Americans favor transportation policies that would address climate change, such as increased transit and bike lanes, according to a new poll. Photo: Green Chip Stocks

A representative survey of 1,010 adults found that 71 percent think that global warming should be a “very high,” “high” or “medium priority” for the president and Congress. Americans overwhelmingly support policy changes that would help address the issue, the poll found. Participants favored developing clean energy sources by a more than 9-to-1 ratio.

“We find very strong bipartisan support for a variety of climate and energy policies in this country,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change. “It runs contrary to what you might expect looking at, for instance, the current make up of Congress and the Republican candidates for president.”

Transportation and planning policies to avert global warming also enjoyed wide approval among survey participants: 77 percent said they support adding bike lanes to roads, and 80 percent said they support expanding public transportation service.

This was true even among self-identifying Republicans. Some 74 percent of Republican respondents said they supported bike lanes and 80 percent signaled their support for increased public transit availability.

Majorities also supported expanding mixed-use zoning, reducing sprawl and promoting energy efficient apartments over single-family homes.

Republicans were more evenly split on issues of zoning and sprawl; 59 percent said they opposed zoning for mixed-uses in order to reduce the need for a car. However, Republicans were split 50-50 on using zoning to reduce sprawl and commute times.

While Americans were generally supportive of climate change policy fixes, their commitment did not go as far when their wallets entered the equation. For example, poll respondents generally favored expanding public transit options. But when asked if they would be willing to support a 10 cent fee per gallon of gas to support transit, they were overwhelmingly opposed, Leiserowitz said. Americans are also diametrically opposed to tax increases of all types. Those polled rejected the idea of a carbon tax, even if the revenues would be returned in the form of income tax reductions.

But that doesn’t mean Americans are entirely unwilling to bear some costs to support clean energy, Leiserowitz said. For example, when asked if they would support a a 20 percent renewable energy requirement for utility companies, Americans sign on, even if they are told such a regulation would cost them an additional $100 annually in energy costs.

“There is some element of wishful thinking here.” Leiserowitz said. “It’s not that they’re just against paying more; people support increased energy costs. For whatever reason there’s a taboo around paying at the gas pump that people just don’t like. They also don’t like the word ‘tax.’”

Another interesting finding was that public prioritization of federal action on global warming has been declining since 2008, when Yale began its poll. That is mainly due to the public’s increased concern about the economy, Leiserowtz said.

“People are much more worried about losing their job or their house,” he said. “The threat of climate change just can’t compare.”

Image: SFMTA

San Francisco could be headed on a course toward transportation sustainability, granted it’s the politically popular thing to do.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) recently released its 2011 Draft Climate Action Strategy [pdf], laying out a progressive blueprint for how the city should tackle reducing its greenhouse gas emissions from one of their leading sources: driving.

“The Climate Action Strategy is a citywide plan, but since the SFMTA is responsible for the streets, arguably we have the biggest part in all of this,” said SFMTA Director Cheryl Brinkman.

Transportation makes up 36 percent of the city’s emissions, says the report, and 89 percent of that is from private automobiles. The SFMTA’s goal is to cut transportation emissions to half of 1990 levels by 2035 by reducing the current share of driving in half to a mode split of 30 percent of trips by car, 30 percent by transit, and 40 percent by bicycling and walking.

From parking regulations to transit-oriented development to complete streets, the plan recommends the most effective measures to take and perhaps most importantly, the political processes required to fund and implement them. But while the SFMTA staff and directors may seem mostly on board, support from other agencies will be crucial to cause a major shift in the city’s transportation and land use policies.

“We need to hold the line on our transit-first policy,” said Timothy Papandreou, SFMTA Deputy Director of Transportation Planning for the Sustainable Streets Division. “It’s something that we’ll continue to be challenged on, but that’s really our major policy move.”

The most politically challenging strategies, said Brinkman, include reallocating street space to dedicated transit and bicycle lanes as well as implementing the parking and congestion pricing policies that will be the key to funding projects.

“We know what it takes to make buses run efficiently,” she said. “But we can’t just snap our fingers and make public transportation this amazing option when we’ve spent the past fifty years making private automobiles this amazing option.”

“We’re going to need the support of the supervisors and the Mayor,” said Brinkman, who is optimistic the support is there. ”We also need the support of the citizens, which I think we have. When I look at the numbers of households that own one car, or less, it’s big.”

According to the report, 30.3 percent of households in the city don’t own cars while another 40.8 percent own only one car. The average automobile trip within the city is 2.8 miles, compared to 2.3 miles for bicycles, and the most driving is shown to come from residences and employers in areas with low density, separated uses and streets that most heavily favor automobile speed.

Projected Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) for residences and employers. Image: SFMTA

A promising step already launched last week is SFpark, a first-of-its-kind venture to collect data on parking demand and price it accurately. The program is expected to help reduce car congestion from drivers circling for parking, clearing up the streets for bicycles and transit and improving safety for pedestrians.

Coupled with enforcing new and existing ordinances against under-priced parking in the city’s garages, the plan names demand pricing as a crucial component for providing more revenue to improve walking, cycling and Muni, as well as providing less incentive to drive.

