Bay Area Flight Plan: The New Regional Airport Systems Plan
Is it possible to incorporate "smart growth" into all the future planning for the Bay Area? Five regional agencies are beginning work on a Smart Growth Strategy which would institutionalize a new approach to planning for future growth in the region. The two-year effort will work toward two goals:
The agencies include the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) and the Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB). The five agencies will be contributing funding and staffing to match a grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The work plan, with a proposed budget of almost $1 million, was on the MTC and ABAG agendas in July; the other agencies will be considering it in August and September.
As proposed, the work plan for the Smart Growth Strategy consists of four phases. Phase 1 is underway. In addition to approval of the work plan and budget by the five agencies, it includes designing a process to include local leaders and the public in developing the Strategy. The Steering Committee will include 3 members each from MTC, BAAQMD and ABAG; BCDC and RWQCB will each appoint one member from their boards. Advisors to the Steering Committee will include leaders from the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development (BAASD), the Bay Area Transportation and Land Use Coalition, the San Francisco District Council of the Urban Land Institute, and similar organizations as appropriate. In addition, consultants will be hired to assist with defining and implementing the overall public input phase of the planning process. To avoid duplication of effort, the work plan will be coordinated with the BAASD's Regional Livability Footprint Project, which is intended to relate action recommendations in the Alliance's Compact for Sustainable Development to land use decisions in the Bay Area.
Phase 2 will focus on public input, through a series of workshops to be held around the Bay Area beginning in September. These workshops will be designed to involve key local officials and interested stakeholders, including groups and individuals who have not previously participated in regional growth and planning. Workshops will be held in five or six subregions, often based on pairs of counties, such as Marin/Sonoma. They will begin by acknowledging efforts already underway in the subregion to manage growth, such as urban growth boundaries, transit-oriented planning and development programs, and surveys of housing opportunities. Initial workshops will be "town hall meetings", bringing together the public with city councilmembers and county supervisors to brainstorm problems, issues and solutions. Followup workshops will begin to focus on specific solutions, including implementation measures which might require changes at the regional or state level.
At each step of the workshop process, one result will be a map of each subregion defining where and how the future growth should be accommodated. A final series of workshops will bring together local elected officials and staff, with attendees from the previous workshops who wish to participate, to summarize and review proposed land use changes, transportation investments, and implementation ideas which have resulted from earlier workshops. If these proposals will not accommodate all the growth in ABAG's projections, additional ideas will be solicited as well. The workshops will provide a set of preliminary strategies which can be used to shift projected growth patterns away from the status quo, and identification of needed fiscal and regulatory incentives to support smart growth land use decisions. These strategies and incentives, reflecting the needs and priorities of local jurisdictions, will be presented to the Steering Committee in March and April 2001.
While some strategies may be implemented almost immediately at the local level, reinforcing awareness of the benefits brought by smart growth, at the regional level the workshop results will lead to Phase 3, preparation and analysis of an alternative regional growth scenario. Using a 25-year time frame, ABAG will prepare both a baseline scenario based on current trends, as usual, and also a smart growth scenario incorporating workshop conclusions. A preliminary analysis of the alternative's effects on regional open space, housing, and other quality of life concerns will be prepared to help local jurisdictions as they compare and comment on the two scenarios. A more detailed analysis of both scenarios, including transportation and air quality impacts, will then be provided to the Steering Committee. The Steering Committee will also be provided with a set of implementation strategieslocal, regional and state levelwhich would be needed for the alternative growth scenario.
At a final "joint summit" meeting, the boards of the regional agencies will meet to consider the results of the previous work in the form of two growth forecasts, two sets of transportation investments, two sets of projected effects on the region, and a preliminary implementation plan tied to the future scenarios. The local jurisdictions, as represented on the ABAG Executive Board, will vote first, choosing one of the two scenarios. The regional agencies, which can provide input for the first vote, may then vote to take action on any of the implementation measures called for in the scenario chosen in the first vote. This landmark summit meeting is tentatively scheduled to take place in the summer of 2002.
Phase 4, implementation, will be an ongoing responsibility of local jurisdictions and regional agencies, with involvement by the state as well. If the preceding process has worked as intended, the region will have two advantages as it moves forward: a unified approach to applying smart growth to decisions made at all these levels, and also improved coordination between regional agencies to address the interrelated issues of land use, transportation, air quality and quality of life.
