Vol. 3 No. 4, (Spring) 1997 Douglas R. Porter, Managing Editor

While most communities are welcoming development that brings jobs and tax base, Boulder, Colorado, figures the traffic congestion that goes with it is too much to bear. Having controlled residential growth for many years, Boulder is now trying to limit nonresidential growth, with some unforeseen consequences.

Boulder's growth management program is well known as one of the earliest, most comprehensive, and most restraining on development in the nation. In response to rapid growth of tract housing in the 1950s, city officials adopted restrictions on water service -- the famous "blue line" -- to control development in the surrounding foothills, enacted special taxes to finance acquisition of open space around the city, and wrote three tiers of building height limitations into its charter to retain views of the foothills. It also placed limits on the number of residential building permits issued each year (modeled on the Petaluma system) and formulated a detailed comprehensive plan that, by an interlocal agreement with the county, controls growth outside the city.

Boulder's public officials intended that these actions, in combination, would retain the city's small-town character and natural setting. To a large extent, they have succeeded, making Boulder a highly liveable environment for its citizens and a very attractive location for high-tech and other industries. However, residential growth restrictions have forced many employees of Boulder industries to find affordable family housing in other Front Range communities such as Fort Collins and Loveland. And in recent years, Boulder's public officials have been increasingly alarmed about the traffic and other effects of nonresidential development.

In 1993, the city and its citizens participated in a lengthy series of discussions about the quality of future growth in the Boulder Valley. Called the "Integrated Planning Project," the discussions considered four land use scenarios and their effects on population, employment, and other factors. One of the outcomes was a decision by the city council to limit the amount of job growth to a level consistent with the current jobs/population ratio.

As seems to be customary in Boulder, a squabble ensued about ways and means to accomplish that goal, including a citizens' initiative to limit growth, council consideration of various policy options, and council enactment in 1995 of an ordinance to impose a decreasing rate of nonresidential development each year through the year 2000. The allotted 550,000 square feet was reduced year-by-year to 385,000 square feet by 2000.

The ordinance specified that 75 percent of the available square footage each year would be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. The remaining 25 percent, called "community priority" projects, was based on council actions on specific projects, based on planning board recommendations that took into account a variety of potential public benefits of the projects. Subsequently, projects proposals became queued up into the 1999 allotment. Both the council and the planning board, however, found the 25-percent priority decisionmaking difficult and business leaders complained about what theyconsidered rather arbitrary picking of winners and losers.

As a result, in April and May, 1996, the Council adopted resolutions directing the city manager to postpone acceptance of new applications until a new procedure could be formulated to "reduce the incremental non-residential development potential in the Boulder Valley." Three strategies were considered to accomplish that goal:

• Rezoning of non-residential land to residential uses;

• Reductions of allowed intensities of nonresi-dential development;

• Changes in building space allowances for nonresidential uses.

Boulder's planning staff has prepared proposals for comprehensive zoning revisions, together with changes in the comprehensive plan, that would reduce the amount of projected job growth in Boulder by 45 percent, or about 13,000 jobs, excluding university and federal laboratory employment. Final action is anticipated by September, 1997.

Boulder planners studied programs in several other communities that had attempted to limit nonresidential growth. A panel session at the 1997 APA national conference in San Diego reported on some of those experiences. Newport Beach, California adopted a traffic phasing ordinance in 1978 and in 1988 adopted additional legislation to closely link planned land uses to traffic-generation limits. Over time, however, the system required disapproval of job-producing projects the community wanted and growth kept occurring at a rapid pace. As a result, Newport Beach is turning to LOS requirement measured over the entire street system instead of individual links or intersections and regulating growth through development limitations rather than roadway capacities.

Davis, California also attempted to limit growth to retain its small-town atmosphere and maintain a jobs/housing balance. Part of its strategy was to require "pay-as-you-go" contributions from developers for capital facilities. Recent experience, however, shows that nonresidential development is lagging badly (occurring at about a third of the pace expected). Not only is the jobs/housing ratio increasingly out of balance but the capital facilities financing plan has fallen behind schedule. Suspecting that the current impact fees on nonresidential development are part of the problem -- fees are 25 to 100 percent greater than in neighboring communities -- Davis is planning fee reductions and incentives packages for certain types of projects.

These types of problems with metering the rate of nonresidential development occurred also in San Jose over a couple of decades. For many years San Jose officials jealously guarded large land areas zoned for industrial use, hoping for continued economic development. As jobs began overtaking residential resources, however, the city changed policies to rezone industrial and commercial properties for residential use.

All these experiences tell us that closely managing growth, especially in small communities, is rife with complexities and perplexities.

