Clean Air and Transportation:

Vital Concerns for TEA-21 Reauthorization

Testimony of Michael Replogle

Transportation Director, Environmental Defense

 

Before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change, and Nuclear Safety

March 13, 2003

Mr. Chairman, my name is Michael Replogle, and I serve as Transportation Director of Environmental Defense. Environmental Defense is a leading, national, NY-based nonprofit organization, representing 300,000 members, that links science, economics, and law to create innovative, economically viable solutions to today's environmental problems. I serve as Chair of the Energy and Environment Issue Team of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, and today also speak on behalf of the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Defenders of Wildlife, Center for Community Change, America Walks, the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice, Metropolitan Atlanta Transportation Equity Coalition, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign (based in New York), and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

 

I am pleased to have this opportunity to discuss transportation and air quality, especially focusing on transportation conformity and the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Program and to offer our views as the subcommittee begins work in reauthorizing TEA-21. I want to incorporate by reference the extensive testimony I provided on transportation and air quality issues to the full Senate EPW hearing on July 30, 2002. I stand by that testimony.

Transportation Conformity: A Key Element in Timely Attainment of Healthy Air

Conformity is a principal way to keep the transportation system accountable to public health, air quality and the environment.  In the 12 years, since TEA-21 was enacted, the science linking emissions from the transportation sector to public health has confirmed, time and again, the powerful link between health and the environment. Conformity is way to balance the checkbook, to keep track of air quality impacts and spur greater efficiency in the transportation system.  Without conformity, money will be spent on transportation without this basic accountability.

Clean Air Act (CAA) transportation conformity requires transportation plans that are designed to achieve motor vehicle emission within the pollution limits established in state air pollution implementation plans (SIPs). Conformity was strengthened in the 1990 CAA Amendments to require quantitative emission limits so transportation plans could be held accountable for their performance, and to assure that transportation and air quality planners would coordinate their activities. Conformity was strengthened because, since adoption of the 1970 CAA, growth in the number of vehicle miles traveled and related transportation emissions had been routinely underestimated, leading to repeated failure of many metropolitan areas to attain healthful air quality by established deadlines. Despite the adoption of far cleaner vehicle and fuel technologies, air pollution from motor vehicles – then and now - continues to harm the health of millions of our citizens.

Today, it is clear that, despite setbacks that have delayed and hampered its implementation, transportation conformity has been successful in many ways.

• It has spurred broad support for timely implementation of cleaner vehicle technologies, fuels, and vehicle maintenance initiatives.

• It has spurred adoption of strategies to reduce traffic and related pollution growth by expanding transportation choices and better managing transportation systems.

• Conformity has made it routine business for transportation planners to consider the air quality implications of alternative policies and investments and fostered much better interagency coordination.

Conformity: Like Balancing Your Checkbook. Transportation conformity has been most effective behind the scenes, providing timely information to decision-makers to motivate action to reduce pollution and protect public health. Most conformity success stories have gone unreported and little noticed, while the complaints from some transportation officials about the nuisance of transportation conformity are often recounted.

Conformity is a lot like balancing your checkbook – it’s not a fun way to spend your time, but its vital to the health of your household or business in the long run that it be done. Doing it routinely, frequently, and with the most accurate, up-to-date information available helps avoid surprises, bounced checks, and overdrafts that can result from untimely failure to record an ATM banking transaction, catch checkbook register arithmetic errors, or mis-recording of data, thereby protecting one’s financial health and reputation. So too metropolitan areas doing frequent conformity analysis can catch early errors in forecasting motor vehicle emissions that result from changes in assumptions - such as the share of SUVs and light trucks vs. passenger cars, job and housing patterns, transit fares, parking rates, or improved travel behavior data - or from mistakes in transportation and emissions modeling and analysis.  Timely updates to modeling assumptions improve accountability and protect the integrity of transportation and air quality planning.

However, some highway officials argue that there is a “timing mismatch” between the transportation and air quality planning process. They advocate “fixing” this by reducing the frequency of conformity analyses, limiting the future time horizon for air quality analysis, and by allowing use of out-of-date assumptions and data for conformity analysis. Such proposals would greatly weaken transportation conformity and make it likely that regional air quality control strategies will fail for the third time since enactment of the Clean Air Act in 1970. These proposals would put off for another generation the day when all Americans might breathe healthful air. Congress should reject these proposals that threaten public health and the environment.

To explain why, I’d like to recount several conformity success stories, including a recent one here in the Washington, DC-northern Virginia-suburban Maryland area. Successes like these would be imperiled by ill-advised proposals from some highway officials.

