Enact Transportation Impact Fee Before Approving Any New Project

From: Better Cupertino
Date: Sat, Oct 17, 2015 at 9:16 PM
Subject: Please Enact Transportation Impact Fee Before Approving Any New Project
To: City Council citycouncil@cupertino.org

Dear Mayor Sinks, Vice Mayor Chang and Councilmembers,

Please enact Transportation Impact Fee to help mitigate accumulated citywide impact created by new development projects, as specified in the new General Plan, as soon as possible. Please do not approve any new project until the Transportation Impact Fee is in place.

Policy M-10.1: Transportation Improvement Plan

Develop and implement an updated citywide transportation
improvement plan necessary to accommodate vehicular,
pedestrian and bicycle transportation improvements to
meet the City’s needs.

Policy M-10.2: Transportation Impact Fee

Ensure sustainable funding levels for the Transportation
Improvement Plan by enacting a transportation impact fee
for new development.

Such fee should be imposed on all new projects whether or not an EIR is required. The mitigation measures suggested in the project-specific EIR normally only mitigate project impacts in the immediate surrounding areas. But the citywide accumulated impacts are not mitigated.

 

The EIR of 2014 GPA concluded that the traffic condition of Cupertino is "Significant and Unavoidable." The consultants then presented a long list of mitigation measures to enhance the situation. However, the consultants did admit that even after all of the mitigation measures are implemented, the condition would still be "Significant and Unavoidable."

Given that situation, we cannot afford to sit and do nothing and just watch the condition to become worse with each project. The EIR already made it clear that it is not possible to even mitigate the current traffic congestion. However, having a long term transportation plan, paid for by Transportation Impact Fee, is better than not doing anything.

Please consider to start actions to enact the Transportation Impact Fee.

Sincerely,

Liang Chao