Anderson v. City and County of San Francisco
In recent years, many cities have decided that promoting the increased use of bicycles improves the quality of life and promotes a variety of public policies. Since 1997, San Francisco has been one of these cities. A decade later, an upgrade to the City’s statutory Bicycle Plan generated an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) of more than 2,000 pages that was certified by the City’s Board of Supervisors. Two groups and one individual objected, to no avail, to the trial court ruling that that the EIR complied with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA; Pub. Resources Code, § 21000 et seq.[1]). Only the individual, Rob Anderson, continues the attack, appealing from the trial court’s order. He contends that the EIR is riddled with fundamental procedural and substantive legal error, and that the massive administrative record of more than 36,000 pages will not support numerous findings of the trial court. Aided in large measure by the trial court’s comprehensive written decision, we reject all of Anderson’s challenges to the EIR itself. However, he does identify a defect in the process when the EIR was certified by the Board of Supervisors, which failed to make a handful of findings required by CEQA. We therefore must reverse in order that this omission may be corrected.
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