Frequent Conformity Checks Deliver Timely Correction of Emission Reduction Shortfalls. In July 2001, Washington-area officials sought to update the region’s transportation plan more than a year before its conformity finding was due to expire, so they could include several new regionally-significant highway projects. The area’s Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), in a routine update of modeling assumptions, found mobile source emissions exceeding the SIP emission limits by about 8 tons per day of Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) when the growing use of sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and light trucks was accounted for, as these vehicles produce significantly more pollution per mile driven than standard cars. This finding was an early warning that additional emission reduction strategies needed to be adopted before new road projects could be added to the transportation plan.  Officials formed a task force to consider reopening the SIP to allow for more motor vehicle pollution by finding offsets from other emission sources or fixing the conformity problem by adopting added emission reduction measures. Over the course of a year, area officials deliberated, and eventually settled on three major types of actions which each contributed significantly to address the conformity problem within the transportation planning process:

·       The MPO refined their models to better account for emissions and for emission reducing measures already being implemented by the District of Columbia and other jurisdictions, but not previously credited by planners.

·      The state of Maryland advanced a $42 million package of new transportation emission reduction strategies, including buying clean buses, improving pedestrian and bicycle access to transit, and supporting transit oriented development and telework.

·      The state of Virginia cut back its proposed short-term road program for 2005 by 100 lane miles of new road capacity (representing about 0.5% of 2005 modeled road capacity), which the MPO estimated would result in a 1% reduction in regional mobile source NOx, a 0.1% decrease in VOC, a 0.6% reduction in daily VMT, and a 1.3% increase in daily transit trips. [1] And Virginia taxpayers saved $800 million.

If proposals being pushed by some transportation officials and road lobby groups to reduce the frequency of required conformity analysis of regional transportation plans to every 5 years or to allow the use of obsolete data assumptions for conformity analysis had been in effect, this $42 million package of emission reduction measures would almost certainly not have been funded.  Awareness of the emission benefits of reduced road expansion - driven by fiscal problems more than by the pressures of transportation conformity - would have gone unnoted. The MPO would have devoted less time and resources to considering strategies to reduce emissions and traffic growth.

If the region had been allowed to use old data for conformity analysis of Transportation Improvement Programs (TIPs) and regional transportation plans, the region’s officials would have been able to add major new highway projects to the plan at a time when it was clear that motor vehicle emissions would far exceed the pollution budget established in the SIP, almost guaranteeing that the region would not be able to attain the 1-hour ozone standard by 2005, after it had already missed the 1999 deadline for meeting that standard that was set in the 1990 Clean Air Act.

Our families here in the Washington region would face worse health problems from breathing the air. The “fixes” proposed by some highway officials ostensibly to “align planning horizons and frequency of updates for transportation plans and SIPs” would actually have the effect of reducing the timely alignment of transportation and air quality plans, leading to much dirtier air, more sick kids, more premature deaths from respiratory problems, and more damage to the health of the Chesapeake Bay and other ecosystems caused by excess air pollution from motor vehicles.

Twenty-Year Conformity Planning Horizon: Vital to Considering Long-Term Effects of Transportation Investments. I’d like to recount another relatively unheralded conformity success story that would have been put in peril by the “fixes” proposed by AASHTO and the road lobby. In the mid-1990s, it became clear that Charlotte, North Carolina’s 20-year transportation plan would not stay within the pollution limits set in the region’s air quality plan. This helped prompt local officials to consider and adopt a new 2025 Transit Land/Use plan for Charlotte-Mecklenburg with bus rapid transit and light rail to support the five major transportation and development corridors. Funding for the plan is coming from a combination of local, state, and federal funding, including a half cent local sales tax approved in 1998 by Mecklenburg County voters to expand bus and rapid transit improvements. The requirement that the regional transportation conform 20 years into the future was a vital element in motivating this regional progress and action to curb pollution while expanding transportation choices.

Indeed, the proposal by the road lobby to weaken conformity by having it apply only to the first 10 years of the RTP or to the last horizon year in the SIP threaten to cause a renewed widespread failure of SIP control strategies. Such a proposal would allow major projects, such as new outer beltways, to advance far into planning, development, and construction before accounting more fully for their profound long-term impacts on regional growth and traffic patterns, and related air pollution. The unsophisticated regional traffic models currently in use by most MPOs are already too insensitive to induced traffic and land use effects. This proposal would exacerbate this problem. Some state DOTs complain that they must make up for pollution growth from traffic in the out years of their 20-year transportation plans, without help from SIP control strategies after the attainment year. While SIPs are not required to adopt control strategies beyond the attainment year until the attainment year is reached and requirements for a 10 year maintenance plan are triggered, at least a half dozen states have adopted SIP control strategies that extend beyond or begin after the attainment year, to help transportation agencies deal with this problem.

But this problem would not materialize if metropolitan areas adopted development policies that combine transit oriented development with the implementation of comprehensive regional transit programs. To eliminate the obligation of the transportation agencies to account for the long-range impats of the choices they make will force other emissions sources to bear the entire cost of future emission reductions.

