Circulate San Diego released a report today on how the City of San Diego can better implement Transit Oriented Development (“TOD”). TOD benefits housing affordability, economic development, and the climate. However, a variety of barriers exist to prevent TOD in San Diego.
This report recommends a variety of specific, detailed, and actionable policy reforms that can be adopted city-wide to implement TOD. The full report can be viewed online at https://www.circulatesd.org/plan_diego_report_transit_oriented_development.
While community plans can and should be updated, they should not be the entire focus of San Diego’s efforts on sustainable growth and TOD. City-wide policies that act as barriers to achieving the Climate Action Plan and the City of Villages Strategy should be reexamined and replaced.
Housing affordability, climate change, and economic vibrancy are all city-wide concerns. City-wide challenges merit city-wide solutions.
This report includes proposals in the following policy areas:
- Affordable Homes Bonus Program: Implement the City of San Diego’s innovative and transformational program to provide added development rights if projects incorporate affordable homes.
- Traffic: Provide credits to TOD projects for their traffic calculations, and implement recent state laws for measuring traffic impacts.
- Parking: Allow developments near transit to provide modestly less parking, and to satisfy some of their parking requirements with alternative transportation choices.
- Floor Area Ratios: Create a program to sell bonuses to floor area ratios in exchange for contributions to the City of San Diego’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
- Development Fees: Reform the calculation methods for development fees to remove disincentives to build compact units near transit.
