Baltimore Regional Partnership 
1000 Friends of Maryland * Baltimore Urban League * Chesapeake Bay Foundation
Citizens’ Planning and Housing Association * Environmental Defense

February 22, 2000

Mr. J. Craig Forrest, Chairman
Transportation Steering Committee
601 North Howard Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

Re: TSC response to Baltimore Regional Partnership Comments on Conformity

Dear Mr. Forrest,

Thank you for your January 28 response to our comments regarding the conformity determination of the 1998 Baltimore Regional Transportation Plan (BRTP) and the 2000-2004 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP). Since I had not heard the rescheduled start time of your February 3 meeting, I thought I would put the substance of my comments into letter form and request a meeting on behalf of the Baltimore Regional Partnership to discuss our anticipated work with you further. This letter includes those comments and some additional information on transportation control measures we thought relevant to the Transportation Steering Committee’s work.

As I expressed only briefly at the February 3 meeting, we are very appreciative of the TSC’s vote at your January 20 retreat to conduct a substantial regional strategic planning, or "visioning," process from this year until 2002. Through such a process we hope to be able to work with the TSC in a much more proactive, collaborative process to bring about a better future for the Baltimore region.

As you know, we are extremely critical of the future envisioned by the 1998 BRTP. Through a longer-range visioning process, however, we believe we could work with you in a much more collaborative way to bring about a future where Baltimore area residents have effective transportation choices and where transportation and land use decisions work together to curb sprawl, revitalize existing communities, and to enhance the mobility of the region’s population and work force. We would like to meet with you to discuss our active participation as you move forward with this process.

We continue to be concerned with the travel demand model used by the TSC. While we understand you have made recent efforts to improve modeling, we are concerned that the current model’s shortcomings threaten the validity of this plan conformity, future conformity determinations, mobile source emission estimates, and the visioning process itself. For example, one of Michael Replogle’s comments on the model was that it underestimates traffic related to urban centers, missing nearly 20 percent of traffic going into and out of Baltimore City. Given the exceedingly thin margins between the modeled emissions levels and the new mobile source budgets, we are concerned this indicates underestimation of current and forecast emissions. We would like to know on what timetable the TSC/BMC will more fully address the model validation issues with a further upgrade to the model.

Upgrading the TSC’s travel demand model is crucial to the success of the anticipated visioning process. In order truly to alter the Baltimore region’s traffic congestion-plagued future, we believe the TSC must be willing to employ cutting-edge modeling techniques to promote pedestrian- and transit-oriented communities that give Baltimore-area citizens alternatives to automobile travel. We urge the TSC to look to other metropolitan areas such as Portland, Oregon, or Sacramento, California as examples where more cutting-edge tools are used. Closer to home, Montgomery County, through the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, also employs advanced modeling techniques. That county, working with the county’s Citizen Planning Association, is exploring a "Balanced Land Use" future which attempts to relieve congestion and preserve open space by balancing future residential and business growth and by directing growth to walkable, transit oriented communities.

Michael Replogle has offered to follow up with Harvey Bloom to discuss model upgrade, model applications, and other issues related to the assessment of environmental and equity impacts of transportation planning. We are interested in working with the TSC and BMC to help enhance your expertise and capabilities for transportation analysis to meet federal requirements and support sound planning.

Regarding the process of approving the Baltimore region’s TIP and conformity determination, we commend you for voting to wait until the appropriate time after you receive the adequacy determination for the State Implementation Plan (SIP) from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is crucial and legally required to make sure the TSC does not assume that projects in the TIP will proceed until EPA determines that they fit within the region’s plan to meet federal clean air health standards by 2005.

We appreciate Attachment 1 to your response, designed to address our concerns regarding emissions control measures. Upon reading it, however, we find that the TSC’s reply does not, in fact, address our concerns. At the suggestion of Diane Franks, I have attempted to contact Howard Simons at the Maryland Department of Transportation to explore this further, but I also wanted to bring the problem to your attention.

We were quite dismayed that literally none of the Partnership’s concerns were addressed. We are concerned that the figures used to calculate pollution reductions from the College 33 program came from months not in the summer ozone season. That concern was not addressed in Attachment 1. We are concerned that most new participants in the College 33 program may well be former users of other transit services. That was not addressed, either. We are concerned that, according to the Baltimore Metropolitan Council’s own survey, 21 percent of telecommuters would otherwise carpool or take transit and that 11 percent drive at least occasionally to a telecommuting center. Neither concern was factored into the TSC’s calculations or addressed in Attachment 1.

