Why CA’s new housing law has some people struggling with public transportation

from Ben ChristopherCalMatters

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For years, Burbank residents, business owners and elected officials have squabbled over a plan to put a rapid new bus line through downtown.

The North Hollywood to Pasadena Bus Rapid Transit project is planned to run a bus-only corridor connecting the eastern end of the San Fernando Valley with the western part of the San Gabriel Valley, while connecting two of Los Angeles County’s best-served rail lines. To do that, LA Metro plans to take away a lane and a ton of parking along most of the 18-mile route, which includes much of a four-lane stretch that runs through downtown Burbank.

Since the agency launched the project in 2017, a vocal coalition of ticked-off Burbankers, Glendaleans and residents of the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Eagle Rock a protester, petition and (unsuccessful) trial to block, delay or revise the plan.

Now, with the stroke of his pen, Gov. Gavin Newsom has turned this long-simmering bus battle into a full-blown war for housinglocal control and the future of single-family neighborhoods.

Earlier this month, Newsom signed a law allowing apartment buildings to spring up within half a mile of major transit stops. This includes stops for selected bus routes that run frequently, have priority at traffic lights and have their own lanes

The goal of the law is to locate new housing near publicly funded transit, directing more potential riders to those systems while minimizing traffic, pollution, and the climate impact of new housing development.

But the law also applies to future transit projects that have reached a certain point in planning — including the NoHo to Pasadena bus line.

Susan O’Carroll, a planning and environmental consultant and Burbank resident, said there have long been problems with the bus plan. Now that its development brings the promise of a neighborhood-wide zoning overhaul, the stakes feel much higher. The bus would actually “destroy single-family neighborhoods on both sides” of the route, she said.

The only way to stop the apartments now, she said, is to stop the bus.

The Burbank Brewery Battle was an unintended consequence of Senate Bill 79a law that housing advocates, public transit boosters and many environmental urbanists hailed as a historic victory for sustainable planning. This law represents the culmination of a legislative trend in which California finds itself relaxed minimum parking requirements and allowed for more affordable housing and additional housing units to be built on lots near bus and rail lines.

But even proponents of transit-oriented development acknowledge that it can sometimes lead to “perverse” policy incentives, said Amy Lee, a transportation researcher at UC Davis who recently published an article on how California city governments responded to a Act of 2022 prohibiting local residential parking requirements near transit.

When housing and transportation are tied together, for opponents of new housing, “logically, the answer is just to say, ‘okay, we’re just going to cut transit,'” she said.

This could mean scrapping a project altogether. In the case of Senate Bill 79, it could also mean campaigning to bring the bus back into the flow of car traffic or slowing down the rail system so as to bypass the specific thresholds that would trigger rezoning.

Density-averse city governments can also exploit ambiguities in the law. For example, if a bus gets a dedicated lane for only part of its route, as is the case with the line designed to cross Burbank, is rezoning triggered at every stop along its route, none of them, or just those where the bus has its own lane?

Turning contentious local disputes over new bus or rail lines into even more contentious rezoning battles also has a way of turbo-charging the politics of both. “It’s expensive,” Lee said.

A barrier to LA’s transit boom?

Not that supporters of the new law didn’t see that coming.

The statute purposefully limits rezoning to projects already included in a regional transportation improvement plan — a short list of projects that have already received a short- to medium-term funding commitment.

“If in a few weeks the Orange County Transportation Authority says they want to do a streetcar project from Fullerton to Disneyland, that will not qualify,” said Mark Vukcewicz, state policy director for Streets For All, which co-sponsored Senate Bill 79.

Additionally, projects could still trigger zoning changes after being added to one of those transportation shortlists in the future, but only if they’re part of the region’s longer-term capital plan by the end of this year.

The range of such projects is not particularly complete in most of the state’s major metro areas. The Bay Area’s transit system isn’t growing much these days. Nor has San Diego, where the city has rezoned most of its major transit hubs anyway.

The Los Angeles metro area is a notable exception.

In 2016, voters in the county supported a raising the sales tax to finance public transport improvements. With relatively little public transportation infrastructure on and in the ground, the Los Angeles metro area has a subway, light rail, and bus rapid transit boom of transit in its planning line. All of these projects could trigger rezoning under the new housing law and so “have a chance to be influenced by NIMBY housing politics,” Vukcevic said.

Beyond Burbank

O’Carroll and other opponents of the NoHo to Pasadena project called for LA Metro to conduct another environmental review of the bus line. The first, drawn up back in 2020, does not take redistricting into account. That leaves significant land-use changes that would result from the bus line unstudied and unpublicized, she said.

The Burbank City Council has, for its part, repeatedly voted to ask LA Metro to leave the bus in the regular flow of traffic on its route through the city.

It might be too late.

In a written statement, LA Metro spokeswoman Missy Coleman said the agency will continue to “coordinate closely with the cities of Los Angeles, Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena” as it finalizes the design “in accordance with the Metro Board-approved project.”

What the board approved was a bus-only lane route. Construction is scheduled to begin before next summer. The looming deadline of the 2028 Olympics could cause further delay particularly unpleasant.

“The Metro Board will have to take the unprecedented step of stopping a project that has already begun,” said Nick Andert, documentary film director and public transport advocate.

But with so many bus and rail projects in the pipeline across Los Angeles County, Burbank’s highly heated new bus policy may be a preview of what’s to come.

Large-scale plans are being developed. A new railroad from the San Fernando Valley to the affluent neighborhoods around UCLA. A subway extension running south from Hollywood. A bus rapid transit line connecting South Los Angeles with neighborhoods east of Hollywood. All are controversial in their own right, Andert said. Ditching the prospect of new housing could give local elected officials an additional reason to disagree.

“Cities can really delay permitting for certain things if Metro doesn’t work hand-in-hand with them and address their concerns,” he said.

“They have no idea what’s coming”

Supporters of the new zoning law say they hope such controversies will be isolated and short-lived. Once neighborhoods begin rezoning early next July, it will likely take years for developers to begin replacing single-family homes with condos en masse. Significant, neighborhood-redefining densification can take decades in any given location, if at all.

“Call me an optimist — or maybe a slob — but I think the general public will understand that housing is not the end of the world and that development happens over a really long period of time,” Vukcevic said.

It may be a while before angry homeowners along the NoHo to Pasadena bus line reach such levels of composure.

Lisa Cusack, a Glendale homeowner and local GOP activist who serves on the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, said she was late to start organizing against the planned bus route. It wasn’t until this year’s zoning bill came out of the state Senate that she realized the full implications of the proposed bus line and started a petition and website to “save Glenoaks,” the main thoroughfare that would serve as a major route through town.

“I go around and talk to the neighbors and they have no idea what’s coming,” she said. When Senate Bill 79 was still moving through the Legislature, the “threat” of compaction was somewhat abstract. Now that Newsom has signed it into law, pitching her neighbors is a lot easier to do — the only way to stop the upcoming zoning changes is to stop the bus.

“People are just now starting to understand,” she said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.