Land use and transportation: Envisioning regional sustainability

This study of one region is in many ways relevant for others. In 1994, at the request of the Regional Alliance for Transit (RAFT), the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) used RAFT's assumptions in a run of its computer model of land use and transportation for the nine counties of the San Francisco, California, region. The RAFT run assumed the same population and employment growth for 2010 as MTC. RAFT assumptions combined a pricing reform, land use changes, and a shift of funds from freeways to transit. The pricing reform was to, in effect, pay employees the value of their "free" parking at work if they did not use it. The land use changes were to stop growth in the green belt and to revitalize neighborhoods and industries in transit-served areas. Funds were shifted from freeways to CalTrain upgrades, commuter rail, light rail, express bus services and local buses. RAFT proposed only three highway projects: one was to test against a competing freeway proposed in Hayward; a second for the I-238 bottleneck, and the third for Route 4 in Contra Costa. Regionally, performance was measured using many indices. For the Hayward project, it was measured in terms of mode choice, of level of service on highways, and of BART ridership. The RAFT plan performed significantly better than MTC's Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) on all measures regionally and in Hayward. MTC claimed it could not implement the RAFT plan, and RAFT responded to MTC. Despite limitations on its powers, MTC can still condition funding for transportation projects on land use, and can plan on the basis of market-based pricing reform and transit supported by land use and pricing reform. The problem is MTC's willingness to use the powers it has, which depends, in turn, on support from local governments.