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Sustainable Communities Strategy Implementation Project

Contact

For more information about this plan, contact Heather by email or phone: (831) 264-5086

Sustainable Communities Strategy Implementation Toolkits

Through a series of collaborative meetings in 2016, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG) staff, consultants, agency, municipal, and non-governmental partners assembled Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) Implementation Toolkits with examples of projects and best practices to help achieve regional and local sustainability goals and emission reduction targets through efforts to provide housing, jobs and services in proximity to one another and to better link them by transit and safe and convenient bicycle and pedestrian access.

The wide variety of tools are grouped in separate Infill Housing, Economic Development and Transportation sections of the Toolkit. Each of these sections opens with a summary of all its tools and link to individual “cutsheets” for each of the tools. These pages include detailed descriptions of each tool, which are intended to inform community discussions and decision making by local agencies and municipalities. One or more pages from the Toolkit may be downloaded and distributed by anyone at any time.

Economic Development Toolkit

The Economic Development Toolbox Contains the Following Sections:

  • Sales Taxes and Other Local Taxes
  • General Obligation Bonds
  • Revenue Bonds
  • User Fees
  • Housing Trust Fund
  • Cap and Trade
  • Economic Development Administration Grants
  • USDA Grants and Loans
  • Community Development Block Grants
  • Low Income Housing Tax Credits
  • New Market Tax Credits

Infill Development Toolkit

The Infill Development Toolkit Contains the Following Sections:

  • Attached Sidecourt
  • Detached Motorcourt
  • Detached Sidecourt
  • Horizontal Mixed Use
  • Live/Work
  • 'Plexes
  • Small Lot Single-Family
  • Stacked Flats (Apartments)
  • Tiny House Village
  • Townhomes or Rowhomes
  • Verticle Mixed Use

Transportation Toolkit

The Transportation Toolkit is contains the following sections:

  • Enhance Pedestrian Connections
  • Enhance Bicycle Connections
  • Enhance Local Transit Connections to Regional Transit
  • Increase Transit Service Effectiveness and Frequency
  • Implement Site Scale TDM Measures
  • Upgrade Bus Stops
  • Develop Local Mobility Hub
  • Develop Transit Streets and Corridors
  • Develop New Trail Connections
  • New On-Demand Transit Service
  • Carsharing/Ridesharing Strategy with Park and Ride Lots
  • New Express Transit Service
  • Develop Electric/Autonomous Vehicle Implementation Strategy
  • Signal Coordination with Transit Priority

AMBAG Place Types

Place Types were developed to help inform local and regional efforts to achieve the Metropolitan Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy (MTP/SCS) goals and objectives. Because individual communities in the region may include a range of Place Types and transitions between them, tools in the Toolkit may be useful in a variety of settings. The following descriptions of the AMBAG Place Types identify the unique Intensity, Land Use and Transportation characteristics of those Place Types along with local examples of these Place Types. The Place Types were developed as part of the 2040 MTP/SCS development process and will be updated with each MTP/SCS update.

Opportunity Areas

Opportunity Areas are places the region plans to grow in the future, which is where Transit Priority Areas and Economic Development Areas within the AMBAG region overlap. The results of this analysis will provide AMBAG with an initial set of Opportunity Areas, which will include proposed boundaries, underlying land use Place Type, supporting graphics and an explanation justifying the selection. Opportunity Areas were then used to identify a set of potential Transit Priority Projects (TPPs) that will support AMBAG’s SCS strategies for reducing greenhouse gases.