Big, big news for California. The fact that probably few here even know about it shows how little forumers here understand urbanism, and demonstrates how superficial our fanboy project updating and our obsession with power lines (citywatch
) appears in the grand scheme of things. For anyone who cares, this is
real, fundamental change, the likes of which will see us move more towards a European model of city-building and set precedence for a nationwide end to limitless sprawl
Yesterday in Sacramento the LOS (Level of Service) planning metric was removed as a required element of CEQA (EIR) reviews of proposed developments. This applies as much to environmental reviews of private sector developments (housing/retail etc) as it does to infrastructure (eg road diets)
the significance is huge. LOS has probably been the single biggest source of ammunition for NIMBY lawsuits against dense ped-friendly developments nationwide, and as a single planning metric, probably contributed most to the sprawl that American cities are notorious for because it made sprawl much more cost-effective for developers than urbanism. LOS has been invoked by NIMBYs to de-densify developments by labeling any impact on car throughput and car throughput alone an "environmental impact" which must be mitigated. The effect was that all developers/municipalities were forced to mitigate forseen impacts to car traffic by widening streets/freeways, downsizing proposals, and altering urban design in order to accommodate increased traffic, making for the car-centric urban landscape prevalent throughout America.
Without LOS, developers need not worry about their impact on automobile traffic, so long as alternate transportation modes are made available. This means that municipalities will be free to divert a greater share of transportation funding to non-automobile based mitigations such as bike and rail infrastructure, and it means developers can propose denser projects focused on pedestrians/bicyclists rather than cars, without facing the spectre of costly project-killing lawsuits. This change alone is going to do more to accelerate urbanization of California cities than all of the half-assed low quality urban infill going on today.
Quote:
California Has Officially Ditched Car-Centric ‘Level of Service’
Ding, dong…LOS is dead.
At least as far as the state of California is concerned.
Level of Service (LOS) has been the standard by which the state measures the transportation impacts of major developments and changes to roads. Level of Service is basically a measurement of how many cars can be pushed through an intersection in a given time. If a project reduced a road’s Level of Service it was considered bad — no matter how many other benefits the project might create.
Now, thanks to legislation passed last year and a yearlong effort by the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR), California will no longer consider “bad” LOS a problem that needs fixing under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) . This won’t just lead to good projects being approved more quickly and easily, but also to better mitigation measures for transportation impacts.
Late yesterday, OPR released a draft of its revised guidelines [PDF], proposing to substitute Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) for LOS.
In short, instead of measuring whether or not a project makes it less convenient to drive, it will now measure whether or not a project contributes to other state goals, like reducing greenhouse gas emissions, developing multimodal transportation, preserving open spaces, and promoting diverse land uses and infill development. ...
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http://la.streetsblog.org/2014/08/07...el-of-service/