Newsletter This Committee is concerned with the analytical relationship of the natural and human environment as an integral part of the planning, design, construction and operation of transportation systems and projects, and issues pertaining to integrating environmental considerations in transportation delivery.

It’s hard to believe the progress that the hard working committee members and friends have done since the last newsletter. Working together we have presented a workshop, two lectern sessions and cosponsored five others, joined forces with ICOET to open the summer meeting registration and begin a return to Salt Lake City. Well done!

A Belated Happy New Year!

Environmental Analysis in

Transportation Committee

(ADC10)

Winter 2017

Inside this issue: Highlights from the Annual Meeting, Page 2 Highlights from the Committee Business Meeting, Page 3 Webinars and our Summer Workshop Plans, Page 4 Transitions and Friends, Page 5 Survey of TRB Committees, Page 6 We Can Do Better, Page 10 Member Profile, Page 12 A Final Thought, Page 13

Martin Palmer, Chair of ADC10

Once again our deepest thanks to Marianne Hatzopoulou (See Member Profile, Page 13) for setting up our new Twitter account. We used it within hours of the account being set up. With our new social media tool, we hope to keep you better informed of new and on-going items of interest. Follow us at @TRBADC10

Our website is at http://trb-adc10.weebly.com/

Stepping into Social Media—

“We made a lot of progress

this past year”

The Committee’s Sessions and Workshops

at the 2017 Annual TRB Meeting.

Highlights from the Annual Meeting

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Above: Committee member Tim Hill of Ohio DOT (L) and Carlos Swoke of TxDOT (R) were part of a four-person discussion panel deliberating on the benefits and challenges of states taking on federal environmental decision-making role in state DOT environmental programs. Right: Harold Peak of FHWA presided over the session.

The Benefits and Challenges with NEPA Assignment [Cosponsored by ADC50]

Under NEPA assignment, FHWA no longer has a project-level environmental decision-making role in the administration of the state DOT environmental program, but instead transitions to a program oversight role in ensuring federal requirements and commitments made by the state in the MOU are met through audits and/or monitoring.

Thursday’s Workshop: Low Impact Development (LID) for Road Stormwater Runoff Management to Reduce the Risk of Flooding and Water Pollution Urban land surfaces are replaced by impervious surfaces such as roads and buildings, which prevent rain or snow water from naturally draining into the ground, leading to extensive stormwater runoff. Stormwater runoff into nearby rivers without being cleaned of pollutant will contaminate waters. Low Impact Development (LID), such as permeable pavements and Sponge City, can restore land’s ability to naturally manage road stormwater runoff and reduce the risk of flooding and water pollution.

"Really absolutely wonderful session that greatly exceeded expectations! "

---Jennifer M. Fuller

FHWA: A FAST Overview on Accelerating Project Delivery [Cosponsored by ADC50]

The session provided an update on various key FHWA activities including the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation “FAST” Act, which calls for further streamlining the approval process for new transportation projects.

Committee member Hui Li presided over a well-received workshop addressing the challenges of stormwater runoff.

“Volunteering to help on a session or workshop is a

great way to be involved in the committee’s work

and advance what we do as transportation and

environmental professionals.”

A HUGE “Thank You” to Susan Jones for organizing two sessions at this year’s annual meeting.

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The Committee Annual Business Meeting—

Discussions and Accomplishments Highlights

We put on a successful 3-day mid-year workshop with our sister committees on Ecology and Transportation (ADC30) and Historic and Archaeological Preservation in Transportation (ADC50) in Salt Lake City. The theme for the workshop was “Innovation and Collaboration Leading the Way. Joining ICOET for this coming summer.

The Steering Subcommittee wrote and got approved the Committee’s Triennial Strategic Plan (TSP). We will examine the goals and objectives of three subcommittees this year.

The Strategic Issues Subcommittee sent a survey to 46 other TRB committees—both inside

and outside of the Environment and Energy section. More than 70% committees responded

giving a snapshot of future leading issues.

We accepted five poster abstracts and two papers were recommended for poster presentation.

Developed ways to potentially enhance the number of future paper submissions.

The History Subcommittee is conducting and archiving an oral history of the committee through interviews of past chairs and people influential in the committee, and collecting documents and photographs related to the committee’s involvement with environmental issues.

Published our first newsletter since the winter of 2012.

Took crucial beginning steps toward assisting young members through mentoring and scholarship discusses.

Refocused our committee research efforts and developed a concept and direction onto which to build our future research statements.

Built a new website and opened up the first social media account in the committee’s history.

Twenty of the members of our committee family.

As every summer, the committee has a mid-year workshop and business meeting. This year and for only the second time in the existence of the committee, we will be meeting at the ICOET conference. The conference will be in Salt Lake City and jointly hosted by the Utah and Wyoming DOTs with support from the FHWA. At the event, we will also join our sister TRB committee—Ecology and Transportation (ADC30). ICOET is one of the foremost conferences bringing forward a broad range of ecological issues related to transportation. The conference draws scientists, engineers, policy makers, planners and resource agencies together to discuss cutting-edge research, share best practices and deliver solid advice to field practitioners. Presenters and attendees come from all over the nation and many countries around the world. Please don’t miss it. We hope to see you there!

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Selected Upcoming Workshops, Conferences and

Webinars

TRB Webinar: U.S. DOT's Smart City Challenge and FTA's MOD Sandbox: Advancing Multimodal Mobility and Practices

TRB will conduct a webinar on Monday, February 13, 2017 from 1:00 to 2:30 PM ET that will feature

highlights from the 2016 U.S. DOT's Smart City Challenge and The U.S. Federal Transit

Administration's (FTA) "Mobility on Demand" (MOD) Sandbox workshop. This webinar will emphasize

the role of public transit, shared mobility, and emerging technologies (connected and automated

vehicle technology, sensing, cameras, etc.) in the recent competitions, along with next steps and

plans for researching the pilot projects and documenting best practices. This webinar will also

highlight the U.S. DOT Smart City Challenge winner as well as pilot projects from the FTA MOD

Sandbox.

The Utah state capitol building.

May 14-18, 2017 Salt Place Convention Center, Salt Lake City, Utah

Beyond Boundaries: Building on Common Ground

Our Summer Plans— Beyond Boundaries: Building on Common Ground

For more information please go to the meeting

website at: International Conference on

Ecology and Transportation

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Transitions

Kelly Dunlap giving a presentation in Salt Lake City.

Mike Davis of ICF International.

“Both Kelly and Mike have been strong, active committee members”

In addition to organizing sessions and delivering captivating presentations, Kelly Dunlap has been the secretary for our committee for well over a year. As she transitions back to Caltrans, Mike Davis of ICF International has graciously volunteered to take on the duties that includes developing the committee’s business meeting agendas, notes and decisions as well as the committee’s newsletter.

Mike Davis is a Senior Vice President in ICF International’s San Francisco office. Mike become a committee member in April 2015 and has continuously provided enormous value and much needed help on a wide variety of committee activities.

Friends Make a Difference At the committee business meeting during the annual TRB gathering last month, we made a strong pitch to involve friends in the work the committee does. During that discussion someone asked, “Does anyone either really understand what a friend can do or the contributions that friends make?” It’s a great question. Friends can do virtually anything a member can do. They can review papers, develop sessions and deliver presentations, help organize the mid-year workshops, write in the committee newsletter, write research statements, liaise with other committees, help capture the near four decades of history of the committee, feed information and material to our webpage…and the list goes on and on. Jeff Frantz of CH2M and several of our liaisons are just a few great examples. Jeff Frantz is working with Collen Vaughn on the History Subcommittee to interview past chairs and other people who have been influential on the committee to document an oral history of our work over its near four decades of existence. He is also one of our liaisons. Stephanie Camay, Tom Bruechert, Erica Schneider, Angel Aparicio and Harold Draper all work as liaisons keeping us informed of and sharing information with other TRB committees. In addition, Harold has been helping us review posters and papers for the annual meeting. There is no doubt that our committee would not have been successful without the help of our friends.

“I can’t say enough about the important contributions

that friends of the committee make.”

Survey of TRB Committees: Environmental in Transportation Rick Record, ADC10

At January’s Annual Meeting, the Environmental Analysis in Transportation Committee ADC10 reported on results of its recent outreach effort to a broad sampling of TRB’s 200+ standing committees. The goal was to get a “snapshot” indication of environmental issues and perspectives – long-term, “right now” or in between – that are in the sights and minds of committee leaders. The survey, conducted by ADC10’s Strategic Issues Subcommittee, provided an interesting update to a similar survey conducted in 2010. While the 2010 survey was limited to ten committees primarily in the Environment and

Energy Section of the Planning and Environment Group of the TRB family, the 2016-17 Survey cast a much broader net. Survey requests were sent in November 2016 to 46 committees in ten different TRB Groups, ranging from Policy and Organization to Operations and Preservation, as well as modal groups (see Figure 1). These 46 committees were selected to capture a range of perspectives and relationships, and provide insight to how differently positioned committees look at the environment in transportation. What Did We Learn? Using an unconstrained, open-ended survey, we were seeking information that would help us see perspective shifts from the 2010 survey, and also help us better understand how our ADC10 committee, with its broad mission attached to the environmental umbrella that touches all of transportation, might need to better respond and relate among TRB committees, including in some non-traditional areas. The results were interesting.

Figure 1 – These 46 committees in ten different Groups were asked to participate in ADC10’s survey of environment in transportation; more than 70% responded.

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In 2010, nearly all the input about environmental “future” fell into 5 subject area groups, illustrated by this spider plot:

Figure 2 - Results of 2010 Survey Grouped by Broad Environmental Subject Area Category

From the 2010 survey input, these five subject area categories above were defined as follows:

1) Broader Consideration of Alternatives – More focus on operational and technology-based options and all forms of demand management, across all modes, will be required, as well as expanded assessment of benefits, including environmental.

2) More complete consideration of health effects – Transportation relationships to human health effects will become increasingly important in transportation delivery and operations, and will require more complete and focused effort in environmental analysis.

3) Policy and management challenges – Shortfalls on funding, increasing travel and maintenance demands, and new environmental priorities (e.g. climate change) will place increasing pressures on transportation delivery and operations, pushing toward approaches removed from traditional DOT platforms; environmental issues, requirements and goals will become more important in the overall process, and at the same time more difficult to address in traditional pathways and methods.

4) Expanded Land/Air/Water (interrelationships among different physical regimes) – There will be increasing expectation and scientific need to consider environmental impacts and benefits outside of traditionally insulated individual physical regimes (land, air, water) to improve decision-making, including biotic/abiotic considerations (e.g., air quality impacts on water quality; light pollution effects on community health; energy flow, sources and sinks; inter-regime dynamics of climate change).

5) Measurement, economics and valuation – The future will require a more complete and independent role for economics in environmental decision-making; central to this will be quantitative measurement of assets, impacts and benefits.

In terms of subject area grouping, the 2016-17 survey results had very similar structure. All five categories from 2010 were strongly represented, although with some shifts in relative frequency of citation were noted. This may be considered one indication of current relative importance or priority. With many more committees surveyed over a much broader practice area, the 2016-17 survey preliminary results look like this in summary, for four TRB Standing Committee groups:

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Figure 3 - Results of 2015-17 Survey Input by Category and four TRB Standing Committee Groups

“Alternatives”, driven in large part by technology and management alternatives extending from the rapid

evolution of autonomous and connected vehicles, became the top category, but general relationships

remained similar. A new category was needed and added: “Other/New”, this to account for an array of

new, smaller scale input items that did not have a logical home elsewhere. Examples of “Other/New”

category items that came to the fore in the 2016-17 survey include:

- A new business model for transportation funding and reconciling with environment

- Emergency planning and actions related to climate change adaption

- Disproportionate community impacts from climate change adaptation needs

- Fundamental questions around human carrying capacity

- New emphasis on conserving non-renewable resources

- Mechanisms to deliver big net benefit projects, not just impact avoidance

- New emphasis on EJ and equity issues

- Research gaps on funding deficiencies

- Risk assessment in planning

- Ability to accurately forecast travel in midst of big changes

- Role of land use in achieving environmental benefits

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Other inputs are being compiled from other modal categories and a few late survey returns, so expect

some further shifts in Figure 3 and other parts of our results.

What About Length of View, and Scale?

We also assessed the timeframe and scale of view of various inputs, by committee Group. In the scatter

diagrams below, the relative axis values apply:

Timeframe 1 Now, immediate, near-term 2 Foreseeable but not ready yet 3 “Out there”; cannot yet see whole picture Scale 1 Project or practice scale 2 Regional to national: broad categories of effect 3 Transformational; big policy or direction shifts

Figure 4 – Timeline and Scale perspectives for survey input items from four TRB Standing Committee Groups

It is evident from this assemblage that different committee groups are looking at “environment” with

different views of timeline and scale. The greatest variability and range seems to be within our Planning

and Environment group itself, home to ADC10 and most other “traditional” environmental committees

within TRB.

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Take-Aways, So Far

When it comes the environment in transportation, the sands are shifting, and quickly. We see the same

categories of environmental “future” (whether that future is 2 or 20 years out), with some new twists.

Rethinking project funding and delivery and relationship to environmental outcomes seems to be

permeating thinking. Risk assessment is taking on an emphasis. Alternatives will need to aggressively

account for almost unpredictable technology, lifestyle, operations and travel demand shifts. It seems that

our ADC10 committee will need to think about how it can best bring these many quickly moving parts into

the analysis, process and methods part of transportation decision-making in the broad context of the

environment.