Leslie Stewart
For more information:
Amidst controversy over proposals for expanded runways at San Francisco International Airport, the Regional Airport Planning Committee (RAPC) has almost finished updating the Regional Airport System Plan (RASP) to the year 2020. The committee is made up of representatives from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). The updated Plan will become the airport element of MTC's Regional Transportation Plan and will assist BCDC in making permit decisions when airport changes affect the Bay shoreline.
The San Francisco International (SFO) runway expansion proposal is the latest in a series of moves by Bay Area airports to address capacity needs in response to the region's growth. San Jose (SJO) is currently adding capacity, and within the timeframe of the new RASP, Oakland (OAK) will also need to increase runway space. (See January/February 1999 issue.) The RASP process has been considering a range of strategies to meet the region's growing demand for airport capacity, while acknowledging the need to minimize additional impacts on the environment and mitigate noise and pollution for neighboring communities. Discussion has included adding limited commercial service at general aviation airports, now used for private aircraft, converting military airfields to commercial use, or shifting flights from one airport to another.
The primary conclusions and recommendations presented to RAPC in mid-July provided no clear-cut answers to the difficult choices facing the region. As expressed in the draft Plan, "the choices concerning runway improvements are essentially choices between: a) serving projected demand through system expansion, b) tolerating increasing airport delays in favor of protecting the environment beyond that which may be achieved through mitigation, or c) limiting air passenger choices through flight restrictions that attempt to achieve a better balance between demand and capacity."
The draft Plan indicates that system expansion must continue to be an option. "After examination of a range of alternatives to construction of new runways, our analysis does not reveal a strategy, or set of strategies, that can adequately close the gap between demand and capacity by 2020, " said the report. "Nevertheless, we should continue to monitor developments that may change these conclusions in the future."
While new runway construction would improve reliability, it would not totally eliminate delays by 2020, particularly in bad weather, according to the draft Plan. In addition, "there remain a number of significant technical and environmental issues that still need to be resolved before a decision to increase runway capacity can be supported at SFO and/or OAK." Therefore, the Plan recommends an ongoing approach rather than specific actions: continued environmental analysis of expansions at SFO and OAK, continued indication of interest in future commercial use of current military airports, and maintaining an effective reliever airport network through support of general aviation airports.
As next steps, the Plan includes a number of suggestions for actions which could be taken by RAPC, the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), the airports, and other entities:
The draft Plan also identified key considerations which must be addressed for any runway expansion involving Bay fill, including runway design issues which could affect the amount of fill, and noise and airspace impacts due to reconfiguration of flight routes.
The goals of the new RASP are to:
While the recent update incorporates new analyses and information which will help RAPC address these goals, it is not complete. Extensive modeling is still taking place to create additional information which will help guide future decisions. The new Plan, when adopted, will provide a better map of where those decisions may lead, but it will not tell the region which road or destination is best. Some important choices must be made by RAPC and the boards of its member agencies. The results will significantly affect the region's economic and environmental future.
Leslie Stewart
For more information:
Chris Brittle, MTC, 510-464-7700
Patricia Perry, ABAG, 510-464-7900
Jeff Blanchfield, BCDC, 415-352-3654
Once again we present a summer roundup of "Bright Ideas", a selection of interesting and thought-provoking ideas gleaned from our reading this past year. They appear on these two pages and on pages 6 and 7. We believe that you will find them stimulating and possibly useful.
Leslie Stewart, Editor
New city buildings in San Francisco will be environmentally friendly under a recently enacted "green building" ordinance. The buildings must conserve energy and water, be healthier for occupants and visitors, and encourage recycling. This means they will probably contain energy-efficient lighting, recycled carpeting and furnishings made from recyclables, and should be constructed with windows which open, nontoxic paint, and wood harvested from sustainable forests.
Some plans are already in place for the next new buildings. At the new offices of the Department of the Environment, the director plans a bicycle storage space. The pavilion being built by the Friends of Recreation and Parks at the west end of Golden Gate Park will have a roof covered with soil and planted with sedum, a succulent plant similar to ice plant. Walls of the building will be constructed with a mixture of cement and fly ash, a residue from burning coal; using less cement helps to reduce global warming created by cement plants.
