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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

January-February 2009

Making a Dent in Traffic

The plan’s investments and initiatives will help to significantly reduce the severity of traffic delays despite an influx of more people and more cars on area roads. (Photo: Barrie Rokeach)

The Draft Transportation 2035 Plan in and of itself may not do much to curb Bay Area residents’ appetite for driving — nor alleviate the necessity of driving for some — but it will get motorists where they’re going considerably faster. These findings emerged from a computerized analysis of the draft plan’s performance vis-à-vis several key objectives set by the Commission at the outset of the long-range 2035 planning process.

The plan will help trim per-person freeway delay in the year 2035 from a projected 72 hours a year to 47 hours a year. This progress is largely a result of the plan’s $1.6 billion investment in the Freeway Performance Initiative (see story). The Regional HOT Network (see story) and new transit capacity also will play a role. Yet the impressive reduction in delay achieved by these investments still falls short of the year 2035 performance objective to reduce congestion to 31 hours per person per year, or 20 percent below current levels.

Somewhat paradoxically, the Draft Transportation 2035 Plan barely makes a dent in trimming the per-capita miles driven in the region, reducing daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per person in 2035 from 21.3 to 21.2 — scant progress toward the performance objective of 18.2 miles per person per day, or 10 percent below current levels.

“The Bay Area’s very dynamism, as measured by projected growth in both population and jobs, poses a daunting challenge when it comes to reducing the number of miles driven by vehicles in the region,” the document notes.

Adding to the challenge are the region’s long-standing land-use patterns, which tend to separate jobs and housing by considerable distances, often with little regard for proximity to public transit. The Draft Transportation 2035 Plan addresses this issue in part by doubling funding for MTC’s groundbreaking Transportation for Livable Communities Program. True to its “TLC” acronym, this decade-old initiative revitalizes communities with tender loving care in the form of streetscape improvements and amenities for bicyclists, pedestrians and transit riders — and in the process bolsters efforts to attract people and development to the urban core and transit nodes. The TLC investment also will bolster the interagency FOCUS program, which is working to redraw the urban landscape in a more sustainable model while protecting open space.

Public-awareness strategies developed in conjunction with the plan’s climate-change campaign likely will come into play in combating upward VMT trends as well.

But making real headway on limiting miles driven and stemming greenhouse gas emissions will take even stronger measures. The results of the performance assessment show that while the Draft Transportation 2035 Plan points the region toward the right path, the plan’s initiatives and investments do not move the Bay Area far enough down that path. “A bigger regional effort — with an agenda that includes more transport pricing, focused growth, technology advances and individual behavior changes in addition to infrastructure investments — must be mounted to truly cause major change and put that change in motion. It will take all of us to build the momentum for change, and... the Bay Area stands ready for the challenge,” the document notes.

See the full Performance Assessment Report at www.mtc.ca.gov/T2035.

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