As one early step, Brinkman highlighted the need to eliminate “early bird” discounts given to drivers by private parking garages during the morning rush hour. “These garages have a pricing strategy that is encouraging people to drive right when it’s most important that our buses move efficiently,” she said.

Livable City Director Tom Radulovich praised the plan’s progressive view on city planning, though he says seeing it through will require better coordination between the current “three headed creature” of city planning agencies: the SF Planning Department, the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and the SF Redevelopment Agency.

“It’s great to see land use questions and parking issues called out in this report, I think for the first time, as climate reduction strategies,” said Radulovich, praising recommendations such as eliminating minimum parking requirements, enforcing employer benefits to non-driving commuters, pursuing better Muni fleet maintenance and expansion, and implementing the Transit Effectiveness Project.

Absent from the report, however, are maximum parking limits in new developments and a plan for dedicated bus lanes, he noted. Brinkman also pointed to bike sharing systems as a strong strategy that should be included.

The SFMTA is currently meeting its goals of reducing emissions from Muni vehicles, notes the plan, but automobiles remain the biggest hurdle. However, car owners in the city could start paying their fair share to fund the Climate Action Strategy.

A mitigation impact fee of $50 to $150 per car would raise $24 million to $72 million a year, says the report, as well as an off-street commercial parking fee of $100 to $300 per stall of free parking, which would raise $6 million to $17 million anually. The plan says SFMTA staff should evaluate the fees and report to the agency’s board before June 30, 2012.

Even if the economic justification for such measures is apparent to some advocates and city officials, educating the public to move the political process forward will be a major challenge.

“Change is really difficult, and a few people can slow things down by being very upset,” said Brinkman. ”Whether or not the involved public process is something you love or hate, it’s the reality of San Francisco. People aren’t stupid, they need to see why it’s going to work and how it’s going to work.”

Does the
Senate climate bill include a user fee? That depends on how the term is
defined. (Photo: Pop
and Politics)

The central complaint raised by
mainstream transport players boils down to, as American Association of
State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) executive director
John Horsley put it in
a statement, the Senate bill’s "preemption" of user-fee revenue
that historically has gone into the nation’s dwindling highway trust
fund.

"Congress can ill-afford to consider any legislation that" siphons
off money from the trust fund, which has required more than $30 billion
in replenishment from the general Treasury over the past 18 months,
Horsley said.

Stephen Sandherr, chief of the Associated General Contractors — a
backer of the
Senate effort to bar the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from
regulating greenhouse gas emissions in the absence of congressional
action — echoed that sentiment in his
own statement on the upper-chamber climate proposal.

"[B]y taking funds raised through the proposal’s new transportation
fees
and committing all but a small percentage to unrelated spending, the
legislation leaves our aging and inefficient roads, airways and transit
systems vastly underfunded," Sandherr said.

But does the Senate climate bill impose a user fee on
transportation fuel consumers? The text of the measure specifically
requires "each refined [fuel] product provider" to purchase emissions
permits from the EPA on a quarterly basis at a fixed price, with no
permit trading allowed. Horsley’s depiction of those charges as a "user
fee" relies on the considerable likelihood that oil companies and
refiners would pass on the cost of those emissions permits to consumers
in the form of higher gas prices.

In the meantime, how much of the revenue raised by the bill’s new
fuel permits would infrastructure receive?

The American Road and Transportation Builders Association estimated
last week that the Senate plan would raise $20 billion from the new
charges on oil producers and refiners, with about $6.25 billion of that
divided into equal parts — one-third for the highway trust fund,
one-third for competitive federal grants similar to the TIGER
program, and one-third for local land use projects, in the style of
the so-called "CLEAN
TEA" proposal.

Proponents of clean energy and environmental laws designed to reduce greenhouse gases had best not take the challenge to California's AB 32 too lightly. Backers of a ballot initiative that would "delay" implementation of the law until the state's unemployment level is below 5.5 percent for a full year look to have gathered enough signatures to put the measure to a vote this November. The coalition collecting signatures for the ballot measure is submitting its signature list for certification to state elections officials and The Sacramento Bee quotes one of the campaign's leaders as exclaiming, "We're headed to the ballot!" 

The affront to AB 32 is more than just a handful of out-of-state oil companies (like Texas-based oil firms Tesoro and Valero) and conservative activist organizations. Both major Republican candidates for Governor support some sort of delay for the legislation. In addition, the populist rhetoric fueling the campaign pitting over-reaching government against small business owners who are being strangled by over-regulation seems tailor made for a tea-party rally. Add to that the alarmist figures coming from the California Small Business Roundtable, which estimates that implementation of A.B. 32 will cost small businesses in California about $50,000 annually and would destroy more than one million California jobs and it wouldn't be surprising if more voters are swayed by the campaign.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's reputation as a "Green" governor rests on this legislation's implementation, released a strong statement slamming the backers of the initiative:

The effort to suspend AB 32 is the work of greedy oil companies who want to keep polluting in our state and making profits. AB 32 will add jobs, create savings in energy costs and increase personal incomes. In fact, the highest job creation California is seeing right now is in our green economy. When I ran for Governor, I said if special interests tried to push me around, I would push back. That's exactly what I will do to these greedy oil companies.

