REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Action on a Multimodal Improvement Plan for the City Place Project
Report
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
As a member agency of the Santa Clara County Congestion Management Program (CMP), the City of Santa Clara (City) is required to prepare and adopt a Multimodal Improvement Plan (MIP) to address the seven CMP intersections that are impacted as identified in the City Place Project (Project) Environmental Impact Report (EIR). The MIP includes $23,414,000 in various transportation projects and programs designed to improve the overall multimodal network (i.e. vehicular, bicycle, pedestrian, and transit) with a majority of the cost to be funded by the Project and the balance funded by the City.
BACKGROUND
The City of Santa Clara is a member agency of the Santa Clara County Congestion Management Program (CMP), which is administered by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). The purpose of the CMP is to develop a comprehensive transportation improvement program among local jurisdictions that will reduce traffic congestion and improve land use decision making and air quality from a regional perspective. Currently, there are 22 signalized intersections in the City that are classified as CMP facilities due to the significance of these facilities on the regional transportation network. Typical CMP facilities in the City include intersections at: 1) key arterial roadways, 2) County of Santa Clara expressways, and 3) Caltrans freeway on/off ramps. As a member agency, the City has certain responsibilities which include monitoring and managing congestion at these intersections. Compliance with CMP standards is necessary for the City to receive gas tax funding for transportation improvements.
In situations where projects within the City limits cause CMP facilities to operate at levels below CMP minimum standards, California’s Congestion Management Program statute (California Government Code Section 65089.4) requires that a Deficiency Plan or Multimodal Improvement Plan (MIP) be prepared, adopted by the City, and approved by the local CMP administrator. The VTA serves as the CMP administrator for the Santa Clara County. The purpose of a MIP is to identify a set of improvements, programs, and actions that a City will implement to improve the overall performance of the entire multimodal transportation network, with a focus on improving air quality, as a “trade off” to the specific impacts to vehicular traffic operations. As the multimodal transportation network includes vehicular, bicycle, pedestrian, and transit facilities, a MIP will typically focus on improvements to the bicycle, pedestrian, and transit networks and efficiency improvements to the management of vehicular traffic in addition to the standard vehicular transportation capacity improvement such as widening of intersections and roadways.
On June 28, 2016, the City Council approved and certified the EIR for the City Place Project. Included within the EIR is a Traffic Impact Analysis (TIA) disclosing that traffic generated by the Project will cause a total of seven CMP intersections within the City to operate below minimum CMP standards. The impacted intersections and corresponding agencies with jurisdiction over them are listed below and shown in Attachment 1:
• Great America Parkway and Tasman Drive (City)
• Great America Parkway and Mission College Boulevard (City)
• Agnew Road/De La Cruz Boulevard and Montague Expressway (City/County)
• Scott Boulevard and Central Expressway (City/County)
• De La Cruz Boulevard and Central Expressway (City/County)
• San Tomas Expressway and Monroe Street (City/County)
• Lafayette Street and El Camino Real (City/Caltrans)
As the Project’s impacts on these intersections cannot be fully mitigated, the City is required to prepare a MIP which would evaluate them for proposed multimodal improvements at or near these intersections. Typical multimodal improvements include enhanced bicycle lanes, intersection curb bulb-outs (i.e. sidewalk extensions), transit enhancements, and trail facilities.
DISCUSSION
The MIP (Attachment 2) was prepared in accordance with the requirements of the CMP statute and in accordance with the VTA’s Deficiency Plan Guidelines. In general, it includes the following sections: 1) a list of deficiencies and an analysis describing the cause of the deficiency, 2) an action list that documents the improvements recommended to offset the deficiency, 3) an action plan that specifies the steps that will be taken to implement the plan, and 4) a monitoring program to track implementation of the action plan.
MIP Deficiency List and Analysis
For the purpose of identifying the MIP deficiency list, the MIP utilizes information from the City Place EIR to analyze traffic impacts due to the Project. The seven CMP intersections addressed by the MIP were identified in the EIR as impacted by the Project. Although the Project would partially mitigate these intersections with planned physical improvements that would improve vehicle operations, these seven intersections would remain impacted by the Project. Staff has analyzed and concluded that there are no additional feasible physical improvements that can be implemented to improve the intersection operations to meet CMP standards and that preparation of a MIP is necessary to comply with CMP standards.
MIP Action List
The purpose of the MIP Action List is to identify the improvements, actions, and programs for improving overall CMP operations with a focus on improving air quality. The MIP identifies five broad improvement categories that meet CMP requirements. The categories are: 1) Transit Service Enhancements, 2) Bicycle and Pedestrian Access and Facilities, 3) Freeway and Arterial Operations, 4) Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Strategies, and 5) Land Use/Site Design Standards. As a starting point for discussions on a potential action list, several documents were used as input including the City’s General Plan, the City of Santa Clara’s Bicycle Plan, the VTA’s Countywide Bicycle Plan, and other relevant documents.
