Rancho Cucamonga, California

7 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 10 “On the commuting front, only around 5% of our trips are made by walking and biking. And that’s because we developed primarily as a suburban community.” The development of a new General Plan for the city was completed in 2021, outlining transportation improvements in key corridors. Burris explains, “If we develop some of these corridors in a more urban, more walkable pattern, it gives us the opportunity to reduce our reliance on automobiles, and it helps us meet the community’s needs for a greater variety of places to live.” To bring more development into the community, updates to the Development Code were enacted – a necessary step. As developers were looking at the city, it was felt that the expectations weren’t clear enough and there was quite a bit more risk associated with potential development, just in navigating the entitlement process. According to Burris, “We focused all of our efforts on laying out clear expectations, more objective standards, is really exciting. They are expecting 11 million passengers per year to use the high-speed train, which will take a lot of cars off the road, and help with some of our sustainability initiatives as a region.” Additionally, the city is involved in the design phase of a project to connect the Ontario International Airport and the Rancho Cucamonga Metrolink station through a six-mile tunnel. “Theoretically, you could get to an international airport from many places throughout the region, even Las Vegas when it’s all said and done, without having to get into a car,” maintains Burris. In other sustainability efforts, a new climate action plan puts the city on a path towards a 47% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. “We are quite excited about that,” says Burris. “If we can deliver these new transportation projects, it’ll help us a lot in reducing our emissions.” He suggests that an increase in active transportation would also play a role, noting,