Critics of the delay initiative also say that the proponents know that the unemployment rate is unlikely to dip to that level anytime soon and the ballot measure is just a clever way of defeating the legislation. As you can see by the chart below, the state unemployment level is almost triple that number, and hasn't been at 5.5 percent in years. 

Supporters of AB 32 should also emphasize the jobs angle, but show how the greenhouse gas law improves the economy. The Bee also featured a story this weekend about one of the many green businesses that are based in California because the state's green policies guarantees a market over the next couple of years. The illustrates how fierce the competition is for these businesses between states. While California has experienced a Green Jobs boom in recent years, resulting in 159,000 new jobs, states such as Ohio are jockeying to have those jobs move out of the Golden State.

The several dozen transportation industry groups that raised
questions about where the upcoming Senate climate change bill would
send proceeds from its new "linked fee" on carbon fuels can stop
worrying — because it looks like the legislation won’t contain any new
tax on motor fuels.

Sen. John
Kerry (D-MA) (Photo: Getty)

As Sen. John Kerry (MA), the climate bill’s chief Democratic
author, told
Reuters late yesterday:

"There is not even a linked fee. There’s not a tax,
there’s nothing similar."

Pressed
for clarification about the fee, Kerry then said, "certainly not the
way it was described previously, nothing like that." The Massachusetts
Democrat refused to elaborate.

Kerry was more direct in a response to the
Houston Chronicle, stating: “The gas tax is 18.4 cents today, and
it’ll be that when this bill is passed.”  

His comments do not rule out the possibility of some charge on
carbon-based fuels remaining in the bill, but they cast significant
doubt on the scenario that Washington transportation watchers had feared
most: extra fees that oil companies would pass on through higher costs
at the pump, amounting to a de facto gas tax hike without guaranteed
revenue for road and transit projects.

The oil and gas industry had responded favorably to the prospect of
a predictable fee they could market as a response to climate change,
effectively shifting any negative consumer response onto Congress rather
than fuel producers. American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard
predicted
last month that a carbon charge would "soften the reaction" among
his member firms to a national cap on greenhouse gases.

The challenge of addressing transportation emissions, which account
for about one-third of the nation’s total output, could end up pushing
the release of the Senate climate bill beyond its original Monday
deadline. Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC), the measure’s sole GOP backer so
far, told
CongressDaily that Monday remains "the hope" but is not set in
stone.

Image: MTC

The report rightly points to endemic land-use and auto-centric development problems in the Bay Area that make transit less attractive for many than driving: "The Bay Area's transit system operates under the difficult combination of unpredictable revenue sources and unsustainable cost structure on the one hand, and underpriced auto alternatives and insufficiently transit-supportive land uses on the other."

One of the more troubling aspects of the report, as KALW's Nathanael Johnson wrote on the Bay Area Transit blog, is that the picture is only going to get worse without a significant change in course. Operators have already cut service and raised fares, but new capital costs will add additional burden and farebox recovery rates aren't going up.

The report also contends that transit operators have fallen short in performance. Since 1997, after adjusting for inflation, transit costs in the Bay Area have increased by 52 percent, while revenue hours of service increased by only 16 percent and ridership increased by only 7 percent.

"That is a terrible return on our regions' transit investment and it should cause us to think long and hard before committing future funds to such a low-yield strategy," the report concludes.

The report compares Bay Area transit systems to a patient with chronic illness, and the most recent two-year difficulties as a spike in the fever: "When the fever passes, this patient will not be restored to good health. Unless fundamental changes are made, the underlying, chronic conditions will reappear, and all energies will be channeled into the struggle to cope, with no real hope of thriving."

While the report is negative and cautionary, the MTC states rightly that while the current system is unsustainable, it is not "on a path of irreversible decline" and transit is vital to the health of the region's economy.

Furthermore, the growing imperative to combat climate change, according to the report, "means that our growing population must learn to drive less -- and to take transit more often."

"Both have pointed the way to a more rational system," according to the report.

Though the report's authors acknowledge they "have more questions than answers as to how the region's transit system can be repositioned to achieve higher levels of efficiency and service effectiveness," they make repeated reference to a solution that has come up numerous times at recent MTC meetings: Consolidate some of the 28 transit agencies that currently operate in the Bay Area with the goal of attaining efficiencies and reducing redundant service.

Without a transition from the current unsustainable course of action, the report says, "we will fall short of the resources our regional transit system needs by a cool $1 billion a year over the next quarter-century."

Sen.
Lindsey Graham (R-SC) joined the White House in denying that his
forthcoming climate bill would feature a "gas tax." (Photo: MSNBC)

But
it looks like there’s no need to worry. The Obama administration
yesterday gave a statement to the Wall
Street Journal that sought to lock down any attempt to associate
the Senate climate plan with higher fuel charges: “The Senators don’t
support a gas tax, and neither does the White House."

