o A white paper which declares American society is at a "tipping point" at which radical social change may be quickly initiated through Green transportation and "Smart Growth" policies was released at the end of summer 2001.

The white paper, Transportation Reform and Smart Growth: A Nation at the Tipping Point, was released by the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP), an Inside-the-Beltway alliance of environmentalist, socially progressive, and alternative transportation advocacy groups. Participating were two allies, the Founders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities, and Smart Growth America.

o In December 2001 -- at the National Press Club -- STPP and its allies proclaimed a New Transportation Charter, to coincide with a gala banquet celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA).

o And the December proclamation of the charter was timed with the release by the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee of a Green-influenced schedule of reauthorization hearings in 2002 in advance of debate over the successor of the existing Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21).

The Green policy initiatives are moving ahead as the surface transportation community begins to contemplate what kind of federal transportation legislation will take the place of the existing TEA-21. The new law, now being called "TEA-3", must be enacted by Oct. 1, 2003 to ensure steady funding for road building, maintenance and other transportation elements.
 

Greens losing traction

The Greens are starting early on TEA-3 because they have lost traction in recent years, beginning well before the current Republican administration.

On the losing end of numerous recent court battles, stung by the abandonment by the United States of the Kyoto climate change treaty, feeling the backlash of frustrated governments which see capital public works projects stalled by legal nitpicking, and worried that economic recession will temper the viability of costly environmental mandates, the Green lobby is determined to hold the line or even expand environmental themes in the coming surface transportation legislation.

In particular, the Greens have been checkmated in legal efforts by the aggressive activities of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) and its allies in the Advocates for Safety and Efficient Transportation (ASET) coalition.

Most recently, ASET scored another major legal victory Sept. 27 for the when it bested, in pretrial motions, the Environmental Council of Sacramento, the Sierra Club and the 'No-Way L.A.' Coalition lawsuit to stop transportation projects worth $400 million in California.

ASET, the strategic environmental litigation alliance, entered the case as an intervenor. The ASET legal team aimed its actions at knocking down the attack on the legitimacy of the federal and state transportation planning and project approval process under the Clean Air Act.

As an intervenor, ASET helped federal, state and local transportation agencies defend their decision to approve the projects. ASET also challenged the legal assumption -- and won in a precedent-setting ruling -- that the no-growth groups should be entitled to reimbursement for their legal fees under the Clean Air Act if their lawsuit had been successful.

The ASET litigants in the case were ARTBA, the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association, the National Asphalt Pavement Association, the American Concrete Pavement Association, the National Association of Home Builders, the Laborers-Employers Cooperation & Education Trust and the Construction Industry Manufacturers Association, now consolidated with the Equipment Manufacturers Association as the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM).
 

At the 'Tipping Point'

The environmentalist white paper released late last year attempts to show how transportation policy should be crafted to halt suburban sprawl and reconstruct disinvested urban areas.

"Our country is on the verge of a 'tipping point' for transportation reform and smart growth," wrote Don Chen, Smart Growth America, and Nancy Jakowitsch, STPP. "The transportation reform movement faces a set of converging circumstances that can catapult efforts to a whole new level, not incremental as some have predicted, but instead monumental change."

[Editor's Note: According to 21st century lingo, a "tipping point" is a point in time at which disparate elements attain a critical mass, together precipitating movement forward into a totally new paradigm. Does that make sense?]

Enactment of this new vision in surface transportation, they write, is "essential to the full realization of our nation's societal, economic and environmental goals."

They write:

o A "one size fits all" policy of building big roads and boosting vehicle speeds conflicts with many local priorities.

o The "overemphasis on road construction has led to a neglect of public transportation."

o Large highways and roads have facilitated sprawl, "leading households, businesses and public services to move out of older communities."

o The benefits of highway construction are diminishing. "Adding more capacity to today's mature highway network generates negligible productivity benefits."

o Regions "can't build their way out of congestion ... building more road capacity typically begets additional traffic."

