Driving Down Emissions

Can Reducing Driving be a Key Part of US Climate Action?

• I wrote a piece in Citylab about how electric vehicles - most provocatively, the Hummer EV - fit into the decarbonization picture. 

• I was a guest on the War on Cars podcast, chatting about - must’ve been on all of our minds - the Hummer EV.

• Remember that you can find a roundup of the latest transport decarbonization news - including some takes on Joe Biden’s election - at the bottom of this email. 

Can Reducing Driving be a Key Part of US Climate Action?

In October, Transportation for America released a new report entitled Driving Down Emissions. The report focuses on everything the US can do to lower passenger transportation emissions that doesn’t involve electrifying vehicles. 

In a word, that means driving less. How might we do that? Broadly, by rethinking urban development patterns to allow more people the possibility of living near the things they need to access, and by changing transportation infrastructure to focus on alternatives to driving.

Even if you could successfully electrify every passenger vehicle in the United States, you’d leave every other problem associated with car dependency untouched: traffic fatalities, traffic congestion, and limited accessibility. Making a serious dent in driving, on the other hand, would attack those problems in addition to lowering emissions. That’s one obvious reason to be excited about decarbonization solutions that target changes in land use and infrastructure.

My questions about the changes advocated for in the report are not so much about whether they are beneficial, but whether there’s a realistic path for them to happen at the scale and speed necessary to make an impact on the climate challenge. I lived for several years in San Francisco, one of the American jurisdictions that exemplifies political opposition to denser urban development near transit infrastructure.

That said, the report rightly points out some reasons for optimism. Minneapolis recently abolished single family zoning citywide, and other cities seem to be following in its wake.

I sat down with Scott Goldstein and Jenna Fortunati from Transportation for America to learn more about the report. An edited version of our conversation is below.

Andrew Salzberg (AS):  One of the big arguments of the report is that there's a lot of demand that's being left unmet for denser, walkable communities that are capable of reducing vehicle miles travelled (VMT) and greenhouse gas emissions. But I've lived in a lot of places where there's a lot of political opposition to allowing that denser development. How does Transportation for America think about the political obstacles to what you're advocating for, like NIMBYism? Are there places we can look for progress on the scale that is going to help on the climate problem?

Scott Goldstein (SG): The research that we've seen, the polls that we've seen, specifically, show that this is what the public wants. They want choices. Not everybody wants to live in the same type of community. When the National Association of Realtors polls people, do they want to live near transit? Do they want to live in a place that's bikeable or walkable? The answer is overwhelmingly yes. And the price for those apartments and those homes are at a premium. And so we think the market is demanding it. And so, whatever label you want to ascribe to it - NIMBYism - you know, it's a market failure. We're not providing what the market demands. And in fact, as the report points out, through so many different kinds of policy, from housing and zoning to  transportation, we're actively deciding not to provide that. 

I think that the public understanding of this, and the policymaker understanding of this has really changed. We’re no longer talking about tax allocation districts or things that nibble at the edges of the problem. Now we're focusing on fundamentally changing rules around what we can build. So that's zoning, but it's also fundamentally realizing that the infrastructure we build is ‘creating policy’ for the life of that asset. And so, recognizing that, just because we've built infrastructure a certain way for 60-70 years, that doesn't mean that that's how we have to build it tomorrow. And I think that for a lot of people that's clicking. When we talk to policymakers on the hill, there's a real change in attitude. It's no longer how much money can we pump into the system? It's: is the system working? And then you see that at every level of government, you know, from local on up to federal. A lot has changed. And there's a new crop of policymakers. And many policymakers over there have a deeper understanding of what needs to be done. 

AS:  What's driving the changes in attitude you're talking about? Is that a climate driven reality? Or traffic congestion? Or that the problems have gotten worse? Or all the above?

SG: You know, it's probably all of the above, if you want to paint the country with a broad brush. In each community, it's going to be a little different. I remember reading a story about how Dallas decided to invest in transit after Boeing decided that they weren't going to move from Chicago to Dallas. And their rationale was, we need to be in a transit oriented place, and Chicago was that place. You've obviously had a very high profile Amazon search for its HQ2, but you've also had lots of other companies carrying on similar searches. We have a report that documents this phenomenon called Core Values. Whether it's big urban areas or even suburban town center developments, people want to be able to walk and be connected by transit. So that's the business case. 

But it's not just the business case. At all levels of government, but certainly at the federal level, climate is now a driving force in a lot of decision making, or at least it was in the House development of their recent infrastructure legislation. And, you know, you're seeing a recognition at all levels of government that what we're doing is worsening climate, and worsening equity and failing to meet the market need for different choices. 

AS: There may be a new administration in the near future (ed note: we recorded the interview before Biden was declared the winner of the election). What’s the federal role in pushing for more livable, walkable communities? 

