Linking Transportation and Air Quality
Planning:
Implementation of the Transportation
Conformity Regulations in 15
Nonattainment Areas
svEPA
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency

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Linking Transportation and Air Quality
Planning:
Implementation of the Transportation
Conformity Regulations in 15
Nonattainment Areas
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Departrment of Transportation
£%	United States
Environmental Protection
^1	Agency
EPA-420-R-99-011
March 1999

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Publication # EPA420-R-99-011
Linking Transportation and
Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the
Transportation Conformity Regulations
in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
A Report to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Department of Transportation

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Acknowledgments
It is a genuine pleasure to thank the many people who have made this research possible. We
owe our most important debt of gratitude to the more than 230 individuals - identified by name in
an appendix to this report - who were interviewed and provided other data about the transportation
conformity process. Their knowledge and insight are reflected on virtually every page that follows.
Without the cooperation, patience, and candor of all of these people - sometimes provided on
multiple occasions - this study quite literally could not have been carried out.
From the outset, the researchers were promised full intellectual independence by the federal
agency sponsors, EPA and FHWA. That independence has been scrupulously respected by the
federal agency staff with whom we have worked closely throughout this proj ect. Particular assistance,
for which we are extremely grateful, was provided by Laura Voss, Meg Patulski, Kathryn Sargeant,
and Margo Oge of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Lucy Garliauskas and James Shrouds
of the Federal Highway Administration.
At Harvard, our efforts have been ably supported by Treina Fabre, Sophie Delano, and James
Scafide, who served at various points as research assistants, and by Rochelle Furman, Kate
Fitzpatrick, and Julie Zanotti, who transcribed numerous interview tapes. Sandra Garron effectively
managed project finances, and Julie Zanotti deftly performed many other administrative tasks that
kept the project moving. On several occasions, Stephanie Abundo and Todd Olmstead took time out
from their Ph.D. research to provide helpful technical assistance.
Joshua Anderson was a partner with one of the authors in conducting an earlier study of im-
plementation of the transportation provisions of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. The current
work has benefitted significantly from his earlier efforts.
The people at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government are genuinely delightful
companions, supportive colleagues, and thoughtful commentators. Alan Altshuler, David Luberoff,
Mary Graham, and Jay Walder, in addition to those mentioned above, deserve special thanks for their
support, but others too numerous to mention by name are responsible for creating a unique and
stimulating environment.
The authors of this study are solely responsible for the accuracy of the data presented here and
for the generalizations and conclusions they have reached. They have benefitted greatly, however, from
the careful review and scrutiny of all or parts of this manuscript by representatives of the federal agencies
and some of their interview respondents. The authors are extremely grateful to these commentators, who
have saved them from errors of omission and commission, while helping them refine their interpretations
of the data. Any shortcomings that remain, however, are the exclusive responsibility of the authors.
Neither the project's federal sponsors nor Harvard University necessarily agree with or endorse the
findings and conclusions presented here. Those are ours alone.
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
March 1999
iii

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements	iii
Table of Contents	v
Executive Summary	ix
Chapter 1: The Conformity Assessment Project	l
Project Purposes 	1
Focal Questions	2
Selection of the Research Sites	3
Research Methods and Data	8
The Research in Perspective	9
Outline of the Report	10
Chapter 2: The Purposes and Requirements of Transportation
Conformity	12
Policy Antecedents	12
Purposes and Expectations	14
Pollution Reduction and Public Health 	14
A Procedural Framework and Incentives	14
Improving the Planning Process 	15
Public Deliberation and Decision Making	16
Advancing the Environmental Advocacy Agenda 	16
Conformity Requirements 	17
The 1991 Interim Conformity Guidance 	18
The 1993 Conformity Rule	19
Performance Standards	20
Procedural Requirements 	21
Penalties and Penalty Triggers 	22
Amendments to the 1993 Conformity Rule	24
The August 1995 Amendments	24
National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 	 25
The November 1995 Amendments 	25
The August 1997 Amendments	27
Chapter 3: Implementing the Transportation Conformity Requirements 28
Passing the Emissions Tests	30
Budget Test	30
Build/No-Build Test	36
Less-than-1990 Test	37
v

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Using the Required Modeling Techniques 	37
Demonstrating Timely Implementation of SIP TCMs	38
Meeting the Fiscal Constraint Requirement 	38
Links to SIP Failures 	39
Human Error	40
Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation
Conformity Process	41
Building Institutional Capacity	44
Contextual Conditions 	44
Organizing for Conformity	46
Developing Technical Capacity	49
Establishing Interagency Consultation Procedures 	52
Start-up Issues	52
Formalizing Consultation Procedures in a Conformity SIP 	53
Interagency Consultation in Practice	56
Stakeholder Participation in Conformity	64
Environmental Advocates	65
Business Associations	68
The Broader Visibility of Conformity	69
Engaging Policy Makers	69
Public Visibility 	71
Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans 73
Effects of Conformity on Transportation Plans and Programs	73
Effects on Highway Projects	74
Effects on Transit, Other TCMs, and Land Use Planning 	80
Conformity and Air Quality Planning	86
1992	CO and PM10 SIPs	86
1993	VOC Reduction SIPs	87
Effects on Subsequent SIP Planning	89
Conformity Effects on SIP TCMs	92
Other SIP Impacts 	93
Chapter 6: Toward A New Planning "Arena"	96
Better Data and Analytic Tools 	96
Analysis and the Regulatory Process 	97
Confronting Conformity Difficulties	99
Re-examining the Models	100
Generating Policy Debate	100
Institutional Dynamics of Changing Transportation and Air Quality Plans .... 101
Conformity as an Evolving Process 	103
vi

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Appendix I: Glossary of Abbreviations	104
Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites	106
Atlanta	106
Baltimore	108
Boston	109
Charlotte	Ill
Chicago	113
Denver	114
Houston	116
Milwaukee	117
Northern New Jersey	118
New York	119
Philadelphia	120
Phoenix	121
Portland	122
Salt Lake City 	123
San Francisco	124
Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site	125
Atlanta	125
Baltimore	126
Boston	126
Charlotte	127
Chicago	128
Denver	129
Houston	130
Milwaukee	131
Northern New Jersey	132
New York	133
Philadelphia	134
Phoenix	135
Portland	136
Salt Lake City 	137
San Francisco	137
National	139
Appendix IV: Sources of Population and Transportation Data	140
Appendix V: Report Authors	143
Figures and Tables
Figure 1-1: Nonattainment Areas in the Study	4
Table 1-1: Growth Rates of Population and Vehicle Miles Traveled by Study Site	6

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Table 1-2: Nonattainment Classifications for Study Sites by Pollutant	7
Table 3-1: Types of Conformity Problems by Nonattainment Area	29
Table 3-2: Problems Meeting the Conformity Requirements by
Nonattainment Area	31-32
Table 4-1: Core Public Agencies in Transportation and Air Quality by
Nonattainment Area	42-43
Table 5-1: Population and VMT Growth Rates by Higher- and Lower-Growth
Study Sites	76
viii

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ilwcutivc Summary
Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the Transportation Conformity
Regulations in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
Chapter 1: The Conformity Assessment Project
The Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) of 1990 require far-reaching efforts under the
"transportation conformity" regulations to assure that transportation investments in nonattainment
and maintenance areas are consistent with state commitments to meet national air pollution standards.
This research documents how these regulations were implemented during the period 1991 through
January 1998.
Focal Questions. Three questions have organized the study:
How has conformity affected key agencies and constituencies' organizational capacity and
relationships?
How has conformity changed the transportation planning/programming process and its
results?
How has conformity changed air quality planning and regulation?
Although the research does not attempt to evaluate the technical dimension of conformity
modeling, it seeks to place the technical process in the larger context of the institutional relationships
involved.
Study Sites. The researchers chose a non-random sample of 15 nonattainment areas -
Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Milwaukee, New York, Northern
New Jersey, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco - to concentrate on
large metropolitan areas with more severe air pollution problems. The sample does not include rural
nonattainment areas, small metropolitan areas, or areas with minimal pollution problems.
In each area, the researchers consulted documents and publications and conducted personal
interviews. In all, they spoke with more than 230 individuals knowledgeable about conformity, in-
cluding representatives from MPOs, state air agencies, state DOTs, EPA and FHWA field offices,
environmental advocacy groups, and other stakeholders.

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Executive Summary: Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning
x
Chapter 2: The Purposes and Requirements of Transportation
Conformity
The conformity process is intended to ensure that a nonattainment (or maintenance) area will
keep transportation-related emissions within the bounds needed to bring the state into compliance
with (or maintain) the national ambient air quality standards - and thus to advance the public health
goals of the Clean Air Act. But the statute and the regulations promulgated by EPA to implement
them imply a broader set of purposes, and stakeholder groups have layered on additional expectations
about how conformity would work. These extended purposes and expectations include:
establishment of a procedural framework and incentives for analyzing transportation-relat-
ed pollution,
improvements in both transportation and air planning processes and establishment of
tighter connections between them,
improvements in public deliberation and decisions on transportation and air quality issues,
and
promotion of elements of the environmental advocacy agenda.
Chapter 3: Implementing the Transportation Conformity Requirements
During the study period, each of the 15 study sites experienced at least some difficulty with
the technical and procedural requirements of the 1993 transportation conformity regulations. These
problems are considered in six categories: (1) Emission tests: passing the emission budget and
build/no-build tests, (2) Modeling procedures: fulfilling the transportation modeling requirements, (3)
TCM implementation: demonstrating timely implementation of those transportation control
measures committed to in control strategy SIPs and maintenance plans, (4) Fiscal constraint:
showing that the transportation plan meets the ISTEA fiscal constraint requirement, (5) SIP failure:
triggering conformity problems because of problems with SIP submissions, and (6) Human error:
experiencing conformity problems because of procedural confusion and/or data analysis mistakes.
The nature and consequences of these problems for the transportation planning process and
air quality regulation varied significantly. (See Table 3-2 in the body of the report for the problems
encountered by each nonattainment area.) In applying the specific emission tests of the 1993 regula-
tions, five study sites encountered significant difficulties with the budget tests, which continued to
pose serious problems for Atlanta, Charlotte, and Houston at the end of the study period in January
1998. The build/no-build test was problematic for even more areas, but the difficulties were less
severe - and, because this requirement was substantially altered by the 1997 conformity amendments,
the problem has become moot in most areas. No study area reported difficulty with the less-than-
1990 test.
The other conformity requirements were generally less problematic than the emission tests.
While a number of study sites had some difficulties gearing up for the network modeling requirements
of the 1993 regulations, only New York City and Chicago faced serious conformity delays as a result.

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Executive Summary: Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning
xi
The fiscal constraint requirement posed no serious problems for any areas, although Boston
experienced a brief conformity delay because of this test. Initially, the provisions of the 1993 rule
regarding SIP failures caused problems for a few areas; but the 1995 conformity amendments
alleviated this issue. During the study period, only Salt Lake City suffered a conformity freeze or
lapse because of SIP failure.
Chapter4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
Fulfilling the purposes of conformity depends crucially on creating stronger institutional links
between two sets of agencies - transportation and air quality - that operated quite independently of
each other prior to enactment of the CAAA of 1990.
Contextual Conditions. For the core regional and state agencies involved in conformity
- particularly MPOs, state and regional air agencies, and state DOTs - implementation of the
conformity regulations created significant stresses, not merely in terms of what conformity itself
required but also in the context of broader changes stemming from the CAAA and ISTEA. Even
without the conformity requirements, air quality and transportation agencies faced substantial in-
creases in workload as well as the need to develop new skills and to build relationships with other
agencies.
Developing Technical Capacity. Conformity made significant start-up demands on
MPO technical capacity and resources. Of the 15 study sites, New York City and Chicago had the
most difficult experiences. Most of the MPOs in the study were subject to the network modeling
requirements of the 1993 conformity regulations, and all needed to upgrade their modeling cap-
abilities to meet the general requirements of conformity. Typically, MPOs had to hire additional in-
house technical staff and/or consultants for this purpose. While conformity was often the decisive
factor, these upgrades were also motivated by ISTEA's planning requirements and the provision of
federal funds to strengthen planning capabilities.
For state air agencies developing necessary technical resources was also challenging. To meet
a spate of new responsibilities under the Clean Air Act, including conformity, most air agencies hired
additional staff members who had or could develop transportation expertise, but this took time; and
new staff had to be assimilated to new institutional practices and cultures. By contrast with both air
agencies and MPOs, state DOTs faced far less conformity-related pressure for technical capacity
enhancement.
Both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation
significantly contributed to the development of organizational capacity for conformity by providing
technical assistance to state and regional agencies.
Establishing Interagency Consultation Procedures. The conformity regulations em-
phasized the need for effective interagency consultation at each stage of the conformity process.
Consultation practices have emerged gradually as first the 1991 interim conformity guidelines and
then the 1993 regulations have been implemented.
As a result of start-up challenges, many areas missed the window of opportunity for consul-
tation that could have informed the first set of SIPs in the CAAA/ISTEA era. In a few areas, such
as Boston, Houston, and Milwaukee, broad-based SIP planning task forces were established.

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Executive Summary: Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning
xii
However, transportation planners in some other areas were not sufficiently aware of the importance
of their involvement in SIP planning. Thus, emission budgets were derived implicitly from SIP inven-
tories without enough consideration of their implications for future conformity determinations. Like-
wise, during the start-up phase, air planners were just beginning to establish their role in trans-
portation planning and frequently felt that they had too little influence on the first post-ISTEA round of
transportation plans and TIPs.
Typically led by the air agency, concerned agencies in most states began working on conform-
ity SIPs in 1994. Many states finished work essentially within the allotted year, building on the
experience gained in their initial conformity experiences. Most developed interagency consultation
procedures with little disagreement, and a number regarded the exercise of specifying responsibilities
and defining processes as quite useful in clarifying expectations about how conformity would be
carried out. To accommodate forthcoming amendments to the conformity regulation, however, EPA
moved the deadline for completed conformity SIPs into 1998. Conformity SIPs were therefore not
complete in many areas at the conclusion of the study period in January 1998.
Consultation in Practice. Whatever the legal status of their conformity SIPs, though, the
study areas have developed interagency consultation practices that go well beyond previous levels
of interaction. Formal consultation goes beyond the mechanics of conformity in most, but not all, are-
as. Air agencies now typically participate in some fashion on the MPO committees where trans-
portation decisions are made, so they have an opportunity to make suggestions or raise issues at a
formative stage of policy development. Official interactions, however, tell only part of the story of
interagency consultation. Formal consultation procedures have frequently helped to foster stronger
informal working relationships and deeper understanding of the issues in a number of areas.
Many of the state and regional officials interviewed for the study stressed that, as a result of
the formal and informal relationships that conformity has spurred, they have developed a much great-
er understanding of their counterparts' challenges and the constraints that shape their policy ap-
proaches. This makes it far easier to acknowledge problems and work together to solve them. Con-
sultative relationships, once initiated, therefore tend to become reinforcing.
In some areas, however, consultation is relatively limited and focused to a great degree on for-
mal interactions such as committee meetings, review of proposed conformity determinations by air
quality planners, and comments by transportation planners on proposed SIP budgets or mobile source
control measures.
Even in areas where strong consultative relationships have developed, important limitations
remain. Where close interagency relationships develop, they do not transcend or submerge distinct
institutional interests and perspectives in conformity. Nor do they fundamentally change disparities
of bureaucratic or political power. Agency personnel continue to represent their own agencies and
may not always be able to find common ground with their colleagues on specific matters. As a result,
while state air agencies provide important technical inputs to conformity analysis in a number of study
sites, they have generally been reactive rather than proactive participants in conformity. Resource
limitations and the opportunity costs of using this scarce capacity for conformity are a major barrier.
Because a number of air agencies have little in-house technical expertise on transportation demand
modeling, they are uncomfortable probing that dimension of conformity even when they have serious
reservations about how the MPO is handling it. Perceived political weakness of air agencies relative

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Executive Summary: Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning
xiii
to transportation counterparts is another barrier. In only a few instances identified in the study sites
have air agencies been aligned against transportation agency positions in major conformity disputes.
Federal Agency Roles. The conformity regulations give DOT the final authority to de-
cide whether an MPO's conformity determination should be approved. In practice, FHWA has taken
the lead in this review, working closely with EPA and FTA. The federal agencies also consider com-
ments from interested stakeholders (most often environmental advocacy groups). Serious objections
from a key stakeholder typically trigger intensive review of the MPO's conformity analysis.
FHWA has generally worked with FTA and EPA to reach consensus on a federal position,
sometimes managing discussions at multiple levels of the agencies. In only one instance in the study
sites - Atlanta - has there been severe disagreement between DOT and EPA.
In each state in the study, FHWA has division offices in the same city in which the state DOT
headquarters is located. Therefore, its air quality staff members generally have direct access to their
counterparts in state and regional agencies and often provide technical assistance and advice.
EPA field staff, operating from only ten regional offices, do not have comparable access in
many instances. They have nonetheless played active roles in implementing conformity - providing
technical assistance, troubleshooting on major issues, advising and consulting with national
headquarters staff, working with states and MPOs to develop conformity SIPs, and dealing with the
conformity consequences of control strategy SIP revisions or disapprovals. However, EPA's involve-
ment in conformity at the MPO/nonattainment area level has been significantly more variable, and
weaker overall, than FHWA's - to a great degree because EPA lacks a state-level presence equivalent
to FHWA's divisions.
FTA also has only regional offices, and its conformity role has generally been less extensive
than either FHWA or EPA's.
At the headquarters level, FHWA staff in Washington provide technical backup, interpret
agency policy, promote inter-area consistency, and manage liaison with EPA headquarters staff.
EPA's mobile source headquarters staff, primarily based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, played the lead role
in drafting the transportation conformity regulations and the subsequent amendments (in close con-
sultation with DOT, whose concurrence was required by the statute). EPA headquarters has also
played a continuing role in interpreting the regulations, coordinating regional office mobile source
specialists to ensure national consistency, and has communicated regularly with state and regional
transportation and environmental agencies and other stakeholder groups.
Stakeholder Roles. The conformity regulations require both that the public have
opportunity to comment on conformity analyses before the determination is made and that MPOs
fulfill the requirements of the DOT metropolitan planning regulations, which more generally mandate
public participation in transportation planning. Using these paths of access, environmental advocacy
groups have been the most active non-governmental stakeholders in conformity, playing key roles in
about one third of the 15 study sites and a more limited role in most others. To track conformity
well, however, is time-intensive and requires significant technical skills. To participate effectively,
therefore, environmental advocates have had to make efforts that, in many respects, parallel the

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Executive Summary: Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning
xiv
involvement of personnel from the core public agencies. In several study sites, strong environmental
groups that have focused on transportation issues more generally have therefore strategically chosen
not to become actively involved in the conformity process. And not every study site has advocacy
groups capable of effective participation.
Business associations are the only other stakeholder group active in conformity - and then
only in a few nonattainment areas.
The Broader Visibility of Conformity. At least up to the conclusion of the study period
- January 1998 - conformity had not generally been effective in focusing the attention of high-level
appointed policy makers and elected officials on the issues of transportation and air quality. The
complex and highly technical nature of the conformity process has been a barrier to expanding parti-
cipation in the planning arena beyond the core group of planning and policy officials who deal with
it on a regular basis.
The core public agencies have also had limited success in drawing the general public's atten-
tion to conformity. In most of the study sites, there is scant media coverage of the transportation
planning process in general and conformity in particular. Unless controversy arises, conformity is an
inherently difficult subject for newspapers, let alone television or radio, to report. Its highly technical
nature, revolving around complex regulatory requirements and arcane modeling procedures, dimin-
ishes its accessibility to both generalist reporters and the public.
To the extent that the core agencies have attracted public attention to conformity, they have
relied primarily on organizing and formally announcing public meetings, placing notices in their news-
letters, and - increasingly - posting notices and technical documents on MPO websites. Conse-
quently, very few unaffiliated citizens have availed themselves of opportunities for involvement, even
when MPOs and others have exerted considerable effort to secure participation.
However, in several areas that have experienced long conformity lapses (such as Denver,
Charlotte, and Atlanta) the level of media coverage has increased, including newspaper coverage that
explains the policy issues as well as describes the conflict. This makes the issues more accessible to
the public. Under these circumstances, moreover, senior policy makers and elected officials are also
more likely to become active in trying to resolve the conformity problems.
Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
Effects on Transportation Plans and Programs. Firm conclusions about impacts of
conformity on transportation plans/programs are premature because of the dynamics of transportation
planning and project development. The regulations were not in effect during the formative years of
many of the projects in transportation plans/programs that were subject to conformity during the
study. In effect, the conformity regulations were applied to the final stages of planning. It is not sur-
prising, therefore, that the effects of conformity have been felt more clearly in the planning process than
in the substance of the plans themselves.
During the period in 1991-1993 that the interim conformity guidance was in effect there was
considerable initial uncertainty about what this unfamiliar procedure entailed and how it had to be
documented, but most MPOs experienced relatively little difficulty demonstrating conformity against
this standard.

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Executive Summary: Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning
xv
Highway Projects in High-Growth Areas. Under the 1993 regulations, as amended, con-
formity's impacts on highway projects have been felt primarily in a number of the high-growth areas
in the study - Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Houston, Salt Lake City - which found passing
conformity's emission budget tests problematic during the study period.
Except for Portland, the high-growth study areas tend to have substantial dispersed land de-
velopment and a significantly rising level of vehicle-miles traveled (VMT). As a consequence, they
typically have major highway capacity expansion plans. These areas generally have transit systems
with much smaller mode shares than the typical low growth area in the study - and their growth is
primarily occurring at the peripheries of the metropolitan area where providing high-quality transit
service is problematic. On the air quality side, because these areas, with the exception of Houston,
have less severe ozone problems than the low growth areas in the study, they have earlier attainment
deadlines. Consequently, they must show required reductions, net of VMT growth, more rapidly than
the lower-growth areas.
The effects of the difficulties that Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Houston, Salt Lake City had
in passing conformity emission budget tests ranged from delays in proceeding with certain planned
projects, to scaling back the design scope of others, to eliminating certain projects from proposed
transportation programs. Atlanta and Charlotte were experiencing conformity lapses at the time the
study concluded in January 1998.
Highway ProjectsinLower-GrowthAreas. Implementation of the conformity rule has had
far less impact on transportation plans/programs in the older, relatively low growth metropolitan areas
in the study - Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, northern New Jer-
sey, and San Francisco. Although these areas typically have more serious pollution problems, they
generally have mature highway infrastructure networks, well established transit systems, and relatively
slow VMT growth. As a result, many projects in their transportation plans/programs have neutral
or positive air quality benefits. These proj ects include reconstruction and maintenance of the roadway
system and most investments in transit. Thus, conformity has not required maj or adaptations of trans-
portation plans in these areas because there are few major capacity expansions on the table, the mix
of projects already includes many with air quality benefits, and technology measures are being
adopted in the SIP.
These areas, however, have not yet met their stiffest conformity challenges. In the absence
of attainment demonstrations for these areas, the emissions budgets that they have met come from
15% VOC reduction SIPs and subsequent RFP SIPs. Moreover, at the end of the study period, some
had not yet determined conformity against 1999 RFP levels.
Ongoing Highway Impacts. How Charlotte and Atlanta would resolve the lapse problems
noted above was not clear at the conclusion of the study period in January 1998. What these
situations and other less dramatic cases in the study suggest, however, is how difficult institutionally
and politically it is for MPOs and state DOTs to make changes in their transportation plans and
programs. Given the difficulty of extricating projects from plans, and the length of time that will
elapse before proj ects in the pre-ISTEA pipeline are exhausted, it is not surprising that major changes
in the contents of regional transportation plans have been few.
As a result of conformity, though, it appears that proposals for major highway capacity en-
hancement, while not precluded, are less likely to move into preliminary planning phases than they

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Executive Summary: Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning
xv/'
might have previously, if they seem likely to be "emission budget busters." Because major highway
projects may threaten financial as well as emission budgets, moreover, this effect is strongly rein-
forced by the fiscal constraint requirement of ISTEA.
Effects on Transit, Other TCMs, and Land-Use Planning. Because a number of con-
formity stakeholders, particularly environmental advocacy groups, expected that conformity would
promote specific elements of their transportation policy agendas, this study has investigated whether
conformity has had an impact on transit, other transportation control measures (TCMs), and land-use
planning.
In the 15 study sites, conformity considerations seem to have reinforced - but not determined
- transit policies in two areas (Denver and Portland). At the end of the study period in January 1998,
however, transit planning in the others had been much less affected by conformity. Contrary to the
cited expectations, most rapidly growing metropolitan areas in the study, including those that have
experienced conformity difficulties, had not found transit's emission benefits sufficient grounds to
encourage major investments. However, the areas that already have extensive transit networks have
found the emission benefits of continued investment helpful in demonstrating conformity.
Only two areas (Boston and Baltimore) reported adopting a TCM specifically for conformity
purposes. In others, the availability of CMAQ funding has probably increased the attractiveness of
some TCMs relative to other possible expenditures; and several areas routinely used an off-model
analysis of TCMs to pass the build/no-build test. Because most TCMs show only modest air quality
benefits, however, other factors have driven their inclusion in area plans; they have not been program-
med specifically to capture air quality benefits.
Some proponents of conformity hoped that modeling transportation/land use links would also
lead to consideration of alternative land-use scenarios in the planning process and wider acceptance
of land-use regulation as a viable policy option for reducing mobile source emissions. However, with
the exception of Portland among the 15 study sites, the impact of conformity on actual land-use de-
cision making has been limited by the distribution of institutional responsibilities and the politics of
land use regulation.
Conformity and Air Quality Planning. During the start-up phase of CAAA/ISTEA im-
plementation, conformity did not have a large influence on the first rounds of SIP planning, primarily
because of competing statutory demands and the timing of the 1993 regulations.
As areas have moved through subsequent rounds of air quality and transportation planning,
however, conformity has had more impact. In the face of conformity problems, some areas have ad-
justed or amended mobile source budgets. Other areas have proactively reassessed emission budgets
to anticipate and deal with looming conformity problems. For example, to deal with PM10 conformity
problems in 1994, the Denver region established out-year budgets that increased over time, while it
mitigated emissions in the downtown area to keep them within allowable limits. In 1995, Salt Lake
City added ten years to its ozone maintenance plan, matching the time frame of its transportation plan,
to ease problems of passing the NOx budget test for ozone. Portland proactively established out-year
emission budgets in its 1996 ozone maintenance plan to make future conformity determinations less
difficult.