A spokesman for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the climate proposal’s
sole GOP sponsor, also denied that the bill would include a gas tax. The
bulk of the back-and-forth is a semantic battle that reflects how
politically poisonous a gas tax increase remains for both parties in
Washington.

But it may also suggest that Graham and his co-authors are moving
away from the carbon fee they had originally conceived. Graham described
the idea to
The Hill last month as "an assessment on what they do in the carbon
world. They are creating a carbon product, they are going to pay a
fee." The cost of such a fee, he added at the time, would be partially
passed on to customers at the pump.

On the whole, the fact that the White House is already denying the
existence of a gas tax more than a week before the climate bill is set
to emerge may not bode well for its future (not to mention that of the still-stalled
six-year transportation legislation).

"So Much For Kerry-Graham-Lieberman Global Warming Gas Tax?" the
press office of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) tweeted.

(Photo: Pop and Politics)

Five of the Harvard team's six outcomes assumed a future carbon price of $30 per ton (higher than the price envisioned in the House-passed climate bill) that rises over time, with other tweaks added to the system, including continued government tax credits for hybrid and electric vehicles, an immediate 50-cent hike in the gas tax, and more increases in auto fuel-efficiency standards.

The researchers concluded that taxpayer-funded clean-vehicle credits "are expensive and not particularly effective at reducing CO2 emissions, at least in the near term." In order to trim transportation's 30-percent contribution to total U.S. emissions, the Harvard team recommended an all-of-the-above approach:

[O]ptions now being discussed in Congress cannot by themselves achieve the significant reductions in the transportation sector needed to meet the Obama administration’s targets for total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. The most effective policy for reducing CO2 emissions and oil imports from transportation is to spur the development and sale of more efficient vehicles with strict efficiency standards while increasing the cost of driving with strong fuel taxes. Without addressing both, CO2 emissions from the U.S. transportation sector will continue to grow.

Of course, higher gas taxes are as anathema to politicians as clean-car subsidies are alluring -- which is leaving green groups wary of a bipartisan Senate proposal to include a new motor-fuel fee in climate legislation. The oil industry has said it prefers a new carbon tax on fuel because companies can more easily pass on the costs to consumers, attributing the resulting gas-price hikes to congressional climate action.

From the Harvard researchers' perspective, however, expensive fuel is merely a means to an end.

Air pollution over the Inland Empire. Photo: DanDC/Flickr

(Editor's note: This is the first of two stories by Streetsblog LA Editor Damien Newton on efforts to delay implementation of California's groundbreaking climate legislation.)

In 2006, the California Legislature passed, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed, Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), a landmark law that requires the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. 

The legislation was the first of its kind in the United States and set a precedent numerous states have followed subsequently. For transportation reformers and environmentalists, AB 32 is important legislation that could still be a "game changer" in the way California thinks about transportation.

Thanks to a coalition of pro-business Republicans and the oil industry, however, there is a strong push to place a measure on this fall’s ballot to postpone the implementation of AB 32 objectives. Critics of the climate bill cite the current economic crisis as a valid reason to delay trying to clean California’s air. Assuming opponents of AB 32 can gather a minimum of 433,971 valid signatures to qualify their measure for the November ballot, voters will be asked to vote to "delay" the implementation of AB 32 until the state unemployment level dips below 5.5%.

While former Gubernatorial candidate and current Congressman Tom McClintock and Assemblyman Dan Logue, the figureheads in the anti-AB 32 campaign, aren’t members of the oil lobby, a recent New York Times article revealed that oil giants Tesoro and Valero have funded the anti-AB 32 measure on the ballot. Neither firm will either confirm or deny their involvement.

Steven Maviglio, of Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs took exception to the idea that AB 32 is bad for the economy, saying the new ballot measure would be the culprit in damaging the bottom line, particularly in the clean technology field. "This initiative would destroy the clean energy economy," he said. "There's more than $5 billion in venture capital, 3,000 businesses and 45,000 people employed in Clean Tech. This would take a wrecking ball to the only flourishing part of the economy."

Mavigilio also pointed out that delaying or overturning AB 32 would be bad for supporters of alternative transportation. "AB 32 is the catalyst for a lot of smart growth planning and anti-pollution efforts. This could derail any effort to have a smarter, less polluting transportation system."

Environmentalists concerned about the push-back from the oil industry were joined by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who commented last week on the ballot initiative via press release:

We are currently in the midst of a global climate change crisis that is not only a threat to our environment, but our economic and job markets as well.  Here in California, we have always been leaders and activists and I am deeply proud that we have taken aggressive steps to combat climate change head-on with environmental initiatives and legislation such as AB 32...

...We cannot afford to lose sight of the progress we have made because large, out-of-state companies are more interested in lining their pockets with profits than protecting our environment.

For his part, Governor Schwarzenegger hasn't spoken on the link between Texas oil companies and California environmental policy, but the state does have plenty of ammunition available to fight critics of its greenhouse gas limits.  The California Climate Change Portal hosts a series of fact sheets about the level of emissions created in California and the economic benefits of converting to a cleaner economy. You can read other opinions debunking what some term the McClintock/Logue effort at Calitics.

Meanwhile, Valero was named one of the worst polluters in the United States and was forced to pay $711 million in environmental fines in 2005 alone.

(from left) Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and John Kerry (D-MA) (Photo: Getty Images)

Over the weekend, the first hints of the trio’s potential strategy were revealed to The Washington Post — and new pricing for transportation fuel could play a major role (emphasis mine):

According to several sources familiar with the process, the lawmakers
are looking at cutting the nation’s greenhouse gas output by targeting,
in separate ways, three major sources of emissions: electric utilities,
transportation and industry.

Power plants would face an overall cap on emissions that would
become more stringent over time; motor fuel may be subject to a carbon
tax whose proceeds could help electrify the U.S. transportation sector;
and industrial facilities would be exempted from a cap on emissions for
several years before it is phased in.

The concept of an across-the-board tax on fossil fuels used for transport is not new. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson backed it in October, aligning his company with the stance of some environmental groups and causing debate over his motivations.

But
Tillerson’s endorsement proposed rebating a carbon tax back to
consumers rather than letting it "becom[e] a revenue stream for other
purposes," making it far from clear whether the three senators could
win support for giving more new money to electrified transportation.
(By way of context, electric cars received more funding in the first six months of the Obama administration than the Federal Transit Administration’s annual budget.)

Physicist Joseph Romm, who blogs on every twist of the climate debate for the Center for American Progress, described
the Post story as a "trial balloon" for the senators’ plan and warned
that the end of the cap-and-trade concept would hardly silence critics
who are working to re-brand emissions caps as a closet "gas tax":

My sources say that what they’re proposing isn’t actually a carbon
tax on gasoline, nor is it the original cap-and-trade proposal, but
something in between.  Since the notion is complex and confusing — and
no final decisions have been made — I won’t try to explain it fully
here. …

While some oil companies may support this approach, my guess/fear is
ExxonMobil/API will simply attack the new bill as a gasoline tax —
indeed, that may be their plan.

As Romm points out, the devil is in the details: How would a new fuel
tax be structured? Given how many lawmakers acknowledge (if
reluctantly) that the existing gas tax is the most practice way to pay
for a comprehensive new federal transportation bill, imposing a new
motor fuel fee could hurt the three senators’ chances with their
infrastructure-minded colleagues.

Putting
aside the possible merits or drawbacks of Kerry, Lieberman, and
Graham’s approach, the Post story reveals a political climate that may
be ever-so-slightly shifting in favor of passage of a climate bill this
year. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) reportedly told Kerry
last week to intensify work on the "tripartisan" deal in hopes of
bringing legislation to a vote before the November midterm elections.

Carol Browner, at right, with the president. (Photo: TreeHugger)

If Congress succeeds in blocking the EPA from following through on a Supreme Court mandate
to regulate emissions, a legislative path to nationwide pollution
limits would effectively become the sole means for the Obama
administration to follow through on commitments it made at last year’s Copenhagen climate summit.

But White House climate adviser Carol Browner
noted today that a congressional block on the EPA’s authority would
have a second wave of consequences for transportation policy — it
would jettison the Obama administration’s much-heralded deal to raise auto fuel-efficiency standards to 35.5 mile per gallon by 2016.

"I
don’t know why members [of Congress] would want to go out and vote
against the science of climate change," Browner told attendees at a
climate conference sponsored by The New Republic.

Without EPA
authority to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, she explained,
"there is no car rule" — referring to the agreement to adopt
California’s landmark efficiency standards as a national model.

"If
the car rule were not to go forward, California would still have all
its authorities," Browner added, meaning that the auto industry’s fears
of compliance with a "patchwork" of regional fuel standards would become a reality.

Browner’s
comments came as climate legislation continues to lose momentum in the
Senate, giving more political ammunition to lawmakers and industry
representatives who seek to stall the process.

Yet Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), one of three negotiators working on a "tri-partisan" climate deal in the upper chamber, took a notably upbeat tone today on the prospects for action this year, and Browner concurred with Kerry’s sentiment.

"We’re
all now playing the same game inside the same stadium," she said. "The
question is, can we bring it to a successful conclusion? … We’re
fully engaged in this effort."

One move the White House won’t make, per Browner, is to release its own set of specific climate proposals, similar to the health care reform plan
released by the president this week. That leaves unclear the
administration’s stance on several simmering environmental debates,
including the share of revenue from a future climate bill that should go to clean transportation.

Sen.
Robert Byrd (D-WV) used the STP program to earmark millions of dollars
for road projects in his home state, including the above "King Coal
Highway." (Photo: MCRA of WV)

Among the budget items slated for elimination are a $10 million fund
aimed at helping cities and towns adapt to climate change, $34 million in
rail line relocation grants — which, the White House noted, is siphoned off by
congressional earmarking rather than a merit-based process — and a $12
million inter-city bus security program that was unsuccessfully
targeted in last year’s budget.

But
the largest proposed funding cut under the U.S. DOT’s
purview is
the Surface Transportation Priorities (STP)
program, which distributed $293 million last year to an array of local
road, bridge, and trail projects earmarked by members of Congress.

