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Page 21 of 27 Hopkins Avenue as an example since recent counts on Hopkins were quite different from the volumes estimated in the General Plan EIR. Table 3: Comparison of General Plan and Recent Traffic Volumes on Hopkins Avenue (Hudson to Broadway) “Existing” Volume (2008) “Project” Volumes (2030)2 Recent Traffic Count3 Volume Threshold for LOS E4 Additional Volume Required to Trigger Impact (LOS E) Average Daily Traffic (ADT) 7,1001 --- 7,600 --- __ AM Peak Hour Volume 358 440 830 1,610 780 PM Peak Hour Volume 595 260 737 1,610 873 1 Redwood City New General Plan Technical Report (September 2008). Figure 7: Roadway Segment Average Daily Traffic Volume 2 Redwood City New General Plan Draft EIR (May 2010). Table 4.14-2 Existing (2008) Roadway Segment Levels of Service Summary 3 Traffic counts collected March 2015. 4 Redwood City New General Plan Draft EIR (May 2010). Table 4.14-1 Roadway Segment LOS Thresholds 5 This hourly volume is unusually low for a roadway with an ADT of 7,100 vehicles. As a general rule of thumb peak hour volumes are 10% of the daily traffic volume. The last two columns on Table 3 above illustrate the volume threshold for level of service (LOS) E as well as the number of additional trips required to trigger LOS E along this segment of roadway, which would be considered a new significant impact. LOS A – D are considered acceptable levels of service, whereas LOS E and F are considered unacceptable. If traffic goes from LOS A to LOS D, no new impacts are triggered as these are both considered acceptable. If traffic goes from LOS D to LOS E, a new significant impact would occur and further environmental analysis would be required because of the change from an acceptable level of service to an unacceptable level. Thus, for the Hopkins Avenue example, it would take an additional 780 Peak AM trips or 873 Peak PM trips to lower the level of service to LOS E and trigger additional CEQA analysis. Travel demand models estimate changes in traffic based on existing travel volumes and patterns, potential changes to the transportation network, and potential land use changes. In spite of all the effort to make these models as robust as possible, they are, at the end of the day, an approximation and we expect them to underestimate changes on some streets and to overestimate them on others. Just as Hopkins traffic volumes are higher than estimated, recent traffic volumes on other streets are both lower than the future estimates as well as lower than the 2008 volumes. This was the case on Massachusetts Avenue (between Woodside and Alameda de las Pulgas) as shown in Table 6 below. 8.A. - Page 21