The Transportation Agency prepares the Regional Transportation Plan every four years, which provides a basis for actions to allocate state and federal funding to transportation projects. The Transportation Agency prepares its plan in coordination with AMBAG, which prepares a Metropolitan Transportation Plan for the three-county Monterey Bay Area in its role as the federal Metropolitan Planning Organization for this region. Transportation investments in the Monterey Bay region that receive state and federal funds or require federal approvals must be consistent with the Plan and included in AMBAG’s Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program. The Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program is a four-year program and represents the near-term commitments of the Plan.
Developing a Sustainable Communities Strategy is a newly enacted requirement of a Metropolitan Transportation Plan from Senate Bill 375. The Sustainable Communities Strategy provides linkage between greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles through integrated transportation, land use and environmental planning. As part of the planning process, AMBAG works closely with the cities and counties in the tri-county region to develop a new population, employment and housing growth forecast and land use patterns and strategies based on reasonably available revenues. The Strategy also integrates the transportation network of projects included in each county's Regional Transportation Plan. These documents are prepared in in close coordination with the region’s transit operators, local jurisdictions, Caltrans, the Monterey Bay Area Resources Board, state and federal resource agencies, local agency formation commissions and other special purpose public agencies.
These regional plans outline the tri-county priorities for meeting future transportation and mobility needs, consistent with the adopted policy goals and objectives, as well as within the constraints of transportation revenues forecast over the 20-year planning horizon of the document. AMBAG's current 2040 Plan is built on a set of integrated policies, strategies and investments to maintain and improve the transportation system to meet the diverse needs of the region through 2040, consistent with those developed within Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito County's transportation plans. The new Plan's forecast year will be 2045.
Initial activities for the 2045 Plan were kicked off in April 2019. Activities currently underway are highlighted below.
2022 Regional Growth Forecast
The process to update the Regional Growth Forecast is underway. The first step in updating Regional Growth Forecast is establishing the regional numbers. The draft tri-county regional employment, population and housing figures have been accepted by the AMBAG Board of Directors in March 2020. AMBAG then began to disaggregate the forecast numbers to the jurisdiction level. The draft subregional growth forecast was released in July 2020 and will be presented to the AMBAG Board of Directors and the Planning Directors Forum in August 2020.
The 2022 Regional Growth Forecast is scheduled to be accepted for planning purposes in Fall 2020. Once the 2022 Regional Growth Forecast has been finalized, AMBAG staff will be reaching out to each local jurisdiction to verify and update each of the traffic analysis zones (TAZs) using the new forecast. This is a crucial step as it will be used for modeling purposes in the Regional Travel Demand Model.
2045 Metropolitan Transportation Plan/Sustainable Community Strategies and Regional Transportation Plan Performance Measures
The 2045 Metropolitan Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategies performance measures (Attachment 1) are used to evaluate each of the policy goals and have been updated with new metrics added. The performance measures in the Regional Transportation Plan are aligned to maintain consistency with the 2045 Plan. Performance measures allow us to quantify regional goals, estimate the impacts of proposed investments, and evaluate progress over time. The AMBAG Board of Directors accepted the updated performance measures for the 2045 Plan in February 2020. The Transportation Agency Board also approved the updated performance metrics for the Regional Transportation Plan at their February 2020 meeting. AMBAG staff is currently developing methodologies to calculate the new measures to be included in the 2045 Plan.
Environmental Justice Definitions and Thresholds
Environmental Justice is the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, and incomes during the development, adoption, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. The 2045 Plan includes a proposed set of updated environmental justice definitions and thresholds for minority, low income, low mobility, and low community engagement populations (Attachment 2). These draft definitions and thresholds would be used with the aforementioned performance metrics to better identify how the scenarios and projects included in the 2045 Plan will effect these communities. Transportation Agency staff is coordinating with AMBAG and our partner Regional Transportation Planning Agencies in the development of the environmental justice definitions to maintain consistency with the Regional Transportation Plan.
Transportation Project List
Transportation Agency staff is working with local jurisdictions and Caltrans, and AMBAG is working with the transit operators, to update the transportation project list for the 2045 Plan using the TELUS database. Transportation Agency staff has requested that jurisdictions provide any changes to existing 2040 Plan projects, such as changes to cost estimates and project phasing, as well as adding new projects or deleting projects that have been completed.
2045 Plan Financial Assumptions and Scenario Development
Transportation Agency staff has been working with AMBAG, the Regional Transportation Planning Agencies of Santa Cruz and San Benito, and the transit agencies to develop financial assumptions for the Metropolitan Transportation Plan and Regional Transportation Plan through 2045. The financial assumptions will guide how much local, state and federal funding will be reasonably available for the transportation investments included in the 2045 Plan.
Beginning later this year, scenarios will be developed and evaluated. The scenarios will include various combinations of land use assumptions and various multimodal transportation improvements and investments. The scenarios will be evaluated using the Regional Travel Demand Model.
Next Steps
Transportation Agency and AMBAG staff will continue to develop the various components of the 2045 Plan working with the Planning Directors Forum, Technical Advisory Committees, partner agencies and key stakeholders.