The replacement for Laguna Honda Hospital has been redesigned to comply with the ordinance. Instead of a large seven-story building, it will now be a collection of smaller "pods" surrounded by landscaping and with interior gardens, improving the relationship between the buildings and the external environment.
It is possible that in the future San Francisco's civic buildings may even incorporate built-in solar heating or a biomass heating system. Like drought-resistant exhibition gardens, the new city buildings will demonstrate how green building can take construction in the city in a new direction.
For more information:
San Francisco Department of the Environment, 415-554-6390; http://www.ci.sf.us/environment
Since multiple agencies are charged with protecting aquatic resources in California, complying with regulations has often been burdensome for property owners. Now a single form has been developed to help property owners obtain the many permits needed when property changes affect a creek, coastal area or wetland.
The Bay Area Joint Aquatic Resources Permit Application (JARPA) was developed by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the San Francisco Estuary Project (SFEP) under a grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). During the first year of the JARPA project, ABAG and SFEP developed the form with input from staff at Bay Area agencies with aquatic permitting responsibility, including San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, California Department of Fish and Game, EPA, and US Army Corps of Engineers. The form is 14 pages long, similar to the length and complexity of several agency applications, but combining these multiple applications into one.
Local agency staff were trained to understand the mandates of the various permitting agencies, and how the form might be used in the permitting process. The form will provide each agency with the same project information on which to base permitting decisions. Agencies can also determine which other agencies are reviewing the application, enabling better coordination and ensuring proper permitting with no gaps in oversight.
The JARPA process is already in use in Washington state, where it has been successfully used for many small projects such as single family docks and small wetland fills, and for projects as large as an airport runway and a large bridge crossing. ABAG and SFEP have recently received a two-year grant from EPA to establish a JARPA permit center, including assistance for individual permit applicants who wish to use JARPA for their project. The grant will also allow continued agency staff training, and ongoing revision of the form based on initial use by permit center staff and participating agencies.
For more information:
The JARPA form is online at http://www.abag.ca.gov/bayarea/sfep/projects/JARPA/JARPA.html. ABAG contact is Jennifer Krebs, 510-464-7977, jenniferk@abag.ca.gov or Carol Thornton, 510-622-2419, CarolT@abag.ca.gov
Community gardens on city-owned property in Seattle are adding more than a recreational resource to the urban area. As described at the Local Government Commission's Ahwanee Conference in March, Seattle's P-Patch gardens have provided the city an opportunity to teach organic cultivation methods, reducing toxic runoff to Puget Sound. Gardens create open space which balances urban density, and crime has decreased when gardens are added to an area. Recently new gardens have been sited near public housing, allowing new immigrants living there to supplement their resources and grow favorite vegetables which are unavailable in US markets. The city's General Plan now requires a P-Patch community garden in any plan which will add density to a neighborhood.
For more information:
Seattle Dept. of Neighborhoods, 206-684-0464; http://www.cityofseattle.org/don
For Caltrain and BART commuters, tickets are a mouse click away. For almost two years, Caltrain has offered Ticket-by-Internet for 10-Ride Tickets. For maximum security, passengers who wish to use the service print and mail an application form available on the Caltrain Website. After they receive a Personal Identification Number from Caltrain, they may e-mail ticket orders at any time, and the tickets will be mailed within 5 business days.
BART offers tickets on its Website through an online vendor with a secure site. Up to three tickets may be ordered at one time, and will be received within 5 working days. The Website also offers a form which may be printed and mailed. Recently, BART has partnered with online grocer Webvan to allow customers to buy tickets at the same time they buy groceries, an extension of BART's ongoing arrangement with brick-and-mortar stores.
For more information:
Caltrain, 650-508-7921; http://www.caltrain.com/caltrain/fares.html
BART, 510-464-7110;http://www.bart.gov/riding/tickets/online.htm
Some car owners who would be interested in an electric or hybrid gas/electric vehicle have been frustrated by the small number of these cars currently available in California. However, without demonstrated consumer interest, it is difficult for manufacturers to gauge demand, and pressure is building on regulators to back off on state regulations requiring a percentage of new vehicles to be low-emitting or zero-emitting within a few years.
Now car owners can register their interest in having these "clean cars" available on the market by signing a pledge that their next car will meet certain fuel efficiency and air pollution standards. The Clean Car Pledge is part of a campaign by a coalition of environmental and health organizations, which is led by the Union of Concerned Scientists and includes the American Lung Association, CalPIRG, the Coalition for Clean Air, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, and the Planning and Conservation League.