SG:  We think that the federal government has an enormous role to play. So many lawmakers look at federal policy as just sort of a bank passing cash received from the gas tax back to the States. Most of the money's for highways, there's no requirement that those highways be built with 'complete streets'. There's no requirement that those highways be maintained before we build new ones. There's no requirement that the highways be designed for greenhouse gas reductions or for access to jobs and services. It tends to be the opposite: we invest in highways based almost exclusively on vehicle speed as the goal. And as a result, as the report lays out, you push development further and further away.

On top of that, they under invest in transit. It's only 20% of our federal transportation program, and biking and walking is an afterthought in terms of the amount of money. If the feds would provide more parity on highways and transit funding, if the feds would require that highways be designed for GHG reduction, for access to jobs and services, then we would see different types of investments. If complete streets designs and approaches were required, we'd see different types of investments. 

And so we really want to see fundamental reform, because if you're a local community right now that wants to invest in safer streets, and in more transit, it's prohibitively expensive, because the feds don't support your investment. For those reasons, we were very supportive of the House INVEST Act, which was their transportation authorization bill. Because it did basically everything that I just talked about and more. It required maintenance on highways, it required complete streets, it had access to jobs and services as well as the greenhouse gas performance measure for highways.

AS: You mentioned a greenhouse gas performance measure for highways - what is that? 

SG : The bill doesn't specify exactly how it would work. But in general, it would require that when you're designing a highway, you have to take into account the greenhouse gas impacts of that highway. You have to look at, "is expanding that highway going to increase or reduce greenhouse gases?" There are ways that building a roadway might not. If you're enabling a shorter trip, or if you're building robust biking and walking infrastructure as part of that roadway, you might facilitate other modes of travel. So it's not to say that you won't ever build a new road. But it would take into account the greenhouse gas effects of the infrastructure building and to have a goal for reducing those. So under that performance measure, theoretically, communities would have to start making investments to reduce emissions in the roadway sector. And every Department of Transportation would be required to work to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And funding would be allocated towards that. 

AS: So let's turn to vehicle electrification. One of the things report argues is that, even if we had a magic wand that made all new vehicles electric overnight, fleet turnover takes a long time. One of my responses to that is that urban development and infrastructure changes almost certainly take even longer. So how do you think about the time frame for some of the changes the report advocates for?

SG : Well, the built environment is always changing. And, you know, if you look at any city in the country, and you got a picture 10 years ago, another picture today, you'd see changes all over the place. So we don't think that's a real argument. 

And some changes that you want to make are quick. You know, building safe pedestrian infrastructure is relatively fast. Infill development in communities can be rapid. And so I think that that's kind of like a false choice, that it's not to say that we shouldn't keep electrifying while we make these sorts of changes as well. 

Jenna Fortunati  (JF): COVID is a great example of just how cities have been able to make built environment changes that dramatically changed the way people use the built environment.

AS: Part of the argument in the report is that the climate advocacy doesn’t often focus on the approaches you highlight - changes in travel behavior that reduce driving. To the extent that's the case, why is that?

SG: I think a big part of that - because I've heard folks tell me this - is that people don't want to get into the politics of taking people's 'car culture' away. You know, for a lot of people, it's easy to wrap your heads around a tech fix. Just swap out the cleaner car and swap out the cleaner power source. As opposed to what might seem like a lot of small changes all over the country. So maybe it’s perceived as 'politically easier'. Even though none of these things are easy. And people who've been fighting for them have been fighting hard for a long time.

New & Worth a Read

• What might a Biden administration mean for decarbonizing transportation? A few early thoughts:

  • An earlier newsletter covered the Biden plan for transport decarbonization. I’d love to see it unlock local action on low emission zones.

  • He comes in with a clear mandate on climate change.

  • It might help get New York over the line on congestion pricing.

• Have we reached peak city? Interesting bearish take on the future of urban density from the always thoughtful David Levinson.

• Culdesac, a proposed ‘car free’ development in Tucson Arizona, gets some high profile New York Times coverage even before it opens.

• Great short video on EV battery supply challenges.

• China sets a goal of 50% of new vehicles sales being EVs by 2035 (link), with the other 50% hybrid. Depending who you ask, that’s either very ambitious or not nearly ambitious enough. Related: China’s global strategy to outpace the US on EVs. 

• Auke Hoekstra, one of my go-to sources (especially on twitter), joined Michael Liebreich (founder of BNEF) on his podcast. 

• A deep dive on the challenges of charging electric delivery vans.

• The International Energy Agency releases their 2020 renewables report.

• The City of Vancouver released a new Climate Action Plan.

• Most major U.S. cities that have pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions are failing to meet their goals or haven't even started to track local progress, according to a report by the Brookings Institution.

• Why American public transit is so bad.

• Fantastic new climate change podcast from Leah Stokes and Katherine Wilkinson. Really worth listening to their episode on the Sunrise Movement. The episode on president-elect Joe Biden’s 2035 100% clean energy plan is also excellent.

• While we’re celebrating Biden’s victory, it’s worth examining what a 6-3 supreme court majority could do to throw the brakes on climate action.

• California released its 2018 GHG inventory. Transportation - the largest source of emissions - actually declined for the first time in a while. (link)

Till Next Time,

Andrew