Keng Her
The multi-modal Transportation Impact Study (TIS) is one of the most effective tools for assessing the impacts of new land development (or redevelopment) and establishing a nexus with project mitigations, including impact fees. Recent legislation as well as public sentiment have made it imperative that transportation professionals better understand how to prepare and review these studies.
Although current California environmental regulations (CEQA) require specific methods for use in analyzing transportation impacts, focusing on vehicle-miles traveled, this class will consider a broader variety of transportation impacts. A good TIS can consider a much wider range of impacts than CEQA and therefore can better reflect local community values. The class will consider such topics as site access and off-site improvements to satisfactorily accommodate project traffic, including traffic signals. It also considers how impact fees can be applied consistent with California law to recover costs associated with the new development. It also considers non-VMT impacts, such as multi-modal impacts, delay to buses, providing the right amount of parking, internal circulation, and improving the pedestrian/ bicycle environment.
This 8-hour course (in 4 two-hour modules) provides the basics and practical applications of analysis procedures for determining impacts using various performance metrics on all modes (pedestrian, bicycle, transit, and auto). It emphasizes the best practices that are being employed in California and other areas. This course focuses on urban/suburban streets (non-freeways), internal circulation planning, and providing just the right amount of parking. Applications of analyses include improving transportation impact studies, environmental impact reports (EIRs) and project mitigation, new development design standards, and the CEQA review process. Attendees will also become familiar with:
Labor-saving shortcuts for data collection (because some multimodal level of service methodologies can be very "data hungry")
How 'induced travel demand' is defined, and when it does (or does not) create a significant environmental impact under the law
Cross-modal impacts (when capacity or physical characteristics of one mode are changed and thereby affect another mode using the street)
How to assess "fair share" impact fees to pay for project mitigations
How parking can be used as an effective demand-management measure
Available resources (web and paper) that provide further guidance
This class has been updated to reflect many changes in California law between 2020 and 2024. Updates to important references-such as the 2023 Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, and ITE Recommended Practice on TIA-will also be considered.
This course is a combination of instructor presentations with interactive engagements to apply the techniques in the real-world, with case studies and applications of the material. The material complements TE-43 (Multimodal Transportation Operations: Evaluation Methods & Performance Measures), and TE-60 (VMT Metrics Policy Applications and Technical Analysis for SB 743 Compliance), although each can be taken as a stand-alone class.