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FHWA Home / Accelerating Innovation / Every Day Counts / EDC News: October 31, 2024

EDC News

October 31, 2024

Innovation of the Month: Integrating GHG Assessment and Reduction Targets in Transportation Planning

The Oregon Department of Transportation’s (ODOT’s) vision statement for its 2023 Oregon Transportation Plan (OTP) identifies three lenses to guide decisions – safety, equity, and climate. By elevating climate change to the highest level of their transportation plan, ODOT makes a bold statement about the importance of the transportation sector in addressing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a contributor to climate change.

The OTP recognizes that reducing GHG emissions through mitigation efforts is vital to achieving Oregon’s sustainability and climate action goals. State climate objectives in the OTP are: 1) to achieve State goals for reducing GHG emissions and 2) to preserve and improve the quality of Oregon’s water, air, and natural ecosystems.

The policy framework of the OTP includes a section on reducing GHG emissions, as well as a section on securing sustainable and reliable transportation funding. The framework promotes initiatives such as cleaner vehicles/fuels, transportation electrification, increasing active and public transportation, improving land use patterns, and using true cost pricing in the transportation system to reduce GHG emissions. These actions are meant to reduce emissions by cleaning up each vehicle mile traveled (VMT) or by reducing VMT altogether.

The OTP also developed climate performance targets. These targets include reducing passenger VMT per capita by 20 percent and transitioning to cleaner vehicles and fuels to reduce lifecycle carbon dioxide equivalent per mile by 77 percent. Implementing these targets will build on a variety of performance measures and metrics from the State’s 2013 Statewide Transportation Strategy, the State’s GHG reduction roadmap. Measures include implementing actions often shared with other agencies, such as transit service funding and fleet electrification, improving the energy efficiency of Oregon’s vehicle fleet, per-mile pricing that covers the actual cost of the transportation system, and more.

Oregon DOT’s inclusion of climate change as a key consideration in the decision-making process reflects the agency’s commitment to reducing GHG emissions in the State’s long-range plan development and implementation.

To learn more about Integrating GHG Assessment and Reduction Targets in Transportation Planning, contact David D'Onofrio, FHWA Office of Natural Environment, or Jim Thorne, FHWA Office of Planning, or subscribe to the team's e-newsletter, or visit the initiative's website.

New Funding Opportunity to Accelerate Adoption of Emerging Technologies

The Federal Highway Administration’s Accelerating Market Readiness (AMR) Program builds a bridge between research and practice and provides resources to assess whether innovations emerging from research will perform as intended in their operational environment. A new five year open Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) is seeking proposals starting on October 29, 2024.  The purpose of this BAA is to solicit a variety of solutions that will support the strategic objectives of the AMR program. The AMR program will provide resources for the assessment of emerging innovations and for the objective-written documentation of these assessments.  These activities are intended to help advance the innovations to a more complete market-ready status, which in turn should accelerate the adoption of the innovations by transportation agencies. Please register for our Virtual Industry Day on November 20, 2024 at 1pm ET for more information. 

North Carolina Uses Hybrid Virtual Public Involvement Approach to Meet NEPA Requirements

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires an agency look at the environmental consequences of a proposed action before implementing that action and requires public hearings to inform the public about the planned action and give an opportunity for feedback and questions. FHWA released a Virtual Public Involvement Practices in NEPA report summarizing eight case studies that explored potential approaches to virtual public involvement (VPI) in the NEPA process. One State featured in this report was North Carolina.

To conduct public involvement for their Corridor K project, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) used a hybrid virtual/traditional approach to ensure access for those with limited broadband access. Corridor K is a 127-mile section of the Appalachian Development Highway System, and the project includes adding alternating climbing and passing lanes with an eight-foot shoulder to improve mobility and reliability along the corridor.

For this project, NCDOT held a live, virtual public hearing, as well as use a website on a virtual platform to share information and collect comments. NCDOT also provided the option for members of the public without broadband access to provide feedback on the Environmental Assessment and recommended project design via mail, phone, or one-on-one meetings.

NCDOT mailed newsletters to over 1,600 property owners in the study area, which contained a project update; instructions to access the virtual public hearing; a link to the project website along with a QR code; contact information; instructions to provide comments online by email or by phone; and instructions to request hearing materials without internet access. Further, NCDOT used the newspaper, an online press release, social media, and radio advertisements to announce the hearing while referring listeners to the project website.

Read the case study to learn more about how NCDOT’s approach fared in engaging the public and how taking the hybrid approach helped increase public trust and support in the project.

To learn more about VPI, please contact Mack Frost, FHWA Office of Planning, Stewardship & Oversight, or Robert Washington, FHWA Office of Project Development & Environmental Review.

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NextGen TIM 10/23/24
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Strategic Workforce Development 10/17/24
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Integrating GHG Assessment 10/16/24
EPIC2 10/16/24


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About EDC

Every Day Counts, a State-based initiative of the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Innovation and Workforce Solutions, works with State, local, and privatesector partners to encourage the adoption of proven and underutilized technologies to deliver transportation projects more efficiently, enhance safety forall users, support a sustainable and resilient infrastructure, and incorporate equity inproject planning and delivery.

EDC News is a weekly publication highlighting successful EDC innovation deployments across the country.

EDC News is published weekly by the FHWA Center for Accelerating Innovation.

Disclaimer: The U.S. Government does not endorse products or manufacturers. Trademarks or manufacturers’ names appear in this document only because they are considered essential to the objective of the document. They are included for informational purposes only and are not intended to reflect a preference, approval, or endorsement of any one product or entity.

Except for the statutes and regulations cited, the contents of this document do not have the force and effect of law and are not meant to bind the States or the public in any way. This document is intended only to provide information regarding existing requirements under the law or agency policies.

Recommended Citation:
U.S Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration
EDC News; October 31, 2024
Washington, DC

https://doi.org/10.21949/1521898

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Page last modified on October 30, 2024
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