SB 768: California Environmental Quality Act: Department of Housing and Community Development: vehicle miles traveled: study.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires a lead agency, as defined, to prepare, or cause to be prepared, and certify the completion of an environmental impact report on a project that it proposes to carry out or approve that may have a significant effect on the environment or to adopt a negative declaration if it finds that the project will not have that effect. CEQA also requires a lead agency to prepare a mitigated negative declaration for a project that may have a significant effect on the environment if revisions in the project would avoid or mitigate that effect and there is no substantial evidence that the project, as revised, would have a significant effect on the environment.

Existing law requires the Office of Planning and Research to prepare, develop, and transmit to the Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency for certification and adoption proposed revisions to guidelines establishing criteria, for purposes of CEQA, for determining the significance of transportation impacts of projects within transit priority areas to promote the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the development of multimodal transportation networks, and a diversity of land uses.

Existing law establishes the Department of Housing and Community Development in the Business, Consumer Services, and Housing Agency and makes the department responsible for administering various housing programs throughout the state.

This bill would require the department, in consultation with local governments and other interested parties, as specified, by January 1, 2028, and subject to an appropriation by the Legislature for this purpose, to conduct and post on its internet website a study on how vehicle miles traveled is used as a metric for measuring transportation impacts of housing projects pursuant to CEQA. The bill would require the study to include, among other things, an analysis of the differences in the availability and feasibility of mitigation measures to housing projects for vehicle miles traveled in rural, suburban, urban, and low vehicle miles traveled areas. The bill would repeal those provisions on January 1, 2029.