Volpe Center: Volpe Center Highlights

Information Resources

Volpe Center Highlights - April/May 2001

Director's Notes

Meeting Environmental Challenges Across the Nation

Innovation in transportation is vital to a healthy economy. However, advancement at the expense of the environment has unacceptable impacts on our quality of life. The Volpe Center is committed to protecting and enhancing the human and natural environment, and we are especially qualified to address the varied and complex challenges presented by environmental issues. Our staff's excellent technical and management skills, and our traditional role as an integrator and innovator, have made the Center a nationally significant provider of environmental services.

The Center offers expertise in the full spectrum of environmental activities: planning, measurement, modeling, policy development, regulatory development, operational support, site assessment, and site restoration. We work on projects throughout the United States -- including Maine, Montana, Alaska, Hawaii, Florida and California -- in support of all major modal administrations and other federal and state agencies. Internationally, our presence is growing in the fields of noise, air quality, and climate change.

As attention to environmental issues increases, noise is becoming a growing concern. Since 1970, we have been involved with all aspects of transportation-related noise and vibration measurement and modeling, particularly aircraft and highway noise. The Acoustics Facility supports the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Integrated Noise Model for predicting aircraft noise levels, and the Federal Highway Administration's Traffic Noise Model.

The Center's Air Quality Facility supports the FAA in its ongoing efforts to study and improve the analysis and modeling of air quality at airports. Facility activities include emissions and dispersion measurement, as well as computer modeling. A current example is the System for assessing Aviation's Global Emissions (SAGE), now in the early stages of development, which will allow the FAA to make informed policy decisions regarding global emissions from aircraft.

Transportation is responsible for more than a quarter of all domestic, human-induced, greenhouse gas emissions, which many scientists believe are capable of causing global warming. Volpe's support of DOT's Center for Climate Change and Environmental Forecasting includes examining cost and benefits of alternative fuels, studying market-based strategies such as emissions trading, evaluating roles of state and local planning, and supporting domestic and international policy development.

The increased number of commercial air tour operators at national parks has raised concerns about adverse impacts on natural and cultural resources, visitor experiences, and tribal lands. The Center supports the FAA's Air Tour Management Plan Program with technical services that include National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance and noise research.

The Focus story in this issue covers our transportation planning for Cape Cod, Massachusetts, an environmentally sensitive region whose population is outgrowing its transportation infrastructure. The Center is supporting the development of the Cape Cod Five-Year Public Transportation Plan, which aims to balance seasonal increases in travel demand, year-round needs, future investments in infrastructure, and preservation of the historical and natural environment.

President Bush is expected to lift the moratorium on cross-border transit for most Mexican trucks and buses by January 2002. In anticipation, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is preparing rules addressing certification regulations as well as safety and training procedures for carriers operating under the North American Fair Trade Agreement. Volpe staff will assist FMCSA in developing an Environmental Assessment for the proposed rules. The next issue of Highlights will address Volpe's work related to this issue.

The Center also assesses the effectiveness of remediation technologies. Our support to the U.S. Coast Guard includes assessing existing technologies used for the control of invasions of aquatic nuisance species, which are introduced to our waters via ship ballast and are a threat to native animals.

Our work for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expanding. We are conducting two environmental assessments for EPA Region 1 in support of the Brownfields Initiative, which promotes the cleanup and sustainable redevelopment of certain industrial and commercial facilities. (See the March issue of Highlights.) In Libby, Montana, where past vermiculite mining resulted in environmental releases of asbestos fibers, we continue to provide EPA Region 8 with environmental engineering, remediation, and information-systems services. To determine the national extent of associated asbestos contamination, we have begun removal assessment support at sites in Regions 8 and 9 that received vermiculite shipments from Libby. (Region 9 work is covered in this issue.) The Libby project has received national media attention, as large-scale remediation projects often do; however, preventing the development of environmental problems is one of our foremost concerns.

Our Environmental Assessments and Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) have guided the development of many transportation projects. For the past 3 years, the Center has been providing environmental, system-safety, and planning support to the Federal Railroad Administration's Maglev Deployment Program, whose goal is construction of a magnetic levitation (maglev) public transportation system. We recently completed the Maglev Final Programmatic EIS, which addresses potential impacts on the human and natural environment and suggests possible mitigation measures for adverse impacts. The Center will continue to provide environmental support during testing of a maglev system in Germany and technical oversight of the preparation of two site-specific EISs.

Assessing the environmental and health impacts of transportation is becoming an integral part of our traditional system-safety analysis and technology assessment. We are working to cultivate awareness in the transportation community and to integrate environmental issues into transportation planning, development, and operations to avoid costly remediation and mitigation down the line.

In the past year, we have successfully supported several DOT Administrations in developing new policy options and regulations to streamline the NEPA process for transportation projects, as mandated by TEA-21. Environmental streamlining is increasingly important to the expansion of both surface and aviation infrastructure, as DOT works to balance sometimes-conflicting goals and tradeoffs: to improve capacity, mobility, and safety while protecting the environment. The Volpe Center will continue to expand its role in the vital area of environmental service as we do our part to make the world a better place.

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