In addition, one of our partner groups, 1000 Friends of Maryland, noted in their comments that the TSC has not yet received binding commitment letters from the Mills Corporation for the emissions reductions measures for which the TSC is taking credit in the TIP. Unfortunately, we are still waiting for the TSC to address these various concerns cited in these original comments from the Baltimore Regional Partnership and 1000 Friends of Maryland.

We continue to be concerned, as expressed in our December 14, 1999 letter, January 21, 2000 comments, and elsewhere that the TSC has not adopted all reasonably available control measures in its Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) and Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). Environmental Defense, another of our partner groups, submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency on the Baltimore SIP to this effect February 14, 2000. Because of the need to coordinate plans in the TIP, RTP, and SIP, we thought it would be helpful to present information from those comments in this letter.

As noted in the February 14 Environmental Defense comments on the Baltimore SIP, the Clean Air Act requires nonattainment plans to provide for implementation of all reasonably available control measures (RACM) as expeditiously as practicable. However, the Baltimore TIP and RTP update has failed to include many reasonably available measures. EPA interprets this Clean Air Act requirement as imposing a duty on all nonattainment areas to consider all available control measures, and to adopt and implement any such measures that are reasonably available. States must provide a justification, supported on economic or technological grounds, as to why measures within the arena of potentially reasonable measures have not been adopted. Further, to show that RACM are being implemented as expeditiously as practicable, the state must explain why the selected implementation schedule is the earliest schedule based on the specific circumstances of that area. Such claims cannot be general claims that more time is needed but rather should be specifically grounded in evidence of economic or technologic infeasibility.

The TIP and RTP update has not sought to support the SIP process by addressing these requirements. The TIP, RTP, and SIP contain only a limited set of control measures, and fail to offer any justification for the state’s failure to adopt numerous available measures. EPA, STAPPA, the separate states, and the public have all identified measures that have been implemented, and that are generally available in most areas. These lists are not discussed in the TIP, RTP, or SIP submissions. The TSC and State have not provided a basis for concluding that such measures are not reasonably available. In addition, the SIP contains no demonstration or claim that the implementation schedule is the earliest practicable one.

The RTP adopted by TSC has adopted some projects and programs that meet the definition of transportation control measures, although they are not identified as such. Presumptively, these measures are reasonably available since they have already been approved by the metropolitan transportation planning process and have satisfied the requirements for reasonably available funding under TEA-21. These planned TCMs are incorporated into the SIP to the extent that the air quality modeling for the area assumes that the transportation system in the area will, in fact, be the system in the MPO plan. But most of the projects and programs in the regional transportation plan that would qualify as TCMs have not been identified as Transportation Control Measures and included as such in the SIP.

Even with the projects and programs adopted in the RTP, the TIP and RTP are still particularly deficient with respect to transportation control measures (TCMs). Mobile source emissions are the largest individual components of both the VOC and NOx inventories, but the plans contain no or few serious new measures to reduce growth in vehicle travel. The TIP and RTP do not adequately consider the possibility of major expansion of transit service, reduced or zero transit fares, pricing strategies, trip-reduction ordinances, employer-based transportation management plans, and expanded pedestrian and bicycle facilities to reduce emissions. These and other TCMs are listed in section 108(f) of the Act, and in EPA guidance documents that identify more than 70 individual measures within broad TCM categories.

A 1996 study by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) and the Environmental Defense (EDF) found that a combination of transit oriented development and pricing strategies (e.g. parking surcharges, transit subsidies, carpool subsidies, HOV tolls) could substantially reduce vehicle trips and miles traveled in the metro D.C. area. Cuts in trips and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) would necessarily reduce both VOC and NOx emissions. The CBF/EDF scenario assumed that traffic calming, sidewalk and bicycle path construction, and other strategies would be used to produce pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly urban areas and transit-oriented centers. These strategies are equally available in the Baltimore area although they would need to be tailored to fit specific community characteristics.

