recess regular hearing for may 2013. i'd like to remind the members of the public the commission does not tolerate any outbursts or disruptions of any kind. if you have any mobile devices that may sound off during these proceedings, please silence them or turn them off. and when speaking before the commission please do state your name for the record. commissioners, we left off under your regular calendar item 12, plan bay area. >> commissioner, [speaker not understood] with the planning department. i'm here to brief you on plan bay area which is the sustainable communities strategy for our region. this arose out of senate bill 375 which was a state bill that called for all of the bay area's region -- all of the california's regions to demonstrate how each region would achieve per capita reduction in greenhouse gas emissions through long-range planning. we've briefed you periodically

on this the last pew years. the last time we were here was about nine months ago when the jobs housing connection which was the draft growth strategy and the draft transportation strategy were first formed and put out. since then, about a month ago, mtc, abag, metropolitan transportation commission and association of bay area governments, released the draft plan bay area, the draft sustainable clean air strategy that brings the growth strategy and transportation strategy together. they are out for a comment period which ends next week. so, our hope today is to brief you on the content of the plan and e-i-r and staff will be working on letters to mtc and abag on the contents, so, we hope to hear your feedback to help us form those letters. i'm here with my colleagues liz bryson who will speak to the transportation strategy of the plan and victoria wise from our department who will brief you on the draft e-i-r.

if i can get the presentation. so, just to talk a little bit about why the plan is happening in the first place, the entire plan bay area is based on population projections. growth and jobs, growth in housing, and the premise is to shift that growth towards urbanized areas and more directly shift the most intense growth to actual urban areas like san francisco, san jose, and oakland. the reasons they're doing that are ones you are quite well aware of. greenhouse gases obviously are most affected by driving, less driving means lessee missions, more people can walk, bike, and take transit. they don't need to drive as much. water use is another great reason for directing people towards urban areas. an interesting fact, sierra club recently, i guess about three years ago did a per

capita water analysis and found that san francisco is the lowest in the bay area by far in term of water use of 108 gallons per day versus almost 175 gallons per day in alameda county which is relatively urban, too, which makes a difference how people live and how we consume our resources. and then a thing that i think is less talked about but that is one of the things underpinning plan bay area as it's trying to reach beyond lubetionv and transportation towards social and economic activity, cities try to offered [speaker not understood] even as afford ability is an issue in our more dense areas. they found social connectedness is a chi critical factor in upward mobility. lack of car alliance can fail to help people connect and move forward. it is a complicated web bus there is a factor in there shifting areas to help us move forward. and another factor underlying the population projections within plan bay area is how we

will grow. the productions are just projections. no one is really sure ~ if we will grow and by how much and who those people would be, but plan bay area sees the same trends that we have been seeing in our city, like a growing senior population who often are trying to downsize and fit within urban areas. a growing asian and latino population, cultures that are much more familiar with multi-generational households and multi-family housing preferences often. a growing work force under 35, which is showing demands to be single longer, more accepting of density and transit and often more desirable of multi-family housing as well. on the employment sector, they're seeing growth primarily in the professional and health sectors with things like industrial jobs staying stable, particular growth in the knowledge sector with the kind of jobs that we in san francisco have been seek a local boom in. they're seeing a demand for

connected and accessible workplaces and along with those jobs a real mode shift, a desire for commute patterns that are connected to transit on bike lanes, that kind of thing. >> so, this just talks a little bit about what the region's saw their task as. as i mentioned, greenhouse gas emissions was the state directive, but within that, connecting land use and transportation planning, making sure that we have an ability to house the region's population at all its income levels and that is a really tricky thing to do in a regional plan and i don't think -- i'm not sure it is a possible thing to do in a regional plan. it is not one that came out very successfully. and another key factor here was embodying local vision. so, as i'll talk about when i get into the growth strategy, it really was built on work with the different municipalities within the bay area to see what their visions are, where they could grow, and by how much. and that was the foundation of the plan. ~ land use

