A new state-mandated plan for the Bay Area may displace the region's goods movement businesses, thereby worsening congestion, increasing air pollution, raising consumer prices, and eliminating well-paying green- and blue-collar jobs.
Mandated by SB 375, the draft Plan Bay Area seeks to to reduce the region's carbon emissions and still accommodate substantial increases in jobs and population by encouraging dense infill development close to transit, i.e. Smart Growth.
However, by focusing compact growth in central areas, often near major goods movement corridors, the plan threatens to inflate commercial rents and thereby displace the region's industrial businesses, resulting in greater truck travel and congestion, worse air pollution, higher transportation costs translating into more costly goods, the permanent loss of industrial land, fewer well-paying blue/green collar jobs in proximity to the urban workforce residing in the central Bay Area, and less economic diversity.
It now appears that the final plan, scheduled to be approved by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments in mid-July, will be amended to protect viable industrial lands and to improve goods movement in the region.
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