Obama Administration Proposes Greenhouse Gas Measurements for Transportation Projects

The Obama Administration on April 22 proposed to require recipients of federal transportation dollars -- mostly states, cities, and metropolitan planning areas -- to track transportation-related emissions and set goals for cutting them. Although it would not establish targets or penalties, the proposal is designed to make state and regional infrastructure planners account for climate impacts to encourage "smarter" transportation planning strategies, such as mass transit and electric vehicles, while discouraging sprawl-inducing exurban roads projects.
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The Obama Administration on April 22 proposed new performance measures that recipients of federal transportation dollars -- mostly states, cities, and metropolitan planning areas -- will use to weigh progress in addressing traffic congestion, including a first-ever proposal to measure greenhouse gas emissions.

The proposal is designed to make state and regional infrastructure planners account for climate impacts to encourage "smarter" transportation planning strategies, such as mass transit and electric vehicles, while discouraging sprawl-inducing exurban road projects.

The proposal would require states to "evaluate and report more effectively and consistently on transportation system performance, including travel time reliability, delay hour, peak-hour congestion, freight movement and on-road mobile source emissions." 

The potential establishment of a performance measure for greenhouse gas emissions caught many in the transportation community by surprise, generating a flurry of criticism from groups who say it goes beyond the scope of the Congressional mandate in MAP-21, the highway bill passed in 2012, and will hinder transportation projects.  

The rule would not prescribe or prohibit specific projects, but many view this type of environmental provision as discouraging projects to generate new and wider roads.  The American Road & Transportation Builders Association, for example, warned that a mandate for agencies to set climate targets could be used as a pretext to discourage highway construction at a time when American desperately needs better infrastructure.
 
Several states and cities, including California, Oregon, Massachusetts, Seattle, the Twin Cities, and Chicago, already take carbon pollution into account when developing transportation plans.

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