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2008 Going Green Conference: Building, Technology & Practices

Thursday, October 9, 2008, 7:30-11:45 a.m., Doubletree Hotel, Rohnert Park

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Napa takes aim at transportation with new strategic plan

NAPA COUNTY – Facing rising congestion and little room for road expansion, Napa County officials are looking for new solutions to help ease local transportation problems. Using a $200,000 grant from Caltrans, the Napa County Transportation & Planning Agency is updating the county’s Strategic Transportation Plan for the first time in 10 years.

According to NCTPA program manager Eliot Hurwitz, the agency is taking a broader look at transportation than it has in the past, focusing more on related issues such as land use. “It’s not a linear progression of the kinds of planning we’ve done in the past,” Mr. Hurwitz said. “We have a new energy environment, a new geographic environment.”

After spending a year meeting with community and business groups, the agency is releasing a list of 20 strategies aimed at improving transportation in the county. “We’re going to try to put some rough cost parameters around each one of those things,” Mr. Hurwitz said. At the top of the list is the creation of more work force housing, a measure aimed to reduce commutes to lower-paying jobs from neighboring areas with cheaper housing, such as Solano County.

“The [NCTPA] doesn’t control housing funding, but we can point out that if you want to solve your transportation problems, there’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Mr. Hurwitz said.

Meanwhile, workers who can afford to live in Napa County are increasingly commuting elsewhere to higher-paying jobs. According to an NCTPA study, 22 percent of Napa County commuters work outside the county, compared with 17.7 percent of Sonoma County workers.

“We have a jobs-housing imbalance, which exacerbates our transportation problems,” said Nancy Levenberg, president and CEO of the St. Helena Chamber of Commerce. Representatives from local business groups and companies have been meeting with NCTPA officials to help shape the new transportation plan, Ms. Levenberg said.

Transportation has long been a major concern for Napa County businesses, many of which supported a proposed half-cent sales tax increase for road improvement placed on the ballot as Measure H in 2006. A new ballot measure is expected in the November election.

According to Mr. Hurwitz, the NCTPA’s new transportation plan calls for “strategic road system expansion” focused in the southern part of the county, which is the fastest-growing and most heavily traveled area. About $140 million in funding has already been approved to widen Jameson Canyon Road between Napa and Solano counties, and Napa County is already planning new interchanges at the intersections of Highway 12 at Highway 29 and Highway 121 at Soscol Avenue.

But Mr. Hurwitz cautioned that road expansion will only go so far to meet the county’s growing transportation needs. Traffic on Highway 29 north of Highway 12 is projected to increase by 72 percent from 2003 to 2030, and it is projected to triple south of Highway 12, according to an NCTPA forecast.

“The growth projections that we’re seeing in terms of population and job growth are such that we’re going to need to address all sides of the issue,” he said. “We’re not going to be able to build our way out of this. There’s not going to be the money, the capacity or, frankly, the taste to just build more and more infrastructure.”

In an effort to help reduce demand for roads, the NCTPA is developing a strategy to increase bus service and ridership. Currently, less than 2 percent of Napa County commuters use public transit. “If we could bring that up to 2.5 or 3 percent, that would be tremendous,” Mr. Hurwitz said.

Increasing the frequency of service could boost ridership, but it may not have enough of an effect to offset the cost of new buses, according to Mr. Hurwitz. Other options under discussion include bus routes that target areas with high concentrations of jobs or van pools that target specific employers, which would be paid for with a combination of public and private money.