Steve Doyle’s Blog

The Regional Targets Advisory Committee (RTAC), created by legislation (SB 375 Steinberg, 2008), is moving into the Recommendation portion of its’ function. By statute, the RTAC must complete its discussions and provide its recommendations to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) by September 30, 2009. The recommendations are for the methodologies, procedures and policies the CARB should consider when setting the Regional Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions reduction targets. Our most recent meeting (August 5th) focused on the Framework for the committee’s recommendations and the policies we continued to debate. Let me offer a brief summary:

The Framework discussion for the Committee’s recommendations focused primarily on Process and Procedure. In my opinion, the RTAC is focusing on a “bottoms up” approach for the CARB staff to process into a Board recommendation. That is, the Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO’s) desire to provide CARB staff with an initial analysis of the expected capabilities for GHG emissions reduction focused on the “aggressive and achievable” standard outlined in the statute. CARB staff would then use empirical data on the relationship between travel and land use, along with existing Regional Transportation Plans (RTP’s) and Blueprints (regional land use plans) and the GHG reduction benefits from fuels and fuel efficiency to evaluate the MPO proposals.

CARB staff would then respond to the MPO’s with preliminary targets using models, off-model tools and region specific characteristics for their analysis. The MPO’s would be encouraged to comment back to CARB staff and in fact, enter into collaborative analysis using all available data, empirical evidence and policies to create the CARB staff recommendation on the regional targets for the CARB consideration. These recommendations would be released for public comment prior to the Board’s meeting and action.

This Framework seems to be gaining support among RTAC members and CARB staff. The four largest MPO’s have offered to begin some preliminary off-model sketch planning to provide CARB staff with some initial data input. The preliminary timing for this initial work is December 2009.

On the Procedural side of the RTAC’s recommendations, the committee is coalescing around the use of existing transportation planning models for early years’ analysis, with augmentation by off-model tools, like sketch planning. Supplementing these early year models and off-model tools would be policies and programs to enhance the opportunity to capture a maximum percentage of the GHG reduction potential. The RTAC will likely recommend the continued growth of modeling capabilities through a coordinated effort by all MPO’s, CalTrans, the California Transportation Commission (CTC) and CARB, with a goal of a consistent and transparent modeling capability within a 5-10 year time frame. In the interim, the MPO’s will work together with CARB staff to maximize the opportunities for consistency between the existing modeling formats.

Policies to be considered in the creation of GHG Emission Reduction Targets will likely include Best Management Practices (BMP’s) that MPO’s can utilize to augment their transportation modeled, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction strategies. Such BMP’s could include Smart Growth Strategies, Land Use Measures, Transportation Measures, and Pricing Strategies. These policies are still being discussed by the RTAC and recommendations of specific BMP’s have not yet been suggested.

The next meeting of the RTAC will be on August 18th, at the Cal/EPA Headquarters Building in the Coastal Hearing Room from 9:00 am – 4:00 pm. The Cal/EPA building is located at 1001 I Street in Sacramento. The meeting is open to the public and will be webcast.