Wash. Admin. Code § 365-196-840 - Concurrency
(1) Purpose.
(a) The purpose of concurrency is to assure
that those public facilities and services necessary to support development are
adequate to serve that development at the time it is available for occupancy
and use, without decreasing service levels below locally established minimum
standards.
(b) Concurrency
describes the situation in which adequate facilities are available when the
impacts of development occur, or within a specified time thereafter.
Concurrency ensures consistency in land use approval and the development of
adequate public facilities as plans are implemented, and it prevents
development that is inconsistent with the public facilities necessary to
support the development.
(c) With
respect to facilities other than transportation facilities counties and cities
may fashion their own regulatory responses and are not limited to imposing
moratoria on development during periods when concurrency is not
maintained.
(2)
Determining the public facilities subject to concurrency. Concurrency is
required for locally owned transportation facilities and for transportation
facilities of statewide significance that serve counties consisting of islands
whose only connection to the mainland are state highways or ferry routes.
Counties and cities may adopt a concurrency mechanism for other facilities that
are deemed necessary for development. See WAC
365-196-415(5).
(3) Establishing an appropriate level of
service.
(a) The concept of concurrency is
based on the maintenance of specified levels of service with respect to each of
the public facilities to which concurrency applies. For all such facilities,
counties and cities should designate appropriate levels of service.
(b) Level of service is typically set in the
capital facilities element or the transportation element of the comprehensive
plan. The level of service is used as a basis for developing the transportation
and capital facilities plans.
(c)
Counties and cities should set level of service to reflect realistic
expectations consistent with the achievement of growth aims. Setting levels of
service too high could, under some regulatory strategies, result in no growth.
As a deliberate policy, this would be contrary to the act.
(d) Counties and cities should coordinate
with and reach agreements with other affected purveyors or service providers
when establishing level of service standards for facilities or services
provided by others.
(e) The level
of service standards adopted by the county or city should vary based on the
urban or rural character of the surrounding area and should be consistent with
the land use plan and policies. The county or city should also balance the
desired community character, funding capacity, and traveler expectations when
adopting levels of service for transportation facilities. For example a plan
that calls for a safe pedestrian environment that promotes walking or one that
promotes development of a bike system so that biking trips can be substituted
for auto trips may suggest using a level of service that includes measures of
the pedestrian environment.
(f) For
transportation facilities, level of service standards for locally owned
arterials and transit routes should be regionally coordinated. In some cases,
this may mean less emphasis on peak-hour automobile capacity, for example, and
more emphasis on other transportation priorities. Levels of service for
highways of statewide significance are set by the Washington state department
of transportation. For other state highways, levels of service are set in the
regional transportation plan developed under
RCW
47.80.030. Local levels of service for state
highways should conform to the state and regionally adopted standards found in
the statewide multimodal transportation plan and regional transportation plans.
Other transportation facilities, however, may reflect local
priorities.
(4)
Measurement methodologies.
(a) Depending on
how a county or city balances these factors and the characteristics of travel
in their community, a county or city may select different ways to measure
travel performance. For example, counties and cities may measure performance at
different times of day, week, or month (peak versus off-peak, weekday versus
weekend, summer versus winter). A city or county may choose to focus on the
total multimodal supply of infrastructure available for use during a peak or
off-peak period. Counties and cities may also measure performance at different
geographic scales (intersections, road or route segments, travel corridors, or
travel zones or measure multimodal mobility within a district).
(b) In urban areas, the department recommends
counties and cities adopt methodologies that analyze the transportation system
from a comprehensive, multimodal perspective, as authorized by
RCW
36.70A.108. Multimodal level of service
methodologies and standards should consider the needs of travelers using the
four major modes of travel (auto, public transportation, bicycle, and
pedestrian), their impacts on each other as they share the street or
intersection, and their mode specific requirements for street and intersection
design and operation.
(c) Although
level of service standards and measurement methodologies are interrelated,
changes in methodology, even if they have an incidental effect on the resulting
level of service for a particular facility, are not necessarily a change in the
level of service standard.
(5) Concurrency regulations.
(a) Each planning jurisdiction should produce
a regulation or series of regulations which govern the operation of that
jurisdiction's concurrency management system. This regulatory scheme will set
forth the procedures and processes to be used to determine whether relevant
public facilities have adequate capacity to accommodate a proposed development.
