The County of Yolo, located in the Sacramento, California region, is in the process of updating their General Plan with a horizon year of 2030. The unincorporated area of the County has historically focused on preservation of farmland, open space, and natural resources, while directing residential growth to incorporated cities and in some cases established rural communities. However, with the existing incorporated cities nearing build-out and increased pressure on the county to accommodate additional residential growth, the County has the opportunity to establish a new growth area. As part of the General Plan update, the County has identified the Town of Dunnigan (with less than 400 existing residential units) as a new Specific Plan area that would accommodate up to approximately 8,000 new residential dwelling units. The size of the community was predicated on a desire to fix existing environmental problems such as water contamination due to private septic systems while also creating a sustainable full-service community.
The Draft General Plan includes policies that promote sustainable development in the Dunnigan Specific Plan area, including matching jobs to housing, ensuring that jobs are created concurrently with housing, providing needed services in the community, and promoting walking, biking, and transit. The focus of the policies is to reduce the need for vehicle travel but it is not intended to reduce personal mobility. To further insure that the Dunnigan Specific Plan area achieves lower levels of travel, Fehr & Peers worked closely with the County to develop a daily vehicle miles of travel (VMT) generated per household threshold. The threshold was developed based on the new regional travel demand model for the Sacramento region, called SACSIM, which is a state of the art activity-based travel demand model. This new type of model simulates people and their activity patterns (i.e., why they travel) to estimate regional travel performance measures, such as VMT.
The regional SACSIM model estimates that the incorporated cities of Davis and Woodland, which are mature full service cities, are anticipated to generate 44 miles per household by 2035, while the unincorporated area of the County is estimated to generate 77 miles per household by 2035. The Dunnigan Specific Plan area is envisioned to include a land use pattern and transportation system representative of a mature and sustainable community similar to the Cities of Davis and Woodland. As a result, the following new policy was developed as part to the VMT analysis in the Yolo County General Plan Draft EIR:
- The Dunnigan Specific Plan shall incorporate a maximum of 44 vehicle miles of travel (VMT) generated per household per weekday through implementation of all feasible actions including but not limited to specifications contained in Policies CC-3.3 through CC-3.6. As part of the specific plan implementation, the VMT performance shall be monitored at each phase.
The specific approach may be applicable elsewhere but it would need to be tailored to the local conditions. Yolo County has unique land use conditions (i.e., Williamson Act properties, strong commitment to agricultural protection, focused growth in cities that no longer want to grow in significant amounts, etc.) that were important considerations in establishing the threshold. Other key factors related to this approach include the following benefits that go beyond just greenhouse gas reductions:
- Reduces the urban footprint of planned development through higher densities and a mix of land uses with a focus on encouraging transit, bicycling, and walking.
- Reduces energy use from buildings due to higher densities and from traveling.
- Reduces air pollutant emissions.
The full VMT discussion is available for public review in the Transportation and Circulation section of the Draft Yolo County General Plan EIR at the Yolo County Web site.
