Dear Ms. Aris and Mr. Forrest:

Thank you for conducting a briefing on Baltimore's transportation and air quality, held on August 16, 1999. We are writing to follow up comments and observations made at that meeting. The Interagency Consultation Group is meeting on August 19th to discuss the planning assumptions to be used as inputs for the TSC's transportation conformity analysis. The Transportation Steering Committee is meeting on August 24th and will also consider this seemingly technical issue, which will have great practical consequence for the health of Maryland's residents and communities.

We urge your groups to approve the use of updated 1996 Maryland motor vehicle registration data for conformity analysis and to provide more documentation to the public on proposed changes to the transportation model assumptions and methods.

The draft analysis by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) and the Baltimore regional Transportation Steering Committee (TSC) released on August 19th shows that air pollution coming from cars and trucks in metropolitan Baltimore is about 15 percent greater than previously estimated for all years evaluated. This change results from updating the information about the characteristics of the motor vehicle fleet in the Baltimore region, using more recent 1996 registration data, rather than obsolete 1990 data. This increased pollution is due to greater use of sport utility vehicles today than in 1990 and the fact that consumers continue to use older, more polluting cars and trucks for more years than previously assumed. These added emissions are a major contributor to the ozone smog pollution that exacerbates health problems and death rates for those with respiratory diseases such as asthma.

Ground-level ozone in Maryland has reached dangerous levels on at least eight days this summer, harming the health and threatening the lives of many Maryland residents. The Maryland Phase II State Implementation Plan (SIP) for air quality sets limits on how many tons per day of the pollutants that form this ozone smog -- Nitrogen Oxides and Volatile Organic Compounds -- can be allowed without harming public health. The new MDE/TSC study shows that the region's transportation plan significantly violates these emission limits. This provides important new evidence that local, regional, and state agencies should immediately step up efforts to reduce traffic growth and air pollution.

Thus we are alarmed that a consultant to the TSC and MDE recommended on August 16th that the obsolete and plainly incorrect 1990 motor vehicle registration data should be used for conformity analysis in 1999, rather than using more up-to-date 1996 motor vehicle registration data. This would unethical and illegally delay the timely attainment of healthful air quality, as required by the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act section 176(c)(1)(B)(iii) requires conformity determinations to "be based on the most recent estimates of emissions." As EPA stated in the preamble to the August 1997 conformity regulation (40 CFR Parts 51 and 93, (IX)(B), it "believes that areas must use the most current tools available at the time of the conformity determination, in accordance with the Clean Air Act. Using the best models and assumptions will also produce the best emissions estimates on which areas will base decisions regarding transportation and air quality."

The regulations are clear that --

"the conformity determination, with respect to all other applicable criteria in §§93.111 - 93.119, must be based upon the most recent planning assumptions in force at the time of the conformity determination."

"Assumptions must be derived from the estimates of current and future population, employment, travel, and congestion most recently developed by the MPO or other agency authorized to make such estimates and approved by the MPO. The conformity determination must also be based on the latest assumptions about current and future background concentrations."

"The conformity determination must be based on the latest emission estimation model available. (§93.111).

(6) The ambient temperatures used for the regional emissions analysis shall be consistent with those used to establish the emissions budget in the applicable implementation plan. All other factors, for example, the fraction of travel in a hot stabilized engine mode, must be consistent with the applicable implementation plan, unless modified after interagency consultation according to §93.105(c)(1)(i) to incorporate additional or more geographically specific information or represent a logically estimated trend in such factors beyond the period considered in the applicable implementation plan. . (§93.122(a)(6)).

From this compilation of regulatory requirement it is clear that the Maryland is not required to use the same motor vehicle registration assumptions as the SIP used. However, the Interagency Consultation Group is obligated to take action to adopt the new motor vehicle registration factors as more appropriate geographic specific information that represents the recent trend in factors. In the presentation by the consultant on August 16th, page 43 of the handout inaccurately and misleadingly leaves out the language contained in the last regulatory cite above. If the Interagency Consultation Group does not adopt the revised motor vehicle registration data even though it is clearly available and has already been shown to be of use in performing the necessary analysis, the conformity analysis would violate other sections of the regulations and the clear Clean Air Act statutory language. Thus any conformity finding or project approval flowing from such finding, relying on the obsolete data, could be subject to legal challenge.