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Lots of debate and bickering commonly accompanies public decision making on regional transportation issues. But the controversy in the Washington, D.C. region has generated three competing visions of the long-range regional transportation system, perhaps unusual in the scope and potential meaning of the proposals. On one side is the environmental community headed by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Environmental Defense Fund. It's espousing land use changes and transportation improvements that would reduce needs for new roads. On another side is a series of reports commissioned by the Washington Board of Trade that post dire warnings about the effects of cutting back on highway building. In the middle is the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments' COG 2020 Long Range Plan, which serves as the "official" document for the region.

The spate of alternative plans is occurring in a region whose metropolitan governance process is particularly unfocused and toothless. The Washington-Baltimore region sports four regional planning agencies and three MPO agencies, all beholden to local governments. The District of Columbia, the ostensible center of action, is afflicted by a local government in shambles and the overbearing presence of the federal government and its sometimes contrarian Congress. Maryland state and local governments tend to favor some public guidance of the development process while Virginia governments at all levels remain thoroughly cowed by private-sector attitudes. These fractionations generally have yielded business-as-usual transportation plans and continued proliferation of highway lanes despite the successes of the Washington Metro system and commuter rail systems.

In 1993, the Washington Regional Network, an affiliation of several environmental and other interests, published A New Approach: Integrating Transportation and Development in the National Capital Region. The report came during a regionwide debate over the form and content of growth in the rapidly expanding region. The debate came to a head in the brawl over the Disney themepark proposed for a site well outside the Beltway, a proposal seen by many as the epitome of sprawl-inducing and highway-dependent development and by others as (1) the normal course of business and/or (2) an entirely appropriate and desirable development that would spur economic growth in a growing outer county.

The New Approach plan proposed a much greater reliance on the use of transit, biking, and walking to reduce anticipated increases in highway travel, and therefore highway funding and construction needs. It also advocated transit- and pedestrian-friendly land use patterns that would reduce dependence on automobiles. With projections of a substantial increase in non-SOV travel modes, the report suggested that plans for highway construction could be substantially cut.

This alternative approach to current transportation plans was greeted with great interest by many organizations and individuals concerned with growth patterns in the Washington area, but was roundly discounted as unrealistic by many public and private decisionmakers and remained little known among the larger public.

In May, 1996, came another publication: A Network of Livable Communities, published by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Environmental Defense Fund. Calling for determining "a clearer, brighter future by applying a relatively simple set of planning principles for growth," the report advanced the notion that "the problem is sprawl" perpetuated by transportation plans that downplay alternatives to automobile travel.

The report elaborated on the New Approach advocacy of concentrating development within the existing urbanized area and along rail transit lines, improving sidewalks and bicycle paths, imposing fees for roads and parking, establishing growth boundaries, and investing in existing road and transit networks instead of new highways. Livable Communities went further in (1) identifying sites for new urban centers to be connected by an expanded transit network and (2) in proposing employer provision of discounted or free transit passes to workers, workplace parking fees, and raising priorities for pedestrian, bicycle, and public transit services.

The project also commissioned Cambridge Systematics and MCV Associates to conduct an independent analysis of effects on travel behavior of New Approach proposals for changes in land use, pricing, urban design, and transit investment, using the WashCOG transportation model with some refinements. The scenario defined by the project would shift 28 percent of projected household growth and 10 percent of the job growth into 40 transit-oriented centers around the region; another 15 percent of household growth and 10 percent of job growth would be shifted from low density areas to higher density areas outside transit-oriented centers. The scenario assumed that traffic calming and sidewalk and bicycle path construction would make many areas more pedestrian-friendly and that higher work-place parking fees, deeply discounted transit passes, and VMT fees would boost transit use. Altogether, these changes would produce a 15% reduction in projected daily vehicle trips and an 11.5% drop in daily vehicle miles travelled compared to the COG baseline forecast.

To accomplish these improvements, the report called for such actions as changes in zoning, adoption of regional and local growth boundaries, tax-base sharing, regional review processes for large-scale projects, and maximum parking limits.

With these ideas in circulation throughout the region, the Greater Washington Board of Trade (the regional organization representing businesses of all kinds, including developers) commissioned a series of studies of regional travel projections and their economic implications, based on WashCOG's constrained long-range transportation plan. Forecasts expect a 43% increase in population and employment by 2020 (a faster rate than the previous 25 years), 95% of it outside the urban core (the District plus Arlington and Alexandria). Given that growth, the studies projected a 60% increase in vehicle trips and a 79% increase (80 million more miles) of daily miles travelled. Nearly three out of five new work trips would be between suburbs or between rural and suburban areas. Projections showed no increase in the percentage of travel by transit, although work trips by transit would increase by 300,000.

This rise in travel demand would occur on a system for which current long-range plans project only a 20% increase in highway capacity. By 2020, of 30 transportation corridors, 22 would "have unacceptably high traffic volumes" (below LOS B), double the current number; 14 would operate at level F. Highways affected include most of the Beltway and most highway segments from the Beltway out through the Washington suburbs.