Adoption of Emission Controls For Years After Attainment Deadline: Ready Solution to Emissions Growth Issues. For example, Denver was faced with a terrible particulate matter (PM) problem in the 1980s.  Agencies began taking action against wood burning.  There was progress made during this period, but PM was still measuring 185 µg/m³ compared to the NAAQS of 150 µg/m³.  Conformity made transportation planning and air quality agencies look at other sources of PM.  They started looking at street maintenance practices and implemented street sanding and sweeping strategies in the mid 1990s as a short-term emission reduction measure.  Strategies have been implemented beyond the initial strategies adopted as part of the Colorado SIP.  Within 2 years PM level dropped to 80 µg/m³.  Conformity spurred Denver to also build into regional plans enough maintenance plan measures to meet long-term health standards through 2015.  Conformity provided additional incentive for developing light rail in Denver since it would provide long-term help to mitigate the PM problem. Conformity also led to the development of Metro Vision 2020 which includes a commitment by metro area governments to limit growth to a 730-square mile area and has committed the region to transportation alternatives to support this goal. Denver also has a number of travel demand management (TDM) strategies in their long range plan such as a RideArrangers program and a telework program.  They do not take credit for TDM system management in the 2025 conformity finding, but they recognized the potential for reduction and retain them as a safety margin in meeting the emissions budget.

Transportation Control Measures (TCMs) are recognized in the Clean Air Act as a key part of attaining and maintaining healthful air quality. Some regions have used them extensively to help assure progress on clean air, including them in their plans even well beyond the attainment year of the SIP. For example, TCMs represent nearly 5 percent of total emission reductions in the San Joaquin  region of California.  The MPO projects that TCMs will deliver as much as 10 percent reduction in emissions by 2020.  In San Joaquin County rideshare, vanpool, and commuter rail provide significant emissions reductions, with a large percentage of San Joaquin County residents facing long distance commutes into the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Conformity: A Key to Coordination Between Transportation and Air Quality Agencies. Since the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, conformity has been a significant factor fostering local, regional, and national political support for cleaner fuels and vehicles and inspection and maintenance programs that have helped produce more timely progress towards attainment of healthful air quality. In that period, conformity has been the single greatest factor promoting interagency cooperation between transportation and air quality agencies at the state, local, and federal levels. Prior to 1990, transportation agencies paid no attention to the air quality consequences of transportation investments and plans. But in recent years, many metropolitan areas have adopted changes to their transportation plans and programs to help reduce traffic growth and emissions. Consideration of air quality impacts of investments has become a routine matter in many metropolitan areas where pollution problems are more severe. In most regions with serious air quality problems, officials and staff of air agencies and transportation agencies routinely meet and work together to help foster effective program administration that delivers progress on both mobility and air quality goals.

For example, Atlanta’s conformity problems led the Governor to create a new regional authority responsible for better planning and funding transportation, air quality, and growth management in Georgia’s non-attainment areas in an effort to fix a broken interagency cooperation process. The political impetus to accomplish this was obtained only once the transportation plan conformity finding expired. Had the road builder’s proposal for a once in five year conformity review been in force, informed observers can have little doubt this governance reform would have faced insurmountable obstacles.

And while road builders have often raised the spectre of transportation conformity causing major disruptions to transportation programs, there have been no such disruptions. Even in Atlanta, where the longest conformity lapse of consequence to date took place, the region lost no transportation funding but instead redirected several hundred million dollars of funds from sprawl-inducing, pollution-generating roads into projects that reduced pollution and into safety and system improvements that would not increase emissions.

Proposals to reduce the frequency and time horizon for conformity analysis and to allow use of obsolete assumptions for conformity will not make the system work better. Instead, by reducing incentives for agency coordination they will make the system less efficient.  Conformity works well when transportation and air quality experts work closely together on a routine basis, to plan and implement highway and transit investments and air pollution reduction strategies.  Conformity, and the current schedule of deadlines, gives these agencies a powerful incentive to work together.  The deadlines are also spaced just far enough apart to allow problems to be identified early – before they become crises that threaten air quality targets.

If the minimum frequency of conformity determinations for transportation plans is set at five years, and if the life of a short-term transportation funding program conformity finding is extended beyond the current two years, as some propose, this will likely be too far apart to detect and correct significant increases in emissions, especially in fast-growing metropolitan areas where vehicle miles traveled or the use of SUVs and light trucks grows, or to account in a timely way for important new data on housing, employment, and travel patterns produced periodically by the U.S. Census and other sources. 

Conformity Time Frames Must Be Keyed to Attainment Schedules. The ultimate purpose of conformity is to ensure that motor vehicle emissions are reduced to the levels required by the States in the SIPs to attain the national health standards. For the Clean Air Act to work, all emissions in an area must be reduced to the allowable levels established in the SIP by the deadline for attainment, and kept within those levels thereafter.

Updates of motor vehicle emissions must be coordinated with the Act’s attainment deadline. In areas where the deadline has been extended, emissions updates must also be coordinated with the milestones set for making interim progress toward attainment. If the motor vehicle emissions analyses required for conformity are not coordinated with important CAA deadlines, then there is no possibility for taking corrective action to reduce motor vehicle emissions to meet the emission-reduction targets that must be met to attain the national standards.

The key points when emissions targets must be met are the attainment date, and the 3-year interim milestones that are required to ensure progress toward attainment. All the intervals between these dates are three years, or less.

