Traffic-Congestion Ruling Could Benefit Developers

SAN DIEGO—A recent California Supreme Court ruling on traffic-congestion mitigation finds that state agencies must mitigate the offsite impacts of their development projects. The Court ruled in favor of the City of San Diego over the Board of Trustees of CSU, affirming the Court of Appeals’ decision and directing the Board of Trustees to vacate its environmental-impact study.

As GlobeSt.com reported exclusively in June, Sacramento-based Stoel Rives‘ attorney Allison Smith told us City of San Diego v. Board of Trustees of the California State University involves the obligation of CSU to pay fair-share traffic-mitigation fees to the City of San Diego following the environmental review of CSU’s plan to expand the San Diego State University campus and increase enrollment. The City of San Diego challenged the environmental review of that plan, primarily because CSU found that expansion would have significant impacts on traffic in the area around SDSU, but CSU did not promise to help pay for improvements that would mitigate those traffic impacts. Had the ruling gone the other way, the City could have ending up footing the bill, or some or all of the improvements wouldn’t be done. CSU agreed to pay its “fair share” of the costs of these improvements if it was appropriated additional funding by the Legislature for that purpose. For more information on the case, click here. For a brief on the case, click here.