Lest we forget

Thanks to all vets on Veterans Day.

New Study: Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states need to step up their game on electric vehicles

The eleven Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states have done a lot to promote the proliferation of electric vehicles but – according to a new study – it’s not nearly enough to get where we need to be to combat climate change.  The new report, produced jointly by the Conservation Law Foundation, the Sierra Club, and the Acadia Foundation (available here), urges these states to do much more and to “act boldly” to rapidly accelerate EV adoption.  EVs present a “clear pathway to meet climate goals,” but the numbers of plug-in vehicles on the road just aren’t growing fast enough.

The authors recommend 9 steps that government can take to speed up the process, which can be briefly summarized as:

1.     Use high-level task forces or commissions to focus leadership,

2.     Provide consumer incentives,

3.     Make EVs more accessible to low-income people,

4.     Promote consumer-friendly charging stations,

5.     Encourage utilities to incorporate EVs into a modernized grid,

6.     Lead by example through fleet EV adoption,

7.     Encourage manufacturers to do a better job of design and marketing,

8.     Encourage auto dealers to do a better job of marketing, and

9.     Promote public education.

All of these steps are pretty straightforward and are being implemented to some extent in most of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.  What is often lacking, in my opinion, is a sense of urgency.

Curiously, the report does not make a specific recommendation for pursuing regional partnerships to promote EV adoption.  This is, in fact, one area where the region is a leader.  The Transportation and Climate Initiative, a collaborative effort of the transportation, environment, and energy agencies of the eleven states (plus DC), has been hard at work for five years, sharing best practices and producing educational and outreach materials.  (Full disclosure: I helped facilitate the startup of TCI.)

I would also like to have seen more discussion on some of the difficult issues surrounding public charging stations, including what role they should play in an overall “electric” roadway network.  Nothing is said concerning the role of “fast” chargers on interstate highways, which in my opinion is a key component of the network.  They do suggest addressing the prevailing incompatibility of charging technologies by “encouraging” interoperability, although I would recommend a much tougher line from government.

All in all, this is a very useful and timely report.   With the Paris conference looming, hopefully US policy makers will soon receive a new impetus for grappling with climate change.  I believe that what we need to do in the transportation sphere is to electrify the system, and promoting rapid adoption of EVs is the first big step to getting there.  The CLF/Sierra Club/Acadia report provides a good policy guide to taking that step.

Thanks Jamie Fox!

Jamie Fox has just ended his second tour of duty as New Jersey Commissioner of Transportation, and it didn’t work out the way he – and many of us – had hoped.  The short version is that Fox – a very partisan Democrat – came back to NJDOT under a Republican governor to try to put together a bipartisan transportation funding bill.  Aaaaaand it didn’t happen.  The odds were always against him.  Most New Jersey Republicans have caught the anti-tax fever (or maybe the anti-getting-primaried-from-the-right fever) and of course the governor still has presidential aspirations, which overshadows every policy decision.  But still, this would have been a good time to raise the gas tax and reauthorize the state’s Transportation Trust Fund: gas prices are well below $2.00 a gallon, the Trust Fund is out of money, the needs are staggering, a lot of popular projects could be put out the door at good prices, and Jamie Fox has as much talent at legislative magic as anyone.  But it didn’t happen.

Jamie Fox is a brave man who took on a daunting challenge simply because he thought it was the right thing to do.  He wasn’t able to slay the dragon, but he deserves our thanks for giving it a try.

Another thing Denmark does well

Bernie Sanders may have drawn some chuckles for suggesting the US use Denmark as a model, but the fact is that the Danes get a lot right.  Sure, it’s a much smaller and in many ways less complex country, but Denmark – like much of Europe – is way ahead of us on many measures of societal and political progress.

A case in point is climate change adaptation on the roadway network.  The Denmark Roads Directorate has set out a clear policy direction in a Strategy for Adapting to Climate Change document (available here).   The main impact they anticipate from climate change is increased rainfall, leading to increased flooding events on the highway.  The planned response is straightforward:

·      Better manage flooding when it occurs, through rapid response, information, detours, etc.,

·      Improve the roads where incidents have occurred, and

·      Prevent future problems where possible, using the best available science to “climate proof” roads where it makes sense to do so.

This is really straightforward stuff, as it should be for an organization that owns and operates a highway network.  The Danish approach has proven so popular that the Danes are leading an effort among all the EU highway agencies to develop a standard climate change adaptation strategy. 

AASHTO are you listening?

Go Canada!, or Why Justin Trudeau is important to the future of US transportation policy

So Canada has a new young, charismatic, JFK-style prime minister.  It will be fun watching the transition to a new Liberal government.  But what has this got to do with US transportation policy?

The Liberal platform has a bold plan for stimulating the economy while advancing policy goals.  The idea is to pump large amounts of money into infrastructure and human services ($5 Billion for each in the first year), financed by higher taxes on the rich (shocking!) and deficit spending (even more shocking!).  The infrastructure piece appears to be mainly transportation, although the plan is not very detailed at this point.  If successful, the plan will get the economy revved up while putting valuable public assets on the ground at relatively cheap prices.  It will be – in effect – a very large Stimulus package.

