The developer fee concept has been successfully used in many states across the United States, more notably California and Florida to fund various transportation related infrastructure construction projects. In the State of California, the application of developer fee has a special significance due to high real estate costs and a large auto ownership. The emphasis in this paper is on transportation mitigation through the implementation of developer fee or traffic impact mitigation fee. With the growing number of automobiles and land development, there is a greater need today more than ever, for assessing proper traffic mitigation charges. According to a recent study, with the completion of the interstate freeway system in the U.S., there will not be enough funds available even to maintain the existing road infrastructure at the current level not withstanding the new construction in the future. The only way to keep our traffic moving and maintain an orderly growth of developments is to identify those sources and develop a mechanism to charge those who are responsible for generating the traffic. Besides, in California, State Assembly Bill 1600 (AB1600) allows local agencies for establishing guidelines for implementing "developer fee" programs. The main objective of this paper is to present a unique approach used in calculating transportation related infrastructure fee for two different size U.S. cities (City of Montclair and City of Fontana) in California. In spite of the legislation that was in place, it was required to justify the developer fee based on transportation modeling (to forecast future traffic) and identifying traffic mitigations required to maintain level of service "E" or better. The results of extensive modeling and mitigation studies conducted in both cities to set up the developer fee program are described in this paper. The resulting fee structure is very close to the values used in several jurisdictions across California. The authors believe that the methodology suggested in this paper can be applied to various other communities of similar development characteristics like Fontana and Montclair. (A)
Samenvatting