HomeMy WebLinkAboutAppendix E VMT AnalysisE
Appendix E
VMT Analysis
14855-04 VMT.docx
January 25, 2023
Mr. Randy Bowman
City of Palm Desert
73510 Fred Waring Drive
Palm Desert, CA 92260
UNIVERSITY PARK MEDICAL CENTER VEHICLE MILES TRAVELED (VMT) ANALYSIS
Dear Mr. Randy Bowman:
Urban Crossroads, Inc. is pleased to submit to City of Palm Desert this Vehicle Miles Traveled
(VMT) analysis for the proposed University Park Medical Center development (“Project”), which is
located south of Gerald Ford Drive, north of College Drive, and west of Technology Drive in the
City of Palm Desert. It is our understanding that the Project includes an 94,700 square foot
building with medical offices, an urgent care, and lab uses, as well as a 20,000 square foot
outpatient surgery center building.
BACKGROUND
Changes to California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines were adopted in December
2018, which requires all lead agencies to adopt VMT as a replacement for automobile delay-based
level of service (LOS) as the new measure for identifying transportation impacts for land use
projects. This statewide mandate went into effect July 1, 2020. To aid in this transition, the
Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) released a Technical Advisory on Evaluating
Transportation Impacts in CEQA (December of 2018) (Technical Advisory) (1).
Based on OPR’s Technical Advisory, the County of Riverside has prepared their Transportation
Analysis Guidelines for Level of Service, Vehicle Miles Traveled (County Guidelines). (2) This
analysis has been prepared based on the adopted County Guidelines as the City of Palm Desert
utilizes the County guidelines.
VEHICLE MILES TRAVELED (VMT) SCREENING
The County Guidelines set forth screening criteria under which Projects are not required to
submit detailed VMT analysis. This guidance for determination of non-significant VMT impact is
primarily intended to avoid unnecessary analysis and findings that would be inconsistent with
the intent of SB 743. VMT screening criteria for development projects include the following:
•Small Projects with low trip generation per existing CEQA exemptions or resulting in a
3,000 metric tons of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent per year screening level threshold.
Specific examples are provided for some land uses but do not address medical office
uses directly. The small project screening threshold is not met.
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January 25, 2023
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• Projects Near High Quality Transit within ½ mile of an existing major transit stop and
maintains a service interval frequency of 15 minutes or less during the morning and
afternoon peak commute periods. The study area is currently served by the SunLine
Transit Agency, but bus service is outside the immediate Project vicinity. Based on the
current transit in the study area, the Project site is not located within ½ mile of an existing
major transit stop, nor along a high-quality transit corridor. The high quality transit
screening threshold is not met.
• Local Essential Service shortens non-discretionary trips by putting those goods and
services closer to residents, resulting in an overall reduction in VMT. For medical / dental
Projects, the office building size threshold is 50,000 square feet. The local essential
service screening threshold is not met.
• Map-Based Screening eliminates the need for complex analyses by allowing existing
VMT data to serve as a basis for screening smaller residential and office developments.
Map-based screening is performed for residential and office developments, per the
County Guidelines. A Project is presumed to have a less-than-significant impact if the
area of development is under the threshold as shown on the screening map. This map-
based screening eliminates the need for complex analyses by allowing existing VMT data
to serve as a basis for the screening of smaller residential and office developments.
Map-based screening is performed using the map titled: RIVTAM Model (2012) Daily
Home Based Work VMT per Worker Comparison to Riverside County Average, which
indicates it is based upon the County average. The map utilizes the sub-regional
Riverside Transportation Analysis Model (RIVTAM) to measure current VMT performance
within individual TAZ’s and compares them to the applicable impact threshold (e.g., VMT
per employee for office or industrial land uses). The County Guidelines define VMT per
Employee as the sum of VMT for personal motorized trips made by all workers of an
office or industrial development project, divided by the total number of workers at the
project.
Exhibit 1 shows the Project area on the County’s VMT map combined with an overlay of
the RIVTAM Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs). The Project is located within RIVTAM TAZ 4682,
which experiences 15.72 VMT / Employee. The Project TAZ Home Based Work VMT /
Employee is more than the County average VMT / Employee. The Project is therefore
eligible to be screened out based on map-based screening criteria. The map-based
screening threshold is not met.