another interesting fact about component of plan bay area is that it was built on performance targets. looking at how we can increase our economic vitality, not only how we can reduce greenhouse emissions, but how we can ensure all future development, future growth happens within the already urbanized footprints. looking at vmt, vehicle miles traveled and how we can reduce that, while increasing our nonauto mode share. looking at ways to improve health of our citizens, reducing deaths from particle emissions, reducing injuries from collisions, increasing the amount of time people spend walking and biking every day. and lastly as an equitable measure looking at how we can decrease housing and transportation, the percent of cost that housing and transportation take up of a person's -- of a household's budget. we'll get into those growth and transportation strategies, but just on a meta level, the

majority of those targets were met and i think the plan did pretty well. it is worth noting that we didn't decrease collisions. the plan didn't decrease collisions. and i think as the regional staff presents that, they did not phrase that target in a good way. it wasn't phrased as a reduction of -- in terms of percent based on population, but just net decrease in collisions. the fact is if we add as many people as the region says we're going to over 2 million people are going to have more accidents and more of those people crashing into each other. another unfortunate finding of the plan was that while the percent of housing and transportation costs that represented a household income did go down in proportion to what would happen without the plan, they did not go down overall. they still raised. i think the increase was, without the plan, they thought those combined costs would increase by 10% of what they are today. with the plan they're still going to increase by 3%.

so, it's still going to be a problem. so, i'll just get lightly into the growth strategy, which is the land use component of the plan. what we're looking at in term of growth over the region is 1.12 million jobs to 20 40, 66 0,000 new households. san francisco's share of that is significant. we're looking at 92,000 households and 190,000 jobs. we're taking a great share of the growth, as is oakland and san jose. i've spoken to you previously about these numbers. we think they're ambitious, but not out of -- completely out of whack with what we've seen in the past. whether we can sustain this level of growth over the next 25 years is the question, but these are the numbers we're looking at. the strategy for the region, as

i mentioned, is based on local vision. so, what happens is all of the growth is directed towards locally designated priority development areas as a refresher, prior development areas have to be -- they are designated -- they are accepted by abag. localities designate them, but abag and mtc look at the qualities that those areas contain and decide whether they actually are truly a pda. they have to be within an existing community or infill development area. they have to be near existing or plan transit. they have to provide housing and/or jobs on a significant amount of those, and they are supposed to provide a diversity of density in order to kind of connect with community identity. so, this plan contains over 170 pdas that were nominated by the various jurisdictions, and over 60 cities and counties. what that means is that the majority of the growth can happen in pdas 80% of the housing units that were projected to grow will fit in

those pink areas you see in this map. 60% of the jobs. we've spoken a lot to you about the need to connect jobs to transit because that really is the end trip of the commute trip ~ and i think that is something we wish we could have been a little more ambitious toward, but it does still represent a significant shift for the region. and then locally in terms of where our growth is happening, i believe you're familiar with our priority development areas which are shown on this map. we can fit 85% of our projected housing in pda's and 75% of our projected jobs in pda's. somewhat on parallel. little more aggressive than what the region is doing, but somewhat parallel. i think what is important no noel it does not necessarily mean the growth that doesn't fit in pda's is going to happen in unplanned ways which just means we haven't planned for it yet and we probably have some more work to do in the next 25 years. and then lastly, i just wanted

to mention, because i think a very interesting thing about this plan, and i'm not sure how many of the other regions sustainable stratejai have this overlayer component, the plan does try to go beyond the projection of land use. the region the last several years has taken an interest in the kind of issues especially important to us. things like creating complete communities, ensuring housing affordability, looking at development without displacement, how do we preserve our existing communities while growing at the same time. and it does provide some funding to do so. liz during her presentation will talk a little about the funding that is connected through the one bay area block grant framework, but just like our local plans try to address things like how we're providing affordable housing, how we're connecting residents to jobs, how we're providing job training or community education, the region is looking at how they can support our efforts to do so and that will be a new component that will be very welcome to us in

