54 years since the first Earth Day, the US is still focusing on highway expansion. In light of increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, due in part to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Transportation for America and its partners engaged the Future of Transportation Caucus to brief Congress on transportation decarbonization. We explained that to truly decrease emissions we need to electrify transportation systems and support travel options beyond private vehicles.
In a briefing on Capitol Hill, T4A Policy Associate Corrigan Salerno showed how highway expansion funds in the IIJA dwarfed historic investments in public transit leading to disastrous GHG emissions increases. The short and sweet of it is that mode-shift needs to be coupled with electrification to decrease our GHG emissions. Taylor Reich from the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy explained that coupling electrifying transportation with mode shift (opportunities to travel outside of a car) will save the government and private citizens trillions, lower energy consumption, and lower emissions.
Miguel Moravec from the Rocky Mountain Institute and Move Minnesota advocate Katie Jones described how states are already incorporating electrification and mode shift into policy. Minnesota’s Climate Action Framework and Colorado’s GHG Transportation Planning Standard require transportation infrastructure projects to abide by local GHG reduction targets. Thanks to these regulations, major highway expansion plans have been set aside in favor of bus rapid transit, active transportation networks, and transit oriented development.
The path forward
Most of the funding for highway expansion projects comes from formula funds with few strings attached, giving state departments of transportation (DOT) the option to expand aggressively. With the Senate voting 53-47 against mandating DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations (MPO) to track their GHG emissions, Congress is not helping increase transparency into our state transportation investments or halt endless highway growth.
Colorado and Minnesota are already implementing solutions and Maryland is trying to catch up. The federal government must meet their decarbonization efforts by bringing these state-level approaches to a national scale.
And there’s a path forward to do just that. Legislation such as Senator Markey’s GREEN Streets Act requires minimum standards for GHG, vehicle miles traveled (VMT), and air pollution reductions. It would also require DOTs and MPOs to publicize the environmental and health impact data for large expansion projects.
We already know that transportation decarbonization is necessary for fighting climate change. Electrifying all cars, a lofty goal on its own, won’t be enough to solve our climate crisis. Goal setting and transparency are integral to decarbonization. Without building more public transportation, establishing more active transportation infrastructure, and giving people the freedom to travel outside of a car, we won’t make significant progress. To truly respect our planet, our federal leaders must do more to address mode shift and electrification.
The four presenters at the briefing (from left to right): Miguel Moravec, Katie Jones, Taylor Reich, and Corrigan Salerno.
Gently curving through wetlands southeast of the Great Salt Lake, Utah’s Legacy Parkway has been characterized as an example of a state DOT making a principled compromise to craft a transportation solution balancing transport modes and ecological needs. However, the legacy UDOT had truly left behind was a connection for the new West Davis Corridor, an ongoing project continuing the march through the remaining marshes and farmland of the Salt Lake Valley.
Legacy Parkway and multi-use trail, north of Salt Lake City, Utah. Image source: UDOT.
Background
Over the last thirty years, Utah has seen impressive population growth that has been unmatched by most states, but not all responses to growth balance communities’ needs for equity, environmental preservation, and economic sustainability.
According to projections from transportation planners at UDOT, population and travel demand in the five counties on the east half of the Great Salt Lake were going to increase an astonishing 60 percent and 69 percent, respectively, by 2020. (2020 Census data shows their population estimate was off by about 130,000 people.) Planners warned that at this scale of growth, not building new highway infrastructure would be devastating with travel speeds at peak hours dropping to just seven miles per hour.
To prevent this catastrophe, Utah Governor Michael Leavitt announced long-range plans for Legacy Highway in 1996, a 120-mile highway running parallel to Interstate 15. The first portion of this expansive route would be called Legacy Parkway and double as a “line in the sand” to prevent development west of the highway. Under the Utah DOT’s original preferred plan, that line would cut through 1,568 acres of Utah’s rare wetlands and historic farmsteads.
Advocates push back
Starting in 1997, the Utah Department of Transportation began environmental impact studies for Legacy Parkway as part of the NEPA process, culminating in the release of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) in 1998. In the public meetings following the release, advocacy groups like Utahns for Better Transportation highlighted a multitude of flaws in the study and in the plans themselves. Instead of presenting alternatives to highway routes, UDOT presented the public with alternative highway routes, variations in the right of way that differed only in their relative negative impacts on residences, farms, and wetlands. Residents pointed to the Draft Environmental Statement’s incompleteness and contradictions, finding it had failed to calculate the project’s impact on wildlife, paradoxically associated higher air quality with increasing vehicle travel, and neglected to evaluate transit and land use among the alternatives. In an analysis commissioned by the Sierra Club, researchers found the DEIS’s traffic analyses were misleading. The models were applied inconsistently across geographies, allowing UDOT to present the no-build alternative as extremely untenable.
Legacy Highway
Musicians weighed in on the project too. Country music singer and songwriter Brenn Hill wrote the song “Legacy Highway” expressing his frustrations about the plan. The title of this blog post comes from the lyrics of that song. Listen to it here.
After one year of comments and federal reviews, UDOT and the Federal Highway Administration, the lead federal agency of the project, released the Legacy Parkway Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) in July 2000. Utah DOT’s new preferred plans would include a multi-use trail, cost only $369 million, fill only 46 acres of wetlands, and impact the second least amount of developable land compared to alternative highway plans.
While UDOT’s Final Environmental Impact Study portrayed Legacy Parkway as a principled compromise that could both meet the automotive travel demands of 2020 and preserve wetlands, it still ignored much of the substantive criticism levied against the models in the earlier Draft Environmental Impact Statement. As UDOT forged ahead, awarding construction contracts as early as December 2000 (before they’d received final permits), Utahns for Better Transportation, the Sierra Club, and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson took the only recourse left to them: they filed a lawsuit.
Lawsuit
Construction on the Legacy Parkway began in January 2001, just after the Federal Highway Administration approved the Legacy Parkway FEIS. With no other recourse, Utahns for Better Transportation, the Sierra Club, and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson sued the Utah Department of Transportation and participating federal agencies to stop the construction of Legacy Parkway. The plaintiffs brought their issues against the DEIS and FEIS to the Utah District Court.
Elected leaders make a difference
It should not be too surprising that Anderson, a mayor known for his ardent advocacy for sustainable municipal policies, joined the suit. Since the start of his term in 1999, Mayor Anderson had seen the outsized impact that Salt Lake City’s TRAX light rail system had on the city and presided over network improvements that improved daily ridership vastly beyond initial projections. Local support for transportation alternatives grew to be so strong that voters in the city passed tax increases—on themselves—to support the development of new mass transit infrastructure. Building off of public support for these new systems, Anderson stated that “with the commitment by the community to mass transit comes a commitment by our Administration to transit-oriented development.”
While the first case against Legacy Parkway was dismissed in the Utah District Court, the coalition of advocates appealed the decision in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. In November 2001, the court issued an injunction and forced the Utah Department of Transportation to cease construction. After nearly a year of review, the Court found that the federal agencies’ Environmental Impact Statements were inadequate “to the point of being arbitrary and capricious.”
The court forced the agencies to develop a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that addressed failures to adequately consider harm to wildlife, alternate highway routes, narrower median design (the design included in the 2000 FEIS would have allowed for future expansion to six lanes), and mass transit. UDOT and the FHWA developed a new impact statement to account for the original deficiencies from 2002 to 2004, but by then, the project could not afford any more lawsuits.
Compromise
Advocates might have won the battle, but they lost the war. They negotiated a compromise with UDOT while the Final Environmental Impact Statement was being drafted, winning concessions like $2.5 million for rapid transit studies, an additional $12 million for land preservation, and unique provisions banning semi-trucks and lowering Legacy Parkway’s speed limit (an ineffective solution to dangerous roadway speeds, as we wrote in Dangerous by Design).
Construction resumed in March 2006, Legacy Parkway was completed in 2008, and just 12 years later, the provisions expired, allowing the speed limit to increase and semi-trucks to drive on the parkway. By making a few temporary compromises, UDOT successfully greenwashed the first segment of the 120-mile-long Legacy Highway network that now transports 20,000-30,000 vehicles a day.
When Legacy Parkway opened, it was celebrated by motorists for its scenic routes and tranquil views of sunflower blooms along its meandering path. Ironically, drivers enjoying the views now contribute to emissions in a region with some of the worst air quality in the nation. To build the parkway, over 4 million tons of material had to be used to fill in the wetlands below the road and the concrete and steel used in construction could have produced as much as 40,000 tons of CO2. It cost 685 million dollars.
Better build another highway
Though planners miscalculated how dramatic population growth would be in the past, the counties surrounding the Great Salt Lake will no doubt continue to see major growth. But rather than taking congestion as a sign to innovate new solutions, like a hammer looking for a nail, UDOT uses the all too familiar tool of highway expansion to “solve” congestion. Lane additions and highway expansion every 10 years can’t solve traffic and certainly will not improve ecological outcomes, but it can cost the public their health and hundreds of millions of dollars for a handful of miles.
Now UDOT has new plans for a northern expansion of Legacy Parkway, meant to address still further population growth projections. UDOT and FHWA have familiar words for the project, called the West Davis Corridor:
By 2040, the number of households in this region will increase by 65 percent. This population growth requires a solution that addresses upcoming transportation needs while minimizing impact to the community and environment. After a thorough analysis of fifty-one alternatives, a preferred alternative (West Davis Highway) has been identified. By 2040, this one project would reduce all congestion west of I-15 by one-third.
This new highway will include a land preserve and a recreational trail as part of its environmental impact mitigation strategy. While the interchange to I-15 is being constructed, traffic is being routed over the Legacy Parkway. The budget for the West Davis Corridor project is $800 million.
Project plans showing the interchange between I-15, Legacy Parkway and the West Davis Corridor. Image Source: ArcGIS
State DOTs would have us believe that highways are the solution to population growth and congestion on our nation’s roadways, but history has proven otherwise. Costly highway projects always seem to require a new costly highway project, and the endless cycle only makes conditions worse for the environment and people who live around and drive on these roads. While advocates did succeed in changing the course and character of Legacy Parkway, this compromise failed to make lasting change. To do that, we need more than compromise. We need a fundamental change in our priorities.
Community Connectors: tools for advocates
You may be fighting against a freeway expansion. You may be trying to advance a Reconnecting Communities project to remove an old highway. You might be just trying to make wide, dangerous arterial roads a little safer for people to cross. This Community Connectors portal explains common terms, decodes the processes, clarifies the important actors, and inspires with helpful real-world stories.
While NEPA exists to protect the environment and communities, it has long fallen short of addressing climate emissions and protecting disadvantaged communities. In response to a call for comments about new guidance on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, Transportation for America joined a nine-member working group to urge the White House to address transportation’s role in climate emissions and historic injustices. Read the full comments here.
Streets like this one allow for multiple modes of travel, helping to reduce emissions from personal vehicles. Flickr photo by Billie Grace Ward.
On January 6, 2023, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) released Guidance on Consideration of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change, directing federal agencies to improve the evaluation of climate impacts in environmental reviews as part of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) process.
The CEQ, created in 1970 with the passage of NEPA, is a body that oversees federal agencies’ implementation of NEPA-required environmental assessments of federally funded projects. As the lead body for the NEPA process, the CEQ’s Guidance determines the scope of scrutiny that projects must undergo through the NEPA process. However, for decades, the NEPA process and the CEQ have ignored or understated the significant role that federally approved transportation projects play in contributing to climate change emissions and overburdening Black and Brown communities.
The current approach from CEQ allows agencies like the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to sign off on faulty traffic models that fail to account for the role increased highway capacity has in increasing car usage and the associated CO2 and fine particle pollution that follows. Inaccurate models used today often project, paradoxically, that new highways will reduce harmful emissions. But decades of previous experience have consistently shown that these projects worsen the congestion problems they were built to solve, while harming the communities they go through.
Ensure that transportation agencies’ actions and plans reduce emissions in order to meet the country’s international commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Direct FHWA and states to include realistic assessments of how transportation infrastructure investments could contribute to or reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Devise criteria in the NEPA process that prioritizes actions to reverse damage to community health from transportation infrastructure projects.
By taking into account these comments and other points included in the working group’s response to the Guidance, the CEQ can align the NEPA process with national climate policy. More detail on why the Council on Environmental Quality should consider these goals and how they would achieve them is included in the full comments document.
Mark your calendars for the 2018 edition of Transportation for America’s national conference for those interested in forward-looking state transportation policy and funding solutions.
In light of the Trump administration’s rhetorical and policy shift away from direct federal funding for transportation investments, the spotlight again turns to states and localities when it comes to policy and funding for transportation. Over 30 states have stepped up and passed new transportation funding legislation since 2012. An unfortunately much smaller number of states have passed smart policies to reform how those dollars are spent.
Capital Ideas 2018, will offer a highly interactive curriculum of model state legislation, campaign tactics, innovative policies, and peer-to-peer collaboration to help participants advance successful proposals to raise new funding for transportation and ensure those dollars are wisely spent to accomplish tangible goals and help states stay competitive in the 21st century. Our 3rd biennial national conference to be held in Atlanta, GA on Wednesday, December 5, 2018 and Thursday, December 6, 2018.
Call for session proposals now open
Transportation for America invites cutting-edge proposals for conference roundtable sessions and general plenary sessions that pertain to the emerging paradigm shift characterizing our transportation landscape today—disruption and uncertainty. The plenary and roundtable discussions at Capital Ideas 2018 seeks to address the following questions:
How will states manage their role in transportation funding & policy during this time of dramatic transition and change?
What is the appropriate role of state government in a disruptive world of transportation policy?
What can states do to ensure that our transportation network is equitable, accessible, safe and affordable?
Are our investment decisions today ensuring stronger local economies, greater access to opportunity and jobs, cleaner environments, healthier populations or better mobility for everyone in the future?
With a continually shifting and uncertain future for federal transportation funding, how can states successfully fund transportation investments and how will they demonstrate the value of their investments?
All plenary and session proposals are due on June 15, 2018 at 8 p.m. EDT. Submitted your plenary and or session proposal here. Also remember that as a T4America member you get a discounted member ticket price. Conference registration opens on May 8, 2018. Learn more here.
As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you the latest information and developments around federal policy. This dedication includes in-depth summaries of what is going on in Congress and the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT). Check out what you may have missed this past week in Congress and at U.S. DOT.
Senate Approves FY18 Budget
On October 19th, after a series of amendments the Senate approved H. Con. Res. 71, a concurrent resolution establishing the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2018 and setting budgetary levels for fiscal years 2019 through 2027. The proposed budget significantly reduces non-defense discretionary spending, which would likely require cuts to transit Capital Investment Grants, TIGER, and passenger rail programs. The Senate-passed budget must now be reconciled with the budget approved by the House on October 5th. Both chambers must pass identical budgets to utilize reconciliation (a process by which legislation only needs 51 votes in the Senate) to approve tax reform. T4America will provide updates as the House and Senate work to approve a final FY18 budget. It is important to note, however, that additional budget legislation will be necessary to raise the sequester caps set in the Budget Control Act, allowing Congress to complete its FY18 appropriations work.
Senate Environment and Public Works Reschedules Vote on FHWA Nominee
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee postponed an October 18th meeting during which it was planning to vote on Paul Trombino’s nomination to be FHWA Administrator. T4America has been informed that postponing the meeting was unrelated to Mr. Trombino’s nomination. This meeting has been rescheduled for this Wednesday, October 25th and we expect his nomination to be approved.
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Holds Infrastructure Hearing
On October 11th, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Subcommittee on Highways and Transit held a hearing entitled: “Building a 21st Century Infrastructure for America: Highway and Transit Stakeholders’ Perspectives”. You can watch the full hearing here. In a wide-ranging hearing, the panel of witnesses discussed a variety of issues important to the transportation community. Witnesses and Members agreed on the importance of a long-term solution to the solvency of the highway trust fund. Republicans on the Committee were focused on alternatives to funding the trust fund beside the gas tax. Democrats on the Committee expressed frustration that there have been several hearings about the importance of a long term solution to the trust fund but the Committee has not marked up, or held hearings on, legislation that would raise more funding for the highway trust fund.
Mr. Peter Rogoff, Chief Executive Officer, Sound Transit made a forceful case for transit investment and noted how the President’s budget and House appropriations package actually cuts transit funding, especially the Capital Investment Grant program, and would harm communities like Seattle that have raised billions in local funds for transit investments with the understanding that the Federal government would match the local commitment.
This hearing is part of an effort to prepare Congress to develop an infrastructure package. T4America will provide additional updates as the Administration and Congress work on this issue.
