National City staff: CEQA VMT analysis met, applicant must fund traffic signal at Sweetwater and Orange

City staff told the committee that state rules now require vehicle‑miles‑traveled (VMT) analysis under CEQA and that the project’s VMT and local transportation studies identified an impact at the Sweetwater–Orange intersection. Staff said the applicant proposed a full traffic signal as mitigation and that its fair‑share contribution was about 70 percent.

Staff explained they reviewed the applicant’s licensed traffic‑engineer reports and cannot perform private development traffic studies themselves; applicants must provide the consultant’s analyses for staff review. The presenter offered to share the full traffic reports and raw count data, including appendices, with committee members and members of the public who request them.

The presentation described a before‑and‑after operations modeling exercise showing that adding the signal would improve intersection operations to an acceptable level (the presenter cited a Level of Service B result), which staff said supported conditioning the project on signal installation and the applicant contribution. Staff also said they would pull police accident history and collect additional traffic counts, then run a formal signal warrant analysis under state criteria before returning recommendations to a future meeting.

The presenter noted some site‑specific technical work (including a queuing analysis for a proposed car wash) and said those analyses were included in the reports. Committee members were offered an opportunity to review the full technical appendices; staff said they would distribute the materials via email on request and would agendize the follow‑up analysis later in the summer.

The committee did not take a formal vote on any motion during the presentation. The next procedural step, as described by staff, is data collection and a staff return with results and recommendations to a future committee meeting (staff suggested targeting August or September).