Senate Transportation Leaders Clash Over Highway Administration Greenhouse-Gas Proposal
The leaders of the transportation committee in the Senate are at odds over a Federal Highway Administration proposal that would measure the value of state and municipal transportation projects by their greenhouse gas emissions.
Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Environment and Public Works Committee, took their differing views to the Eno Center for Transportation last week. The Washington-based nonpartisan think tank published their editorials.
Inhofe, the committee’s chairman, stressed the agency’s proposed GHG regulation would divert time and resources “away from achieving the performance goals set forth in law — a law that was enacted with overwhelming bipartisan support from Congress.
“Should FHWA’s GHG proposal be adopted as a final rule, challenges to this measure will distract FHWA from implementing the measures specified by Congress,” Inhofe wrote.
To counter the chairman, ranking member Boxer argued the performance measure for carbon pollution is “critically needed now.”
"We cannot have a strong economy unless we have a safe and reliable transportation network of roads, bridges, transit systems, railways, and airports that allows everyone to get to work, to school and to marketplaces. Similarly, we must protect the air our families breathe to safeguard our health and maintain our quality of life," she wrote.
The senators included in 2012’s MAP-21 highway law a mandate for FHWA to set performance standards for federally backed highway projects. The agency is expected to announce whether it will include the climate metric in a final rule later this year.
American Trucking Associations said it was strongly opposed to the agency's proposal.
“FHWA does not have the legal authority to take this action, nor is it good policy,” Darrin Roth, ATA’s vice president for highway policy, said in an Aug. 18 letter included in comments from the public about the proposal.
