SCAG Region Value Pricing— Regional Express Lane Network: Concept of Operations
The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) prepared its first Regional Express Lane Network Concept of Operations (ConOps) document in 2016 as part of its Express Travel Choices Study. The study featured a stakeholder-led process that identified the regional express lane network to be implemented in three tiers over a 30-year period.
The ConOps provided a blueprint for integrating individual express lane projects into a regional system by identifying a comprehensive set of issues that should be addressed as individual express lane projects advanced. Through ongoing meetings, the stakeholders vetted each of these issues to formulate a set of technical policy recommendations to serve as a framework for establishing consistent and/or compatible operating, design, and policy rules for the regional network.
Read the full SCAG Region Value Pricing— Regional Express Lane Network: Concept of Operations
Transit Priority Best Practices Report
As part of the metropolitan planning efforts, SCAG is conducting a Regional Dedicated Transit Lanes Study to explore the opportunities, needs, challenges, and best practices for developing a regional network of dedicated bus lanes and other transit priority treatments that would enable enhanced transit services, improve mobility, accessibility and sustainability, and advance implementation of Connect SoCal, the 2020-2045 Regional Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy. This toolkit of potential priority treatments and supportive policies, tools, and practices, is meant to be tailored to a variety of local needs and constraints in Southern California communities.
Read the full Transit Priority Best Practices Report
Mobility as a Service (MaaS) Feasibility White Paper Final Report
Connect SoCal, the 2020-2045 Regional Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy identified Key Connections that lie at the intersection of land use, transportation and innovation, meant to advance policy discussions and strategies to leverage new technologies and create better partnerships to increase progress on the regional goals. One of the Key Connections is shared mobility and MaaS, emphasizing that the future of travel will be shaped by technology and the ability of residents to easily choose from and use a variety of travel options.
MaaS integrates transportation services into a single mobility platform that provides competitive alternatives over private vehicles, to promote universal basic mobility, encourage mode shift, and foster sustainable travel choices. This White Paper identified the key policy issues and building blocks for MaaS, and the critical steps that will advance the region towards a truly integrated transportation system. The findings and recommendations set the stage for policy discussions for the 2024 Connect SoCal update.
Read the full MaaS Feasibility White Paper Final Report
SwissCal Conference on the Swiss Public Transportation Ecosystem
In February and March of 2022, twenty representatives from SCAG, including sixteen members of the SCAG Regional Council, participated in the SwissCal Conference on the Swiss Public Transportation Ecosystem. The goal of the virtual conference, which connected senior leaders and professionals from across California with senior Swiss transit experts, was to learn about Swiss best practices associated with transit coordination that could be applied in Southern California. The virtual conference was organized by non-profit Seamless Bay Area, and included three other co-hosting partners: LA Metro, Stanford University Bill Lane Center for the American West, and Caltrans.
SCAG participants participated in a two hour follow-up workshop to reflect upon lessons learned and develop a set of actions to advance improved coordination within the next 1-2 years.
View the full SwissCal Final Report
President’s Report – Year in Review: 2021-2022
This report summarizes the accomplishments of SCAG during President Clint Lorimore’s term covering the period 2021-2022. The featured accomplishments highlight the agency’s extensive work to identify and address the needs of the region and promote sustainability, prosperity, and quality of life improvements for all Southern Californians.
Download the President's Report - Year in Review: 2021-2022.
American Community Survey Data in Southern California
A First Look at 2016-2020
After delays due to the pandemic’s impact on survey response rates, the U.S. Census Bureau released the long-awaited American Community Survey (ACS) 2016-2020 5-Year sample on March 17, 2022. While the release is the first to include survey results from 2020, SCAG is not expecting to get complete 1-year data for 2020. Only select data sets are available, and none are available for geographies smaller than states.
Wilmington Freight Mitigation Study
SCAG, in collaboration with the City of Los Angeles, Port of Los Angeles, and Caltrans, commissioned this transportation planning study to achieve two primary objectives: (1) assess the impacts of increased truck travel on a disadvantaged community in the Wilmington area of Los Angeles and (2) recommend both traffic and general land use mitigations to improve the quality of life for residents in this community.
The Wilmington Freight Mitigation Study focused on the traffic impacts associated with the permanent closure of two private railroad crossings at Lomita Boulevard between Eubank Avenue and Alameda Street in the City of Wilmington, California. The study area, bounded by Lomita Boulevard to the north, Drumm Avenue to the east, Pacific Coast Highway to the south, and Sanford Avenue to the west, already experiences high truck traffic due to the surrounding industrial land uses and proximity to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The closure of the rail crossings potentially further exacerbates this condition by changing the truck travel patterns from a direct connection to Lomita from Alameda to various alternative routes.
For a more in-depth look into what drove the study process and exactly how it was developed, please see the full report available below.
Read the full Wilmington Freight Mitigation Study
2021 Regional Briefing Book
Released in conjunction with the 12th Annual Southern California Economic Summit, held virtually on Dec. 2, 2021, this year’s Regional Briefing Book provides an overview of the SCAG region economy today, as well as an outlook for the counties. There is also an assessment and discussion on incorporating equity in SCAG’s long-term planning, as well as preliminary research into what drives good jobs in U.S. regions to help develop measures and strategies to promote good jobs in Southern California.
Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Potential in the SCAG Region
Promoting accessory dwelling units (ADUs) construction is an increasingly viable option for addressing the region’s housing needs. To support ADU planning, SCAG has collaborated with Cal Poly Pomona’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning to identify parcels with potential for detached ADUs based on physical capacity using criteria from recently amended State law and parcel-level geospatial data from SCAG. The 6th cycle housing element requirements involve estimating ADU development potential, removing barriers to their development, and programs incentivizing ADUs including affordable rental ADUs.
This project comprehensively examines the physical ADU capacity of sites in the six-county SCAG region, focusing only on detached ADUs. ADU eligibility and physical capacity under a range of local policy scenarios have been incorporated into the Housing Element Parcel (HELPR) tool to enable users to screen sites based on this study’s criteria. Part of SCAG’s regional data platform, the HELPR tool allows users to explore and analyze over five million parcels in the SCAG region based on updated, curated versions of parcel-level land use data in light of recent housing element requirements.
Download the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Potential in the SCAG Region report.
President’s Report – Year in Review: 2020-2021
This report summarizes the accomplishments of SCAG during President Rex Richardson’s term covering the period 2020-2021. The featured accomplishments highlight the agency’s extensive work to identify and address the needs of the region and promote sustainability, prosperity, and quality of life improvements for all Southern Californians.
Download the President's Report - Year in Review: 2020-2021.
Racial Equity: Baseline Conditions Report
In July 2020, SCAG’s Regional Council made a commitment to advancing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion throughout Southern California. For the region to become healthy, livable, sustainable, and economically resilient, SCAG needs to dramatically improve outcomes for low-income families and people of color. To that end, SCAG’s core function, its planning work, must directly address the long‐standing systemic and institutional barriers that have fostered inequities in health, wealth, and opportunities. SCAG staff are developing an Early Action Plan to help facilitate the consistent integration of equity into its planning work. The purpose of this report is to highlight past transportation and housing policies and practices that yielded the inequitable conditions that exist today and provide a preliminary baseline assessment of racial equity in Southern California to inform future planning. These inequitable conditions fall into categories aligned with the goals of SCAG’s long-range plan, Connect SoCal: economy, healthy/complete communities, mobility, and environment.
Download the Racial Equity: Baseline Conditions Report (March 24, 2021 Revision).