For example, the Act’s default schedule for nonattainment areas allows less than three years between the time the limit on motor vehicle emissions, i.e., the “motor vehicle emissions budget,” established in the SIP by the State, and the date when the area is required to attain the NAAQS. Unless EPA grants an extension, States are required to submit a SIP for each nonattainment area within three years after designation as nonattainment, and the SIP is required to provide for attainment within 5 years after designation. See CAA section 172(b). That means an area is only allowed two years from the time the motor vehicle emissions budget is established in the SIP until the attainment date when motor vehicle emissions must meet the budget.

If the conformity analysis is not required for 5 years, the conformity process would be disconnected from moving an area toward attainment of the NAAQS because the transportation agencies would not have to analyze emissions, or take corrective action to revise their transportation plans and TIPs, during the period when emissions must be reduced. This entire process would become irrelevant. Then the transportation agencies would come back five years from now and ask for repeal because conformity had become a paper exercise that no longer served any air quality purpose. To ensure that conformity continues to play a very important role in attaining the NAAQS, the schedule for conformity reviews must remain closely coordinated with statutory time frames for achieving emissions reductions.

           

Another set of important emissions reduction targets mandated by the Act are the 3-year milestones established for areas that have extended attainment dates. The Act allows EPA to set later attainment dates than the 5-year deadline required by section 172(b), but also requires interim reductions to achieve “reasonable further progress.” See sections 171(1), 172(c)(2) generally. Section 182(c)(2)(B) requires the adoption of measures to achieve at least 9% reductions in emissions every three years, and 182(g) requires the states to determine if actual emissions comply with the milestones at the end of each 3-year period.

           

To establish milestones for total emissions in an area, motor vehicle emissions must be determined for the area as well as stationary source emissions. To determine compliance at the end of a milestone, motor vehicle emissions must again be analyzed. The 3-year schedule for conformity was intended to ensure that the transportation agencies would be determining motor vehicle emissions around the time that milestone compliance demonstrations are required by the Act. If conformity is determined every 5 years, the emissions estimates will not be available for the states to make their compliance demonstrations. More importantly, the transportation agencies will have no obligation to take corrective action when a milestone is violated as a result of motor vehicle emissions that exceed the budgets in the SIP. Corrective action will not be required until a new conformity determination is required, which could be as much as four years later.

In short, the Act can’t work as intended if the conformity schedule is not coordinated with the key statutory deadlines for emissions reductions. Nor will the transportation agencies be as likely to receive cooperation from the state in the development of additional emissions to solve excess motor vehicle emissions. Under current law, sections 182(c)(5) and 182(g)(3), when motor vehicle emissions exceed SIP levels, the state is required to submit additional measures to reduce motor vehicle emissions back down to the levels used to demonstrate attainment in the SIP. If these State obligations are not coordinated with conformity determinations, the transportation agencies may not get timely help to prevent or resolve a conformity lapse.

           

Transportation agencies and others, such as the authors of the misguided January 2003 Resources for the Future (RFF) Report, Exhausting Options, who propose to relax the current conformity schedule do not discuss any of these coordination issues, or the potential adverse impacts on implementation of the Act if the schedules are no longer coordinated. They only consider the burdens on transportation agencies that result from the obligation to keep transportation emissions within the limits required by the States’ air quality plans. A balanced approach to these issues is required to ensure that the Act remains an effective tool for achieving a safe air supply for every American. The evidence in the RFF Report demonstrates that while significant efforts are required to keep motor vehicle emissions within bounds, the cooperative efforts of air and transportation agencies has produced effective solutions to these challenges. This kind of effective partnership was a goal of the Act, and is working. Emissions are being kept in bounds and the public is being well served.

Air Agency Performance Needs to Be Enhanced.  Rather than disconnecting the schedule for conformity determinations from the other schedules in the Act, the committee should require effective implementation of the corrective measures required of the state air agencies and EPA. EPA supplied this committee with responses to questions transmitted at the hearing last summer which indicate that, aside from California, almost all states with serious and severe ozone nonattainment areas have not submitted the milestone compliance demonstrations for 1999 required by section 182(g). Even more disturbing, EPA states in its response to Question 16: “We sent no correspondence addressing State failures to submit milestone compliance demonstrations.” EPA has been derelict in not taking action to require emissions updates needed to determine if the states are on track toward attainment, and to require corrective action if they are not.

           

Implementing this requirement of the Act would go a long way toward resolving the complaints from the transportation agencies that the states are not updating their SIPs to overcome shortfalls in achieving the emissions reductions needed for conformity, milestone compliance and attainment.

           

Effects of Conformity Fix on New NAAQS Attainment and on Use of 2000 Census Data. Let’s look at how the road builder’s package of conformity “deadline mismatch fixes” might affect the timeliness of considering new information, data, and control strategy requirements.

