Suggested Citation:
Volker, Jamey, Reyhane Hosseinzade, Susan L. Handy (2024)

Brief: Using Vehicle Miles Traveled Instead of Level of Service as a Metric of Environmental Impact for Land Development Projects: Progress in California

Senate Bill (SB) 743 (2013) and its related regulations eliminated automobile level of service (LOS) and replaced it with vehicle miles traveled (VMT) as the primary transportation impact metric for land development projects under the California Environmental Quality Act. Actual implementation of the LOS-to-VMT shift was left up to lead agencies, primarily local governments. The LOS-to-VMT shift was expected to create many challenges, given the often-limited resources of local governments, the entrenched use of LOS, and the perceived lack of established practice regarding VMT estimation, mitigation, and monitoring. With those concerns in mind, researchers at the University of California, Davis investigated how local governments have been implementing the LOS-to-VMT shift for land development projects.  This policy brief summarizes the findings from that investigation.

The full research report can viewed at this link.