"Americans want transportation policies to deliver improved community outcomes, such as a more equitable society, stronger communities, better air quality, a healthier population, improved public safety, and a more robust economy," they write without supportive data. "A growing advocacy movement is starting to reform the transportation sector to produce better results."
 

'Tipping Point' flawed

STPP's white paper ultimately fails in its logic because it assumes surface transportation policy is responsible for urban disinvestment and suburban sprawl. Instead, these social conditions are caused by consumer choice in a free market economy. Social engineering can't be leveraged by highway construction; instead, society is shaped by people making choices that are right for them.

New Federal Highway Administrator Mary Peters said as much in December at the annual meeting of the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO) in Fort Worth.

"People need to have choices, not mandates," Peters said. "[FHWA] is not a social policy agency, it's a transportation agency and we need to grasp that now." Peters is assessing the validity of FHWA's current direction in the wake of the Clinton administration.

"Congestion is a problem of demand outpacing capacity," Peters told AASHTO. "We need to break the antihighway cycle that has plagued us. Sometimes transportation really is about asphalt, concrete and steel."

Ironically, in the United States, contemporary suburban sprawl was launched by the railroads in the late 19th century, as means of developing high-value real estate far from the furor of the cities. Up and down the urban East Coast, and in older Midwestern cities like Chicago and St. Louis, "old line" suburbs lie along former passenger (now commuter) rail lines. But today, the Green movement considers a beefed-up commuter rail system as a way of forestalling sprawl.
 

Taking a stand on TEA-3

It's clear that the release of the white paper at the end of summer was only a prelude to the real kick-off of the Green movement's actions on TEA-3 near the end of the year.

On Dec. 12, in a handsome ballroom of the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C., the antihighway lobby celebrated the 10th anniversary of ISTEA, and rededicated itself to the reauthorization battle and to a new manifesto of principles that will serve as its battle plan.

The soiree was held under the aegis of STPP. Speakers at "ISTEA: A Decade of Progress" included Independent and former G.O.P. Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vt., new chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee), Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta, former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y., whose seat Sen. Clinton occupies), and champion of highways and current House Highways and Transit Subcommittee chair Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.).

The evening honored Moynihan's leadership in crafting ISTEA, which, in a great departure from previous "highway bills" as they used to be called, allowed local government agencies to move or "flex" funding from highways to mass transit, introduced environmental and quality-of-life issues into federal transportation policy, and linked the ability to build highways to a region's conformity to rigid air pollution standards as defined by the Clean Air Act.

Jeffords played to the crowd, an observer noted, saying that in effect, the baton has been passed from Moynihan to Jeffords. "Jeffords believes that the change and direction of surface transportation under ISTEA and continued under TEA-21 is right on the money," the observer said. "Jeffords made it clear that Moynihan is the role he hopes to play in the next round of reauthorization."
 

Jeffords pledges environmental bill

Long involved in the Senate public works committee, Sen. Jeffords' more recent statements dovetail with the Green agenda and will pose a strong challenge to those who would roll back environmental aspects of ISTEA and TEA-21.

"I will work to marry our environmental goals with our transportation needs," Jeffords said in August as he took the helm of the Senate committee in  August 2001. "As many of you know, by 2003 Congress must complete action on a transportation reauthorization legislation. This committee will have an aggressive hearing schedule as we prepare for that great undertaking."

That day -- in an effort to support the fight against presumed global warming -- Jeffords suggested his committee consider a national cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions from the transportation sector, not unlike that impacting coal-fired electric power plants.

"That might be a more effective way to stimulate innovation in less carbon-intensive fuels and efficiency," he said. "Our nation sits at an environmental crossroad. We can lead on clean air, or follow. We can lead on clean water, or follow. We can lead in reducing global warming, or follow. I say, let us lead." There's no doubt that TEA-21 reauthorization will provide such a vehicle for his leadership.
 

ISTEA was camel's nose in tent

Long-time observers consider ISTEA to have been the camel's nose in the tent, so to speak, the first real incursion of Green philosophy into surface transportation policy and funding.

