DATE: April 25, 2016 TO: Transportation Team FROM: Manoj Madhavan & Christopher Espiritu, Transportation Planner RE: CEQA –2040 SF‐CHAMP Modeling Methodology Assumptions This memo sets forth the selection criteria for including projects that affect the 2040 SF‐CHAMP Modeling Assumptions transportation and land use network. The San Francisco Chained Activity Modeling Process (known as SF‐CHAMP) is a regional travel demand model maintained by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA)1. This model is used to assess the impacts of land use, socioeconomic impacts, and transportation system changes on the performance of the local transportation system. SF‐CHAMP was developed to reflect San Francisco’s unique transportation system and socioeconomic and land use characteristics. It uses San Francisco residents’ observed travel patterns, detailed representations of San Francisco’s transportation system, population and employment characteristics, transit line boardings, roadway volumes, and the number of vehicles available to San Francisco households to produce measures relevant to transportation and land use planning. Using future year transportation, land use, and socioeconomic inputs, the model forecasts future travel demand. The SF‐CHAMP Model incorporates a state‐of‐the‐art approach to forecasting travel demand. This activity‐based model is more sensitive than traditional four‐step models to a broader array of conditions that influence travelers’ choices. One of the fundamental differences between the SF‐CHAMP Model and traditional models is that it is tour‐based, not trip‐based. A tour is a chain of trips made by an individual that begins and ends at home without any intermediate stops at home, whereas a trip is a single movement from an origin to a destination. As such, the model structure is more complex than the traditional four‐step modeling approach. CEQA Guidelines Section 15355 states that, “cumulative impacts refers to two or more individual effects which, when considered together, are considerable or which compound or increase other environmental impacts. The cumulative impacts from several projects is the change in the environment which results from the incremental impact of the project when added to other closely related, past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future projects.” In identifying reasonably foreseeable projects for the purposes of modeling future transportation network conditions, the Planning Department uses the following criteria: 1 http://www.sfcta.org/modeling-and-travel-forecasting#publications 1. The project is included in the latest adopted Regional Transportation Plan (RTP); or2 2. The project is included in the latest adopted San Francisco Transportation Plan (SFTP); or3 3. The project is actively undergoing environmental review and/or is anticipated to undertake environmental review in the near future because sufficient project definition has been established. The above criteria are intended to guide the selection of transportation network projects to be included in the future conditions but the final selection is at the discretion of the Environmental Review Officer. The above criteria are intended to be applied at the time the modeling work is undertaken. The land use assumptions are derived from projections developed by Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) for the Sustainable Communities Strategy: Jobs‐Housing Connections Strategy. While the land use projections from the Jobs‐Housing Connections Strategy for population, employment, employed residents and jobs are used at a Transportation Analysis Zone ‐ TAZ (close to Census Tract size) level of geographic granularity outside of San Francisco, the San Francisco Planning Department (SF Planning) uses the ABAG and MTC Jobs‐Housing Connections Strategy control totals to allocate base year land use growth within the City & County of San Francisco (CCSF) and its TAZ’s. The land use inputs can be obtained upon request from the SFCTA or SF Planning. As further described below, SF Planning makes use of the following methodology to refine and make adjustments to the initial ABAG distribution of land use data within San Francisco. Land Use Allocation The following summarizes the main steps used by SF Planning to allocate ABAG’s Sustainable Communities Strategy: Jobs‐Housing Connections Strategy based employment and household growth for the City & County of San Francisco to the City & County of San Francisco’s 981 TAZ’s as established by the SFCTA. The Planning Department routinely prepares land use forecasts to aid in policy deliberation and decision‐making related to the city’s land use future, as well as form the basis for testing transportation impacts of new projects or plans. The basis for the land use forecasts has for a number of years been the citywide projections from ABAG. ABAG issues biennial projections for 2 On April 22, 2009, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) adopted the Transportation 2035 Plan for the San Francisco Bay Area, which specifies how some $218 billion in anticipated federal, state and local transportation funds will be spent in the nine‐county Bay Area during the next 25 years. 3 The San Francisco Transportation Plan (SFTP) 2016 is the strategic update of the San Francisco Transportation 2040 Plan adopted in 2013 and is available at http://www.sfcta.org/transportation‐planning‐and‐studies/san‐francisco‐ transportation‐plan‐2040‐home. 2 population, jobs and households, and since 2003 these projections were prepared reflecting a strategic effort to focus regional growth where existing infrastructure can be leveraged, with the latest release being Sustainable Communities Strategy: Jobs‐Housing Connections Strategy. Larger macro‐economic conditions are taken as given as reflected in ABAG Sustainable Communities Strategy: Jobs‐Housing Connections Strategy. The purpose of the San Francisco Land Use Allocation (SFLUA) is to distribute the citywide growth targets (control totals) from ABAG Sustainable Communities Strategy: Jobs‐Housing Connections Strategy to 981 distinct TAZ’s in CCSF. The Planning Department categorizes land uses not by industrial activity, but by a land use classification system crafted to reflect distinct land use characteristics of a given economic activity. These land use categories were designed to work with SF‐CHAMP, the activity‐based transportation model maintained by the SFCTA. There are 7 overall steps to the allocation of Land Use projections in CCSF for inclusion in SF‐CHAMP: 1) Convert control totals from ABAG Sustainable Communities Strategy: Jobs‐Housing Connections Strategy to the Planning Department’s land use sectors to work as land use specific growth targets. 2) Summarize growth in the pipeline and other planning programs and summarize by TAZ per land use sector. 3) Assume vacant space is partially filled over the allocation period and grow employment relative to base year numbers. 4) Determine residual growth to be allocated in addition to pipeline and filled vacant space to reach growth target for households and employment by land use sector. 5) Determine buildout capacity for land uses such as Production/Distribution/Repair (PDR) and Management, Information, and Professional Services (MIPS) and OTHER commercial/institutional square footage for each parcel in the city as a function of current and/or proposed zoning, and summarize by TAZ. Assign to each TAZ the portion of citywide PDR, MIPS and OTHER square footage it comprises. 6) Summarize existing commercial square footage and housing units by sector by TAZ and determine each TAZ’s share of citywide totals. 7) Based on steps 5 and 6, construct for each TAZ for each land use sector a weight determining the relative attractiveness of a TAZ for development. A TAZ with plenty of capacity, but little existing activity, will not be as attractive as a TAZ with some capacity and plenty of existing activity, all other things being equal. Each weight is then converted to a proportion of citywide weights and multiplied the residual from step 4 to get TAZ‐specific growth for each land use sector, and number of housing units. These are summed with the contribution from the pipeline and vacancy fill, and total growth is known. As a result of these steps, SF planning can determine the households and jobs for each land use sector for each TAZ. 3 Transportation Network This section discusses 2040 assumptions for transit, and assumptions for other San Francisco and regional road, and toll policy projects. SF‐CHAMP assumes regional roadway project implementation in accordance with the most recent Regional Transportation Plan as well as the San Francisco Transportation Plan. By 2040, several regional transit improvements are anticipated. These projects include BART extensions/increased BART service and the first phase of SMART. Caltrain, BART and WETA will each provide expanded services to new stations and terminals. The MUNI transit network has several planned service expansions and improvements scheduled by 2040 including Muni line headways after services changes planned under “Muni Forward” have been implemented. This also assumes realignment of transit routes that have been approved and funded as of January 2015. SF‐CHAMP assumes that Bay Area Bridge tolls increase in line with inflation over the long term. For future year scenarios, SF‐CHAMP tolls are assessed at values that are constant in real terms. In addition to this assumption, scheduled toll changes are also