The
STP program is "not subject to merit-based criteria or competition; nor
are states or localities given the flexibility to target them to their
highest transportation priorities," the White House wrote in explaining
its bid to zero out the spending.

Eliminating STP funding
(which the Obama administration proposed to do in its budget for the
current fiscal year) is likely to prove a heavy lift with lawmakers who
depend on politically valuable transportation earmarks to win favor
with voters. The program is a longtime favorite of road-building
stalwarts such as former Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman
Robert Byrd (D-WV), who earmarked more than $20 million in STP money
for West Virginia roads in 2008 alone.

However, STP
money has also benefited clean transportation projects that might not
otherwise have secured federal aid. In recent years, lawmakers have
steered program funds to build a trail along Connecticut’s Quinnipiac
River ($1.4 million), conduct a seismic retrofit of San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Bridge ($1.9 million), and build new parks in Louisville, Kentucky ($5.8 million in 2008, courtesy of Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell).

Will
the administration succeed in its latest effort to slim down
congressional transportation earmarking? The first clues are likely to
emerge later this month and next month, when Transportation Secretary
LaHood and other U.S. DOT officials begin their rounds of testimony on
Capitol Hill.

(Photo: TreeHugger)

NO2,
a main ingredient in smog, is linked to adverse
respiratory health effects such as chronic asthma. In creating a new
one-hour NO2 exposure limit of 100 parts per billion (ppb), the EPA
noted that the risk of short-term NOX exposure is particularly acute
near major highways.

As EPA chief Lisa Jackson said in a statement:

This new one-hour standard is designed to
protect the air we breathe and reduce health threats for millions of
Americans. For the first time ever, we are working to prevent
short-term exposures in high risk NO2 zones like urban communities and
areas near roadways. Improving air quality is a top priority for this
EPA. We’re moving
into the clean, sustainable economy of the 21st century, defined by
expanded innovation, stronger pollution standards and healthier
communities.

The rule will be enforced by setting up monitors near roads in areas
with more than 500,000 residents, according to the agency, with a
deadline of 2013 for the beginning of pollutant tracking. The EPA said
it plans to work directly on 40 new monitors for cities and towns with
the most significant NO2 exposure.

It’s worth noting, however, that major cities have remained out of
compliance with EPA air-quality standards for years without
losing significant amounts of federal highway money, as the federal
government often threatens. Moreover, the EPA has not changed the
current annual NO2 standard of 53 ppb.

Freight upgrades made EDF’s transport wish list for 2010. (Photo: TSA)

Most items on AASHTO’s list are awaited with equal fervor by green groups and transit advocates, such as new high-speed rail grants and a congressional jobs bill — but most state DOTs are unlikely to see eye to eye with transport reformers on the big issues, to put it mildly.

With that in mind, perhaps, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) today released its own top 10 transportation to-dos.

The
entire list is worth reading in full, while remembering that many of
EDF’s preferred changes have the best chance of becoming law if
Congress moves forward with a new six-year transportation bill before
the midterm elections. Two goals on the list are notable because they
often get short shrift in the larger debate:

• Modernized, cleaner freight: Funding for a freight system that is efficient and provides environmental benefits. Our freight system is expected to grow 80% in the next 10 years, and we need solutions to reduce pollution and congestion. …
• Pay-as-you-drive insurance: Let’s incentivize reduced VMT and get PAYD in every state, so drivers can opt for an insurance policy that best reflects their lifestyle.

PAYD is undergoing a pivotal test run in California, where Damien Newton found
environmental advocates sorely disappointed with the fine print of new
insurance rules. It’ll be interesting to see whether Congress adds
incentives for better state-based PAYD options to the next long-term
transport bill … when it emerges.

Gina McCarthy, EPA’s top air pollution regulator. (Photo: CECE)

Gina McCarthy, EPA’s assistant administrator for air and radiation, acknowledged in a speech at EMBARQ‘s transportation conference that her agency as "less effective" working alone on crafting strategies to cut VMT.

McCarthy
called for federal agencies to work together on a coordinated approach
to transportation policy that makes economic and environmental factors
an essential part of the mix.

"When we say transportation, everybody thinks ‘car’,"
McCarthy said. "That’s a challenge for us as individuals, as a society
– and clearly it’s a challenge for me, as someone who’s supposed to
deliver clean air to breathe."

McCarthy
described lowering VMT as the third leg of the EPA’s transport stool.
The other two, she explained, are encouraging vehicle technology to
reduce emissions and promoting cleaner-burning fuels.

But
that third leg drew the bulk of McCarthy’s attention, as she echoed the
mission statement of the White House’s inter-agency "livable
communities" effort.

"Transportation, above all else, needs to be looked at through a series of complementary
measures, beyond cap-and-trade, in order to drive the types of reductions we need in order
to live in a sustainable world," said McCarthy, a veteran environmental regulator in Connecticut.

And McCarthy appeared to recognize the existing federal
system’s built-in bias toward transportation projects that make life
difficult for air-quality regulators. "The easiest way to spend large
hunks of money is to widen a road," she said. "The worst way to spend
large hunks of money is to widen a road."