***

New Ways Taking Hold – We Can do Better! Rick Record, ADC10 Many attended last year’s (that is, at the 2016 Annual Meeting) interesting and provocative lectern session on Achieving Environmental Benefits through Alternative Delivery. The theme of this session, an idea generated and organized by our ADC10 Strategic Issues Subcommittee, was to see where research and practice can go, or needs to go, is doing better with total environmental outcomes in concert with non-conventional project delivery (e.g. design-build contracts or P3 arrangements with performance measures). Our three presenters “covered the waterfront” on ideas and experiences in the U.S. with bringing creativity and flexibility into making transportation work harder, and with greater net value, on important environmental aspects connected to the transportation investment. Dr. Hafiz Munir (MnDOT) gave an impressive “tour” of all the fronts that Minnesota DOT is working on with alternative delivery and the environment. Stephanie Blanco (Parsons Transportation Group) showed how a complex design-build transport corridor can be managed and scheduled for increased and more reliable environmental benefit. And Ken Avery (Bergman Associates) provided an inside look at what goes on with a complex mega-project – the Tappan Zee Bridge – and how measured environmental benefits enter into contract management. Our ADC10 family – and all our co-sponsoring committees – are truly grateful for the effort and skill our panelists brought to the session!

The author of the two articles (above and below) Rick Record is owner of RL Record, LLC Consulting and chair of the Strategic Issues Subcommittee of ADC 10.

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Moving on to here and now on another continent, friend of ADC10 Victor Loehr, an innovative transportation project leader at Rijkswaterstaat - the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment – is doing some amazing work. Victor has communicated with our Strategic Issues Subcommittee on emerging practices in Europe, and had hoped to also participate in our “benefits through alternative delivery” lectern session last year. Unfortunately, it did not work out for Victor to travel to TRB. Victor has been leading the charge – with most excellent results – in bringing market-value environmental benefits into “wide open” project delivery packages, just as we have been discussing within ADC 10 for several years now. “Wide open” means not constraining the contractor for best design and configuration to achieve roadway functional goals and a best outcome on environmental metrics. Rijkswaterstaat is using a design-build-finance-maintain platform to get measurably better results with transportation and the environment.

Our speakers the January 2016 session on environmental benefits and alternative delivery (L to R): Ken Avery, Stephanie Blanco, and Hafiz Munir

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After the success of their first project in this manner (slide above), Victor reports that Rijkswaterstaat is currently launching the building phase of a second, larger road expansion project that was procured in the same manner; and soon to be followed by a third and fourth project have also decided to challenge the market to increase ecological project value in the tender. Another interesting development is that the Dutch administration (including two ministries, as well as lower level administrations) have agreed with a wide range of market parties (contractors, consultants, infrastructure operators, etc.) upon a “Green Deal Infrastructure” framework. This green deal acknowledges the important function of infrastructure verges to connect nature reserves, and calls for exchange of information to further the development of the concept of nature connectivity through infrastructure. Victor hopes to post more complete discussion of his work in our next newsletter, so keep an eye out for that in our Summer edition!

***

Member Profile

Marianne Hatzopoulou is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Transportation and Air Quality. Her expertise is in modelling road transport emissions and urban air quality as well as evaluating population exposure to air pollution. Her research aims to capture the interactions between the daily activities and travel patterns of urban dwellers and the generation and dispersion of traffic emissions in urban environments. She has developed regional GHG emission inventories for Toronto, Montreal, and Philadelphia as well as evaluated the potential of travel demand and technology scenarios on emission reduction. She has been invited on a number of panels and colloquia to speak about strategies to reduce transportation-related GHG emissions.

Dr. Marianne Hatzopoulou

If you have an idea to either improve our newsletter or to submit an article for the newsletter, please contact either Mike Davis at mike.davis@icf.com or Martin Palmer at palmema@wsdot.wa.gov.

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Marianne has an active research stream in air pollution exposure and health. She has spearheaded a number of large air pollution monitoring campaigns and investigated potential determinants of exposure including meteorological effects, road geometry, the types of built environments, and traffic composition. She has also designed and implemented panel studies aiming at linking exposure to traffic emissions with measureable physiological changes in study participants. She works closely with epidemiologists in the development of improved measures for air pollution exposure and has received funding from federal and provincial health agencies to conduct integrative research in transportation, air pollution, and public health. Her research has received media coverage through various written and oral interviews. Marianne serves on the Transportation Research Board committees on “Transportation and Air Quality”, “Social and Economic Factors of Transportation”, and “Environmental Analysis in Transportation”.

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A Final Thought…

“Earth and sky, woods and

fields, lakes and rivers, the

mountains and the sea, are

excellent schoolmasters, and

teach some of us more than

we can ever learn from

books.”

—John Lubbock