Transportation
and Air Quality Testimony
County
Judge Ron Harris
Collin
County, Texas
North
Central Texas Council of Governments
Metropolitan
Planning Organization for the
Dallas-Fort
Worth Region
Presented Before the
U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
July 30, 2002
Washington, D.C.
Mr.
Chairman and members of the committee, I am Ron Harris, County Judge of Collin
County. Our county is located within
the five-million-person Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Area. Today, my remarks represent the view of the
policy officials from our region, specifically the Metropolitan Planning
Organization of the North Central Texas Council of Governments. I am a former Council of Governments
President, City Council member, twelve years as County Judge, and serve as chair
of the North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee, co-chair Texas Clear Air
Working Group and member of the Local Government Advisory Committee to the
director of E.P.A. Our region has
benefited from participation in partnerships with E.P.A. Regional Administrator
Cook and Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission. I am appearing today at your invitation and
hope that we will be able to strengthen our partnerships through your
leadership in fine tuning environmental and transportation laws to more
effectively result in cleaning of the air.
I
want to thank you and the members of the committee for holding this series of
hearings to review the critical issues surrounding air quality and
reauthorization of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st
Century.
Metropolitan
areas account for 75 percent of the nation’s population and 83 percent of its
economic output. They are centers of
social and economic activity, and are the hubs of the national transportation
system. As these centers grow,
congestion frequently follows, and unfortunately, all too often associated air
pollution. We think with the
implementation of sustainable land use; rail transit; management and operations
improvements; freeway improvements; toll road construction; and aggressive air
quality policies, programs, and projects, urban regions can exhibit economic
vitality, mobility, and air quality attainment.
As
you know, our agency prepared a response to questions from the committee. I applaud your format of requesting real
world feedback from users around the country.
I ask that you refer to that response for specific details to your
questions. What I would like to do is
address five of the more important policy questions.
1. Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program
(CMAQ). The Clean Air Act Amendments of
1990 and the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991
permanently fused transportation and air quality planning and programming. The CMAQ Program is one mechanism to
aggressively fund control measures to reduce mobile source Volatile Organic
Compound (VOC) and Nitrogen Oxide (NOX) emissions. This funding and these measures are intended
to lower exceedances of the one-hour and soon to be eight-hour ozone standard. We anticipate that the CMAQ funding Program
will also be eligible to reduce emissions in the soon-to-be implemented
Particulate Matter (PM) 2.5 standard.
The National Academy of Sciences Committee on this topic, of which our
Transportation Director was asked to serve, recommends continuation of the CMAQ
Program. In addition, the Committee
proposed a more flexible and more effective program by permitting eligibility
for high emitting vehicles and assistance in reducing further emissions from
diesel emission sources.
2. Additional Technology, Vehicle Emission
Controls, and Transportation Control Measures or TCMs. TCMs are important components to reduce
emissions and greatly assist with air quality conformity. They often meet mobility and air quality
objectives. Non-traditional TCMs are
some of the most innovative and cost-effective programs in reducing vehicular
emissions by way of altering emission rates or reducing vehicle miles of
travel.
We
ask the Congress to continue its past leadership in establishing federal
technology programs that would otherwise be legally difficult to implement at a
statewide or local level. Congress is
encouraged to explore ways to reduce the growing off-road mobile source
emissions. Another approach to reduce
vehicular emissions is to advance already existing federal gasoline, diesel,
and engine standards earlier than required.
3. Plan Submittal Frequencies. Coordination
between the State Implementation Plan (SIP), the Transportation Plan,
Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), and associated air quality conformity
analysis proves to be difficult due to varied schedule requirements. Currently, the SIP submittal process is
infrequent, but influenced by real-time, observed air quality data. The Transportation Plan has a three-year
update cycle, and the TIP has at least a two-year update cycle. It would be much more efficient to have
consistent submittal frequencies and to streamline the implementation of
specific policies, programs, and projects with less emphasis on repeating the
planning process for already approved plans.
In addition, it would lessen the confusion to our citizens, local
governments, transportation authorities, regional partners, and resource
agencies as they try to coordinate their planning activities with these federal
requirements.
4. Conformity. The air quality conformity process is a good
mechanism to demonstrate that sound transportation planning is occurring. There are three predominate concerns. First, SIP and emission budgets have a
relatively short-term horizon, while conformity of the Transportation Plan may
be 25 years in the future with little unknown out-year emission technology
benefits. Second, The Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) can establish new emission rate software at irregular
intervals. This creates a conflict on
how to include new information or the often suggested inconsistency of
comparing transportation air quality impacts between two very different EPA
software versions. Third, conformity is
often used as a litigation mechanism instead of the transportation assessment
Congress established.
5. Planning Horizons. Existing planning horizons for the SIP and the
Transportation Plan is an issue that Congress should consider making more
consistent. The Transportation Plan is
required to maintain a staged 20-year horizon and the SIP to contain a
near-term attainment date.
Again, more detailed
information is contained in our eight page response to your questions. Thank you for your invitation to be here
today.