the coming years. with that i'll turn it over to liz. ~ >> good afternoon, commissioners. liz bryson with the san francisco county transportation authority. and the authority has been very involved in sort of coordinating san francisco's input into the funding process. we've had a really great experience working with all of the relevant agencies, the planning department, the sfmta's mayor's office of housing, among others. there has been some real successes as a result of that coordination and we've had great wins for san francisco in that process. so, sarah gave a great overview of the new requirements of doing this joint regional land use and transportation plan as a result of [speaker not understood]. just a little bit of background on the transportation component of that. the region a.m. transportation plan, this is something that the region has been doing for many, many years, updated every four years, and it's important

to note a little bit about the regional transportation is and is not. so, it kind of has two roles. on the one hand it is a sort of symbolic policy commitment by the region of what the region's transportation investment priorities are. and on the other hand it plays a more strategic role related to being a gate keeper to receiving transportation funding. so, we in san francisco try to make sure anything we expect to need, any funding coming from the federal, state, or regional levels in the next four years before the next update to the plan, we try really hard to make sure it ends up in the rtp in order to ensure that we can be eligible for the funding sources. and, so, to that end we actually do a lot of our prioritization of san francisco transportation priorities through a county level process that i know we've briefed you on before, the san francisco transportation plan. that's really where we do our priority setting process, and then we forward things r

the right regional transportation priorities. and just one more note on the san francisco transportation plan. i won't spend much time on it during today's presentation, but we have been updating it in throws of that this summer. ap ~ so, i twesthat sort baarea in terms of the plan transportation investment. the first one shows a breakdown of all of the funding that is expected to come into the region between now and 20 40. that includes federal, state, regional funds ~. it also includes locally generated funds. some examples of that would be the prop k tax that we administer here in san francisco. also the type of transportation investment that comes with new development that comes from the private sector. so, there are pected from all t

between now and 20 40hich sounds like a tremendous amount of money. it is actually not enough relative to the needs that have been projected. and this sort of shows how that funding is broken down with the two big chunks representing maintenance and operations. 80% of the funds are expected to go towards those needs and it's about enough -- not even quite enough to approximately today's level of maintenance, which isn't necessarily an ideal state of repair. and the remainder is split between expense and transit expansion that is a slightly bigger share of 70%, road expansion 5%. so, now moving from the 289 billion, of that 289, a lot of it the region has no discretion as to where it would be spent. examples will be locally generating sources. so, the real important decisions in the plan have to

do with the $57 billion that the region has some role in saying where it should be directed within the region. and there are six main strategies for how that 57 billion should be distributed among the region. again, of the discretionary revenue, there is a big chunk dedicate today maintaining the transportation system. a second category is the 1 bay area grant. this is a really important and new funding program. i know when i was here last time, nine months ago, i gave a little bit of an overview about it. generally this is the first time that the region has really tied transportation money to land use and good land use decisions. so, while a traditional formula for distribution funding from the region to the counties looks at pretty much your share of the population, your share of land miles and you get a share of the money based on that, this time that formula also includes consideration of a jurisdiction's track record

in producing housing and particularly affordable housing, as well as future plans to accommodate more housing through the regional housing needs allocation process. so, this is actually a really great achievement of the plan. it's something that we in san francisco advocated for -- you know, we've done the good work and the hard work of doing good land use planning and there needs to be some commensurate investment in transportation. it's not perfect, but it's a very symbolic gesture and a great achievement of this plan. and that funding needs to be spent 70% in support of priority development areas. so, in san francisco you saw the map of our priority development areas. another chunk of the tide goes to building the next generation of transit. i'll speak a little bit about what that means in san francisco in the following slides. there is a chunk of about 7% that goes to boosting freeway and transit efficiency. this represents two different

programs. the freeway performance initiative an performance initiative. now, the freeway performance initiative is something that's been around for awhile. it's how can we manage our existing freeway system for efficiently. so, things like ramp metering, things like infrastructure that lets you know when there is an incident, and clear it, and things of that nature. and the transit performance initiative is a new investment. it's one that never existed before and is another thing that we in san francisco advocated to be there as a counter point to the freeway performance initiative and the region has made a 500 million dollars commitment to that, to that program over the lifetime of the plan. i think that's a good overview of the main investments here. next slide just talks about what are the aspects of this plan that we see as really strong from the transportation side and for san francisco specifically. one is that the region did what

