I think the prescriptive options here are well thought out and appropriate to many project types. Being able to implement 2 strategies for 2 points is a good option for projects that need to provide some parking but are taking reduction measures. Obtaining 2-year contracts for carshare has been an issue in the past and I recommend the TAG reach out to carshare providers to verify that 2-year contracts are available before publishing the credit with that requirement.

My main concern with the Transportation Demand Assessment option is that the methodology is based on U.S. data that is not necessarily available or applicable outside the country. (Or even within it – I tried using the Mixed Use Trip Generation Model on a project I’m familiar with in downtown Chicago, and had trouble finding some of the data points even with the huge amount of data our regional planning org offers.)

I also have reservations about requiring project teams to do what could just be an academic exercise just for LEED compliance; it’s not clear what performance outcome the project is supposed to achieve with this assessment that it could not have achieved with the team’s local knowledge or a different transportation study. For example, an office or resi developer typically has data on how much car/bike parking is used at existing properties in the same region, or a university campus has centrally managed parking and transit, and that knowledge seems much more useful and project-specific than the calculator. In theory I like the idea of requiring projects to do some assessment of how they can reduce VMT, but in practice I think any project that can achieve 2 of the prescriptive options has either gone through an equivalent process or is located somewhere with a robust non-car mode share. And with all the variables that go into a demand assessment it seems very hard to prescribe a certain type of study that will fit all project types, regions, etc.

If a travel study is required in the final version, I would urge the TAG to go through the exercise of documenting credit compliance for a few sample projects in different locations to uncover potential issues around data availability, time commitment, understanding how to apply the data, etc. before finalizing the requirement language.