In addition, the scheme should identify the responses to be taken when it is
determined that capacity is not adequate to accommodate a proposal. Relevant
public facilities for these purposes are those to which concurrency applies
under the comprehensive plan. Adequate capacity refers to the maintenance of
concurrency.
(b) Compliance with
applicable environmental requirements, such as ambient air quality standards or
water quality standards, should have been built into the determination of the
facility capacities needed to accommodate anticipated growth.
(c) The variations possible in designing a
concurrency management system are many. However, such a system could include
the following features:
(i) Capacity
monitoring - a process for collecting and maintaining real world data on use
for comparison with evolving public facility capacities in order to show at any
moment how much of the capacity of public facilities is being used;
(ii) Capacity allocation procedures - a
process for determining whether proposed new development can be accommodated
within the existing or programmed capacity of public facilities. This can
include preassigning amounts of capacity to specific zones, corridors or areas
on the basis of planned growth. For any individual development this may
involve:
(A) A determination of anticipated
total capacity at the time the impacts of development occur.
(B) Calculation of how much of the total
capacity will be used by existing developments and other planned developments
at the time the impacts of development occur. If a local government does not
require a concurrency certification or exempts small projects from the normal
concurrency process, it should still calculate the capacity used and subtract
that from the capacity available.
(C) Calculation of the amount of capacity
available for the proposed development.
(D) Calculation of the impact on capacity of
the proposed development, minus the effects of any mitigation provided by the
applicant. (Standardized smaller developments can be analyzed based on
predetermined capacity impact values.)
(E) Comparison of available capacity with
project impact. For any project that places demands on public facilities,
cities and counties must determine if levels of service will fall below locally
established minimum standards.
(iii) Provisions for reserving capacity - A
process of prioritizing the allocation of capacity to proposed developments.
This process might include one of the following alternatives:
(A) Setting aside a block or blocks of
available or anticipated capacity for specified types of development fulfilling
an identified public interest;
(B)
Adopting a first-come, first-served system of allocation, dedicating capacity
to applications in the order received; or
(C) Adopting a preference system giving
certain categories or specified types of development preference over others in
the allocation of available capacity.
(6) Regulatory response to the
absence of concurrency. The comprehensive plan should provide a strategy for
responding when approval of any particular development would cause levels of
service for concurrency to fall below the locally adopted standards. To the
extent that any jurisdiction uses denial of development as its regulatory
response to the absence of concurrency, consideration should be given to
defining this as an emergency for the purposes of the ability to amend or
revise the comprehensive plan.
(a) In the case
of transportation, an ordinance must prohibit development approval if the
development causes the level of service on a locally owned transportation
facility to decline below the standards adopted in the transportation element
of the comprehensive plan unless improvements or strategies to accommodate the
impacts of development are made concurrent with the development.
(i) These strategies may include increased
public transportation service, ride sharing programs, demand management, and
other transportation systems management strategies.
(ii) "Concurrent with development" means that
improvements or strategies are in place at the time of development, or that a
financial commitment is in place to complete the improvements or strategies
within six years.
(b) If
the proposed development is consistent with the land use element, relevant
levels of service should be reevaluated.
(c) Other responses could include:
(i) Development of a system of deferrals,
approving proposed developments in advance but deferring authority to construct
until adequate public facilities become available at the location in question.
Such a system should conform to and help to implement the growth phasing
schedule contemplated in the land use and capital facilities elements of the
plan.
(ii) Conditional approval
through which the developer agrees to mitigate the impacts.
(iii) Denial of the development, subject to
resubmission when adequate public facilities are made available.
(iv) Redesign of the project or
implementation of demand management strategies to reduce trip generation to a
level that is within the available capacity of the system.
(v) Transportation system management measures
to increase the capacity of the transportation system.
(7) Form, timing and duration of
concurrency approvals. The system should include provisions for how to show
that a project has met the concurrency requirement, whether as part of another
approval document (e.g., permit, platting decisions, planned unit development)
or as a separate certificate of concurrency, possibly a transferable document.
This choice, of necessity, involves determining when in the approval process
the concurrency issue is evaluated and decided. Approvals, however made, should
specify the length of time that a concurrency determination will remain
effective, including requirements for development progress necessary to
maintain approval.
(8) Provisions
for interjurisdictional coordination - SEPA consistency. Counties and cities
should consider integrating SEPA compliance on the project-specific level with
the case-by-case process for concurrency management.
Notes
Statutory Authority: RCW 36.70A.050 and 36.70A.190. 10-03-085, § 365-196-840, filed 1/19/10, effective 2/19/10.
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