Certified Green: New Planning Resource Available to Developers

A while back, when people proclaimed that we were seeing just the tip of the green revolution’s iceberg, the joke was, by the time we see the rest, the real icebergs will have melted. We were told that a truly effective green revolution would need to be swift and pervasive, more than just the occasional recycled can and bamboo floor. Going green, fully, would involve a wholesale change in how we eat, get around, live, and thrive.

That’s the story we’ve heard. For the most part, though, we’ve still seen only discrete exemplars of change: an electric car here, a green building there. The changes have been autonomous. The broad, infrastructural network of change, however, remains largely under ever-warmer water.

Until now.

TransForm (formerly known as TALC, the Transportation and Land Use Coalition), has recently developed a program to integrate a host of otherwise independent green concerns, notably transportation and housing. The program — GreenTRIP — offers a type of smart growth certification for new residential and mixed-use developments.

GreenTRIP began conceptually in June 2008 with the recognition that sustainable green buildings and cheap, efficient public transportation are not enough; we also need an infrastructure that accommodates and incentivizes walkable urban space. Operating on the premise that neighborhoods near to public transit and shopping will be increasingly desirable in the green economy, TransForm hopes that improving the walkability of these neighborhoods will reduce household expenses, traffic congestion, and greenhouse gases — all while helping California conform to the environmental mandates of Assembly Bill 32 (Pavley) and Senate Bill 375 (Steinberg).

Here’s how it goes: If you are developing a primarily multi-family residential or mixed-use housing area, with a maximum of 20 percent single-family homes, and you plan within the urban growth boundary to build at least 50 homes having a density of at least 20 units per acre, GreenTRIP can help you out. GreenTRIP staff will rate your development and, depending on your score, work with you to plan, improve, and achieve distinction in an increasingly competitive market for urban development. Projects are scored based on three criteria: 1) projected vehicle miles traveled per household; 2) traffic reduction strategies; and 3) appropriate amounts of parking. Certification thresholds vary depending on exactly what “Place Type” of development is at stake: Regional Centers, Urban Centers, Urban Neighborhoods, Sub-Regional Centers, Town Centers, or Transit Neighborhoods. (Each has specific differences; TransForm adopted the Place Type identification model used in the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s 2007 Station Area Planning Manual.) The scoring thresholds in each of the three criteria are based on what TransForm would like to see as a minimum high standard of excellence in green issues surrounding a new development.

GreenTRIP certification offers more than just a decal to place in a window — you’ll get a plaque and promotional literature, too. But that’s not the point. Certification carries with it the opportunity to work with GreenTRIP staff to customize traffic reduction strategies most amenable to a particular development’s needs and financial feasibility. Ultimately, GreenTRIP facilitates the reduction of traffic and greenhouse gases in and around new developments, and the GreenTRIP staff publicly explains these benefits to policy makers and community leaders with the hope of encouraging the growth and success of developments that meet its environmental standards for certification. In this way, GreenTRIP certified projects can hope to attain some differentiation in a market that increasingly prizes affordability and sustainability.

Currently, it is possible for a building far from transit or with a large amount of parking to achieve high ratings from the leading green building standards. With GreenTRIP, TransForm aims to define a green standard for how people get to and from the buildings to complement existing green building standards that concentrate mostly on construction materials.

Why does parking matter? Over the past 50 years we’ve built communities where people are expected to drive to all their destinations. The result is that newer communities have become auto-oriented seas of parking that further discourage driving. With a scoring system directly tied to strategies for reduced driving, GreenTRIP directly tackles the 38 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas sources attributed to transportation.

GreenTRIP gives developers a choice of three traffic reduction strategies to meet their required certification levels. First, unbundled parking is a flexible parking system that separates the price of a parking space from residential rent or purchase price, enabling people to pay only for what they need, thereby saving money for the resident and assuring fewer spaces go unused. According to TransForm, one space in a typical structured parking garage costs $30,000. At that rate, just five unused spaces amount to a $150,000 loss of potential revenue. Discount transit passes are another viable strategy to reduce traffic, particularly considering that subsidizing something like a monthly bus pass — even for decades at a time — can be far cheaper for developers than providing an additional parking space for each unit. When developments are within walking distance of transit hubs, offering a discount on passes can be even more alluring to prospective residents. Finally, free carshare membership makes it convenient for families with more than one car to sell one vehicle, saving on the costs of ownership, while still having access to a shared car through City CarShare or Zipcar, the Bay Area’s two carshare providers. Depending on the type of neighborhood the proposed project is in, developers need to meet one to three of these strategies to become GreenTRIP certified.

GreenTRIP’s first pilot test began in September 2009, when TransForm invited developers who met the program’s minimum criteria for participation to get involved. While the results are still being evaluated, early signs are promising. In spring 2010, TransForm intends to undertake a second pilot program incorporating the lessons of the first with a larger group of more test subjects. After that, the organization hopes to launch GreenTRIP throughout the Bay Area and statewide, eventually eyeing the possibility of further expansion still. With seed funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s Climate Protection Grant Program, GreenTRIP has some promising support. Its advisory committee consists of city planners, developers, consultants in transportation and development, academics, and staff members from housing and transportation agencies. On a policy level, the main emphasis is integrating parking and traffic concerns into residential and mixed-use development plans, ideally with mandated regulations and programs to create a more comprehensive green revolution.