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Executive Summary: Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning
xv ii
Just as air planners have become more significant and involved stakeholders in transportation
planning, transportation planners have become more active stakeholders in air planning. In most
ozone nonattainment areas, they have been much more involved with the 9% and attainment year
budgets than they were with the 15% VOC reduction SIPs, although in several areas (e.g., Atlanta,
Philadelphia, and New York City) they did not get deeply involved in negotiations until after prelim-
inary budgets had been set and transportation agencies had to react through comments. Overall, this
involvement represents a maj or change in the practice of transportation and air quality planning. Even
where bureaucratic relations have not been smooth, the previously separate planning and regulatory
processes have become far more tightly linked than ever before.
Conformity has spurred this process in two main ways: (1) by stimulating greater scrutiny of
and refinements in the current data and forecasting techniques for transportation demand, and (2) by
forcing planners and policy makers to identify, confront, and more directly assess the options they
have for reducing mobile source and other emissions.
The complexity of the modeling process and the inter-relationships between conformity and
SIP modeling, however, have sometimes made it difficult to get to the heart of these issues. All of
the areas that have had serious problems passing the budget tests (Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver,
Houston, and Salt Lake City) initially responded by attempting to alter the modeling underlying
mobile source emission budgets or to enlarge the mobile source share of the aggregate budget to
accommodate high VMT growth rates.
Although the conformity rule does not require areas to put TCMs in the SIP, some environ-
mentalists believed that the protection given SIP TCMs would encourage areas to do so. During the
initial round of SIP planning, however, conformity proved to be a disincentive for inclusion of TCMs
in SIPs because delay of a SIP TCM could cause a conformity lapse, jeopardizing the flow of federal
funding for all transportation projects. Portland is the only study area that placed TCMs in the SIP
specifically to ensure their implementation even if political opposition arose.
Some areas considered the ramifications of conformity when choosing SIP measures other
than TCMs. With the notable exception of Phoenix, however, few adopted mobile source control
measures that were not mandated by the C AAA. Three study areas (Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix)
requested NOx waivers, at least in part to avoid problems with the conformity NOx build/no-build
tests. Denver adopted air quality measures outside of the SIP to pass PM10 conformity, while avoid-
ing the hurdles of an amendment to add measures to the SIP. In Maryland, although conformity did
not influence the initial form of the state inspection and maintenance (I/M) program, the governor
vetoed a bill adopted by the legislature in 1997 that, by making I/M voluntary, would have resulted
in EPA disapproval of the Baltimore SIP and imposition of a conformity freeze.
Chapter 6: Toward a New Planning "Arena"
Planning Improvements. The interviews conducted for this study reveal a broad profes-
sional consensus that conformity-related improvements in planning methods are genuine and valuable
not only for air quality regulation but also for other planning purposes. Conformity requires trans-
portation planners to use advanced analytic tools and the latest available planning assumptions to

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Executive Summary: Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning
xv in
forecast transportation demand and mobile source emissions. Coupled with the infusion of ISTEA
funds to hire technical staff and collect more recent, often more detailed, data about demographic
trends, land use, and travel behavior, conformity has thus led to significant improvements in planning
capabilities in all of the study sites, though in varying degrees. Improvements in transportation plan-
ning have served not only to focus transportation planners on the goals and requirements of the Clean
Air Act but also have had a direct effect on air quality planning.
Divergent Perspectives on Regulation. It is important to distinguish, however, be-
tween acceptance of air quality analysis for planning purposes as opposed to regulatory purposes.
Conformity shapes key policy decisions, allotments of large sums of federal aid, and legal authority
to proceed with projects. As a result, many transportation and air planners continue to have
significant differences about how the conformity analysis is conducted and what impacts it has on the
quality of decision making.
Some transportation planners resent the absolute priority that air quality goals have over all
other goals in transportation planning. Many question the validity of using the model outputs for
making conformity determinations, arguing that conformity conveys a false image of precision. These
feelings are sometimes intensified because of inconsistencies between the planning assumptions
incorporated in SIPs and those in the conformity analysis. These inconsistencies do not always make
it more difficult to demonstrate conformity. If they do, though, transportation planners often express
frustration that the complexities and slowness of the state regulatory and federal approval processes
make it quite time consuming - and often impractical within the time frame of regular transportation
planning cycles - to update SIP planning assumptions.
By contrast, many air planners and environmental advocates contend that the modeling results
provide a sufficiently good approximation of current reality and future development patterns to
warrant their use for conformity, especially given their view that it is critically important to achieve
Clean Air Act goals. Others argue that emission models underestimate mobile source pollution, so
that transportation projects get the benefit of the doubt. Some suspect that MPOs shade the
transportation demand analysis to produce favorable results.
Another divergence in the perspectives of transportation and air planners results because con-
formity permits the modeling to take "credit" for improvements in vehicle emission control systems
or beneficial changes in fuel composition only when these are mandated by federal regulations and/or
adopted in legally enforceable regulations by the state. Many transportation planners and advocates
regard this as an artificial feature of the planning system. They contend that it is poor policy to be
forced to forgo transportation proj ects which would otherwise be permissible simply because the time
frame of decision making on national technology policies is independent of - and therefore imper-
fectly synchronized with - the timing of their conformity decisions. By contrast, many air agencies
and environmental advocates assert that until such controls are legally mandated, it is inappropriate
for conformity to recognize still-speculative emission reductions. Once transportation projects are
approved, they argue, it is difficult or impossible to halt them or scale back if emission reductions
from technology measures do not materialize.
Confronting Conformity Difficulties. In the framework of the CAAA of 1990, con-
formity is an analytic "trip-wire" to alert policy makers to inconsistencies between two sets of policies
- air quality planning (codified in state implementation plans) and transportation planning (codified

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Executive Summary: Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning
xix
in transportation plans and programs). In the 15 study sites, this reconsideration tends to occur in
distinct phases. First, planners carefully re-examine the modeling on which the conformity analysis
is based to confirm that a problem exists and to discover its magnitude. When conformity difficulties
are significant, they must then deal with the institutional and political dynamics of changing either the
transportation plan/program or the applicable SIP so that conformity can be demonstrated.
Through the process of reconsidering planning assumptions and modeling techniques, the
transportation agencies seek to reduce the possibility that conformity penalties might result from
"technical" difficulties in the modeling rather than "real" future problems revealed by conformity fore-
casting of emissions. Environmental agencies, in turn, seek to discover whether the analysis has been
conducted appropriately and whether genuine conformity problems exist. As a result of such scrutiny
on both sides, errors have been discovered, improved estimates of key parameters have been secured,
and refinements of modeling methods have been introduced.
Within the community of core conformity stakeholders - transportation and air agencies and
active stakeholder groups - the character of the consultation process appears to have important con-
sequences for the credibility and longer term effects of the analytic process. In areas with less intense
interagency consultation practices, reassessment of modeling methods is likely to be performed pri-
marily by MPO staff, sometimes with little visibility to other agencies and stakeholders. But MPO
autonomy comes at a cost: reduced confidence by outsiders in the results. By contrast, when the an-
alytic issues of conformity have been the focus of careful "upfront" discussion and debate among
interested agencies and stakeholders, transportation planners are more likely to regard any remaining
problems in demonstrating conformity as "real" rather than modeling artifacts; and air planners and
advocacy groups are less likely to harbor suspicions that conformity has been demonstrated by tech-
nical manipulation. As successive cycles of conformity analysis are undertaken, effective interagency
consultation creates greater mutual confidence in the analytic process.
The professionals, however, are not conformity's only "audience." Conformity was also
clearly intended to get policy officials, elected executives, legislators, and a broad array of stakeholder
groups to confront the policy dimensions and tradeoffs of transportation and air quality. Data from
the 15 study sites, however, suggests that it can sometimes be problematic to move discussion of
conformity problems beyond the relatively small circle of transportation and air quality professionals
and the few stakeholder representatives who deal with it on a regular basis. In some of the study
areas, this has led to considerable delay in confronting the roots of their conformity problems.
Responding to Conformity Problems. In the event of conflict between transportation
plans and air quality commitments, the conformity regulations permit an MPO or state, in principle,
to resolve the inconsistency by making changes to transportation plans/programs, SIPs, or both. As
a practical matter, however, it has often proven more difficult to make such changes than some of the
architects of conformity anticipated.
To disaggregate the final package of projects that appear in a regional transportation plan or
program is politically arduous and time consuming. Many environmental advocates and air planners
have been frustrated that the transportation planning/programming process has proven less pliable
than they hoped or expected. This problem is exacerbated by the weak link between transportation

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Executive Summary: Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning
xx
planning and land use regulation that exists in virtually all of the study sites, except Portland.
Seeking changes on the air quality side - i.e., in the state implementation plan - encounters
other kinds of difficulties. Depending on the state, this may take many months, sometimes more than
a year. To go through the SIP revision process is almost always to delay the normal schedule for
developing and initiating new plans/programs. Seeking changes in a SIP is also burdensome for air
planners. They often have competing priorities for time and resources, including meeting new SIP
development responsibilities. Not unlike the political process that produces transportation plans,
emission budgets usually represent consensus policies established after long periods of negotiation
among stakeholders from different emission-source sectors. Reopening budget allocation decisions
can ignite politically potent inter-sectoral disputes. Air planners are therefore often reluctant to man-
age SIP revisions.
While changing plans is difficult on both sides, it is ultimately transportation plans that are
placed at risk by conformity difficulties. This was clearly intended by the legislative architects of the
conformity provision of the CAAA of 1990. But it is also true that the officials with direct re-
sponsibilities for the program at risk - in MPOs and state DOTs - have direct influence over only
some of the potential ways of resolving inconsistencies between transportation and air quality plans.
To the extent, therefore, that conformity is meant to allow even-handed consideration of the means
of resolving inconsistencies between transportation and air quality plans, the difficulties in changing
SIPs and the disparities in the timing of the two planning processes is problematic.
Conformity as an Evolving Process. This study is a snapshot of conformity during a
particular period; but like any regulatory process, conformity is evolving and responding to new
situations. In addition to the issues noted, conformity must adapt to the new National Ambient Air
Quality Standards for ozone and particulate matter, which will make new areas subject to regulation.
New tools for analyzing transportation demand and the effects of transportation policies on pollution
are in development. The impact of conformity over the long run on transportation planning/program-
ming may be greater than it has been to date - as new plans and projects take account of conformity
in their formative stages, not just as they are being finalized.

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Chapter 1: The Conformity Assessment Project
Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the
Transportation Conformity Regulations
in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
A Report to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Department of Transportation
Publication Number
EPA420-R-99-011

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Chapter 1
The Conformity Assessment Project
The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 re-
quire far-reaching efforts to assure that trans-
portation investments in nonattainment and
maintenance areas are consistent with state
commitments to meet national air pollution
standards. The statutory mandate was imple-
mented through major federal regulations
issued in November 1993 by the U.S. En-
vironmental Protection Agency, with the
concurrence of the U.S. Department of Trans-
portation. Known within the transportation
and air quality professional communities as the
"transportation conformity" (or "conformity")
rule,1 these regulatory procedures have raised
the hopes of many for improvements in
transportation decision making, while also mo-
tivating considerable criticism from some
affected agencies and concerned stakeholders.
Project Purposes
The research reported here, jointly initiated
by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the Federal Highway Administration, was
planned as Phase 1 of a comprehensive
Conformity Assessment Project. By carefully
examining experience in 15 areas, the research
will document and develop a better un-
derstanding of how the transportation con-
formity regulations have been implemented and
'All references to "conformity" in this report relate
to the "transportation conformity" regulations, which
apply only to highway and transit projects. The CAAA
of 1990 also require "general conformity" procedures
for other federal projects/actions.
with what early effects on transportation
planning and air quality regulation at the metro-
politan and state levels.
The overall study was undertaken to inform
and stimulate further thinking about conformity
in the transportation and air quality practitioner
communities. It was also intended to provide
information to elected officials, stakeholder
groups, and interested citizens about an
important effort to coordinate and make
consistent the effects of federal transportation
and air pollution policies, which in the past
have operated quite independently. More
specifically, the research reported here was
designed to discover:
the ways in which conformity works ef-
fectively and achieves its intended ends,
the ways in which conformity has been
problematic - and why - and how areas
have dealt with these problems,
conformity challenges for the future.
Phase 1, reported on here, covers the period
from 1991 through January of 1998, which in-
cludes experience under the Interim Conformity
guidelines issued by EPA and DOT in 1991 and
under the November 1993 conformity regula-
tions. Phase 2 will revisit the issues of Phase 1
after several more years of experience, focusing
particularly on whether and how the 1997 con-
formity amendments, as well as further imple-
mentation of other aspects of the 1990 CAAA,
have affected how conformity works at the met-

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Chapter 1: The Conformity Assessment Project
2
ropolitan and state levels.
Although no study of conformity can ignore
the technical issues of transportation and air
quality modeling that are central to the practice
of conformity, this research was intended to
deal primarily with institutional impacts, effects
on planning process, and substantive planning
outcomes. We have inquired how the conform-
ity modeling requirements have affected insti-
tutional development in the study sites and how
the modeling process and results have shaped
the conformity decision-making. It should be
carefully noted, however, that the study was
not designed to provide a careful examination,
let alone an evaluation, of modeling practices in
each study site, nor to assess more generally
the technical dimensions of the conformity
process. Conclusions about the technical di-
mensions of transportation and air quality mod-
eling are beyond the scope of this research.
Focal Questions
Three overarching questions have organ-
ized this research:
(1) How has conformity affected key
agencies and constituencies' organizational
capacity and relationships? Conformity tests
organizational capacity in at least two ways.
First, it makes technical and analytic demands
on involved agencies and stakeholder groups.
The core public agencies responsible for the
analysis need not only computer modeling
proficiency to forecast regional transportation
patterns and associated pollution but also the -
capacity to evaluate the forecasts and help
policy makers understand their implications.
Other agencies and stakeholders that do not
themselves perform modeling tasks nonetheless
require sufficient technical sophistication to
assess the process and evaluate policy options
and impacts. Second, through the interagency
consultation process, conformity requires the
development of institutional relationships that
did not previously exist in most locales.
Conformity seeks to coordinate transportation
and air quality - formerly nearly independent
policy systems - and foster collaboration
among agencies and constituency groups that
historically have had very different
perspectives. In some jurisdictions, indeed,
these stakeholders viewed each other with deep
suspicion or had clashed on policy matters.
This cooperation was supposed to occur in the
larger context of the ISTEA-mandated
transportation planning process, which involves
many planning factors other than air quality
conformity.
Recognizing these demands, the research
looked closely at institutional issues. How well
have agencies and stakeholders coped with and
adapted to the technical and coordination
requirements of conformity? Did they have
sufficient resources to manage its demands, or
did they have to upgrade their organizational
capacity and build new relationships? What
positive practices have developed? What
problems have arisen - and why?
(2) How has conformity changed the
transportation planning/programming pro-
cess and its results? Conformity places new
demands on the transportation planning and
programming process, in conjunction with el-
ements of ISTEA that mandate broader par-

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Chapter 1: The Conformity Assessment Project
3
ticipation in planning and fiscal constraint of
plans. Planners and decision makers in nonat-
tainment areas must give air quality a far more
prominent place in their considerations. In the
face of potential financial penalties and
restrictions on their ability to proceed with new
transportation projects, they must assure that
their policies and investment choices - assessed
over a 20-year time horizon - are consistent
with commitments made by their state to re-
duce pollution levels.
The research therefore asked how trans-
portation planners and policy makers have ad-
apted their previous practices to fulfill the ob-
ligations of the conformity regulations. It ex-
plored the organization of the transportation plan-
ning process, patterns of participation and in-
teragency coordination, specific roles played by
different types of agencies and stakeholders, and
whether and how the outcomes of the
planning/programming process were materially
changed by conformity requirements. The re-
search looked both for notable conformity-related
innovations in the conduct of transportation
planning and for problems and dilemmas created
for planners and policy officials by the 1993
conformity regulations.
(3) How has conformity changed air
quality planning and regulation? The con-
formity regulations seek to assure that deci-
sions made in transportation policy are con-
sistent with the requirements of the Clean Air
Act Amendments of 1990 and with the specific
planning and regulatory actions that each state
is taking to reduce pollution to the levels man-
dated by the CAAA. In making this connec-
tion, however, the regulations anticipate that
issues that arise in transportation planning will
in turn affect the choices that state officials
make in pursuing air quality goals.
The study therefore inquired how transpor-
tation conformity has affected air quality plan-
ning and regulation. Specifically, it inquired
whether and how conformity has affected civic
debate about transportation goals and their
interaction with air quality goals, whether
conformity has affected the emission budgets
developed in State Implementation Plans under
the CAAA of 1990, and whether conformity
has affected the inclusion of transportation
control measures (TCMs) and other mobile
source controls in SIPs.
Selection of the Research Sites
To ground the study in the realities of actu-
al practice and to gather data, the researchers,
in consultation with staff in the Environmental
Protection Agency and the Federal Highway
Administration, selected 15 nonattainment
areas for careful study. (See Figure 1-1.) Ten
of the selected areas - marked by an asterisk
below - had been studied by one of the
researchers in a previous project (1992-1994)
conducted on behalf of EPA and FHWA. The
earlier research had more generally investigated
implementation of the transportation provisions
of the CAAA of 1990 and the air quality provi-
sions of ISTEA.2 Five additional areas were
2For results of that study, see Arnold M. Howitt,
Joshua P. Anderson, and Alan Altshuler, The New Pol-
itics of Transportation and Clean Air (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of
Government, Taubman Center for State and Local Gov-
ernment, November 1984; also published by the U.S.
Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Ad-
ministration, FHWA-PD-97-010, DOT-VNTSC-
FHWA-97-5, February 1997); and Joshua P. Anderson

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Figure 1-1
Nonattainment Areas in the Study
Portland, OR
San Francisco, CA
Milwaukee
Chicago, IL
Denver, CO
— Boston, MA
New York, NY
Northern NJ
Philadelphia, PA
Baltimore, MD
Charlotte, NC
Atlanta, GA
Phoenix, AZ
Houston, TX

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Chapter 1: The Conformity Assessment Project
5
selected for the current study specifically be-
cause they were perceived by the federal
agencies or the researchers to have had "inter-
esting" conformity experiences that warranted
examination. The 15 nonattainment areas
selected for this research are:
Atlanta, Georgia,*
Baltimore, Maryland,*
Boston, Massachusetts,*
Charlotte, North Carolina,*
Chicago, Illinois,*
Denver, Colorado,
Houston, Texas,*
Milwaukee, Wisconsin,*
•	New York, New York
•	Northern New Jersey
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,*
•	Phoenix, Arizona,*
Portland, Oregon,
Salt Lake City, Utah*
San Francisco, California
Table 1-1 provides information about popula-
tion growth and auto usage in these 15 study
sites.
The selected areas were not meant to con-
stitute - nor are they - a random sample of
nonattainment areas subject to the 1993 con-
formity rule. Instead, they were selected to
and Arnold M. Howitt, "Clean Air Act: SIPs, Sanc-
tions, and Conformity," Transportation Quarterly
(Summer 1995).
concentrate on large metropolitan areas with
more severe air pollution problems (with a pri-
mary, but not exclusive, emphasis on ozone).
As shown in Table 1-2,13 of the selected areas
were classified at least "moderate" for ozone,
and 10 of these were in nonattainment status
for at least one other pollutant. In addition,
Denver (transitional for ozone) was a
"moderate 2" area for carbon monoxide and
"moderate" for particulate matter, while Port-
land (marginal for ozone) was also a "moderate
1" area for carbon monoxide. (Some of these
areas have subsequently been reclassified, as is
also indicated in Table 1-2.) Beyond these
criteria, the researchers sought to assure
diversity by including:
nonattainment areas in all regions of the
country;
areas growing rapidly in population and
geographic spread, as well as those that
were growing much more slowly in
those respects;
areas with mature highway systems and
substantial transit usage, as well as
those significantly adding to their high-
way networks and currently having
more limited transit systems.
In making these selections, the researchers
and sponsors believed that this sample of 15 re-
search sites provided a significant number of in-
dividual cases that varied in several respects
potentially relevant to conformity. They felt
that an intensive examination of the conformity
process in these jurisdictions would shed im-
portant light on how the new regulations were
being implemented in major areas, identify situ-
ations in which effective implementation
strategies were being employed, and reveal

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Table 1-1
GROWTH RATES OF POPULATION AND VEHICLE MILES TRAVELED, BY STUDY SITE
NONATTAIN-MENT
AREA
POPULATION
VMT
1980
1990
1995
Percent
Annual
Growth ('80
'90)
Percent
Annual
Growth
('90-'95)
Percent
Annual
Growth
('80-'95)
1990
1995* or 1996"
Percent
Annual
Growth ('90
'95 or
'90-'96)
VMT Per
Capita ('95
or'96)d
Atlanta
1.989.341
2.653.159
3.038.050
2.9%
2.7%
2.9%
81.472.984
105.218.456
**
4.4%
34.6
Baltimore
2.173.989
2.348.219
2.432.993
0.8%
0.7%
0.8%
49.900.000
55.900.000
*
2.3%
23.0
Boston
4.945.835
5.204.103
5.274.317
0.5%
0.3%
0.4%
59.816.200
64.412.700
**
1.2%
12.2
Charlotte
566.838
686.574
760.939
1.9%
2.1%
2.0%
14.515.000
18.442.000
*
4.9%
24.2
Chicago
7.171.420
7.332.926
7.641.329
0.2%
0.8%
0.4%
127.402.856
140.834.243
*
2.0%
18.4
Denver
1.618.461
1.848.319
2.085.158
1.3%
2.4%
1.7%
39.100.000
50.900.000
**
4.5%
24.4
Houston
3.118.480
3.731.029
4.164.393
1.8%
2.2%
2.0%
90.400.000
105.800.000
*
3.2%
25.4
Milwaukee
1.693.289
1.735.364
1.780.769
0.2%
0.5%
0.3%
33.072.000
35.900.000
*
1.7%
20.2
No. New Jersey
4.961.510
5.108.929
5.243.598
0.3%
0.5%
0.4%
125.153.923
129.352.902s
**
0.6%b
24.7
New York
11.063.184
11.379.764
11.462.260
0.3%
0.1%
0.2%
133.577.052
132.284.161
*
-0.2°bc
11.5
Philadelphia
3.682.450
3.728.991
3.731.703
0.1%
iMi".,
0.1%
64.565.000
70.195.000
**
1.4%
18.8
Phoenix
1.600.093
2.238.498
2.563.582
3.4%
2.7%
3.2%
49.600.000
57.000.000
*
2.8%
22.2
Portland
1.050.418
1.174.291
1.300.729
1.1%
2.1%
1.4%
20.413.000
22.437.000
*
1.9%
17.2
Salt Lake City
765.606
913.897
1.023.765
1.8%
2.3%
2.0%
20.130.479
25.864.357
**
4.3%
25.3
San Francisco
5.179.759
6.020.147
6.302.933
1.5%
0.9%
1.3%
113.389.000
123.666.900
*
1.8%
19.6
a1999 VMT.
b 1990-1999.
c NYMTC does not regard negative VMT growth in this period as indicative of future trends.
d 1996 per capita rates are calculated using 1995 population.

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Table 1-2
Nonattainment Classifications for Study Sites by Pollutant
\ONA I I AINMI N I ARI A
1990 Ozoni:
1990 Carbon Monoxidi
1990 PM-IO
Atlanta
Serious


Baltimore
Severe 1
Moderate 2
Redesignated to Attainment 1995

Boston
Serious
Moderate 2
Redesignated to Attainment 1996

Charlotte
Moderate
Redesignated to Attainment 1995
Not Classified
Redesignated to Attainment 1995

Chicago
Severe 2

Moderate
Denver
Transitional
Moderate 2
Reclassified to Serious 1997
Moderate
Houston
Severe 2


Milwaukee
Severe 2


Northern New Jersey
Severe 2
Moderate 2

New York
Severe 2
Moderate 2
Moderate
Philadelphia
Severe 1
Moderate 1
Redesignated to Attainment 1996

Phoenix
Moderate
Reclassified to Serious 1997
Moderate 1
Reclassified to Serious 1996
Moderate
Reclassified to Serious 1996
Portland
Marginal
Redesignated to Attainment 1997
Moderate 1
Redesignated to Attainment 1997

Salt Lake City
Moderate
Redesignated to Attainment 1997
Not Classified
Moderate
San Francisco
Moderate
Redesignated to Attainment 1995; Proposed
Reclassification to Nonattainment 1997
Moderate 1
Redesignated to Attainment 1998

7

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Chapter 1: The Conformity Assessment Project
problems that had emerged from this
experience. It is worth noting, however, that
the sample does not include rural nonattainment
areas, small metropolitan areas, or areas with
minimal pollution problems. So the research
findings should be interpreted cautiously if
interest focuses particularly on such areas.
Research Methods and Data
Data for this study was collected primarily
during the period from fall 1996 through spring
1998, with some additional work conducted
until February 1999. In the course of the
project, the researchers gathered and assessed
several types of information about the 15 study
sites:
Background data was compiled on all
study areas, including official docu-
ments prepared in the course of their air
quality and transportation planning,
local newspaper reporting (primarily
identified through NEXIS searches),
articles in national newsletters,3 Federal
Register notices and regulations
pertaining to each area, selected doc-
uments from EPA and FHWA files, and
other materials provided by interview
subjects.
In ten of the nonattainment areas, the
researchers consulted records of their
interviews (primarily with staff mem-
bers of MPOs, air agencies, and state
DOTs) conducted for the earlier Har-
vard study during the period from the
3These included, particularly, Clean Air Report,
Mobile Source Report, Links, and Transportation and
Clean Air Report.
fall of 1993 through early 1996.4
In each of the 15 study sites, new per-
sonal interviews were conducted with
between 11 and 23 individuals know-
ledgeable about conformity. In all
areas, interview subjects included rep-
resentatives from the MPO, state air
agency, state DOT, EPA and FHWA
field offices, and environmental advo-
cacy groups. In some areas, interviews
were also conducted with state legis-
lative staff, regional or local air agency
officials, representatives of other
stakeholder groups (primarily business
associations), and other knowledgeable
observers. In all, the researchers spoke
with more than 230 people involved
with conformity in the 15 study sites.5
Interviews were conducted using semi-
structured, elite interview techniques. In other
words, the researchers did not conduct a survey
with a fixed set of questions asked of each
subject and then tabulate the results. Instead,
the interviews began with a set of basic
questions that were adapted - often extensively
- for each subject to take account of the locale,
information had been collected in person in Bos-
ton, Chicago, Houston, and Salt Lake City and by tel-
ephone in the remaining six sites.
5During the conformity study, the researchers vis-
ited seven research sites - Boston, Denver, New York,
Northern New Jersey, Portland, San Francisco, and Salt
Lake City. Telephone interviews supplemented in-
person interviews in these sites. In the remaining re-
search areas, all interviews were conducted by tele-
phone. The typical interview was one hour in length,
with the range approximately a half hour to about three
hours. A large majority of the interviews were conduct-
ed with individual respondents, but some interviews
involved two or more respondents at the same time.

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Chapter 1: The Conformity Assessment Project
9
the institutional and professional perspectives
to which that respondent could speak, and the
specific experiences that each respondent had
had with conformity. As a particular interview
unfolded, the researchers frequently asked
questions and explored issues that during their
preparations they had not anticipated covering
with that subject.
Most information was provided by respon-
dents on the record, but occasionally specific
comments were provided on a not-for-attribu-
tion or background basis. All of the respond-
ents agreed to allow us to cite their names as
sources for the study. Most respondents were
familiar with only one research site, but a few
(generally federal agency officials or repre-
sentatives of national environmental advocacy
organizations) were knowledgeable about more
than one.
Since no interview was exactly the same as
any other, this research method precludes tab-
ulation and quantitative analysis of responses to
particular interview questions. On the other
hand, the researchers were provided with rich,
detailed descriptions of the conformity process
in each research site, described from a variety
of perspectives. Our respondents provided
specific accounts of events and institutional
relationships in their own locales and shared
their insights and evaluative judgments about
how conformity is working.
Once this information was compiled, the re-
searchers conducted an intensive within-site
and cross-site analysis, seeking to understand
the conformity process and the relationships it
has created. The findings, generalizations, and
conclusions reported here are based on the 15
nonattainment areas in which research was con-
ducted, but the research was sufficiently
broadly based to generate plausible hypotheses
about what might have been discovered in a
more inclusive examination of conformity im-
plementation in major metropolitan areas.
The Research in Perspective
The value of this research thus lies in its de-
scription and interpretation of the working ex-
perience of 15 major nonattainment areas with
this important regulatory mandate. The data
available is rich enough to provide a nuanced
perspective on institutional relationships in spe-
cific areas and to judge whether the experience
of individual areas reflects common experiences
or special circumstances. The time period
investigated is long enough that difficulties
associated with the conformity "start-up" can
be placed in the perspective of a few more
years of experience during which agency
working relationships have been established and
new analytic procedures have become more
familiar. Some early problems have been
surmounted, some have not, while other issues
have emerged that deserve future study and
analysis.
Although this research does not attempt to
evaluate the technical dimension of conformity
modeling, it seeks to place the technical
process in the larger context of the institutional
relationships involved, which more technically-
oriented research rarely does in any detail.
Any full assessment of conformity, howev-
er, is bound to be provisional at this time. By

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Chapter 1: The Conformity Assessment Project
10
its nature, conformity's influence must be
judged in a more extended time frame, as trans-
portation and air planning processes continue
to adapt, expectations and practices evolve, and
investment and policy decisions are made and
implemented. Since early 1998, events in
several of the study sites - including Atlanta,
Charlotte, and northern New Jersey - have
occurred that deserve careful analysis. That is
why a second phase of the Conformity Assess-
ment Project has been planned by EPA and
FHWA from the outset.
Nonetheless, the regulatory process does
not stand still awaiting formal policy evalu-
ations. Amendments to the regulations and
changes in state and regional practice have been
made - and may be made again - in light of
experience. Even provisional information,
systematically collected and assessed, can be
extremely valuable. In presenting the findings
of this report, the researchers have sought to
provide sufficient information about the re-
search sites to allow readers of this report to
assess the interpretations and conclusions for
themselves. It is therefore hoped that both the
data and the findings will prove useful in on-
going policy discussions about conformity at
the metropolitan, state, and national levels.
Outline of the Report
Chapter 2 examines the purposes and
requirements of the transportation con-
formity regulations. Following a short
history of efforts prior to the CAAA of
1990 to coordinate transportation
investments and air quality regulation,
it analyzes the purposes of the
conformity regulations as derived both
from the statute and regulations and
from a broader set of stakeholder ex-
pectations. It also describes what the
1993 regulations require of transpor-
tation planners and other stakeholders.
Chapter 3 provides an overview of how
the conformity regulations have been
applied in the 15 study sites and what
difficulties were experienced by each
area in applying the several conformity
tests.
• Chapter 4 examines how conformity
has connected transportation and air
quality planning, concentrating on insti-
tutional and process issues. It focuses
initially on the institutional context in
which the 1993 regulations were
implemented. Then it explores the
roles played by different types of par-
ticipants - MPOs, state air agencies,
state transportation agencies, the
federal agencies, and environmental and
business stakeholders - as conformity
has become an integral part of
transportation planning. Finally, it as-
sesses the extent to which conformity
has led to the attentiveness and involve-
ment of elected officials and the general
public in transportation and air quality
issues.
Chapter 5 explores the impacts of con-
formity on the substance of both trans-
portation and air quality plans in the
study sites. It asks whether the practice
of conformity has modified decisions
about highway projects, transit, other
TCMs, and land use policies. It also

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Chapter 1: The Conformity Assessment Project
11
examines whether, in turn, conformity has led
to changes in air quality planning.
Chapter 6 reviews the maj or findings of
the report, assessing the extent to
which conformity has created a new
"planning arena" that genuinely links
transportation and air planning.
Following the body of the report, an
appendix provides capsule histories of
the conformity experiences of each of
the 15 study sites.
Another appendix identifies the inter-
view respondents whose accounts and
observations form the key source of
project data in each study site.
Additional appendices provide a glos-
sary, identify the sources of population
and transportation data for the study
sites, and provide information about the
authors.

