SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) Chapter 728 of the Statutes of 2008 (SB 375) supports the goals of the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) by requiring each of the state’s 18 metropolitan areas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks. SB 375 calls on each metropolitan area to develop a sustainable communities strategy (SCS) to accommodate future population growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
(b) One of the major components of SB 375 is to coordinate the regional housing needs allocation process with the
regional transportation process while maintaining local authority over land use decisions. Thus, local officials are key decisionmakers in how the provisions of SB 375 are ultimately implemented.
(c) The nine-county Bay Area metropolitan area SCS, Plan Bay Area, was adopted in 2013 through a cooperative effort of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). The Bay Area is expected to grow by 2,000,000 people over the next 25 years.
(d) Plan Bay Area provides a strategy for meeting 80 percent of the region’s future housing needs in priority development areas (PDAs). These are neighborhoods within walking distance of
frequent transit service, offering a wide variety of housing options, and featuring amenities such as grocery stores, community centers, open space, and restaurants.
(e) There is a direct relationship between development planning for population growth in PDAs and the provision of open space and other amenities in these areas that will be required to support projected growth. San Francisco, like most cities, aims to provide adequate quality open space for the broader public health and quality of life of its citizens and workforce. As new development occurs, it serves additional residents and employees, who, in turn, require new, or expanded and enhanced, open space.
(f) A 2014 San Francisco Citywide Nexus Analysis documents this direct relationship between projected population
growth and the cost of new open-space infrastructure to support growth. Providing recreation and open space, such as baseball diamonds, soccer fields, parks, playgrounds, tennis courts, flower gardens, community gardens, and greenways, is a capital intensive undertaking, especially in San Francisco where land availability is low and land prices are high.
(g) To meet the goals of SB 375, more of the future development is planned to be walkable and bikeable and close to public transit, jobs, schools, shopping, parks, recreation, and other amenities. Many of San Francisco’s PDAs are located in areas of San Francisco that both lack open space and are home to most of the city’s freeways. There are many parcels and right-of-ways
rights-of-way beneath and adjacent to these freeways and within PDAs that could be used for open-space purposes, yet currently the cost of leasing those lands from the Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is prohibitively high.
(h) Thus, one strategy for supporting statewide SB 375 goals is to decrease the cost of providing additional open space by decreasing the cost of land. An innovative intergovernmental partnership would engage Caltrans in low-cost leases with San Francisco for areas under the freeways that overlap with PDAs and San Francisco would, in turn, take on the cost of building and maintaining much-needed new open space on those lands to support and accommodate future population growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
(i) San Francisco has already demonstrated the viability of open-space uses under Caltrans freeways through various completed and successful projects. In the Mission Bay Area, San Francisco operates several recreational uses under Interstate 280, including volleyball and basketball courts, as well as pedestrian walkways. In the SoMa West area under the Route 101 Central Freeway, San Francisco leased two Caltrans parcels and built a very popular dog park and skatepark. The leases for these projects, which San Francisco negotiated carefully in partnership with Caltrans, could serve as models for a framework of more financially feasible open-space projects.
(j) With an under-freeway open-space framework in place, San Francisco could more readily meet its SB 375 goals. If this lower land cost opportunity was established, the
under-freeway open-space projects could become financially feasible and San Francisco would be able to localize the decisionmaking process for these new open-space uses. This would allow San Francisco the flexibility to coordinate and plan locally and to more comprehensively plan to accommodate future population growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.