Before joining Rails-to-Trails Conservancy in 2001, I focused on issues of sustainability and livability at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. One of the many lessons I learned from that experience is the importance of developing quantifiable indicators to assess whether policies or practices actually contribute to or undermine sustainability/livability.

In the case of transportation infrastructure investment, such metrics are essential because it is too easy for various entities to embrace the vague concepts of sustainability/livability while insisting that the continuation of business as usual will produce the desired outcomes.

An essential way to ensure that policies actually move us in the right direction is for policy makers to adopt performance-based metrics that hold public agencies accountable for well defined results. This is also the only way we can restore the public trust in our transportation policy necessary to build the political will to support increased revenues for transportation investment.

An excellent example of the need for such metrics can be found in last week’s discussion. Highway interests continue to insist that any revenues from fees imposed on the transportation sector to reduce greenhouse gases be dedicated to the highway trust fund with no requirements whatsoever that such funds be expended on transportation infrastructure investments that actually reduce greenhouse gases.

That position is unacceptable. This is the perfect example of the need for a well defined set of metrics that can be used to evaluate competing transportation investments to determine how we can best ensure the cost-effective movement of people and goods in a manner that also dramatically reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

The adoption of such metrics is both good policy and good politics.

While our transportation system is key to the strength of our national economy and qualify of life, there’s also no doubt that our current infrastructure has an impact on the environment. Today our transportation systems account for 27 percent of domestic energy consumption, 27 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and 2.8 billion gallons of wasted fuel each year. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The fact is that congested highways, inadequate transit systems and a lack of capacity on key commercial corridors cause needless traffic tie ups, wasted fuel and unnecessary pollution. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Indeed, researchers estimate that we can cut 30 percent of CO2 emissions from our transportation network with the right mix of new capacity and better management of existing roads and transit systems.

But it is not enough to wish for a greener transportation system, you have to build it. That is why the Associated General Contractors of America released its comprehensive “Building a Green Future” yesterday. The plan outlines measures public officials, developers and the construction community should take to improve the efficiency of our buildings and infrastructure. It identifies ways Washington can make it easier to launch new transit projects, shift cargo traffic to energy efficient barges and accelerate federal approval for new transportation projects in congested corridors. And it calls for making the level of transportation investments virtually every expert agrees are needed to improve capacity and reduce traffic.

While this plan will clearly lead to major environmental improvements, it also will give a much-needed boost to the hard-hit construction industry. The goal is clear, by next Earth Day make sure that we all can breathe easier, work more and earn a good living.

In an era of accountability, the development and acceptance of transportation sustainability performance measures is long overdue. As the saying goes we treasure what we measure. Imagine if our transportation policy was centered on performance measures that required overall reductions on energy intensity per passenger mile? How different would our regions and the urban transportation systems that serve them look? Transit, bicycling, carpooling as well as walking facilities and services would be more robust, more integrated and produce a healthier bottom line for our citizens and our economy.

We understand that electric cars will help get us there, and efficiencies can only get better with coordinated land uses, parking management and road pricing which will sustain those energy gains over time. Research shows that on average, transit is at least twice as energy efficient per passenger mile as driving alone and bicycling is virtually carbon neutral. While the private sector embarks on greening and electrifying the auto fleet, public transit agencies have been greening their fleets for almost two decades now. Public transit agencies have led the way with clean fuels and vehicles; mass transit also reduces the need to drive thereby reducing the region's pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

As an example, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for Linear Infrastructure would be one way to ensure that not only is the transit service green, but the facility itself is using best practices to reduce emissions, waste, energy and pollution. It would be even better if LEED certification was given post completion of a project rather than before to ensure that projects have actually achieved their performance objectives.

In San Francisco, the SFMTA's Sustainable Mobility Strategy is drawing from the principles of smart growth, multi-modal integration, demand management and strategic expansion in an effort to meet multiple economic, environmental and social objectives of our transportation system. I have set a goal for our agency to be carbon neutral by 2030, and we are leading the nation with an on target 20% reduction of our agency's carbon footprint below 1990 levels by 2012. If everyone in the industry matched our goals, we would see wholesale improvements to our environment and our economy.

