Performance Measures for a Sustainable Transportation Network Pasadena s Approach Frederick C. Dock, Ellen Greenberg, Mark Yamarone

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1 Performance Measures for a Sustainable Transportation Network Pasadena s Approach Frederick C. Dock, Ellen Greenberg, Mark Yamarone Abstract. As California cities move into the second decade of the 21st Century, they are responding to a series of state mandates that have been adopted in the past several years to address climate change. The greenhouse gas reductions mandated by AB 32 and the regional targets for greenhouse gas inherent in SB 375 have introduced new dimensions into the realm of transportation management. Similarly California s adoption of a statewide Complete Streets policy has advanced the movement toward more walkable, bike friendly cities. In addition to the state requirements, Pasadena, along with many other cities, adopted the Urban Environmental Accords and the U.S. Council of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in the furtherance of a sustainable future. The net effect of these sustainability programs on the transportation system is to change the perspective from which the performance of the system has been viewed. To achieve the sustainability goals, the transportation professional must look beyond the efficiency of the network in moving vehicles as the primary metric of performance. New metrics that reflect the sustainability goals are needed and must be balanced across modes. These new metrics must recognize that the level of complexity in the development and measurement of urban transportation strategies goes far beyond the current Level of Service metric that we are familiar with and use to address system performance. This presentation will address the metrics that Pasadena is using to measure urban transportation system performance and how those measures are carrying forward into development review and environmental clearance. Introduction As one of the three oldest cities in the Los Angeles region, Pasadena s roadway network was laid out and constructed many years ago and the city has been fully developed for decades. Much of the original street grid was developed around the city s original streetcar neighborhoods. In the early part of the 20 th century the City demolished the fronts of buildings through the historic core to widen Colorado Boulevard to accommodate the dramatic increase in car use. Obviously this is no longer an option for increasing roadway capacity in the City. Land use decisions made in the City s1994 and 2004 General Plan updates set forth a limited growth strategy that protected the historic neighborhoods that ring the Central District of Pasadena while embracing the potential for transit-oriented development (TOD) along the route of the Gold Line LRT service. Since the opening of the Gold Line in 2003, Pasadena has seen a marked increase in mixed-use and multi-family residential redevelopment and infill in the Central District along with an intensification of commercial office and employment in the TOD areas. Faced with an increasing level of demand on a roadway system that is essentially fixed at its current size, Pasadena s Department of Transportation has turned increasingly to strategies that manage traffic in the city. To that end, a variety of programs have been developed to protect neighborhoods and to implement ITS capabilities. Pasadena has made a significant commitment to encouraging non-auto travel by operating a local

2 transit system that provides feeder/circulator service to the regional transit system, through comprehensive pedestrian and bicycle system planning and by implementing a charging infrastructure for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. The city has addressed system management needs through the development of a sophisticated traffic management center (TMC) that allows for real-time management of the city s network of 300 traffic signals and traveler information system components. Travel demand management is a high priority, both for the city as an employer, but also as a regulator for new buildings over 75,000 square feet throughout the city, which are required to prepare, implement and monitor TDM plans in compliance with the City s Trip Reduction Ordinance. As California cities move into the second decade of the 21 st Century, they are responding to a series of state mandates that have been adopted in the past several years to address climate change. The greenhouse gas reductions mandated by Assembly Bill 32 and the regional targets for greenhouse gas inherent in Senate Bill 375 have introduced new dimensions into the realm of transportation management. Similarly California s adoption of a statewide Complete Streets policy has underpinned the movement toward more walkable, bike friendly cities. In addition to the state requirements, Pasadena, along with many other cities, adopted the Urban Environmental Accords 1 and the U.S. Council of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement 2 in the furtherance of a sustainable future. In addition to the sustainability mandates, the City is responding to the movement toward a more walkable and bike friendly city as a necessary response to the public health crisis facing most cities. The incidence of diseases associated with childhood obesity is directly related to the lack of exercise traditionally achieved through walking. A road network that provides a safe and convenient environment for active transportation choices and a land use pattern that supports shorter trips are critical components to achieve increased trip making that is not dependent upon a car. The net effect of these sustainability programs on the transportation system is to change the perspective from which the performance of the system is viewed. To achieve the sustainability goals, the transportation professional must look beyond the efficiency of the network as the primary metric of performance. New metrics that reflect the sustainability goals are needed and must be balanced across modes. Shorter and fewer vehicles trips become an important measure in relation to greenhouse gas production. The condition of the pedestrian and bicycle networks becomes a factor in the performance of a multi-modal system. The availability and connectivity of transit service increases in importance. All of these metrics introduce new levels of complexity into the development and measurement of urban transportation strategies that goes far beyond the current Level of Service metric that we are familiar with and use to address system performance. Furthermore, these new metrics reflecting sustainability concerns need to co-exist with metrics reflecting the concerns of local residents about livability and mobility in their community.

