Fred Allebach
1/28/21, updated 5/19/24
Sonoma Valley (traffic) Capacity Threshold Study draft presentation to the SVCAC 1/27/21
Sonoma Valley Citizen’s Advisory Commission
This four-plus-year study is aimed at assessing the effects of winery events on valley traffic. What increment of traffic is added to background traffic by winery events? Unsurprisingly, the results show that traffic gets worse with industrywide events in peak (summer) season.
An SVCAC ad hoc was formed in December, 2020 to address and give Permit Sonoma advice about winery events. Traffic is one element of the process that will establish county guidelines for winery events. Look for February or March for this to be revisited by the SVCAC.
For traffic studies in general, some interesting stuff came out. The consultant, Todd Tregenza of GHD basically said there are so many variables and subjectivities, that proscribed studies are inherently inaccurate. You need permanent traffic counting stations and long-term data to create accurate traffic pictures.
Even as this study was lauded as strong, some SVCAC members challenged the data (from years 2017 and 2018) as subjective and unrepresentative. People’s own experience of traffic will always be different than what a study says. There will always be some factors to take exception to. Roger Peters, an ace public commenter, pointed out his experience of congestion, (of him trying to get out onto Hwy 12 in Kenwood) was different than a measure of congestion as average speed compared to free flow.
Other interesting consultant comments: there is still a lot of congestion in peak season regardless of events. And, Sonoma Valley traffic can reach unacceptable levels on any day of the year, regardless of events.
The final recommendations seek ways to limit and mitigate the effect of winery events on valley traffic congestion. There are 12 detailed final recommendations, some of which are to implement county road design standards, protect rural character, have shuttles, and make more Class 2 bike lanes.
Greg Carr, ex oficio county planner on the SVCAC, said traffic modeling is critical to land use planning and that this study represented a really good analysis. Carr also said that the county General Plan update is the only time a comprehensive traffic forecast is made. He also said, the SSP EIR, Springs Specific Plan, Environmental Impact Report would give hints about cumulative valley traffic impacts.
Paradigms, assumptions, values, interests
An inherent background issue here is the long-range growth forecast (forecasts made by planners in ABAG Association of Bay Area Governments, SCTA Sonoma County Transportation Authority and others) What numbers are accurate and/or desirable? What is the real growth rate? For who? Why? On what planning basis? Where? What does “growth” really mean?
When a highly-charged buzzword sits at the center of policy issues, look for a lot of disagreement. Bottom line: values always underlie technical policy; putting those values out on the table is worthwhile. To the extent that we pretend these are simple technical, code exercises, we’re denying the interests that infuse the numbers.
Traffic as a proxy indicator for values
Traffic is how “growth” gets managed on the streets, where it and the land use underneath it might go. Planners adhere closely to “smart growth” theory memes and to climate protection aspirations though limiting transportation greenhouse gas, GHG, footprint. As with all paradigms, there is a purity filter and all data and evidence tends to be unquestioningly shoveled into the paradigm whether it fits or not. This lack of flexibility boxes people in and limits possibly adaptive options.
As an affordable housing advocate (social equity paradigm), I’m concerned that general efforts to limit North Bay and Sonoma Valley traffic will not only address winery events but also exacerbate existing North Bay segregation. More high density infill affordable housing projects, that re-include the displaced working class may be framed as “growth” and then proxy fights will be had to limit equity because it’s framed as growth, traffic, and congestion.
Winery events are now sought to be limited based on the negatives of growing traffic. The SVCAC’s Tim Freeman linked housing and traffic in his comments. Upshot: core issues that stakeholders are against, like upzoning for housing density and equity, and winery events get attacked through proxy arguments. Bottom line, people are against them because the “change” disrupts a rural character stasis. This is a continuation of similar issues opened up by protagonists of No on the Measure W UGB (urban growth boundary) issue.
Growth and the countryside as a static value
Pre C-19 and fires, winery events and tourism intensification had grown quite bit, with the blessing of local governments and associated economic boosters. Putatively this was “good for the economy”, but not for all. Neighbors complained of dilution of rural and small town character, of congestion, and evacuation safety issues. Lower-end service workers (60% AMI, area median income and below) never seemed to share the great bounty being generated by the wine-tourism-hospitality combine and indeed, constant valley inflation and working class cost burden remain serious issues, wine bonanza or not.
What we have with winery events is government and commerce aiding and abetting the creation of capitalistic negatives that government then must address after. Better to have a full cost accounting, triple bottom line sustainability plan to start?
The wine bonanza had got to a place where businesses within the frame all complained they needed more events, needed more tasting rooms to be able to compete, the thesis basically being that there should be no limits, and that society should be captive to unregulated commerce that would then somehow trickle down benefits down to the workers and everyone else.
Crosstown traffic
The consultant said: Sonoma Valley collector roadways, Hwy 12, Hwy 121, Arnold Drive, 8th Street East, Napa Rd. etc. do not meet current roadway design standards. Collison rates are higher than state average. These roads are designed to handle less volume. Maybe rural character equals substandard roadways? Substandard roadways then get protected to maintain the rural lifestyle. Many people moved here for the character. The county has so many miles of rural roads per capita, the tax base then can’t pay to fix the roads up, and many don’t really want them fixed up anyway. It’s all a self-reinforcing loop.