As we enter the second decade of this millennium, the transportation sector is increasingly more data driven which means more accountability and openness. It's time to get on board and embrace this trend for our triple bottom line.

On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, it’s important to note for the record the many ways in which state departments of transportation have been approaching livability and sustainability. Just yesterday, AASHTO released a new report, The Road to Livability, which describes how a full range of transportation options – including improvements to roadways, transit, walking and biking – can improve livability in our communities. (Available at www.transportation.org)

Far from “lagging behind” as Ms. Caruso implies, transportation agencies across the country have been leaders and are using every opportunity to tailor transportation projects to the needs of the communities they pass through. States are focusing their efforts on rapidly expanding options for biking, walking and transit use as well as implementing such road-related, livable policies as revitalizing urban centers, building local economies, and preserving historic sites and scenic country roads.

This is not a new phenomenon. Even before livability became a buzzword, many of us in the transportation field were working hard at improving the quality of life through smart transportation choices and investments. In 1998, as Associate Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, I had the privilege of working with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton to announce the new Millennium Trails program. In the past ten years, state DOTs have used $5.2 billion to fund bicycle and pedestrian programs across the country, almost $1.125 billion in FY 2009 alone. In 2007, states spent $13.3 billion on transit, compared to federal funding of $10.7 billion. Several states, including New York, Oregon, Illinois and Washington have issued guidelines for ensuring their projects meet sustainability criteria.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has indicated that livability is among the Administration’s top priorities for future transportation funding. Soon it will be up to Congress to determine how “livability” will fit into the next multiyear transportation authorization legislation.

Transportation is clearly a critical link in creating more livable communities, playing an important role in connecting affordable housing, good jobs, a safe and healthy environment and strong schools. But what’s been missing from the national dialogue on livability is what can be accomplished through road-related improvements. The next authorization bill must take into account the important role played by road-related investments in enhancing communities and improving the convenience of travel and access to services for all citizens.

AASHTO’s new report, The Road to Livability, shows the versatility of the tool kit available to state DOTs today and the many projects already completed that have revitalized our neighborhoods while offering a balanced approach to livability.

Environmental sustainability is an important part of our national transportation system and project selection should certainly take environmental impacts into consideration. However, these impacts should only be part of the equation. We must look at the merit of the project and how it relates to national priority, not just environmental impact.

Proposed highway projects with significant environmental impacts are already subject to an environmental impact statement (EIS). This decision making tool lays out the positive and negative environmental affects of the proposed project and sites. The document is required for all actions “significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.”

Investing in projects that alleviate traffic congestion at critical bottlenecks on our nation’s highways will have positive, lasting economic and environmental effects. Expanding highway capacity around our nation’s worst traffic bottlenecks is just one of the American Trucking Associations’ sustainability initiatives for reducing fuel consumption and the industry’s carbon footprint.

ATA also supports policies that reduce speed on our highways to 65 mph, technologies to reduce discretionary idling, and policies that promote more productive trucks and further improvements to diesel engine efficiency. Through a strong partnership with engine manufacturers, new over-the-road truck engines far exceed the EPA’s diesel engine emission standards. ATA also recommends that shippers and motor carriers join the U.S. EPA SmartWay Transport Partnership Program in order to achieve greater national gains in fuel efficiency and carbon reduction. The program’s goal is to look beyond the fuel economy of individual vehicles and use new management techniques and technologies to increase the amount of cargo moved per gallon of fuel for the whole fleet.

As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and continue working for a more sustainable transportation system, we must focus on maximizing both the environmental and economic returns on our investments.

