How will our largest institutions—including those that handle billions in infrastructure investments—grapple with climate change?

It is telling that Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study released a draft of their long-range transportation plan without a single mention of climate change. While it does include a number of sustainable ideas—such as a ‘fix it first’ policy and investments in bicycling amenities—the fact is, in the absence of federal or state climate change legislation, metropolitan planning organizations like AMATS are not required to look at climate change impacts. That hasn’t stopped at least ten MPOs around the country which are anticipating big changes and considering CO2 as a variable in their long-range plans.

To encourage AMATS to make the connection between how transportation dollars are spent and slowing global warming, email your thoughts during this week’s public comment period to: amats@ci.akron.oh.us

The following are some ideas for the AMATS report, where it could include a vision of the changes that we should be thinking about.

Talking points

There are a number of areas where climate change should be mentioned and discussed in detail throughout the report. Realistically, if we can push to get climate change discussions in the following four areas, it may be considered a success:

• Preface (page 1 printed document, page 5 of PDF)
  AMATS indentifies an “uncertain future” as one of the challenges facing the plan. However, even though gas prices and vehicle miles traveled trends are discussed as uncertainties, there is no mention of climate change, or climate policy impacts on future trends and investments. This would be a good area for calling climate change out as one of the uncertainties affecting transportation investments.
• Future Trends (page 10 of printed document, page 14 of PDF)
  There is talk of uncertainty of population growth and employment growth. Climate change should be mentioned here. This would be a good area for a new subsection called “Climate Change Challenges” which would describe how Climate policy may impact pricing and development patterns and influence how and where people travel and live.
• Appendix C: Air Quality Analysis (page 51 of printed document, 55 of PDF)
  AMATS discusses both ozone and particulate matter and the methodologies for calculating. We should push to have AMATS think proactively and consider CO2 emissions as well – as these are very likely to be regulated. We can be proactive, not reactive, for once and start looking at CO2 now. At least 10 other MPOs in the country are measuring CO2 impacts of projects.
• Appendix G: Environmental Mitigation (page 87 of printed document, 91 of PDF)
  This section looks at the adverse environmental impact of proposed projects. AMATS has identified 8 variables to consider with each project –noise, water, wildlife, etc. This area should include climate change impact as one of the variables.

Click here to read a draft of the plan

Links

• State and MPOs that have included climate change in long range transportation plans
• State and MPO requirements to quantify GHG
• A “Brief history of public transit in Akron”
• Akron Bike Week 2008
• Akron Bicycle Club

Brad Chase, GCBL Climate Change project manager, contributed to this post.