Overview
The transportation construction industry has played a critical, if often unrecognized, role in improving the nation’s air quality. ARTBA members continuously seek and deploy cleaner and more efficient methods of transportation construction. Moreover, many projects directly improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, especially those relieving traffic congestion-a leading cause of these emissions.
This is one reason why recent decades have seen significant improvements in the nation’s air quality and emissions from the transportation sector specifically. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reported, “Between 1970 and 2021, the combined emissions of the six common pollutants (PM2.5 and PM10, SO2, NOx, VOCs, CO and Pb) dropped by 78 percent. This progress occurred while U.S. economic indicators remain strong.” EPA noted that Gross Domestic Product, vehicle miles traveled, and population had grown over that period, while emissions declined.
However, Clean Air Act (CAA) regulations have not properly recognized this long-term progress. As a result, CAA initiatives have been criticized as reflecting the varying policy goals of presidential administrations, rather than being based on science, public health and safety.
Given these circumstances, ARTBA supports the following reforms, policies, and industry practices:
- Amending the Clean Air Act to allow consideration of regulations’ implementation costs in addition to their effect on public health and safety.
- Incorporating resiliency into projects to better withstand changes in climate as well as natural disasters and other weather-related impacts.
- Deploying innovation and technology, as well as increased investment, in creating more resilient infrastructure, while acknowledging these practices must vary according to geography.
- Decreasing emissions associated with transportation construction through the appropriate use of recycled materials, alternative materials, and clean construction equipment.
- Increasing federal investment in highways, public transportation, and alternative mobility modes to help ensure a more efficient and accessible transportation network.
- Sunsetting transportation conformity requirements, which unfairly penalize counties by threatening and depriving them of federal highway funding for projects which will reduce congestion and improve air quality.
- Reviewing National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) every ten years and ideally not until measures taken to meet existing standards have had a chance to take effect.
- Allowing use of funds from the Congestion Mitigation Air Quality (CMAQ) program for congestion reduction activities, including new roadway capacity.
- Directing any proceeds from a federal “carbon tax” (or other user-based fee tied to vehicle emissions) into the Highway Trust Fund, so users of the nation’s surface transportation system will help pay for its maintenance and improvement.
- Providing flexibility in future regulations so states may address GHG emissions through their own preferred transportation improvements.
- Encouraging federal funding for processes that reduce emissions throughout all phases of transportation improvements, including building, use and disposal. Examples of beneficial emissions reduction strategies include:
- Efforts to develop and select materials with reduced net embodied carbon (e.g., low-carbon pavement, concrete, steel).
- Incentives for circular economy innovations (e.g., materials recycled content, re-use/recycling of construction “waste,” and reducing the use of new materials).
- Use of renewable energy for construction and operation (e.g., on-site or through credits, and virtual power purchasing agreement).
- Maximizing ongoing emissions reductions in construction.
- Building on the success of the transportation construction industry’s Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and working to improve them, rather than imposing new mandates conflicting with recent progress.