A set of sustainability standards for transportation construction is something TEN would love to see, and the LEED green building certification provides a great model. Transportation groups such as APTA and ASHTO could lead the way, creating new sustainability standards for the transportation industry and then lifting up outstanding projects, as the U.S. Green Building Council has done with LEED. There is already so much expertise in the field of green design and construction that there is no need to reinvent the wheel—it’s a matter of adapting best practices from other fields to transportation construction. There’s a wealth of talent just waiting to be tapped.

The key will be to make sure sustainability standards take equity into account, because equity issues inform and overlap with sustainability in so many ways. The same short-sighted transportation planning that rammed highways through formerly stable low-income neighborhoods, literally splitting communities in two, resulted in the exposure of working class people of all colors to pollution, accidents, noise, chemical spills, and explosions. We all live with that legacy today. Sustainability standards must give us another way forward.

The standards should also reflect the need for more non-motorized transportation options to let our communities travel in more sustainable ways. A study this month showed that the percentage of U.S. students aged 5-14 who walk or bike to school is a quarter of what it was 40 years ago. The outstanding Safe Routes to Schools program is doing its part to reverse this. Comprehensive transportation sustainability standards should be another part of the solution.

NRDC has struggled with this issue as we’ve helped to develop LEED-ND, a rating system that evaluates neighborhood sustainability, including local transportation. LEED-ND, which was approved for implementation late last year, offers policymakers valuable tools to evaluate the sustainability of planned development at a local level. However, the process of crafting this standard has also taught us that a federal transportation policy supportive of environmental sustainability will require something quite different.

An environmental rating system would only tell us what we already know: that our transportation system remains unsustainable. Climate and energy aren’t the only environmental concerns with transportation, but they are a good place to start. Transportation was responsible for 27% of total US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2008. This makes transportation the nation’s second largest end-use emissions source—larger than any other nation’s economy-wide emissions, with the exception of China. Over the past two decades, transportation has also been the nation’s fastest growing GHG source, responsible for 47% of the net increase in emissions between 1990 and 2007. (Transportation also accounts for close to 70% of US oil consumption, but that’s for an energy security post.)

The surface transportation network we’ve built has provided an incredible level of mobility that remains an important component of American prosperity. But it is also terribly inefficient. The national driving rate has increased at three times the rate of population growth since 1970, meaning that we are driving more frequently and more miles per capita. As a result, nearly 80% of transportation emissions today come from highway vehicles.

The outlook for the future is no brighter. National VMT is projected to double by 2030, and freight tonnage is projected to increase by more than 26%. This is not a scenario that will reduce emissions. Indeed, even under previously considered climate change proposals in Congress, as all other sectors achieve substantial reductions, transportation sector emission remain flat, and only by virtue of aggressive increases in vehicle efficiency.

Fortunately, this scenario is not inevitable; it assumes a static transportation policy that yields outcomes similar to the past. We can change it with a new vision for transportation policy that considers the climate and energy impacts of our transportation plans and investments in a meaningful way, helping determine what we build and where we build it.

To accomplish this, we must start by setting national goals for reducing transportation oil consumption and GHG emissions, along with other important transportation goals such as safety, mobility (or perhaps accessibility), asset maintenance needs, goods movement, etc. We must then align transportation plans and programs to support national, state, and regional efforts to achieve these goals over time through infrastructure investments and system management. Performance standards and incentives can help states and regions, each in their own unique way, make reasonable progress toward this suite of goals.

Practically, what does this mean? It means better road and congestion management and strong consideration of road pricing. It means increasing investment in efficient non-road transportation options, and a real multi-modal freight strategy. It means much better coordination of transportation plans with local land use. And when new road capacity is called for (yes, this environmentalist recognizes that a road is often the best way to get from here to there!), it means being cognizant of the long term energy and climate impacts. And of course, this vision also includes ever-more efficient vehicles running on new low-carbon fuels.

A new transportation program that achieves this is our best hope for making sure that our limited transportation funds are spent in the best interest of both local areas and the nation at large, at once supporting both prosperity and sustainability.

