Working Group Meeting – July 30, 2009
The Climate Change Working Group's third meeting was held on July 30, 2009 at the NJTPA offices in Newark. Over 40 representatives from Monmouth, Hudson, Bergen, and Morris counties, the City of Newark, NJDOT, NJDEP, NJ Transit, PANY&NJ, Tri-State Transportation Campaign, NJFuture, NJ Turnpike Authority, DVRPC, SJTA, Rutgers, and Somerset County Freeholder Peter Palmer participated in the meeting.
Harrison Rue, a principal at ICF International and former executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and MPO in Charlottesville, VA, was the guest speaker. He discussed the role of Metropolitan Planning Organizations in mitigating the impacts of climate change, and described a variety of climate change action strategies that can be included in
Some of his key points included:
- In order to be effective in implementing climate mitigation actions, a single, cooperative, planning process should be pursued that integrates the plans of long-range MPO plans with the plans from State agencies, including transportation and transit plans.
- Developing fuel-efficient vehicles can only go so far in controlling emissions. By 2050, the number of vehicle miles traveled annually is projected to rise by 160 percent, which would wipe out much of the gains from driving greener cars.
- To make further progress, land development decisions must be made with transportation in mind. Neighborhoods should be designed – and if necessary, retrofitted – so they have convenient public transportation access and are easy to walk.
- Regional Scenario Planning that links land use, transportation, economy and the environment are an important means to evaluating and guiding land use decisions on transportation-related GHG emissions within the region and along major transportation corridors
- Focus on a Multimodal Corridor Strategy that integrates multimodal transportation and land use planning, and tie it to local master plans and State DOT project programming. Use transportation projects to demonstrate state-of-the art practices and policy changes, and target funding towards projects that implement these new policies.
Robert Graff, Manager, Office of Energy and Climate Change Initiatives at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), presented the results from the DVRPC's regional greenhouse gas (GHG) emission inventory. Aspects of the inventory included:
- Mobile and stationary energy use, waste disposal, agriculture, industrial processes (non-energy), emissions from fuel systems, and land use, land cover change, forestry sources
- Allocated VMT by splitting the trip length between the origin and destination, while highway and airport trips were not allocated
- Allocated 90 percent of total regional GHG emissions to the counties and 84 percent of total emissions to municipalities.
- The GHG emissions for the region were calculated at 90 MMTE using a 2005 baseline.
After Harrison Rue and Robert Graff’s presentations, Mr. Marty Rosen from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, provided a summary of a new grant program funded by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The initiative provides funding for municipal and county governments as well as county colleges for planning or implementation projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Ms. Gian-Claudia Sciara, graduate instructor at the Bloustein School for Planning and Public Policy, lead a discussion regarding the Rutgers Graduate Planning Studio course scheduled to be taught this fall. The Climate Change Working Group will serve as the client, and provided several possible work tasks for the class, including:
Evaluation/Scenario Planning:
- Evaluation of transportation projects in the TIP for GHG emissions and evaluate project’s impacts on the MPOs goals - Quantify Smart Growth Scoring for evaluating TIP projects
- Inventory available data/information MPOs have to evaluate projects. This is needed to inform FHWA efforts. Case studies are needed, use projects on the TIP. What data is missing in order to screen projects?
- NJDOT & VTC have entered into an agreement to analyze GHG footprint of transportation projects. There is a need to develop tools to assist in this effort.
- Evaluate Transportation System based on various scenarios: High gas prices, climate change, food system, etc for how it impacts the transportation network – how resilient is it?
- Apply transport projects to developing LU/transportation models on VMT
Climate Change Adaptation:
- An Adaptation analysis of state roads and bridges would be VERY helpful to NJDOT. There is also a need to provide information to county engineers for the design of infrastructure projects.
- Huge Impacts to Port Activities as a result of climate change. We need to explain how/what the Port works. Need better communication, better guidance on how to act.
Mitigation:
- Design a Framework to evaluate the effectiveness of GHG mitigation actions.
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For More Information
Resources and documents relating to climate change are at right. For more information or to participate in the working group, contact Jeffrey Perlman at 973-639-8445 or jperlman@njtpa.org.