Reso 2024-006 Transportation Element of the General Plan

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IN THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SAN LEANDRO RESOLUTION NO. 2024-006 RESOLUTION TO ADOPT TEXT AMENDMENTS TO THE TRANSPORTATION ELEMENT OF THE 2035 GENERAL PLAN TO REPLACE LEVEL OF SERVICE (LOS) WITH VEHICLE MILES TRAVELED (VMT) AS THE CRITERIA TO BE USED FOR TRANSPORTATION ANALYSIS UNDER THE CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ACT (CEQA) IN COMPLIANCE WITH SENATE BILL (SB) 743 AND CEQA GUIDELINES SECTION 15064.3 WHEREAS, the California Government Code Section 65300 et seq. requires every city and county in California to adopt a General Plan for its long-range development, and further, to periodically update that plan to reflect current conditions and issue; and WHEREAS, in 2016, the City Council adopted the 2035 San Leandro General Plan (“General Plan”) covering the 20-year period from 2015 through 2035; and WHEREAS, the General Plan includes goals and policies related to land use, transportation/traffic, infrastructure, and design and establishes uses and development standards within the City; and WHEREAS, the General Plan includes text and diagrams specifying the distribution, location, and extent of the uses of land and other essential facilities within the City; and WHEREAS, the California Environmental Quality Act Guidelines (“CEQA Guidelines”) encourage public agencies to develop and publish thresholds of significance to be used in determining the significance of a project’s environmental effects; and WHEREAS, CEQA Guidelines Section 15064.7(b) requires that thresholds of significance must be adopted by ordinance, resolution, rule, or regulations, developed through a public review process, and be supported by substantial evidence; and WHEREAS, Senate Bill 743, enacted in 2013 and codified in Public Resources Code Section 21099, mandated changes to the CEQA Guidelines regarding the criteria for determining the significance of transportation impacts of projects throughout California; and WHEREAS, in 2018, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (“OPR”) proposed, and the California Natural Resources Agency certified and adopted, new CEQA Guidelines Section 15064.3 that identifies vehicle miles traveled (“VMT”) as the most appropriate metric to evaluate transportation impacts; and WHEREAS, as a result, automobile delay, as measured by Level of Service (LOS) and other similar metrics, no longer constitutes a significant environmental effect under CEQA; and WHEREAS, staff worked with a transportation consultant, Fehr & Peers, to develop administrative guidelines for analyzing VMT consistent with SB 743 (2013), the CEQA Guidelines, and technical guidance provided by OPR; and WHEREAS, staff worked with Fehr & Peers to prepare text amendments to the Transportation Element of the General Plan to formalize the replacement of LOS with VMT as the criteria to be used for transportation analysis under CEQA in the City of San Leandro and to establish the appropriate context for LOS-based analyses outside of the CEQA process; and