• Data from the 2000 Census journey-to-work survey is expected to become available in late 2003. Many MPOs continue to use inadequate transportation analysis models that were calibrated on travel data from the early or mid-1990s on 1990 Census data. Many MPOs are anticipating revisions to their travel forecasting models using 2000 Census data so they can better reflect current travel patterns and behavior. It is not uncommon for a major MPO model update to take 18-24 months, which means improved analysis methods and data to support conformity analysis may become available in late 2005. But a new conformity analysis of a 10-year regional transportation plan, based on a deficient travel model based on obsolete 1990 travel data, might be adopted in the fall of 2005 and, under the road lobby’s proposal, this analysis would continue to be valid until late 2010, after the expenditure of all the funds authorized in a new six-year transportation bill. In the meantime, major pollution-increasing transportation projects could proceed to be approved and funded for construction without any consideration of their emissions impacts, even if the revised travel data and model shows that the previous 1990-data  based model significantly underestimated emissions.

• The MOVES model, which will update the Mobile 6 emission factor model for mobile sources, is anticipated to be made available by EPA in the fall of 2005, and will become mandatory for use in SIPs and conformity analysis by 2007. A conformity analysis made in 2006 might rely on by then out-of-date Mobile 6 emission estimates, but would not need to be updated and replaced with a new regional plan conformity finding until 2011, six years after the issuance of the improved MOVES model, which is likely to lead to significant changes in the estimation of mobile source emissions. In the meantime, major pollution-increasing transportation projects could proceed to be approved and funded for construction without any consideration of their emissions impacts, even if the MOVES model shows that the Mobile 6 emission estimates were significantly underestimated.

• The 8-hour ozone designations to be made by EPA in April 2004 are not anticipated to require adoption of SIPs and motor vehicle emission budgets until 2007. The first conformity analysis will be required for newly designated areas 1 year after designation in 2005. The SIP for such areas will be required to provide for attainment by 2009 (see section 172(b)), but the next conformity demonstration would not be required until 2010. Thus, if the transportation plan is not adequate to reduce motor vehicle emissions to the level required for attainment, there would be no requirement to change the plan before the attainment deadline. As a result, the area would fail to attain and another SIP would be required. Thus, a new conformity finding made in early 2007 for a 10-year regional transportation plan might continue to be valid until 2012, allowing a network of new outer beltways to be approved for construction in 2010 or 2011 which would result in massive sprawl, traffic growth, and pollution without considering the impact on the region’s capacity to meet the deadline for attainment of the 8-hour ozone standard in 2012. The burden for emissions reduction required for attainment would fall on stationary and area sources, small businesses, and consumers, while giving the road construction industry a free pass to build new roads that cause substantially greater pollution at taxpayer expense. All the funds authorized in a new six-year transportation bill would be spent before considering the impacts of 8-hour ozone and PM-2.5 air quality standards on the road building industry, even if it was clear that the transportation plan approved in 2007 would make it impossible to attain the new NAAQS by an extended 2010 or 2012 deadline.

Helping Conformity Work Better.  Instead of the statutory “fixes” sought by the road lobby, schedule coordination should come from better interagency coordination and by ensuring that EPA carries out its obligations to review the adequacy of SIPs every three years, not through relaxing the frequency of accounting system checks and balances. 

If there is any statutory adjustment to conformity, it should assure that areas in a conformity lapse will be able to add new emission-reducing transportation projects to non-conforming short-term Transportation Improvement Programs (TIP) and long-range transportation plans, even if those projects were not previously contained in a conforming, fiscally-constrained TIP or plan. This is discussed in greater detail in Attachment 1 to this testimony, which is the response I offered to this Committee to follow-up questions after the July 30, 2002 hearing on transportation and air quality.

Promote Performance-Oriented Planning Systems. Better interagency coordination and air quality and transportation planning, and more timely project delivery, could also result from a requirement that all state and metropolitan areas develop and periodically update, with public involvement, coordinated transportation, natural resource protection, and growth management plans that consider alternative scenarios that considerably reduce traffic growth and enhance environmental performance through better system management. Such an activity would fit naturally within a new environmental management system for transportation agencies. Such a system should be supported by annual reports on the current and projected performance of transportation system management, investment, and proposed programs and plans, accounting for cumulative and secondary impacts on growth patterns, public health, greenhouse gas emissions, the achievement of natural resource planning goals for air, water, and habitat protection, and the provision of equal access to jobs and public facilities for all residents, including those without cars, without undue time and cost burdens. Short of a mandate for such activities, the Congress could offer a 100 percent federal funding share for these activities to encourage their voluntary adoption by states and MPOs.

Enforce Fiscal Constraint and Travel Modeling Requirements. Congress should also take steps to assure that EPA and FHWA will better comply with the Clean Air Act and transportation planning laws. Traffic and emission forecasts often rely on unsupportable assumptions that go unquestioned in the interagency review process. FHWA and EPA have failed to enforce key Clean Air Act and TEA-21 planning requirements that transportation plans and programs must be fiscally constrained and show the sources of funding that can be relied upon to implement and operate them. They have also failed to enforce regulatory requirements that the effects of congestion and new transportation capacity on travel time and cost appropriately be “fed-back” through the travel behavior analysis process and reflected in emission and traffic estimates.

