CEQA & environmental
Level of service (LOS)
The A–F congestion grading that was CEQA's traffic metric until SB 743 — no longer a CEQA impact, but alive in general plan policies and fee programs.
Definition
Level of service grades vehicle delay at intersections and road segments from A (free flow) to F (failure), and for decades it defined a project's CEQA traffic impact — congestion worsening past a threshold meant mitigation, usually road widening. Under the CEQA Guidelines § 15064.3, automobile delay no longer constitutes a significant environmental impact; LOS survives instead in general plan circulation elements, congestion management programs, and local conditions of approval.
Why it matters in an underwrite
The costs didn't disappear when CEQA dropped LOS — they moved. Cities still enforce LOS standards through general-plan consistency findings on discretionary approvals and through traffic impact fee programs, so a project can pass CEQA cleanly on VMT and still owe signal and widening money as conditions. Read the circulation element's LOS policies before writing "no traffic mitigation" into the pro forma, especially for discretionary approvals that require consistency findings.
Sources & related guides
See also
See the term in the law itself
Read the controlling text in the Code Library, or ask the AI how it applies to your project.
Last reviewed 2026-07-29. General information, not legal advice.