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Taubman Center researchers are investigating several policy issues at the nexus of transportation and environmental planning, including the impacts of new air quality standards around the country. These projects include the following: New Ambient Air Quality Standards New Ambient Air Quality Standards When the US Environmental Protection Agency promulgated a new National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ground-level ozone in July 1997, it began a process that will lead to the designation of new non-attainment areas in April 2004. When this cohort begins to grapple with the attending regulations, they may be able to benefit from the experience of existing non-attainment areas. This research set out in 2002 to examine how several states – Georgia, North Carolina and Oklahoma – were preparing for this round of designations. In a paper presented at the 2003 annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Jonathan Makler and Arnold Howitt tied together the history of the new standard, their observations of conformity experience in the 1990’s, and the preparations underway in each of the three states. Full Report | Presentation to Transportation Research Board, 1/13/2003 | The Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) of 1990 require far-reaching efforts under the "transportation conformity" regulations to assure that transportation investments in non-attainment and maintenance areas are consistent with state commitments to meet national air pollution standards. For the last decade, Taubman Center researchers have investigated how these regulations have been implemented in fifteen metropolitan areas around the country in non-attainment with the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for ground-level ozone. In a 1999 report Arnold Howitt and Elizabeth Moore, the findings covering 1991-98, were published jointly by FHWA and EPA. The research has continued as some of the study areas have made great strides and others have struggled with emerging challenges such as new emission models, explosive growth and more. Full report | Related article from the 1999 Taubman Center Report | Useful Links During the 1990s, metropolitan transportation planning in the United States has been signif–icantly altered by the regulatory requirements of the Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) of 1990. Central to these changes has been the role of emissions modeling (mainly the widely used, successive versions of EPA’s Mobile model), which is closely linked to transportation demand modeling. Many transportation planners have contended that the modeling process distorts emissions projections and hence makes it more difficult to satisfy CAAA requirements. The current deployment of the new MOBILE 6 has rekindled this debate. This project is looking at how the required emissions modeling has been managed institu–tionally in a sample of 15 major metropolitan areas in the United States, all of which have been non-attainment areas under CAAA. The work examines the way in which the models are utilized in the transportation planning and air quality regulatory processes – focusing particularly on how the uncertainties of the modeling results have been managed institutionally and politically in the process of meeting Congressionally man–dated policy purposes. Arnold Howitt, Principal Investigator |
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