3 Pasadena, like most other southern California cities, has used a fairly conventional approach to assessing transportation impacts for development review and for adopting long-range plans. This approach is currently focused on Level of Service (expressed in terms of intersection volume to capacity ratio) and on traffic volume changes on street segments. Until recently, this approach has allowed for the identification of transportation impacts on vehicular traffic on the street system and allowed the city to require mitigation of traffic volume increases both in neighborhoods and on major streets. However, in the last few years, this approach has increasingly resulted in outcomes that are inconsistent with the city s vision for the street system -- by placing a disproportionate emphasis on reducing vehicle delay, while remaining largely silent on the impacts to pedestrians and bicyclists, the city s focus on Level of Service encourages widening of streets and increasing traffic speeds. In the interest of measuring what matters (rather than what s easy to measure), Pasadena has been redefining the metrics that the city uses to assess transportation performance. This effort has included identifying appropriate metrics, working with those metrics to understand how they might be used to address an expanded set of goals for the transportation system that embrace sustainability objectives, and identifying the necessary efforts to have these new metrics adopted as city standards. New Metrics Taking advantage of a citywide Comprehensive Plan 3 update, Pasadena is reevaluating the current transportation performance measures in the context of how well each helps the city meet its objectives for transportation and mobility. With the expanded emphasis on sustainability and a continued focus on livability, the performance measures are also being evaluated for their ability to assist with determining how to balance trade-offs among travel modes and among the mobility needs of different members of the community. In addition to reflecting new values and requirements applicable to the city, new metrics must be relevant to the set of options actually available. In Pasadena, this means decreasing emphasis on identifying needs for capacity or for reducing individual intersection delay. Reflecting the range of options available, new metrics lay the foundation for a city transportation system with increased emphasis on: Network management Travel time reliability Improved transit services Complete Streets Multifunctional rights of way: green streets, social spaces Multimodal system management The new metrics retain some present measures and areas of focus that respond to community expectations, while also expanding the scope of performance measurement. The objectives of performance measures are summarized with the following list:

