Revised December 5, 2002

Introduction

This document summarizes the findings of the Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Issaquah Concurrency Study project's Technical Memorandum 2 and 4. The main report presents a summary of the concurrency systems and practices used by the four cities, and places them into the context of how each city is using their concurrency system to implement the state's Growth Management Act, while meeting the needs and desires of their citizens. The report also identifies limitations and areas of concern with the current concurrency process. Finally, it presents an initial review of alternative approaches to changing or refining the concurrency practices currently used by the participating cities.

This document summarizes the material found in that report.

Project Overview

The cities of Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, and Issaquah requested this study to look at the effects of the Growth Management Act's (GMA) transportation concurrency requirement on their Eastside communities. Concurrency requires that a jurisdiction's transportation infrastructure keep pace with development. The GMA mandates that cities establish level of service (LOS) standards for their transportation systems, which are the baseline for determining whether current facilities can accommodate new development. Jurisdictions may only permit new development if their transportation infrastructure can sustain the development while continuing to meet the LOS standards.

Since the GMA's adoption in 1990, it has become apparent that the transportation concurrency requirement, in some respects, work against the growth management principles of the Act and cities' own comprehensive plans. Therefore, this study was commissioned to look at whether there are problems in the way concurrency is currently measured and to look at ways the concurrency requirement could be reoriented to reinforce the cities' growth management objectives.

Findings

1. Auto traffic is the basis for transportation concurrency determinations in all four cities. While there are minor differences in the way the cities calculate concurrency, they all use a four-step modeling system designed to measure the amount of automobile travel as compared to roadway capacity (volume/capacity). In fact, each city's modeling program removes travel using alternate modes, including transit, from its concurrency calculations. Under this measurement system, Issaquah is currently out of compliance with concurrency requirements. In Redmond, two of seven zones are out of compliance. Bellevue is currently in compliance, but further development likely will raise compliance issues. Kirkland is currently in compliance and does not face any immediate compliance problems.

2. While measurement systems are the same, each city approaches the implementation of transportation concurrency laws differently. The GMA mandates that jurisdictions establish roadway LOS standards, leaving LOS definition and level as local decisions. As might be expected, approaches to the selection of LOS standards and the implementation of concurrency laws on the Eastside vary considerably. Kirkland recognizes that some congestion will necessarily come with new development, and has set its standards high enough that so that concurrency laws will not hinder its ability to implement the comprehensive plan's land use vision. Issaquah, on the other hand, has set LOS standards so that they prevent existing traffic congestion from becoming more acute, even if it means denying new development.

Redmond and Bellevue assume that LOS standards should vary throughout the city according to land use, acknowledging the fact that more dense areas of the cities will have higher levels of congestion. However, at the same time, the cities set their LOS standards based on the amount of traffic congestion residents will tolerate. Therefore, the amount of development will depend as much on the level of congestion neighborhood residents are willing to accept as on the land use vision articulated in the comprehensive plan. Interestingly, each city's approach to concurrency implementation is entirely consistent with the requirements of the GMA. However, the different approaches lead to strikingly different results on the ground. For example, in Kirkland, concurrency has been essentially a "non-issue" in implementing the comprehensive plan's development objectives, whereas in Issaquah concurrency has in many cases been "the issue," perceived as a significant obstacle to implementation of the comprehensive plan's land use vision.

3. Regional traffic presents a significant challenge to cities' ability to achieve the goals of the Growth Management Act, and the current transportation concurrency process does not encourage or reward the actions needed to achieve those goals. As a result, cities face conflicts between desired land-use changes, desired transportation system performance, and desired/acceptable transportation system infrastructure improvements.

Concurrency's local focus neglects the fact that a considerable amount of traffic generated by new development comes from-or goes to-distant destinations, passing through and affecting the transportation system performance of several jurisdictions on the way. As a consequence, regional pass-through traffic has become one of the most significant obstacles intermediary jurisdictions face in implementing concurrency. In some cases, a new local development consistent with the city comprehensive plan can be denied because its estimated traffic would cross the allowable LOS threshold, even though in-city development is not the primary cause of that LOS exceedance. (Bellevue's experience with development in the Lake Hills community provides one such example. Also, much of Issaquah's concurrency compliance problem is directly attributable to pass-through traffic.)