is called a project performance evaluation to determine which transportation projects would be included in the plan. there was over 100 evaluated against the target that sarah described at the beginning of the presentation. out of all 100 plus projects, there were 13 that were called out as the, as the high performers that sort of stood out as being the most supportive of the goals and targets of the plan. and out of those 13, 7 of them were ones that would benefit san francisco. so, that's more than half and considering san francisco is just one county out of 9 and we're a small share of the regional population, that's a pretty good track record. and the result of that is that the region has made policy commitment to support those projects with discretionary revenues. some of that 58 billion goes to support those types of projects. and the table on the right of the slide shows those high performers with the ones that our san francisco projects

highlighted. i talked about the 1 bay area grant program already, but that's another thing that we can really point to san francisco's advocacy as something that helped it happen. in particular, one thing that we did that wasn't in the initial proposal was to say an initial proposal was about making investment in housing in general. we say, william, you should get extra money if you're really doing the hard work of affordable housing, affordable housing is very controversial topic throughout the region. san francisco tends to perform very well in producing very low and low-income housing and that is weighted within the formula. transit performance initiatives, again, new program, never created before, really good program that was a result of advocacy from us as well as others in the region. so, that said, it's not perfect as any regional plan never would be and it has to represent the needs of a

nine-county region and the constrained funding viardthv that ~ environment we're working under, this is one challenge that remains in terms of state of good repair. even though 88% of the revenue that is expected to support maintenance and operations, this is our latest projection of what the shortfall is in san francisco that we've calculated as part of our county wide transportation plan process to the order of 6 plus billion dollars over a 28 year period. that's a challenge that remains. there's others from transit crowding to congestion to all sorts of other things. we'll be looking at county wide transportation plan coming up with what are the next generation of projects and policies that we need to respond to those challenges. just a little bit to transition into -- so, this plan is going to be adopted by july. what happens after that and what is already underway to implement the plan? well, on the one hand, i

mentioned these two programs, the freeway performance and transit performance initiative. these are new programs of funds and typically in approximately a three or four-year cycle, the region then makes a funding -- a programming decision about a tranche of that funding. so, san francisco has the challenge wren now and the next cycle of the funding to really define what do these programs look like in san francisco, what is the specific project that we could get to the point of being ready to implement those funds. so, on the freeway performance initiative side, san francisco has really never benefited from these funds before, but we've been doing some really great brainstorming between the authorities, sfmta, planning department to put in a caltrans planning grant to look at ways we can racks allies the freeway ramps, thinking in particular about the soma area as one example where the ramps are very closely spaced, less than half a mile apart, and not that well designed, and there may be opportunities to repurpose some ramps for transit or car pools and things of that nature. so, that's an idea of the --

example of the planning work we might do to set up implementable projects. similarly on the transit performance initiative side, there is some thinking that's been done, the authority, sfmta about looking at those sort of hinge points in the metro system and what are the types of [speaker not understood] to deal with the bottleneck be it the embarcadaro turn around or west portal and where [speaker not understood] come together. i mentioned how there's shortfalls that remain for many projects and a couple of -- there's an entire advocacy platform that the region has put together to couple to highlight of particular note, one is cap and trade as an entirely new revenue source and there's been some talk at the region of let's make sure the region is clear what our priorities are so we can make sure that we're successful in bringing down a share of the cap and trade revenues locally. and secondly, sarah talked a

little about this, the challenge of this goal of achieving all of the housing needs by income level and the region. the plan is predicated on assuming there is some sort of a replacement to the redevelopment tool that was lost. so, that's something that i know there will be a lot of attention on, trying to achieve that in the coming years. and finally, i talked a little about how the -- we go from this 28-year general idea of how funding will be planned, distributed to specific tranches of actual implementation funding. so, a cycle of that funding is underway to be programmed. it's known as the 1 bay area grant framework. and within that framework there are specific funding programs which include this block grant that i described. so, the authority has been working to program that cycle of funds. we did a call for projects process that began in the fall