That BART and larger arterials were never extended into the Sonoma Valley area of the North Bay prevented the commercial development that would have generated better paying jobs and thus paid for better roads overall. Underlying issue: We’re stuck in a rural stasis by design which then impacts RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Assessment), housing, jobs, level of commerce, wages, traffic, and many other things.
Increased SoCo RHNA is part-ways based on balancing the exclusivity that has grown in SoCo.
Traffic, growth, numbers, values?
This starts to beg a hidden question: can a desirable area expect to not change? Can an area burn the bridge to new immigrants? Can an area tamp down commerce and business? Does growth constriction necessarily make things cost more and create exclusivity, like at an airport? What larger issues are at play here? Does the emphasis on the environment, climate, and VMT metrics, (vehicle miles traveled) and reducing greenhouse gas emissions have a hidden discriminatory dimension?
An initial question I had was: to what extent can this traffic capacity threshold study be used to assess background traffic for housing development projects and for fire evacuation concerns? The consultant said: “we’re not forecasting the future.” He also said for fire, a separate evac study would need to be made. Given that it took four-plus years to get this study done, nobody hold their breath for more studies!
Kathy Pons of Valley of the Moon Alliance centered in Kenwood said this was “a great study”, and like me, she wondered how specific traffic studies will go with this one? Can this study be a baseline for other studies?
People typically complain about traffic, especially with winery events and high density housing projects. Attempts to use congested traffic and fire evac danger as proxy reasons are being made to deny dense housing, as with the SSP and the Siesta Way project. This is a concern for affordable housing advocates. If congestion and density are negatives but current “smart growth” land use planning seeks to stuff all into the center (except existing low density property owners), what and who gives?
Sustainability calls for truth, honesty, and sacrifices from all
It seems to me that the end result of smart growth is that people have to learn to live with congestion in core urban areas, and then be able to get to open, green spaces on their days off, if they have a car and can pay the entry fees. Oh, and if those open, green, ag spaces want to cash in on people’s desire to be out in the countryside, well, this study is all about how to mitigate the effects of that use. No wonder people don’t like “regulation!”
Current substandard roads may in some ways represent the fruit of an isolationist trend that has sought to keep valley “growth” tamped down to protect the rural and small town character. Preventing growth is a big meme. I suggest this has negative consequences for workers, and if I was the Augustus Caesar of Sonoma Valley, I’d re-do all these economic and social arrangements from the bottom up, and attempt the creation of a truly sustainable system.
Traffic as it is now becomes a proxy signal for hidden social, economic, and environmental imperatives. Isabel Wilkerson could work Sonoma Valley into her Caste thesis, and show how all the myriad codes and policies strengthen segregation.
What kind of horse is our wagon hitched to?
Electeds are kind of caught here because on one hand they know they need economic strength (i.e. the wine-tourism-hospitality combine) to fund government, yet the windfalls of capitalism’s economic growth at once destroy the environment, chew workers up with high cost burdens, and alienate critical bourgeoisie propertied residents who don’t want “change” in the form of unbridled commerce eating up the pastoral countryside they moved here for.
Traffic congestion from winery events is akin to the effects of high density infill. In a way, the bourgeoisie, proletariat, and captains of industry are meeting in a local class struggle. Class struggle traffic study title? Highway to hell!
Limiting wineries, tourism and hotels and associated traffic is one aspect here. This is often justified under the rubric of environmental sustainability, but as with many first world paradigmatic takes on sustainability, lip service to equity is paid but in the end social equity and climate justice disparities are just left to get worse and worse. This all points to an obvious conclusion, if the overall impulse of controlling cohorts is to limit “growth”, this also limits housing inclusion and more jobs for the working class. The exact same anti-traffic rationales are used for winery event commerce as they are for high density infill.
Opening core issues
As Wilkerson says, it is easy for controlling cohorts to ignore core class and caste issues, avoid putting underlying values and interests on the table, claim they are the victims, and then the system just goes on.
If growth and its varying meaning is a core issue, the anti-growth pattern plays out on a regional, ABAG planning level: the North Bay protects itself from Bay Area expansion as Sonoma protects itself from growth encroachment and as rural areas protect against winery events. Problems and issues are shunted to core urban areas where residents then fight more “density.” This creates a dynamic I’ve termed “the green checkmate”: growth everywhere is fought, and only the landed and wealthy are left standing to be able to pay the higher prices in the proscribed and protected areas.
Refigure, deeply or shallow?
With C-19 and fires, the tables have turned radically from when winery events were the bad guys. Maybe now more economic inputs are needed? How will people have jobs and rise above minimum wage purgatory if there’s no work and growth? What other system is on the table that will work and have sufficient buy-in? What we mean by growth is critical. Traffic ends up reflecting that. The proletariat just wants a fair share of the benefits, then we can talk limits for everybody after that. We can’t just dial back traffic and commerce and throw low wage workers under the bus. That’s not just or sustainable.
It’s also not sustainable to allow unregulated commerce, and attempt to manage social issues under an economic system that is fundamentally amoral.
On the road of life, congestion indicates action, motion and dynamism. Sleepy hollow, low capacity roads indicate a phlegmatic economy more tailored to desires of a modern rural aristocracy than to the needs of the working class. Roads and traffic and simply the reflection of deeper societal patterns. Traffic, economy, land use, housing, are all connected.
When we get to General Plan updates, we’ll do well to question assumption and paradigms, these plans are after all made by us, and we’re only limited by what we think is possible.
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