Many MPOs continue to rely on unrealistic and questionable financial and technical forecasts as they determine the quality and performance of regional transportation systems in future years, including the level and price of transit services, the characteristics of motor vehicles being driven, and the amount of traffic and emissions. Poor accounting often leads to underestimation of motor vehicle emissions, making it more likely that State Implementation Plan (SIP) air pollution control strategies will again fail to deliver on the promise of healthful air for all Americans, more than 35 years after the first Clean Air Act. These problems were detailed in my testimony to the full Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on July 30, 2002.

The failure to reflect “induced” traffic often leads to underestimation of emissions. EPA and FHWA should assure that MPO traffic models used for conformity and project impact analysis appropriately reflect scientifically established relationships between travel time, travel cost, and traveler behavior, as reflected in numerous induced traffic studies. If MPO models do not reflect these relationships adequately, immediate corrective action should be required to assure honest accounting for traffic and emissions growth, with a timely investment in developing best practice analysis methods, regionally and nationally. These empirical relationships are well reviewed in a paper by two former EPA scientists, which I attach to this testimony by reference. Their survey of the literature found that in general for every 10 percent increase in road lane miles, it is typical to find a 3 to 11 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled, with 8 percent being a typical median value. As this paper notes,

Regional transportation planning agencies (or the states) generally maintain a system of models to forecast and evaluate the impact of transportation projects and plans. These models are usually deficient in accurately forecasting emissions (Transportation Research Board 1995) partially because they do not adequately account for both short and long run induced travel effects. This can be partially corrected by building feedback mechanisms into the models to at least account for some of the short run impacts (Johnson and Ceerla, 1996 a). Air quality regulations already require this step for conformity analysis, though actual practice has generally not kept up with the regulatory requirement.

 Some EPA regions are working with metropolitan planning organizations to improve the state of the practice in the modeling of transportation impacts, in particular the impacts of transportation on land development. Various modeling packages (none of which are ideal) are available to provide estimates of land development changes induced by transportation and accessibility changes. Improved modeling of these impacts would provide decision-makers with far better information on the short-run and long-run emission impact of alternative transportation plans and are critical for development of State Implementation Plans that will actually help bring a region into attainment of the NAAQS. Project selection criteria would also be vastly improved. [2]

Notable improvements to models used for transportation and air quality planning are being made in many regions, including Portland, Oregon and Sacramento, California. And other states are making progress.

Mr. Chairman, the Ohio Department of Transportation has launched a $6 million program to develop an integrated transportation and land use model. This work follows the example of Oregon, which has pioneered a similar state-wide model and which is sharing it with its metro area planning agencies. And the Columbus Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission is developing an activity-based travel micro-simulation model which offers the promise of bringing that area’s analysis tools up to best practice standards. These kinds of tools are vital to making performance-based planning a reality rather than an ill-supported pipe-dream.

Ensure the Integrity of SIP Attainment Strategies. EPA has issued guidance that encourages submission of Attainment SIPs that sound science suggests are unlikely to provide for the attainment of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) as they are required to do. Moreover, EPA has been finding such SIPs adequate and granting them full approval. Conformity to the emission budgets in these SIPs is unlikely to result in attainment by the statutory deadlines.

In January 2002, EPA released a new Mobile 6 emission factor model that metropolitan areas and states must use this year or next year to update their SIPs. In nearly all metropolitan areas, this improved model is showing that mobile source emissions of NOx and VOC are significantly higher than previously estimated for years prior to 2007. Thus, emissions will be higher than previously thought in the attainment deadline years that have been established for serious and severe 1-hour ozone nonattainment areas.  These substantial excess emissions in the attainment year are likely to cause the attainment SIPs to fail unless these emissions are offset by added emission reductions.

Before accepting new Mobile 6 SIPs as adequate for purposes of conformity, or as new attainment demonstrations, EPA should require states to either offset these increased emissions or to use a regional airshed model to evaluate whether their SIP strategies will be adequate to demonstrate attainment by the statutory deadlines. However, EPA has offered states guidance that would allow them to use scientifically unsupported “rollback” methods in lieu of new modeled demonstrations of attainment with the latest emission inventories and forecasts.

Congress should ask EPA in what areas and by how much emissions will increase in each SIP milestone and attainment year using Mobile 6, compared to the emissions estimated using the older Mobile 5 model, and ask EPA or the states to evaluate with regional airshed models the effect these increased emissions will have on forecast ozone levels in various attainment years. Congress should ask EPA to explain the science behind its assumption of a linear relationship between NOx and VOC emissions and ozone levels that is at the heart of the EPA weight-of-evidence and rollback methods for appraising the adequacy of attainment SIPs, in light of a National Academy of Sciences study finding that:

Nonlinearities in the response of ozone concentrations to emission changes generally result in smaller ozone reductions than might be expected or desired from reducing emissions. For example, by the year 2000, mobile sources in Los Angeles are expected to account for about 30% of total VOC emissions. Airshed model calculations indicate that removing this fraction of VOCs would decrease peak ozone 16% from 270 to 230 ppb for the particular set of episode conditions studied (Russell et al., 1989)…

