WHAT IS A COUNTYWIDE TRANSPORTATION PLAN?

Napa Valley Transportation Authority is required to develop long-range countywide transportation priorities through a comprehensive planning process. The countywide transportation plan (CTP) provides a direction for the four- to five-year plan while taking into consideration land use, environmental, population, and financial projections over a 25-year planning horizon. It recognizes that what we decide to implement now has implications for the future of Napa Valley. NVTA last updated the countywide transportation plan in 2015.

This Countywide Transportation Plan, Advancing Mobility 2045, includes a list of visionary transportation investments intended to improve conditions in Napa County and serve its residents, workers, and visitors. Constrained financial resources require that we take a critical look at which projects, programs, and policies are pursued and submitted to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) for inclusion in the Bay Area Regional Transportation Plan (RTP), Plan Bay Area.

The RTP is a 25-year financially constrained plan that creates a framework for the regional planning process to establish consistent and sustainable planning goals throughout the nine-county Bay Area region. Plan Bay Area links transportation and land use policy, as well as addresses Senate Bill (SB) 375 requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. SB 375, the 2008 California Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act, requires that regional transportation planning agencies, like MTC, consider greenhouse gas emissions in the long-range planning process. NVTA maintains consistency with the regional process by completing a new countywide transportation plan roughly every four years. This countywide plan maintains consistency with regional and statewide sustainability goals by integrating and promoting transportation linkages to new development to foster walkable communities and providing more access to schools, local jobs, and retail. In addition, this plan encourages the use of alternative transportation modes, such as transit, walking, and bicycling.

The projects submitted for consideration to MTC for inclusion in Plan Bay Area must be financially constrained. In order to ensure other projects can be included for funding not yet identified within the four- to five-year timeframe of the plan, NVTA separates the proposed projects into two categories: constrained and unconstrained. This allows projects to move forward within the planning period if additional funding is identified.

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Advancing Mobility 2045 was developed during an historic pandemic and climate change manifested in an unprecedented wildfire season. These challenges have highlighted the necessity to plan for a more efficient, sustainable, equitable, and safe transportation system. This section describes NVTA's response and role in addressing these issues and concludes with the policy framework needed to address them.

THE PANDEMIC AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Advancing Mobility 2045 was developed during a historic, worldwide pandemic that has altered how transportation planners and jurisdictions think about transportation. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused a major economic and cultural disruption for the State of California, the statewide transportation system, and for the Bay Area. As of January 2021, COVID-19 had claimed over 400,000 lives in the United States. The economic fallout drove state unemployment to 25 percent1 at its peak, and caused a deep and sudden economic recession. The way people work and travel was abruptly transformed, with many workplaces closing in-person operations, causing employees to work from home. This made work very convenient for some, but it has also fostered a greater divide between middle-/uppermiddle-income and low-income earners. Concerns about how to address this new equity challenge are a focus of this plan.

There was a 40 percent reduction in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the Bay Area during the last two weeks of March 2020, the peak of the pandemic economic shutdown, which resulted in an 80 percent reduction in congestion.2 The pandemic also resulted in a 70 percent decline in Vine Transit ridership. COVID-19 had an even more profound impact on other Bay Area transit operators, particularly commuter systems like BART and the San Francisco Bay Ferry, which experienced a 90 percent reduction in daily ridership. At the same time, there was a visible and measurable increase in bicycling and walking. Two possible reasons for this increase could be less congested roadways that were safer for non-auto users, or less time spent commuting that lead to more time for leisure.3

Consideration should be given to what may happen once the pandemic concludes and economic activity returns to normal. There are two perspectives about what could happen.

One perspective suggests that automobile congestion may return and be worse than pre-COVID volumes. A research group from Vanderbilt University found that cities dependent on transit are at risk for extreme traffic because people will choose to take a single-occupant vehicle (SOV) instead of riding public transit, unless transit systems can resume safe, high throughput operations quickly. For San Francisco, the study found that a 25 percent mode shift from transit to SOV would result in 16.4 minutes of additional delay for commuters compared to pre-pandemic commute times.4 Another perspective suggests that more prevalent telecommuting may continue and reduced traffic could sustain increased levels of bicycle and pedestrian activities.5

The future of public transit is key in this discussion. NVTA’s priorities for managing congestion and expanding transit have not materially changed since the pandemic began. Nevertheless, there is a greater interest in “right-sizing” the system and in ensuring public safety.

1 California Employment Development Department, 2020 2 Institute of Transportation Engineers https://www.ite.org/about-ite/covid-19-resources/covid-19-traffic-volume-trends/ 3 https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-25/bicycle-business-is-exploding-during-covid-19-will-it-last 4 The Rebound: How COVID-19 Could Lead to Worse Traffic (V2) https://lab-work.github.io/therebound/ 5 https://theconversation.com/the-office-is-dead-long-live-the-office-in-a-post-pandemic-world-138499

The pandemic provided NVTA with an opportunity to expand its on-demand technology to the City of Napa. The drop in transit ridership offered an opportunity for NVTA to reevaluate how it deployed transit within the city. On April 27, 2020, local routes A through H were suspended and the Vine began operating on-demand service for local trips Monday through Saturday, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., using its on-demand Ride the Vine app. Since the implementation, weekday ridership has consistently increased every month. For the first half of August, the system carried 2.6 passengers per hour on weekdays, approaching the target of 4.0 passengers per hour. The increase in rider demand shows that many Vine riders are transit dependent. This has not been consistently true among other Bay Area systems.

NVTA staff is hoping to sustain on-demand services, but may resume some fixed-route service when schools begin to hold in-person learning again. Nevertheless, the on-demand pilot project has been useful to understand the demand and the amount of resources that may be needed to sustain more innovative and convenient service for the residents of the City of Napa. It has also validated where people are traveling from and where ultimately they would like to go and when. This provides a peek at predictive, rather than reactive, planning which will ultimately provide better services for the riding public.

NVTA, along with the other San Francisco Bay Area transit systems, has pledged to follow the Riding Together: Bay Area Healthy Transit Plan which prescribes specific cleaning protocols for vehicles and facilities, social distancing, and protection protocols for both transit employees and riders.

TRAIL MARKER FOR PEDESTRIANS AND BICYCLISTS IN WESTWOOD HILLS .

While studies have shown that COVID-19 infection rates among transit riders may actually be lower than the general population,6 public transit systems must also counter public perception that may be significantly different from reality. As part of this effort, the public is receiving additional information about what the Vine is doing to protect its riders and workers, and what they can do to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus.