Environmental Goals and Infrastructure Realities: Transportation Dilemmas and Solutions"

ISSN 1052-7524 Proceedings of the Transportation Research Forum Volume 7 1993 35th TRF Annual Forum New York, New York October 14-16, 1993 The Environment and Transportation Infrastructure 51 Environmental Goals and Infrastructure Realities: Transportation Dilemmas and Solutions" Scott E. Nadler, Moderator Assistant Vice President Consolidated Rail Corporation My name is Scott Nadler. I'm Assistant budget analyst fresh out of college, when Vice President ofEnvironmental Quality the wise old heads assured me that it with Conrail. was a lot more fun to be a budget was no money. The examiner when there distinction between a truism and a That didn't make a lot of sense. They cliche is that a truism is what you say said, sure it does. and a cliche is what somebody else says. Let me start with two truisms that I When there is no money, there are no think will be central to what we are here easy choices. Everybody has to deal to talk about today. One is that with some pain. Therefore, you don't everything connects to everything. I spend time convincing people to make t hought I had some sense of that. I painful decisions. It is only a question of l earned it a lot more poignantly in the which painful decision. Half the fight is Year-and-a-half that I've been managing a already fought for you. corporate environmental program. It is clear, though, that it is not a principle On the transportation side, that is the that has always been put thoroughly terms into world we are dealing in today. In practice, particularly from a public of conventional funding sources and Policy standpoint. mechanisms, there is clearly a crisis. It can potentially be an opportunity, as We've got a lot to learn about how to well. make sure that everything does really connect up to everything and that it To talk to you about making those c onnects up in our thinking and not just connections and the ways in which a in the effects. In particular, there is a crisis can be turned into an opportunity dynamic of the funding mechanisms,the to help make those connections, we Politics oftransportation, especially from brought together three people who spend the highway side, that has really helped a lot of time and brain power looking at s eParate transportation programs from these issues. the environment in which that trans- Portation takes place. We need to at look First you will be hearing from Jim how those connections take place. Tripp. Jim is General Counsel of the The Environmental Defense Fund. His second truism that we will be education includes the University of talking about today is that crisis can be Munich and a Masters ofPhilosophy and an opportunity. I learned that as a a Law Degree from Yale. He has been 1 A grant from Conrail helped make this session possible. 52 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 with the Environmental Defense Fund some issues in the tri-state since 1973. transportation area,where we are now — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut Then you will hear from Sam Schwartz, — and how we are trying to address better known as "Gridlock Sam" from those issues. his column in the New York Daily News. Sam is Executive Director of the As Scott indicated,transportation — how Infrastructure Institute and is on the we use transportation dollars, what our faculty of Cooper Union. He is also Vice transportation system looks like, and President of Hayden Wegman, a how it functions — has emerged verY consulting and engineering firm. clearly in the last two years as a major domestic environmental issue — much Sam was with the City of New York's more as national and environmental Department ofTransportation for nearly groups are more concerned than 20 years, culminating in the role of previously. engineer and first Deputy Commissioner. What are the environmental resources He is a licensed professional engineer, on which our transportation system has and his education includes a B.S. from a major impact? They are air, and, Brooklyn College and a Masters in Civil indirectly, water and land — all kinds of Engineering from Penn. land resources — and energy. Batting cleanup here will be Brian It would be fair to say that trans- Ketcham, who is President of Brian portation infrastructure, and the kind of Ketcham Engineering and Executive development that it supports,have major Vice President of Konheim & Ketcham, impacts on all of those environmental an environmental consulting firm. resources. Brian was trained as a design engineer In terms of air quality, it should be clear at Case Institute of Technology and at in most of the major metropolitan areas MIT. He has worked for over two of the country that our non-attainment decades on clean air and transportation for ozone is due in large part to planning issues, including air pollution transportation. control work for the City, authoring its first comprehensive transportation The transportation sector combination of control plan in the early 1970's. automobiles, trucks, and buses contributes in a very significant way, in Brian has been deeply involved in trying some cases more than 50% of the VOC's to quantify the societal costs of and NOX, and therefore is a transportation, particularly motor predominant force in determining what vehicles, and is a founding member of ozone levels are. the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. That, in turn, has major impacts on public health, on visibility, and on James Tripp, Counsel environmental resources like forests. So, Environmental Defense Fund any effort to clean up the air in the country and to improve visibility and My plan is to talk about some national public health in our cities in terms of air transportation and environmental issues, quality means placing significant and then to talk more regionally about constraints on our transportation system. The Environment and Transportation Infrastructure 53 In terms of water, what goes into the air want to see land relentlessly chewed up verY often ends up in the water, and that and consumed for development and for ls. certainly true of nitrogen oxide. more highways. So,there is a constraint Airborne nitrogen oxides are a major there. cause of festering nitrification, e nutrient nrichment. From an environmental point of view, in most metropolitan areas, virtually all The transportation sector in this country the watersheds, forests, wetlands, flood consumes about 60% of the oil, half of plains, farm land, whatever is left, is which is imported, so the demand for valuable and important. From an fossil fuels by our transportation sector want c environmental point of view, we to ontributes oil spills and everything save as much of that as possible. associated with oil imports and tr ansshipment. Energy — the transportation sector consumes something like 60% of the oil You may ask why a transportation and a third of the fossil fuels consumed sYstem contributes to so much air in this country. What difference does it Pollution? Well, every mile that a truck make? or a car goes, it produces pollutants. What difference does it make that the Trucks and cars can get cleaner, but United States consumes five times the there is a tremendous amount of worldwide per capita average in fossil congestion on a lot of our highways, fuels? It seems to me, as an Particularly in urban metropolitan areas. environmentalist, we should be thinking So, You can say, well, isn't the solution of transforming our transportation t herefore to build more highways, to system or structuring a transportation e ncourage people and businesses to move system in this country that to some further away to have more sprawling degree makes d sense for the rest of the ecentralization? We then come up world from an equitable and fairness against land. That is the constraint. point of view. Row much land in the country do we For historical reasons we developed Want to consume through the much before the t rest of the world. The ransportation sector in the form of new rest of the world wants to become rich, highways and loops and interchanges but then, what is the world going to look and parking lots and garages? How like? Imagine if all the major cities of Much land are we willing to see the world and other countries replicated s acrificed, particularly in our the kind of transportation system we l zetropolitan areas, through further have and they used energy the way that Metropolitan expansion, the kind of we do. sPrawl that this country has witnessed and in many ways promoted over the The energy consumption of the world last 40-50 years? would go up four or five times. Whatever your feelings I are about think it would be fair to say that if you greenhouse gases, I think it would be look at major metropolitan areas across fair to say that the result would be this country,there are increasingly vocal disastrous. conservation groups, land conservation groups, environmental groups, civic From an environmental point of view, groups, community groups, that do not certainly national but also from a global 54 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 point of view, there is a need to decrease Resources Institute a year or two ago did significantly the amount of energy used a little study showing that users of in our transportation sector. Over the highways and trucks and cars are next 30-40 years, when I say decrease, I subsidized by general taxpayers very am talking about a two-thirds decrease, significantly. at least, in terms of fossil fuel consumption.

Load more