Compendium of Workshops on Integrating Air Quality and Transportation

The National Association of Regional Councils has released a compendium of information from ten workshops held from 2001 through 2005 on Integrating Air Quality and Transportation. Topics of the workshops included smart growth and alternative land use, congestion mitigation and air quality improvement program project selection criteria and performance measures, using outreach to improve air quality, a transportation planning approach to reducing greenhouse gases, and air quality conformity case studies. Federal legislation--specifically, the air quality provisions of the Clean Air Act, as amended and the transportation planning provisions of Title 23 and Title 49 of the United States Code (ISTEA and TEA-21, respectively)--require the integration of transportation and air quality planning in areas that are designated by U.S. EPA as nonattainment. In other words, areas that do not achieve the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ozone are required by federal law to maintain a balance between transportation investments and strategies and their impact on air quality.

This legislation has, in turn, created numerous challenges for those agencies involved in transportation planning or air quality monitoring, such as Councils of Government and Metropolitan Planning Organizations, State Departments of Transportation, local transit agencies, as well as state and local air quality agencies. Further, the challenges these organizations must confront range from the basics of understanding the federal legislation and its subsequent compliance issues, as well as the more exacting details involved with implementing conformity strategies to achieve air quality standards, while, at the same time, targeting transportation investments. As such, large and small organizations must have the capacity, data and resources to manage pressing transportation needs, while maintaining federal air quality standards in designated nonattainment areas.

The Workshops: Integrating Air Quality and Transportation Planning
The National Association of Regional Councils (NARC), the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as part of a cooperative agreement, conducted a series of eight workshops over a four-year period from 2001 through 2004. Designed primarily for board members, executive directors, and staff of Regional Councils and Metropolitan Planning Organizations, the ten workshops addressed the most pressing challenges that these organizations must tackle when attempting to balance healthy air with transportation investments.

An advisory group, comprised of representatives from Regional Councils that regularly deal with conformity issues, joined representatives from the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO), American Public Transit Association (APTA), and the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators/Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials (STAPPA/ALAPCO) to develop the workshop topics. The workshops’ primary purpose is to benefit both metro areas and rural regions that are dealing with nonattainment designation, or, for the first time, confronting nonattainment under the 8-hour ozone standard.

Over the past twelve years, NARC has advocated at the national level for and represented the interests of Councils of Government, Planning Commissions, Development Districts and Metropolitan Planning Organizations on issues related to air quality and transportation planning. As part of these efforts, NARC has collected and published the information and expertise shared throughout these ten workshops. We are pleased to provide this information to agencies and organizations responsible for achieving the NAAQS for ozone.