Comment Log Display

It's wonderful to see these three major institutions coming
together to address challenges within California. Thank you.

While California's institutions are generally cognizant of and
taking action to address direct causes of emissions, we're not
doing as well on proximate causes. Where we live, where we work,
and what amenities are nearby are huge drivers of transportation
demand and thus emissions. Please consider taking some actions that
could help address the gap:

Use the RHNA process to address VMT. Right now there is no
requirement for municipalities to address housing:jobs:amenities
ratios as part of the RHNA process. Without that, we're unlikely to
see VMT per capita improvements even if we do someday see
improvements in housing affordability.

Leverage new state laws liberalizing land-use near transit. A
recent bevy of state laws reduces land-use restrictions in
proximity to transit. As we build new transit, in addition to
thinking about where it might serve existing communities it should
be considered how it might enable new housing. Most of these laws
empower projects within half a mile of transit.

Create and publicly release a high-quality VMT dataset. Direct
energy use seems to be studied to death, but there's little
publicly-available data to help model VMT impacts of land-use
policy decisions. Personally, I suspect that building
missing-middle housing even if it depends on cars can dramatically
drive down VMT so long as it's well-located relative to jobs and
amenities. Unfortunately, my guess is no better than anybody else's
without good data to support it. Produce the data and make it
easily available to enable better thinking.

Thank you,
Sasha Zbrozek

P.S. for CARB: Please sunset CaRFG in favor of Federal RFG. That
standard is pretty good already, and with the passage of phase 3
will exceed California's standards. Harmonizing will reduce prices
and improve market efficiency.