According to the old fable, first it was the camel's nose; then his head; then the whole camel in the tent. Now, with TEA-3, the Greens are going for the whole prize. And Greens acknowledge ISTEA's significance in this progression.

ISTEA launched "a decade of transportation investments built on principles of improved performance, economic efficiency, environmental stewardship, and community involvement," STPP said in its invitation to the Dec. 12 dinner. "ISTEA was the work of leaders from both parties who had the vision to set transportation priorities based on providing choice and improving communities."

The day after the dinner STPP introduced its Alliance for the New Transportation Charter at a briefing at the National Press Club, and then designated the period Dec. 13-21 Transportation Advocacy Week.

Key to the Alliance is the "New Transportation Charter", a modern-day Magna Carta that expresses the goals of the antihighway lobby.

In the best traditions of "Inside the Beltway" coalition-building, the Alliance is a broad-based partnership whose intended audience is transportation and political decision makers and the general public. "We seek to affirm the successes of ISTEA and begin to articulate needs for reauthorization of the federal transportation law, TEA-21, in 2003," the Alliance said.
 

Charter presages Green blueprint

For easy assimilation, the charter was deliberately kept short. A more detailed policy platform -- a Green "blueprint" for TEA-3 -- will be developed through early 2002 and will reflect the principles of the charter.

Clearly, STPP intends to build on the social programming elements of ISTEA, as continued in TEA-21. "ISTEA gave our states, regions, communities and the public new tools to use transportation investments as a means to achieve broader public objectives," STPP's charter states. "[But] while many states have embraced ISTEA's tenets of community involvement and empowerment of local decision-makers, no state has yet implemented ISTEA to its full potential."

Demanding transportation policies that provide "real changes" in transportation planning and investments, the Alliance's new charter insists on a surface transportation system that involves itself less in road building and more in public policy.

For example, the charter insists the program promote "Social Equity and Livable Communities". "The transportation system should be socially equitable and strengthen civil rights, enabling all people to gain access to good jobs, education and training, and needed services," the charter demands.

"Where possible, personal transportation expenses should be minimized in ways that support wealth creation," code words for transit system operating subsidies, long disallowed under federal law as encouraging wage inflation at transit agencies.

The charter also demands a system that preserves public health by promoting cleaner air and water quality. It also should "encourage healthy physical activity", code words for spending federal gas tax money on bike paths and facilities.

The vision the antihighway lobby will fight for in the next reauthorization evidently will compel transportation facilities to turn cities and towns into a kind of wonder land for residents, paid for by the federal gas tax.

"[T]ransportation should also enhance the quality, livability and character of communities and support revitalization without displacement," the charter says. "The transportation system should allow every American to participate fully in society whether or not they own a car and regardless of age, ability, ethnicity, or income."
 

Discouraging sprawl in reauthorization

Predictably, the Green movement, as spearheaded by the STPP, will use reauthorization to further its "Smart Growth" or antisprawl objectives.

In 1999, under the slogan "Livable Communities", future presidential candidate Al Gore released a checklist of potential federal initiatives that were intended to limit suburban sprawl. Now these elements will become talking points in reauthorization.

For example, the Alliance's manifesto insists that "transportation investments should support local and regional economic objectives and recognize efficient activity centers as the drivers of economic prosperity and sustainable growth."

These are code words supporting economic activity "nodes", to which federal policy should steer road, transit and light rail funding to support concentrated housing and commercial areas, and discourage differentiated suburban housing and commercial development.

Lastly, federal transportation policy should promote the economy, empower victimized minorities, save the countryside and farmers, protect wild places and environmental quality, discourage fossil fuel consumption and save the world.

"Transportation investments, services and incentives should meet our travel needs, promote economic prosperity and environmental justice, preserve and protect open space, scenic resources and agricultural land, protect and enhance the integrity of natural resource systems and wild places and improve air and water quality," STPP's Alliance charter asserts. "Such efforts can promote resource efficiency and energy conservation, while reducing reliance on foreign oil and offering solutions to climate change."