One of the more important realities in California's decision-making processes is that the decisions regarding how and where to grow, and the equally important choices in terms of how to provide mobility and access to relevant destinations, are made separately. While land use authority has historically been a hot button issue in the United States, the separation between local land use decisions and regional and statewide transportation planning decisions has been one of the greatest barriers to successfully managing traffic demand in conjunction with sustainable commercial and residential growth. As a 1998 LAO report on transportation describes:
"Transportation demand is also influenced by local land use decisions that determine the locations of new housing and jobs, and which in turn determine whether communities will be compact and densely populated or sprawling and sparsely populated. Land use in many of California's communities is defined by lower-density development and ever-expanding urban boundaries that make pedestrian, bicycle and transit travel impractical, and that increase trip length and VMT (vehicle miles traveled). Coordinating land use and transportation policies is made more difficult because many large urban areas include several city and county jurisdictions, and land use decisions of one jurisdiction can impact traffic in other jurisdictions."
Suburban sprawl has tremendous implications for how and even if California can indeed handle its projected population increases and housing, jobs, and transportation needs in the next forty years. The amount of land consumed - much of it in the form of productive farmland or valuable open space - as well as physical infrastructure that current growth patterns require per capita comes at a tremendous cost both economically as well as environmentally.
Consider the experience of Los Angeles, where between 1970 and 1990 the population grew 45 percent but the developed land area grew 300 percent. If these types of development trends continue, in the next twenty years, areas like the Central Valley will lose much of its productive farmland and yet experience levels of traffic congestion similar to those faced by Los Angeles commuters today. The American Farmland Trust in a recent study found that the current model of growth and development for the Central Valley threatens to consume a million acres of prime farmland by 2040, reducing farm and ranch profits by $5 billion annually and requiring such massive amounts of new transportation and other public infrastructure that it will run city and county budgets into a $1 billion deficit.
California is truly stalled at a crossroads in deciding not only how we're going to grow, but just as importantly how we're going to pay for that growth. The type of transportation investments and policies that the state pursues will likely be a critical component in shaping that growth, and will significantly impact what our communities and our quality of life will be like in future decades. While there are many uncertainties in this equation, one thing appears definite: we must dramatically change our planning and decision-making frameworks at the state, regional, and local levels, or we may indeed be doomed to failure. There may well be a strong case for increased funding for transportation statewide, particularly for congestion management, public transit and local street and road maintenance projects. But if that's all we accomplish - spending more money on transportation - we'll have slapped an even higher price tag on a system that won't address the core issues and needs of California's communities because it will have once again treated only the symptoms and ignored the larger root causes of the problem.
The rate of land consumption in California has actually outpaced the growth in population by a factor of five to one or more since the 1960s. This trend alone is closely linked with the similar exponential increase in the growth in driving. Source: United States Geological Survey (USGS).