There is also substantial evidence that significant air quality benefits can be achieved by modifying land development patterns to limit urban sprawl and facilitate transit use. A recent EPA-funded report concludes that careful land use planning can reduce vehicle trip lengths and promote shifts to transit, bicycling, and walking modes. For example, the report cites studies showing that development at infill sites can result in vehicle NOx emissions that are 27% to 42% lower than at more dispersed locations. The report identifies specific strategies to achieve such results, including planning that promotes transit-oriented development, density transfers, and design elements that encourage pedestrian, bike, transit, and ridesharing activity (e.g. narrower streets, sidewalks, bike lanes, traffic calming devices). The report further identifies a number of cities throughout the nation where such strategies have been adopted and included in air quality plans. For example, the maintenance SIP for Portland, Oregon identifies several land use TCMs, including an urban growth boundary, requirements for transit-oriented development, and a regional parking policy. The 1994 Sacramento, CA, ozone SIP contains land use-related TCMs, including a requirement that new developments include mitigation measures to achieve a 15% reduction in vehicle emissions. The San Francisco clean air plan includes land use planning measures, and programs to promote pedestrian travel and traffic calming. The EPA report also identifies a number of other land use TCMs that have been adopted in other cities, although not yet included in clean air plans. All of the above-referenced strategies are within the arena of potential RACM that must be considered by the states.

Another demonstrated TCM is Commuter Choice, based on the tax subsidy for commuter travel by transit enacted by Congress in TEA-21. EPA has estimated significant NOx and VOC reductions that are attributable to implementation of this program in New York City. The scope of the program could be significantly expanded through marketing, matching state tax credits, and implementation for public employees. The program is clearly "available" nationwide through ISTEA, but many options are open to states to encourage, promote, subsidize, or even require its use in nonattainment areas.

In addition to the federal Commuter Choice tax benefit, the 1999 Maryland General Assembly enacted a 50% tax credit for employer subsidies of employee transit fares. This program, however, was not included in the SIP. In addition to the tax credit, Maryland and the TSC could include a program requiring employers to provide a parking cashout option to employees who agree to stop driving to work. Such a program has been adopted in Los Angeles, and the evidence shows that one out of eight people who used to drive have taken advantage of the program.

Yet another TCM promoted by one of our partner groups, Environmental Defense, is the phase-out of diesel buses and fleet vehicles on an accelerated schedule and replacing them with new buses and fleet vehicles powered by substantially cleaner fuels, such as natural gas or stored electric power. It would seem, given in-use emissions data for NOx and VOCs, that such a conversion program would be an RACM for possible inclusion in the TIP, RTP, and SIP. The TSC has not addressed Environmental Defense’s earlier comments on the subject , however, nor does it seem to have considered such a program for inclusion.

Maryland has not generally included the foregoing measures in its SIPs nor otherwise treated these emission reduction measures as TCMs in the TIP and RTP, and it has offered no justification for that failure. Maryland has evaluated numerous RACM as part of the development of its 15% plan, but has not updated that review with regard to the development and adoption of final implementation plans. The process that states undertook in the early 1990s looked only at measures needed to meet the 15% Rate of Progress requirement for VOCs. It did not consider or quantify the potential NOx benefits of any measures, and did not evaluate RACM for purposes of timely attainment. Further, the process did not review all of the above-mentioned TCMs, did not recommend adoption of specific measures, and did not give justifications for rejecting unadopted measures.

Such early reviews of potential TCMs provide a starting point for states to revisit availability of TCMs, but they do not support any conclusions about predicted emission reductions or the current cost per ton of various measures, nor do they provide a narrative evaluation of the pros and cons of each measure. Moreover, a cursory process that took place years ago hardly suffices to determine what strategies are reasonably available today.

Regarding the composition of the TSC, we would like to commend the TSC for deciding that the elected official members would conduct 4 meetings per year beginning this year. We believe this is a good start toward more elected official involvement in major TSC decisions. It is our understanding that Baltimore County Executive Dutch Ruppersberger would chair those meetings and that he and the other elected officials would listen to public comment and vote on business before the TSC at those meetings. Again, we would welcome the opportunity to meet with you and to explore these plans further.

In conclusion, thank you again for your response to our comments on the TIP and conformity determination. We look forward to working with you in the year 2000, and would very much appreciate the opportunity to meet with you to discuss the year ahead.

Sincerely,

Dan Pontious
Director