The MIP identifies a total of $23,414,000 in improvements and programs to improve the City’s CMP transportation network. These improvements are shown in Attachment 3. Additionally, the following two tables provide a programmatic breakdown of the MIP program budget and examples of significant improvements included within the MIP. The MIP Improvement Categories for TDM Strategies and Land Use/Site Design Standards are not funded by MIP funds as this work is either on-going with City funding and/or included within existing work efforts funded by other sources.
Table 1, MIP Programmatic Budget
|
MIP Improvement Category |
Budget |
|
Transit Service Enhancements |
$2,605,000 |
|
Bicycle and Pedestrian Access and Facilities |
$12,464,000 |
|
Freeway and Arterial Operations |
$8,345,000 |
|
Transportation Demand Management Strategies |
* |
|
Land Use/Site Design Standards |
** |
|
Total |
$23,414,000 |
*The MIP includes TDM measures from the City Place EIR and suggested implementable TDM actions for future development to reduce the volume of single-occupancy vehicles by promoting rideshare, employer-based trip reduction programs, and other trip reduction strategies. These are not funded with MIP funds.
**The MIP recognizes that the City is engaged in a significant amount of on-going work towards the creation of precise plans for specific focus areas in the City. These plans will continue to be an effort led by the City’s Community Development Department. These are not funded with MIP funds.
Table 2, Significant Improvements included within the MIP
|
Action Description |
Improvement Category |
Responsibility |
Cost Estimate |
|
Fund master plan for the Santa Clara Great America Train Station |
Transit |
VTA |
$750,000 |
|
Planning study to evaluate a shuttle program |
Transit |
City |
$500,000 |
|
Bicycle and Pedestrian trail improvements along Calabazas Creek and Saratoga Creek (share of trails) |
Bicycle and Pedestrian |
City |
$2,400,000 |
|
Install separated bicycle facility along Stars and Stripes Drive through the VTA parking lot to Great America Station |
Bicycle and Pedestrian |
City |
$1,500,000 |
|
Install new sidewalk on Montague Expressway between Agnew Road and Lafayette Street |
Bicycle and Pedestrian |
County |
$1,000,000 |
|
Uncontrolled Crosswalk Enhancements near six MIP intersections |
Bicycle and Pedestrian |
City |
$1,370,000 |
|
Pedestrian Overcrossing Study |
Bicycle and Pedestrian |
City |
$500,000 |
|
Install two Changeable Message Signs (CMS) on Lafayette Street |
Freeway and Arterial |
City |
$2,000,000 |
|
Install Adaptive Traffic Signals along Great America Parkway |
Freeway and Arterial |
City |
$2,600,000 |
MIP Action Plan and Monitoring
The MIP action plan describes how the action list (Attachment 3) will be implemented and includes information regarding who is responsible for implementing each action, how the action will be paid for, and when each action will be implemented. Per the Development Agreement between the City and Related Santa Clara LLC, the City Place Project is required to contribute a maximum amount of funding towards the improvements identified in the MIP, and any improvements above that amount will be funded by the City. The maximum amount of funding depends on the several variables such as the actual land uses constructed, the size of the buildings, the timing of construction of the buildings, and the local/regional Transportation Impact Fees (TIF) in place at the timing of building permit issuance. The Developer’s actual responsibility will not be fully quantifiable until full build-out of the Project. However, based on the Development Agreement and from recent information provided by the Developer, at full build-out of the Project, it is estimated that the Developer’s responsibility may range from a minimum of $17,430,800 to a maximum of $20,100,150. Based on a MIP total cost of $23,414,000, the resulting potential City share of MIP costs range between $3,313,850 and $5,983,200. Additionally, the MIP costs were developed based on today’s construction cost and are likely to escalate over the life of the Project and MIP. The City’s share would be expected to be mostly funded from outside sources such as grant funds, Measure B, and regional funds.
In addition, the MIP acknowledges in the action plan that through the City Place EIR, the City Place development is responsible for additional transportation funding in the amount of $51,954,707, including $35,790,487 for intersection mitigations in Santa Clara and surrounding jurisdictions and $16,164,220 as a voluntary contribution towards freeway improvements as shown in Attachment 4. These traffic mitigations and freeway improvements were not considered part of the action list presented in the MIP, but taken together with the action list, will help offset the deficiencies at the seven CMP intersections.
Monitoring of the MIP will be reported through the City’s Budget process, annual AB1600 reporting, and through the bi-annual VTA CMP monitoring report.
