California Environmental Quality Act: vehicle-miles-traveled database.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires a lead agency, as defined, to prepare, or cause to be prepared, and certify the completion of, an environmental impact report on a project that it proposes to carry out or approve that may have a significant effect on the environment or to adopt a negative declaration if it finds that the project will not have that effect. CEQA also requires a lead agency to prepare a mitigated negative declaration for a project that may have a significant effect on the environment if revisions in the project would avoid or mitigate that effect and there is no substantial evidence that the project, as revised, would have a significant effect on the environment. CEQA requires the Office of Planning and Research to prepare and develop, and the Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency to certify and adopt, guidelines for the implementation of CEQA. CEQA requires the office to develop criteria for determining the significance of transportation impacts of project within transit priority areas that promote, among other things, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. CEQA requires the office, in developing the criteria, to recommend potential metrics to measure transportation impacts of projects that may include, among other things, vehicle miles traveled. CEQA authorizes the office to establish criteria for models used to analyze transportation impacts. CEQA authorizes the office to adopt those criteria for determining the significance of transportation impacts of projects outside transit priority areas. This bill would require the office to establish and maintain a vehicle-miles-traveled database containing methodological guidance on which models should be used for particular types of projects and the best sources of trip-length data for various land-use types.