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7.A Page 87 The Seaport line would also run adjacent to properties designated Commercial - Regional and Commercial - Office Professional/Technology before crossing Highway 101 towards the San Francisco Bay. A streetcar circulator could facilitate connections between employees at this site and resources at Seaport Center, Pacific Shores, and Downtown, presenting opportunities for shared resources and synergies among businesses. The Seaport Boulevard route also connects with mixed use areas; in its proposed configuration, the Seaport line would meet with the Broadway line near two large sites designated Mixed Use - Corridor near Downtown Redwood City. Both of these large sites are specifically identified as opportunity sites for redevelopment in the Housing Element. In addition to providing high-quality transit access from certain Redwood City housing concentrations to increased-intensity employment centers and mixed-use areas,the Seaport streetcar line would also provide a valuable connection between the proposed ferry terminal station at the end of Seaport Boulevard and two major multi-modal regional transit facilities in Downtown Redwood City—the Caltrain station and the SamTrans bus depot. Such a link would allow employees from all over the Bay Area to access jobs at increased-intensity employment centers and mixed-use areas without an automobile. The modeling effort to analyze impacts with respect to traffic, water supply, and air quality/greenhouse gases comprehensively considered each of the streetcar lines' effects on development patterns of surrounding properties according to the land use categories identified in the New General Plan. The modeling effort assumed that the streetcar system would encourage and facilitate redevelopment and investment along the streetcar corridors. Case studies and research have shown that areas immediately 410 adjacent to streetcar lines are likely to increase in density and intensity subsequent to streetcar line installation.'The City assumed a higher level of development near the streetcar lines in order to estimate impacts conservatively (i.e. more development would equate to more impacts, and it is assumed that the streetcar would be an incentive for development). At the same time, the transportation component of the model assumes a reduced number of vehicle trips adjacent to the streetcar lines, as studies show that a significant portion of trips shift to streetcar when the use is immediately adjacent to the line.2 Significant levels of commercial development along Seaport Boulevard were assumed as part of the growth projections considered in the General Plan and EIR, equivalent to approximately three new corporate campuses of over 500,000 square feet each.These generous assumptions ensure that the potential growth inducing impacts of a streetcar are fully accounted for in the EIR. It is anticipated that without the streetcar line, future development would not be constructed at or near the modeled densities or intensities in these immediate areas. The New General Plan and the New General Plan EIR do not anticipate or assume any development or growth other than that which may occur in those areas that are a part of the New General Plan as described above. The modeling analysis was therefore adjusted for the land use designations that are located adjacent 1 Portland Office of Transportation and Portland Streetcar Inc., "Portland Streetcar Development Oriented Transit,"April 2008; Basile Baumann Prost&Associates, Inc., "Denver TOD Economic and Market Study Survey Results: Transit Induced Growth,"June 2007; Jeffery J. Smith, Thomas A. Gihring, and Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, "Financing Transit Systems Through Value Capture: An Annotated Bibliography,"December 2009. 2 Metropolitan Transportation Commission, "Characteristics of Rail and Ferry Station Area Residents in the San Francisco Bay Area," September2006; Cervero and Arrington, "Vehicle Trip Reduction Impacts of Transit-Oriented Housing", Journal of Public Transportation, 2008.