For more information:
Union of Concerned
Scientists, 510-843-1872; online,
http://www.cleancarpledge.org
When drivers must give up their cars because of age or medical conditions, many of the trips they no longer take are for shopping or maintaining social ties. Even work-related trips may become difficult to manage, if the only alternatives are expensive taxis or paratransit vans with restrictive schedules. A Portland, Maine, nonprofit provides another answer. Using volunteer drivers to cut the cost, Independent Transportation Network provides a taxi-style ride service to seniors 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Many volunteer drivers use their own cars, but ITN also owns five sedans. The service is supported by charges billed to riders at approximately half the cost of a taxi ride, gift certificates bought for riders by relatives and friends, and local businesses which underwrite a portion of the cost of a ride to the store for their customers.
For more information:
ITN, 207-828-8608; http://www.itninc.org
Carsharing (July/August 1999): Building on a successful pilot program to provide "station cars" at BART, drivers can now rent a shared car based at the Fremont BART station. Hertz is offering the cars for $300-$400 per month, depending on mileage, less than the estimated cost of ownership. Drivers use the car during the day, driving from BART to work and back, or at night, driving from BART to home and back in the morning. Station cars are guaranteed a convenient parking place at the BART station.
Location-Efficient Mortgage (July/August 1998): Home buyers who can give up a car because their new home will be close to transit may now use the money they will save to help them qualify for a bigger mortgage. With underwriting from Fannie Mae, the Location-Efficient Mortgage is available in the Bay Area for a limited time. Home-buyers make a 3% down payment and receive a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage on a one-unit, owner-occupied house or condominium, and a subsidy good for 25% off the cost of a one-year transit pass.
Communities struggling with increasing congestion are also investigating innovative ways to solve their traffic and transportation problems. Some of the more high tech solutions are:
• Flashing crosswalks. A few Bay Area communities have installed solar-powered crosswalk lights. Pedestrians trigger the lights with a pushbutton mounted at the side of the street, and low-profile lights mounted in the pavement along the crosswalk flash to alert drivers.
• Crossing countdowns. A technique which has been very well received in several Bay Area communities is adding numbers on crosswalk signals to indicate how much time is left for pedestrians after the warning hand shows. Pedestrians are better informed, and so are drivers, who watch the numbers to anticipate when to slow for traffic signal changes.
• Robotic parking. Densely developed cities are beginning to consider the advantages of an automated parking system which can store twice as many cars as a conventional parking garage. Already in place in Europe and Japan, the system will be installed in Hoboken, NJ, and has been proposed for use in Berkeley and San Francisco. Drivers place their car on a pallet, where it is then lifted to a vacant slot in the building; a computerized system allows identification of the vehicle and retrieval when the driver returns. Although initial construction is expensive, the cost can be recouped through parking fees and is offset by the fact garages need less space in high cost downtown districts.
Less high-tech are "traffic calming" techniques, such as speed humps (lower than speed bumps), extended sidewalks at intersections (bulb-outs) and traffic circles. Bulb-outs define spaces for parallel parking along the street, make shorter crosswalks from block to block, let pedestrians and drivers see each other, and slow vehicles as they turn in and out of the street. Traffic circles are small islands in the middle of intersections, which also cause traffic to slow. These have been very successful in many communities. Marin Circle in Berkeley has been restored to its 1910 appearance with a fountain, landscaping and lighting funded by the neighborhood. Palo Alto is now considering European-style roundabouts, which send cars in one direction around the circle until the desired exit is reached, eliminating cross-traffic left turns. These are particularly effective at intersections which are not amenable to traffic signals, for example a 5-street intersection with odd angles.
One cause of congestion is delays due to road repairs, and innovative solutions are available for this as well. Caltrans has designed a technique to allow replacement of broken signposts in approximately ten minutes, far less than the normal thirty to forty minutes, and with less danger to maintenance workers. Signs are installed using a permanent, reusable concrete footing, which holds a wooden post secured by two specially designed plastic wedges. The plastic wedges are manufactured out of recycled carpet fibers and are environmentally benign. The footing is designed to remain in place if the sign is hit by a vehicle. Replacement of a broken post is as simple as removing the wedges with common tools, removing the stub of old post, and wedging in the new post.