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Chapter 2: The Purposes and Requirements
of Transportation Conformity
Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the
Transportation Conformity Regulations
in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
A Report to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Department of Transportation
Publication Number
EPA420-R-99-011

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Chapter 2
The Purposes and Requirements of
Transportation Conformity
What is conformity intended to accom-
plish? By what regulatory mechanisms does it
seek these objectives? This chapter sets the
conformity process derived from the CAAA of
1990 in context by briefly examining the de-
velopment of federal environmental controls
on transportation planning and investment. It
then examines the purposes of conformity and
the broader climate of expectations that the
regulations have engendered among
stakeholders. Finally, the chapter examines in
depth the specific requirements of conformity
as laid out in the statute, the 1993 regulations,
and subsequent amendments to those
regulations.
Policy Antecedents
Environmental advocacy groups were the
leading proponents of the conformity provision
of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.
Their efforts to see such a requirement included
in the law stemmed to a great degree from their
dissatisfaction with the effects of a series of
previous federal regulatory initiatives. These
initiatives, beginning in 1969, sought to assess
the environmental effects of specific road-build-
ing proposals prior to allowing construction and,
more generally, to promote transportation pol-
icies contributing to achievement of the nation's
environmental goals. From the perspective of
environmental advocates, these policies fell short
of these objectives, leading the legislative ar-
chitects of the CAAA of 1990 to craft stronger
requirements.
The National Environmental Policy Act
(NEPA) of 1969 created a regulatory tool -
environmental impact analysis - to ensure that
the potential environmental consequences of
development projects, including road-building
proposals, would be considered in decision
making. From the environmental perspective,
however, NEPA had two significant
drawbacks. First, although it establishes
procedural requirements for environmental
analysis, the law did not provide substantive
guidelines for determining which projects
should proceed. Therefore, it did not prevent
decision makers from moving ahead with
projects that have adverse environmental im-
pacts, as long as these were considered in the
environmental analysis. Second, NEPA's
project-by-project focus did not sufficiently
address cumulative air quality effects - for
example, how transportation projects would
affect regional emissions of pollutants.
Environmentalists therefore sought a more
systemic regulatory approach through suc-
cessive iterations of the Clean Air Act. Early
efforts to create strong links between air
quality regulation and transportation planning,
however, encountered many institutional
problems and resistance. Until the CAAA of
1990, neither federal law nor the practices of
metropolitan transportation planning provided
clean air advocates and regulators with much
leverage on highway or transit investments.
An initial, unsuccessful effort to connect

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
13
transportation investment policies to air quality
regulation came in conjunction with the CAAA
of 1970. In Section 109(j) of the Federal-Aid
Highway Act of 1970, Congress required the
Secretary of Transportation, in consultation
with the Administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency, to issue regulations for the
purpose of assuring that federally assisted
highway projects would be "consistent" with
the air quality plan for each pollution control
area. The draft regulations became mired in
disagreement between the federal agencies,
however, and were not finally issued until
1975. They were extremely vague, moreover,
on the crucial question of how consistency
should be determined; and, to the
disappointment of environmental advocates,
they gave state transportation officials rather
than environmental regulators the respon-
sibility of making consistency determinations.
In most areas, EPA regional offices - pol-
itically beset, understaffed, and preoccupied
with other responsibilities, including the need
to develop the extremely controversial
Transportation Control Plans of the early
1970s - made little effort to activate Section
109(j). Where they did, the effect was
minimal. EPA's particularly aggressive New
England regional office, for example, was re-
buffed by state transportation officials when it
tried to claim a veto over Boston area
transportation projects.1 There as elsewhere,
agency officials had very little training or
1 See Mark Garrett and Martin Wachs, Transporta-
tion Planning on Trial: The Clean Air Act and Travel
Forecasting (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications,
1996) and Arnold M. Howitt, Managing Federalism:
Studies in Intergovernmental Relations (Washington,
D.C.: CQ Press, 1983).
experience in the field of transportation. Nor
were they tied into institutional and personal
networks of transportation officials. This
severely limited the agency's capacity for
information gathering, constructive discussion,
formulation of policy alternatives, persuasion,
and tactical flexibility in seeking its goals.
The 1977 CAAA contained stronger lang-
uage. It prohibited metropolitan planning or-
ganizations (MPOs) from adopting a "project,
program, or plan" that did not "conform" to
the provisions of an approved State
Implementation Plan, and it authorized the
U.S. Secretary of Transportation to withhold
federal highway aid upon a finding of non-
conformity. FHWA was assigned responsi-
bility to monitor compliance with the conform-
ity requirement, in consultation with EPA.
After extended negotiations, FHWA and EPA
operationalized the conformity requirement in
a 1978 Memo of Understanding which spelled
out in general terms how consultation between
transportation and air planners should occur
and how the two planning processes should
relate. As a practical matter, however, the
conformity procedure specifically required
only that states assure the timely
implementation of transportation control
measures they elected - at their own initiative
- to include in their SIPs; and federal
enforcement was weak. Consequently, the
conformity requirement of the 1977 CAAA
was a negligible factor in transportation invest-
ment decision making. The Secretary of
Transportation never penalized a state finan-
cially for violating the conformity requirement,
though environmental advocates occasionally
used conformity as a litigation "hook," most
successfully to challenge transportation

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
14
planning methods in the San Francisco Bay
area.2
Purposes and Expectations
The CAAA of 1990, reinforced by the
Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency
Act (ISTEA) of 1991, required much tighter
integration of regional air quality and trans-
portation planning than its predecessor, most
notably in its invigorated transportation con-
formity provisions. Ultimately, pollution re-
duction to meet national air quality standards
and achieve the resulting public health benefits,
were the primary goals of these provisions.
But the statute - and the regulations pro-
mulgated by EPA to implement them - implied
a broader set of purposes than this ultimate
goal; and various stakeholder groups layered
on additional expectations about how
conformity would work and what it should
accomplish. These extended purposes and
expectations included:
•	establishment of a procedural frame-
work and incentives for analyzing
transportation-related pollution,
•	improvements in both transportation
and air planning processes and estab-
lishment of tighter connections be-
tween them,
•	improvements in public deliberation
about and decisions on transportation
and air quality issues, and
•	advancement of certain additional ele-
ments of the environmental advocacy
agenda.
2See Garrett and Wachs (1996).
Therefore, before examining the detailed
conformity requirements, it is worthwhile to
discuss these goals and expectations further.
Each suggests a different lens through which
to view and evaluate the conformity process,
as it has actually been implemented in the 15
study sites. This report will examine conform-
ity impacts in light of this set of purposes and
expectations.
Pollution Reduction and Public
Health
First and foremost, the conformity process
is intended to ensure that a nonattainment (or
maintenance) area will keep transportation-
related emissions within the bounds needed to
bring the state into compliance with (or
maintain) the national ambient air quality
standards - and thus to advance the public
health goals of the Clean Air Act. Conformity
requires forecasting regional and (for certain
pollutants) localized emissions from
transportation. These projections, in turn, are
used to determine whether expected future
pollution levels jeopardize the timely achieve-
ment of the federal standards. If so,
conformity provides leverage to prevent the
use of federal funds for these investments.
A Procedural Framework and In-
centives
Conformity is also intended to create a
procedural framework and organizational in-
centives so that the public agencies respec-
tively responsible for transportation and air
quality policies will carefully analyze trans-

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
15
portation-related pollution. When problems
are perceived, conformity is supposed to
motivate these agencies to take steps to reduce
pollution, as needed, to achieve the federal
standards within the deadlines of the Clean Air
Act.
Procedurally, conformity relies on a per-
formance measurement system, consultation
requirements, and stiff penalties for failing to
satisfy conformity conditions. MPOs conduct
computer simulations of transportation
demand, forecast the resultant emissions of
controlled pollutants, and then compare the
projected pollution to the permissible levels in
the state implementation plan. The conformity
regulations also require interagency col-
laboration both to frame these analyses and
seek solutions to any problems revealed. It is
expected that compliance will be motivated by
the desire either to achieve pollution-reduction
goals or to avoid interruptions in adopting or
implementing transportation plans and pro-
grams. Participating agencies therefore will be
inclined to develop transportation plans and
programs that can pass the conformity tests or
find ways to modify transportation or air
quality plans to do so.
The procedural framework and incentives
are expected to operate on federal agencies no
less than their counterparts at the state and
regional levels. US DOT and EPA field staff
oversee and evaluate the technical analyses, in
consultation with each other and their coun-
terparts, to assure that federal funds are not
released to finance transportation programs
that undermine state efforts to comply with
Clean Air Act requirements.
Improving the Planning Process
A key purpose of conformity is to upgrade
the quality of both air and transportation plan-
ning and to forge strong links between these
previously autonomous planning systems. On
one side, conformity compels transportation
agencies to make air quality a key planning
factor - a criterion that is an integral part of
policy assessment and that constrains emergent
decisions about transportation investments. It
also seeks to give air agencies a far stronger
voice in the transportation planning process.
On the other side, by giving transportation
agencies a serious stake in air planning,
conformity seeks to motivate their close in-
volvement in developing state plans to reduce
pollution.
Better integration of transportation and air
quality planning over successive planning cy-
cles, it was hoped, would improve the results
of each process. As new air quality plans were
developed, for example, policy makers would
be motivated to re-examine mobile source
emission budgets in light of the area's
conformity experience to make sure that inter-
sectoral priorities for pollution reduction were
appropriate.
Part of the thrust of conformity is to en-
hance the analytic tools applied to trans-
portation and air planning. To improve data
and technical methods, the conformity regula-
tions set standards for transportation demand
and emission modeling, require compilation of
current data, and specify how system perform-
ance must be measured. As important as these
technical processes are in the conformity
process, however, the mandated interagency

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
16
consultation process lies at the heart of
aspirations to improve the planning system.
Effective interagency consultation is re-
garded as a way to assure that more and better
quality information is brought to bear on trans-
portation and air planning and to perfect the
modeling and analytic capabilities of the MPO
and other agencies. It also encourages mutual
understanding of stakeholder values and
viewpoints, promotes debate about policy
alternatives, and forces the agencies to con-
front policy tradeoffs. In short, improving the
planning process means more coordination,
better deliberation, and a sharper focus on the
major dimensions of choice.
Public Deliberation and Decision
Making
Some stakeholders hoped that by improv-
ing planning processes, conformity would con-
tribute to solving a major problem that arose
under previous versions of the Clean Air Act
- the failure to engage high level officials and
the general public in serious discussion about
the causal connections between transportation
and air pollution and the policies that could
reduce transportation emissions. Although not
stated directly in the statute or regulations,
some observers regarded this outcome as a
logical consequence of the conformity process.
By gathering information, engaging agencies in
dialogue about transportation and air quality
issues, and forcing them to confront conflicts
between transportation plans and pollution
reduction commitments, conformity would
raise the public profile of these issues.
Citizens would learn more about the issues,
and elected and senior policy officials would
be compelled to address them.
Advancing the Environmental
Advocacy Agenda
Beyond the pollution reduction goals of
the Clean Air Act, many environmental advo-
cates had firm expectations that conformity
would help promote specific elements of their
transportation policy agenda - purposes not
necessarily shared by other conformity
stakeholders. The environmentalists had long
sought a regulatory lever to influence trans-
portation planning and investment policies,
particularly to discourage the financing of
increased highway capacity and boost mass
transit availability and convenience. Many
environmentalists argue that highway capacity
expansion, by improving access and reducing
travel times to outlying regions of the metro-
politan area, are a major cause of urban sprawl
and the increasing spatial separation of jobs,
residences, and shopping. In turn, they
believe, low density development increases the
number and length of auto trips, decreases
auto occupancy rates, and diminishes the
practicality of pedestrian and transit trip
making. Similarly, they argue that road-
building to alleviate congestion in densely de-
veloped corridors induces additional travel,
since there is invariably a great deal of latent
travel demand in such areas, suppressed mainly
by the existing congestion. In part, this is a
case for controlling air pollution. Additional
auto travel, they believe, generally means more
pollution (though congestion relief may
temporarily reduce emissions per vehicle mile).
But concerns about highway capacity also

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
17
connect to a broader environmental policy
agenda than air quality - preserving open
space and agricultural lands, maintaining
pedestrian- and transit-friendly patterns of set-
tlement, and conserving energy.
Consequently, many environmentalists ex-
pected that conformity, by seeking to control
air pollution, would also support a trans-
portation agenda with more sweeping pur-
poses. These included sharp limits on new
road capacity, increased investments in transit
service, incentives for individuals to reduce
their reliance on single-occupancy vehicles,
and land use regulation policies to promote de-
velopment patterns that required less travel.
Conformity Requirements
How is this complex set of purposes - and
the broader expectations they engender - em-
bodied in the specific requirements of the
CAAA of 1990 and the transportation con-
formity regulations? As noted, the core of the
conformity process are procedures intended to
ensure that a state does not undertake federally
funded or approved transportation projects,
programs, or plans that are inconsistent with
the state's obligation to meet and maintain the
NAAQS. This is accomplished by first using
transportation demand models and mobile
source emission models to make a 20-year
forecast of emissions from the transportation
system, taking account of changing dem-
ographics, land uses, economic development,
federally mandated improvements in auto
emission systems, new transportation in-
frastructure and services. The predicted levels
of emissions in several milestone years are then
compared with the maximum emissions
permissible under applicable SIPs. Thus, a
conforming transportation project, program,
or plan is one that:
•	does not cause or contribute to any
new air quality violation,
•	does not increase the frequency or sev-
erity of any existing air quality vio-
lation, and
•	does not delay timely attainment of air
quality standards or interim emission
reduction milestones.3
In the statute, Congress outlined a general
set of requirements for determining conform-
ity. MPOs must show that expected emissions
from the transportation system are within the
mobile source emission budgets in applicable
state implementation plans (SIPs).
Transportation programs must also provide for
timely implementation of any transportation
control measure a state has included in ap-
proved SIPs. Projects must come from a con-
forming plan/program and must not have
changed significantly in design concept or
scope. In making conformity determinations,
MPOs must use emissions projections based
on the most recent population, employment,
travel and congestion estimates.
To flesh out the specific procedures and
analytic techniques to be used within this
framework, Congress required EPA to prom-
ulgate federal regulations one year from the
statute's enactment (i.e., by November 1991).
3Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, Public Law
No. 101-549,104 Stat. 2399 (1990), codified as amen-
ded at 42 U.S.C.A. §§ 7401 et seq. (West, 1995). The
Transportation Conformity provision is found in § 176
(§ 7506) of the statute.

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
18
At a minimum, these regulations were to
address consultation procedures by which state
and regional agencies would confer in making
conformity determinations, the frequency of
conformity determinations, and the procedures
for determining conformity in nonattainment
and maintenance areas. One year later (i.e., by
November 1992), states were required to
adopt SIPs that would codify their conformity
procedures. Until approval of these state con-
formity SIPs, MPOs in ozone and CO non-
attainment areas were required to show that
transportation plans and programs would con-
tribute to annual reductions of mobile source
emissions.
The 1991 Interim Conformity
Guidance
In June 1991, US DOT and EPA jointly
issued interim conformity guidance that estab-
lished temporary procedures until the federal
conformity regulations were promulgated.
The interim guidance was intended to fill a
short void but continued in place for more than
two years while the federal agencies
negotiated and solicited stakeholder comments
on the content of the regulations, not finally
promulgated until November 1993.
The interim guidance specified procedures
and analytic techniques nonattainment and
maintenance areas should follow to meet the
CAAA requirements. Among these was the
establishment of quantitative emission tests to
show that transportation plans/pro-
grams/projects were not increasing the fre-
quency or severity of existing air quality viola-
tions and were contributing to annual VOC
and CO emission reductions. These emissions
reduction tests included two separate analyses:
•	a "build/no-build" test in which areas
had to show that emissions would be
less if all projects in the plan/program
were implemented (the "action" scen-
ario) than if they were not imple-
mented (the "baseline" scenario);4 and
•	a "less-than-1990" test in which areas
had to show that emissions in the ac-
tion scenario would be lower than
1990 emission levels.5
Because PM10 modeling techniques were not
yet well developed, PM10 conformity deter-
minations under the interim guidance could be
accomplished using qualitative assessment meth-
ods proposed by the MPO and jointly approved
by US DOT and EPA. The interim guidance
also included a list of specific project types that
the federal agencies agreed would be "exempt."
Consequently, they could move toward imple-
4Projects included in the baseline scenario includ-
ed all in-place regionally significant highway and tran-
sit facilities, services and activities and all on-going
transportation demand management (TDM) and trans-
portation system management (TSM) activities. The
action scenario included all projects in the baseline
scenario plus all new regionally significant projects,
including transportation control measures (TCMs) and
non-federal regionally significant projects that would
be implemented by the analysis year.
5The interim guidance required emissions tests for
CO in CO areas and VOCs (but not NOx) in ozone
areas. The less-than-1990 test was not explicitly
spelled out in the interim guidance, but was clarified as
being an implicit requirement of the interim guidance
in a U.S. DOT memo entitled "Further Guidance on
Conformity Determinations" from the Director, Office
of Environment and Planning to the Regional FHWA
Administrators and the Federal Lands Highway
Program Administrator (dated July 27, 1992).

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
19
mentation even if they came from a non-
conforming transportation plan/program.
The 1993 Conformity Rule
The CAAA required that EPA, with DOT
concurrence, promulgate the federal conform-
ity regulations before the end of 1991. But
development of the rule proved much more
time consuming than the framers of the statute
had anticipated. Following issuance of the
conformity guidance in June 1991, EPA and
DOT negotiated for more than a year on how
to operationalize the full statutory
requirements. The Notice of Proposed Rule-
making (NPRM),6 published on January 11,
1993, just as the Bush Administration was
leaving office, generated sharp criticism from
both the transportation and environmental
stakeholders. Senior career officials in both
agencies, eventually joined by policy officials
from the new Clinton team, managed extensive
consultations with stakeholder representatives,
as well as further interagency negotiations, to
develop the final version of the rule, which
was not published until November 24, 1993.7
The 1993 conformity regulations estab-
lished performance measures and procedural
requirements, specified penalties designed to
motivate compliance, and indicated the cir-
cumstances under which the penalties would
be applied.8 It also laid out an implementation
schedule, with varying conformity require-
ments in each phase:
•	The Interim Phase II began 30 days
after publication of the rule (December
27, 1993) and ended with an area's
submission of a control strategy SIP
for a particular pollutant (i.e., a SIP
with an emission budget, such as the
15% VOC reduction SIP or an at-
tainment demonstration).
•	The Transitional Period b egan with an
area's submission of a control strategy
SIP and ended when EPA took final
action on the SIP (e.g., an approval,
disapproval, or finding of incom-
pleteness).
•	The Control Strategy Period began for
an area when EPA approved its con-
trol strategy SIP and ended when the
area could demonstrate that its emis-
sions had been reduced to meet federal
air quality standards. (This occurred
when EPA approved the area's
redesignation request, including both a
demonstration that the area had
^Environmental Protection Agency, Criteria and
Procedures for Determining Conformity to State or
Federal Implementation Plans of Transportation
Plans, Programs, and Projects Funded or Approved
Under Title 23 U.S.C. or Federal Transit Act, 40 CFR
Part 51 (58 FR 3768), January 11, 1993.
Environmental Protection Agency, Air Quality:
Transportation Plans, Programs, and Projects; Fed-
eral or State Implementation Plan Conformity; Rule,
40 CFR Parts 51 and 93 (58 FR 62188), 24 November
1993.
8As described below, the 1993 conformity rule has
since been amended three times to simplify some of its
provisions and to increase implementation flexibility.
See Environmental Protection Agency, Transportation
Conformity Rule Amendments: Transition to the
Control Strategy Period, 40 CFR 51 and 93 (60 FR
40098), 7 April, 1995; Transportation Conformity
Rule Amendments: Miscellaneous Revisions, 40 CFR
51 and 93 (60 FR 57179), 14 November, 1995; and
Transportation Conformity Rule Amendments: Flexi-
bility and Streamlining, 40 CFR 51 and 93 (62 FR
43780), 15 August, 1997.

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
20
attained the NAAQS and a mainten-
ance plan that set forth strategies to
sustain compliance for ten years).
•	The Maintenance Period began with
approval of the maintenance plan and
continued for 20 years. (The main-
tenance plan covered a ten-year peri-
od, at the end of which another ten-
year maintenance plan would be writ-
ten to outline strategies to preserve the
standard to the end of the 20-year
maintenance period.)
Performance Standards
To ensure that transportation plans, pro-
grams, and projects conformed to SIP commit-
ments to meet the national air quality stan-
dards, the 1993 conformity rule maintained the
emission reduction tests found in the interim
guidance and added other analytic re-
quirements:
•	PM10 areas, previously required only to
perform a qualitative analysis, were
now required to complete a quan-
titative analysis of PM10 and its pre-
cursors (VOCs and/or NOx if they
contributed significantly to PM10 prob-
lems), using either the build/no-build
test or the less-than-1990 test.
•	Ozone areas, which had been required
to perform the emission reduction tests
(the build/no-build and less-than-1990
tests) only for VOCs under the interim
guidance, were now also required to
perform both emission reduction tests
for NOx (as a precursor of ozone).
• A new emission test, the "budget test,"
which makes a direct comparison
between the SIP mobile source bud-
gets and the emissions modeled from
the transportation network (for all
pollutants and/or their precursors) was
also added by the 1993 conformity
rule.
According to the regulations, for any par-
ticular pollutant for which an area was not in
attainment of the NAAQS, emission reduction
tests were required until the end of the Trans-
itional Period. The budget test did not begin
until the onset of the Transitional Period, when
a SIP with a mobile source budget was
submitted.9 Thus, during the Transitional
Period, both the emission reduction tests and
the budget test were required. Not until the
beginning of the Control Strategy Period were
the emission reduction tests dropped, allowing
the use of only the budget test. (As will be
discussed below, this testing protocol was
simplified through amendments to the con-
formity rule in 1997.)
In any conformity determination, all re-
quired emission tests were to be applied to
several analysis years. The first analysis year
was the first milestone year in the applicable
SIP - 1995 in CO areas and 1996 in ozone
areas.10 The second analysis year was either
9The Transitional Period could start at different
times for different pollutants, depending on the due
dates for control strategy SIP submissions for each pol-
lutant. Areas in violation of the NAAQS for more
than one pollutant could therefore simultaneously be in
different conformity periods for different pollutants.
10SIP milestone years are ones in which specific
emissions levels are to be achieved. Thus, in ozone ar-

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
21
the attainment year or, if the attainment year
was the same as the first analysis year or ear-
lier, five years after the first analysis year. The
last analysis year was the final horizon year of
the 20-year transportation plan.11 In between,
additional analysis years had to be selected so
that no two analysis years were more than ten
years apart. Thus, to perform the conformity
analysis, a nonattainment area would complete
all required emission tests for each analysis
year. Nonattainment areas that were out of
compliance for more than one pollutant had to
complete these tests for each pollutant and/or
its precursors.
Procedural Requirements
In addition to the performance standards,
the 1993 conformity rule established a com-
prehensive set of procedural requirements.
These were intended not only to standardize
the analytic techniques used for conformity de-
terminations, but also to enhance commun-
ication and coordination among the agencies
involved with conformity and to ensure imple-
mentation of transportation plans/programs
that have air quality benefits. In major nonat-
tainment areas, the rule required the use of
eas, the first milestone year was 1996, when 15% re-
ductions in VOCs were required (unless an attainment
demonstration was submitted first). Subsequent mile-
stones occur every three years thereafter as rate-of-
progress reductions were required.
"Horizon years are those for which the transporta-
tion plan describes the envisioned transportation sys-
tem and documents and quantifies the demographic
and employment factors that influence expected trans-
portation demand. The first horizon year is generally
ten years after the base year and the final horizon year
is the last year in the transportation plan.
computer simulation models to analyze the
transportation system. Specifically, by January
1, 1995, CO areas and ozone areas classified
serious and above had to use network-based
transportation demand models with certain
specific attributes. As part of the modeling
protocol, the conformity rule required the use
of the most recent planning assumptions
available - e.g., current estimates of popula-
tion, employment, travel, congestion, transit
service, and TCM implementation. In addi-
tion, the rule called for use of the most recent
version of the motor vehicle emission model
and specified the frequency with which
conformity determinations must be made.
The 1993 rule required interagency consul-
tation on conformity determinations, but,
within broad guidelines, allowed each state to
craft customized procedures to reflect its own
institutional arrangements for transportation
and air quality planning. These were to in-
clude a delineation of the roles and procedures
to be undertaken by MPOs, the state DOT,
state and local air quality agencies, US DOT,
and EPA before making conformity deter-
minations and developing SIPs. In addition,
the consultation procedures were supposed to
establish guidelines for various conformity
processes, such as selecting transportation
models, deciding whether projects were
exempt or regionally significant, and determin-
ing whether TCMs were being funded and
implemented.
Three other conformity provisions - re-
garding TCM implementation, fiscal con-
straint, and exempt proj ects - sought to ensure
implementation of transportation projects that
benefit air quality. The first was a requirement
that TCMs included in a SIP be implemented

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
22
in timely fashion. If a TCM was not being
implemented on time, the MPO had to
determine what obstacles existed, identify the
steps being taken to alleviate the problem, and
ensure that priority was being given to funding
the TCM. Conformity was also made
contingent on fulfilling a provision of ISTEA
requiring transportation plans and programs to
be fiscally constrained - i.e., they could
include only projects that reasonably expected
funding. Historically, transportation plans and
programs listed many more proj ects than could
be afforded. Although TCMs were included,
they were frequently not implemented because
the responsible agencies chose to spend
available funds on other projects. In addition,
the 1993 conformity rule repeated the categor-
ization of exempt proj ects (which originated in
the interim guidance).12 This provision allowed
certain transit and air quality beneficial
projects - such as ride-sharing and bike and
pedestrian facilities - to move forward even if
the area could not pass the conformity tests.
12The 1993 conformity rule established four cate-
gories of exempt projects, which include: (1) Safety
projects, such as railroad/highway crossing, hazard
elimination programs, shoulder improvements, guard-
rails, median barriers, crash cushions and skid treat-
ments; (2) Mass Transit projects, such as operating as-
sistance to transit agencies, purchase of support vehic-
les, rehabilitation of transit vehicles, construction or
renovation of signal systems and purchase of new
buses and rail cars; (3) Air Quality projects, such as
ride-sharing and van-pooling promotion activities at
current levels and bicycle and pedestrian facilities; and
(4) Other, such as noise attenuation, advance land ac-
quisitions and acquisition of scenic easements.
Penalties and Penalty Triggers
What made the conformity regulations
compelling to transportation agencies - and
potentially threatening - was that failure to ful-
fill these conformity requirements by specified
deadlines would prevent programmed trans-
portation projects that were not "grand-
fathered" (see below) from advancing through
the design and construction process and,
ultimately, lead to withholding of federal
transportation funds.
Penalties under the 1993 conformity rule
take the form of a conformity "freeze"13 or a
conformity "lapse."
•	During afreeze, no new transportation
plans or programs can be approved,
and no projects can be added to
existing plans/programs. However,
during a freeze, projects from the first
three years of previously conformed
plans/programs can still be advanced -
i.e., reviewed under NEPA or funded
for detailed design or construction.
•	During a lapse, no new project-level
conformity determinations can be
made. Because the ISTEA metropoli-
tan planning rules require that only
projects from a conforming plan/pro-
gram can be funded, a conformity
lapse halts the flow of federal money
to any new projects. However, pro-
jects can continue to be funded if they
13The term "freeze" did not actually appear in the
regulations until the 1997 amendments (see below).
However, it was widely used to denote the the 1993
rule provisions with which it is associated here.

