Surface Transportation Environmental Research: A Long-Term Strategy -- Special Report 268 (2002)

For the past 30 years,¹ Americans have addressed the environmental impacts of transportation through policy initiatives, planning and analysis, new programs, and new technologies.² Accomplishments have been significant, but much remains to be done. During the next 25 years, significant growth and changes in the nation’s population and economy are expected to occur, posing major new challenges for transportation and the environment, but also offering important opportunities for advancement. Major new investments in transportation–environment research will be needed if these opportunities are to be realized.

Many of the challenges to be met stem from America’s surface transportation systems, and in particular the motor vehicle–highway system. Private investments in the automobile and public investments in highways have brought Americans unprecedented freedom of movement. Most individuals today have access to automobiles providing them with the means to pursue interests, jobs, recreation, and schooling in ways and places that would have been out of reach for most Americans just a few decades ago. Goods move quickly and efficiently on truck and intermodal truck–rail systems, supporting economic growth. Americans have incorporated the automobile and truck into nearly all aspects of life—the economy, society, and popular culture.

At the same time, the costs of current surface transportation systems are high. As driving levels increase, roads are becoming more congested, and valu-

able time is being lost in heavy traffic. Roads and parking are consuming large amounts of prized urban space. Residences and businesses are increasingly choosing to locate in the suburban fringe to avoid congestion, and the landscape is being fundamentally altered as new developments and new transportation facilities are built on land formerly devoted to farms and ranches, forests, and recreation. Thus traffic and roads are strongly implicated in many of the major environmental problems faced by the United States today: air and water pollution, heavy energy use, fragmented farmlands and habitat, wildlife and biodiversity losses, and community disruption. In turn, these problems are adversely affecting human and ecosystem health and the nation’s overall quality of life.

In addition, the negative effects of surface transportation are unevenly distributed. The results of transportation investment decisions—facilities and networks—frequently have a disproportionate impact on inner-city neighborhoods and older suburbs. Outward movement often proves costly to the communities and businesses that are left behind. People who cannot drive have limited access to jobs, services, education, and recreation. Older people, low-income populations, persons with disabilities, and minorities bear a disproportionate share of these adverse impacts.

If the current situation presents significant challenges for transportation professionals, the next 25 years will add to those challenges. The U.S. population is predicted to grow by 60 million, with most of that growth in metropolitan areas. Gross domestic product is projected to reach $29 trillion (approximately 1.5 times today’s levels in real terms). If current trends persist, the number of passenger miles traveled is predicted to grow even more rapidly than the population or the economy, swelling from 5 trillion in 2000 to 8.4 trillion in 2025. Americans will expect policymakers and transportation professionals to provide the transportation facilities and services needed to accommodate this growth efficiently, at low cost, and in a socially and environmentally responsible manner. The nation must find ways to deliver a transportation system that simultaneously promotes economic growth, adds to the health of communities and individuals, uses energy efficiently, is inclusive, and enhances the natural and built environments.

The Surface Transportation Environmental Cooperative Research Program Advisory Board (Advisory Board) was formed by the Transportation Research

Board of the National Research Council to recommend a national agenda of environmental research for the surface transportation community that would address the challenges and opportunities discussed above. In the course of conducting this study, the Advisory Board concluded that a major new investment in transportation–environment research is needed to support the nation’s growth and meet public expectations for improved transportation system performance. The nation’s collective vision of a transportation system that is efficient, equitable, and environmentally benign is clear. To date, however, there exists no comprehensive strategy for realizing that vision.

The United States has enjoyed a remarkable prolonged period of economic expansion since World War II. The standard of living for the average American has increased substantially, with annual personal expenditures tripling on an inflation-adjusted, per capita basis between 1950 and 2000. During this same 50-year period, the population of the United States has grown by 130 million; more than 33 million people were added through immigration and natural increases between 1990 and 2000 alone. Automobiles and trucks have been the dominant means of surface transportation in the United States throughout this period, and have played an important role in supporting and shaping the nation’s growth and expansion. They have heavily influenced our consumer goods economy, development patterns, and popular culture. Access to a private vehicle has become the rule rather than the exception for those of driving age, and today more than 95 percent of our person-trips are made by automobile. Truck usage also has grown and now accounts for more than 90 percent of all shipments. The distances traveled are increasing as well: since 1970, Americans have more than doubled their total vehicular travel, and truck travel has more than tripled. There are now more than 200 million vehicles traveling greater than 2.6 trillion miles per year in the United States.