4 Informing the community Assessing progress and monitoring progress Analyzing options Synching up with other goals Anchoring funding and mitigation requirements Guiding operating decisions and strategies As discussed below, only some of these purposes align with the functions of the City s Comprehensive Plan. The Plan will firmly establish the City s commitment to emphasizing quality of travel experience for travelers using all modes while elevating the importance of safety, livability and sustainability. As the Plan covers the full range of issues relating to development and transportation in the City, its performance measures should also reflect interactions between land use, community character and transportation system. To achieve this alignment, the following four categories of measures were considered: accessibility, sustainability, livability, and driver experience. Accessibility Accessibility, or the ability to reach desired goods or services is often confused with the transportation metric of mobility, which is much more a measure of physical movement (i.e., how you get from A to B ). Enhancing mobility is a purely transportation related exercise and generally involves the supply side of transportation (e.g., road widening leads to better auto mobility and better LOS). Because the physical network in areas like Pasadena is constrained, supply side changes often involve trade-offs between modes. Often, better mobility equals better accessibility, but not always. Cities with high levels of congestion and poor vehicle mobility are very successful places because of excellent accessibility. Enhancing accessibility involves a twodimensional approach that addresses both transportation and land use. Since accessibility is about connecting people to activities rather than about only the trip inherent in that connection, then there can be a land use solution in addition to a transportation solution to each accessibility question. Rather than building new street capacity to better connect residents to commercial areas, clustering shops and housing around a transit stop can also achieve better accessibility. Rather than building a new transit line, re-routing an existing transit line to better serve popular destinations can also achieve better accessibility. Walk Score is an example of a metric that measures accessibility based on the proximity of walkable destinations to a specific location. Pasadena is currently refining a GIS-based accessibility measure for the city s neighborhood that accommodates a weighted ranking of the attributes as enumerated by participants in the outreach process for the Plan. Sustainability Sustainability metrics measure the effectiveness of the city s transportation system for reducing transportation s climate and environmental impacts. Sustainability definitions

5 are generally about longer term actions that preserve the environment for future generations and, as such, involve a variety of approaches to transportation that mix elements that are beyond the ability of the city to influence (fuel mix and vehicle technology) with those that are within the city s ability to influence (vehicle use and operating conditions). Sustainability also generally includes an equity component that is often expressed in a triple bottom line approach (i.e., Environment, Economy, and Equity). Performance measures for sustainability that the city is considering are the following: Vehicle Miles Traveled (per household, per employee, per capita) Mode Share Housing + Transportation Cost index When accessibility and sustainability are combined, greater accessibility through land use planning and coordination of transportation leads to fewer auto trips, reduced per capita vehicle-miles traveled, reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and lower household transportation costs. Livability Livability, while the subject of many different definitions, is essentially attempting to measure quality of life and opportunities. In that context, livability metrics measure the availability of opportunities for all residents, workers and visitors. Health and safety measures are typically found in livability metrics. A review of national Best Practices shows the City and County of San Francisco as being in the forefront of the measurement of livability in urban areas. Pasadena is investigating the application of San Francisco s Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT), which considers health needs in urban land use plans. The HDMT includes transportation-related metrics that go by the acronyms PEQI and BEQI or the Pedestrian Environmental Quality Index (PEQI) and the Bicycle Environmental Quality Index (BEQI). Both of these indices evaluate the transportation network in terms of design characteristics, volumes, and safety that most affect pedestrian and bicycle travel. Driver Experience Driver experience metrics are those that measure how motorists experience the street system. These include the old standard Level of Service but need to add attributes that reflect people s experiences of the system or network and move attention away from individual intersections and more towards corridors. Measures that achieve this shift in focus include driver travel time, average travel speed, reliability of travel time and safety (collisions). Additionally, the new measures need to decrease the emphasis on the efficiency of auto travel relative to other modes and they need to address the manner in which people use and experience the transportation system as a whole from a Complete Streets perspective. This is being accomplished by subscribing to the use of Multi-modal Level of Service (MMLOS) analysis from NCHRP (proposed for the 2010 Highway Capacity Manual) that emphasizes quality of travel experience by walk, bike, transit,