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
23
are exempt or if they are "grand-
fathered" (i.e., come from a conform-
ing plan and program, have been found
to conform at the project level, have
completed the NEPA process as it
applies to transportation, and have not
changed significantly in design and
scope). Grandfathered projects are
allowed to continue during a lapse
because they have already gone
through the air quality analysis and
been shown not to increase regional
emissions.
The conditions under which conformity
could freeze or lapse depended on specific
"triggers" associated with transportation and
SIP planning deadlines or inability to pass the
conformity tests. The conformity triggers
connected to transportation planning deadlines
were fairly simple and straightforward.
Conformity lapsed if the transportation plan or
program was not updated and conformity re-
determined at least every three years. Also,
any plan revision required a TIP update and
conformity re-determination within six months,
unless the plan merely added or deleted
exempt projects.
Conformity triggers associated with SIP
planning were more varied, relating both to
adoption of new SIPs and to EPA disapproval
of previously submitted SIPs. Conformity of
existing transportation plans had to be initially
determined within 18 months of the
publication of the 1993 conformity rule.
Subsequently, conformity had to be deter-
mined within 18 months of approval of any
new SIP that established or revised a mobile
source emission budget, or added, deleted, or
changed a TCM. During the transitional
period, a conformity determination on plans
and programs had to be made within one year
of a control strategy SIP due date.
In addition, the 1993 rule included a num-
ber of triggers tied to SIP "failures":
•	If a SIP was not submitted, or was
found incomplete, conformity was first
frozen 120 days after the SIP due date
and lapsed 12 months after the SIP due
date.
•	If a SIP was disapproved, conformity
lapsed 120 days after the disapproval,
unless the disapproval contained a
"protective finding." EPA ccould give
a protective finding either to an incom-
plete or disapproved SIP. A protec-
tive finding was granted if EPA de-
termined that the SIP submission
would have been approvable or com-
plete if all committed measures had
been submitted in enforceable form
(i.e., with legally binding implementing
regulations). Under a protective find-
ing, the area would be allowed an
additional 12 months after the finding
to complete the SIP before conformity
would lapse.
In all cases of SIP failure, a conformity
freeze or lapse was based solely on the status
of the SIP, which might or might not have any-
thing directly to do with mobile sources.
Moreover, the penalty was imposed irrespec-
tive of the area's ability to meet other pro-
cedural or analytic requirements of the con-
formity rule. EPA developed the SIP failure
triggers because it believed that, in the pro-
longed absence of an acceptable control strat-
egy SIP, the CAAA required nonattainment
areas to refrain from advancing transportation

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
24
projects that could increase emissions.14
Amendments to the 1993 Con-
formity Rule
The first year of implementation of the
1993 conformity procedures concluded with a
dramatic change in national political power.
By early 1995, an aggressive new Republican
Congressional majority, swept into office by
the national elections of November 1994, was
looking critically at all federal regulatory
policies. At the same time, many state officials
vocally criticized the 1993 regulations. They
perceived cumbersome procedural
requirements, models too crude to be used for
critical regulatory purposes, and the looming
possibility of widespread interruptions of
federal transportation funding as a result of
conformity lapses, which appeared likely to
result primarily from missed Clean Air Act
deadlines. These events placed conformity in
a national spotlight. EPA, responding to
stakeholder criticism but preserving the basic
framework of the 1993 regulations, made a
series of modifications to provide
nonattainment areas more time for compliance
and make the requirements more flexible.
Three sets of amendments were eventually
issued between February 1995 and August
1997.
The August 1995 Amendments
The most immediate implementation issue
'"Environmental Protection Agency, Air Quality:
Transportation Plans, Programs, and Projects; Fed-
eral or State Implementation Plan Conformity; Rule,
58 Federal Register 62192 (24 November 1993).
in late 1994 was pressure on states to com-
plete SIP requirements before conformity
lapsed as a result of a SIP failure. The CAAA
of 1990 had established two types of man-
datory sanctions of which the cutoff of state
transportation funds was seen as the more
severe. EPA was obligated to impose this
highway sanction two years after the failure of
states to comply with certain provisions of the
law, including SIP failures. But the 1993 con-
formity regulations, in effect, imposed the
transportation funding sanction under an accel-
erated time schedule. For example, many
areas whose 15% VOC reduction SIPs had
been designated "incomplete with a protective
finding," pending formal adoption of state
regulations, were facing conformity lapses at
the end of 1994, even though they would not
have been subject to highway sanctions for
another year. In November 1994, moreover,
states were required to submit ozone
attainment demonstrations for moderate or
above ozone nonattainment areas and 3% rate-
of-progress (ROP) plans for serious and above
ozone areas. If these submissions were not
completed on time, areas would face a con-
formity lapse after only 120 days. But many
were having difficulty putting in place the air
quality dispersion modeling capacity required
for these SIPs, and EPA had not resolved data
and regulatory uncertainties about interstate
ozone transport.
State transportation and environmental
policy official s, convened through the National
Governors Association to seek consensus on
how these issues should be addressed, argued
that imposing conformity-triggered "highway
sanctions" more quickly than could be done
under the mandatory sanctions provision of the

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
25
Clean Air Act was inconsistent with
Congressional intent, especially when EPA
was in part responsible for delays in fulfilling
the Act's requirements.
EPA acted quickly to grant temporary re-
lief to the substantial number of areas facing
imminent conformity lapses. In February
1995, the agency amended the 1993 rule to in-
crease the time period before conformity
lapsed for certain types of SIP failures, effec-
tively aligning the timing of these lapses with
the mandatory CAAA highway funding sanc-
tions.15 Under these amendments, areas with
certain types of SIP failures were no longer
subject to the conformity lapse and were al-
lowed two years after the finding to correct
the SIP before conformity lapsed. The affect-
ed SIP failures were:
•	incomplete 15% SIP with a protective
finding,
•	incomplete ozone attainment demon-
stration or 3% ROP SIP,
•	failure to submit an ozone attainment
demonstration or 3% ROP SIP,
•	disapproval with a protective finding
for any control strategy SIP for any
pollutant.
The amendments, however, retained a con-
formity freeze and did not align the lapse dates
with the CAAA sanctions dates for certain
other types of SIP failures, specifically:
•	a failure to submit a 15% SIP or an in-
complete 15% SIP without a protec-
tive finding;
"The February interim final rule, effective immed-
iately, became final in August 1995.
•	a failure to submit or an incomplete at-
tainment demonstration for CO, PM10
or N02; or
•	a disapproval of any control strategy
SIP without a protective finding.
Because the amendments dealt only with SIP
failures, areas that had a complete or approved
control strategy SIP were still required to
fulfill the conformity requirements within one
year of the SIP deadline.
National Highway System
Designation Act of 1995
Although the 1993 conformity regulations
had specified that conformity applied only to
nonattainment and maintenance areas, environ-
mental groups had challenged this interpreta-
tion of the CAAA of 1990. They successfully
argued in litigation that conformity should also
be required in attainment areas so that they
could anticipate transportation emission probl-
ems that might subsequently produce viola-
tions of the national ambient air quality stan-
dards. Congress pre-empted that legal victory
in November 1995, however, with a provision
in the National Highway System Designation
Act stating that conformity was required only
in nonattainment and maintenance areas.
The November 1995 Amend-
ments
Shortly after the interim final rule for the first
amendments took effect, areas with ozone
attainment demonstration problems gained fur-
ther relief. In March, 1995, EPA Administrator

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
26
Mary Nichols announced a new approach to
development of ozone attainment demonstra-
tions. It phased and delayed the attainment dem-
onstration submission dates, allowing areas more
time to study ozone transport issues and come to
a regional consensus on how to deal with them.
It also postponed the threat of conformity lapses
due to attainment demonstration failures.
Although many areas avoided lapses
through the first conformity amendments and
the attainment demonstration delays, stakehol-
der criticisms of the conformity rule continued.
In late March, the National Governors
Association brought state transportation and
environmental officials together with EPA and
US DOT managers to outline a variety of
conformity issues they wanted addressed. The
state representatives pushed EPA to align the
lapse dates for SIP failures that were not
covered by the first amendments with CAAA
highway sanction dates. State officials also
advocated making the regulations less
cumbersome and more flexible. They sharply
questioned the value of the build/no-build test
once a SIP budget had been submitted.
Another concern was the inability of areas to
adopt non-federally funded projects during a
conformity lapse. States also wished to have
a mechanism in the conformity rule that would
allow non-exempt projects to be added to
plans/programs without a full-scale regional
analysis. Of concern to some states was the
burden placed on rural nonattainment areas by
a lack of comprehensive transportation
planning and modeling capacity, which made it
difficult to link specific transportation projects
to regional emissions impacts. States also
sought greater flexibility in making TCM
substitutions in SIPs and pointed out the need
for an easier way in which to change SIP
budgets to reflect updated models and/or
assumptions. These issues were discussed in
greater detail in April at a national
stakeholders meeting, including the federal
agencies, state DOTs, MPOs, air agencies, and
environmental advocacy groups.
In responding to these concerns, EPA dealt
again with the most pressing issues and held
the more difficult and less time sensitive for
later deliberation. The second package of
amendments to the 1993 conformity rule (pro-
posed in August 1995 and published as a final
rule in November 1995) included the following
provisions:
•	Conformity lapses were aligned with
CAAA highway sanctions for some of
the SIP failures not covered by the first
amendments:
•	failure to submit or an incom-
plete 15% SIP without a pro-
tective finding and
•	failure to submit or an incom-
plete CO, PM10, orN02 attain-
ment demonstration.
•	The grace period during which areas
were required to make a conformity
determination after the submission of a
control strategy SIP was extended
from 12 to 18 months.
•	SIP TCMs were allowed to proceed
during a conformity lapse.

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Chapter 2: Purposes and Requirements of Transportation Conformity
27
The August 1997 Amendments
Further changes took two more years of
consultation and negotiation. The third amend-
ments to the 1993 conformity rule, initially
proposed in July 1996 and published in final
form in August 1997, dealt with several issues
that had been previously raised by stake-
holders. The most important provisions
simplified the emission test requirements:
•	Areas were allowed to drop the emis-
sion reduction tests (build/no-build and
less-than-1990) and use the budget test
within 45 days of a SIP budget
submission}6 (Previously both the
emission reduction tests and the bud-
get test were required until the budget
was approved by EPA.) This sig-
nificantly simplified the testing pro-
tocol and eliminated several conform-
ity phases that had previously gov-
erned the application of emission tests.
•	Rural nonattainment or maintenance
areas were given the option of choos-
ing the budget test, the emissions re-
duction tests (build/no-build and/or
less-than-1990 test) or dispersion
modeling to demonstrate conformity in
the years not addressed by the SIP.
The 1997 amendments also made a number
of changes to give areas greater flexibility in
applying the conformity requirements:
In areas with a disapproved SIP with-
out a protective finding, the transpor-
tation plan or TIP would be frozen (in-
stead of lapsing) 120 days after the
disapproval.
During a conformity lapse, non-federal
projects could be implemented if they
were included in the first three years of
the most recent plan/program
conformity determination.
Traffic signalization projects did not
have to come from a conforming
plan/TIP in order to advance, but the
emissions associated with these pro-
jects had to be included in the next re-
gional analysis.17
The transportation network modeling
requirements were streamlined.
However, the 1997 amendments to the con-
formity rule did not address the issue of flexi-
bility for transportation control measures,
which had concerned a number of states, be-
cause EPA believed that TCM substitutions
were already possible under existing policies
for SIPs.
1<5If a previously approved budget existed, thatbud-
get continued to apply for the years it covered.
17This provision reflected a Clean Air Act Amend-
ment enacted by Congress in September 1996.

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Chapter 3: Implementing the
Transportation Conformity Requirements
Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the
Transportation Conformity Regulations
in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
A Report to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Department of Transportation
Publication Number
EPA420-R-99-011

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Chapter 3
Implementing the Transportation
Conformity Requirements
The 1993 transportation conformity regul-
ations established a set of technical and pro-
cedural requirements, described in Chapter 2,
that had to be satisfied in order to demonstrate
conformity. Each of the 15 study sites
experienced at least some difficulty with these
requirements, which the remainder of this
chapter describes. This analysis emphasizes
the problems encountered as conformity was
implemented.1 Chapters 4 and 5 explore more
broadly the impacts that the conformity pro-
cess had on transportation and air quality plan-
ning.
The problems encountered implementing
conformity in the study sites, summarized in
Table 3-1 by study site, are grouped in six
categories:
Emission tests: passing the emission
budget and build/no-build tests,
Modeling procedures: fulfilling the
transportation modeling requirements,
TCM implementation: demonstrating
timely implementation of those
transportation control measures com-
mitted to in control strategy SIPs and
maintenance plans,
Fiscal constraint: showing that the
1 As noted in Chapter 1, although a full assessment
of the technical dimension of conformity modeling was
beyond the scope of the research, the project sought to
examine the technical issues in the larger context of
the institutional relationships involved.
transportation plan and program meet
the ISTEA fiscal constraint require-
ment,
SIP failure: triggering conformity
problems because of problems with
SIP submissions, and
• Human error: experiencing conform-
ity problems because of procedural
confusion and/or data analysis mis-
takes.
As will be discussed, the nature and conse-
quences of these problems for the transpor-
tation planning process and air quality regul-
ation varied significantly. In applying the spe-
cific emission tests of the 1993 regulations,
five study areas encountered significant
difficulties with the budget tests, which con-
tinue to pose serious problems for Atlanta,
Charlotte, and Houston. The build/no-build
test was problematic for even more areas, but
the difficulties were less severe - and, because
this requirement was substantially altered by
the 1997 conformity amendments, the problem
has become moot in most areas. No study
area reported difficulty with the less-than-1990
test.
The other conformity requirements were
generally less problematic than the emission
tests. While a number of study sites had some
difficulties gearing up for the network mod-
eling requirements of the 1993 regulations,
only New York City and Chicago faced
serious conformity delays as a result.

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Table 3-1
Types of Conformity Problems by Nonattainment Area
Nonattainment
Area
Emission
Budget Test
Emission Build/
No-Build Test
Modeling
Requirements
Timely TCM
Implementation
Fiscal
Constraint
SIP
Failures
Human
Error
Atlanta
X




X**

Baltimore

X*



X

Boston

X


X

X
Charlotte
X





X
Chicago

X
X




Denver
X



X


Houston
X
X


X
X**

Milwaukee

X*





New Jersey

X*





New York

X*
X




Philadelphia

X*





Phoenix

X
X




Portland






X
Salt Lake
X




X

San Francisco



X



* Although these areas have reported very close calls passing the build/no-build test, particularly for NOx, they have not necessarily had to make any
adjustments and have not experienced conformity delays as a result.
** These are technical SIP failures that had no discernable impact on local planning.
29

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Chapter 3: Implementing the Transportation Conformity Requirements
30
The fiscal constraint requirement posed no ser-
ious problems for any areas, although Boston
experienced a brief conformity delay because
of this test. Initially, the provisions of the
1993 rule regarding SIP failures caused
problems for a few areas; but the 1995
conformity amendments alleviated this issue.
Within the study time frame, only Salt Lake
City suffered a conformity freeze or lapse
because of SIP failure.
Table 3-2 identifies for each study site the
conformity problems encountered and their
impacts. In the following pages, the extent to
which study sites experienced difficulty with
each category of conformity problem is
examined in greater depth.
Passing the Emission Tests
The 1993 conformity rule requires areas to
demonstrate that emissions from transpor-
tation plans/programs will remain within the
allowable cap set by the SIP budget (the emis-
sion budget test) and that transportation plans
will contribute to the overall reduction of
pollution (the build/no-build and the less-
than-1990 tests).
Budget Test
Difficulty passing the budget test has pro-
ven to be the most serious type of conformity
problem, causing most of the lapses experi-
enced in the study areas. Five of the study ar-
eas have experienced difficulties with the bud-
get tests. Four of them - Atlanta, Charlotte,
Houston, Salt Lake City - had difficulty
passing the ozone budget tests; and two areas
- Denver and Salt Lake City - had trouble
with PM10 budgets. Only Houston was able to
avoid a lapse during the study period. As a
result, budget test problems have had the
largest impact on transportation and air quality
planning (as will be discussed in greater depth
in Chapters 4 and 5).
ATLANTA. Ozone budget test difficulties
have led to a conformity lapse and caused a
number of transportation projects to be scaled
back, delayed, or indefinitely postponed. Al-
though the area had little difficulty with
conformity in 1994, the MPO began imple-
menting model and data upgrades in 1995 that
predicted higher emission levels than had been
reflected in the earlier analysis. As a result,
Atlanta barely squeaked through its 1995
budget analysis.
In 1996, passing the budget test proved
even more problematic. Because the area was
experiencing higher than expected VMT
growth and was slow to implement inspection
and maintenance and reformulated gasoline
programs, its 1999 NOx budget for ozone set
an emissions cap that the area could not meet
in developing a new TIP. ARC, the Atlanta
MPO, and Georgia DOT struggled to develop
strategies that would close the large gap
between allowable and projected emissions.
Ultimately, the northern arc of the Outer Loop
was barred from moving into the TIP, the road
to the massive new Mall of Georgia was scaled
back, and only exempt and grandfathered
projects from the previously conformed 1995
TIP were allowed to move forward.
These problems continued throughout
1997 during which ARC could not develop a

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Table 3-2
Problems Meeting the Conformity Requirements by Nonattainment Area1
Area
Problem
Impact
Atlanta
1996	- Budget Test (NOx for ozone)
1997	- Budget Test (NOx for ozone)
1996	- Conformity determination could not be completed; MPO advanced only
grandfathered and exempt projects.
1997	- Conformity determination could not be completed. After EPA-DOT
dispute resolved, MPO adopted Interim TIP with only grandfathered and
exempt projects. Conformity lapsed: January 1998.
Baltimore
1995 - Non-implementation of ECO
1997 - Legislature made I/M voluntary
1995 - MPO developed Regional Commuter Assistance Program to make up for
lost emission reductions from ECO program.
1997 - Governor vetoed voluntary I/M program in part because a non-manda-
tory program would have caused EPA disapproval of the 15% SIP, with
consequences for conformity.
Boston
1994 - Data Entry Error
1994	- Fiscal Constraint
1995	- Build/no-build Test (for CO, VOC and
NOx)
1994 - Conformity determination delayed for 2-3 months until problem
discovered.
1994	- Conformity approval delayed while STIP fiscal constraint resolved.
1995	- MPO added CMAQ project to TIP for off-model analysis.
Charlotte
1994 - Budget Test (NOx and VOC for
ozone)
1996 - Budget Test (NOx and VOC for
ozone)
1994 - Conformity analysis completed by creating budget reconciliation
methodology.
1996 - Conformity determination could not be completed. MPO advanced only
grandfathered and exempt projects. Conformity lapsed: January 1997,
with no resolution by early 1998.
Chicago
1994 - Build/no-build Test (NOx for ozone)
1994	- Network model assumptions
questioned
1995	- Network model enhancements not in
place
1994 - MPO completed off-model analysis for replacement buses.
1994	- Conformity determination delayed while MPO justified its low VMT
estimates.
1995	- MPO advanced only grandfathered and exempt projects.
Milwaukee, New Jersey and Philadelphia are not included in this table because they reported only problems with the build/no-build tests that did not cause a
delay to the conformity determination.

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Area
Problem
Impact
Denver
1994 - Budget Test (PM10)
1996 - Budget Test (PM10 & NOx for PM10)
1994 - Conformity lapsed: November 1994 for approximately one year, until
September 1995. Amended PM10 budgets.
1996 - MPO negotiated local agreements for sanding and sweeping measures,
and air agency tightened I/M NOx test for future years.
Houston
1994 - Build/no-build Test (NOx for ozone)
1994 - Budget Test (VOC for ozone)
1997 - Budget Test (VOC for ozone)
1994 - Conformity delayed while waiting for a temporary NOx waiver.
1994 - MPO spread large highway projects out over several years and scaled
back the Grand Parkway.
1997 - Air agency made technical corrections to submitted VOC budget.
New York
1995	- No network based transportation
demand model
1996	- No network based transportation
demand model
1995	- MPO advanced only grandfathered and exempt projects.
1996	- MPO received extension of 1994 TIP to advance grandfathered and
exempt projects. In 1997, a new interim network model was approved,
new budgets were submitted, and conformity determined.
Phoenix
1994	- Build/no-build Test (NOx for ozone)
1995	- Network model enhancements not
complete
1994	- Conformity determination delayed several months until NOx waiver
approved; MPO advanced only grandfathered and exempt projects
1995	- Conformity determination delayed until MPO completed model
enhancements
Portland
1994 - Human Error (incorrect assumptions
used in conformity analysis)
1994 - Conformity lapsed for one year; MPO advanced only grandfathered and
exempt projects
Salt Lake
1993	- Incomplete SIP without protective
finding.
1994	- Budget Test (NOx for PM10)
1995	- Budget Test (NOx for ozone)
1993	- Conformity frozen until SIP found complete in 1994.
1994	- Conformity lapsed November 1994 to October 1995; MPO received
permission from EPA to use MOBILE 4 for conformity analysis of NOx
for PM10.
1995	- Air agency added ten years to the ozone maintenance plan.
San Francisco
1996 - Timely Implementation of TCMs
questioned
1996 - MPO made more detailed accounting of TCM problems and steps to
alleviate them.
32

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Chapter 3: Implementing the Transportation Conformity Requirements
33
new long-range plan that conformed. In
August 1997, FHWA granted a six-month TIP
extension, during which a controversy over
grandfathering projects surfaced. Not able to
develop a full conforming TIP, the MPO
drafted an interim TIP (ITIP) that contained
only TCMs written into SIPs that had received
EPA approval, as well as grandfathered and
exempt projects from the 1995 regional trans-
portation plan update. Several dozen projects
that ARC originally wanted to regard as
grandfathered were not ultimately included in
the ITIP because FHWA felt they could not
meet the applicable NEPA requirements; EPA
simultaneously reviewed the NEPA
documents. FHWA's regional office was then
prepared to approve the ITIP, but EPA's
regional office raised concerns about several of
the remaining grandfathered projects in the
ITIP.
This led to sharp policy disagreements
among the federal agencies. Even though the
1995 plan had received a conformity determin-
ation, EPA's regional office argued that the
conformity analysis had not satisfied all of the
applicable requirements of the conformity rule.
EPA therefore believed that the disputed
projects should not be grandfathered because
they would substantially increase highway cap-
acity, worsening air quality problems. Staff
from the White House Council on Environ-
mental Quality ultimately brokered a regional-
level agreement among EPA, FHWA, and
FTA that allowed five of six disputed projects
to move forward in the ITIP, with two of these
limited to planning and design. ARC removed
the sixth project from the ITIP. The EPA-
FHWA-FTA agreement also established dates
by which the Atlanta area should complete a
conforming long-range plan and an ozone
attainment demonstration.2 Conformity lapsed
in Atlanta on January 17, 1998.
CHARLOTTE. Like Atlanta, Charlotte has
also experienced recurring problems with the
ozone budget tests. Initially, these seemed
mainly to be procedural difficulties, but sub-
sequent problems led to a prolonged conform-
ity lapse and the delay of some transportation
projects. In 1993, the state air agency chose
to request redesignation to attainment for
Charlotte as a moderate ozone area that had
not had recent air quality violations; the area
prepared a maintenance plan rather than sub-
mit a 15% VOC reduction SIP. In 1994, dur-
ing its first conformity determination under the
1993 conformity rule, the area found that
future VOC and NOx emission projections
derived from the transportation plan were
higher than the emission budgets in the ozone
maintenance plan. Planners at the state air
agency believed that the higher emissions in
the transportation plan were due not to an
actual increase in pollution, but to the
difference between the methods used to cal-
culate VMT in the base year for the emission
budgets (using HPMS and other data) and
those used to develop the new transportation
plan (using the MPO's travel demand models).
To rectify this problem, the area developed a
reconciliation methodology that applied a
corrections factor to the base-year inventories
to make them comparable to the 1990
emission levels in the transportation
2In addition, the agreement recognized the need
for national-level staff of EPA, FHWA, and FTA to
develop a national memorandum of understanding or
make changes in the conformity regulations to ensure
proper use of the grandfathering provision, particularly
to see that it was not used to evade the consequences of
a conformity lapse.

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Chapter 3: Implementing the Transportation Conformity Requirements
34
plan. The air agency argued that once the
difference in the base-year VMT calculations
was reconciled, the area should conform if the
emissions growth rate in the transportation
plan stayed below the growth rate in the
maintenance plan. Although the area passed
conformity in 1994 using this methodology,
EPA subsequently required that the area de-
velop a technique that adjusted base-year
VMT to match the SIP's base year emissions
inventory rather than vice versa, as any ad-
justments applied to the budget would require
a SIP amendment. The state and MPO subse-
quently accomplished this.
Problems with conformity did not surface
again in Charlotte until 1996, when the area,
experiencing substantial increases in VMT, be-
gan to have serious trouble passing the ozone
budget tests for NOx and VOC. In 1995, the
MPO had decided that a conformity analysis
was not required since the projects in the new
TIP came from a conforming plan and had not
undergone any major changes. Later in the
year, however, the air agency discovered an
error in its emission budget calculations.
When the corrected budget was used in the
conformity analysis for a proposed 1996 TIP,
the results showed a substantial exceedance of
the emission budget. Although much effort
went into finding a solution - with the MPO,
state DOT, and state air agency staff
discussing many potential solutions - the bud-
get test disparity could not be resolved, and
the TIP could not be adopted. During 1996,
the agencies tried unsuccessfully to develop a
required transportation plan update that could
meet conformity requirements. Conformity
therefore lapsed in January 1997, and this
lapse had not yet been resolved by early 1998.
Although numerous grandfathered and exempt
projects continued to move forward during the
lapse, three new transportation projects were
held up.
HOUSTON. The budget test for ozone has
also posed difficulties for Houston. Although
at the end of the study period, the area had
been able to resolve its conformity problems
without a lapse, it was uncertain how much
longer it would be able to do so. Houston's
conformity problems began in 1994 when the
area had trouble passing the VOC budget test.
It resolved the problem by postponing some
highway projects and scaling back the massive
Grand Parkway project (although this was
done more to meet fiscal constraint re-
quirements than to pass the emission test). In
1997, Houston again had difficulties when it
ran its first conformity analysis using a 1999
VOC budget, which tightened the emission cap
from the 1996 budget level. Transportation
planners found it difficult to show that
emissions toward the end of the 20-year tran-
sportation planning horizon would stay below
1999 levels. This problem was resolved by
making technical corrections to the submitted
(but not yet approved) SIP that recalculated
the budget using VMT estimates from the
travel demand models rather than from HPMS
data.
At the end of the study period, Houston was
anticipating future problems passing the NOx
budget test for ozone. The area had been
granted a temporary NOx waiver in April 1995
that permanently expired at the end of 1997. As
planners looked ahead, they were uncertain how
the area would be able to reduce mobile source
NOx emissions sufficiently to stay within the
emission cap imposed by a NOx budget.

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Chapter 3: Implementing the Transportation Conformity Requirements
35
Salt Lake City. The budget test for
ozone also created problems for Salt Lake
City, but this area did not experience a lapse.
Like Charlotte, Salt Lake City had been rede-
signated to attainment, submitting a mainten-
ance plan rather than a 15% SIP in 1993. In
1994, the area had difficulty demonstrating
that emissions toward the end of the 20-year
transportation planning horizon would stay
below the 2005 NOx budget in the ozone
maintenance plan. To alleviate the problem,
the area added 10 years to the maintenance
plan, establishing budgets to 2015. The ex-
tended budgets, which take account of emis-
sion reductions from vehicle fleet turnover,
allow NOx emissions (as a precursor of ozone)
to rise after the end of the 10-year main-
tenance plan without causing violations of the
ozone standard. With higher budgets, the area
passed conformity in 1995 and has not en-
countered subsequent problems with the con-
formity emissions tests for ozone.
In addition to its ozone budget problems,
Salt Lake City also had difficulty passing the
NOx budget test for PM10 in 1994. The area's
PM10 SIP had been developed in the late 1980s
- long before the budget concept or the
conformity procedures had been established in
law. This proved particularly problematic for
NOx (as a precursor of PM10). Although NOx
was not a consideration when the SIP was
written, an implicit NOx budget was derived
from the SIP. Further complicating the NOx
issue was the fact that the NOx budget had
been derived using MOBILE 4, while the
conformity analysis used MOBILE 5, which
calculated much higher NOx emissions for
mobile sources. Unable to make this "apples
and oranges" comparison work for conformity,
the area lapsed in November 1994. Advancing
only grandfathered and exempt projects, the
MPO tried to convince EPA that the budget
problem was not the result of real increases in
emissions but of differences in the way
MOBILE 4 and MOBILE 5 projected NOx
emissions. EPA was eventually persuaded and
has since allowed the Salt Lake City area to
use MOBILE 4 in the conformity analysis for
NOx (as a precursor of PM10, but not of
ozone).3
DENVER. Like Salt Lake City, Denver
lapsed when it tried to test conformity using
budgets that were implicitly derived from a
PM10 SIP that pre-dated the conformity rule.
Denver's budget problems began in 1994
during the conformity analysis of the 1994
TIP. Transportation planners could not de-
monstrate that emissions in the final horizon
year of the transportation plan (2015) would
stay below the 1997 PM10 budget of 44 tpd in
the maintenance plan. The area lapsed and
advanced only grandfathered and exempt
projects while it undertook the difficult and
contentious task of amending the PM10 bud-
gets.
Working together, regional transportation
and air quality planners sought a solution that
would allow them to increase the PM10 budget
without jeopardizing the area's ability to reach
PM10 attainment. Analysis indicated that peak
regional PM10 emissions would be ap-
proximately 65 tpd in Denver's downtown
core in 2015 if the proposed transportation
plan were implemented. Further, the planners
determined that the regional PM10 emissions
3EPA permitted this practice in a limited number
of PM10 nonattainment areas because the SIP had been
submitted and approved before the 1993 conformity
regulations were finalized.

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Chapter 3: Implementing the Transportation Conformity Requirements
36
budget could be raised from 44 to 60 tpd -
without either imposing new controls on
stationary and area sources or causing
violations of the NAAQS. Therefore, they
proposed adopting mitigation measures that
would reduce 2015 emissions to the 60 tpd
level in the Denver core, while allowing the
permissible level of PM10 emissions to rise to
the 60 tpd level in the suburban areas of the
region.4 This proposal provoked months of
controversy and criticism from environmental
and public health advocates regarding the
health effects of increased particulate levels.
The proposed budget increase was approved
for only a three-year period by the state air
agency, allowing the area to conform the plan
and TIP in 1995 but posing the threat of a
recurring conformity problem. The state
legislature subsequently intervened to allow
the budget amendment to apply throughout the
period covered by the SIP.
In 1996 Denver more briefly experienced
problems passing the budget tests for both
PM10 and NOx (as a precursor of PM10), but
was able to find solutions without sparking a
major controversy or experiencing a lapse. To
do so, the area adopted street sanding and
sweeping agreements at the local level to re-
duce PM10 emissions and promised future-year
tightening of the standards in inspection and
maintenance tests to pass the NOx budget test.
4DRCOG was able to quantify its safety margin,
showing how much emissions might rise, and assigned
that budget to mobile sources. In its PM10 SIP, it used
dispersion modeling to determine where violations
would occur in the region and committed to do disper-
sion modeling in the future to demonstrate conformity.
The SIP also commits DRCOG to adopt additional
control measures if they are needed in the future to
pass conformity tests.
Build/No-Build Test
Many areas in the study experienced dif-
ficulty with the build/no-build tests - especially
for NOx. In some instances the conformity
determination was slowed or delayed, but in
no case did conformity lapse as a result of the
build/no-build test.
Two study sites - Houston and Phoenix -
realized in 1994 that they would not be able to
pass the NOx build/no-build test. Each applied
for aNOx waiver, which delayed its conformity
determination while the waiver was processed.
Phoenix received a permanent waiver, and
Houston was granted a temporary waiver
pending the results of a study to determine
whether or not the area would benefit from
NOx controls. Houston's waiver, as noted
above, expired at the end of 1997.
Several other study sites - including Balti-
more, Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, New Jer-
sey, New York, and Philadelphia - have had
varying degrees of difficulty with the build/no-
build test. Some have been able to pass the
NOx build/no-build only by a razor-thin
margin, sometimes by making small adjust-
ments in the initial modeling assumptions.
Some reported tipping the scales through off-
model analysis of CMAQ projects that were
not captured by the network model. Chicago
followed this strategy in 1994, taking credit
for new alternative fuel buses. (It subse-
quently applied for a NOx waiver, which was
granted in 1996.) After similar difficulty in
1995, the Boston MPO developed a way of
handling this type of situation. It routinely
does not claim credit in the regional analysis
for projects such as park-and-ride lots, van-

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Chapter 3: Implementing the Transportation Conformity Requirements
37
pool programs, or replacement buses. Then, if
build/no-build problems arise, it completes an
off-model analysis of specific projects to dem-
onstrate conformity.
Baltimore faced a potential build-no build
problem that stemmed from state government
resistance to the national Employee Commute
Option program mandate in severe ozone non-
attainment areas. Baltimore's 1994 transpor-
tation plan assumed ECO implementation. But
in the face of significant opposition from the
Baltimore business community, which feared
being at a disadvantage to its competitors in
nearby Washington, D.C. (an area not subject
to the ECO mandate), Maryland's governor
issued an executive order declaring ECO
voluntary; and the legislature eliminated all
program funding.5 When the Baltimore MPO
continued to include ECO in its 1995 con-
formity analysis, the state air agency expressed
discomfort that the program was nonetheless
credited; and an environmental group ques-
tioned the validity of claiming full emission
credit for a voluntary program. The MPO
therefore deleted ECO from the conformity
analysis, replacing it with a regional commuter
assistance program that it pledged to im-
plement in 2005.
Boston and Chicago reported atechnicality
in the way the build/no-build analysis is
calculated that made the test highly problem-
atic. Boston cited an example from its 1995
conformity analysis. When planners analyzed
the 1996 milestone year, FY 1996 projects
were in both the "action" scenario and the
5Congress subsequently amended the Clean Air
Act to make the ECO program voluntary in the areas
previously required to implement the program.
"baseline" scenario (because it had already
been conformed in the FY 1995-97 TIP).
Because there had been no other regionally
significant changes, the analysis showed no
decrease in emissions in the "action" scenario,
which is required by the conformity rule. The
Boston MPO resolved this problem by adding
a CMAQ project to the TIP for off-model
analysis. Chicago, as noted above, took credit
for new alternative fuel buses.
Most of the issues with the build/no-build
tests no longer exist with implementation of
the 1997 amendments to the conformity rule,
which allow areas to use only the budget test
for conformity 45 days after a SIP with a bud-
get is submitted.6 Previously areas were re-
quired to continue the build/no-build tests until
submitted budgets were approved by EPA, a
process that can take more than a year.
Less-than-1990 Test
No study site reported problems satisfying
the requirements of the less-than-1990 emis-
sion test.
Using the Required Modeling
Techniques
Several areas had conformity problems due
to the conformity rule's demand for use of a
6This holds true unless a SIP budget has pre-
viously been approved by EPA for all or part of the
time period in question. In that case, the old approved
budget must be used for the time period for which it
was approved until the new budget is approved as a re-
placement.

