Pleasant Hill BART

Specific Plan

CIRCULATION AND PARKING

Circulation and parking within the Station Area involve the integration of the automobile, transit vehicle, bicyclist, and pedestrian in a manner that minimizes congestion or safety hazards. The provisions for circulation and parking are incorporated into specific policies. A traffic study was completed in 1996 which evaluated circulation improvements needed to facilitate access to the Station Area and to alleviate regional traffic congestion around the Station Area. The traffic study also evaluated the implications of removing the proposed arterial in the former Southern Pacific Railroad right-of-way from the County General Plan. The executive summary of the traffic study appears in Appendix A.

Growth Management Program

As a result of the passage of Measure C in 1988, Contra Costa County jurisdictions are required to participate in a growth management program in order to receive their share of Measure C sales tax "return to source" funds. One requirement of the growth management program is the adoption of growth management elements in local general plans. Growth management elements set forth policies to ensure that local services will be available to accommodate new development, and recommend traffic levels of service (LOS) that should be maintained on basic (local) routes. For roads defined as regional routes, traffic service objectives (TSOs) are established by the regional transportation planning committees as part of the Action Plan for Routes of Regional Significance.

In the Pleasant Hill BART Station Area, Treat Boulevard is designated as a Route of Regional Significance. The remaining streets in the area are Basic Routes and are subject to traffic service objectives defined in local general plans. The Contra Costa County General Plan (1991) designates the land use in the Pleasant Hill BART Station Area as "central business district." The traffic level of service (LOS) for this type of land use is defined as low E (volume-to-capacity ratio of 0.90 to 0.94).

The Central Contra Costa Action Plan for Routes of Regional Significance (1994) establishes traffic service objectives for Treat Boulevard as follows: (1) a delay index of 2.0 with a minimum peak hour average travel speed of 15 miles per hour, and (2) an average vehicle occupancy of 1.2 persons per vehicle. The "delay index" is a measurement of the amount of time required to travel between two points during the peak hour, as opposed to the time required to travel the same distance during off-peak hours.