First Name | Robert |
---|---|
Last Name | Cervero |
Email Address | robertc@berkeley.edu |
Affiliation | University of California at Berkeley |
Subject | Role of land-use management in scoping plan |
Comment | Dear CARB officials: I am writing to urge the strong consideration of land-use planning and management as an effective tool to reduce VMT per capita and thus contribute to California's climate stabilization targets. I write this based on many years of experience as a researcher at UC Berkeley studying these admittedly complex relationships. I'll make two key points. (1) Historically, relationships between travel behavior and land use have been distorted due to underpricing and resource misallocations -- e.g., free parking, failure to price externalities, lack of congestion tolls. In Europe and elsewhere where fuel and parking charges more closely reflect true social costs, relationships between urban form and VMT are much stronger. Thus combining strategies like Transit Oriented Development (TOD) with something more akin to social-cost pricing would reveal that land-use management can play a much more significant role in reducing CO2 emissions than historically assumed. Any scoping plan needs to consider this. (2) Our understanding of the elasticities between variables like urban densities and VMT per capita are based on the low end of the curve. As pressures like rising fuel prices (over the long term) prompt densities to increase, we will be at different places on the demand curve. These relationships are historically non-linear. I believe at more intermediate levels of prices for fuel and automobile usage, we will find the influences of factors like urban densities on transit usage and VMT reductions to be proportionally greater. Past empirical studies fail to reflect this. I have attached a recent study I directed that examines the influences of density, accessibility, and other factors on VMT per capita based on experiences across 370 US urbanized areas in the early 2000s. The key point is that urban densities significantly drive down VMT per capita however this benefit can be neutralized whenever road densities are high. In short, synergistic benefits accrue when compact, mixed-use development is accompanied by more investments in public transit than in roads. Again, the synergies from land-use management and "smart transportation" investments, I believe, are potentially enormous, and this should be reflected in CARB's draft Scoping Plan. Respectfully submitted, Robert Cervero, Professor Department of City and Regional Planning University of California, Berkeley |
Attachment | www.arb.ca.gov/lists/scopingpln08/1413-vmt_study-cervero___murakami.pdf |
Original File Name | VMT study-Cervero & Murakami.pdf |
Date and Time Comment Was Submitted | 2008-12-08 17:18:39 |
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