Regional transportation plans: sustainable communities strategy.

Existing law requires certain transportation planning activities by designated regional transportation planning agencies, including development of a regional transportation plan. Certain of these agencies are designated under federal law as metropolitan planning organizations. Existing law requires metropolitan planning organizations to adopt a sustainable communities strategy as part of their regional transportation plan, which is to be designed to achieve certain targets established by the State Air Resources Board for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles and light trucks in the region. Existing law generally requires transportation planning and programming activities by the metropolitan planning organization to be consistent with the sustainable communities strategy, with certain exceptions. Existing law, to the extent the sustainable communities strategy is unable to achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, requires the affected metropolitan planning organizations to prepare an alternative planning strategy showing how the targets may be achieved through alternative development patterns, infrastructure, or additional transportation measures or policies. This bill would provide that greenhouse gas emission credits for counties and cities that site and permit commercial wind, solar, and biomass projects may be used as credit in the formulation of the sustainable communities strategy or an alternative planning strategy. The bill would also provide that transportation trips outside of federal lands that are directly related to activities of a federal or state military installation shall not be included in the emissions inventory otherwise required to be considered to achieve any reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Existing law requires the metropolitan planning organization or a county transportation agency, as appropriate, to consider financial incentives for cities and counties that have resource lands or farmlands, as defined, for the purposes of, for example, transportation investments for the preservation of the city street or county road system, and farm to market and interconnectivity transportation needs. This bill would add provision of access for renewable energy projects to the transportation investments that should be considered for purposes of providing financial incentives.