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City of San Leandro Proposed Guidelines for Analyzing VMT <br />December 8, 2023 <br />Page 7 of 12 <br />Based on OPR guidance, the City of San Leandro proposes to use the thresholds of significance <br />listed below for various types of projects; projects that exceed their corresponding threshold <br />would be presumed to have a significant transportation-related environmental impact. <br />•Residential (and similar) projects: The proposed project’s VMT exceeds the level that is <br />15% below existing home-based VMT per resident for the Central Planning Area (also <br />known as Planning Area 2). (In other words, the project’s home-based VMT per resident is <br />greater than 85% of the existing Central Planning Area home-based VMT per resident.) <br />•Employment generating/office (and similar) projects: Project VMT exceeds the level <br />that is 15% below existing home-work VMT per worker for the Central Planning Area. (In <br />other words, the project’s home-work VMT per worker is greater than 85% of the existing <br />Central Planning Area home-work VMT per worker.) <br />•Employment generating/industrial and warehouse (and similar) projects: Project <br />VMT exceeds the level that is below existing home-work VMT per worker for the Central <br />Planning Area.2 <br />•Mixed-use projects: Each land use component of the project should be analyzed <br />independently, applying the appropriate threshold of significance from above to each <br />land use type included in the project. <br />•Other land use and regional-serving project types: Net increase in total VMT in the <br />region (that is, the difference in total VMT in the region with and without the project), an <br />appropriate per capita metric, or as determined by the Planning staff. <br />•Transportation projects: Net increase in total VMT in the region. <br />Consistent with CEQA requirements, the same methodology shall be used to estimate both the <br />project VMT and the threshold of significance used to evaluate the impact. <br />5. Mitigation Measures <br />If the VMT analysis concludes that the project would cause a significant VMT impact based on <br />one or more of the significance thresholds defined above, then mitigation is required. CEQA <br />requires that all feasible measures be implemented to reduce identified impacts to less-than- <br />significant levels <br />Mitigating a VMT impact involves different types of actions than mitigating an LOS impact. <br />Mitigating a project’s VMT impact entails reducing the number and/or the length of vehicle trips <br />2 A separate threshold for industrial and warehouse uses is developed because areas zoned for these uses <br />are typically disconnected from other uses, have low development densities, and may not be well served by <br />transit or non-motorized infrastructure. As a result, these areas tend to have higher VMT. Thus, an adjusted <br />threshold, which is different from OPR recommendations, is used to acknowledge that industrial and <br />warehouse developments could not relocate to areas with a greater mix of uses or better transit or non- <br />motorized connectivity that would have low VMT.