If the plan is implemented (and given the solid Liberal majority in Parliament it should be) it could provide a valuable model for the US.  Will it be successful?  Time will tell.  We know – despite the folk tales told in some circles – that the US Stimulus at the beginning of the Great Recession was a huge success, rescuing much of the economy will producing lasting benefits at bargain prices.  The Canadians have apparently not yet convinced themselves – as Americans have apparently convinced ourselves – that they are too poor, too old, too tired, too depressed, or whatever, to make bold plans to engage the 21^st Century.  I wish them success!

Let’s Play “Find the Metro Station”

The poor Washington Metro system has gotten such a bad rap lately (here for instance) that I hate to pile on, but on a recent visit to DC I couldn’t help but notice how hard it is to find the entrance to a station you’re not familiar with.  Partly I think this is just lack of maintenance (as in the following photo) and partly it’s a matter of an overall design scheme that is “tasteful” and “muted.”  “Garish” isn’t what you want in our nation’s capital, but how about more pedestrian trailblazer signs?

In the long run, Metro needs more money for maintenance (who doesn’t?).  Also, to maximize its long-term value, the Metro system (in my minority-of-probably-one opinion) should double its inside-the-beltway network.

Takeaways from a game-changing conference on transportation and climate change resilience

Veterans of transportation conferences would probably rate most of them as useful, some of them as important, and only a few rare ones as game-changers.  The recent Transportation Research Board conference on transportation resilience (officially the First International Conference on Surface Transportation System Resilience to Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events, website here) rates as a game-changer in my mind.  A key group of about 250 academics and practitioners presented and discussed the latest findings in this critical area and demonstrated a remarkable level of agreement on the current state of knowledge and practice, pressing issues, and next steps.  The progress being made in grappling with these complex and urgent problems was heartening, especially when we are so often subjected to the discouraging spectacle of climate change denying, anti-science politicians holding high office.

I won’t attempt to summarize everything that happened at the conference, but I will discuss three takeaways that seem important to me.

1. Plan for failure

Planning FOR failure doesn’t mean planning TO fail.  It means that no matter how well you design and build your system, there is every likelihood that some flood, fire, hurricane, avalanche, or plague of locusts will knock some pieces of it out of service at some point in time – and possibly sooner rather than later.  Instead of hoping or pretending that that won’t happen, the new thinking is that you should anticipate that it WILL happen and plan for it.  Planning FOR failure means that you have strategies in place to make your systems more robust in order to minimize failure, to respond to failures with rapid recovery actions, and to keep your system going even when bad things happen.  A great example presented at the conference is New Jersey Transit’s TRANSITGRID.  Superstorm Sandy knocked out the power to NJ Transit’s rail system for days, contributing to the virtual shutdown of the state.  Now NJ Transit is preparing to build an independent “microgrid” -  a separate, robust power generating system that will be able to supply power to the core rail system, maintenance yards, and bus depots and keep trains and buses moving, even when the regional grid goes down.

2. Making your system more resilient may not be as expensive as you feared

A lot of scary things can and will happen in the coming decades, but one piece of good news is that advances in science, engineering, and planning mean that the cost of “defending” your infrastructure may be manageable.  Two examples from presentations at the conference:

·      A comprehensive study of 135 culverts in northwest Connecticut, which used both flooding predictions and field engineering assessments, found only a handful of culverts with a high need of replacement.

·      A very detailed study of future flooding possibilities in the Big Dig tunnel system in Boston found only a few likely entry points for water that need upgraded protection.

The increasingly sophisticated scientific and engineering tools are being linked up with new and improved planning tools – dynamic learning, collaborative planning, risk management, robust decision making, etc. – to make smarter investments possible.

3. Communications and collaboration on transportation resilience issues is strong and growing

For a subject area that is new and that overlaps a lot of very different fields and interests, it is encouraging to see increasingly robust communications and collaboration between and among scientists, engineers, practitioners, and policy makers.  There was much talk at the conference on the importance of “boundary” organizations – groups that translate needs and resources between academics and practitioners.  Emblematic of this growing trend is the fact that TRB itself has established a new “section” – a group of topically focused committees – to concentrate on resilience.  This sort of collaboration is the meat and potatoes of TRB, and the agreement to concentrate resources on resilience will have significant consequences for years to come.  At a smaller level, the ICNet group is modeling pathbreaking collaborative techniques.  ICNet is a loose group of about 75 academics and practitioners in New England that works on resilience questions right at the mine face of practical concerns.  There is also growing collaboration crossing governmental boundaries.  FHWA has demonstrated a very smart approach to resilience by funding pilot projects and sharing the results, rather than prematurely attempting to impose national policies.  The Transportation and Climate Initiative – now 5 years old – continues to promote collaborative climate change work among the transportation, energy, and environment agencies in the Northeast.  And in Europe, the 29-nation organization of highway agencies will soon move toward adoption of a uniform framework for highway resilience strategy.

I hope, as I’m sure many of the conferees do, that this session will be the start of a series of equally productive sessions.  My congratulations to FHWA, TRB, and the whole conference staff for a great success.