The goal of this Caltrans funded grant is to establish a regional VMT mitigation program for Santa Cruz County so that projects can reduce impacts from VMT to a less-than-significant level by paying into a program. This project will provide the County and local cities with a regionally coordinated mechanism to mitigate development projects that cannot mitigate on-site, which will provide certainty for development projects and simultaneously provide additional funding for active transportation and transit projects that help reduce VMT overall via a banking or exchange program.
SB 743, signed into law in 2013, required the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) to establish a new metric for identifying and mitigating transportation impacts for projects that are subject to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). OPR identified Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) as the new metric. The County's VMT thresholds were adopted in 2020 and updated in 2021 following OPR’s guidance which uses average VMT per person/employee as a baseline for determining needed reductions. Average VMT within the County is fairly low and as such many development projects, even those within urban infill areas, cannot meet adopted thresholds for reduced VMT.
Santa Cruz Regional VMT Mitigation Program Report
The preliminary final report for the Santa Cruz Regional VMT Mitigation Program is available for review. Staff is currently obtaining input from the public as well as from the Board of Supervisors, the Cities of Capitola, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley, and Watsonville, and the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. The final report with recommendations for program implementation and administration is anticipated to be available early 2025.
Click here for the Preliminary Final Santa Cruz VMT Mitigation Program Report