TRIP GENERATION
In order to develop the traffic characteristics of the proposed project, trip-generation statistics
published in the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Trip Generation (11th Edition, 2021)
manual for the proposed land use (ITE Land Use Code: 720 – Medical/Dental Office) is used. Per
ITE Trip Generation Manual, a medical-dental office building (ITE 720) is a facility that provides
diagnoses and outpatient care on a routine basis but is unable to provide prolonged in-house
medical and surgical care. One or more private physicians or dentists generally operate this type
of facility. Therefore, ITE rates for a medical-dental office land use has also been utilized for the
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January 25, 2023
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outpatient surgery center portion of the Project. Table 1 presents the trip generation rates and
the resulting trip generation summary for the proposed Project. As shown in Table 1, the Project
is anticipated to generate a net total of 4,129 trip-ends per day with 356 AM peak hour trips and 451
PM peak hour trips.
TABLE 1: PROJECT TRIP GENERATION SUMMARY
PROJECT VMT ASSESSMENT
The VMT projections are based upon the Riverside County Transportation Analysis Model
(RIVTAM). RIVTAM is a useful tool to estimate VMT as it considers interaction between different
land uses based on socio-economic data such as population, households, and employment. The
Riverside County Guidelines identify RIVTAM as the appropriate tool for conducting VMT analysis
for land use projects.
Project VMT has been calculated using the most current version of RIVTAM. Adjustments in socio-
economic data (SED) (i.e., employment) have been made to within the RIVTAM model to reflect
the Project’s proposed employment.
Table 2 summarizes the employment estimates for the Project. The employment estimates have
been developed from medical office square footage land use to employment factors used for
similar projects. For medical office, 3.00 employees per thousand square feet result in 284
employees. For surgery center, 3.95 employees per thousand square feet result in 79 employees.
TABLE 2: SOCIO-ECONOMIC VARIABLE ESTIMATES
Socio-Economic Variable Quantity
Employees 363
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Adjustments to household and population data for the Project TAZ were made to the RIVTAM
base year model (2012) and the cumulative year model (2040). Each model was then run with the
updated SED factors included for the Project TAZ.
PROJECT IMPACT ON VMT
Per the County Guidelines, the introduction of new local essential services (such as
medical/dental offices) shortens non-discretionary trips by putting those goods and services
closer to residents. Therefore, the local essential services are evaluated by calculating the net
regional change in VMT.
Travel activity associated with total link-level VMT was extracted from the “without Project” and
“with Project” RIVTAM run for 2012 and 2040. This methodology is commonly referred to as
“boundary method” and includes the total VMT for all vehicle trips with one or both trip ends
within a specific geographic area. The “boundary method” VMT for the City is utilized to determine
the change in overall VMT effect of the Project which is not necessarily locally-serving. A
comparison of City total VMT without and with the Project is shown on Table 3. Attachment A
contains supporting model output data.
TABLE 3: BASE YEAR CITYWIDE LINK-LEVEL VMT
Category 2012 2040 2022
City VMT Without Project 934,309 1,345,841 1,081,285
City SP Without Project 85,236 128,280 100,608
City VMT/SP Without Project 10.96 10.49 10.75
City VMT With Project 934,653 1,347,169 1,081,459
City SP With Project 85,598 128,643 100,971
City VMT/SP With Project 10.92 10.47 10.71
To determine whether or not there is a significant impact using the boundary method, the City of
Palm Desert VMT with the project employment is compared to without project conditions. The
City VMT without Project is estimated at 1,081,285, whereas with the Project employment, the
City VMT is estimated at 1,081,459. The project’s effect on VMT is considered potentially
significant without reductions because it results in a cumulative link-level boundary County VMT
increases under the plus project condition compared to the no project condition.
PROJECT VMT REDUCTION
Project VMT is based upon the home-based work project-generated VMT per employee. Table 4
shows the home-based work VMT associated with the Project for both baseline and cumulative
conditions. VMT estimates are provided for both the base year model (2012) and cumulative year
model (2040), and linear interpolation was used to determine the Project’s home-based work
baseline (2022) VMT.
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TABLE 4: PROJECT HOME-BASED WORK GENERATED VMT
Category 2012 2040 2022
VMT 9,003 8,104 8,682
6% VMT for Virtual Appointments -521
For baseline (2022) conditions, the Project generates 8,682 Home-Based Work VMT. According
to the County Guidelines, a 6% VMT reduction can occur when resources allow patients to access
healthcare services or communicate with healthcare staff through online or off-site programs.
Therefore, a reduction of 521 VMT occurs due to virtual appointments. Based on the raw model
results, the project would cause a net increase in VMT. However, a post-processing adjustment
of 6% is applied to the project’s VMT generation based on an expectation that the project would
experience an increased level of virtual appointments than would be reflected in the RivTAM
model that was used to estimate trip generation for the project.
