Bay Area cap on car commute advances
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission wants companies with 50 or more employees to cap car commutes to 40% of their workforce by 2035, as part of a state goal of slashing greenhouse gas emissions.
The transit planning agency voted unanimously Friday to advance the proposal. Other workers could walk, bike, or take public transit to offices or stay home. Carpooling would be subject to the cap. Agricultural businesses that lack public transit options would be exempt.
The commuter mandate will require state legislation to be legally binding. That would likely spark future opposition, and it’s unclear how lawmakers would craft those laws or enforce them. Even in its watereddown state, the proposed mandate would be one of the
most restrictive in the country.
The measure replaces a controversial proposal advanced in September that would have required large companies to keep 60% of workers at home even after the coronavirus pandemic. That proposal drew opposition from public officials including San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, along with BART and the Bay Area Council, whose members include hundreds of businesses.
Critics said the earlier plan would hurt public transit agencies that are already struggling from the coronavirus pandemic and further hobble economic activity in urban centers like downtown San Francisco. They also said it would punish people who have remote work challenges, such as having multiple roommates. Opponents of the earlier plan were more supportive of the new proposal.
“The workfromhome mandate was the wrong solution and represented excessive regulatory overreach. The compromise will help revitalize downtowns, and gives business critical flexibility to have workers carpool, use public transit, ride bikes or walk, or even work remotely, but by their own choice,” Bay Area Council CEO Jim Wunderman said in a statement.
The policy measure is part of Plan Bay Area 2050, a regional plan that is required for local transit agencies to obtain state funding of $ 100 million or more per year. The plan now requires a study of impacts and a full environmental review. A final vote is expected next fall.
“This is a good decision for our city, our region, and our economy,” Breed said in a statement on Friday. “Pushing for strong environmental protections doesn’t mean simply telling people to stay home. We need to strengthen our regional transportation system and improve alternative ways of getting around our City. That’s the fundamental change we need, and we look forward to working with the MTC to achieve these goals.”
Restricting car usage is likely to be controversial. As of 2015, 75% of Bay Area commuters drove to work, 14% used public transit, 5% walked or biked and 6% worked from home, according to MTC. Previous bills targeting drivers, such as 2017’ s state gas tax increase, led to major opposition. Separately, San Francisco has been studying downtown congestion pricing as a way to alleviate traffic, which has begun to return during the pandemic.
MTC’s goal in 2050 is to have less than half of commuters drive and a quarter or less work from home.
“We did hear the concerns loud and clear, especially from the business community,” said Dave Vautin, a project manager at MTC during Friday’s public hearing. The new policy will provide much more flexibility while maintaining the greenhouse gas emission cuts, he said.
Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis, said he supported MTC’s goals.
“There’s a real political imperative and policy imperative to do something about vehicle miles traveled,” he said. “In that context, this makes a lot of sense.”
But Sperling disagreed with a blanket 40% car commuter cap for the region, given the local differences in the availability of public transit.
“That’s a mistake. If you’re in San Francisco that’s very different than if you’re in Walnut Creek,” he said. A better policy would account for those differences with varying caps, but it would be harder to implement, he said. The threshold of 50 employees or more could also be a challenge for small businesses, he said.
There are few precedents for MTC’s plan, Sperling said. In 1987, Los Angeles mandated companies with 100 or more employees to find car alternatives under Regulation XV, but Sperling said the program was no longer active.
Nick Josefowitz, an MTC commissioner and chief policy officer at SPUR, an urban planning think tank, hailed the new proposal after previously opposing the workfromhome mandate.
“This is a huge step forward. Replacing a workfromhome mandate with a more flexible program to reduce congestion and pollution from driving is much better for workers, business, transit operators and the region as a whole. It also doesn’t penalize all those who walk, bike or take transit to work,” said Josefowitz, who is Breed’s appointee to MTC.
The plan also calls for building more housing near transit, adding rail lines and expanding public transit. But these initiatives, which will cost billions of dollars, may be threatened by the ongoing recession from the coronavirus pandemic.