and we've been working with the implementing transportation agencies in san francisco to distribute and program $38.8 million. and the final recommendations for that funding i think are to go throughout our process in the next month. a couple examples, there's so far been a sort of process to rate the projects in terms of being in the high or a middle high tier and some that came through the first round being the high tier include the 2nd street scape project, masonic project and improvements around the transbay center for bicyclists and pedestrians. so, one other thing to note on the near term funding horizon, the same funding program that created the block grant also created -- didn't create, it programmed a share of funding for our program called the priority development area raring program. now, this is a program that previously was administered at

the regional level and in this plan it's been decided that half of it will go directly to counties to be administered at the county level. francisco the planning dertmen administering that fund source. it is expected to be -- it will be $2.38 million over a four-year cycle. and it's a really cool way to think about the next cycle of this 1 bay area grant and doing the planning work you need to do to set up a project to be ready for implementation funding that comes with very strict timely use of fund deadlines. so, in order to think more about these questions of using the pda planning funds and future abag funds, the authority is actually required to prepare something that we call the transportation investment and growth strategy which is pretty much an exercise to synthesize a lot of work we've done through all of the priority development area plans looking at transportation needs, bringing it together in order to help us be able to think about what the

transportation priorities are within each of the pda's. so, i will leave it at that. we put together a draft document with input from the different agencies, sort of being refined and we'll take it through a board process at our authority board in the summer. and i'm going to now turn the presentation over to victoria to do the e-i-r section and at the end would be happy to answer any questions. >> thank you, victoria, [speaker not understood]. we've been reading the draft e-i-r and the plan bay area as are many jurisdictions have as well because the draft e-i-r is currently out for public review. as sarah mentioned, that 45 days closes next week on thursday. so, i will just give you a brief overview, sort of high level about how the e-i-r, a little about the contents and focus the discussion on the

potential for ceqa review and implications surrounding that. as all of you are very familiar with and the e-i-r focus of course is to analyze the plan bay area 1 into bring to decision makers the impact the plan will result in. and just as importantly to put forth mitigation measures to address those impacts. and of course, as with any e-i-r, identify and analyze a reasonable range of alternatives. and then provide the basis for modified c-e-q-a review. just very briefly talk about the alternatives. as with any e-i-r, this draft e-i-r covers the new project alternative which assumes all the land uses and local policies that existed in 2010 along with the 2010 transportation network. and then the proposed plan sarah and liz described to you already, and then an alternative section talks a little about the transit

priority focus alternative, and that basically focuses future household growth and concentrates on the pda areas which a map you've seen earlier in the presentation. and then it has an mtc's preferred transportation investment strategy which as liz mentioned provides 90% of the funding towards o and m existing facilities -- i'm sorry, i misspoke. the transit bay area focus alternative actually is a little bit different from the preferred [speaker not understood] strategy in that [speaker not understood] bay bridge tolls to fund some of the bart and ac transit investments and then it has a development fee linked to vehicle miles traveled. then if we take a look at the enhanced network communities alternative, it's similar, although this is an interesting alternative in that it allows for more disbursed growth pattern and concentrated in pda as much as the preferred plan. and as far as the transportation investment

portion of, it is very similar plan, but it has [speaker not understood]. number 5 equity jobs [speaker not understood]. focuses on job opportunities [speaker not understood]. in terms of e-i-r alternative number 5 is what we call the environmentally preferred alternative. it results in fewer environmental impacts in the plan but i think what's important to note about this is that it really is marginally better in terms of impact on the environment and that's really key. just in terms of overall impacts of the plan, you know, it's going to result in 39 significant unavoidable impacts on the environment and then about 42 total impacts would be less than significant or we are going to be able to mitigate them in the region.