If Maryland agencies use obsolete vehicle registration data to approve new sprawl and pollution inducing transportation projects, they will cause more severe and frequent ozone air pollution violations of the existing federal health standards for ozone for years to come. The cost of cleaning up this pollution burden will be imposed on small businesses, utilities, consumers, and through added health costs and injury borne by those suffering from respiratory problems. If Maryland agencies use more current and appropriate data on vehicle registrations, this will help elected officials and the public understand the real problems our region faces and motivate timely collective action to address these problems. It will help get local and state and private sector interests working together, as in Atlanta, to solve the region's air quality and transportation problems and to support fuller implementation of Smart Growth and smart transportation strategies.

As an ethical issue, this situation is analogous to the problem faced by a civil engineer who is putting up a bridge or building and who discovers that the steel beams delivered on site are not as strong as the ones assumed by the project plan. An ethical engineer will not build according to the plan using the weaker beams, knowing that this would increase the likelihood that the bridge or building would be unsafe and harm its users. An ethical engineer will redesign the structure, so that it can be operated safely for years to come relying on the materials at hand, or using alternative materials to build it.

We are also concerned that changes in the speed-adjustment factors and model assumptions should be fully documented and compared with observed traffic and transportation data. TSC is proposing to adopt a new TP+ traffic model that appears to contain some useful enhancements. We are concerned that TSC and BMC have made so little progress in developing a new mode choice model, more sensitivity tools to evaluate the effects of transportation on land use, and methods to reflect how the time-of-day of travel changes in response to changes in travel capacity and costs. We are concerned that the model methods described on August 16th do not reflect the effects on VOC and NOX emissions of significant motor vehicle travel at speeds of 65mph and above on the region's expressways. There are reasonable methods for adjusting speed-factor adjustments to account for this higher speed and more polluting travel. Yet the speed/emissions relationship graph on page 63 of the August 16th handout stops at 60mph. Based on a discussion with the consultant, we believe emissions from high speed driving are significantly underestimated in the Baltimore regional analysis and that this could and should be corrected for the upcoming conformity analysis through adjustment of the post-processor software.

We would also like to see full documentation of how the adjustment in the speed-delay curves corresponds to observed traffic flow data in the region and how well the new models correspond to observed traffic counts and times by time-of-day.

EPA proposed to require network-based models to be validated against peak and off-peak ground counts for a base year that is not more than ten years prior to the date of the conformity determination. The final rule requires validation against "observed" counts rather than "ground" counts because the term "ground" counts sometimes implies automobile counts only. In fact, models should be validated against counts for all modes, including transit, bicycle, and pedestrian. EPA believes that because "observed" counts is a more general term, it more appropriately conveys the intent of the proposed requirement. (40 CFR Parts 51 and 93, (IX)(D)).

In addition, since emissions estimates are extremely sensitive to vehicle speed, EPA and DOT recommend that speeds be estimated in a separate step after traffic assignment (also known as "post-processing"), using refined speed-volume relationships and final assigned traffic volumes. Post-processed speeds estimated in the validation year should be compared with speeds empirically observed during the peak and off-peak periods. These comparisons may be made for typical facilities, for example, by facility class/area type category. Based on these comparisons, speed-volume relationships used for speed post-processing should be adjusted to obtain reasonable agreement with observed speeds. Regardless of the specific analytical technique, every effort must be made to ensure that speed estimates are credible and based on a reproducible and logical analytical procedure. (40 CFR Parts 51 and 93, (IX)(D).

This final rule adds to the proposed validation requirement a sentence specifying that model forecasts must be analyzed for reasonableness and compared to historical trends and other factors, and that the results must be documented. This sentence was added for several reasons. First, a commenter suggested that the conformity rule should require model forecasts to be compared to documented historical trends in travel behavior, such as changes in per capita vehicle trips and VMT, trip length, mode shares, and time-of-day-travel, and require significant differences between trends and forecasts to be explained. EPA agrees that this is minimum acceptable practice and has added language to the conformity rule accordingly. (40 CFR Parts 51 and 93, XI(D), August 1997)

In summary, we urge you to use the best information to make better transportation and air quality plans now and to take immediate steps to cut traffic and pollution growth in the short and long term. These include efforts to promote rapid adoption of the now enacted transit tax credit for employers who pay for transit passes for their employees (which takes effect January 1, 2000). The state and region should encourage employers to offer added cash income in lieu of parking benefits to employees, to further spur alternatives to solo automobile commuting. The state and region should aggressively promote strategies to replace dirty diesel buses and trucks with clean natural gas buses and clean fueled vehicles. Accelerating the planned 20-year investment in pedestrian and bicycle improvements so these are built in the next two or three years could reduce pollution growth and improve travel options for many citizens.

If the Baltimore region is unable to make a new transportation conformity finding, it will help promote Smart Growth and help us to rethink long term investment patterns to support long term growth of better communities with less traffic.

Thank you for your consideration of our comments.

Sincerely,