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Chapter 3: Implementing the Transportation Conformity Requirements
38
network-based transportation demand model
with specific attributes. As noted earlier in this
chapter, New York City experienced the most
difficulty meeting the modeling requirements
as the area had not previously used a network
based model. New York demonstrated
conformity in 1994 using qualitative analysis
and sketch planning techniques, but it did not
have the required network model up and
running by the January 1995 deadline. The
area therefore advanced only exempt and
grandfathered projects in 1995. When the
models were still not in place by 1996, the area
sought and received a third-year extension of
its 1994 TIP, continuing to move forward
exempt and grandfathered projects. The first
generation of network models was finally
operational in 1997, and New York City was
at last able to complete the required
conformity analysis to adopt a new plan and
TIP.
Chicago and Phoenix also experienced
conformity delays while they worked on up-
grading network models they already had in
place. Chicago undertook a major overhaul of
its already existing network model. In the
process, CATS had to forgo a conformity an-
alysis in 1995 as the required changes were not
yet in place. The area therefore had to delay
implementation of some projects, advancing
only those that were grandfathered and exempt
until the next conformity cycle. In Phoenix,
the 1995 conformity determination was
delayed - but only briefly - while model
enhancements were completed.
Demonstrating Timely Implemen-
tation of SIP TCMs
Of the 15 study sites, only San Francisco
reported any difficulty documenting timely
implementation of SIP TCMs, and this did not
cause any delay in demonstrating conformity.
As part of the settlement of the suit brought by
the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund and other
environmental advocates against the
Metropolitan Transportation Commission
(MTC), San Francisco was required to in-
corporate a number of TCMs which dated
back to its 1982 SIP into its ozone main-
tenance plan. Because a number of these were
imprecisely defined, the Bay Area air agency
and the EPA regional office in 1996
questioned their timely implementation, which
had not been well documented in previous
conformity analyses. In response, MTC
provided a more detailed description of the
TCMs and explained the steps taken to
implement them, which satisfied the air district
and EPA that the conformity requirement was
being met.
Meeting the Fiscal Constraint Re-
quirement
Many study areas indicated that the fiscal
constraint provision of ISTEA, also a con-
formity requirement, has had significant impact
on transportation plans/programs. Many
MPOs have had to pare down long lists of pro-
jects included in earlier plans for which fund-
ing could not be reasonably expected. As
previously mentioned, Houston scaled back its
Grand Parkway proj ect to ensure that its long-
range plan met ISTEA's fiscal constraint
requirement. Only Boston and Denver among

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Chapter 3: Implementing the Transportation Conformity Requirements
39
the study sites, however, had any problems
completing a conformity determination
because of fiscal constraint problems.
Boston's problem in 1994 was not directly
a conformity problem but did cause a delay in
concluding the area's conformity deter-
mination. During the approval process of its
FY 1995-97 STIP, FHWA's Massachusetts
division office cited two fiscal constraint
problems. FHWA believed that the second
year of the STIP (FY 1996) was 100% over-
programmed because it budgeted the sum of
its highway apportionments, plus its unobligat-
ed balance. In addition, the state was counting
on money from a bond bill not yet approved by
the legislature to fund a major project during
the first two years of the STIP. FHWA and
FTA therefore deferred approval of the STIP
pending resolution of these issues. This action
effectively put the Boston TIP conformity
determination on hold until the state produced
a financially constrained STIP in March 1995.
Although highway funding was held-up and
TIP conformity could not proceed, this was
not technically a "conformity lapse," having
been caused by a funding dispute between
FHWA and the state over the STIP.
In 1996, Denver area environmentalists
raised fiscal constraint issues during the con-
formity process. Arguing that the MPO was
mitigating emissions from the E-470 tollway
proj ect by claiming credit for transit expansion
projects that did not have secure funding, they
threatened to sue on the grounds that the plan
was not adequately fiscally constrained. The
MPO counter-argued that the emission
benefits of the transit projects were so small
that the proj ects could be totally removed from
the plan without threatening the conformity
determination. Ultimately, no litigation was
filed, and there was no delay in the conformity
determination.
Links to SIP Failures
Under the 1993 conformity rule, certain
types of SIP failures (described in Chapter 2)
can trigger a conformity freeze or lapse, re-
gardless of a satisfactory emission analysis of
the transportation plan or program. Several
examples of this were found in the 15 study
sites.
Initially, areas had one year to submit a
control strategy SIP and have EPA declare it
complete - or else conformity would lapse.
Given myriad challenges during the start-up
phase of CAAA implementation, a number of
areas around the country did not meet this
deadline and therefore experienced conformity
lapses while SIP requirements were com-
pleted. Two study areas - Atlanta and Hous-
ton - appeared on FHWA's lapse list during
this period. It appears, however, that any im-
pacts there were quite minimal. When in-
terviewed later, area planners were either un-
aware of or didn't remember that a lapse had
occurred.
Subsequently, the February 1995 conform-
ity amendments increased the time for areas to
submit complete SIPs to two years, aligning
the SIP conformity lapse with imposition of
CAAA highway sanctions. Several other
study areas - including Baltimore, Boston,
Milwaukee, New York City, Philadelphia and
Phoenix - were saved from a lapse by this
change.

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Chapter 3: Implementing the Transportation Conformity Requirements
40
Salt Lake City had a more serious SIP
"completeness" problem. In 1993 it submitted
an ozone attainment redesignation request,
which EPA subsequently declared incomplete.
Under the 1993 conformity rule, conformity
was, in effect, frozen - that is, beginning 120
days after the finding, no new transportation
plans or programs could be approved and no
projects could be added to existing
plans/programs. The area sued EPA; and as a
result of subsequent negotiations, EPA
declared the submission complete in July 1994,
ending the problem.
Baltimore faced a potential SIP failure
problem in 1997 when the Maryland legisla-
ture passed a law that would have made the
state's I/M program voluntary. This would
have caused the 15% VOC reduction SIP to
be disapproved by EPA. The Governor ve-
toed this bill at least in part because of the
conformity implications of failing to implement
the required form of I/M. At the end of the
study period, Boston and New Jersey were
also anticipating possible conformity problems
associated with delays in their I/M programs.
Human Error
In the course of interpreting and executing
the analytic and procedural requirements of
conformity, three areas have had problems that
are attributable simply to human error.
Portland is the most dramatic example. In
1994, during the first conformity analysis un-
der the 1993 conformity rule, the MPO had
some difficulty interpreting the build/no-build
requirements. Because it made incorrect
assumptions about which projects should go
into the build and the no-build scenarios, the
conformity determination was invalid. When
this was discovered, the area decided to let
conformity lapse for a year rather than ex-
pending the resources to re-do the analysis.
This decision resulted from the realization that
a lapse would not interfere with currently
planned projects, which were either exempt or
grandfathered.
Boston also encountered conformity dif-
ficulty due to a human error. In 1994 the area
could not pass the build/no-build tests for
VOC, NOx, or CO due to a calculation error in
a spreadsheet the air agency provided to the
MPO for the conformity analysis. After the
two agencies probed the causes of the con-
formity problem for a few months, the error
was discovered and corrected.
As mentioned above, the North Carolina
air quality agency made a mistake in the cal-
culation of Charlotte's NOx and VOC budgets
in 1994, which made passing conformity easier
at that time. However, when the error was
corrected, subsequent emission analysis in
1996 - which also took account of changing
conditions - revealed conformity difficulties
that had not been resolved at the conclusion of
the study period.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the
Transportation Conformity Process
Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the
Transportation Conformity Regulations
in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
A Report to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Department of Transportation
Publication Number
EPA420-R-99-011

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Chapter 4
Institutional Roles in the
Transportation Conformity Process
Fulfilling the purposes of conformity de-
pends crucially on creating stronger institu-
tional links between two policy areas - trans-
portation and air quality - that had operated
quite independently of each other prior to
enactment of the CAAA of 1990.
The previous framework of federal law did
not create effective incentives for collaboration
between the agencies working in the two
policy areas. It required integration between
separately mandated transportation and air
quality planning processes. But it provided
minimal federal financial aid for planning activ-
ities, and few penalties were imposed on states
for failing to implement pollution reduction
policies contained in their SIPs.
As a result, although air quality regulators
could seek pollution reductions from the
transportation sector, they frequently could
not secure the commitment and cooperation of
the transportation agencies in developing
policies to achieve this purpose. Nor could the
regulators assure that state and local elected
officials would actually adopt the policies the
regulators mandated. They could not ensure,
therefore, that the air quality impacts of trans-
portation policies would be taken into account
in decision making, that transportation proj ects
inconsistent with pollution reduction targets
would not be undertaken, and that promised
projects with air quality benefits would actu-
ally be implemented.
Enactment of the CAAA of 1990 and
ISTEA created a new regulatory climate.
Transportation agencies were directed to make
air quality a key goal and were given strong
fiscal incentives for compliance. But the intent
of the conformity regulations and other
provisions of the new laws was not merely to
impose tougher command-and-control regula-
tions. At least as important was establishing a
procedural framework for collaboration among
transportation and air agencies.
For the core regional and state agencies in-
volved - particularly MPOs, state and regional
air agencies, and state DOTs - implementation
of the conformity regulations created
significant stresses, not merely in terms of
what conformity itself required but also in the
context of broader changes stemming from the
CAAA and ISTEA. Even without the con-
formity requirements, air quality and transpor-
tation agencies faced substantial increases in
workload as well as the need to develop new
skills and to build relationships with other
agencies.
This chapter examines this institutional
dimension of conformity. Table 4-1 identifies
the core public agencies concerned with con-
formity in each study site. The chapter in-
quires first into how these agencies went about
building the organizational capacity, parti-
cularly the technical tools, they needed to
carry out the conformity requirements. Then
it explores the development of interagency
consultation practices, both in terms

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Table 4-1
Core Public Agencies in Transportation and Air Quality Planning, by Nonattainment Area
NONA I I AIV
MI.NT AREA
Metropolitan Plan-
ning Organization
State 1 ranspori ai ion
Ageno
Si All. AlRQl AI.ITN AG EM A
Lead Agencn ior
Sip Development
Atlanta
Atlanta Regional
Commission (ARC)
Georgia Department of
Transportation (GDOT)
Georgia Department of Natural
Resources (DNR)
State AQ agency
Baltimore
Baltimore Metropolitan
Council (BMC)
Maryland Department of
Transportation (MDOT)
Maryland Department of the
Environment (MDE)
State AQ agency
Boston
Boston MPO
The Executive Office of
Transportation and
Construction (EOTC)
Massachusetts Department of
Environmental Protection (DEP)
State AQ agency
Charlotte
Mecklenburg/Union MPO
North Carolina Department of
Transportation (NCDOT)
North Carolina Department of
Environment and Natural
Resources (DENR)
State AQ agency
Chicago
Chicago Area
Transportation Study
(CATS)
Illinois Department of
Transportation (IDOT)
Illinois Environmental Protection
Agency (IEPA)
State AQ agency
Denver
Denver Regional Council
of Governments
(DRCOG)
Colorado Department of
Transportation (CDOT)
Colorado Department of Public
Health and Environment
(CDPHE)
Regional Air Quality
Council (RAQC)
Houston
Houston-Galveston Area
Council (HGAC)
Texas Department of
Transportation (TxDOT)
Texas Natural Resources
Conservation Commission
(TNRCC)
State AQ agency
42

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NONATTAIN-
MI.NT ARI A
Metropolitan Plan-
ning Organization
State Transportation
Ageno
State Air Qi ai.i n Agi no
Lead Age.no eor
sip Development
Milwaukee
Southeastern Wisconsin
Regional Planning Com-
mission (SEWRPC)
Wisconsin Department of
Transportation (WisDOT)
Wisconsin Department of
Natural Resources (DNR)
State AQ agency
New York
New York Metropolitan
Transportation Council
(NYMTC)
New York State Department of
Transportation (NYSDOT)
New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation
(DEC or EnCon)
State AQ agency
Northern New
Jersey
North Jersey
Transportation Planning
Authority (NJTPA)
New Jersey Department of
Transportation (NJDOT)
New Jersey Department of
Environmental Protection
(NJDEP)
State AQ agency
Philadelphia
Delaware Valley
Regional Planning Com.
(DVRPC)
Pennsylvania Department of
Transportation (PennDOT)
Pennsylvania Department of
Environmental Protection (DEP)
State AQ agency
Phoenix
Maricopa Association of
Governments (MAG)
Arizona Department of
Transportation (ADOT)
Arizona Department of
Environmental Quality (DEQ)
The MPO
Portland
Metropolitan Service
District (Metro)
Oregon Department of
Transportation (ODOT)
Oregon Department of
Environmental Quality (DEQ)
State AQ agency
Salt Lake City
Wasatch Front Regional
Council (WFRC)
Utah Department of
Transportation (UDOT)
Utah Department of
Environmental Quality (DEQ)
State AQ agency
San Francisco
Metropolitan
Transportation
Commission (MTC)
California Department of
Transportation (Caltrans)
California Environmental
Protection Agency
(CalEPA)
Joint: Bay Area Air
Quality Mgmt District,
Assoc. of Bay Area
Govts, and MTC
43

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
44
of the "official" process required in conformity
SIPs and the relationships that have emerged
in practice. Then the chapter turns attention to
the role that nongovernmental stakeholders,
particularly environmental advocacy groups,
have played in conformity.
Finally, the chapter inquires whether con-
formity has had a wider impact by raising the
public profile of transportation and air quality
issues, educating the public, and increasing the
likelihood that senior policy and elected offi-
cials would feel compelled to address these
issues.
Building Institutional Capacity
Contextual Conditions
CAAA. The CAAA of 1990 transformed
national regulation of air pollution. In doing
so, it left state governments and regional agen-
cies with numerous new policies to develop
and politically controversial regulations to
draft and adopt (many under tight time dead-
lines imposed by Congress), as well as with
new on-going tasks to carry out.
For air agencies, conformity was merely
one of several challenges in transportation
competing for attention - and transportation
policy was only part of the sweeping scope
and workload created by the CAAA. Among
other transportation duties, air agency mobile
source staff had to prepare inventories and
forecasts of emissions, develop mobile source
emission control strategies in SIPs, and see
that programs such as enhanced I/M, ECO,
oxygenated and reformulated fuels, and gas
pump vapor recovery were successfully
launched. State transportation departments
and MPOs, for their part, had fewer new tasks
to perform as a result of the new statute; but
they recognized, some more quickly than
others, that the CAAA had potentially pro-
found implications for their policies, oper-
ations, and funding streams. Consequently,
they had to devote far more attention to air
quality issues, get a better understanding of the
technical issues and workings of the regulatory
system, and participate actively in policy
debates over how pollution reductions could
be accomplished.
While the states were charged with many
new responsibilities, they were also left with
significant uncertainty about precisely what
complying with the CAAA would entail. As
with most major national legislation, the new
version of the Clean Air Act did not spell out
in detail what all of its provisions required. In-
stead, it left EPA (in some instances, in con-
sultation with DOT) responsibility for de-
veloping detailed federal regulations to im-
plement statutory mandates, including but not
limited to transportation conformity - an effort
that took several years to complete. This
meant that the full scope of new state respon-
sibilities unfolded only gradually, even as sta-
tutory deadlines for proposing plans to reduce
mobile-source pollution loomed ahead.
ISTEA. As demanding as the wave of
change that the CAAA set in motion, imple-
mentation of ISTEA created a parallel set of
pressures for the state and regional agencies in
the conformity process. Congress enacted
ISTEA in late 1991, and DOT elaborated its
requirements in the metropolitan planning reg-
ulations issued in late October 1993, just
before the conformity regulations were issued.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
45
Among other effects, ISTEA:
strengthened MPO authority to con-
duct the planning process and allocate
federal funds;
generally permitted greater flexibility
in using federal funds to support the
transportation system, but also created
a new categorical program for proj ects
with air quality benefits (the con-
gestion mitigation and air quality im-
provement program or CMAQ);
required a more frequent, systematic,
analytic planning process that explicitly
took account of new planning factors,
including (but not limited to) air
quality;
required the development of a long-
range transportation plan to be coor-
dinated with the process for devel-
oping transportation control measures
for the SIP;
encouraged multi-modal planning and
explicit project alternatives analysis;
required the development of a set of
six "management systems" for inter-
modal facilities, bridges, pavement,
public transportation, safety, and con-
gestion;1
• reinforced the CAAA's requirement
that transportation investments be con-
sistent with pollution reduction com-
mitments that a state had made in its
SIPs;
mandated fiscally constrained trans-
1 Congress later made several of these management
systems voluntary rather than mandatory.
portation plans;
opened the planning process more
widely to institutions that in many lo-
cales had previously been secondary
participants (including local govern-
ments, ports and airports, transit oper-
ators, and air quality and economic
development agencies);
mandated more active efforts to in-
volve the general public and non-gov-
ernmental stakeholders (such as ship-
pers and freight companies, and envir-
onmental advocates) in transportation
planning.
As a result, at the same time that the 1993
conformity regulations were being imple-
mented, ISTEA was reshaping the balance of
power in metropolitan transportation planning
and changing longstanding institutional
practices. MPOs and state DOTs were rede-
fining their own relationships in the trans-
portation planning and programming process,
in some cases tugging and hauling over who
would take the initiative. Both felt pressure to
enhance their technical planning and analytic
capabilities. Simultaneously, because of
efforts to increase participation in planning by
the public, non-governmental stakeholders,
and historically peripheral public agencies,
MPOs and state DOTs were hearing more
voices - some new, many louder - expressing
visions of the purposes regional transportation
networks should serve and how they should
evolve. Throughout, MPOs and state DOTs
were struggling to make politically difficult
choices about regional priorities, as traditional
transportation plans - often featuring so many
projects that, in effect, they constituted "wish

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
46
lists" - were transformed into fiscally
constrained plans.
State air agencies, for their part, had new
opportunities to participate in and influence
state and regional transportation decision mak-
ing. To be effective, however, they had to
learn how the planning process worked pro-
cedurally, develop expertise in the issues, and
build relationships with other participating
agencies and constituencies.
Against this backdrop of dramatic change
in both air quality regulation and transpor-
tation planning, conformity posed significant
challenges for the the key public agencies.
Organizing for Conformity
MPOs. In each of the 15 study areas, an
MPO is the key implementer of conformity.
These MPOs are either single-purpose
agencies established primarily to carry on
regional transportation planning2 or multi-
purpose regional councils that may also
conduct land use, economic, and environ-
mental planning and regularly bring together
senior officials of the region's municipal and
county governments.3 MPO governing boards
2These include the Boston MPO/CTPS, NYMTC
in New York City, NJTPA in northern New Jersey,
CATS in Chicago, the Mecklenburg/Union MPO in
Charlotte, and MTC in the San Francisco Bay area
(which also has some transportation operating func-
tions).
3The multi-purpose regional councils are DRCOG
in Denver, the BMC in Baltimore, ARC in Atlanta,
MAG in Phoenix, Metro in Portland, H-GAC in Hous-
ton, SEWRPC in Milwaukee, DVRPC in Philadelphia,
and WFRC in Salt Lake City. These organizations
sometimes have a transportation policy committee that
are typically composed of local elected
officials or senior transportation agency
officials, sometimesjoinedby citizen members.
Although MPO governing boards vote the
formal conformity determination, they are
rarely deeply involved in conducting or
evaluating the actual analysis. That is pri-
marily the responsibility of MPO professional
staff4 A high-level staff member - typically
the agency executive director or deputy
director or the director of transportation plan-
ning - closely oversees the process. The
actual transportation and emission modeling is
generally performed or coordinated by a senior
technical staff member, perhaps supported by
another or several other technical professionals
who work full- or part-time on conformity
during the planning cycle. Some MPOs
receive additional support from consultants,
the state DOT, or the state air agency. In ad-
dition to conducting the technical analyses for
conformity, the MPO typically organizes and
coordinates interagency and stakeholder
consultations either through specialized "tech-
nical" or "policy" committees or by soliciting
agency comments, as will be detailed below.
DOTs. State DOTs in most states are
also significant participants in conformity, even
though the MPO is clearly the lead institution
serves as the primary forum for transportation
planning issues, so that the council's full governing
body deals in detail only with quite prominent trans-
portation issues.
4The MPOs in the study, which are nearly all lar-
ger than average and include some of the nation's lar-
gest, have full-time professional staffs ranging in size
from about a dozen to about one hundred personnel.
The Mecklenburg/Union MPO relies on the City of
Charlotte's Department of Transportation for its staff
capacity.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
47
in each study site. At a minimum, one or more
DOT staff, generally reporting to a senior
manager in the planning or environmental divi-
sion, maintain liaison with MPO technical staff
through regular bilateral meetings and tele-
phone communications - and often by parti-
cipating in MPO technical committees with
representatives of other agencies.
Beyond this basic involvement, the role of
state DOTs in conformity varies, depending on
the institutional strength of the MPOs in-
volved, the number of nonattainment areas in
the state, and the degree of difficulty that
MPOs encounter in satisfying the requirements
of the regulations.
In a few study sites (e.g., Charlotte and
northern New Jersey), the technical role of the
state DOT is greater than in the typical case.
Because the MPOs in these areas have only a
few technical staff members stretched across a
range of transportation planning functions, the
state DOT directly supports the conformity
process by providing data, giving technical
assistance, and sometimes performing elements
of the analysis. In states with multiple nonat-
tainment areas (e.g., California, Utah, Illinois,
Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York,
Texas), moreover, the DOT needs more in-
house conformity expertise and technical capa-
city because it is likely to be managing all or a
substantial part of the analytic workload of
conformity for smaller areas. In some states
with several major nonattainment areas (such
as Maryland and Pennsylvania), the state DOT,
often in conjunction with the state air agency,
plays a significant inter-area coordinating role,
helping MPOs in the major nonattainment
areas exchange information and develop
consistent conformity policies and technical
practices.
AlR AGENCIES. In most study sites, state
air agencies perform statewide coordinating
functions, contribute directly to the conformity
technical work of MPO staff, participate in
MPO policy discussions, and review and
critique conformity analyses. In states with
multiple nonattainment areas, air agency staff
help coordinate conformity procedures and
information for the agencies responsible for
conformity in each area. State or regional air
agencies typically maintain the MOBILE or
EMFAC emission models for the nonattain-
ment area,5 in which cases they supply the
emission factors for the conformity analysis.6
They have also provided technical advice to
MPO staff who work on conformity. In the
course of drafting the conformity SIP, more-
over, state air agencies typically have taken the
lead in securing agreement on interagency
consultion procedures, as will be described
below.
Other State and Local Agencies.
In most of the nonattainment areas in the
study, other state and local agencies have been
marginal participants in conformity. Only in
Denver and the San Francisco Bay area are
there regional air agencies that have been
5Air agencies faced only modest start-up demands
to perform transportation emission analyses. Most al-
ready had the modeling capacity in place, so they need-
ed primarily to update as new versions of MOBILE or
EMFAC were released.
6There are exceptions, however. In Arizona, for
example, the MPO is also the lead agency for air plan-
ning; so it, rather than the state air agency, performs
the emissions modeling. In Boston, the MPO also does
the emissions modeling in house.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
48
closely involved in conformity policy dis-
cussions. In some nonattainment areas, other
agencies also provide specific data inputs for
the transportation demand modeling that feeds
into the conformity analysis. For example, the
land use planning agency in Chicago has
worked closely with CATS in developing land
use forecasts; in the Bay area, MTC, the
regional air agency, and the council of
governments, which does land use planning,
have closely collaborated; and transit operators
in several locales (e.g., northern New Jersey
and New York City) provide data and
modeling capacity to MPOs. Most commonly,
however, the perspective of other agencies is
felt in conformity when one or more of their
staff members sit on the consultative
committees organized by the MPO.
Federal Agencies. The federal agen-
cies concerned with conformity have had var-
ying degrees of involvement at the state and
regional levels. FHWA is the only federal
agency to have a permanent presence in each
state, as well as regional offices responsible for
groups of states. In states that have significant
air quality problems, FHWA division (i.e.,
state) offices assign a staff member to work
with MPOs and state DOTs on conformity and
other air quality issues. Depending on the size
of the division office and the number of
nonattainment areas in the state, this staff per-
son may work full-time on air quality issues or
combine this task with other planning or
environmental activities. FHWA's nine re-
gional offices also have air quality specialists,
generally full-time, who, among other duties,
work on conformity issues.7 National-level
FHWA staff in Washington, D.C., coordinate
policy and consult on specialized technical
questions.
EPA has also been closely attuned to the
implementation of conformity. In a number of
the 15 study sites, staff from one of EPA's ten
regional offices have provided assistance to
MPOs, state DOTs, and air agencies in under-
standing conformity requirements and carrying
out technical analyses. EPA regional staff
consult regularly with the agency's national
headquarters staff responsible for conformity
(who are based in Ann Arbor, Michigan) to
exchange information and make sure that
policy positions are coordinated. Unlike
FHWA, however, EPA does not have field
staff stationed in each state. Staff attention to
conformity is therefore more widely spread,
hence less intense in the typical case than
FHWA's.
The CAAA assigns FHWA and FTA joint
responsibility for the review and approval of
MPO conformity determinations, but FTA has
played a small role in most study sites. Like
EPA, FTA has ten regional offices but lacks a
state-level presence.8 Typically, one of FTA's
transit planners in each region spends less than
full-time on conformity as a supplementary as-
signment. It is less likely, therefore, for FTA
7The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Cen-
tury (TEA 21), enacted by Congress in 1998, elim-
inates funding for these regional offices. Their func-
tions will be partially absorbed by division offices and
by four new technical assistance centers.
8During the latter part of the period that this study
covers, DOT was establishing metropolitan-level of-
fices, including FTA personnel, in some large cities.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
49
to be involved in routine conformity consulta-
tions. FTA staff members do contribute to
discussion of specific transit-related questions
- especially in areas like Chicago, New York,
or San Francisco, that have major transit
networks and spend substantial proportions of
their federal funds for this purpose.
Developing Technical Capacity
MPOs. Conformity made significant and
stressful start-up demands on MPO technical
capacity and resources, beginning with the in-
terim conformity guidelines in 1991 and in-
tensifying once the 1993 regulations were is-
sued. Most of the MPOs in the study were
subject to the network modeling requirements
of the 1993 conformity regulations,9 and all
needed to upgrade their modeling capabilities
to meet the general requirements of conform-
ity. Typically, MPOs had to hire additional in-
house technical staff and/or consultants for this
purpose. The types of improvements that
study area MPOs instituted in their modeling
and analytic capacity varied, but they included:
updated input data for population, em-
ployment, and land use;
new travel surveys;
acquisition of new travel demand soft-
ware - either through adaptation of
standardized packages or customized
development;
increased model detail - e.g., to reflect
time-of-day (rather than 24-hour or
9This conformity requirement applied to all ozone
and CO nonattainment areas classified "serious" and
above.
peak/off- peak) assignments, arterial
link capacities, signal-cycle variations
at intersections, or volume-capacity
curve variations;
• migration from a mainframe to a work-
station or personal computer envir-
onment;
installing or upgrading emissions mod-
eling capabilities, including successive
versions of EPA's MOBILE model
and, in some cases, development of a
post processor able to perform
emissions analyses for alternative
policy packages without re-running the
full emissions model;10 and
adding feedback capabilities to reflect
the effect of changes in land use, trans-
portation capacity, and price on travel
behavior - e.g., in terms of number
and length of trips, mode share,
destination choice, and time of day.
While conformity was often the decisive
factor, these upgrades were also motivated by
ISTEA's planning requirements and the
provision of federal funds to strengthen plan-
ning capabilities. A number of MPOs reported
that although they had significantly invested in
developing transportation demand modeling
capacity during the 1970s and early 1980s,
they had made mostly incremental improve-
ments during the remainder of the decade.
ISTEA required regular updates of regional
plans and explicit analysis of a rich set of plan-
10Only a few of the MPOs in our study did emis-
sions modeling themselves, relying instead on the state
or regional air agency to mount and run the MOBILE
or EMFAC model to provide emissions factors for
MPO conformity analyses.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
50
ning factors. This created workload and
technical demands that many MPOs could not
adequately meet. ISTEA, however, also
increased the amount of federal funds available
for planning; and conformity and other
planning needs afforded justification for in-
vesting some of these funds in additional
technical staff and modeling capacity. The
pressures of CAAA and ISTEA compliance
thus provided opportunity as well as need for
enhancing technical capacity.
Most of the MPOs in the study now do
transportation demand modeling in-house, al-
though the smaller ones (e.g., Charlotte and
northern New Jersey) sometimes procure as-
sistance from consultants or the state DOT.
Multi-purpose regional councils usually de-
velop demographic, economic, and land use
data and forecasts themselves, while single-
purpose transportation agencies are more like-
ly to rely on other regional or state agencies to
supply this information. Most MPOs depend
on the state air agency to carry the primary
load in emissions modeling, although a few,
including Boston's, have in-house capacity for
emissions modeling. In Phoenix, unlike any
other study site, MAG has been formally
designated by the governor as the lead air
quality planning agency for the nonattainment
area, so it not only performs conformity
analyses but also develops the area's SIPs.
During CAAA and ISTEA start-up, even
though many MPOs generally regarded im-
provements in technical capacity as desirable,
tight regulatory deadlines for new transporta-
tion plans, SIP development, and conformity -
as well as active oversight and criticism by
environmental advocates - made managing
these changes quite stressful for many MPOs.
The tight timeframe did not seem adequate for
the magnitude of the task, particularly given a
short supply of skilled transportation modelers.
Competition for their services was intense
given simultaneous recruiting by similarly-
motivated transportation (and some air) agen-
cies. Alternatively, building the skills of
current staff or procuring appropriate
consulting services also took considerable
time. The process of making modeling
improvements - typically requiring interagency
consultations, detailed design specifications,
acquisition of software and/or programming,
testing, and implementation - frequently had
to be accomplished in several iterations over a
period of at least two or three years.11
Of the 15 study sites, New York City and
Chicago had the most difficult experiences. In
the early 1990s, alone among the MPOs in the
study areas, NYMTC had no comprehensive
network-based transportation demand model
in place, although New York's major op-
erating agencies, such as the transit authority,
had specialized modeling capacity for their
own needs. The large task of developing a
network model for the massive and complex
New York region by the January 1995
conformity deadline - difficult enough - was
nThis study could not gather systematic com-
parative information about the monetary costs of up-
grading MPO technical capacity to satisfy conformity
requirements. Even if we had had direct access to bud-
get data, our interview subjects had no ready way to
separate conformity-related improvements from up-
grades more generally prompted by ISTEA, to identify
or account accurately for in-house costs (especially
where personnel spent some, but not all, of their time
on technical improvement activities), or clearly to
separate capital investments for system development
from operating costs.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
51
complicated by a state-mandated hiring freeze
that prevented NYMTC from securing
adequate internal technical staff and by long
delays in letting consulting contracts for model
development. Not until mid-1997 was
NYMTC's modeling capacity conditionally
certified by FHWA for conformity analysis,
pending further improvements by 1999. In
Chicago, difficulties arose for quite different
reasons. CATS already had an extremely
complex, mainframe-based, network demand
model - but one that could not flexibly ac-
commodate the new kinds of analysis required
by conformity. CATS initiated incremental
improvements, the adequacy of which were
sharply challenged by a coalition of local
environmental advocacy groups, supported by
experts working with the national En-
vironmental Defense Fund. FHWA's division
office also strongly encouraged further up-
grading. As a result, over several years,
CATS made ambitious, expensive enhance-
ments to its models and collected much addi-
tional supporting data, including the land-use
forecasts prepared by a sister regional agency.
Litigation threats and the time pressure of
making on-going conformity determinations
during the maiden runs of new model sets
added to the normal difficulty of implementing
major innovations in technical practice.
In northern New Jersey and Baltimore, the
process of technical capacity development co-
incided with a more general period of rapid
staff growth and development. NJTPA, a new
MPO which had a very small in-house tech-
nical staff, inherited some modeling capacity
from NJDOT and NJ Transit, which it
upgraded with consulting support. These
improvements were vetted by an open public
process, with significant participation by en-
vironmental advocates led by the Rutgers En-
vironmental Law Center and affiliated with the
Tri-State Transportation Campaign. Bal-
timore's newly reorganized MPO took over
the technical resources of its predecessor, but
used consultants to improve its models while
simultaneously significantly increasing the size
of its transportation planning staff. These
efforts were spurred in part by questions raised
about the adequacy of Baltimore's models by
environmentalists during the interim
conformity period.
MPOs in a number of other areas needed
fewer changes or were able to upgrade their
technical capacity with less difficulty. In the
San Francisco Bay area, MTC had recently
gone through an exhaustive litigation challenge
to its modeling practices brought by the Sierra
Club Legal Defense Fund in 1989.12 The
extensive model upgrades that MTC put in
place as a result of settling the suit influenced
the national policies reflected in the conformity
requirements, and they positioned MTC to
meet those requirements once the 1993
regulations were promulgated. Portland's
Metro, with very strong in-house capabilities,
refined a set of models that already had been
significantly adapted to deal with air quality
and land use issues. Boston's CTPS, which
welcomed the overall improvements in
planning capability prompted by CAAA and
ISTEA, upgraded its models for conformity
primarily with in-house staff. In Phoenix,
MAG retained consultants to help it develop
12See Mark Garrett and Martin Wachs, Transpor-
tation Planning on Trial: The Clean Air Act and
Travel Forecasting (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, 1996) for a detailed analysis of the Bay
Area situation.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
52
modeling improvements over several years -
as did H-GAC in Houston and ARC in Atlan-
ta.
State Agencies. Compared to MPOs,
state DOTs faced less conformity-related pres-
sure for technical capacity enhancement. Most
had stronger technical capabilities to begin
with, and the areas for which they take primary
analytic responsibility are usually smaller ones
that can utilize less complex methods.
For state air agencies, by contrast, devel-
oping necessary technical resources was far
more challenging. As noted above, conformity
was merely one of several types of new trans-
portation tasks that the CAAA set before state
air agencies, each competing for staff attention
and resources. To meet the spate of new re-
sponsibilities, most air agencies hired addi-
tional staff members who had or could develop
transportation expertise, but this took time;
and new staff had to be assimilated to new in-
stitutional practices and cultures. A few state
air agencies (notably in Texas and North Caro-
lina) developed in-house transportation
modeling capabilities, so they would under-
stand better what MPOs and/or the state DOT
were doing and have some independent ability
to assess policy alternatives.
Federal Agencies. Both the U.S. En-
vironmental Protection Agency and the U.S.
Department of Transportation contributed to
the development of organizational capacity for
conformity by providing technical assistance.
In a number of areas, MPO and air agency
staff members praised EPA regional office
staff - for example, in Denver and San
Francisco - for assistance in understanding
conformity requirements and carrying out
technical analyses during the early phases of
implementing the 1993 regulations. FHWA
divisional staff also provided a great deal of in-
formation to MPOs, state agencies, and other
stakeholders, helping them understand what
conformity required and how it could be done.
National headquarters staff mounted some
more extensive technical assistance efforts -
e.g., to help Denver and Atlanta deal with
conformity difficulties.
Establishing Interagency
Consultation Procedures
Since in all states the planning and opera-
ting responsibility for transportation and air
quality policies is dispersed among many in-
dividual public agencies - state, regional, and
local - the conformity regulations emphasized
the need for effective interagency consultation
at each stage of the conformity process.
Consultation practices have emerged gradually
as first the interim conformity guidelines and
then the 1993 regulations have been
implemented.
Start-up Issues
As discussed, the early years of CAAA and
ISTEA implementation were fraught with
challenges. As new and sometimes competing
demands were placed on transportation and air
quality agencies, many struggled to understand
and implement their broadened roles and
responsibilities, notably those imposed by
conformity. Given the turmoil of the start-up
phase, it is not surprising that the first round of