For more information on the Quick Change Signpost: http://www.dot.ca.gov/newtech/research/qcsp/qcsp.htm
As part of the increasing emphasis on automobile use, American architecture has changed to place the garage nearer and nearer to the street, sometimes almost obscuring the house itself. In an effort to reverse this trend and make streets more friendly, Portland, Oregon recently passed an ordinance which no longer permits the garage to dominate the front of a home.
Under the ordinance, the main entrance must be close to the street and clearly identifiable from the sidewalk. The side of the house facing the street must have a certain minimum amount of window and door space. While the city decided not to regulate some design details such as roof pitch and siding materials, it specified that a garage could be no wider than 50 percent of a house front and that a front door must be recessed no farther than 8 feet behind a front wall. The code gives incentives for living space built over a garage.
Builders in the city are revising their plans, many of which do not comply with the new ordinance, and predict that this will add approximately $17,000 to the average $140,000 home, a prediction which is disputed by the city. The ordinance will also make it difficult to build new homes with two-car garages on the smaller infill lots available in the city. However, many city residents welcome the new restrictions; a recent survey found that while most new houses were suburban-style homes with prominent garages, neighbors felt these houses isolated their occupants from street and neighborhood activity.
For more information:
Portland Dept. of Planning, 503-823-7700; http://www.planning.ci.portland.or.us/zoning/ (specific language is in Chapter 33.110.230, 232 and 250)
During the past 30 years, laws and rules and regulations protecting the environment have resulted in dramatic improvements in air and water quality, waste disposal, and some land use practices. Public awareness has been heightened, and knowledge of the health effects of pollution has increased. Along with these improvements, additional sources of pollution have been identified, some already existing and some the result of emerging technologies. New laws and regulations have been developed to deal with them.
Proliferation of regulation has resulted in controls that conflict with or duplicate each other. Some pollutants and pollution sources have not lent themselves to effective regulation. Others lie outside the jurisdiction of regulatory agencies, and must be controlled by voluntary efforts.
Meanwhile, in the management practices of regulated facilities, environmental matters have moved from the periphery to more central consideration. Some facilities have perceived the need for greater flexibility in developing ways to meet regulatory goals efficiently. Some have gone beyond regulatory compliance and seek appropriate recognition for their efforts.
At this critical juncture in environmental protection, regulatory agencies at both the state and federal level, in partnership with regulated companies, have been exploring voluntary environmental performance programs by which a company will meet or exceed all regulatory requirements that apply to it.
One such program is an environmental management system (EMS). Part of an organization's overall management system, EMS is a process for identifying all environmental impacts of its operations, assessing current environmental performance, setting goals, and developing and implementing plans for continuing improvements in environmental performance. To be successful, an EMS requires the commitment of all personnel to the process, adequate resources, clear assignment of responsibilities, appropriate training, complete documentation and record-keeping, continuous review and revision of the process, and periodic auditing.
Some companies have already turned to EMSs for internal reasons, to improve their efficiency and profits. Some seek to improve their public image and to demonstrate a substantial concern for the environment on their annual reports. Some have adopted specific EMSs as a requirement for doing business in certain countries.
The California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) has decided to investigate whether facilities that have developed EMSs which have been certified under the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 14001 program can be assumed to meet or exceed all environmental requirements. AB 1102, passed in 1999, authorized and funded a program for up to 8 pilot projects to estimate whether EMSs provide improved protection of public health and the environment over the existing regulations. CalEPA has selected 3 facilities in Northern California for pilot projects—IBM in San Jose, Anheuser-Busch in Fairfield, and the Central Marin Sanitation Agency in San Rafael—and 3 in Southern California—the City of San Diego Metropolitan Wastewater Department's Operation and Maintenance Division, Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, and Artistic Plating and Gene's Plating, a pair of medium-sized metal finishing companies. The pilot projects will continue through 2001, after which CalEPA will evaluate their effectiveness.
Adelia Sabiston
For more information:
Jennifer Smith Grubb, CalEPA, 510-540-3315; http://www.calepa.ca.gov/ems
* Note: The July 2000 issue was the last produced on our former production cycle. With the current issue we begin our new publication schedule. The Monitor will now be mailed to readers at the end of each odd-numbered month.