Transportation Sustainability Program

Overview

The Transportation Sustainability Program (TSP) was created to better support the City’s longstanding Transit First policy by modifying the City’s practices relative to development review.

The TSP plans to achieve this through the following two initiatives:

1. changing how we evaluate the effects of new development on the transportation system - emphasizing all modes of transportation - under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA); and

2. establishing a citywide Transportation Sustainability Fee (TSF) to offset the cumulative impacts of projects on the City's transportation network.

These initiatives ensure that development review practices are consistent with the City’s policies and priorities, and that a development’s impact on San Francisco’s transportation system is fully offset through system improvements.

Project History

Transportation Sustainability Program

Under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), development projects being proposed must undergo environmental review.

Currently, the primary way that a project’s environmental effects on the transportation system are determined is by using a measure called Automobile Level of Service (LOS), which measures automobile delay at certain intersections or roadway segments. As a result, the environmental mitigations proposed to offset impacts identified using LOS are focused on improving automobile throughput. This is often infeasible in a dense, urban environment such as San Francisco. Oftentimes these mitigations are also in contradiction to the City’s Transit First and other multimodal policies and priorities.

The Transit First policy recognizes the need to support all modes of transportation - like cars, buses, bikes and walking - to safely and effectively move people and things around the City.

By eliminating Level of Service and replacing it with a measure that takes all modes of transportation into consideration, the environmental review can accurately assess how a new development project affects the entire transportation system and can result in mitigations that support the entire transportation system, including transit, bikes, and pedestrians.

The City is currently preparing an Environment Impact Report (EIR) on the TSP. That EIR will analyze twenty years of projected development and its cumulative impact on transportation system performance. Once this analysis is completed and the program is adopted, individual development projects will no longer be required to conduct cumulative transportation studies as part their environmental review, because those effects will already be known. And, by paying the Transportation Sustainability Fee, projects will mitigate their cumulative effects on the transportation system.

Transportation Sustainability Fee (TSF)

The TSP proposes introducing a Transportation Sustainability Fee to help establish a means by which development projects can mitigate their impacts on the system.

The proposed fee would supplement existing local transportation funding sources and would fund a $1.4 billion expenditure program, over twenty years, shown to directly offset the impacts on the transportation system made by new development.

The TSF would replace or be a credit against payment of existing transit-related development fees like the Transit Impact Development Fee (TIDF) and the Community Infrastructure Impact Fees (if applicable) in order to avoid double charging for transit impacts of new development. The TSF would apply to all land uses, except for single-family homes.

The TSP is the first program in San Francisco which integrates impact fees with the CEQA process such that paying the impact fee means that a project is mitigating its environmental impacts.

Transportation Sustainability Fee: Policy Credits Program

The proposed TSF includes a Policy Credits program to support desirable programs and/or policy outcomes by providing a reduction to or waiver from the fee. There is $40 million in Policy Credits available over a twenty year period. The following types of projects are eligible for fee waivers or reductions under the Policy Credits program:

• Small Businesses: Non-formula retail small businesses expanding or occupying pre-existing commercial space not exceeding 5,000 gross square feet.
• Reduced Parking Developments: Projects will build less than the allowable maximum parking in zoning districts that set a parking maximum.
• Affordable Housing Projects: Projects that are affordable to a household at or below 80% of the Area Median Income; that are subsidized by the Mayor’s Office of Housing and/or the San Francisco Housing Authority; that are affordable for a term of at least 55 years; and that are not built as part of the Inclusionary Housing program.
• Small Residential Projects: Small residential projects comprised of 20 units or less. 

Proposed Transportation Sustainability Fees

$1.4 Billion in Transportation Improvements

The TSF is anticipated to generate $630 million over twenty years. That revenue will be used to leverage an additional $820 million in other local, state, and federal transportation revenues to fund a $1.4 billion expenditure program.

This will fund a set of highly-efficient and cost-effective improvements to the transportation system which will offset the impact of twenty years of development activity on that system. The program will focus on initiatives which show the greatest positive impact on transportation system performance.

Transit Impact Development Fee

The TIDF is an existing impact fee on nonresidential development which, in the absence of an approved TSF, serves as the City’s primary mechanism to offset development’s impacts on the City’s transit system.

Fee rates under the TIDF have not been updated since 2004. In the past eight years, the cost to offset development’s impacts on the transit system have increased, and an ordinance adjusting TIDF rates to better address those impacts was introduced at the Board of Supervisors on May 15, 2012. A nexus study supporting a change in the TIDF rates was also introduced on May 15, 2012. Both items are under consideration by the Board of Supervisors and will be heard by the Planning Commission this summer.

Reports & Presentations

• Project Presentation PDF (January 2012)
• Memo to Planning Commission PDF (January 26, 2012)
• Memo to the Transportation Authority Board Plans and Programs Committee (February 2, 2012 )
• Memo to the Board of Supervisors (May 15, 2012)
• Transportation Sustainability Fee Draft Ordinance 
• Transportation Sustainability Fee Nexus Study 
• Transit Impact Development Fee Draft Ordinance 
• Transit Impact Development Fee Nexus Study
• Transit Impact Development Fee Presentation (June 11, 2012)
• Case Report PDF (July 19, 2012)
• Final Resolution PDF (July 19, 2012)
• Planning Commission Presentation, TIDF PDF (July 19, 2012)

Next Steps

Project Team

The Transportation Sustainability Program is a joint effort between the San Francisco Planning, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.