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
53
air quality and transportation planning did not
occur in an idealized manner. As each group
grappled with its own challenges,
transportation and air quality planners did not
always realize the importance of consultation
and place it high on their list of priorities. Also
complicating the start-up of consultation
procedures was a delay in development of the
federal conformity rule, which contains the
most powerful inducements for interagency
cooperation. Initially slated for publication in
1991, EPA instead issued interim guidance
that left many important issues to be resolved
in negotiations with DOT and various
stakeholders. The federal rule was not
completed until November 1993, concurrent
with the deadline for 15% VOC reduction SIP
submittals (in ozone nonattainment areas) and
the first post-ISTEA transportation plan revi-
sions in many areas.
As a result of start-up challenges, many ar-
eas missed the window of opportunity for con-
sultation that could have informed the first set
of SIPs in the CAAA/ISTEA era. In a few
areas, such as Boston, Houston and Mil-
waukee, broad-based SIP planning task forces
were established through which all actors came
to the table (including both public and private
interests from mobile, stationary and area
sources) to evaluate various strategies for
reducing emissions within each source
category; to consider carefully the trade-offs
among mobile, stationary and area source con-
trols; and thus to set budgets with an
understanding of their future implications. In
other areas, air quality agencies dealt with
each emission source category separately. In
these areas, transportation planners were gen-
erally a party to TCM decisions and in some
were involved in discussion of other mobile
source measures and emission budgets. As will
be discussed below, however, transportation
planners in several areas were not sufficiently
aware of the importance of their involvement
in SIP planning. Thus, budgets were derived
implicitly from SIP inventories without enough
consideration of their implications for future
conformity determinations.
Likewise, during the start-up phase, air plan-
ners were just beginning to establish their role in
transportation planning. They were jockeying
for a voice in the MPO, learning transportation
issues and planning processes, and had not yet
begun to negotiate the formal consultation
procedures that would be solidified through the
states' conformity SIPs. Moreover, because
most MPOs and state DOTs had a project
backlog that had already gone through years of
planning and had strong support from local
governments and interest groups, it was quite
difficult politically to influence transportation
priorities in the short run. As a result, air -
planners frequently felt that they had too little
influence on the first post-ISTEA round of trans-
portation plans and TIPs.
Formalizing Consultation Pro-
cedures in a Conformity SIP
Part of the conformity SIP that each state
was required to develop by November 1994
involved interagency consultation procedures.
Wide state-to-state variation in institutional
structure, however, made it impossible for the
federal conformity regulations to prescribe
specific arrangements for interagency
consultation, as they did for some other con-
formity procedures. In drafting its conformity

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
54
SIP, therefore, each state had to specify a
customized set of policies:
defining the roles and responsibilities
of each participating agency;
establishing general procedures for
meetings, distribution of information,
and opportunities for comments;
indicating how certain conformity-spe-
cific tasks would be accomplished -
e.g., selecting transportation and emis-
sion models, defining "regionally
significant" projects, identifying ex-
empt projects, and determining the
timeliness of TCM implementation;
specifying how the public would be
involved in reviewing and commenting
on conformity determinations; and
establi shing a mechani sm for resolving
interagency conflicts.
Typically led by the air agency, concerned
agencies in most states began working on con-
formity SIPs in 1994. Although the schedule
for submission of these SIPs did not stay on
track (as will be explained below), many states
finished work essentially within the allotted
year, building on the experience gained in their
initial conformity experiences. Most devel-
oped interagency consultation procedures with
little disagreement, and a number regarded the
exercise of specifying responsibilities and
defining processes as quite useful in clarifying
expectations about how conformity would be
carried out.
Although the 1993 conformity regulations
explicitly permitted states to adopt conformity
procedures that were more stringent than the
federal requirements, many states were either
barred by state statute from exceeding federal
environmental requirements or faced an
informal - but powerful - legislative bias
against doing so. Of those that legally could
impose stronger requirements, few chose to do
so. Oregon made its conformity practices
stronger than the requirements in several
respects. Massachusetts also went notably
beyond the federal rule, requiring state air
agency concurrence with the MPO's
conformity determination.
In a few states, drafting the conformity SIP
became a matter of serious contention between
the MPO and other participants. In Utah, the
state DAQ initially drafted a conformity SIP
based on a model developed by
STAPPA/ALAPCO, anational organization of
state and local air pollution officials, which,
among other provisions, gave the envir-
onmental agency a veto over conformity de-
terminations. For its part, the Salt Lake City
MPO insisted on minimal oversight of its
conformity decisions. The two agencies were
therefore unable to reach agreement on con-
formity procedures.
In Colorado, the state Air Pollution Con-
trol Division (APCD) and CDOT jointly led an
intensive interagency discussion about proce-
dures to be incorporated in the Colorado
conformity SIP. This involved participants
statewide, not only those concerned with the
Denver area.13 APCD sought a state
13In addition to APCD and CDOT, other attendees
included representatives from all Colorado MPOs, two
members of the state Air Quality Control Commission
(AQCC), several environmental advocates and
business representatives, and a few unaffiliated citi-
zens.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
55
conformity procedure that specified in detail
how the consultation process should work.
Taking an opposite tack, DRCOG advocated
prescribing as little procedural detail as pos-
sible to satisfy the conformity mandate. This
would have left more discretion to individual
Colorado MPOs to decide how to comply.
The policy discussions were constrained by a
state law that forbade adopting regulations
that were more stringent than required by fed-
eral law. After long, detailed negotiations,
APCD and CDOT eventually reached
consensus, despite the unhappiness of
DRCOG, the Denver MPO. DRCOG was
particularly dissatisfied with a provision that
specified that members of interested advocacy
groups would be permitted to attend all
meetings relating to conformity, along with
agency representatives. The negotiations
about the Colorado conformity SIP coincided
with an intense debate about whether the
Denver PM10 emission budget should be
increased to solve the area's conformity dif-
ficulties, which was ultimately settled by the
state legislature. (These events are described
in more detail in Chapter 3.) Before the con-
formity SIP was formally adopted, DRCOG
and some business interests indicated that they
would seek changes in the draft conformity
procedures through an appeal to the leg-
islature. APCD then decided to postpone ac-
tion on the conformity SIP.
Such indeterminate outcomes could remain
unresolved because the original schedule for
finalizing conformity SIPs was placed on hold
nationally. Conformity SIPs were initially
supposed to be submitted for EPA approval by
November 1994, one year after the 1993
conformity rule was issued. By early 1995,
with some state submissions complete and
others still outstanding, the conformity "scene"
was changing at both the national and state
levels. In response to strong concerns raised
by the National Governors' Association about
the inflexibility and burdens of conformity,
EPA had embarked on national consultations
about how to refine the conformity rule. It
was clear that a set of amendments to the
November 1993 rule would be forthcoming,
which might affect the specific procedures set
forth in the state conformity SIPs. As a result,
EPA relaxed enforcement of the deadline for
submission of conformity SIPs, pending
completion of what were ultimately the August
1997 amendments to the conformity
regulation. These amendments set a new one-
year schedule for submission of conformity
SIPs - by August 1998.
As of the end of 1997, therefore, con-
formity SIPs for most states in the study were
not yet in final form. Arizona, California,
Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, North
Carolina, and Pennsylvania had submitted SIPs
but then accepted EPA's offer to defer formal
action. This deferral left these states the option
of amending their submissions once the 1997
amendments were promulgated without having
to go through the full state regulatory process
once again. Some other study states -
Colorado, Illinois, New York, New Jersey,
and Utah - suspended SIP development before
their regulations were ready for submission to
EPA. These states therefore had to restart the
process once the 1997 conformity amendments
were issued. By contrast, Oregon, Texas and
Wisconsin submitted conformity SIPs to which
EPA gave formal approval - a fact the last two
states came to regret since it meant that their

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
56
SIPs would remain in effect until they
developed, submitted, and secured federal
approval for revisions after the 1997
amendments were issued. Oregon, however,
requested EPA approval so that the provisions
that exceeded federal requirements would be
legally binding.
Interagency Consultation in
Practice
Whatever the legal status of their conform-
ity SIPs, the study areas have developed inter-
agency consultation practices that go well
beyond previous levels of interaction. In most,
communication between transportation and air
agencies was minimal before the CAAA of
1990 and ISTEA; in some, virtually non-exis-
tent. Consultation began to increase in
response to the initial requirements to develop
SIPs and revise transportation plans.
Conformity was another major spur beginning
with the interim conformity guidelines and
followed by the early stages of implementation
of the 1993 federal conformity rule, when all
involved were struggling to understand the
meaning and nuances of the complicated
regulations.
These emerging relationships have led to
improved relationships in all of the study sites.
But this development has been uneven in its
pace and extent across areas, and important
limitations remain.
Regional and State Agencies. As
agencies in each study area have gained more
experience with conformity, consultation pro-
cesses have evolved and generally deepened.
In virtually all 15 study sites, the MPO is the
organizer and focal point for interagency and
stakeholder consultations on conformity. At a
minimum, MPOs organize meetings of the key
agencies and circulate planning documents for
comment as the transportation planning cycle
proceeds.14 Beyond this, a number of MPOs
(e.g., inNew York, Houston, Atlanta, Denver,
and Chicago) host "technical" committees that
meet periodically during the planning cycle and
more frequently when new regulatory issues
are being addressed or problems arise. In
some cases the technical committees existed
before the conformity requirement and have
expanded their membership and functions in
response; in others, they are newly organized.
These groups are typically composed of a
mixture of technical and policy officials from
concerned regional, state, and federal agencies,
including air and transit agencies, FHWA, and
EPA. Sometimes nongovernmental stake-
holder groups sit on these committees or at-
tend as observers. Among other activities, the
technical committees may address transporta-
tion planning assumptions, modeling upgrades,
specific project implementation issues, and in-
teragency coordination problems - as well as
the ultimate conformity determination.
Consultation goes beyond the mechanics of
conformity in most, but not all, areas. Air
agencies now typically participate in some
fashion on the MPO committees where trans-
portation decisions are made, so they have an
opportunity to make suggestions or raise
issues at a formative stage of policy develop-
ment. Air quality planners have occasionally
14For Charlotte, the state DOT and MPO both play
key roles.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
57
secured formal powers in transportation
decisions. For example, in Boston the
conformity SIP includes provisions for DEP
concurrence on conformity determinations and
DEP's inclusion in determining the eligibility
of CMAQ projects. On the other side, trans-
portation planners in many areas are brought
into the air quality process through joint com-
mittees or task forces that deal with SIP
development and issues such as TCMs and
CMAQ. In most areas, consultation has open-
ed the door for both transportation and air
quality planners to be involved much earlier
and more deeply in cooperative efforts.
Official interactions, however, tell only
part of the story of interagency consultation.
As interviews conducted for this study amply
revealed, formal consultation procedures have
frequently helped to foster stronger informal
working relationships and deeper un-
derstanding of the issues in a number of areas.
Where such relationships have developed, they
are characterized by frequent informal com-
munications across agency lines, not merely
distribution of documents and convening of of-
ficial meetings.15 Agency personnel discuss
15The formation of both formal and informal con-
sultation patterns seems to be facilitated or impeded by
an important contextual factor - the proximity of
agency offices. Geographic separation of the state
capital (where the state DOT and air agency are
headquartered) and the home of the MPO (usually in
or near the central city of the nonattainment area) can
pose an obstacle - but by no means an absolute barrier
- to strong interagency consultation. When state agen-
cy headquarters are at a sufficient distance from the
MPO offices (and those of other involved regional
agencies) to make traveling to meetings time-consum-
ing, inconvenient, and expensive, consultation tends to
be less frequent, more formal, and more likely to occur
with some agencies absent. This is the case, for
example, for New York City/Albany, Charlotte/Ral-
conformity progress and problems, exchange
data and information, provide advice to each
other, and strategize about dealing with stake-
holders and other agencies. For example, in
Portland, state air agency and Metro staff have
worked extremely closely on transportation
and air quality issues, along with significant
involvement by the state DOT. Similarly, in
Boston, MPO, air agency, and state DOT staff
have worked quite closely on modeling issues
and development of transportation and air
quality policies. In Denver, despite policy
conflicts, there has been close collaboration
between DRCOG and the regional air agency,
on one hand, and the state air agency and
DOT, on the other; as well as frequent inter-
changes between regional and state agencies.
In the San Francisco Bay area, there is also
strong collaboration between MTC and the re-
gional air agency and active consultation with
the state agencies.
As a result of such contacts in these jur-
isdictions and others, increased professional in-
timacy and trust developed among the in-
dividuals who participate in the conformity
process. Many of the state and regional offi-
eigh, Philadelphia/Harrisburg, and Chicago/Spring-
field. By contrast, where the key agencies are located
in the same city - e.g., in Atlanta, Boston, Denver,
Phoenix, Salt Lake City - or where the travel between
the state capital and the central city of the metropolitan
area is relatively convenient - e.g., between Balti-
more/Annapolis, Portland/Salem, Milwaukee/Madison
- it is easier for key staff to get together for meetings
and to confer informally. The relatively limited degree
of agency consultation in Salt Lake City and Phoenix,
it should be noted, indicates that geographic proximity
is not a sufficient condition for the formation of strong
relationships. It seems to encourage, but not guaran-
tee, more intensive consultation among state and
regional agencies.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
58
cials interviewed for the study stressed that, as
a result of the formal and informal relation-
ships that conformity has spurred, they have
developed a much greater understanding of
their counterparts' challenges and the con-
straints that shape their policy approaches,
making it far easier to acknowledge problems
and work together to solve them. Consulta-
tive relationships, once initiated, therefore tend
to become reinforcing. Contacts that prove
useful in one instance persist, often deepen,
and become routine. New employees of one
agency meet and get to know their
counterparts at others, if their peers' relation-
ships have gotten well-established. Because
consultation is a utilitarian activity, however,
the ebb and flow of the work cycle naturally
affects the intensity of these relationships. The
need to produce a "product" such as a SIP or
transportation plan or program, tends to
intensify the relationships; the periods between
such efforts may display less interaction.
These findings about the development of
closer regional and state agency relationships
must be qualified, however, in certain impor-
tant respects. Even where close interagency
relationships develop, they do not transcend or
submerge distinct institutional interests and
perspectives in conformity. Nor do they fun-
damentally change disparities of bureaucratic
or political power. Agency personnel continue
to represent their own agencies and may not
always be able to find common ground with
their counterparts on specific matters. Inter-
agency tensions continue to exist, and serious
disagreements can erupt periodically. This
was certainly true in Denver, where disagree-
ments about the PM10 emission budget and the
conformity SIP, among other issues, have di-
vided the concerned agencies.
In some areas, moreover, consultation is
relatively limited and focused to a great degree
on formal interactions such as committee
meetings, review of proposed conformity
determinations by air quality planners, and
comments by transportation planners on
proposed SIP budgets or mobile source con-
trol measures. In these areas and some others,
there seems to be far less advance discussion
of issues, less informal give and take, more
turf protection and focus on each agency' s ex-
clusive objectives, and - quite significantly -
less reciprocal trust at the agency and personal
levels.
No single explanation accounts for these
situations, which include Phoenix, Salt Lake
City, and New York. They stem from past in-
stitutional and personal relationships, differing
perceptions of individual agency interests, and
conflicting constituency pressures. In Phoenix,
for example, MAG has played an important
part in supporting an extensive regional road
building agenda, which has strong political
support from MAG's municipal government
members. At the same time, MAG's role as
both MPO and lead agency for SIP planning -
has given it responsibility for most modeling,
analysis, and policy making. Neither the air
agency nor state DOT matches MAG's techni-
cal expertise in these areas; as a result, MAG
engages in less interagency consultation than
many other MPOs. The state air agency, in
particular, regards MAG as insular and is sus-
picious of its commitment to air quality goals.
In Salt Lake City, conflict between the MPO
and air agency has arisen over several issues,

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
59
resulting in poor relationships among some
key staff, mutual suspicions, and limited dia-
logue. In New York, the air agency and state
DOT have had a wary relationship during most
of the period covered by the study, differing
significantly during national discussions about
the 1993 conformity regulations; both have
also been bureaucratically insular in carrying
out their responsibilities under the CAAA and
ISTEA. Although NYMTC is closely tied to
NYDOT, it has a highly decentralized
structure of regional committees, which cre-
ates more participants to consult and more
organizational layers to coordinate; and its dif-
ficulties in complying with the network mod-
eling requirements of the 1993 regulations
have focused it more on internal matters than
on interagency collaboration.
Poor interagency communication can make
dealing with conformity problems more diffi-
cult than they otherwise would be, as evi-
denced by Charlotte's situation in 1997 when
conformity lapsed. As the deadline
approached, there were extensive consul-
tations among planners in the MPO, air agen-
cy, and state DOT. Through these discus-
sions, MPO staff believed that the air agency
would revise the emission budget to ac-
commodate higher levels of mobile source
emissions, as the transportation planners had
requested. The air agency decided not to re-
vise the budgets but apparently did not ade-
quately communicate this position to the
MPO, which continued to hope for several
months that this was a viable option. Similar
communication problems between the MPO
and air agency arose in Atlanta as its lapse
loomed in 1997 - in this instance about pos-
sible additional emission control measures.
Georgia DOT also controlled much of the
communication between itself and the MPO,
on one side, and FHWA and EPA, on the
other. Whether or not better communication
would have sufficed to "solve" the conformity
problems in Charlotte or Atlanta - and it prob-
ably would not have - communication prob-
lems wasted time that would have been better
spent in more direct discussions about how to
respond to the conformity lapse.
Even in areas where strong consultative re-
lationships have developed, important limita-
tions remain. While state air agencies provide
important technical inputs to conformity
analysis in a number of study sites, they have
generally been reactive rather than proactive
participants in conformity. Resource limita-
tions and the opportunity costs of using this
scarce capacity for conformity are a maj or bar-
rier. Compared to the period prior to imple-
mentation of CAAA of 1990, air agencies have
built up significantly more staff expertise and
experience in transportation. But the improve-
ment does not fully meet current demands.
Most air agencies still have too few staff mem-
bers to deal with the wide range of mobile
source issues; given their many tasks, they feel
perpetually short-staffed. So conformity must
compete with other priorities, including some,
unlike conformity, on which the air agencies
must take the lead, particularly SIP
development. Many air agencies in the study
report that staff workload and shortage of
technical expertise prevent them from being as
deeply involved in conformity as they
otherwise might like.
Moreover, because a number of air agen-
cies have little in-house technical expertise on
transportation demand modeling, they are

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
60
uncomfortable probing that dimension of con-
formity even when they have serious reserva-
tions about how the MPO is handling it. They
participate in MPO technical committees,
usually speak regularly with MPO staff on a
bilateral basis, and may raise questions in
official comments on conformity analyses.
Rarely, however, do they seriously challenge
MPO technical conclusions.
State bureaucratic politics shapes this re-
sult as much as resource scarcity. Many air
agency officials interviewed for this study de-
scribed their work on conformity in ways that
implied the following perspective: Conformity
focuses on issues at the heart of the policy
domain of powerful political interests.
Transportation proj ects often have strong con-
stituency backing - e.g., local governments,
business interests, economic development
organizations, construction firms and unions.
The governor, legislators, and local elected
officials pay close attention to these issues and
constituencies. As a result, state DOTs (and
the MPOs with which they are allied) are
among the most politically influential agencies
in state government. By contrast, air agencies
confront a wide range of potentially
controversial matters in addition to
transportation; and they are typically subunits
of state environmental departments, which
have even broader regulatory agendas. Air
agencies consequently must "pick their fights"
carefully. Conformity rarely seems a pro-
mising battleground. Disputes have the po-
tential to disrupt the flow of federal funds and
typically relate to the transportation models
about which air agencies have less claim to
expertise than their transportation counter-
parts. The points of contention, moreover, fo-
cus on technical questions that are either dif-
ficult to explain to generalist officials (e.g., the
arcana of modeling practice) or seem exces-
sively theoretical (e.g., forecasted emissions
budget exceedances two decades in the
future).
Although such views of political and bur-
eaucratic reality do not preclude challenges to
MPO conformity determinations, they are cau-
tionary. Air agencies therefore seek influence
in conformity mainly through "front-end"
participation on the interagency committees
that discuss planning assumptions and mod-
eling changes, in regular communication and
information exchanges with their counterparts
in the transportation agencies, and, to a lesser
degree, by comments on completed conformity
analyses. When difficulties demonstrating
conformity arise, air agencies usually advise on
ways to reduce or mitigate transportation
emissions, interpret federal regulatory re-
quirements, and serve as intermediaries in
negotiations with EPA regional staff. In only
a few instances identified in the study sites
have air agencies been aligned against
transportation agency positions in major
conformity disputes - most notably, when
DRCOG sought an increase in the PM10
budget for Denver.
Federal Agencies: FHWA. In a num-
ber of study sites FHWA personnel are more
tightly integrated into the conformity network
than their counterparts in either EPA or FT A.
In each state in the study, FHWA has division
offices in the same city in which the state DOT
headquarters are located. Therefore, its air
quality staff members have relatively direct
access to their counterparts in state and
regional agencies. In all of the research sites,
FHWA divisional staff participate regularly in

