.)
Europeans are incredulous when they see
how little we pay for gas in this country. Typically 1/2 to 1/3 the price they pay. Yes, their gas is
taxed this much more than ours.
We must have ONE Multi-County
Agency controlling development to the extent that if it can be shown
that development in one county will congest freeway in an adjacent county,
to an unacceptable limit, then that development must be disallowed.
Not until that freeway in the other county has been expanded (or
cost-effective transportation alternatives implemented) should that
development be permitted. All Local Community
Development Agencies need to be overseen by this ONE controlling Agency. But
they need to get it right!
The Bay Area's 7 million residents
are split among nine counties and 100 cities. One city pulls up the
drawbridge, forcing growth elsewhere; another woos auto dealers from its
neighbors, putting budgets in disarray.
Much better would be a regional government with power to craft a large-
scale vision for the area -- and power over major projects that might make
that vision succeed or fail. Not every zoning decision, mind you, but with
clout when needed.
While this may sound utopian -- or terrifying -- it almost happened in 1974,
when a bill to merge five Bay Area planning agencies passed the state
Assembly and had then-Gov. Ronald Reagan's tacit support. But the state
Senate balked. Another try failed in 1992 with the Bay Vision plan to merge
three agencies, including the Association of Bay Area Governments and the
Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
Conventional wisdom says the moment for strong regional government here has
passed. Yet when the Field Poll asked Bay Area residents in April, "Should
the state government require cities and counties . . . to create a joint
regional plan on growth and land-use issues?," 73 percent called it a good
idea. Maybe it's time to renew the battle.
John King sf chronicle
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There will be no Population Increase if there is no Jobs Increase.
PLAN BAY AREA attempts to
predict growth based on estimated Population Increase but
omits to address ways to direct and control Jobs that
cause this increase. The root of the challenge is finding ways to
- encourage job growth where there is
regional housing to take these jobs and
- discourage job growth where there isn't.
But instead the PLAN ignores this obvious approach and dollops Housing &
Transit around already congested areas expecting an inordinate amount of
commuters to abandon their cars as if we were all in a dense European city.
They need to waken up to the fact that Americans have already chosen life in
the suburbs as their preferred goal and will keep their cars, especially
when they will all be driven with free energy, charged overnight from solar
panels + battery.
This is the future that will give us ZERO GHG Emission ( fulfilling the
SB375 goal tenfold if the PLAN did nothing).
There are studies that predict that Suburbs will power cities in the future
from excess generation.
Autonomous electric vehicles, commuting us door to door, might render many
Minor Transit Systems useless, if the PLAN would provide the necessary
roadways for this to happen.
Bottom Line -- focus
on the root cause of disparity in Housing, Transportation and Jobs --
incentives for JOB location and relocation to where there is Housing for it
-- and a JOB TAX where there isn't.
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