What does a sustainable transportation action plan look like?

Providing an answer is the California Secure Transportation Energy Partnership (CalSTEP), a diverse partnership of industry, automotive, business, academia, policy, and non-governmental professionals working in their individual capacities to create a pro-business, comprehensive action plan that leads to significantly increased transportation energy efficiency and fuel choice in California.

Released in Jan. 2007, their 80-page plan delivers specific ideas on how to implement Governor Schwarzenegger’s executive order to address global warming. Part of California’s vision is to reduce petro-fuels at least 15 percent below 2003 levels by 2020, or by 15 billion gallons.

To reach these lofty goals, the study pinpoints three broad approaches:

• Diversifying the state’s fuel supply
• Improving vehicular efficiency
• Reducing the need to drive

It gets down to brass tacks on how to do this—mostly through tax incentives and something resembling a cap and trade system. The latter could be part of an Alternative Fuels Portfolio Standard, which requires refineries to boost production of fuels made from renewable resources to 10 percent by 2010, and 20% by 2020 (refiners could trade credits with each other).

Another interesting idea is a Foreign Oil Security fee—basically, a gas tax that scales up and is rebated to California residents who can then use it how they wish. The fee would “provide stability to petroleum prices that has so often killed off investments in alternative fuels and efficient technologies,” the report states, adding that Alan Greenspan, N. Gregory Mankiw, and Andrew A. Samwick, and the Council on Foreign Relations all support it.

In what may be its boldest stroke, the plan connects the dots between fuel consumption and reducing demand for the highways by linking land-use plans with the huge pot of state transportation funds.

Specifically, it calls for a Smart Communities program that upgrades the state’s transportation models so that the cost savings associated with energy-efficient and climate-friendly land-use planning can be fully realized. The recommended program takes a comprehensive approach that links new state infrastructure spending to the implementation of regional blueprints that will not only prevent sprawl, but will actively reduce the need to drive and cut the overall miles traveled by 10 percent over approximately 25 years.

Read the California Action Plan for Transportation Energy Security (pdf)