Marin Voice: Plan Bay Area’s draft report is built on false narrative

San Francisco Bay Area residents are once again being given a chance to see what regional planners propose for us through 2050 and the predicted impacts on our lives.

Two regional agencies sit at the center of this effort. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission has about 422 employees and a budget of roughly $360 million. The Association of Bay Area Governments operates with a budget of about $93 million and no separate staff; instead, MTC staff support ABAG’s programs. Under this governance model, MTC staff shape how our region grows and oversee regional investments.

Their joint blueprint, Plan Bay Area 2050+, identifies needs and revenues for implementing 35 strategies covering transportation, housing, the economy and the environment. The draft environmental impact report, a legally required analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act, examines what that growth will mean for aesthetics, air quality, wildfire risk, and 14 other environmental categories.

The draft report is intended to help the MTC/ABAG governing boards, with input from the public, weigh the plan’s benefits against its hazards.

First, the glossy news: Plan Bay Area 2050+ lays out a plan to collect and invest about $512 billion for transportation, $746 billion to accommodate projected population and housing growth and $229 billion to protect the region from sea-level rise.

These plans raise a key question: Where’s the money going to come from? Just last year, the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority and MTC were forced to pull Regional Measure 4, a proposed $20 billion regional housing bond, after financial errors surfaced. Reports described it as a “$20 billion mistake” for a bond that overpromised and collapsed under scrutiny. If that single measure couldn’t withstand public or financial review, how can the public be confident that a trillion-dollar plan will fare any better?

When we move from the plan itself to the environmental report, the good news sours. It acknowledges dozens of “significant and unavoidable impacts,” harms that remain even if every mitigation measure were implemented.

Among the unavoidable impacts are aesthetic degradation, increased wildfire danger, water-supply vulnerability and transportation congestion. The report lists aesthetic impacts that include loss of scenic vistas and damage to scenic highways. It concedes that the plan will exacerbate the risk of wildland fires. Water reliability remains precarious, with most of the region dependent on imported sources and aging groundwater basins. And while transportation models promise shorter commutes, the draft impact report notes that congestion and air-quality impacts will persist.

Because these harms remain, the MTC and ABAG boards cannot approve the plan without first adopting a “statement of overriding considerations.” Under CEQA guidelines, the statement allows agencies to declare that the benefits of a project outweigh its unmitigated harms. In this case, MTC staff will likely urge the boards to cite the Bay Area’s “housing crisis” as the overriding consideration justifying approval.

Here’s the heart of the problem: The population and job forecasts baked into Plan Bay Area 2050+ appears to be unreliable. The California Department of Finance, starting with data from 2020, projects only modest population growth statewide through 2050 — about 5% — while the plan assumes roughly 24% growth in the Bay Area. It also assumes housing costs will decline dramatically, with home-price trends returning to early-2000s levels by 2050, an assumption few economists consider realistic.

By inflating growth projections, I think the plan creates an artificial sense of crisis — ignoring the real issue of affordability. That “crisis” is then used as the political reason to override environmental harms. It’s the same logic behind unfunded housing mandates and the unreliable regional housing quotas that MTC and ABAG will revisit when they update the “sustainable communities” strategy.

If built on shaky assumptions, the whole structure tilts toward collapse. Yes, the Bay Area needs long-term planning and investments, but until the assumptions and the numbers are reliable, the draft environmental impact report and the 2050 plan should be sent back.

Here’s what you can do: Before Dec. 18, email comments to eircomments@bayareametro.gov; contact your MTC representative and say that, until the numbers and assumptions are reliable, all should vote no on any statement of overriding considerations and on certification of the draft report; attend a public meeting (details at planbayarea.org/draftplan); and join the next Catalysts online video conference on Monday at 5 p.m..

Mill Valley’s Susan Kirsch is founder of Catalysts for Local Control. Learn more at catalystsca.org.