6 and car. The MMLOS calculation for each mode is based on each mode s users perception of level of service and factors that influences their perception. The influential factors for each mode are as follows: Motorists: Presence of Median Landscaping Signal Progression (number of stops) Posted Speed Limit Pedestrian: Sidewalk Width Separation of Walkway from Traffic Traffic Speed Pedestrian Volumes Number of Traffic Lanes Traffic Signal Delay Bicyclists: Width of Outside lane Presence and width of Bike Lane Speed Limit Intersection Crossing Width Intersection Type of Control Transit Users: Frequency Speed Reliability, On Time Percentage Bus Stop Amenities Pedestrians Access to Stops Load Factor (Passenger/seat) As Pasadena compared the above factors to those currently in use, it became evident that incorporating the MMLOS approach into the city s current approach, rather than replacing the current approach, would be the most productive. To that end, the city s guidelines for impact analysis are now being updated to reflect the addition of MMLOS components to balance the intersection Level of Service and traffic volume metrics currently used as shown in Table 1 below. Table 1. Expanded Methods for Transportation Impact Analysis Intersections Street Segments Auto LOS Pedestrian LOS Auto LOS Pedestrian LOS Bicycle LOS Transit LOS Current Guidelines ICU Not Used Volume Not Used Not Used Not Used Proposed Guidelines ICU MMLOS MMLOS MMLOS MMLOS MMLOS Scale and Focus The new set of measures will decrease the emphasis on additional vehicle capacity and on reducing individual intersection delay in favor of increasing the emphasis on network management and travel time reliability. To achieve this shift in emphasis, the metrics must shift in scale, away from individual location-specific measures to corridor or area wide measures. The performance measures can then be used to highlight corridors and areas that are not operating (or projected to operate) satisfactorily, without creating an expectation of capacity increases at individual locations. The broader scale will be useful as well in comparing alternatives for the General Plan. Vehicle miles of travel (VMT) per household is one of the measures under consideration. Similarly, representative travel times over typical routes are also under consideration. Speed suitability by street type is also being evaluated. These measures, while measurable at an empirical level, are difficult to forecast in the absence of sophisticated models. They operate at district (VMT) and corridor (travel time, speed)

7 scales, which may useful for measuring the General Plan performance, but might mask individual project-level impacts. While lower VMT per household supports the sustainability goals through reduced GHG production throughout the day if the commute trips are not significantly reduced there will be little impact to reducing peak period congestion on the roadway network. VMT data is useful as an information tool, illustrating the different travel characteristics of different parts of the City. Figure 1 highlights the relationship between land use mix and travel behavior in one part of the city. Figure 1. Example of Attributes Linked to VMT Data As a tool in the General Plan process, graphics like Figure 1 are intended to build an understanding of how different choices in terms of mix and development density may influence sustainability outcomes. Process Considerations As part of the City s Comprehensive Plan Update process the discussion and review of new transportation performance measures has been presented to the City s Transportation Advisory Committee, General Plan Update Advisory Committee and City Council. The need to identify performance measure that would provide meaningful metrics for the analysis of the various Land Use and Mobility Element alternatives that would identify how well how the system is functioning or how it is expected to function in the future, evaluate how well the system meets community objectives and help with

8 decision-making and implementation. For the new performance measures to be successful they must clearly connect community objectives and expectations, be based on data and analysis that are available and understandable and provide options that are realistically available to the City. Acknowledgements The initiatives described in this paper are the combined work of the many individuals, both in the Pasadena Department of Transportation and with our consultants. The authors wish to particularly thank Mike Bagheri and Jenny Cristales of PasDOT and Michael Iswalt of ARUP for their invaluable assistance and original work in developing these initiatives. Dowling Associates assistance in the application of the MMLOS techniques to Pasadena was invaluable and is greatly appreciated by the City. Author Information Frederick C. Dock, PE, PTOE Director City of Pasadena Department of Transportation 221 East Walnut Street, Suite 210 Pasadena, CA (626) (626) fax Ellen Greenberg, AICP Associate Principal ARUP 560 Mission Street, Suite 700 San Francisco, CA (415) (415) fax Mark Yamarone Transportation Administrator City of Pasadena Department of Transportation 221 East Walnut Street, Suite 210 Pasadena, CA (626) (626) fax 1 See See 3 The city s General Plan in California practice 4 R. Dowling, et al. National Highway Cooperative Research Program Report 616: Multimodal Level of Service Analysis for Urban Streets. Transportation Research Board,