Great article, but whoa, are these people ever late to the table. We've been talking about pending climate change for 20 years, and just now they are saying they'd better get together to communicate with each other about best practices? Duh.
Climate change and transportation - the next steps
By: Drivers.com staff
Date: Friday, 14. March 2008
The debacle of hurricane Katrina was a wake-up call. Flood protection collapsed, a major bridge was overwhelmed by the violence of the storm, evacuation routes were jammed, a fleet of school buses sat idle while thousands couldn't escape. Food couldn't get in. Law and order broke down. Infrastructure that was supposed to protect the city disintegrated.
Most likely, New Orleans will never be the same because many thousands of former inhabitants will never return to live there.
If predictions about global warming and climate change are mostly true, the future will hold much more of this unless dramatic changes are made in planning, design and organization. Special Report 290 from the U.S. Transportation Research Board (TRB) is a first step in initiating those changes.
The report, which was a joint effort of the TRB and the Division on Earth and Life Studies, attempts to fix where we're at in terms of the climate change debate, and to set out an array of initiatives that need to get under way as soon as possible.
In essence, it's an overview of scientific consensus and the limits of our understanding of the phenomenon, a scan of potential impacts, and a set of findings and recommendations on what to do about it.
In its broad scope it painted a future with far-reaching implications for upgrading current transportation systems and designing new ones for the future.
Altogether the report outlined 15 Findings and 14 recommendations.
Climate change impact
Having established the consensus that climate change is real and we have to plan for it, the report outlined 5 major impacts of change and the probability they will occur during the 21 st century:
Increases in very hot days and heat waves (very likely)
Increases in Arctic temperatures (virtually certain)
Rising sea levels (virtually certain)
Increases in intense precipitation events (very likely)
Increases in hurricane intensity (likely)
Potentially the greatest of these impacts will be rising sea levels and consequent flooding of low-lying coastal areas, says the report. Some land will be lost to the sea and land that isn't will be affected by storm surges and subsidence. Sea ports, roads, railways, airports and transit systems will be affected.
The report notes that some 53% of the population of the United States now resides in coastal areas, and that many are in highly densely populated urban centers.
In other areas, hurricanes, drought or extremes of temperature may be the most prominent. "The impacts will vary by mode of transportation and region of the country, but they will be widespread and costly in both human and economic terms and will require significant changes in the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of transportation systems," states the report.
Key points
The report urges jurisdictions to adjust to longer term planning to allow for climate change impacts. Areas that would be prone to flooding, for example, should develop flood projection maps to be used by land use and transportation planners, engineers and designers.
The US Department Of Transport (US DOT), is urged to "take a leadership role, along with those professional organizations in the forefront of civil engineering practice across all modes, to initiate immediately a federally funded, multi-agency research program." Plans and cost proposals should be prepared for submission to congress.
Learning from the past, especially Katrina, communication between organizations was targeted as a critical element.
"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Geological Survey, and other relevant agencies should work together to institute a process for better communication among transportation professionals, climate scientists, and other relevant scientific disciplines, and establish a clearinghouse for transportation-relevant climate change information."
The report also urged that incentives be woven into state and federal legislation that would encourage, and even require, climate change inclusion in planning and development of transportation infrastructure.
Getting to work
The problems of incorporating climate change predictions into planning and design are enormous, the report acknowledges. It did not attempt to address the issue of cost, report committee chairman Henry G. Schwartz Jr . told a Bloomberg news reporter during a telephone conference following its release on Tuesday. Nor did it address the issue region by region.
One of its recommendations urged regions to cooperate to identify the best practices developed by various jurisdictions:
"The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the Federal Highway Administration, the Association of American Railroads, the American Public Transportation Association, the American Association of Port Authorities, the Airport Operators Council, associations for oil and gas pipelines, and other relevant transportation professional and research organizations should develop a mechanism to encourage sharing of best practices for addressing the potential impacts of climate change." (Recommendation No 8)
Beginning an inventory of needs and requirements is identified as one of the most immediate and critical issues. "We need to begin an inventory as soon as possible to determine what assets are at risk," Dr Schwartz said.
"Most of the work on climate change so far has been done on a global scale," said Schwartz, but "now it�s time to move the debate to what we do specifically."
The once-in-a-hundred-years storm may now come every 25 years. Storms will be more violent, droughts more frequent, floods more prevalent. Bridges, rail lines, seaports, airports, roadways, will be vulnerable. Some may have to be moved.
The implications for cost are enormous, but the implications for failure to respond are even more severe. The most important message in the report, says Dr. Schwartz, is to begin the process.
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Doug,