The effects of this level of vehicle ownership and highway use are substantial. Highway travel now constitutes the primary domestic use of imported petroleum. The costs of owning and operating personal vehicles represent 19 percent of the average American household’s income—equal to the share of food and clothing combined, triple that of medical care, and second only to housing. Roads and traffic in the United States are estimated to affect

the ecology of more than a fifth of the nation’s land area. High reliance on the private vehicle for travel has been a significant contributing factor in the broad spread of urbanized land areas, with the amount of land devoted to residential and commercial land, parking, and streets increasing much more rapidly than population.

Concerns about the environmental implications of surface transportation have assumed a high profile in public discourse. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act (as amended), Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, and a number of other federal and state environmental laws and requirements have been put in place to help deal with the known and suspected impacts of surface transportation. Provisions of successive Federal-Aid Highway Acts, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, and the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) have called for stronger roles for metropolitan planning; systematic consideration of social, economic, and environmental effects; protection of parklands; and more public engagement in planning.

Certainly progress has been made: the air and water are cleaner, species have been protected, and many other adverse impacts have been avoided or mitigated as consideration of the environment has increased. Yet these policies have not yet produced what could be termed a “sustainable” transportation system. Changing community perspectives and constrained finances have combined to keep total highway expansion to approximately 2 percent (in lane-miles) during the past 30 years;³ coupled with the massive growth in motor vehicle use, this constrained expansion has caused the existing road system to experience substantial increases in congestion.

Efforts to improve and expand public transportation in recent decades have resulted in increased usage in some areas, but the gains are uneven. Transit captures a significant share of travel in communities and corridors where services are competitive with the private automobile, such as urban areas, but only about half of the communities in the United States have public transportation systems, and in many other locations only limited service is provided. As of this writing, 47 of the 50 major metropolitan areas in the country have

transit projects under way or under active study. That having been said, as a result of public policy that historically has favored highway and street construction, the United States has the lowest share of transit use of all the fully industrialized economies, at only 2 percent of total travel.

In addition, key trends are moving in the wrong direction. Despite large reductions in vehicle emissions during the past 30 years, many metropolitan regions still have not met basic health standards for air pollution, and several that had achieved compliance have experienced recent excessive violations. Moreover, evidence points to adverse health consequences for children and the elderly at lower pollution levels than were previously recognized. Meanwhile, fuel economy has been declining.⁴

Emerging technologies, policy innovations, and new planning processes offer opportunities for improvement. Relatively little is known, however, about the practical application of these options and whether and where they will succeed.

The Advisory Board has concluded on the basis of this study that the current state of knowledge and the tools available for environmental assessment are inadequate to ensure informed and effective decisions on transportation and the environment:

• The scale of investment in environmental research related to surface transportation is far too small in relation to the massive scale of transportation activity and its impacts.

• Coordination of the research that does take place is insufficient to derive the greatest benefit from the research effort or to ensure that gaps in the research agenda will be filled.

• Dissemination of research results is often inadequate, and the practical implementation of research findings is too slow. As a result, current

practice is not up to date, and opportunities for improved performance are being missed.

• A long-term strategy for systematically addressing the environmental effects of transportation on the environment has not been developed, implemented, or integrated into transportation development and management programs. Current policies and investment strategies have tended to focus on short-term solutions.

The stakes are too high to continue to accept the status quo. As in the past, the major transportation system investments and private-sector land development activities occurring today will become fixtures in the landscape and economy of the nation. Better information and improved methods are needed to support policy and investment decisions in the near term, as well as in the long-term future.

The Advisory Board has identified six critical research areas for research in transportation and the environment:

1. Human health,

2. Ecology and natural systems,

3. Environmental and social justice,

4. Emerging technologies,

5. Land use, and

6. Planning and performance measures.

While each of these areas is the subject of current research, the Advisory Board believes much more focused and coordinated research is needed in each. More important, many critical transportation–environment topics are all but over-looked, or underfunded. Accordingly, in this report a proposed national research agenda in the above six areas is presented. This agenda includes both basic and applied research elements, as well as education and outreach tasks.

