Ordinance 3010-07 - Laserfiche WebLink

EVERETT COMPREHENSIVE PLAN Objective #4: Minimize Environmental and Community Impacts Minimize or mitigate adverse impacts of transportation systems and facilities on the natural environment, neighborhoods and quality of life. The transportation system affects the environment and the community in two ways: the impacts of travel and traffic from the system, and the impacts due to the construction of new transportation system facilities. The City recognizes both categories of impacts in its Comprehensive Plan. The Comprehensive Plan accommodates a substantial increase in population and jobs with a limited expansion of the vehicular transportation system capacity. The emphasis in accommodating travel by increased investments in transit and non -motorized modes will reduce the potential impacts to the environment. However, improvements that are made to the transportation system are likely to affect existing neighborhoods, since the city is largely developed. For the transportation system investments the range of environmental concerns that will be expressed in policy include air quality, energy, noise, natural environment and community impacts. Air quality and energy are generally system -wide and regional in nature, while noise, the natural environment and community impacts are more localized and are emphasized in the Plan because of Everett's ability to affect them more directly through its policies. Objective #4: Planning Principles • Support the application of SEPA through the integration of its requirements into the Comprehensive Plan's implementation program under the Growth Management Act. For transportation, this will place primary responsibility for system requirements on growth management procedures such as the concurrency requirement, and primary responsibility for SEPA on site impacts. Objective #4: Policies: System 4.1. Encourage the use of travel modes that minimize the impacts of transportation systems on the environment, neighborhoods and quality of life. 4.2. Encourage the use of travel modes that contribute to clean air and energy efficiency. 4.3. Pursue transportation projects, pro -grams, and investment strategies that are consistent with noise minimization and water quality efficiency objectives. Construction and Operation 4.4 Minimize impacts on the environment and communities when improving or establishing new transportation facilities. 4.5. Identify, evaluate and adequately mitigate, to the extent feasible, the environmental and community impacts of transportation improvements and operational decisions. 4.6. In order to meet the requirements of the Federal Clean Air Act and Amendments, the air quality provisions of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) TRANSPORTATION ELEMENT 42