Exacerbating regional traffic's effect on concurrency is the fact that jurisdictions currently have few options for reducing the congestion effects of regional pass-through traffic. Transportation system improvements that could affect regional trip mode choice, and thus decrease regional trip impacts, occur at either end of a trip or within the regional infrastructure. As a consequence, they fall outside the local concurrency process. Outside jurisdictions do not have the power to pursue mitigation from developers and must rely on interlocal agreements that can be negotiated with neighboring jurisdictions. To date, interlocal agreements have focused on development near jurisdiction borders where traffic effects bleed over onto the nearby streets of another city. The agreements have not tackled the effects of development on traffic a considerable distance from the development site.

4. Solutions to transportation concurrency problems will involve more than changes to the measurement system. As the Eastside continues to grow, keeping development concurrent with transportation capacity will require cities to do more than adjust their transportation models and measurement systems. To some extent, current concurrency problems may be the result of inaccurate measurement. For example, current performance measures do not adequately address the transportation system's capacity to move people with non-automobile modes of travel. At the same time, concurrency problems may also demonstrate unrealistic expectations about the growth of new development given the level of transportation service residents desire. Further, what is a realistic match between land use and transportation at a local level may not be implementable once jurisdictions factor in the reality of regional pass-through traffic. In this case, jurisdictions may need to revisit their comprehensive plans, reconsidering whether their land use vision is matched with the amount of congestion (expressed as LOS standards) residents are willing to tolerate. In all likelihood, concurrency solutions will involve a combination of changes in measurement and planning.

Next Steps

During the first phase of our study, we have identified several opportunities for the modification or reform of current transportation concurrency practices and its authorizing legislation. We will explore and analyze the following areas of opportunity during the next phase of our study (November 1, 2002- January 30, 2003):

• A System of Regional Concurrency. Our study and PSRC's concurrency assessment project confirm what you already know, local concurrency powers cannot and do not manage regionally generated traffic. Could a regional concurrency system be employed? What would it look like and how might it work? Would loss of local control and complexity cause more problems than would be solved?
  
• Results-based Concurrency Measures. Presently, the four Eastside cities use one LOS metric, the volume of automobiles at key points in roadways. But PSRC's survey identifies two examples where local governments have set different outcome-based measures for future transportation. Can the kinds of performance standards for reducing VMT in Snohomish County and increasing the transit share of trips in Renton make concurrency work better in the eastside cities?
  
• Measuring Non-Roadway Transportation Facilities. How can the four cities define and measure non-roadway (i.e. park and ride lots, bicycle and pedestrian trails) transportation facilities in such a way that they can be incorporated into transportation concurrency standards? How can performance against those standards be monitored, and how can the effects of proposed development on the use of those non-roadway facilities be predicted with accuracy?
  
• Investing in TDM, HOV, and Non Motorized Modes. Auto capacity LOS measures invariably result in road widening solutions. The GMA legislation itself also leans towards immediate capital improvements because it uses the term "adequate public facilities" and imposes a six-year time frame for implementing improvements. What measures could induce more multi-modal and non-structural approaches to concurrency investments, consistent with the intent of federal TEA-21 transportation policy?
  
• A Long Term TDM/Transit Fund. There are two arguments against using concurrency fees for anything other than adding lanes or widening intersections. The first is that funds must be spent within six years, hence on-going car trip reduction methods would be impossible to sustain. The second is that transit operations are not permanent and would disappear after a six-year period as well. We plan to examine the efficacy of creating transit and TDM operating accounts, a type of perpetuating fund that could yield an annuity for transit service. If this kind of mechanism appears promising, we would want to understand if it is enabled under current state law, and if not, what changes would be necessary.
  
• Local/Regional Transit Cooperation. As we have seen, a strength and limitation of transportation concurrency is that it is locally defined and administered. Should an eastside city decide locally to enhance transit service to achieve concurrency in a given corridor, it would remain powerless to implement such service, because transit authority is King County's jurisdiction. What legal, structural or inter-jurisdictional arrangements would remedy the existing disconnect between concurrency at the city level and transit planning and operations at the county level?

View the complete report: The Concurrency Calculation Process: Current Procedures and Potential Alternatives (Mark E. Hallenbeck, Dan Carlson, and Jill Simmons, November 2002).