The most recent report, Economic and Quality of Life Costs of Not Meeting Transportation Needs, projects that high levels of traffic congestion in 2020 would increase shipping costs by 350%, consumer costs by $1,365 per household, and personal travel costs by more than $1,000 per household, and result in a cumulative regional economic loss of $70 to $182 billion by 2020.

Comparing the various reports is frustratingly difficult. The proposals of the environmental groups promise slower increases in travel demand but don't reveal what that adds up to in terms of highway congestion. Some might argue that many of the proposals -- for pricing and regional guidance over development, for example -- are unlikely to be attained in the near future.

By contrast, the Board of Trade's conclusions suggest that the supply of highway capacity is becoming overwhelmed and must be expanded to meet projected travel needs. Curiously, the Board's projections do not account for changes in travel behavior that might result from modifications in assumed development patterns or, for that matter, from increasing congestion. As traffic becomes more congested, patterns of growth might adjust to new travel realities by shortening trips and making greater use of non-auto travel modes. However, the Board's reports anticipate that congestion would drive people and businesses out of the region or into rural areas -- certainly a phenomenon seen in places such as Southern California, the San Joaquin Valley, Phoenix, Atlanta, and other fast-growing metropolitan areas. As in the Washington area, however, these growth movements have simply generated new increases in travel congestion, not relief.

There is no indication in the Board's reports that any solution other than increasing transportation capacity in suburban areas has been considered. The kinds of public proactivism to reduce travel demands propounded by the New Approach and Livable Communities reports are ignored.

Although the transportation tail may be wagging the planning dog, the current contretemps may demonstrate the value of more rational considerations of future metropolitan development patterns as well as transportation systems in the Washington/Baltimore region. Tune in next year....

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Profiled in an earlier volume of the Reporter, the Dulles Greenway was hailed as an example of the new generation of privately-financed tollways. Virginia's Governor George Allen had made privatized highways a key feature of his transportation program but financial troubles surfaced early as traffic volumes fell short of predictions. Now comes word (via The Washington Post, April 25) that the road's owners have failed to pay four debt installments totalling more than $28 million. The state, which had pledged to constrain its financial exposure on the road, has allowed the company to delay reimbursement of $3.5 million in state planning and design funds. The chairman of the House transportation committee said "it creates a problem, philosophically" for the whole idea of privatization. Greenway owners report negotiations are proceeding with a lender group to restructure the financial underpinning for the road.

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After a U.S. District Court ruled that state officials had not sufficiently justified a need for building a 12-mile extension of the North-South Tollway (Interstate 355), the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority commissioned a study of relationships between population shifts, urban decentralization, and highway capacity. To be conducted by the Urban Transportation Center of the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois, the study will focus on the question of whether, how, and how much new highways stimulate development in previously rural areas.

According to the Chicago Tribune, March 31, 1997, the suit was brought by environmental interests concerned with the potential effects of the new highway on rural Will County, south of Chicago. However, the ruling also affects proposals for a northern extension of Illinois Highway 53 through central Lake County. The Tollway Authority is appealing the ruling.

The Tribune article raises the question of whether a new transportation corridor will tend to shift growth from one part of a region to another, meanwhile increasing needs for auto

travel. Another piece of the sprawl puzzle....

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Previous Reporters have described the sweeping conservation planning efforts in Southern California. Now comes word that a core piece of those efforts has been adopted by the City of San Diego. The Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1997, reports that the conservation plan ratified by the city council on March 18, 1997, sets aside 172,000 acres of habitat for 85 endangered species, or about one-quarter of the 900 square-mile study area within San Diego County. About one-third of the 172,000 acres is within the city, which has spearheaded action on the plan and whose approval was critical to obtaining countywide assent to the plan.

The plan establishes criteria for determining developable properties and calls for up to $650 million in public funds for acquiring private lands for habitat protection. As with most such decisions, opinions on the wisdom of the plan were divided. An official of the San Diego Audubon Society said for the Times that the plan "doesn't support the recovery of endangered species" and "our grandkids are going to think us really stupid...." Developers gave reluctant support to the plan because it establishes a regionwide policy to replace painful project-by-project state and federal reviews. Says developer James Whalen, however, the industry "is walking into this thing with its lips pursed." Federal and state officials praise the plan as a new way of doing business that reconciles preservation and development aims.

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In early April, Maryland's legislature gave an important part of the Governor's Smart Growth proposal a go-ahead. Enacted were requirements to restrict state funding for roads, schools, and other infrastructure to designated growth areas. The legislation spelled out size and density criteria to guide local governments' designation of growth areas. Although amendments reduced the State Office of Planning's oversight role and provided a number of exceptions to the targeting process, supporters were heartened by the bill's passage, since it was the most controversial of the proposals.