American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials

Representatives Push to Include Environmental
Performance Measures in Authorization Bill

By LUCAS WALL
AASHTO Journal
June 12, 2009

With the prospect that House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee leaders will release their blueprint for the next six-year surface transportation authorization legislation as soon as next week, numerous members are stepping up their efforts to ensure that strict environmental protection provisions are included in the draft language.

A group of 61 House Democrats wrote the T&I Committee leadership last week to urge them to address energy security and climate change in the authorization bill, which could top 800 pages.

"Energy security and climate change are inextricably linked with transportation," according to the letter dated June 3. "We cannot solve either problem without addressing them in transportation policy."

The letter contends that funding public transportation and integrating transportation into community planning – two of President Barack Obama's policy goals – could reduce harmful emissions.

Three of the letter's signers introduced legislation (HR 2724) June 4 that would set six broad goals for the transportation sector and 10 performance targets to measure progress toward achieving those targets. Reps. Rush Holt, D-IN, Russ Carnahan, D-MO, and Jay Inslee, D-WA, proposed the measure titled the "National Transportation Objectives Act." They seek to have this bill folded into the greater authorization legislation.

The six goals would be in the areas of energy efficiency and security, environmental protection, economic competitiveness, safety and public health, system conditions and connectivity, and equal access for urban and rural areas.

To reach those goals, the bill proposes the following 10 performance targets:

  1. Reduce vehicle miles traveled 16 percent per capita over the next 20 years
  2. Triple the use of walking, biking, and public transportation over the next 20 years
  3. Lower transportation-generated carbon dioxide levels by 40 percent over the next 20 years
  4. Reduce traffic delays by 10 percent over the next 20 years
  5. Boost rail and intermodal freight transportation 20 percent over the next 20 years
  6. Ensure that no one is exposed to at-risk levels of air pollution
  7. Reduce traffic crashes 50 percent to improve public safety and lower congestion costs
  8. Increase by 20 percent the share of major highway, transit, bicycling, and pedestrian infrastructure in a good state of repair
  9. Lower the average household's housing and transportation costs 25 percent
  10. Increase by half the number of essential destinations accessible by public transportation within 30 minutes or by walking within 15 minutes for low-income residents, senior citizens, and the disabled

Some transportation advocacy groups are concerned about including potentially unrealistic environmental goals in the authorization measure and other legislation. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials has joined other organizations in opposing language in the House climate-change bill that would shift transportation planning authority from the U.S. Department of Transportation to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The association has rejected calls to reduce the total number of vehicle miles traveled over the coming decades as unreasonable in the face of a growing population and an economy that is expected to rebound. AASHTO has instead examined in its recent "Bottom Line" report scenarios curtailing the annual growth in vehicle miles traveled to 1.0 to 1.4 percent. It has also supported aggressive strategies for decarbonizing the vehicle fleet, which would result in a reduction in the amount of greenhouse-gas emissions caused by the transportation sector.

AASHTO has been proactively working on draft metrics that state transportation departments could use to measure the success of their performance. The Standing Committee on Performance Management, chaired by Missouri Transportation Director Pete Rahn, has seven task forces studying the areas of safety, preservation, congestion, system operations, environment, freight movement, and planning and programming.

The "Bottom Line" report is available at bottomline.transportation.org. AASHTO's authorization policy positions on climate change are available at tinyurl.com/AASHTO-climatechange.

Lucas Wall can be reached at lwall@aashto.org or 202-624-3626