As
for the cap-and-trade bill, which faces an uncertain future thanks to
resistance from red-state Senate Democrats, McCarthy warned Congress
that her agency is acting under a Supreme Court mandate to curb greenhouse gases: "Though we support cap-and-trade … EPA is going to do what the law says and what the science says."

Should
the approach California used in SB 375 (being signed into law above) be
applied to a congressional cap-and-trade climate bill? (Photo: EcoVote)

But what does Mary Nichols,
chair of the California Air Resources Board and administrator of the
state’s landmark effort to cut emissions by changing development
patterns, think of the idea of tackling sprawl via climate legislation?

"I don’t necessarily think SB 375
[the California land-use bill] should be in a cap-and-trade bill,"
Nichols said today during a session of today’s Transportation Research
Board (TRB) conference devoted to climate change.

The
provocative question of how important a congressional climate bill
would be to transportation was first raised by EMBARQ program director Nancy Kete, a veteran sustainability advocate.

Asking
the TRB audience to consider that "whatever happens on climate change
really is not going to have much impact on transportation," Kete
praised the climate bill’s grants for transit and land-use planning but described them as unsuitable for achieving "significant, short-term" pollution reduction.

Nichols’
uncertain perspective on the path to addressing transportation — which
produces 40 percent of California’s emissions and 30 percent of total
U.S. CO2 — through climate legislation may surprise some, but it
tracks with what she described as an "unsettled" political climate
surrounding the issue of pollution limits.

Indeed, Nichols’
remarks today emphasized the importance of a federal climate plan that
did not attempt to preempt the regulations of individual states, and
California is one of several seeking a go-slow approach to greenhouse gas restrictions from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

So if climate change legislation, which faces
considerable resistance from Senate Democrats, isn’t the vehicle to
begin remodeling the nation’s transportation planning system, what is?
Kete proposed a shift in focus to the six-year federal transport bill
– though its political future is as murky as the climate measure’s.

Yet Kete’s suggestion brought a telling remark from John Stoody, an aide to conservative GOP senator Kit Bond (MO).

Bond has fought the proposed Senate climate bill tooth and nail, releasing
a report that used some dubious math to re-brand it as a "$3.6 trillion
gas tax." Such heated rhetoric suggests that Bond would be opposed to
higher fuel taxes in any form, but Stoody suggested that a gas-fee
increase would be on the table to help fund a new transportation bill.

Referring to estimates that climate legislation would increase gas prices by anywhere from about three cents per gallon to 13 cents
per gallon every year, Stoody said: "If the cap-and-trade bill is
sucking that amount of money out of the system … that much more money
[is unavailable] to pay for a highway bill."

Stoody wondered
aloud whether the climate bill’s projected effect on fuel prices
"actually hurt[s] prospects for a highway bill."

Given Bond’s record,
Stoody’s assessment is unlikely to dissuade transportation reformers
and green advocates from pursuing both a new transportation bill and a
climate bill that dedicates new grants to local planning.

But
Nichols’ and Kete’s inclination to look beyond Congress for
emissions-cutting land use changes could signal the shape of things to
come as the midterm elections approach and Washington’s already meager
appetite for political risk grows even thinner.

(Photo: Scientific American)

The
11 governors vowed to develop a shared low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS)
that would cut the total "life-cycle" emissions from transportation
fuels.  That measure would include the indirect environmental harm
caused by biofuels’ adverse land-use effects as well as the direct consequences of burning conventional gas.

The process is not going to be easy, or quick — the states’ pact
mentions only that a "regional framework" for the standard would be
established by 2011. But the governors’ deal is a sign that amid
uncertain prospects for congressional action on carbon emissions caps,
states are emerging as laboratories for new approaches to curbing
pollution.

Even an LCFS that allows fuel producers to select
their own method of pollution reduction and measures emissions on a
per-gallon basis, as recommended
by the Union of Concerned Scientists, would not be a substitute for
climate legislation that seeks to put a fair price on carbon.

What
an LCFS can do is put electrified rail and other forms of transit on a
more competitive footing by encouraging gas and diesel prices that
reflect the full environmental toll taken by the burning of fossil
fuels. As the California High Speed Rail Blog observed in its analysis of that state’s LCFS — which is expected to serve as a model for the 11 northeastern states:

Note that California’s new low carbon fuel standard does not aim to
directly reduce total vehicle miles driven, nor to increase vehicle
occupancy rates, nor to reduce aggregate net CO2 emissions from
ground transportation in the state. Some or all of these outcomes may
materialize indirectly as a result of higher vehicle and/or fuel prices.

While still serving in the Senate, President Obama embraced
a federal LCFS modeled after California’s version. And it’s worth
noting that California served as the first stop for a higher auto
fuel-efficiency standard that ultimately went national.

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) described the Copenhagen talks this week as a motivator for Senate climate action. (Photo: Getty)

The CBO found that the Senate environment committee’s climate bill, which would nearly triple
the House’s investment in clean transportation, would decrease the
federal deficit by "about $21 billion" during its first 10 years and
result in net spending decreases even after that point.

