03/06/17 City Council Agenda Packet

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EAK RAFFIC AND RANSPORTATION RIAGE Mark Robinowitz ¥ PeakTraffic.org The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) mandates a "Supplemental" Environmental Impact Whether you focus on Peak Energy, Climate Chaos or Statement must be prepared if there are "new what is euphemistically called the ÅGreat Recession,Æ each circumstances" not anticipated when the scoping of these aspects of reaching the limits to growth mandate process was conducted. Surely reaching the global an end to highway expansion. We cannot afford to built peak of petroleum production is relevant for a more roads when we cannot maintain what we already transportation project allegedly designed for travel have. The transition from cheap, abundant oil to long past the peak. expensive, hard to get oil is reducing the amount that If the Federal Highway Administration included people drive and damaging the economic system that Peak Energy in environmental analyses, this would be requires endless growth to function. Peak Energy is a seismic shift in transportation planning across the starting to reduce the physical ability to grow traffic levels, United States. Realistic plans need to consider regardless of economic circumstances. Burning fossil fuels energy depletion and the limits to growth on a finite pollutes the thin film of the atmosphere, with health planet. There are several ways this shift could happen: a consequences and environmental impacts, including successful Federal lawsuit forces FHWA to include Peak global warming. Ecology, energy and money are Energy, the start of gasoline rationing makes interconnected and inseparable, and each require a transportation planners consider alternatives, or a change holistic integration with the others to address any of them.in national policies. Energy depletion is not merely about personal Peak Energy and Peak Vehicle Miles Traveled are transportation. Driving less will be uncomfortable, but Ånew circumstancesÆ relevant for proposed eating less would be far more difficult. Most food eaten in transportation projects. the US crosses time zones, some travels across international borders. As fossil fuels decline we need to Council on Environmental Quality regulations grow food where it is eaten. Relocalizing food production, 40 CFR 1502.9: growing food in cities, community gardens, suburban "food Draft, final and supplemental statements. not lawn" efforts, and protection of farmland from asphalt (c) Agencies: and concrete are all needed to cope with oil depletion. (1) Shall prepare supplements to either draft or final George H.W. Bush's highway law - the 1991 environmental impact statements if: Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (i) The agency makes substantial changes in the (ISTEA) - requires Federal aid highway plans to be proposed action that are relevant to environmental designed for traffic conditions two decades in the concerns; or future, not current traffic congestion. It's anyone's guess (ii) There are significant new circumstances or what energy (and therefore, traffic) levels will be in the information relevant to environmental concerns 2030s, but under any physically possible scenario the flow and bearing on the proposed action or its impacts. rates of petroleum and other fuels will be considerably less than they are today, since conventional fossil fuels have Federal Highway Administration regulations peaked globally. There will be oil extraction in the 2030s 23 CFR 771.130: but at levels less than current rates. Future fuels will be Supplemental environmental impact statements. the dirtier, more expensive, difficult to extract Åbottom of (a) A draft EIS, final EIS, or supplemental EIS may be the barrelÆ supplies. Hyper efficient cars, public transit, supplemented at any time. An EIS shall be supplemented car sharing, and relocalization could mitigate these whenever the Administration determines that: impacts but not prevent them. (1) Changes to the proposed action would result in Transportation planning needs to focus on significant environmental impacts that were not maintaining the enormous road networks already evaluated in the EIS; or built, not expanding them further for travel demand (2)New information or circumstances relevant to that will not materialize on the energy downslope. environmental concerns and bearings on the The investments euphemistically called proposed action or its impacts would result in "modernization" should be dedicated toward quality significant environmental impacts not evaluated in train service, not super wide superhighways.the EIS. Å These forty million \[poor\] people are invisible because America is so affluent, so rich; because our expressways carry us away from the ghetto, we don't see the poor.Æ Ä Martin Luther King, "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution" March 31, 1968 (five days before his assassination)