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By Jorge Casuso

December 1 – The City Council Tuesday night is expected to authorize nearly $700,000 to prepare a cutting-edge method of measuring traffic and lay the groundwork to charge developers a traffic mitigation fee.

The proposed contract with Fehr & Peers calls for a $565,000 “travel demand model” that ties traffic to existing development. The City also would pay the consulting firm $114,600 to prepare a nexus study to support a proposed fee developers will pay to tackle traffic.

The contract comes after the council in September gave staff the go-ahead to come up with a better way to measure traffic to gauge the effectiveness of the policies implemented under the proposed update to the Land Use and Circulation Element (LUCE).

“Traffic is a big issue with the community, so we need to come up with some tools to better address it,” said Bruce Leach, a City Planner in charge of the LUCE. “This will give us more accurate information for the community and for the decision makers.”

Instead of simply measuring the number of vehicles that go through an intersection, the new model will include what development “is on the ground,” Leach said.

According to the staff report, “A new travel demand model will require actual parcel-level data for all current and proposed land uses in the City.

“Staff is finalizing the collection and verification of land uses on a parcel-by-parcel basis and will have this comprehensive assessment completed by the time it is needed for use in the travel demand model,” the staff report said.

Rather than viewing intersections in isolation, the model will determine how vehicles navigate from street to street.

“We know how many cars are on the road,” Leach said. “This will give us a better idea of how traffic is moving and information on vehicle miles traveled, which is important for greenhouse gases.

“This model will take all the buildings and what the trip generation should be and see if they match,” Leach said, adding that the council would then be presented with alternatives to help alleviate traffic congestion.

By late spring of next year, City planners hope to complete an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) analyzing the impacts of the different options the City Council is considering for the updated LUCE.

The report, for instance, will study the impacts of the proposed heights of building that qualify for “height bonuses” if they provide affordable housing and other “community benefits.”

While the “travel demand model” will help gauge traffic, the nexus study will help set the developer fees that will pay for some of the traffic mitigation measures being considered under the LUCE, which would encourage walking by providing neighborhood-serving uses in strategic locations.

Under the proposed plan, developers would be allowed to build taller structures -- the heights have yet to be determined -- near public transit nodes, such as future light rail stations, in exchange for providing affordable housing on-site, as well as other community benefits.

The nexus study, expected to be completed in the first half of next year, would help set the mitigation fees developers would pay to bankroll special "Transportation Demand Management Districts" to manage traffic with the goal of creating “no new net car trips.”

The districts would coordinate and encourage transportation alternatives, such as car and van pooling, not only for employees in the building, but for those in surrounding buildings as well.

Last month, some council members cautioned that a previous effort launched nearly two decades ago to collect developer fees was derailed. The fee was last mentioned in a December 12, 1996 memorandum from consultants before the plan was dropped with no explanation after the nexus study was conducted.

“We’ve learned something,” said Council member Kevin McKeown. “This does show us the importance of the collection of fees in mitigating what development does to our community.”
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In addition to the mitigation fees, the current circulation plan proposes a mixed bag of tools that includes upgrading traffic signals, carving out new and better bike lanes and jacking up parking fees.