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
61
MPO technical committees and/or speak
regularly with MPO professional staff, helping
to establish the necessary data inputs and
analytic parameters of the MPO's transpor-
tation demand models and procedures for con-
formity determinations. This involvement
usually allows them to become aware of dif-
ficulties and potentially controversial analytic
choices; to establish working relationships
with key participants from other state, local,
and federal agencies and non-governmental
stakeholder groups; and sometimes to proffer
advice about how troublesome conformity is-
sues might be handled.
In a regulatory role, FHWA staff members
approve MPO conformity determinations. At
an initial stage, they assess whether the formal
conformity determination adopted by the MPO
fulfills basic requirements - e.g., satisfying the
regulations about modeling procedures,
passing the quantitative conformity tests,
showing that TCMs are being implemented,
and demonstrating that transportation plans
are fiscally constrained. While this initial
review typically "checks off compliance
rather than intensively evaluates the quality of
the MPO's analysis, it has occasionally
revealed problems that delay approval of the
conformity determination. In Boston, for ex-
ample, FHWA staff, with the agreement of
FTA, put conformity on hold in 1994 while
dealing with the question of fiscal constraint of
the state TIP.
FHWA staff members also solicit com-
ments on the conformity determination from
their federal partners, EPA and FTA, and con-
sider comments from interested stakeholders
(most often environmental advocacy groups).
Serious objections typically trigger intensive
review of the MPO's conformity analysis. In
this process FHWA division staff members
play a facilitative role as well as an evaluative
one. A response to the criticisms is sought
from the MPO. If the disagreement is not
readily settled, FHWA staff members typically
convene meetings at which the interested
parties discuss their positions. In some
instances (e.g., in Chicago during early imple-
mentation of the 1993 regulations), repeated
consultations are necessary to work out
differences or determine that an impasse exists.
Within the FHWA hierarchy, the division
offices take the lead in reviewing conformity
determinations. When the issues raised are
primarily local - e.g., questions about how
specific proj ects should be modeled or whether
certain input data is adequate - the division
office typically has the decisive voice in
approval, with the regional office primarily
providing information and general advice
rather than exercising tight oversight. Some
issues have "policy" implications, however -
for example, if they require an interpretation of
federal regulations that might set a precedent
for other areas or if decisions in other
nonattainment areas are cited as justification
for MPO actions. In these cases, regional staff
typically play a larger role, including co-
ordinating with EPA's regional offices and
FHWA headquarters.16 FHWA headquarters
staff provide technical backup, interpret
16These relationships are likely to be changed by
the realignment of FHWA field functions that Con-
gress enacted in 1998 in the new Transportation Equi-
ty Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), which succeeded
ISTEA as the nation's transportation funding
authorization legislation.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
62
agency policy, promote inter-area consistency,
and manage liaison with EPA headquarters
staff.17
Although FHWA, acting in conjunction
with FTA as DOT's representative, has the ul-
timate authority under the CAAA and the
1993 conformity regulations to decide whether
the conformity determination should be
accepted, it has typically imposed its own
judgments only when conciliation efforts have
not succeeded. In regard to modeling, for
example, FHWA has pressed MPOs for
change but has been willing to accept iterative
improvements over several planning cycles if
the MPOs have been able to institute basic
changes more quickly. In Chicago, for ex-
ample, FHWA delayed approval of the area's
conformity determination in 1994, requiring
CATS to conduct extensive further analyses;
but although it pressed CATS to institute
changes in modeling practice as advocated by
a coalition of environmental groups, FHWA
did not ultimately withhold conformity
approval until these changes were fully in-
stituted. In New York, failure to meet con-
formity's network modeling requirements is
one reason why the MPO was unable to adopt
a new TIP for several years; but when an initial
operating model was finally ready in 1997,
FHWA accepted the MPO's commitment to
further upgrading in subsequent planning
cycles. Such decisions have not always
pleased stakeholders, particularly environ-
mental advocacy groups which have some-
17FHWA headquarters staff, on behalf of U.S.
DOT, also coordinates FHWA, FTA, and the Office of
the Secretary's ideas and comments on proposed EPA
regulations for which the statute requires concurrence
between EPA and DOT.
times wanted more pressure on MPOs to
upgrade their modeling practices or change
their transportation policies.
The conformity regulations give DOT the
final authority to decide whether an area's
conformity determination should be certified.
In practice, FHWA has taken the lead; but the
agency has generally worked closely with EPA
and FTA to reach consensus on a federal
position, sometimes managing discussions at
multiple levels of the agencies. In only one
instance in the study sites, however, has there
been severe disagreement between FHWA and
EPA. (The situation in Atlanta was described
in Chapter 3.)
EPA. Regional office staff members have
played active roles in implementing conformity
-	providing technical assistance, trouble-
shooting on major issues, advising and con-
sulting with national headquarters staff, work-
ing with states and MPOs to develop con-
formity SIPs, and dealing with the conformity
consequences of control strategy SIP revisions
or disapprovals. Nonetheless, EPA's involve-
ment in conformity at the MPO/nonattainment
area level has been significantly more variable
-	and weaker overall - than FHWA's.
Because EPA lacks a state-level presence
equivalent to FHWA's divisions, its attention
is more widely spread. The two or three
mobile-source specialists in each EPA regional
office often have many competing demands on
their time, including SIP development and pro-
grams such as reformulated or oxygenated fu-
els, I/M, and, in the early years of CAAA
implementation, the Employee Commute
Option (ECO) program. With a multi-state
purview, moreover, not the single-state focus
of FHWA division personnel, EPA regional

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
63
staff often have responsibility for a half dozen
or more major nonattainment areas, as well as
additional smaller ones. Given the small
number of EPA regional personnel responsible,
managing work flow is problematic.
Transportation planning cycles, roughly syn-
chronized with the federal fiscal year, may
simultaneously hit key periods in several
nonattainment areas; and the demands of
transportation planning may overlap with peak
periods of SIP development.
Achieving equally detailed familiarity and
sustained contact with every nonattainment ar-
ea is thus quite challenging. Each has different
air quality and transportation problems,
varying institutional structures, and numerous
agency staff and stakeholders with whom to
establish consultative relationships. Geo-
graphic distance and travel time from the re-
gional office vary but are frequently substan-
tial. While a number of MPOs have welcomed
EPA participation in area-level planning,
moreover, not all have been equally forth-
coming.
All things equal, EPA regional staff are
more likely to be deeply involved in con-
formity in those cities in which its regional of-
fices are located. Travel is minimized, in-
formal contact is more regular, detailed know-
ledge is greater. In areas removed from the
regional office site, EPA staff have exper-
ienced more difficulty participating as a result
of distance and limited travel budgets (which
was especially problematic during several early
years of conformity implementation). Thus,
EPA staff members based in Region IV in
Atlanta have been closely involved in that area
but have been less active in Charlotte, also part
of Region IV.
Overall, these circumstances seem to have
greatest impact on EPA participation in the
less formal, more routine (but nonetheless
formative) aspects of the conformity process -
e.g., the work of MPO technical committees
discussing modeling improvements or the
parameters of analysis. When EPA staff are
not based in the nonattainment area, their
infrequent personal visits and bilateral
telephone contacts do not fully compensate for
the knowledge and personal relationships that
regular participation in these groups
engenders. It is therefore more common to
hear MPO or state DOT staff involved with
conformity say that they do not know or are
only slightly acquainted with EPA staff than to
hear these people or air agency staff say the
same about FHWA division staff. Some have
come to regard EPA as a "regulator" more
concerned with the formalities of the law than
as a "problem solver."
EPA regional staff have tended to con-
centrate their efforts on fulfilling requests for
technical assistance, coordinating with FHWA
staff, and reviewing MPO conformity
determinations. Even the latter work, regard-
ed as highly important, can be squeezed by
time and resource pressures. Final review and
comment on conformity determinations must
be completed on a tight schedule, typically 60
days or less. In a number of EPA regional
offices, moreover, none of the responsible staff
have in-depth experience with transportation
demand modeling, which reduces their ability
to probe MPO work critically. EPA regional
staff have pressed MPOs to improve their
modeling, but they have tended not to raise
formal objections to MPO practices unless
some other agency or stakeholder has done so.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
64
Given the volume and diversity of their
workload, EPA regional staff must, of
necessity, pick and choose priorities for
attention. In the typical case, they have
deferred to FHWAjudgment on transportation
modeling. The amount of contact between
staff of the two agencies appears to be
substantial, and generally effective "part-
nerships" have developed at the regional level.
While in some cases EPA staff would have
liked to see FHWA be more aggressive in
challenging MPOs, only in Atlanta has there
been strong disagreement between the agen-
cies.
EPA's mobile source headquarters staff,
based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, played the lead
role in drafting the transportation conformity
regulations and the subsequent amendments
(in close consultation with DOT, whose
concurrence was required by the statute). It
has also played a continuing role in
interpreting the regulations, coordinating
regional office mobile source specialists to
ensure national consistency, and has com-
municated regularly with state and regional
transportation and environmental agencies and
other stakeholder groups. The EPA and
FHWA headquarters staffs responsible for
conformity have forged a close working rela-
tionship, which has facilitated relationships
between their respective field staffs and with
stakeholders as well as encouraged forthright
discussions of policy differences that have aris-
en in conformity implementation.
FTA. Like EPA, FTA has ten regional
offices but lacks a state-level presence, which
creates the same difficulties of travel to and
communication with the several nonattainment
areas in each region. FTA's regional offices
have far fewer staff overall than EPA's,
moreover, which means FTA faces even more
severe personnel constraints in dealing with
conformity. FTA staff do contribute to
discussion of conformity questions - especially
in areas like Chicago, New York, or San
Francisco, that have major transit networks
and spend substantial proportions of their
federal funds on this purpose. In the typical
case covered by this study, though, FTA
regional offices sign-off on conformity
determinations, usually deferring to FHWA's
more in-depth review of the issues. The new
metropolitan offices that DOT is currently
opening in some major cities, which will have
both FHWA and FTA staff, may make it
possible in the future for FTA to be more
deeply involved.
Stakeholder Participation in
Conformity
The conformity regulations require both
that the public have opportunity to comment
on conformity analyses before the determina-
tion is made and that MPOs fulfill the require-
ments of the DOT metropolitan planning
regulations, which more generally mandate
public participation in transportation planning.
Using these paths of access, environmental
advocacy groups have been the most active
nongovernmental stakeholders in conformity,
playing key roles in about one third of the 15
study sites and a more limited role in most
others. Business associations are the only
other stakeholder group active in conformity -
and then only in a few nonattainment areas.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
65
Environmental Advocates
Environmental advocacy groups have been
significant conformity participants in a number
of the 15 study sites. In several areas, they
have pressed MPOs hard to upgrade
transportation modeling practices, monitored
(and sometimes challenged) the results of con-
formity analyses, and used conformity dis-
cussions as a forum to advocate alternative
regional transportation and land use policies.
In some areas, they have become well-integ-
rated participants (as official members or reg-
ular observers) in the MPO technical com-
mittees that structure and review the area's
conformity practices, sharing in the informal
discussion and information exchange; in
others, they have gained less intimate, more
formal access through public participation
procedures. Wide disparities exist among ar-
eas, however, in the resources and expertise
that environmental advocates can mobilize
(and choose to use) to influence the con-
formity process.
In several study sites, described briefly ear-
lier in this chapter, environmental advocates
have played prominent roles in the
development of conformity practices. In the
San Francisco Bay area, for example, the Sier-
ra Club Legal Defense Fund, in alliance with
other groups, successfully brought suit against
the Metropolitan Transportation Council, the
area's MPO, challenging the adequacy of its
transportation demand modeling procedures to
forecast the air quality effects of transportation
proj ects.18 Initiated before the CAAA of 1990
was passed but not fully resolved until several
years after, the debate and resolution of the
MTC suit helped shape Congressional action
and the 1993 federal conformity regulations.
Subsequently, the Sierra Club (not the in-
dependent Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund)
has continued to provide support for a loose
coalition of San Francisco area
environmentalists who have pressed the MPO
to accord greater attention to transportation
plans based on tighter land use regulation.
Another example is Denver, where a co-
alition of local environmental groups - which
also has strong ties to the Environmental
Defense Fund (EDF) and other national
environmental advocacy organizations - has
been extremely active. This coalition has
closely monitored DRCOG's conformity
practices, lobbied for modeling improvements,
participated energetically in discussions about
transportation priorities (including pressing for
action on transit proposals), helped secure
commitments during the interim conformity
period for environmental mitigation of the E-
470 toll road project in anticipation of possible
future conformity difficulties, and fought hard
(but ultimately unsuccessfully) to prevent
changes in the area's PM10 emission budget.
In Chicago, a coalition of local environ-
mental groups, aided by technical experts af-
filiated with EDF, effectively pressed the Chi-
cago Area Transportation Study (CATS) to
institute maj or changes in its transportation de-
mand modeling practices. With less success,
these groups have sought changes in the area's
18
See Garrett and Wachs, Transportation Planning
on Trial: The Clean Air Act and Travel Forecasting.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
66
transportation policy priorities. In Baltimore,
the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and EDF
raised serious questions during the interim
conformity period about the adequacy of MPO
modeling practices, which helped spur
significant upgrading. Also during the interim
conformity period, several environmental
groups in North Carolina (including the Sierra
Club, the Conservation Council of North
Carolina, and EDF) negotiated with state
agencies to include all transportation projects,
whether or not federally funded, in the
conformity analysis; they also pressed the state
to agree that the state would perform NOx
conformity tests, whether or not the federal
conformity regulations required this. In
northern New Jersey, advocacy groups affili-
ated with the Tri-State Transportation Cam-
paign, supported by staff from the Rutgers En-
vironmental Law Center, have actively par-
ticipated in area transportation planning. They
began pushing for technical upgrading of
transportation modeling during the interim
conformity period, and sought public access to
conformity consultations. In Atlanta, the
Georgia Conservancy, Citizens for Transpor-
tation Alternatives, and EDF have been active
participants in the conformity-related debate
about transportation priorities, particularly
during controversy about the area's proposed
interim TIP in late 1997 and early 1998. In
New York, a key national-level Environmental
Defense Fund operative has been an active
technical participant in NYMTC's efforts to
develop transportation modeling capacity to
comply with the conformity regulations.
These examples indicate that environ-
mental stakeholders have used the conformity
process to influence transportation planning
practices and participate in public debate about
transportation investments and policies. But
not every study site has advocacy groups cap-
able of effective participation. To track con-
formity well is time-intensive and requires
significant technical skills. In each of the cases
above, advocacy groups have (1) deployed
paid, professional staff to work persistently on
transportation and conformity issues and (2)
have had in-house technical expertise on air
quality and transportation modeling or have
gained access to such expertise through
alliances with national environmental groups
or academic specialists. To participate
effectively, environmental advocates have had
to make efforts that, in many respects, parallel
the involvement of personnel from the core
public agencies. They study federal
regulations and practices; attend numerous
MPO committee meetings typically held during
regular working hours; scrutinize voluminous
planning documents; seek information and
maintain contacts with activists in other
nonattainment areas; discuss the issues in-
formally with local agency staff members, sim-
ultaneously building working relationships; and
prepare for and participate in public hearings.
In a major metropolitan area, such activities
may approximate the time demands of a full-
time job. These tasks are also technically
demanding. To review conformity practices
thoughtfully and make credible critiques where
warranted, environmental advocates must have
either a working knowledge of transportation
and emissions modeling or advisers with these
skills. They also need solid working
knowledge of the issues, practices, and
procedures of both transportation planning and
air quality planning and regulation, and must
develop an understanding of how these

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
67
processes fit together. To the extent that these
groups have credibility as litigators and skill in
attracting press attention, they also enhance
their influence. Environmental advocacy
groups have been forceful players in
conformity when they have people with the
time and technical skills to be productive in
these activities.
While advocates in the San Francisco Bay
area, Denver, Chicago, New Jersey, Atlanta,
and New York have been able to participate
actively in conformity, groups in other areas
frequently lack sufficient personnel and tech-
nical expertise to do so. In these situations,
environmental activists typically feel "out-
gunned" by staff from the public agencies in-
volved in conformity. In Houston, for ex-
ample, one or two Sierra Club volunteers
joined by a few other activists, each with unre-
lated full-time jobs and none with professional
training in transportation planning, have
sought to monitor the full-range of transpor-
tation policy issues, including (but not limited
to) conformity. Similarly, in Salt Lake City, a
small cadre of part-time Sierra Club volunteers
has monitored transportation issues, including
conformity. In North Carolina, because the
Sierra Club's volunteer transportation activists
are located in Raleigh, they have not been able
to monitor events in Charlotte closely;
however, they have gotten some part-time
technical advice from a University of North
Carolina graduate student in planning. Lack of
resources puts such groups at a considerable
disadvantage in the conformity process. They
have difficulty staying abreast of planning and
policy development because they cannot
prepare for or attend all relevant meetings, and
they sometimes believe they get insufficient
notice or are excluded. Even when they
actively question analyses and policies, they
often feel uncertain whether they are reaching
the key technical issues of conformity.
Although both adequate staffing and ac-
cess to technical expertise appear to be neces-
sary conditions for effective participation in
conformity, these are not sufficient conditions.
In several study sites, strong environmental
groups that have focused on transportation
issues more generally have strategically chosen
not to become actively involved in the
conformity process. In Portland, for example,
1000 Friends of Oregon has long had a strong,
influential voice in land use, development, and
transportation policy making. It has been a
major proponent and sponsor of the LUTRAQ
project (land use, transportation, air quality),
which has studied and advocated new strat-
egies to encourage compact urban
development, featuring enhanced transit
service to reduce auto dependence without
compromising mobility. Although deeply en-
meshed in the policy arena, 1000 Friends has
chosen not to participate in the conformity
process beyond keeping generally informed.
This has largely been a choice about how best
to use its limited staff resources, made in the
context of generally close working
relationships with both the MPO and the air
agency as well as a belief that the organization
can weigh in if a particular issue warrants
attention.
In Boston and elsewhere in New England,
the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), a
politically astute policy advocate with strong
litigation capabilities, has been an energetic
force in debates about the environmental
impacts of transportation. In the late 1980s,
it was the key advocate for a multi-billion

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
68
dollar agenda of air quality mitigation
measures, mainly transit proj ects, connected to
the huge Central Artery/Tunnel highway
proj ect. It was also an active participant in the
stakeholder task force formed by the
Massachusetts Department of Environmental
Protection to develop policies to meet the
nonattainment area's CAAA obligations.
Early in the implementation of conformity,
CLF filed unsuccessful lawsuits in Connecticut
and Rhode Island alleging noncompliance with
regulatory mandates. It has not litigated in
Massachusetts, however, nor has it gotten
actively involved in conformity in the Boston
area as a participant in ongoing discussions
through the transportation planning process.
CLF reports that it is devoting less effort in
transportation to such activities and more to
work with grassroots community groups on
specific projects. It has found the air quality
focus of conformity insufficiently broad to ac-
commodate CLF's larger agenda of concerns
about transportation's impact on urban life. It
also has come to regard conformity as a dif-
ficult tool to use in influencing transportation
choices because conformity analysis occurs at
the conclusion of the planning process, when
fully formed project proposals are ready for
inclusion in plans or TIPs.
In the 1980s, the Tucson-based Arizona
Center for Law in the Public Interest (ACLPI),
won litigation that compelled EPA to bring
transportation policy in Phoenix directly under
federal air quality regulation. While
continuing actively to monitor and litigate air
quality issues in Phoenix, ACLPI has chosen
not to get deeply involved in conformity. It
has been unwilling to commit staff to
participate regularly in planning meetings; feels
that its distinctive competence is in law, not
technical transportation analysis; and sees few
"litigation hooks" in challenging conformity
determinations, given the courts' inclination to
give broad deference to agency judgments on
technical matters so long as procedural
requirements are upheld.
Business Associations
Business groups have been active in con-
formity in only a few of the 15 study sites.
The Greater Atlanta Chamber of Commerce
has followed transportation planning issues
closely and, recognizing the potential impor-
tance of the conformity process for regional
development, has argued for policies to re-
strain growth in automobile use. In other are-
as, the business community has gotten in-
volved primarily when inability to conform a
transportation plan or program has threatened
the flow of federal funds to the region. In Den-
ver, for example, business representatives sit
on the transportation policy committee of the
MPO and the governing board of the regional
air agency and thus contributed to debate
about Denver's PM10 conformity problems; but
Denver's organized business community was
not a key participant. At about the same time,
however, business people were involved in a
task force advising Governor Romer, which
helped push the area forward on transit plans.
In Charlotte, at the end of the study period,
business voices were heard as conformity
stalled the transportation planning process. In
Houston, the business community, closely
engaged by Clean Air Act issues more
generally, has kept abreast of conformity
issues as well, but they have not gotten deeply
involved. Other than these instances, business

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
69
groups do not appear to track or participate in
conformity to a significant degree, although
they may be actively involved in transportation
policy more generally.
The Broader Visibility of Con-
formity
The architects of conformity expected that
it would improve the planning process both by
requiring active dialogue among the agencies
and stakeholders and by bringing sharper
analytic tools and better information about
transportation impacts on air quality to bear on
transportation policy making and investment
decisions. Some thought, moreover, that con-
formity could have wider impact by raising the
public profile of transportation and air quality
issues, educating the public, and increasing the
likelihood that senior policy and elected offi-
cials would feel compelled to address these
issues.
Engaging Policy Makers
At least up to the conclusion of the study
period - January 1998 - conformity has not
generally been effective in focusing the at-
tention of high level appointed policy makers
and elected officials on the issues of trans-
portation and air quality. The complex and
highly technical nature of the conformity pro-
cess has been a barrier to expanding parti-
cipation in the planning arena beyond the core
group of planning and policy officials who deal
with it on a regular basis, except if major
difficulties arise in fulfilling the conformity
requirements.
Regional Policy Officials. At the
regional level, this is particularly the case in
study sites where the MPO is a single-purpose
transportation agency. Because the scope of
responsibility and expertise of these MPOs is
more narrowly based, they are less likely than
the multi-purpose regional councils to attract
active participation from the region's key
elected officials and general managers
(although a few such officials who are par-
ticularly interested in transportation may serve
on the policy boards of these agencies). City
and county managers, mayors of major com-
munities, and other senior elected officials tend
to allocate more time to regional institutions
that have wide-ranging agendas and regularly
deal with politically visible issues.
The active involvement of high-level of-
ficials in MPO affairs, whether or not they are
routinely involved in conformity, seems to
make a difference if conformity problems arise.
Although it does not guarantee that the prob-
lem can be readily solved, key decision makers
are more likely to focus on the problem when
they are directly connected to the MPO and
have at least rough familiarity with the issues
(e.g., in Denver and Atlanta) than when these
individuals are more distant institutionally and
substantively (as in New York City and
Charlotte). They can become important
participants when solutions must be worked
out with other regional and state agencies, as
well as with FHWA and EPA. Alternatively,
if such officials have not been exposed to
conformity through participation in MPO
affairs, they are likely to learn about con-
formity difficulties only after area agencies
have gone through lengthy scrutiny of mod-
eling results. The amount of time available

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
70
before a lapse occurs has then typically shrunk,
and conformity's technical complexity creates
a steep learning curve that makes it difficult to
appreciate the issues and potential solutions
rapidly.
GOVERNORS. What applies to local public
managers and elected officials is true for state-
level officials as well. Conformity normally
flies below the radar of governors and state
legislatures. The study sites provide few
examples of involvement by these elected
officials in conformity issues. The typical case
is handled routinely, mainly by the MPO,
which is not directly under state government
supervision.
Even when conformity difficulties arise,
governors' offices generally remain at a dis-
tance. Generalist gubernatorial staffs expect
the agencies concerned to "take care of' such
matters; so long as the agencies are doing so,
they have little inclination to become involved.
If there are conformity disputes between the
state agencies, governors do have authority
under the 1993 conformity regulations to
resolve them. In practice, however, neither
the state DOT nor the air agency has
motivation to let disputes escalate to the
governor's office (although they may let the
governor or his staff know that difficulties
exist). Senior decision makers on both sides
prefer to work out the issues themselves so
they do not lose control of the outcome.
Moreover, so long as the issues are seen as
primarily "technical" - e.g., concerning
modeling assumptions/practices or out-year
forecasts - governors' offices are unlikely to
feel well equipped to resolve them.
If it seems necessary to make significant
"policy" changes in order to conform a plan or
TIP - e.g., altering an emissions budget,
changing the control measures in a SIP, or
making significant changes in a transportation
plan - governors' offices are more likely to
stay informed about the issue but not ne-
cessarily to become directly involved. Gov-
ernors want to choose the situations in which
they either take stands on controversial issues
or bring their administrations into conflict with
federal agencies.
Even when prolonged conformity diffi-
culties have caused a lapse in federal transpor-
tation funding, therefore, governor's offices
have not necessarily gotten deeply involved in
finding solutions. That was true in Colorado,
where Governor Romer was not directly
involved in Denver's difficulties in 1994-95,19
and in Georgia, where Governor Miller had
not, as of early 1998, played a major role in
responding to Atlanta's conformity problems.
When Charlotte's conformity difficulties finally
threatened a road building project with strong
political backing, however, North Carolina
Governor Hunt visibly intervened, directing his
department heads to become more actively
involved in working out a solution. In
Maryland, moreover, Governor Glendening
vetoed a bill that would have limited I/M and
could have caused conformity problems in
Baltimore, although conformity was not the
sole focus of this decision.
State Legislators. This study has
revealed only one situation in the 15 research
19Although he did not play a major role in
resolving Denver's conformity problems, Governor
Romer has been actively involved in broader issues of
transportation and air quality policy making in Col-
orado.

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
71
sites in which state legislatures or individual
legislators have significantly participated in
conformity matters. Indeed, it appears from
interviews with state and MPO officials and
advocacy group staff members that few legis-
lators have much awareness of conformity
(although legislative action on issues like in-
spection and maintenance in Maryland some-
times had actual or potential consequences for
conformity deliberations). The exception to
this pattern - controversy in Colorado in
1994-95 over Denver's PM10 emission budget
- is a significant one, however. Unable to
demonstrate conformity, the Denver MPO
proposed - and the regional air agency sup-
ported - raising the emission budget for down-
town Denver to a level within federal
standards but higher than had previously been
allowed by the Denver PM10 SIP. This
proposal, bitterly contested by environmental
advocacy groups and the city governments of
Denver and Boulder, was approved by the
state air agency for only a three-year period.
Proponents feared this would lead to con-
formity difficulties as soon as it expired, even
though it resolved problems in the short run.
Therefore, proponents took their case to the
Colorado legislature (which had previously
created procedures for legislative review of
State Implementation Plans), with the effect
that the increased emission budget was subj ect
to time limits during the period covered by the
SIP.
Public Visibility
Except in the three areas - Atlanta, Char-
lotte, and Denver - that have experienced pro-
tracted difficulties with conformity or lapses in
federal funding, conformity has had an ex-
tremely limited public profile in most of the 15
study sites. This limited visibility is
problematic to the extent that conformity is
intended to serve as a vehicle for educating
citizens about the connections and potential
policy tradeoffs between transportation and air
quality.
Public Participation. The core public
agencies have had limited success in drawing
attention to conformity. To the extent they
have tried to do so, they have relied primarily
on organizing and formally announcing public
meetings, placing notices in their newsletters,
and - increasingly - posting notices and
technical documents on MPO websites.
Consequently, very few unaffiliated citizens
have availed themselves of opportunities for
involvement, even when MPOs and others
have exerted considerable effort to secure
participation. In northern New Jersey, for
example, NJTPA, urged on by environ-
mentalists, made serious efforts in the early
years of conformity to present issues for dis-
cussion in public meetings. In the first year,
most of the several dozen participants repre-
sented local governments or advocacy groups,
not the general public; and attendance
dwindled in subsequent years. Chicago was
the only study area that reported regular high
attendance at its forums to elicit public
comments on transportation plans and pro-
grams. This was accomplished by an intensive
outreach campaign by CATS, independently
reinforced and extended by advocacy groups.
Media Coverage, in most of the study
sites, there is scant media coverage of the
transportation planning process in general and
conformity in particular. Unless controversy
arises, conformity is an inherently difficult sub-

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Chapter 4: Institutional Roles in the Transportation Conformity Process
72
ject for newspapers, let alone television or
radio, to report. Its highly technical nature,
revolving around complex regulatory
requirements and arcane modeling procedures,
diminishes its accessibility to both generalist
reporters and the public. Because it abstractly
analyzes aggregate regional emissions, con-
formity usually provides no concrete focus on
either an event or specific projects that might
command the public's interest and attention.
What is problematic for newspapers is more so
for the electronic media. Conformity is not a
subject that can be conveyed by soundbite
journalism.
Denver, however, is an exception to this
general pattern. The Denver newspapers and
other media have given extensive coverage to
transportation and air quality issues, for ex-
ample the E-470 project and transit planning.
Conformity has gotten substantial attention
too, primarily but not exclusively during the
1994-95 lapse in federal funding and debate
about the PM10 emissions budget. The news-
papers, in particular, not only followed the
day-to-day story line but also periodically pub-
lished long articles that provided contextual
background. Several factors seem to account
for this comparatively high public profile.
First, the transportation-air quality nexus is not
a new issue for Denver citizens. Prominent
political leaders and organizations have fre-
quently drawn attention to this relationship for
more than a decade. Air quality concerns,
symbolized by Denver's notorious "brown
cloud," have been publicly connected to
transportation at least since the Department of
Public Health, CDOT, and business groups
conducted a Better Air Campaign in the
1980s. There has also been widespread debate
about the benefits and threats of the area's
rapid population growth, burgeoning physical
development, and increasing traffic congestion.
Reporters developed expertise on this set of
issues. More recently, a number of elected
officials in the Denver area, particularly from
Denver and Boulder, have actively sought to
stimulate press and public attention to
transportation and air quality issues. They
spoke out forcefully on the PM10 emission
budget controversy. Similarly, the area's
media-savvy environmental groups have effec-
tively sought public attention for these issues
through public statements, testimony at public
meetings, and informal contacts with the news
media. These broader concerns about trans-
portation and air quality helped frame public
attention to the area's conformity problems.
The realistic possibility of an interruption
of federal transportation funding also height-
ened media attention in other locations. Even
though the newspapers in Atlanta and Char-
lotte had given less prior media attention to
transportation and air quality issues than in
Denver, coverage notably increased in each
area when the threat of a conformity lapse pro-
vided a clearcut news "hook." As the dif-
ficulties in these areas stretched out over many
months, the newspapers not only gave cov-
erage to immediate incidents but also began to
provide more general background on the
issues. Reporters sought out comments from
government and advocacy group spokes-
persons, increasing their opportunities to
provide facts and interpret the situation. At
the end of the study period in January 1998,
with the Atlanta and Charlotte conformity
lapses in effect, events had not proceeded far
enough to make judgments about how much
attention the general public would give to
conformity - and how this would affect
resolution of the issues.