The Advisory Board also concludes that a long-term strategy is critically needed so that research needs in transportation and the environment can be systematically addressed. Current efforts have tended to focus on short-term

issues and short-term responses. These efforts are inadequate for ensuring that the U.S. transportation systems of the 21st century will deliver high-quality economic, social, and environmental performance. The overall strategy entails the development of a research agenda, the conduct of cooperative research, research coordination, and information dissemination.

By no means is the Advisory Board of the opinion that the proposed work needs to be done solely by the federal government, or more broadly by the public sector. Universities, public interest groups, and the private sector should be partners in transportation–environment research. The Advisory Board does, however, believe that there is a need for a new, independent entity that can engage all the parties in a cooperative research program on transportation and the environment. This program would be responsible for continuous renewal of the research agenda; sponsorship of substantial levels of new research; and increased coordination, cooperation, and communication among research entities to ensure that the most benefit will be derived from collectively invested dollars.

The Advisory Board recommends the establishment of a new cooperative research program for several reasons. First, the board recognizes that coordinating a comprehensive research program on transportation and the environment across numerous departments and agencies, levels of government, and the public and private sectors is inherently difficult. Yet such coordination is urgently needed. Research on surface transportation and the environment is being carried out today by at least half a dozen departments and agencies of the federal government, their state and local counterparts, academia, public interest groups, the private sector, and numerous international entities. Most of these research programs are functioning with limited resources that, if coordinated, could greatly enhance the ability to devise means of addressing the issues identified in this report. One function of the proposed research program would be to enable cooperative research among these groups, to support parallel investigations and shared efforts, and to aid in the effective dissemination of research findings from all sources.

Second, a new research program could focus resources on critical issues that cannot be resolved effectively by parties whose interests are at stake. For example, the Advisory Board recognizes that in many areas of the country, transportation–environment issues are hotly contested, and proponents and

opponents debate the “facts” on a variety of topics. In some instances the debate has reached—or may soon reach—a stalemate. Research by a credible institution not directly involved in the controversies could help inform these debates. The key is to ensure that this research is conducted in a manner that is both transparent to the parties and accepted by all as free from bias. Cooperative research programs are in a better position to perform this function than are other research sponsors.

Third, for many transportation–environment research topics, there has been little work done to date, or the work has been narrowly scoped or focused on short-term and primary impacts. In contrast, many of the emerging issues in transportation and the environment concern broad, long-term, multimedia, dynamic, and systems effects—for example, the potential effects of transportation emissions in one metropolitan area on air quality in other regions many miles downwind. Research that addresses these longer-term systems effects is needed, but as noted earlier, most existing research programs necessarily focus on immediate issues and the programmatic needs of sponsors. Here, too, a new cooperative research program would be far better positioned to work on the long-term, complex issues now emerging.

It is for all these reasons that the Advisory Board recommends the establishment of a surface transportation environmental cooperative research program, as originally called for in TEA-21. This program would be responsible for ensuring that the national transportation–environment research agenda was implemented, in certain cases by sponsoring the research and in other cases by serving as the coordinating body. Research under the auspices of the program would stem from a clearly articulated mission, be subject to the highest levels of merit and peer review, and be conducted in a manner that was transparent to all parties. The cooperative research program also would conduct an annual review of the research work being carried out by the various federal government entities and survey the work being done elsewhere throughout the world. This review would include development of specific recommendations for enhanced coordination; sharing of resources and findings; and identification of research gaps, with particular focus on long-term needs.

An effective cooperative research program would serve the needs of and therefore require the participation of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, academia, and the private sector. The board overseeing the cooperative research program should likewise represent the full range of interests to achieve a balanced and comprehensive perspective.

The Advisory Board reviewed the organizational structures of four leading cooperative research programs: the Health Effects Institute, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Program, the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), and the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP). Summaries of these programs are included in Appendix B. On the basis of this review, the Board identified a number of specific program elements that appear to be most important for success:

• Core partners—entities that should contribute to the overall governance of the program, the primary customers and recipients of the research products.⁵ Three categories of core partners should be considered when forming a surface transportation environmental cooperative research program: public entities, the private sector, and nongovernmental/nonprofit organizations.

