Metro Councilor Carlotta Collette discusses transportation strategies with other elected officials from Clackamas County at the April 11 Climate Smart Communities summit.
A few months ago, politicians, advocates, department directors and others agreed on what to study in an effort to reduce the region's tailpipe emissions.
The effort stems from a mandate from the 2009 Legislature, which told Metro to come up with a plan to curb emissions from cars and light trucks. For the past five years, Metro's been whittling down options, working with local communities to come up with a draft strategy for curbing emissions.
In May, members of the Metro Council, the Metro Policy Advisory Committee and the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation agreed on what tactics for curbing emissions should be subject to more intense study.
Metro's planners spent the summer crunching the numbers, and recently released their findings: If the tactics were implemented, the region's tailpipe emissions would be cut by 29 percent by 2035 – well beyond the Legislature's 20 percent mandate.
Tactics? But didn't the Legislature ask for a plan?
Yes, and there's a key distinction. Metro officials are quick to point out that the strategy they're drafting isn't a "plan," per se – it's simply implementation of existing plans. Basically, there's a lot of urban design concepts that are guiding development around the region – many of which were written by local communities and city councils. Making those concepts a reality – implementing existing plans, in technical planner speak – will bring about a 29 percent reduction in tailpipe emissions.
So if the Legislature said to cut emissions by 20 percent, why go to 29 percent?
When Metro planners asked regional leaders to help come up with a plan for curbing emissions, they didn't know, specifically, how much each of their proposed tactics would cut emissions. They knew that increasing transit service had substantial climate benefits, but didn't know specifically how much an increase an transit service would cut emissions.
So the regional leaders – mostly mayors of the region's cities – gave Metro a set of strategies to approach: Increase transit a fair amount; build the region's road network according to what's already in the plans; increase bike and pedestrian access; use technology to smooth traffic flow and reduce delay and provide information and incentives to increase carpooling, walking, biking and use of transit.
After running the numbers, based on input from the mayors and others, the planners came back with the results: Doing what MPAC and JPACT unanimously recommended in the spring gets the region a 29 percent cut in emissions by 2035.
Will they endorse tactics that go all the way to 29 percent?
They could. Some of the proposals in the plans are things that elected officials have a hard time actively opposing – better transit, more parks and trails, long-planned road improvements. A lot of those projects are already in counties' and cities' long-range plans, and are just waiting for funding to build them. In other words, it'd be awkward for an elected official to be in favor of a new sidewalk when it's in their city's neighborhood development plan, but opposed to that same sidewalk when it's in the region's tailpipe emission reduction strategy.
If the idea is to cut emissions, why does it include building more roads?
A few reasons. The first is implicit: Roads make it easier to get some suburban interests, as well as advocates for the region's truckers, to get behind the tailpipe emissions reduction strategy.
There's more to it than that, though. If you want to get people to ride the bus, it helps to have that bus moving quickly. If the road the bus is on is gridlocked, the bus is likely to spend lots of time stuck in traffic, too – making it less useful for commuters. Good streets also make it easier to walk or bike to local businesses.
How much does transit help?
A lot. Making transit easier for riders, through better and more frequent service, could cut significantly tailpipe emissions. It's the single-biggest bite out of what the Legislature told Metro to do in the emissions reduction effort.
Making buses come more frequently, and improving bus lines as they run through priority at traffic lights and other methods, would go a long way to increasing ridership. So would system expansion, making new connections available for riders looking to get to work or other destinations.
What's this about parking?
Another effective way to curb emissions, Metro planners say, could come from managing parking around the region, particularly in areas that already have good transit and bike access.
The general goal, according to Metro, is to try to get private property owners to work together on parking, rather than marking parking spots as off limit to visitors of other nearby businesses. The concept also calls for cities to look at what parking they have, and consider charging for parking, or setting time limits on parking, in areas that are well-connected by transit.
How does it all get paid for?
That's the billion-dollar question. Adding up the expected costs of implementing all of the strategies, the region would have to spend $1.4 billion a year for the next 20 years to make that a reality – about 58 percent of that on building and maintaining roads.
That's not $1.4 billion a year more – it's $1.4 billion a year total.
What we don't have a firm grasp on is how much we're spending now. A preliminary look estimates the region's total transportation spending at about $800 million annually. About 36 percent of that is on road maintenance, another 35 percent on transit operations, with the rest spent on construction projects.
The point is, to meet the state's tailpipe reduction targets, new money is going to be needed. Where that money comes from is a topic for 2015 and beyond.
What happens next?
The strategy is still in the draft phase. The Metro Policy Advisory Committee and Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation are scheduled to have a joint meeting to discuss it on Nov. 7. The Metro Council is required to adopt some plan by the end of the year.
After that, it has to pass muster with state regulators: The Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission will review the approach next year and see if it complies with the commission's requirements.
And then there's the funding issue – if cities and Metro are serious about trying to curb tailpipe emissions, increase transit, reduce congestion and add more sidewalks and trails, they're likely to look to the 2015 Legislature for help in paying for some of it.
After all, it was the Legislature that created this mandate – as part of a 2009 gas tax increase that set aside $960 million for road construction.