Several recent studies have shown that ozone in rural areas of the eastern United States is limited by the availability of NOx rather than hydrocarbons, and that reductions in NOx probably will be necessary to reduce rural ozone values. [3]  

Assure Progress in Dealing With Local Health Impacts of Transportation Projects

Recent scientific research shows that there are many adverse local health impacts experienced by those who live close to major highways carrying large volumes of traffic, including high cancer risk and multiple adverse health effects related to the exposure to small particle air toxics. While diesel exhaust is implicated as the largest contributor to these toxic exposures, all motor vehicles make a contribution.  The South Coast Air Quality Management District’s Multiple Air Toxics Exposure Study (MATES-II), a Colorado study of leukemia risk factors, and a California Air Resources Board study of the Barrio Logan in San Diego have all found that mobile sources contribute as much as 90 percent to the excess cancer risk people experience due to exposure to hazardous air pollutants. At a January 2003 panel of the Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington, DC, several US DOT and EPA officials agreed that this was a serious problem that both agencies are working to develop new policies to address it. Panelists agreed that hot spot exposures near major roads and bus terminals represent a significant health threat that warrants further study.

However, the Federal Highway Administration has thus far resisted calls to evaluate and take steps to mitigate or avoid these health effects in relation to major highway expansion environmental review studies, as required by law. This issue is currently in litigation in relation to the US-95 highway widening project in Las Vegas, Nevada, and has been raised in transportation plan and project reviews in several other regions.

Congress should assure timely EPA action to regulate air toxics and assure that FHWA accounts for and avoids or mitigates the adverse health impacts of exposure of communities to hazardous air pollutants caused by expansion of major highways. Appendix 1 provides more information on this subject.

Assuring Adequate Resources for the CMAQ Program

The Congestion Mitigation Air Quality Program (CMAQ), which helps local communities and states reduce traffic and transportation pollution, should be reauthorized at a substantially higher level, recognizing the much larger population living in non-attainment areas and exposed to hazardous air pollutants. CMAQ funds should be targeted to innovative strategies that produce lasting traffic and pollution reduction, rather than to short-term one-time emission reduction strategies or traffic flow improvements,

Health studies have shown air pollution is more widespread and hazardous at lower levels than previously thought, with major health threats from fine particulate matter and air toxics.

There is widespread consensus that CMAQ funds should be made available to help the hundreds of additional counties that face new requirements to address their previously unrecognized air quality problems. We join in that consensus. There is also wide support for allowing CMAQ funds to be used to help reduce emissions and exposures to air toxics. We agree with this as well. But this means that CMAQ funding must rise by about half over current levels in the next transportation authorization just to sustain the current level of effort in non-attainment areas on a per capita per pollutant basis.

CMAQ is the key source of transportation funding dedicated to improving transportation related air quality. Failure to boost CMAQ funding levels is likely to hamper the ability of existing non-attainment areas to sustain ongoing pollution-reduction transportation investments or limit funds available to newly designated non-attainment areas that need similar access to resources.

TEA-21’s CMAQ obligation formula currently recognizes only the population living in ozone and carbon monoxide non-attainment areas, even though funds can be spent on project that help reduce particulate matter. In 1999, nearly 54 million people live in areas that do not meet the 1-hour ozone standard. According to the latest available monitoring data from EPA, more than double this number - 123 million people - live in the 333 counties violating the new 8-hour ozone standard. Some 82 million live in 173 counties that violate the PM fine National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), with some overlap with ozone non-attainment areas. If contiguous counties that make up metropolitan areas are included, as is usual in designating non-attainment areas, these numbers will grow significantly. Additional millions live in areas that violate the CO standards.

The Federal Highway Administration counts 172 million people living in 1-hour ozone and CO non-attainment or maintenance areas and has used this figure for FY03 CMAQ apportionments to states. Initial estimates suggest that this apportionment population number will increase by about one-fourth when non-attainment area designations are made under the new 8-hour ozone and fine particulate NAAQS in 2004 and 2005. But this increased apportionment estimate does not include the population living in areas affected by air toxics that are outside of what will likely be designated as non-attainment areas under the new NAAQS, nor does it take into account the increased scope of air pollution control efforts that will be needed by existing non-attainment areas to attain the new 8-hour ozone and PM fine air quality standards.

Broad consensus exists that CMAQ eligibility should be expanded to help counties, cities, and states deal with fine particulates and air toxics in addition to ozone and CO. Reauthorization apportionments should recognize the expanded scope of funding needs by proportionate expansion of CMAQ funding based on both population and the degree of pollution remediation needed. Otherwise existing non-attainment areas will face cut-backs in funds for air pollution reduction programs while being asked to take additional steps to further cut pollution to protect public health.