Environment panel chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was elated by the CBO’s report [PDF],
which also attached a $16 billion estimate to the bill’s 10-year
funding for transit, land use, bike-ped infrastructure and other green
transport.

Boxer said in a statement:

The CBO score shows that there is a way to design a clean
energy and climate bill that is fiscally responsible and gets the job done
– while protecting the health of our families and the planet.

But unfortunately, the money-saving news may not be enough to save the environment committee’s framework, which sparked a GOP boycott and fears that moderate Democrats from coal-dominant states would ultimately withhold their votes.

Boxer’s
co-sponsor on the climate bill, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), is separately
working with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) on
a compromise climate proposal aimed at winning 60 votes in the upper
chamber of Congress.

That bill is expected to include new
subsidies for nuclear power as well as an emissions cap lower than the
environment panel’s version. Whether it maintains a respectable level
of support for clean transportation remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Boxer’s GOP counterpart on the committee, Sen. Jim Inhofe (OK), stopped in Copenhagen for just two hours today to crow that a U.S. climate bill has "zero" chance of winning congressional passage.

The energy-saving benefits of transit aren’t limited to the transportation sector. Image: Jonathan Rose Companies via Richard Layman.

At
a panel discussion yesterday at the Copenhagen climate summit, American
policymakers and transit experts delivered a clear message: Walkable
urban development must be part of any effective plan to reduce global
greenhouse gas emissions. Thanks to the magic of live webcasts, I can
relay a few highlights for Streetsblog readers.

Without
directing future development toward walkable urbanism, the climate
impacts of sprawl will overwhelm other efforts to curb greenhouse gas
emissions, said Robert Cervero, a professor specializing in
transportation and land use policy at UC Berkeley. "Urban development
patterns have a significant role to play in carbon reduction," Cervero
told the audience. "Otherwise we’ll just get knocked back by land-use
patterns. Sustainable urbanism has to be part of the equation."

The
benefits of walkable development extend far beyond the efficiencies of
trains, buses, and bikes compared to cars. As journalist (and befuddling congestion pricing critic) David Owen has documented superbly, city dwellers use far less energy to, for instance, heat homes than suburbanites.

Cervero
attached some rough numbers to these "embedded energy savings." While
transit investment alone can achieve a 10 to 20 percent reduction in
America’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions, he said, factoring in
the embedded energy savings of walkable development boosts that figure
to 30 percent. That’s 30 percent compared to present-day emissions
levels. The reduction could reach as high as 60 percent, Cervero added,
compared to the level of per-capita emissions that would result from
continuing business-as-usual sprawl-inducing policies.

Since
most Americans aren’t all that familiar with walkable urbanism, the
question of how to generate public support for more sustainable
development patterns inevitably arises. John Inglish of the Utah
Transit Authority shared some of the successes on this front from his
home state. It’s a bit of an old story, but it’s a good one: In the
late 1990s, the public-private venture Envision Utah began a campaign to shape regional growth in the Salt Lake City region. Through a series of public workshops, they built support for smart growth strategies that became state law in 1999.

How
did they do it? Inglish focused on the sheer fiscal common sense of
walkable urbanism. When presented with the fact that transit investment
produces huge savings in overall infrastructure costs, Utahns got on
board. By 2020, a transit-oriented growth scenario would save some $15
billion, which would otherwise go to roads, sewers, and other utilities
under the sprawling business-as-usual scenario. "That’s more money for
schools and parks," Inglish said. "The community was not as
conservative when faced with the realities as had previously been
thought."

Unfortunately, the audio turned spotty during
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s turn at the podium. To substitute,
here’s an excerpt from his interview with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, in which the mayor marvels at Copenhagen’s bike culture, visible even deep inside city hall:

MAYOR
JOHN HICKENLOOPER: …here we are in Copenhagen. Thirty-seven percent
of the people in this city, when they go to work in the metropolitan
area, ride a bicycle to work. I mean, it’s remarkable. Their goal — I
met yesterday for an hour with the deputy mayor of the environment and
transportation, Klaus Bondam, and Klaus Bondam described how their next
goal is to hit 50 percent. I mean, to have half your population, when
they go to work on bicycles, they’re healthier, the air is cleaner,
there’s less carbon emissions, you save money. I mean, the benefits are
dramatic, and you can see the difference just when you walk down the
street.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, we were just in the city council
last night at like 10:30, 11:00. The whole bottom floor of this
century-old building is filled with not only bicycle racks, but
bicycles that fill them.

MAYOR JOHN HICKENLOOPER: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And city council members, the guards, everyone are riding in and out of the city council on their bicycles.

MAYOR
JOHN HICKENLOOPER: Yeah. When I flew in, the fellow next to me on the
plane is a hotshot young technology expert, makes a huge amount of
money — doesn’t own a car, rides his bike. You know, he says, “It’s
healthier. It’s more fashionable.” It’s — you know, it’s what his
friends do. And I think that’s the whole thing that — when you get to
public sentiment, I mean, what Lincoln was talking about. We need to
change our public sentiment so people want to do these things. And it’s
not government coming down and being punitive, but it’s creating a
change, a transformation in our attitudes.