November 26, 2019: Last week SACOG received federal approval for its 2020 Metropolitan Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy (MTP/SCS).  

The November 20 letter from the Federal Highway Administration is the final step in a four-year process of updating the 20-year MTP/SCS. Two days earlier the SACOG board had unanimously adopted the plan and certified the associated Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR). 

The MTP/SCS lays out a vision for how transportation and land use will develop in the SACOG region over the next 20 years. It sets the agenda for how the region can grow and prosper sustainably over the next two decades. We consider it “a road map to a brighter future.” The plan invests $35 billion into transportation by 2040 to accommodate projected growth of 620,000 new people, 270,000 new jobs and 260,000 new homes. 

“We are delighted that our Metropolitan Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy has been unanimously approved by the SACOG board. This plan lays the groundwork for the Sacramento region to prosper over the next 20 years by growing sustainably and making smart investments in our transportation network to help all people get to where they want to go more easily,” said James Corless, SACOG’s executive director. 

Public participation and private sector input were key to the development of a plan that represents the interests of the region’s diverse population. Feedback and input were gathered through public workshops and surveys, input from cross-sector stakeholders in group meetings, coordination with city and county agencies, and direction from the SACOG Board. The 2020 MTP/SCS is also grounded in a study of the best use of shrinking transportation funding, air quality improvement, and developing a multimodal (transit, walk, bike, car) system that gives people more options for transportation. 

You can download the 2020 MTP/SCS and the associated FEIR.  

In a separate action, both the SACOG board and California’s Department of Housing and Community  Development have approved SACOG’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation Methodology. This is the process whereby the state mandates the amount of housing that jurisdictions must plan and zone for, which is reassessed every eight years. SACOG is then responsible for determining what share of that number of housing units should be allocated to each jurisdiction in its six-county region and at what levels of affordability. 

This year, as expected in a state experiencing crisis-level housing shortages and unaffordability, those allocations increased significantly. The methodology must take into account many different factors such as the relationship between jobs and housing, a jurisdiction’s opportunities or constraints for additional housing, the state of the housing market, and high housing cost burdens. The Department of Housing and Community especially commended SACOG for how it incorporated many of these factors into the methodology it developed, calling it “clear and transparent.”