We need decisive action on climate, but the region’s draft transportation plan isn’t taking it

A planning agency made up of jurisdictions across the region released a draft update this month to Greater Washington’s long-range transportation plan for public comment, just in time for Earth Month. Comments are due by May 3.

The plan’s draft list of projects appears to be a repeat of the previous 2018 plan, spending about $300 billion on mostly the same package of transportation investments through the year 2045. The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB), which is preparing the plan, is modeling and evaluating projects using telework and regional commuting patterns that date from 2014. And TPB’s Director, Kanti Srikanth, said at last month’s board meeting that the draft list of projects will not achieve the region’s adopted climate targets.

Given the increased urgency and desire among residents to address climate change, as well as anticipated lasting shifts in commuting patterns, more of the same isn’t what the region needs.

What the region’s long-range transportation plan does

The TPB coordinates transportation planning and programs among the jurisdictions in the greater Washington region. The agency is governed by a board of the representatives of the region’s governments and transportation agencies. One of its principal activities is preparing a long-range transportation plan, currently titled “Visualize 2045,” every four years in accordance with federal requirements for metropolitan areas.

The update of the regional transportation plan is a two-year process that combines submissions of transit, road, rail and trail projects by member agencies (e.g., Maryland Department of Transportation, WMATA, Fairfax County, etc.) and regional policy statements and goal-setting by the TPB board. The plan helps allocate anticipated federal, state and local funding; , and most of it goes to maintenance and operations, but a significant chunk ($64 billion in the last plan) goes to fund highway expansions and new transit facilities.

The plan incorporates projects that expect to involve federal funding or that are of regional significance over an approximate 20-year timeframe, so a lot of small local projects are not included in the plan. The project list is also constrained to what can be funded over the life of the plan based on adopted federal, state and other funding programs and revenue forecasts. Projects must also demonstrate that they do not worsen air quality.

While TPB cannot dictate the projects that local governments and state departments of transportation submit, the TPB board is made up of officials from those jurisdictions and agencies, so they ultimately are responsible for the plan.

The disconnect between what agencies say and do on climate

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), the agency that houses TPB, last week featured Visualize 2045 on its homepage next to a post headlined “Region Meets Global Standards for Climate Planning.” COG prepared and adopted its new climate plan last fall, and elected officials on the COG and TPB boards both adopted its greenhouse gas reduction targets.

But so far TPB’s Visualize 2045 project list and planning assumptions do not commit to the transportation strategies in the climate plan, even though transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the region (42%).

Why the disconnect? It’s not an issue of two separate governing entities not cooperating; the TPB Director Srikanth, also serves as the COG Deputy Director. It’s not that climate isn’t on the radar; TPB since 2008 has conducted multiple studies that demonstrate how regional transportation investments and policies would help the region meet its climate targets, and is in the midst of another one (results are expected toward the end of 2021, too late to influence the current transportation project list).

So if COG adopted a climate plan in 2020, why can’t TPB adopt a transportation plan by 2022 that is consistent with the COG climate plan and its targets?

An attempt to move beyond the status quo

The TPB Board voted 22 to 1 in December (with 7 abstentions) to require that member agencies “prioritize investments on projects, programs, and policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, prioritize the aspirational strategies, and achieve COG’s land use and equity goals.”

The public wants the transportation plan to address climate change. Responding to TPB’s Voices of the Region opinion survey, 84% of the region’s residents agreed with the statement that “elected officials need to consider the impacts of climate change when planning transportation in the future.” In contrast, only 69% of residents said that traffic congestion is a concern that impacts their life.

Federal attention to climate in transportation funding is also on the rise. Congress is considering the Biden administration’s proposed $2 trillion infrastructure plan, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has signaled an interest in active transportation and sustainable infrastructure investments.

In December TPB added new questions that agencies must answer about how their projects address regional priorities like climate change and equity. But for the vast majority of projects, those that were in the previous Visualize 2045, TPB gave agencies a deadline of April 30 to answer the new policy questions. That means the public will likely not have this information for most projects before the comment deadline.

Some of the answers submitted so far make dubious claims of promoting non-auto travel and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. For example:

• For a $140 million road widening of MD85 near Frederick, which would convert a four lane arterial to six lanes, the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) checked boxes on the form that the project will “promote non-auto travel or can be expected to reduce VMT in the region”, and that it will reduce emissions, while also checking “single driver” as the only travel mode option it supports.
• Meanwhile on the Virginia side of the river, VDOT makes similar claims about the Route 50/North Collector Road, a new four-lane, three-mile highway that will cost $110 million and cut through the woods on the south side of Dulles. The project profile sheet says, “The project is defined with considerations for safety, and will reduce recurring congestion, which helps to reduce greenhouse gasses [sic] while improving travel for people in cars and for freight.”

The projects included in the draft also have a glaring omission: they make assumptions about commuting patterns using 2014 data. Post-pandemic, as telecommuting has become more widespread, those travel patterns may no longer be a given.

How the region could meet its climate targets

Under the 2018 plan, regional transportation emissions would only fall 23% from 2005 levels by the year 2045, mainly through federally required fuel efficiency improvements. But many local governments (including several in this region), states, and countries recognize the need to achieve a 100% reduction in emissions by 2050. COG’s 2050 climate goal, dating back to 2008, seeks an 80% reduction in emissions.

Since 2018, awareness of strategies to make urban and suburban travel sustainable has only grown. We at the Coalition for Smarter Growth released a report last month documenting numerous studies and national examples and laying out recommendations for how our region could cut car pollution while becoming more equitable and livable.

Even with electric vehicles, studies show that the U.S. must also reduce driving to meet climate targets. The 2018 Visualize 2045 plan would only reduce per capita driving by 3%; some experts estimate we need a 20% cut by 2030 nationwide. Metropolitan areas like ours, which have alternatives to driving, need to make even more gains to compensate for the 30% of all miles driven in this country that occur in rural areas with fewer alternative options.

We can reduce the need to drive through good land use planning, affordable housing, and investments in walking, biking and transit. These strategies are successfully being implemented in parts of this region, from Montgomery County’s bus rapid transit projects to the moveDC plan update, transit-oriented development around the region, and many of TPB’s own programs like Transportation-Land Use Connections.

While TPB cannot create by itself new regional travel or land use policies that are binding on member agencies, the agency can play a regional leadership role in convening, facilitating and nudging those agencies to adopt programs for which there is consensus. Ultimately, the buck stops with the officials who comprise the governing board of TPB. They have within their power to demand and adopt a better long-range transportation plan.

Next steps

Although TPB will not adopt a final plan until 2022, after the lengthy air quality conformity modeling phase of the process, the draft list of projects being approved this June typically remain in the final plan with few changes. Thus, any meaningful efforts to create a plan that addresses regional priorities must happen between now and June, when the TPB Board will finalize the draft list of projects. That is why the current round of public comment, open until May 3, is crucial to shaping the plan.

TPB Director Srikanth has said that TPB can update the plan going forward, even potentially sooner than the next major four-year update in 2026.

But if the region largely knows what to do to address climate change, why not do it now? We know that we can’t afford to wait another four years to take swift action on climate. And updating Visualize 2045 is a two-year process, costing around $7-11 million according to TPB’s work plan, and requiring countless meetings and time commitments from staff, local officials, and members of the public. Why go through this intensive process without addressing an urgent regional and global issue just to repeat it again?