Airports have long been leaders in sustainable building and operations. Oakland, Boston, Indianapolis, Detroit, Toronto, San Jose, Phoenix, Boston, Honolulu, and Atlanta are among several airports that have achieved or are currently working toward Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for their terminals. Indeed, LEED certification is widely acknowledged and accepted around the country, so many airports are interested in what, to paraphrase the UPS commercial, “LEED can do for them.”

But the truth is that LEED was not really designed for airport projects, especially large airfield projects. While we are working with the U.S. Green Building Council on ways to adapt LEED to airport projects, many airports are taking their own sustainability initiatives.

The most recognized such initiative is the Chicago O’Hare Modernization Program, a $3.28 billion investment that includes new runways and runway extensions. The OMP has developed a nationally recognized sustainability manual that includes metrics against which every aspect of the project can be measured. They have even developed a ratings system that contractors may use in marketing their own expertise and ability when it comes to sustainability.

ACI-NA has engaged in a number of activities to assist airports in incorporating more sustainable practices and programs in their planning, construction and operations activities. Most recently, ACI-NA helped form the Sustainable Aviation Guidance Alliance (SAGA), which developed a comprehensive database of sustainable initiatives and guidance materials to assist airports in developing or improving a sustainability program. The SAGA principles articulate that an airport operator’s definition of sustainability should relate to its unique circumstances and role within its community and environment.

As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, we should continue to work for a more sustainable transportation system. We should also build on the sustainability programs in place that are recognized by the public. This will ensure better understanding of the work done every day by airports and others in the industry to bring long term environmental, social and economic sustainability benefits for passengers and communities.

As we approach Earth Day, we in the transportation industry are facing a daunting task. We are being asked to solve issues associated with providing an economically viable, readily accessible and environmentally friendly system of transportation that at the same time spurs economic growth, creates jobs, advances our global competitiveness, maintains our mobility freedom and contributes to the right of Americans to a quality and secure life. I have no doubt we are technically up to meeting this challenge—the bigger question concerns if there is political will to understand the issue of transportation in its entirety and find the path that best meets the needs of all of us.

How the climate change debate is conducted will be a determining factor in how successful we are in meeting the challenge. The transportation part of the debate must first start with a definition of the comprehensive needs of the country. Transportation’s role is complex, and the work done by the House T&I committee can be relied on as a base to define the situation. Transportation effects the environment, jobs, security, commerce, mobility and personal freedom. Each must be considered and accommodated to be successful.

We in the technical arena can provide the science that is needed to make informed decisions. If the political process is not dominated by those at the extremes, right or left, a roadmap for the future of transportation can be developed to not only meet the needs, but also the wants. It most likely will not satisfy everyone, but it will result in an improved transportation system that fulfills our commercial needs while significantly improving the environment. With a plan, a complete plan, we will be able to implement through vehicles like a new six-year surface transportation bill and a new aviation funding bill, paid for by dedicated revenue that provides the needed multi-year support to produce the desired results for both the environment and mobility.

The industry is actively engaged in developing a system for measuring sustainable transportation infrastructure. I am aware of a number of ongoing efforts such as the Zofnass Program for Infrastructure Sustainability to create a third party benchmark for the sustainability of infrastructure; the efforts of the Chicago Department of Aviation and AAAE to develop a sustainability manual for airports; and continuing efforts by the federal, state and local governments to provide guidance that will result in more sustainable facilities.

HNTB, and a number of our peers, not only have the appetite to measure sustainability, we are active participants in developing how to be more sustainable and how to measure our effectiveness. I can say from my years associated with the transportation industry that it is extremely rare to meet anyone in the industry who is not dedicated to improving quality of life.

The industry will respond and will excel to create a balanced, well thought out program that meets all transportation needs in a sustainable manner.

Greening America’s Roadways Viewpoint

THINK Magazine Issue 3: Responsible Infrastructure

THINK Magazine Issue 4: Transformative Infrastructure

Related aviation white paper: http://www.hntb.com/sites/default/files/issues/RossbachSustainability_709.pdf