The Regional Development Impact Fee program, as adopted by the Transportation Agency Board of Directors and each of the jurisdictions, went into effect in August 2008. Prior to the adoption of the regional fee program, development proposals were evaluated on a case-by-case basis for cumulative impacts to the regional transportation network as part of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review. This process resulted in, at times, lengthy negotiations with developers, and assessments were not consistently applied throughout the County. The purpose of establishing a countwide Regional Fee program was to streamline the environmental review of new development, and establish a consistent methodology to assess in-lieu fees as a CEQA mitigation for new trips on the regional transportation system.
As part of the Joint Powers Agreement that established the program, and state law, the Agency is required to conduct a major update to the fee program once every five years. In August 2017, the TAMC Board approved the selection of Wood Rodgers to conduct the technical work necessary to update the regional fees. This update is based upon projects identified and environmentally reviewed in the 2018 Monterey County Regional Transportation Plan and its accompanying CEQA Findings.
The updated fees will reflect changes that have occurred in the past five years, such as: updates to population, employment and housing projections; the expected pace of new development; changes in land use plans including general plan updates; the need for new transportation projects based on growth; the completion of some transportation projects; and, changes to estimated project costs.
This update also evaluated how TAMC could incorporate a Fort Ord Reuse Area zone into the regional fee program. The regional fee program segments the County into four distinct zones - North County, Peninsula / South Coast, Greater Salinas, and South County. Currently, development projects located within the FORA boundary only pay the FORA Community Facilities District fee and are exempt by policy from payment of the TAMC regional transportation fee. With the legislatively-mandated sunset of FORA in 2020, the Transportation Agency has been coordinating with FORA's staff and Transition Task Force on the potential transfer of capital improvement program transportation obligations to the TAMC fee program.
The concept of an traffic fee is to assure that new development pays for its impact on regional roads. Most new development will generate new trips; for instance, a new single family home is estimated to result in 10 new trips per day; some of those trips may be linked into a single automobile journey, and some will be walking, biking or transit trips. A new retailer or warehouse is estimated to draw new customers and employees, who will create trips on the regional and local roads, based on its overall square footage. The AMBAG Regional Travel Demand Model incorporates the adopted local general plans, as well as current and projected future population, to predict which roads people will drive on to get to and from these new developments, and existing land uses.
To calculate the traffic impact fee, the consultant, Wood Rodgers, used the AMBAG travel forecast model to determine where future traffic congestion (i.e. a network "deficiency") is projected to occur in 2035 (the forecast year). The fee program then proposes future roadway improvements where this traffic congestion is projected to occur. Only a portion of the future traffic congestion is caused by new trips; the remaining traffic is caused by trips to and from existing development, i.e. employment, housing or shopping centers.
After identifying where regional roadways are anticipated to be congested in the year 2035, the staff-consultant team proposed twelve transportation improvements to include in the fee program, to accommodate the new trips created by development. Staff reviewed this draft list of projects with the Technical Advisory Committee at the February 2018 meeting, and made updates based on members' feedback. The fee per trip was then calculated, by dividing the cost of the proposed transportation improvements by the total number of daily trips on that roadway. This fee per trip is then applied to each new development; in the example above, each new single family home pays 10 times the regional per trip fee, to account for the ten new trips added on to the transportation system. These per trip fees are calculated separately for each of the fee zones, since some zones have more transportation improvements, as well as more new development, than others.
Because project costs have increased, while projected new development has decreased, the proposed 2018 regional fee schedule shows higher fees per trip than the 2013 program for the North County and Greater Salinas and Peninsula zones. In the South County zone, however, per trip fees have decreased, because of a reduction in the projects and project costs attributable to this zone.
In June 2018, the TAMC Board approved the 2018 Monterey County Regional Transportation Plan, and adopted Resolution 2018-12, making findings under the California Environmental Quality Act related to the Transportation Plan. The TAMC Board also approved a policy to keep a possible new FORA fee zone separate from the existing Peninsula zone. This results in a FORA zone fee per trip of $460, which is comparable to the current FORA Community Facilities District fee per trip of $489 for overlapping projects. FORA's Transition Ad-Hoc Committee has released a Draft Transition Plan (dated June 5, 2018) that includes a model for potentially transferring FORA’s functions to multiple receiving agencies, with the Transportation Agency identified as receiving responsibility for regional transportation improvements. With this update to the Regional Development Impact Fee program, TAMC would have a technical basis to assume collection of impact fees for regional transportation projects in the FORA zone.
To prioritize the expenditure of the regional fee revenues, TAMC staff prepares an annual five-year Strategic Expenditure Plan. The Plan prioritizes projects in three tiers: near-term (Tier 1) , medium-term (Tier 2), and long-term (Tier 3), in relation to the program’s 2035 time horizon. Projects that are likely to go to construction sooner and/or have secured funding are scheduled for earlier delivery in the plan. Currently, the Regional Development Impact Fee program has a balance of $3.67 million. The Board has approved programming of $312,205 of these funds to the State Route 68 Commuter Improvements. The balance of existing and Tier 1 fee revenues $3.35 million, are proposed to be allocated to the State Route 156 Improvements project.