Stakeholder Outreach Efforts
The MIP was developed in close coordination with staff from the VTA, County of Santa Clara, and Caltrans. Prior to developing the MIP, in May 2017, City staff presented the City’s approach to the MIP to the VTA’s Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), Policy Advisory Committee (PAC), and Congestion Management Program and Planning Committee (CMPP) for their information and comments. Additionally, the MIP action list was presented to the Santa Clara Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) in March 2018 and to the VTA’s TAC, PAC, and CMPP committees in April 2018. Members of the BPAC provided feedback on the MIP action plan list including considering better connections to bay trails and suggested a project to install a separated bike lane along Stars and Stripes Drive through the VTA parking lot to the Great America Station. Although the MIP does not include funding towards better connections to bay trails as that work would occur outside of the City limits (i.e. San Jose), the City is actively working on projects and programs to improving bicycle facilities throughout the City which will have an overall benefit to this mode of transportation and bicyclists who use the bay trails. Additionally, a proposed Class 1 Bicycle and Pedestrian facility was included through the VTA parking lot as recommended by the BPAC. Furthermore, requests from the VTA regarding funding towards a Great America Station Master Plan and a Tasman Drive Pedestrian Overcrossing Study were incorporated into the MIP.
In addition, an outreach meeting with various development community representatives was held on June 12, 2018. This item was also discussed at the City’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee meeting on June 25, 2018.
Next Steps
In order for the MIP to become effective, the first step is for the City Council to adopt the MIP following the close of the public hearing. Once this is completed, the VTA, as the local CMP administrator, must review the MIP for a determination of conformance with CMP requirements, and accept or reject the MIP within 60 days.
If City Council adopts the MIP, the MIP document will be presented at the next available meetings of the VTA’s TAC, PAC, and CMPP Committees and finally to the VTA’s Board of Directors for approval as defined by the CMP process.
ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW
Per Public Resources Code § 21080 (b) (13), congestion management programs are exempt by statute from the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). As established in Government Code §§ 65089 et seq., a multimodal improvement plan is a required part of a congestion management program when certain conditions are met. As such and within certain parameters, a multimodal improvement plan falls under the same statutory exemption as the CMP.
The purpose of the multimodal improvement plan is to identify and implement measures that will improve traffic conditions in a locality, and, as such, implementation of the plan will lead to improved environmental conditions. Furthermore, items identified from the VTA CMP’s Immediate Implementation Action List have also been identified by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District as actions that when implemented will have a positive impact on air quality in the region. To the degree that individual projects identified in the MIP have the potential for creating ancillary (i.e., localized) impacts to the environment, such impacts will be evaluated as individual projects come forward for design and construction.
FISCAL IMPACT
The MIP identifies a total transportation funding need of $23,414,000. Based on the City Place Development Agreement, the Project is required to contribute a maximum amount of funding towards the improvements identified in the MIP and that any improvements above that amount would be funded by the City. Depending on the several variables such as the actual land uses constructed, the size of the buildings, the timing of construction of the buildings, and the local/regional TIF in place at the timing of Building permit issuance, the Developer’s actual responsibility will not be fully quantifiable until full build-out of the Project. However, based on the Development Agreement and from recent information provided by the Developer, at full build-out of the Project, it is estimated that the Developer’s responsibility may range from a minimum of $17,430,800 to a maximum of $20,100,150. Based on an MIP total cost of $23,414,000, the resulting potential City share of MIP costs range between $3,313,850 and $5,983,200. The City’s share would be expected to be mostly funded from outside sources such as grant funds, Measure B, and regional funds.
COORDINATION
This report has been coordinated with the Finance Department and City Attorney’s Office.
PUBLIC CONTACT
An outreach meeting with various representatives of the development community was held on June 12, 2018. This item was discussed at the City’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee meeting on June 25, 2018. This item was also discussed previously at BPAC and VTA Committee meetings which were publicly noticed.
Public contact was made by posting the Council agenda on the City’s official-notice bulletin board outside City Hall Council Chambers. A complete agenda packet is available on the City’s website and in the City Clerk’s Office at least 72 hours prior to a Regular Meeting and 24 hours prior to a Special Meeting. A hard copy of any agenda report may be requested by contacting the City Clerk’s Office at (408) 615-2220, email clerk@santaclaraca.gov <mailto:clerk@santaclaraca.gov> or at the public information desk at any City of Santa Clara public library.
ALTERNATIVES
1. Adopt the MIP as provided by the California Congestion Management Program statute (California Government Code Section 65089.4) to address the deficiencies at the seven intersections identified in the City Place EIR.
2. Authorize the City Manager to make minor modifications to the MIP as a result of any VTA comments.
3. Adopt the MIP with amendments recommended by City Council and authorize the City Manager to make minor modifications to address the recommended amendments to the MIP.
4. Do not adopt the MIP and provide further direction to staff. This will place the City out of conformance with the CMP statute until corrected. The City may be at risk of losing gas tax revenues.
RECOMMENDATION
Recommendation
Alternatives 1 and 2:
1. Adopt the MIP as provided by the California Congestion Management Program statute (California Government Code Section 65089.4) to address the deficiencies at the seven intersections identified in the City Place EIR; and
2. Authorize the City Manager to make minor modifications to the MIP as a result of any VTA comments.
Staff
Reviewed by: Craig Mobeck, Director of Public Works
Approved by: Deanna J. Santana, City Manager
ATTACHMENTS
1. Deficient CMP Intersections List
2. Santa Clara Multimodal Improvement Plan
3. MIP Action List and Action Plan
4. Intersection and Freeway Improvements