The Oregon Transportation Plan (OTP) (1992) states that Oregon's land use <br />development patterns have tended to separate residential areas from employment and <br />commercial centers, requiring people to drive almost everywhere they go; that the results. <br />have been increased congestion, air pollution, and sprawl in the metropolitan areas and <br />diminished livability; that these auto-dependent land use patterns limit mobility and <br />transportation choices; and that reliance on the automobile has led to increased <br />congestion, travel distances, and travel times. <br />2. Studies annotated in the Land Use Measures Task Force Report Bibliography have found <br />that land use development patterns have an impact on transportation choices; that <br />separation of land uses and low-density residential and commercial development over <br />large areas makes the distance between destinations too far apart for convenient travel by <br />means other than a car; and that people who live in neighborhoods with grid pattern <br />streets, nearby employment and shopping opportunities, and continuous access to <br />sidewalks and convenient pedestrian crossings tend to make more walking and transit <br />trips. <br />3. The Oregon Highway Plan (OHP) (January 1999) states that focusing growth on more <br />compact development patterns can benefit transportation by: reducing local trips and <br />travel on state highways; shortening the length of many vehicle trips; providing more <br />opportunities to walk, bicycle, or use available transit services; increasing opportunities <br />to develop transit, and reducing the number of vehicle trips to shop and do business. <br />4. OTP policies emphasize reducing reliance on the automobile and call for transportation <br />systems that support mixed-land uses, compact cities, and connections among various <br />transportation modes to make walking, bicycling, and the use of public transit easier. <br />The OTP provides that the state will encourage and give preference to projects and grant <br />proposals that support compact or infilI development or mixed use projects. The OTP <br />also contains actions to promote the design and development of infrastructure and land <br />use patterns that encourage alternatives to the single-occupant automobile. <br />5. The Oregon Transportation Planning Rule (TPR) [OAR 660-012-0060(1)(c) and (d) and <br />(5)] encourages plans to provide for mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly development, based <br />on information that documents the benefits of such development and the Land <br />Conservation and Development Commission's (LCDC) policy interest in encouraging <br />such development to reduce reliance on the automobile. The rule [OAR 660-012- <br />0045(4)(a) and (e)] requires local governments to adopt land use regulations that allow <br />transit-oriented developments on lands along transit routes and require major <br />developments to provide either a transit stop on site or connection to a transit stop when <br />the transit operator requires such an improvement. The rule [OAR 660-012-0045(3)] also <br />requires local governments to adopt land use regulations that provide for safe and <br />convenient pedestrian and bicycle access within new developments and from these <br />developments to adjacent residential areas and transit stops and to neighborhood activity <br />centers. <br />Laurel Ridge Record (Z 15-5) T" TI. ' Page 215 <br />