The U.S. Supreme Court concluded that climate change is a serious problem for the U.S. and the world, and should be considered a cumulative impact of development. Many states have developed strategies that attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions toward levels necessary to reach climate stabilization.
Due to continuing growth in vehicle travel per capita, advances in vehicle technology will not reduce greenhouse emissions sufficiently to stabilize our climate. Integrated transportation/land use strategies are also essential, including: sustainable, compact, mixed, transit-oriented development, and transportation demand management, operations management and transit.
To achieve these goals, Fehr & Peers applies a range of transportation planning and engineering expertise and has been fully or partially responsible for:
- Nationally-used methods of estimating the effects of development compactness,
- mix, transit access and urban design on vehicle travel for the U.S. EPA, state and
- regional governments.
- Performance measures and transportation modeling methods related to climate
- change for the States of California and Washington.
- American Public Transit Association recommended practices for assessing the climate change impacts and benefits of transit.
- Regional sustainability blueprints for Sacramento, Denver, Minneapolis and others.
- Climate action plans for local communities.
- Sustainability plans for major developments affecting hundreds of thousands of acres in rapidly growing areas throughout the U.S.
Federal legislation concerning climate and energy and transportation funding re-authorization are presently on hold, while several examples State policy have demonstrated strong commitments to applying transportation strategies to address climate and energy issues. Among these, a prominent example is California’s SB 375.
