In 2017, the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) released a draft of changes to the State’s California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines and Appendix G. The State is required to update CEQA periodically. These changes will be incorporated into the 2019 CEQA Guidelines and Appendix G. Accordingly, the City of Los Angeles Department of City Planning (DCP) proposes updating its CEQA significance thresholds to align with the 2019 Appendix G in order to comply with state law.

As part of this effort, The City of Los Angeles Department of City Planning and Department of Transportation are updating the CEQA Transportation Section to comply with State legislation (Senate Bill 743). State guidelines require all cities to update their transportation impact analysis metrics to vehicle miles traveled (VMT) before July 1, 2020.

Four Open House informational sessions will be available for the community to learn more about and review these updates and to ask questions of Department of City Planning and Department of Transportation staff. There will be public hearings at each Open House, where oral testimony will be heard. Written comments will be accepted until December 21, 2018 and may be emailed to Diana.Kitching@lacity.org and Rubina.Ghazarian@lacity.org and must include the subject line: CF 14-1169 CEQA Thresholds Update or mailed to:

Los Angeles Department of City Planning, Citywide Policy Planning
200 N. Spring St. Room 750 Los Angeles, CA 90012

For more information, you may visit the project webpages (DCP and LADOT) where additional resources are available, such as the Project FAQs, the CEQA Thresholds, and the Draft Transportation Section of the Los Angeles CEQA Thresholds Guide.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is a state law that requires disclosure of environmental impacts of certain proposed discretionary projects. The accompanying State CEQA Guidelines explain how to navigate the CEQA process. Appendix G is a part of the State CEQA Guidelines, which contains the different impact categories for analysis, including biological resources, noise, and transportation, among others.    
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