HAC-Ed Highlight: Transportation, Housing & the Case for Density

At this HAC-Ed, two presentations made the same argument from different vantage points: housing and transportation reform are intertwined and on the same track. Matt Goyne, Principal at Fehr & Peers, laid out the data case for why density and reduced car dependence go hand in hand. Jeremy Levine, Executive Director of Palo Alto Forward, showed what it actually takes to advance that agenda in one of the Bay Area's most resistant cities.

Matt Goyne, Principal, Fehr & Peers Transportation, VMT, and the Case for Infill

Goyne's firm analyzed census block-level VMT data across California using Streetlight Data and identified the variables that best predict how much people drive. The hierarchy matters: vehicles per household ranked first, followed by population density, employment density, and intersection density. Transit access matters and reframes what communities can actually control.

The takeaway: any community, regardless of transit quality, can lower VMT by increasing density and reducing parking. Duplexes, townhomes, and apartments all outperform single-family homes on VMT per capita, even at modest densities of 15–20 units per acre, because residents end up closer to amenities and drive shorter distances. Single-family development is the only typology that tends to raise VMT per capita.

Goyne connected this to a joint policy statement from the California State Transportation Authority and California Health and Human Services establishing a clear link between VMT and roadway deaths. San Francisco has the lowest VMT per capita of any major California city, and the lowest traffic deaths per capita. The policy implication maps onto a public health pyramid: education and behavior change sit at the top (high effort, minimal population impact); putting housing where people don't need to drive sits at the base.

He also raised a pressing and underappreciated issue: post-Palisades fire code updates that converted advisory street width guidance into what many local fire departments are now treating as mandatory, effectively requiring 40-foot-wide local streets with 12- to 13-foot lanes designed for highway speeds. Goyne co-authored a piece in the ITE Journal making the case that this is a bad tradeoff: optimizing for rare fire events at the cost of everyday road safety. Solving it requires transportation planners, fire chiefs, and elected officials in the room together.

→ Read Matt's ITE Journal article on fire codes, street widths, and everyday safety here. Questions or want to connect? Reach Matt at m.goyne@fehrandpeers.com.

Jeremy Levine, Executive Director, Palo Alto Forward Coalition Building in Palo Alto

Palo Alto Forward functions as a unique, critical connecting piece, blending housing, transportation, and climate advocacy to build a broader coalition than any single-issue org could. Their mission: expand housing and transportation choices in a city where median rent is ~$3,500/month, 87% of residential zoning is single-family, most housing predates 1980, and getting a project approved takes four years, $50–80K in fees per unit, 1-2 parking spaces required, and review at the Planning Commission, Architectural Review Board, and City Council.

Palo Alto has been unusually creative at finding workarounds to state law. The clearest example: "focus area" rezonings structured as alternatives to, not complements to, state density bonus. Projects that use the new zoning access higher density on paper, but still need discretionary variance approvals for FAR and parking that most projects can't avoid. The result is that nearly every project outside of builder's remedy ends up in a discretionary process that sidesteps the Housing Accountability Act, SB 423, and most other streamlining tools. It's complicated by design.

The builder's remedy has been their sharpest tool. PAF spent 2022–2024 documenting ways Palo Alto's housing element violated state law, keeping the city out of compliance long enough for ~2,000 units in builder's remedy applications to come in, including a 17-story transit-adjacent project and a 340-unit development on El Camino Real, which now make up the majority of the city's 3,300-unit pipeline. Even Builder's Remedy isn't airtight (the city is currently stalling a legally obligated approval over a garage placement dispute), but it's moved more units than conventional advocacy alone.

On organizing: PAF has deliberately built beyond the usual pro-housing base, presenting to HOAs, retirement communities, Stanford employees, tech companies, and civic groups like the League of Women Voters. The goal is pre-inoculation, reaching community segments before a controversial project hits a hearing, so opposition doesn't go unanswered. They've also started writing ordinance language directly for sympathetic council members, collapsing what would normally be a 3-5 year process to about 6 months for their ADU ordinance.

That ordinance is worth watching. Using AB 1033 (2023) as an entry point, PAF pushed a broader package: raising the ADU size cap to 1,200 sq ft, eliminating the impact fee cliff that hits at 750 sq ft (currently ~$30K), and a bonus ADU program modeled on San Diego that would allow multiple ADUs on lots as small as 6,000-8,000 sq ft – cottage courts and townhome-scale infill in single-family neighborhoods. It has 3.5 of 7 council votes and a hearing coming up soon.

→ HAC members can help PAF right now: show up for projects going before council (HAC's presence on the record matters even when council is resistant); flag state-level loopholes that need cleanup – especially the fee discrepancy between single- and multi-family housing and the density bonus workaround; and connect PAF with developers or attorneys working in Palo Alto. Reach Jeremy at palo.alto.fwd@gmail.com and keep an eye out for PAF's upcoming Cal Ave housing walking tour and Affordable Housing Month events in May.

Both sessions pointed to the same underlying problem: the barriers to housing are political and structural: written into codes, fees, and processes that resist change even when state law says otherwise. Goyne's research confirms that denser infill produces measurably better public health, safety, and climate outcomes. Levine's work shows what it takes to deliver it. The path runs through political organizing, legislative accountability, and coalitions built to outlast well-organized opposition.

Reach out to Brianna at brianna@housingactioncoalition.org if you'd like to connect further!