Streetsblog Los Angeles

A superior court judge rules the modeling that shows that SANDAG's freeway friendly long-term plan violates state law. Image: San Diego Personal Injury Lawyers

When it was passed last March, the long-term transportation plan was hailed as “visionary” for its investment in transit, bicycling and pedestrian projects. The plan was the first regional plan passed under S.B. 375, a landmark piece of legislation that mandated that transportation plans be tied to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. And San Diego leadership was proud.

A few local voices fought back, arguing that the green transportation investments were all in the latter years of the thirty year plan. Proposed investments in new toll lanes would not bring the air quality benefits planners promised. They filed suit. The established powers laughed. Then, the State Attorney General joined the suit. All of a sudden, the lawsuit was front page news.

Today, Superior Court Judge Timothy Taylor ruled today that the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) violated state law by failing to fully account for, and take steps to reduce, climate pollution in its environmental review of the region’s long-term transportation plan in the environmental review of the Long Term Plan. The ruling is a major rebuke to regional planners in the San Diego region and a warning shot to other regional planning organizations that just passing a plan and calling it green is no longer enough.

“The court is setting an important example here for regional planning agencies throughout California,” said Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California. “We cannot wait another 40 years to adopt sensible transportation and land-use policies. Thanks to California laws requiring public agencies to be open about their plans, we were able to hold SANDAG accountable for its faulty planning practices.”

SANDAG must now conduct new environmental review for its 2050 plan to ensure it adequately addresses the risk of climate change. The plaintiffs believe it is likely that the more rigorous environmental review will lead to a revised plan that does a better job of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as required by state law. Read more…

More please? A shot of one of San Diego's freeways. Image: San Diego Personal Injury Lawyers

When the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) passed its 2050 Regional Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy, it declared a major victory over Greenhouse Gas emissions.  The plan was the first plan written to adhere to a 2008 law mandating that long-term transportation plans show a commitment to reducing air pollutants linked to global warming and a slew of public health problems.

However, it didn’t take long for the plan to be challenged in court be environmental groups for not going far enough, a legal battle that could have implications throughout the state.  A local environmental group known as the Cleveland National Forest Foundation launched a lawsuit against the plan that most observers dismissed as having little chance of winning.  Then, the CNFF was joined by other environmental groups, even the California Sierra Club.  Then, the Attorney General, Kamala Harris, weighed in.  Now, the SANDAG plan, once considered an important test of environmental planning, is also opposed by the Environmental Caucus of the California Democratic Party.  The Caucus passed a resolution condemning the SANDAG plan at their February meeting.

“As the first regional government in California to develop a land use plan under the State’s strict new climate change laws, SANDAG has a responsibility to set a path toward a sustainable future,” said Tony L. Hale, Chair of the Environmental Caucus of the California Democratic Party. “Instead, SANDAG’s plan calls for more of the same: sprawl, air pollution, and an increase in dangerous greenhouse gas emissions.”

A full copy of the Caucus’ resolution can be found at the end of this article. Read more…

When the San Diego Association of Governments passed its regional transportation plan, which will direct transportation spending in the region for decades, the agency hailed the plan as a national model.  This was the first plan passed that followed the standards of SB 375, the California environmental law that set greenhouse gas reduction targets based on transportation and development planning.

Kamala Harris

The agency declared victory, but many local advocates weren’t convinced.

“If this is a national and regional model, we’re in bad shape,” Dough McFetridge of the Cleveland National Forest Foundation grumbled to Streetsblog last November.  ”We have a need — a tremendous need — for transit right now, today. This proposal puts funding transit off into so far in to the future that many of us won’t be around anymore.”

McFetridge and other environmental groups pressed forward with a lawsuit claiming that the EIR for the plan was flawed because it didn’t take into account the impact new highway construction would have on vehicles miles traveled.  This week their lawsuit received a major boost when California Attorney General Kamala Harris joined their efforts.

“The 3.2 million residents of the San Diego region already suffer from the seventh worst ozone pollution in the country,” said Harris in a press release. “Spending our transit dollars in the right way today will improve the economy, create sustainable jobs and ensure that future generations do not continue to suffer from heavily polluted air.”

The lawsuit argues that the environmental review of the transit plan did not adequately analyze the public health impacts of the increased air pollution. The San Diego region already has a very high risk of cancer from particulate matter emitted by diesel engines and vehicles and there is no analysis as to whether this risk will increase.  By prioritizing highway expansion in the first years of the plan, SANDAG claims more pedestrian, bicycle and transit expansion in the plan even though those plans may never happen.  The bulk of the investment in transit and active transportation begins decades from now.

“The attorney general’s intervention in this case supports our argument that SANDAG’s plan is deeply flawed,” said Kathryn Phillips of the Sierra Club.  ”We’re encouraged that the State of California is serious about limiting air pollution and climate change pollution created by transportation in the region.”

Read more…

Environmentalists from San Diego are echoing the rhetoric of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in the battle to expand the local transit network and reduce funding for highway expansion.

Transit, as it would exist in San Diego under SANDAG's hybrid option. For links to maps for all the potential plans,click here.

Enter the newly branded, “50-10″ plan.  Los Angeles’ 30/10 advocates can eat their hearts out.

Brought to you by the Save our Forest and Ranchlands (SOFAR) and the Cleveland National Forest Foundation (CNFF), “50-10″ is an attempt to influence the “2050 Regional Transportation Plan” being proposed by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG). Advocates are calling on the agency to build all of its planned transit projects for the next fifty years in the next ten and to leave the highway projects for another day. Even if the agency falls short of the ten year goal, it would hold off on any highway expansion projects until the local transit network is completely built out.

“The foundation of the 50-10 plan includes the development of a preferred regional land use plan – a smart growth land use plan – and the development of a transportation mobility network that support the needs of this smart growth plan,” said Duncan McFetridge of SOFAR in a press release.

Currently, SANDAG staff is proposing a long range plan that actually includes more funding for transit investments ($24 billion) than highway investments ($21 billion). This plan is a combination of the three major options that were considered by the SANDAG Board of Directors and would have transit and highway projects built concurrently. While SOFAR and CNFF concede this is a step in the right direction, they also argue that planning such a large investment in highways as the region is trying to grow its transit mode share is somewhat incoherent.

While SOFAR and CNFF may be borrowing Villaraigosa’s rhetoric, there are many differences between 30/10 in Los Angeles and 50-10 in San Diego. Read more…

A rendering of the plans for the Central Plaza of Balboa Park

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs unveiled a visionary $33 million plan to remove cars from the central square of San Diego's historic Balboa Park.  They hope to raise the funds to complete the plan by the park's 100th birthday in 2015.  The plan would open up the heart of the park to a pedestrian friendly climate where children could play free of fear of passing vehicles in a clean and inviting atmosphere.  To bring this vision to reality, the city would have to remove sixty seven spaces of free parking.

As you would expect, the media is very concerned about those sixty seven parking spaces.

To make matters "worse," if Sanders and Jacobs are unable to raise the $33 million from private interests, they might have to charge for parking in the planned 900 space parking garage.  Can you imagine?  Charging people to use a public parking garage and re-investing in the area that will be effected by the thousands of cars using that garage on a daily basis.

Let the freak out begin.

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