Will The California Environmental Quality Act Doom Us Forever?
With the help of a judge, CEQA (wiki) is what has helped keep most new bicycle infrastructure from appearing in San Francisco for the past 882 days - give or take. We got a bike traffic light because the judge believed a few seriously injured or dead pedestrians or bikers was enough to warrant a one-time, one-fix lifting of the injunction. Thanks, Judge.
I don’t understand CEQA in the least. It’s been on the books for almost 40 years, apparently. I’m not sure if anybody else understands it, either, but I hope somebody does. I’ve been reading and writing about bikes and urban planning for 40-80 hours a week for the past 8 or so months, and CEQA is completely impenetrable to me.
According to this story, CEQA must take into account traffic - presumably motorized traffic, possibly just car and truck traffic. That is, traffic is part of ‘the environment,’ and if it is impacted in any way - good, bad, or otherwise - the EIR must study it and account for it. My reading of this suggests that CEQA will continue to prevent San Francisco - and probably the rest of California - from making timely, effective, bike and walk infrastructure improvements until such time as the law is fixed or repealed. If the law is faulty, we need to change it. If we start now, it might get done within the next 10 years, so let’s start now.
It is not just San Francisco that has to deal with CEQA - it’s a state law - a California law - we all have to deal. Are there no other cities in California that are worried about CEQA? LA? San Diego? San Jose? Long Beach? Fresno? Sacramento? Oakland? What exactly is going on in San Francisco?
If CEQA is a disaster, or if local San Francisco regulations that are used by CEQA are a disaster, or if our Mayor and local government are a disaster - whatever the case is - whatever it is - let’s fix it. I don’t want to be a lawyer. I don’t care what ‘C.E.Q.A.’ stands for. Not. Interested. I’m a biker. Tell me what I need to know to pressure my elected official to get off his or her assssssssssssssssss, and I’ll do it.
What has my attention of the Draft EIR that is about to be released is this - as best I can tell this EIR is a study of some very specific bike plans - that’s it. It will say things like, “If you paint some lines on a road 17th Street in between A Street and B Street (approximately 437.23 feet), traffic will back up this much, this much traffic will be diverted, this much more pollution will enter the atmosphere, etc.” Next year, if you want to, say, do the same on 18th Street, you need a new EIR. That’s another 3 years of waiting.
And all of this, as best I can tell, is just a research project. We can make some predictions about how we think humans will react when we present them with a new set of challenges and opportunities, but modeling human behavior is difficult-to-impossible even in simple situations, and traffic situations are astoundingly complex. We need to be able to make reasonable decisions based on reasonable amounts of information. We need to be able to protect the public health. Put it up to a general vote if we have to - fine — but go to a judge to ask for permission to carry out generic city tasks? It’s absurd.
And this particular EIR will only cover ‘a bunch of lines painted on some streets’. That’s a start - that’s important - but what happens if we want real bicycle infrastructure, like Copenhagen-style bike lanes? Are we supposed to go cap in hand to the same judge and beg him not to force us to do another three-year study? How many will be slaughtered in the interim next time?
As usual, I hope I’m utterly and completely wrong on this. If we are able to start painting some lines on some roads by the summer, it will mark forward progress. The rate at which we’re being pushed off the streets, demonized, terrorized, and slaughtered out there could possibly slow, if only statistically, once the judge lets us start protecting ourselves.
But It just seems like there’s this eerie calm when we talk about the EIR. Just cross your fingers, pray to the bike gods, and hope the judge lets us live.
I want to say, “Stop the presses! Today we start working on removing whatever road blocks stand in our way to real improvements for bikers and walkers. We are abandoning some other projects in order to free up the resources we need to tackle this challenge. It may take us 20 years. Many of us will die before we see San Francisco’s CEQA-related laws change. But our children, or our children’s children, will know the sacrifices we made.”
It sounds melodramatic/stupid, but I’m serious. Most bike/walk advocates love BRT - fine - we’ll probably get what we deserve. And the same can happen for ‘CEQA reform,’ or whatever we want to call it. Maybe it will just magically happen one day? Maybe all car-loving Californians will move to Nevada? But somehow I doubt it.
CEQA and its mix of SF regulations are show-stoppers, obviously, so they need to be given more priority. Complete Streets and bike infrastructure and all the rest - it’s all just noise. CEQA owns us. We need to be deal with it.
…There are lots of links on this SFBC page about something called ‘Level of Service,’ and it seems the SFBC is interested in ‘Level of Service Reform.’ It seems the criteria that San Francisco uses to determine the environmental impact of any new plan for anything in the city is how to push cars into and through the City faster and better. To me, it seems we need to completely blow up this idea that cars should be serviced more and better in San Francisco. We need to completely rewrite those criteria so that cars are treated as the cancer they are. Any new project should be penalized for any cars it allows to flow in, through, or around it. Any new project should be penalized for any cars that are required to service it. If you have some time to burn, to get informed and confused and frustrated, this podcast is pretty good. There are LOS-related PDF docs here and here, if you have more than a third grade reading level - I don’t. And I’m not convinced that these measures do what we need. It looks to me like we need a complete re-think and complete re-write of not just CEQA, but of all the criteria San Francisco uses to enforce CEQA. This time, we’ll get everyone involved. Every active transportation person - every health person - every sports-minded and outdoorsy person - big businesses that benefit from us actually being able to be out there doing active things - environmental people - everyone. We have to give pedestrians and bicyclists and active transportation the priority they deserve - they need to be put at the absolute top of environmental concerns. LOS for cars should become irrelevant - LOS for pedestrians and bicyclists are all that really matters.
…Vanquishing LOS event tomorrow. Wow - not sure I really want to go to this. I’m sure I could find a less painful way to spend my time….stick needles in my eyes….read George Bush’s State of the Union speeches…etc.
Leave comment (2)[p.s. The Forums are open for participation.]
November 18th, 2008 at 10:59 am
We need a team of rogue bike lane painters. Go out there at 3:30am with 30 people, 30 paint brushes and 30 buckets of paint and start painting. By the time the cops show up we’ll have done a whole block or two.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:10 am
CEQA is really a pretty simple law: You have to do an environmental study before you implement a project if it even might have a negative impact on the environment. It’s a good law. You can read an online version of the statute, but most of the law is in developed in the case law, which is a consequence of litigation between developers and those who challenge their projects. It applies to housing developments and Bicycle Plans. Declaring good environmental intentions is not enough. If you’re going to make traffic worse in the city, that is obviously a negative impact.
Your bike-centric perspective impairs your ability to perceive reality. To a hammer the whole world looks like a nail, but most of us aren’t hammers and we see things differently. Cars, buses, and trucks are here to stay. Our economy, among other things, depends on motor vehicles. You keep talking about hardened bike lanes that make cycling safe, but redesigning city streets in SF is a zero-sum game. Any kind of bike lane takes 4-5 feet to make, which means that the city either has to take away street parking or a traffic lane to do that on almost all city streets.