Comment Log Display

June 23, 2010

California Air Resources Board
1001 I Street
Sacramento, CA  95814

Re: Support for implementation of SB 375

Dear Chairwoman Mary Nichols, Board Members and CARB Staff:

Reconnecting America and its Center for Transit-Oriented
Development has been promoting best practices in transit-oriented
development for almost a decade, and we know how important it is to
level the playing field between transit and highway development on
the one hand, and between infill and greenfield development on the
other. Both federal and state policies incentivize highway building
and suburban greenfield development, beginning with the local match
required for transit and the home mortgage tax deduction for those
who own their own homes. SB 375 is perhaps most important because
it begins to redress that imbalance by making infill and
transit-oriented development easier, and less time-consuming and
costly, and because it improves the allocation of transportation
funding according to density and need.

California and the rest of the country need to re-examine the
policies and incentives that have made sprawling highway and
suburban development the norm – a course that helped build this
country but that isn’t working anymore. We must begin to address
the problems long associated with sprawl – including traffic
congestion, declining air quality, and the burden of rising housing
and transportation costs on families. SB 375 begins to do this by
aligning regional planning, transportation funding and
environmental policy, by promoting a jobs-housing balance, by
beginning the reform of CEQA, and by allowing the market to respond
to the growing demand from first-time renters and buyers as well as
empty nesters. SB 375 provides for the sustainable accommodation of
population growth in a way that will improve, not worsen, quality
of life.

The ambitious implementation of SB 375 will benefit our economy
and our communities in so many ways that we can’t afford to not
implement this law. We urge the ARB to adopt ambitious greenhouse
gas reduction targets, especially for 2035, in order to put our
communities on a path to prosperity.

Sincerely,

Allison Brooks
Chief of Staff
Reconnecting America

436 14th Street, Suite 1005
Oakland, CA 94612