1.0 Introduction
On July 14, 2020, the City of Laguna Hills adopted Resolution No. 2020-07-14-4, establishing Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) Analysis Guidelines under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). These guidelines help ensure land use and transportation projects comply with CEQA's requirements regarding VMT. The VMT Guidelines set standardized criteria and thresholds for analyzing transportation impacts within Laguna Hills.
Senate Bill (SB) 743, signed into law by Governor Brown on September 27, 2013, aims to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, decrease traffic-related air pollution, and promote multimodal transportation systems by reducing VMT. SB 743 focuses primarily on projects in transit priority areas but also authorizes changes in how transportation impacts are analyzed outside these areas. New CEQA Guidelines, certified in December 2018, identify VMT as the preferred metric for evaluating transportation impacts, effective July 1, 2020. The previous metric, level of service (LOS), typically related to automobile delay or roadway capacity, is no longer considered a significant environmental impact under CEQA.
The Laguna Hills VMT Guidelines are based on the Office of Planning and Research (OPR) Technical Advisory on Evaluating Transportation Impacts in CEQA (December 2018) and use VMT modeling from the Orange County Transportation Analysis Model (OCTAM). The guidelines are tailored to the city's local land use, transportation network, and General Plan goals and policies.
The City's Planning and Engineering Divisions may modify these guidelines on a case-by-case basis and will update them as needed to reflect new CEQA precedents, future modeling forecasts, and process refinements. While VMT is the primary metric for CEQA compliance, the City will continue to maintain LOS standards in the General Plan for discretionary reviews and to ensure proper traffic operations outside of CEQA's scope. Exhibit A shows the transportation review process flowchart for Laguna Hills, and the Traffic Impact Study Guidelines outline the requirements for LOS analysis.
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