• Institutional arrangement—establishment of the research program in a setting that provides for independence and credibility. A partnership between industry and the public sector enhances a cooperative research program’s ability to create a cohesive, integrated research environment and should offer the added attraction of securing private investments while establishing a firewall of independence around the program. Representatives from nongovernmental organizations can form the third leg of the partnership, thereby differentiating the model from that of the Health Effects Institute.⁶

• Strategic focus—program direction, as established by the core partners and stakeholders of the program and guided by the national research agenda. To ensure that all core partners and relevant stakeholders are in agreement on the priorities of the cooperative research program, a mechanism is

needed for formulating, articulating, and periodically updating the program’s strategic focus areas. The Health Effects Institute and STAR, for example, develop multiyear strategic plans.

• Solicitation and evaluation of research proposals—the ability to exercise vital quality control mechanisms through open competition and merit review. Establishing clear criteria aids in the selection of the most appropriate research projects, thereby ensuring a selection process that is transparent, fair, and subject to open competition. The Health Effects Institute, STAR, NCHRP, and TCRP all use clear selection criteria in addition to insisting that the selected research projects undergo external merit review. Although the merit review processes differ among the four programs, each incorporates the fundamental elements of both external and internal merit review, as well as open competition.

• Evaluation of research—peer review and other approaches designed to ensure the validity and credibility of both the research and the operating functions of the cooperative research program. In addition to evaluating specific research projects upon completion, periodic programmatic evaluations can serve to increase confidence in the operations of the program and may be important when a significant number of end users/customers/ stakeholders are to be satisfied.

• Dissemination—mechanisms for effectively disseminating research findings. Too often, the research process ends with the publication of findings. Unless research programs make a concerted effort to inform other researchers and research institutions, practicing professionals, decision makers, and the general populace about those findings, a system of fragmented, uncoordinated research initiatives will continue to persist.

• Funding—stable funding that enables support of long-term basic and applied research (see below).

• Competency and availability of staff—the ability to attract and retain highly skilled and independent staff. Next to stable and sufficient funding, the support of competent staff is the most crucial element in achieving a successful program. If the program is to avail itself of the best and most experienced representatives of the multiple disciplines needed for the research efforts, long-term stable arrangements and flexible contracting processes must be offered with established and emerging institutions that can demonstrate the ability to assemble appropriate teams and complete the tasks assigned. The staffs and institutions involved must also be shielded from political interests and undue influence from

key stakeholders and core partners; that is, they must be granted full independence so they can apply the highest standards of scientific rigor to their work.

• Stakeholder involvement/communication—mechanisms for providing for meaningful stakeholder involvement in the selection, evaluation, and coordination of the research.⁷ To maintain stakeholder confidence, the process for determining research priorities, selecting and structuring studies, and reviewing the final research products must be clearly understood and readily transparent. All four of the research programs reviewed share common features for actively soliciting stakeholder involvement. Stakeholders are invited to participate in the formulation of the program’s strategic plan and strategic focus areas, to submit research proposals, to participate in merit reviews of the research proposals, to participate in workshops at which ongoing research is presented, and to participate in peer reviews of the research products. They are also apprised of the research findings and recommendations.

Adequate and stable funding must be available on a multiyear basis to support administrative, contracting, and sponsorship activities, including the ability to enter into partnerships with other public and private entities; to support longterm research, both basic and applied; and to sponsor workshops and demonstrations of implementation. Because transportation–environment research has been underfunded during the past 30 years, a significant investment is now needed to address both the backlog of issues that require attention and the issues that continue to arise. The Advisory Board recognizes that a large-scale research program requires a careful startup phase and review of success before a sustainable and effective annual level of research activity is determined. Thus it is prudent to anticipate that the full implementation should and will be phased in over several years. However, the Board finds little reason for the growth of the program to be constrained by a lack of funding. At current federal funding levels, as little as 0.5 percent of annual authorizations of certain federal-aid program categories produces approximately $150 million. While a

precise annual budgetary estimate for the eventual surface transportation cooperative research program cannot be established until after the start-up phase, it is the Board’s opinion that the budget will not exceed such a small fraction of the overall federal transportation program. A national commitment of this scale would not pose a significant financial challenge to the federal transportation program, and given the importance of the environmental issues at stake in the proposed research program, could be expected to produce benefits many times as large.