If the eligibility of the CMAQ program is expanded to include air toxics and fine particulates and all newly designated non-attainment areas without cutting the per capita allocation of CMAQ funds to existing non-attainment areas, an increase of at least 50 percent in CMAQ funding will be needed in TEA-3. This will require growing the program from its FY02 program obligation level [4] of $1.435 billion in FY03 to an average of $2.15 billion a year over the upcoming authorization period.

Attachment 1:

Response to Questions for the Record Concerning Transportation and Air Quality

Michael Replogle, Transportation Director

Environmental Defense, Washington, DC

September 17, 2002

Questions from Senator Jeffords:

1. In general would you agree that conformity is spurring investments in transportation strategies and technologies that reduce air pollution and create better interagency cooperation?

Yes. Since the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, conformity has been a significant factor fostering local, regional, and national political support for cleaner fuels and vehicles and inspection and maintenance programs that have helped produce more timely progress towards attainment of healthful air quality. In that period, conformity has been the single greatest factor promoting interagency cooperation between transportation and air quality agencies at the state, local, and federal levels. Prior to 1990, transportation agencies paid no attention to the air quality consequences of transportation investments and plans. But in recent years, many metropolitan areas have adopted changes to their transportation plans and programs to help reduce traffic growth and emissions. Consideration of air quality impacts of investments has become a routine matter in many metropolitan areas where pollution problems are more severe. In most regions with serious air quality problems, officials and staff of air agencies and transportation agencies routinely meet and work together to help foster effective program administration that delivers progress on both mobility and air quality goals.

Atlanta’s conformity problems led the Governor to create a new regional authority responsible for better planning and funding transportation, air quality, and growth management in Georgia’s non-attainment areas in an effort to fix a broken interagency cooperation process. While road builders have often raised the spectre of transportation conformity causing major disruptions to transportation programs, there have been no such disruptions. Even in Atlanta, where the longest conformity lapse of consequence to date took place, the region lost no transportation funding but instead redirected several hundred million dollars of funds from sprawl-inducing, pollution-generating roads into projects that would reduce pollution and into safety and system improvements that would not increase emissions.

After conformity analysis led Charlotte, North Carolina, to see that its transportation plan would lead to emission problems 20 years in the future, local officials developed, considered, and adopted a new 2025 Transit Land/Use plan for Charlotte-Mecklenburg with a new rapid transit system to support the five major transportation and development corridors identified in the 1994 Centers and Corridors Plan as well as connections to key development hubs between these corridors.  The plan seeks to concentrate jobs around stations, provide residential multi-family housing at stations, and develop rail and bus rapid transit. Capital costs, plus operation, maintenance and other expenditures will cost $1.085 billion over 25 years and quantifiable benefits such as travel time savings and vehicle operating cost savings total $72 million a year, generating a benefit cost ratio of 1.6.   There are also numerous benefits of the plan that are not quantifiable such as improved access to jobs and revitalization of the core center. Funding for the plan will come from a combination of local, state, and federal funding.  Mecklenburg County Voters approved a half-cent local sales tax in 1998 to fund expansion of bus service and rapid transit improvements in major corridors. The requirement that the RTP conform 20 years into the future was a vital element in motivating this regional progress and action. Limiting conformity determinations to a 10-year time horizon – as some propose - might reduce the incentive for other regions to take the kind of leadership initiatives seen in Charlotte.

Conformity helped Denver develop cost-effective strategies to reduce particulate matter (PM) problems. Agencies began taking action against wood burning in the 1980s, but PM was still measuring 185 µg/m³ compared to the NAAQS of 150 µg/m³.  Conformity made transportation planning and air quality agencies look at other sources of PM.  They found that street sanding and sweeping strategies was a very effective measure and implemented controls beyond what was federally mandated, reducing PM levels to 80 µg/m³.  Conformity also provided an incentive for developing light rail in Denver and the Metro Vision 2020 Plan, which seeks to limit growth to a 700 square mile area with supportive transportation strategies. Denver also has a number of travel demand management (TDM) strategies in their long-range plan such as a Ride Arrangers program and a telework program.  While Denver does not take credit for TDM system management in the 2025 conformity finding, the region recognizes TDM emission benefits as a safety margin in meeting their emissions budget.

To deal with emissions problems recognized through the conformity process, many other regions have adopted transportation control measures (TCMs). These represent nearly 5 percent of total emission reductions, for example, in the San Joaquin region of California.  The San Joaquin Council of Governments projects that TCMs, including rideshare, vanpool, and commuter rail, will deliver as much as a 10 percent reduction in emissions by 2020. 

Conformity has also been valuable in helping to win adoption of new short-term emission reduction strategies in the metropolitan Washington, DC region. In July 2001, the DC metropolitan planning organization updated its modeling assumptions to reflect the growing use of sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and light trucks, which produce more pollution per mile driven than standard cars. As a result, they observed that that they could no longer add new road projects to their transportation improvement program (TIP) and regional transportation plan (RTP) and still conform with the NOx motor vehicle emission budget in their adopted SIP. Officials formed a task force to consider reopening the SIP to allow for more motor vehicle pollution by findin