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4.7 – Transportation Draft Environmental Impact Report February 2021 14800 W. Schulte Road Logistics Center 4.7-3 Existing Transit Facilities There is no transit service within the Project vicinity. The nearest transit service is provided by Tracer, the City’s bus service. Tracer provides seven bus routes throughout the City, with the nearest bus stops approximately 2 miles northeast at the intersection of Lammers Road with 11th Street, serving Routes D and Commuter Route G (City of Tracy 2020). 4.7.2 Relevant Plans, Policies, and Ordinances Federal No federal transportation regulations apply to the Project. State Senate Bill 743 On September 27, 2013, Governor Brown signed Senate Bill (SB) 743, which became effective on January 1, 2014. The purpose of SB 743 is to streamline the review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process for several categories of development projects, including the development of infill projects in transit-priority areas, and to balance the needs of congestion management with statewide goals related to infill development, promotion of public health through active transportation, and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. SB 743 adds Chapter 2.7, Modernization of Transportation Analysis for Transit Oriented Infill Projects, to the CEQA Statute (California Public Resources Code [PRC] Section 21099). PRC Section 21099(d)(1) provides that aesthetic and parking impacts of a residential, mixed-use residential, or employment center project on an infill site within a transit-priority area are not to be considered significant impacts on the environment. In addition, SB 743 mandates that alternative metric(s) for determining impacts relative to transportation must be developed to replace the use of level of service (LOS) in CEQA documents. In the past, environmental review of transportation impacts focused on the delay that vehicles experience at intersections and on roadway segments, which is often measured using LOS. Mitigation for impacts on vehicular delay often involves increasing capacity, such as widening a roadway or the size of an intersection, which in turn encourages more vehicular travel and greater pollutant emissions. Additionally, improvements to increase vehicular capacity can often discourage alternative forms of transportation, such as biking and walking. SB 743 directed the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) to develop an alternative metric for analyzing transportation impacts in CEQA documents. The alternative needed to promote the state’s goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and traffic-related air pollution; promote the development of a multimodal transportation system; and provide clean, efficient access to destinations. Under SB 743, it was anticipated that the focus of transportation analysis would shift from vehicle delay to vehicle miles traveled (VMT) within transit-priority areas (i.e., areas well- served by transit). Pursuant to SB 743, OPR released the draft revised CEQA Guidelines in November 2017, recommending the use of VMT for analyzing transportation impacts for all projects. Additionally, OPR released Updates to Technical Advisory on Evaluating Transportation Impacts in CEQA to provide guidance on VMT analysis. In this Technical Advisory, OPR provides recommendations to assist lead agencies in screening out projects from VMT analysis and selecting a significance threshold that may be appropriate for particular ju risdictions. Although OPR’s Technical Advisory is not binding on public agencies, CEQA allows lead agencies to “consider thresholds of significance ...