Land-use plan calls for new growth near transit LAND USE

To naysayers, skeptics and Tea Party members, it's the end of the California suburban lifestyle. To dyed-in-the-wool environmentalists, it's the key to correcting climate change. But in reality, the Plan Bay Area strategy linking land-use and transportation investment is probably neither.

The strategy, approved by the governing boards of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments at a heated meeting in Oakland on Thursday night, is the Bay Area's attempt to satisfy a 2008 state law that requires regions to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2035.

The law requires the regional planning agencies to work together to meet that requirement. Their approach is to use transportation money to help steer growth - an anticipated 2.1 million new residents and 1.1 million jobs - into already developed areas, around existing transit hubs, highways and transit lines. It identifies priority development areas with more than a third of the growth in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose with El Camino Real on the Peninsula and San Pablo Avenue in the East Bay also singled out.

Extension of strategy

While the plan establishes a closer connection between housing and transportation planning, it's an extension of a strategy that already has been used to encourage development around transit hubs.

"It's an evolution, not a revolution," said Stuart Cohen, head of TransForm, a transportation and land-use coalition that supports the plan. "What's stronger than ever is how we're spending our (transportation) money, and where growth is happening."

Cities and counties are not obligated to follow the plan, but money for transportation improvements would go to areas that adhere to it. But even though the plan is optional, it has generated great controversy, as was evident at Thursday's public hearing, which drew an overflow crowd of about 200 and inspired 70 people to wait for hours to speak.

Critics, including members of the Tea Party, call the plan - and the state law requiring it - unconstitutional. Several speakers labeled the plan "totalitarianism" and said "central regional planning" would deprive them of the right to live their lives in single-family houses outside of dense urban areas. Supporters argued it would protect open space and encourage development of more walkable communities and more affordable housing in areas close to jobs and transit.

"I don't see anywhere in the plan where they're going to send out trucks and tear down ranch homes," one man said.

But the Bay Area Business Coalition, which includes the region's biggest business groups, thinks the strategy needs more study, particularly on whether people would really buy housing in areas selected for development. The Building Industry Association of the Bay Area fears the plan could lead to economic decline in Solano, Contra Costa and parts of Alameda counties outside of the region's urban center.

Maintaining roads

"We should not be penalizing folks who want to live somewhere other than San Francisco or downtown Oakland," said Paul Campos, general counsel for the association.

The transportation investment strategy being adopted as part of the plan would spend 88 percent of the $277 billion expected to be available through 2040 on operating and maintaining roads, highways and transit systems. Two-thirds of the remaining funding would be used for transit expansion, with highways getting the rest.

Projects that would be given top priority for federal funding include completion of the BART extension to downtown San Jose, the Transbay Terminal and downtown rail extension, and bus rapid transit projects in San Francisco and the East Bay. Priority would also be given to a regional carpool-toll lane network, freeway metering and parking or pricing plans, including tolls to enter downtown San Francisco and Treasure Island.

While the strategy was approved Thursday, the plan will undergo further study before being considered for adoption in the spring.