Data from the RivTAM model was used to estimate the project’s total VMT generation, then 6.0%
of that total VMT is subtracted from the total VMT results of the model. Riverside County
recognized the need for this adjustment and included a 6.0% reduction in VMT generation for
healthcare services to account for virtual appointments. The County guidelines include this
adjustment in a list of Travel Demand Management (TDM) strategies to reduce project VMT.
However, due to the recent increase virtual appointments, this VMT reduction is considered
necessary to accurately represent the true VMT characteristics of medical facilities. The
underlying RivTAM and ITE methodologies are not considered to reflect this increase in virtual
appointments. It is expected that the VMT reduction due to virtual appointments will occur
naturally without any need for the project to incorporate special features or strategies.
The VMT calculations for With Project With Virtual Appointments are shown in Table 5. As shown
in Table 5, With Virtual Appointments, there is a VMT / SP decrease and therefore no impact
occurs.
TABLE 5: BASE YEAR CITYWIDE LINK-LEVEL VMT
Category 2022
City VMT Without Project 1,081,285
City SP Without Project 100,608
City VMT/SP Without Project 10.75
City VMT With Project With Virtual Appointments 1,080,938
City SP With Project With Virtual Appointments 100,971
City VMT/SP With Project With Virtual Appointments 10.71
FINDINGS/CONCLUSIONS
The Project effect on VMT has been reviewed and With Virtual Appointments, there is a VMT
decrease and therefore no impact occurs.
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Urban Crossroads, Inc. is pleased to submit this letter documenting the University Park Medical
Center Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT).If you have any questions, please contact John Kain at (949)
375-2435 or Marlie Whiteman at (714) 585-0574.
Respectfully submitted,
URBAN CROSSROADS, INC.
John Kain, AICP Marlie Whiteman, PE
Principal Senior Associate
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TAZ Without Project With Project Difference Without Project With Project Difference
4643 16,726.83 16,694.24 37.82 24,049.24 24,000.56 8.60
4652 46,138.30 45,925.10 ‐19.50 48,755.40 48,731.30 92.21
4655 36,887.03 36,691.06 ‐41.22 38,414.82 38,375.26 52.03
4660 9,637.08 9,605.26 8.69 14,626.52 14,581.85 ‐9.87
4662 31,611.14 31,530.84 52.69 45,473.56 45,238.91 ‐126.68
4663 22,368.84 22,282.34 7.48 37,872.65 37,789.01 6.56
4664 33,100.55 33,103.86 142.93 51,755.72 51,643.30 10.84
4665 34,155.19 34,002.82 ‐8.96 47,835.15 47,828.91 107.92
4666 72,004.33 71,775.10 73.50 76,639.39 76,476.52 19.66
4668 27,787.42 27,687.12 16.47 31,775.33 31,736.15 36.57
4671 76,482.03 76,379.27 219.39 98,895.68 98,860.15 200.42
4672 22,188.52 22,376.06 281.92 82,821.43 83,221.29 598.49
4676 28,727.73 29,218.42 613.92 46,776.05 46,963.12 299.16
4677 12,672.07 12,639.82 21.06 23,081.05 23,067.47 41.47
4678 22,088.76 21,975.06 ‐21.01 39,100.98 38,825.71 ‐182.61
4679 69,765.74 69,507.40 34.83 82,908.06 82,916.96 206.81
4680 27,764.72 27,644.69 ‐3.43 40,763.82 40,759.84 93.30
4681 19,971.55 19,866.91 ‐20.85 45,018.76 44,975.77 64.35
4682 53,412.87 55,249.57 2,069.73 98,341.85 100,321.01 2,218.59
4683 10,279.80 10,261.72 25.21 12,882.25 12,873.25 21.72
4684 32,712.15 32,656.12 81.71 46,204.67 46,119.76 25.17
4689 18,778.55 19,002.39 303.99 30,680.92 30,891.49 284.30
4690 49,866.99 49,767.79 110.71 64,554.45 64,599.50 199.23
4696 56,611.25 56,407.52 34.18 81,374.25 81,202.06 21.61
4697 32,074.60 32,187.39 248.54 42,785.33 42,877.10 194.10
4700 5,279.52 5,257.71 0.36 6,170.00 6,153.51 ‐1.80
4703 56,903.14 56,681.07 16.99 75,851.47 75,734.68 63.97
4707 8,312.78 8,276.09 ‐1.78 10,431.75 10,404.89 ‐2.02
Palm Desert 934,309.48 934,652.77 4,285.39 1,345,840.54 1,347,169.33 4,544.08
2012 2040
Attachment A: RIVTAM Output