REPORT TO BICYCLE AND PEDESTRIAN ADVISORY COMMISSION
SUBJECT
Title
Recommendation to City Council on the Update of the Transportation Strategic Program and Adopting a Resolution Amending the City's Master Fee Schedule for Traffic Impact Fees
Report
BACKGROUND
In November 2003, the City approved the Transportation Strategic Program and adopted a Transportation Impact Fee (TIF) on land development that generates new automobile trips (RTC No. 03-385). The purpose of the Strategic Program and fee was to identify and fund major roadway improvement projects that would be necessary to improve traffic generated by new development.
A broadly applied transportation impact fee on new development is well suited to addressing transportation capacity needs. It ensures that all development projects that add new trips to the street network pay a fair share of future transportation improvement costs. In addition, large development projects are still required to complete independent Traffic/Operational Impact Analysis Reports and are responsible for any identified additional improvements beyond those covered in the fee. As the City collects fees under the program, it can prioritize which projects are most in need as traffic patterns change.
The fee is based on transportation impacts caused by future growth as determined by the City's transportation model. The model runs traffic analyses for existing land uses and compares them against future growth to determine how many additional vehicle trips are added and what transportation improvements are needed. The cost of the improvements (minus outside funding sources - as an example Measure B projects require a 20% local match) is divided by the total new trips and the result is a cost per trip. The trips are converted to number of units (for residential development) and square footage (for office/industrial/research and development) using trip generation rates for each land use.
The Transportation Strategic Program and Traffi...
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