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on
Transportation and Air Quality Plans
Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the
Transportation Conformity Regulations
in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
A Report to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Department of Transportation
Publication Number
EPA420-R-99-011

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Chapter 5
Conformity Effects on Transportation and
Air Quality Plans
The conformity regulations anticipated
four strategies by which transportation and air
quality plans can be influenced, either early in
the planning process to ensure that conformity
will be passed or later to correct problems that
have occurred. Areas may:
craft transportation plans/programs to
take account of air quality impacts in
selecting project locations and align-
ments and to include projects with air
quality benefits,
adjust transportation plans/programs
by changing project design or timing
or by removing projects that generate
excess emissions,
alter SIP emission budgets by trading
with stationary and/or area sources or
by recalculating mobile source budgets
with updated assumptions,
add control measures to the SIP (e.g.,
TCMs or mobile source technology
measures like inspection and
maintenance or reformulated gasoline)
to free up room in the budget for VMT
growth.
This chapter discusses the extent to which
study sites have used these options to deal
with conformity difficulties, analyzes the bar-
riers to their use, and explores the alternate
strategies areas have employed to solve
conformity problems.
Effects of Conformity on Trans-
portation Plans and Programs
Prior to the CAAA of 1990 and ISTEA,
state DOTs and MPOs tended to view trans-
portation primarily through the lens of per-
sonal mobility and/or area economic devel-
opment goals. This often resulted in a trans-
portation system that supported the increasing
movement of people and goods, while mini-
mizing congestion, through provision of new
roads and, to a lesser degree, transit. The
CAAA and ISTEA tried to force a sea change
in this process by making transportation plan-
ners also focus on air quality as a goal. To
achieve this goal, while continuing to provide
the mobility necessary to maintain economic
objectives as well, planners would have to
examine alternatives to highway capacity and
the use of single-occupant vehicles.
Although clearly transportation planners
have become much more aware of and ac-
countable for the impacts of transportation on
air quality, it is too early to draw conclusions
about the full impact of these laws - and par-
ticularly the conformity requirement - on
metropolitan transportation systems. As will
be described below, conformity has had signif-
icant substantive impacts in a few of the 15
study sites, particularly those that are growing
rapidly in population and aggregate amounts
of personal travel; in others, major changes in
transportation plans/programs in response to
air quality obj ectives did not materialize during

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
74
the study period.
Firm conclusions about conformity impacts
on transportation plans/programs are pre-
mature because of the dynamics of trans-
portation planning and project development.
The conformity regulations presume that air
quality considerations will be taken into ac-
count from early project planning through de-
velopment of an area's overall transportation
plan/program. At the final adoption stage, if
the conformity tests cannot be passed, the
transportation plan/program can be altered to
solve the problem by dropping, scaling back,
or exploring alternatives to major capacity
expansion projects, or by adding air quality
beneficial projects.
Because this study covers only the initial
four years of implementing the 1993 conform-
ity rule, however, it could not gauge
conformity's ultimate impacts. The regula-
tions were not in effect during the formative
years for many of the proj ects in transportation
plans/programs that were subject to
conformity during the study. This formative
period preceded enactment of the CAAA in
1990 and ISTEA in 1991, as well as the pro-
mulgation of the conformity regulations in
1993. Projects thus in the pipeline for years
were not conceived in or evaluated by the
processes established through the CAAA and
ISTEA. Some of these projects were grand-
fathered before the 1993 regulations took ef-
fect, and others were included in transpor-
tation plans/programs during early implemen-
tation of the 1993 regulations. In effect, the
conformity regulations were applied to the
final stages of planning. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the effects of conformity have
been felt more clearly in the planning process
discussed in Chapter 4 than in the substance of
the plans themselves. Nonetheless, the patterns
that can be discerned from the study are worth
noting.
Effects on Highway Projects
Interim Conformity. During the period
in 1991 -1993 that the interim conformity guid-
ance was in effect, although there was con-
siderable initial uncertainty about what this
unfamiliar procedure entailed and how it had
to be documented, most MPOs experienced
relatively little difficulty demonstrating
conformity against this standard. In many re-
gions, plans and TIPs included traffic flow im-
provements and other system management
measures that promised to reduce congestion,
increase speeds, and thus reduce emissions of
VOCs and CO.
In some study sites (e.g., New York City,
northern New Jersey, Chicago, and Bal-
timore), as well as in national forums, envir-
onmental advocacy groups disputed the val-
idity of these projections, arguing that because
transportation demand models lacked feedback
loops to show the impacts of highway capacity
enhancements on travel behavior, the true
emission impacts of these infrastructure
investments were not being identified. They
also pointed out other flaws in the analytic
tools used by most MPOs - e.g., that models
lacked sufficient geographic detail to capture
the impact of many relatively small projects on
regional emissions.1
'See Arnold M. Howitt, Joshua P. Anderson, and
Alan A. Altshuler, "The New Politics of Clean Air and
Transportation" (Cambridge, MA: Kennedy School of
Government, Harvard University, November 1994),

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
75
At the national level, such critiques helped
shape the content of the 1993 conformity
regulations. Other than encouraging some
MPOs to begin adding to their analytic staffs,
however, they had only minor impacts on the
areas under study. In Baltimore, for example,
consideration of the challenge to MPO
modeling practices jointly raised by the
Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Envir-
onmental Defense Fund merely temporarily
delayed the area's conformity determination.
The only major conformity effect found in
the study sites during this period resulted not
because area transportation agencies had dif-
ficulty satisfying the requirements of the in-
terim conformity guidance, but because they
anticipated a more stringent final federal rule.
In Denver, environmental advocacy groups
strongly criticized a non-federal project
proposed by a public toll authority - the E-470
segment of a circumferential roadway. The
advocacy groups contended it would open
new land to development, creating more PM10
emissions than planners were forecasting.
Other transportation agencies sought
assurances that E-470 would not jeopardize
the area's ability to demonstrate conformity in
the future. Project sponsors eventually agreed
to certain specific mitigation measures and
created an escrow fund to finance additional
mitigation, if that proved necessary.
The 1993 Conformity Regulations.
Table 5-1 shows recent population and VMT
pp. 24-25. Also available under the same title
(Washington, DC: US Department of Transportation,
FHWA-PD-97-010 and DOT-VNTSC-FHWA-97-5,
February 1997), pp. 27-28.
growth data for the 15 study sites, dividing
them into "high" and "low" growth areas.
Conformity's impacts on highway projects
have been felt primarily in a number of the
high growth areas - Atlanta, Charlotte, Den-
ver, Houston, Salt Lake City - which found
passing conformity's emission budget tests
most problematic during the study period.
Of the other high growth areas, Phoenix
averted conformity difficulties during the study
period by aggressively adopting enhanced
inspection and maintenance and fuel controls
to reduce mobile source pollution but may
encounter conformity problems in the future
given its growth rate and road building plans.
By the end of the study period, Phoenix had
been bumped up to higher classifications for
ozone, CO, and PM10. Portland, which has far
less serious ozone nonattainment problems
than the other high growth areas, has had the
nation's most stringent growth management
regulations in place since the early 1970s and,
because it has chosen to invest in rail transit,
has comparatively modest highway capacity
expansion plans.
Except for Portland, the high growth areas
in the study tend to have substantial ongoing
land development and significantly rising levels
of VMT (which has often proved higher than
anticipated at the beginning of the study
period). As a consequence, they typically have
major highway capacity expansion plans.
These areas generally have transit systems with
much smaller mode shares than the typical low
growth area in the study - and their population
and economic growth is primarily occurring at
the peripheries of the metropolitan area where

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Table 5-1
POPULATION AND VMT GROWTH RATES,
BY HIGHER- AND LOWER-GROWTH STUDY SITES

Percent
Annual
Population
Growth ('90-
'95)
Percent
Annual
VMT
Growth ('90-
'95 or '90-
'96)
Daily
VMT Per
Capita
('95 or
'96 )b
Higher-Growth Areas
Atlanta
2.7%
4.4%
34.6
Phoenix
2.7%
2.8%
22.2
Denver
2.4%
4.5%
24.4
Salt Lake City
2.3%
4.3%
25.3
Houston
2.2%
3.2%
25.4
Charlotte
2.1%
4.9%
24.2
Portland
2.1%
1.9%
17.2
Lower-Growth Areas
San Francisco
0.9%
1.8%
19.6
Chicago
0.8%
2.0%
18.4
Baltimore
0.7%
2.3%
23.0
No. New Jersey
0.5%
0.6%a
24.7
Milwaukee
0.5%
1.7%
20.2
Boston
0.3%
1.2%
12.2
New York
0.1%
-0.2%c
11.5
Philadelphia
0.0%
1.4%
17.3
a 1990-1999 rate
b1996 per capita rates calculated using 1995 population data.
cNYMTC does not regard negative VMT growth in this period
as indicative of future trends.
The sources of data for this table are reported
in Appendix IV.
76

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
77
providing high quality transit service is prob-
lematic. On the air quality side, these areas,
with the exception of Houston, have less sev-
ere ozone problems than the low growth areas
in the study. Thus, because they have earlier
attainment deadlines, they must show required
reductions, net of VMT growth, more rapidly
than the low growth areas.
Prior to promulgation of the 1993 con-
formity regulations and in the early phases of
implementation, the looming possibility of
conformity problems encouraged some of
these areas to push as many highway projects
as possible through the NEPA process to
grandfather them. Thus, if and when a lapse
occurred, they would be able to continue to
build for at least two or three years before
feeling the full sting of interrupted highway
funding. Salt Lake City adopted this strategy
in anticipation of a conformity lapse in 1994.
In Charlotte, although no unusual effort was
made to grandfather projects, the area was
able to continue under a conformity lapse dur-
ing all of 1997 with only three projects
delayed.
When conformity problems did develop,
Denver and Salt Lake City, as will be dis-
cussed in the air planning section of this chap-
ter, were able to resolve their conformity prob-
lems by altering their air plans or emission
budgets and therefore did not have to make
significant changes in their transportation
plans. In Houston, however, conformity prob-
lems in 1994 led to reconfiguration of the
Grand Parkway, a planned third circumfer-
ential expressway, which was scaled back in
lanes and capacity.2 In Charlotte, planners and
policy officials, unable to avert a conformity
lapse in early 1997, were struggling to find
ways of solving the problem, with no clear
path to resolution apparent.
Atlanta has most severely felt the impact of
conformity on highway planning. In the early
days of conformity implementation, the nor-
thern arc of the Outer Loop was stopped from
moving into the TIP, and many local observers
now doubt it will ever be built. Later,
anticipating a conformity lapse at the end of
1997, Atlanta rushed to complete NEPA
reviews of more than 100 projects (some of
which were maj or highway expansion proj ects)
so they could be grandfathered. Because
FHWA had not completed NEPA review or
screened them out as ineligible by the end of
1997, more than 60 proj ects were not included
in the interim transportation improvement pro-
gram (ITIP) proposed before the lapse.
Amidst outcries from environmental groups,
EPA raised objections to six of the projects
that did get into the proposed ITIP. It argued
that, although the projects came from a
previously conforming plan, that plan had been
based on outdated assumptions. Because
these projects had the potential to increase
SOV capacity and thus emissions, EPA felt
they should not be allowed during the lapse.
FHWA disagreed with this position, which set
off an interagency dispute that was ultimately
resolved in consultation with the White House
Council on Environmental Quality. An
agreement was brokered among the regional
2At the end of the study period, with its NOx wai-
ver expired, Houston was anticipating further conform-
ity problems to develop - with as yet unknown impacts
on its transportation plans.

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
78
administrators of EPA, FTA and FHWA in
which two of the five (including Georgia SR
400) were limited to design and other
preparation work until a conforming plan can
be developed. Another project was removed
from the ITIP by the MPO.
By contrast, implementation of the con-
formity rule has had far less impact on trans-
portation plans/programs in the older, rela-
tively low growth metropolitan areas in the
study - Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Bos-
ton, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, northern New
Jersey, and San Francisco. So far, these areas
have generally not experienced significant
difficulty passing conformity emissions tests
(with the exception, in some cases, of the
build/no build test). Although these areas
typically have more serious pollution prob-
lems, they generally have mature highway in-
frastructure networks, well established transit
systems, and relatively slow VMT growth. As
a result, many projects in their transportation
plans/programs have neutral or positive air
quality benefits. These include reconstruction
and maintenance of the roadway system and
most investments in transit. In these areas,
projects that expand road capacity are often
traffic flow improvements that relieve con-
gestion but do not increase speeds enough to
adversely affect NOx emissions. Due to slow
growth rates, emissions from increased VMT
are more than offset by fleet turnover and the
technology-based mobile source measures
(such as enhanced I/M and RFG) required by
the CAAA in serious and severe ozone areas.
Thus, conformity has not required major
adaptations of transportation plans in these
areas because there are few major capacity
expansions on the table, the mix of projects
already includes many with air quality benefits,
and technology measures are being adopted in
the SIP. In the absence of attainment
demonstrations for these areas, the emissions
budgets that they must meet come from 15%
VOC reduction SIPs and subsequent RFP
SIPs. Moreover, at the end of the study
period, some had not yet determined
conformity against 1999 RFP levels. Because
a number of these areas have relatively severe
pollution problems, some may develop future
conformity difficulties as attainment
demonstrations are developed - and as the
new ozone and particulate standards are
implemented.
Institutional and Political Factors
in Revising Transportation Plans and
PROGRAMS. How Charlotte and Atlanta will
resolve their lapse problems is not clear at this
writing. While it is possible that major chan-
ges will be required in their transportation
plans, that outcome is by no means certain.
What these situations and other less dramatic
cases in the study suggest, however, is how
difficult institutionally and politically it is for
MPOs and state DOTs to make such changes.
As noted above, the conformity regulations
presume that at the final adoption stage, if the
conformity tests cannot be passed, the
transportation plan/program can be altered to
solve the problem by dropping, scaling back,
or exploring alternatives to major capacity ex-
pansion proj ects, or by adding air quality bene-
ficial projects. This view oversimplifies the
transportation planning process, implying a
greater degree of centralized decision making
- both temporal and institutional - than
actually exists. It does not fully take into

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
79
account the way in which policy and political
consensus on the projects that comprise trans-
portation plans is built over a long period of
time, through negotiation and bargaining
among many and diverse interests inside and
outside of government.
MPOs are not autonomous, hierarchical,
executive-driven entities that crisply make and
carry out decisions. They are representative
bodies whose voting members (typically
elected officials or appointed representatives
of local governments) are episodically involved
and have primary interests in and loyalties to
other institutions and/or the communities they
represent. True "regional" interests are few.
Even major projects like turnpikes or
international airports have differential sub-
regional impacts which divide decision makers;
and these projects are always competitive with
- and frequently subordinate to - more
narrowly focused, more geographically-
parochial concerns.
Initial backing to place a project in a re-
gional transportation plan usually comes from
individual localities or major transportation
operating agencies that wish to address a
specific local need or problem, frequently
economic or land development. In larger met-
ropolitan areas, notably New York and
Chicago, there are formal sub-regional pro-
cesses for developing plans and allocating
funds; in a number of other areas (e.g., San
Francisco and Atlanta) de facto sub-regional
processes exist. Broader support is then built
at the regional and state levels as projects
move through the MPO and DOT selection
processes. Along the way, popular support, as
well as that of developers and myriad other
interests that will benefit from the project
amass behind project plans. The full process
typically takes years, sometimes decades for
major projects. Additionally, there are often
functional or political inter-relationships
among proj ects that make it difficult to alter or
delete one without affecting others. Thus, be-
cause "project selection" is not the result of a
small group of policy makers acting at a single
decision point, it cannot be easily modified or
reversed. Disaggregating the final package of
projects that appear in a regional
transportation plan or program is politically
complicated and time consuming, as recent
experience in Charlotte and Atlanta clearly
illustrates.
A number of forces are thus typically at
play to keep highway projects from being
changed significantly. Political support for
highway capacity expansion tends to be high.
In many of these areas, suburban interests,
which favor projects that expand highway cap-
acity in their areas over transit or other TCMs,
have a majority on MPO boards. Second,
even if MPO boards are willing to curb
highway expansion, they do not have control
over land use decisions that sometimes drive
transportation decisions. For example, in
Atlanta, the MPO could not stop Gwinnett
County's decision to build the Mall of Georgia
but does have the responsibility to provide
transportation infrastructure to support it.3
Third, some of these areas have developed
modeling results showing that major highway
projects reduce emissions because they relieve
3The MPO board could have voted against the
Mall of Georgia but realized that the project would go
ahead, even without board approval. It therefore de-
cided to support the project on the assumption that the
board would then be in a better position to ask for
some concessions from the developers.

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
80
congestion and offer more direct routes to
motorists' destinations. Such results were
obtained for the outer loop proj ect in Charlotte
in the period prior to that area's conformity
lapse. Finally, air agencies, perceiving a signif-
icant disparity in political influence with
governors and legislatures compared to state
transportation agencies, are sometimes hesitant
to raise strong objections to specific highway
projects.
Given the difficulty of extricating projects
from plans, and the length of time that will
elapse before projects in the pre-ISTEA
pipeline are exhausted, it is not surprising that
major changes in the contents of regional
transportation plans have been few. The ef-
fects of conformity on the contents of trans-
portation plans/programs will not be fully felt
until/unless air quality goals are systematically
considered early in project planning cycles.
There are some indications that this is
starting to occur. In the study sites, it appears
that, as a result of conformity, proposals for
major highway capacity enhancement, while
not precluded, are less likely to move into
preliminary planning phases than they might
have previously if they seem likely to be
"emission budget busters." (Some trans-
portation planners report that new project
ideas are subjected to an air quality "laugh
test.") Those projects that move into the next
stages of transportation planning - e.g.,
generating major investment studies (MIS) -
are likely to get earlier and more intensive
scrutiny for air quality effects than an earlier
generation of projects would have.
Because major highway projects may
threaten financial as well as emissions bud-
gets, moreover, this effect is strongly rein-
forced by the fiscal constraint requirement of
ISTEA. The research reported here cannot
pinpoint the cumulative effects of these two
provisions of the CAAA/ISTEA planning re-
gime in part because it is difficult to judge
what might have happened but has not. Nor
can it separate their respective causal influen-
ces on decisions. But a number of people in-
terviewed in the study believe that together the
emission tests and fi seal constraint requirement
are likely to have a significant long-term
impact on the culture and outcomes of metro-
politan transportation planning.
Effects on Transit, Other TCMs,
and Land Use Planning
As Chapter 2 noted, a number of con-
formity stakeholders, particularly environment-
al advocacy groups, expected that conformity
would promote specific elements of their
transportation policy agendas. Among the
effects they anticipated were increased transit
investments to make service more widely
available and convenient, more widespread use
of transportation demand management
measures to encourage individuals to reduce
their reliance on single-occupant vehicles, and
tighter coordination of land use and
transportation planning to promote devel-
opment patterns that require less travel. Al-
though these results were not specifically pre-
scribed goals of the Clean Air Act's con-
formity provision, nor of the 1993 regulations,
this study has investigated whether conformity
has had an impact on transit, other TCMs, and
land use planning.

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
81
TRANSIT. Expectations that conformity
would increase investments in transit were pri-
marily rooted in the belief that transit projects
would provide significant benefits in the con-
formity emission analysis. It was also thought
that the fiscal constraint requirement would
help assure that transit projects that were
included in transportation plans would secure
sufficient funding to go forward. To gauge the
impact of conformity, therefore, the study
team sought to discover whether and to what
degree forecasted emission benefits have
influenced transit planning and decision
making.
In the 15 study sites, conformity considera-
tions seem to have reinforced - but not deter-
mined - transit policies in two areas; but in
others, transit planning has been much less af-
fected by conformity. Contrary to the cited
expectations, most rapidly growing metropol-
itan areas in the study, including those that
have experienced conformity difficulties, have
not found transit's emission benefits sufficient
grounds to encourage major investments.
However, although conformity has not
provided incentives for expanded transit in
most study sites, the areas that already have
extensive transit networks have found the
emission benefits of continued investment
helpful in demonstrating conformity.
Denver and Portland are the two study
sites in which conformity has, to some degree,
affected transit policy. In Denver, conformity
has provided additional incentives for
developing light rail transit that was already
well along in the planning stages prior to pro-
mulgation of the regulations. Since the area's
PM10 problems, localized in the downtown
area most efficiently served by transit, could be
partially mitigated by light rail, the area's con-
formity difficulties reinforced its intent to go
ahead with this project. The fiscal constraint
requirement, along with prodding by a
coalition of environmental advocates, has also
kept the financial feasibility of proceeding with
transit in the forefront of decision makers'
considerations, although at the conclusion of
the study period the failure of a transit-finance
referendum left doubt about how funds would
be found.
In Portland, conformity has meshed with
and buttressed the area's pioneering growth
management policies, including the use of light
rail transit to encourage compact urban de-
velopment. In the late 1980s and early 1990s,
to counter a state DOT proposal for
construction of the Western Bypass, a subur-
ban circumferential freeway, environmental
and transit advocates sought to make an alter-
native case for extending the area's nascent
light rail network. Led by 1000 Friends of
Oregon, they initiated the LUTRAQ proj ect, in
close cooperation with key regional, state, and
federal agencies. LUTRAQ consultants used
modeling techniques similar to those
subsequently required by the conformity rule
to analyze alternative land use and trans-
portation policies for the Portland metropoli-
tan area. As a result of the LUTRAQ analysis,
1000 Friends proposed that light rail transit,
rather than the freeway, be built in Washington
County, to anchor moderate-density
neighborhood development along the right-of-
way. The analysis showed that this develop-
ment, when supported by transportation
demand management measures, could ac-
commodate the area growth expected over 20
years. In 1992, Oregon DOT made the
LUTRAQ proposal one of the five alternatives

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
82
it included in the Major Investment Study
(MIS) undertaken on the bypass. Meanwhile,
Metro, the Portland MPO, recommended a
LUTRAQ-like development plan in its Region
2040 Growth Concept, an initial update of its
regional plan. When the MIS, issued in 1995,
showed that the LUTRAQ alternative was
equal or superior to the Bypass plan in most
dimensions, ODOT decided to proceed with
less extensive road improvements rather than
the Bypass. The Portland area is proceeding
with a Westside light rail project and moving
to implement other elements of the LUTRAQ
vision.4 While conformity did not generate the
LUTRAQ analysis and the regional decisions
that have flowed from it, state and regional of-
ficials have used the CAAA planning process,
including conformity, to expand and lock in
these policies through the regulatory process.
Some environmental advocates expected
conformity to increase the attractiveness of
transit investments in rapidly growing nonat-
tainment areas with high VMT growth rates,
most of which have relatively limited transit
service. However, in ozone nonattainment ar-
eas like Charlotte, Atlanta, Phoenix, and
Houston - which are characterized by quite
decentralized urban development patterns -
even substantial investments in new transit ser-
vice would produce small changes in transit's
overall mode share and thus make only small
impacts on the projected net growth of re-
gional emissions. Even the 20-year time hor-
izon of conformity is too brief a period to plan
4See Keith Bartholomew, "LUTRAQ to Region
2040: From Citizen Alternative to Official Policy,"
Progress (Washington, D.C.: Surface Transportation
Policy Project, March 1997).
and institute major investments in trans-
portation facilities and services, let alone to
see changes in travel behavior play out. Con-
sequently, planners and policy makers, even in
the face of the conformity lapses in Charlotte
and Atlanta, have not seen transit investments
as a major way of dealing with conformity
pressures.5 Moreover, our interview subjects
report, when viewed strictly as a way of im-
proving air quality, transit projects often
compare poorly in cost-effectiveness to altern-
ative mobile source control measures - such as
enhanced I/M or reformulated gasoline. Tran-
sit may make sense for other reasons, but air
quality alone is not a sufficient motive for large
investments. This effect is intensified by the
preference in many areas for light rail over bus
service, which makes transit even more
expensive relative to the air quality benefits it
can deliver. Except in Denver (where the
geographically concentrated PM10 problem
creates a special case among the study areas),
to the extent that transit is being seriously
considered in high growth areas, it is not
because emission reduction credits weigh
heavily on the decision-making scales. In-
stead, some in the business community see
transit as an economic development stimulus.
The fiscal constraint requirement cuts two
ways, moreover. Transit financing difficulties
potentially create fiscal constraint obstacles to
including major projects in transportation
5In November 1998, however, Charlotte voters did
approve a referendum to establish a sales tax
increment for transit. During the same election cycle,
Georgia gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes made
transit in the Atlanta area a campaign issue.
Subsequently elected, he has proposed expanded
regional transit service.

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
83
plans. Many states have laws that require
them to use gas tax revenues only on roads.
These areas must then raise money for transit
by other means - frequently through sales or
other taxes. Transit funding referenda have
failed in Denver and Phoenix, and Houston has
redirected money from a successful
referendum to other municipal purposes. In
Maryland the legislature passed a 50% farebox
recovery requirement, which has put a damper
on provision of any transit services that cannot
garner half of their operating expenses from
ridership.
While there is scant evidence that conform-
ity has motivated new transit investments, in
study areas that have extensive transit
networks and ridership (e.g., New York,
northern New Jersey, Chicago, Philadelphia,
San Francisco, and Boston), there is no
question that the transit component of the
transportation plan plays a significant role in
each area's conformity analysis. These study
sites spend substantial portions of their trans-
portation funds on capital maintenance, re-
placement, and incremental expansion of tran-
sit facilities and service. When modeled as
part of the regional analysis, such transit pro-
jects generally show air quality benefits that
partially offset emissions from VMT growth or
additional road capacity (or are neutral in air
quality effects). In a few cases, moreover, off-
model analysis of transit projects (e.g., the
purchase of alternative fuel buses in Chicago
and replacement buses in Boston) has helped
areas pass build/no build tests that might
otherwise have proved problematic.
Nonetheless, the individuals interviewed in
these study sites did not regard potential emis-
sion impacts on the conformity analysis as a
significant influence on decision making either
in terms of the transit budget share or the
types of projects supported. The direction of
influence in such cases is from transit to
conformity, not the reverse. Because of strong
local political demand for transit, it appears
that these areas would have spent their money
on transit projects anyway. In some cases,
interview subj ects did note, transit investments
became attractive or jumped higher on area
priority lists because they qualified for funding
under the Congestion Mitigation and Air Qual-
ity (CMAQ) program created by ISTEA to
promote compliance with CAAA
requirements. But this incentive effect was
independent of the conformity requirement and
would have operated were the latter not in
place. In the Chicago and Boston cases
referred to above, for example, area planners
performing the conformity analysis simply
took advantage of bus purchases that had al-
ready been decided.
TCMs. While the conformity regulations
do not compel areas to include TCMs in their
SIPs, conformity does require that TCMs that
have been written into SIPs be implemented in
a timely fashion; and the regulations protect
certain types of TCMs as exempt projects.
These provisions, coupled with the expectation
that TCMs would show emission benefits, led
some to believe that conformity would
increase the adoption of TCMs in
transportation plans/programs.6 Conformity,
however, does not appear to be having this
effect in the study sites. Although many
"The section on "Conformity and Air Quality
Planning" later in this chapter includes a discussion of
the degree to which TCMs have been included in SIPs.

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
84
MPOs in the study have adopted TCMs -
including traffic flow improvements, park-and-
ride lots, and HOV facilities - in transportation
plans/programs, interview subjects do not re-
gard conformity as the main impetus for doing
so.
Only two areas reported adopting a TCM
specifically for conformity purposes. Boston
added a noncontroversial CMAQ project to
the TIP to pass the build/no-build tests in
1995. In Baltimore, where a new TCM re-
solved TIP conformity difficulties triggered in
1995 by the status of the ECO program, the
situation was far more complex politically.
The 1994 Baltimore transportation plan had
assumed implementation of the then man-
datory federal ECO program. But Baltimore
business interests strongly opposed the ECO
mandate out of concern that the program
would put their region at a competitive
disadvantage with the Washington metropol-
itan area, which was not subj ect to ECO. Gov-
ernor Glendening responded to the political
pressure in May 1995 by declaring ECO a
voluntary program, notwithstanding the
federal mandate; and the legislature cut all
Maryland Department of Environment (MDE)
funding for the program.7 When the MPO
staff nonetheless plugged ECO into the con-
formity analysis to offset NOx emissions in
future horizon years, MDE expressed dis-
comfort that a program for which it had no
funding and no implementation plans was used
in the analysis; and the Sierra Club Legal De-
fense Fund (SCLDF) questioned the claim of
full emission credit for a voluntary program.
The MPO therefore proposed a regional
commuter assistance program (RCAP), to be
financed with transportation funds and imple-
mented by the MPO staff in 2005. Because
RCAP claimed minimal emission reduction
credits and did not rely on MDE for staff or
funding, SCLDF and MDE no longer objected
to its use in the conformity analysis. The
RCAP program, not scheduled for
implementation until 2005, has been refined
and supplemented in subsequent conformity
analyses.
In other areas, the availability of CMAQ
funding has probably increased the attractive-
ness of some TCMs relative to other possible
expenditures; and many areas routinely use an
off-model analysis of TCMs to pass the
build/no-build test. Because most show only
modest air quality benefits, however, other
factors have driven their inclusion in area
plans; they have not been programmed spe-
cifically to capture air quality benefits. Indeed,
environmental advocacy groups have argued
against some of these projects (particularly
transportation system management - TSM -
projects intended to use existing infrastructure
more efficiently), even when MPO modeling
shows conformity benefits, on the grounds that
by reducing congestion they will ultimately en-
courage more drivers to use the road. In each
of the study sites, restrictive transportation
demand management measures that might have
large air quality benefits - e.g., various forms
of pricing incentives - are regarded as too
politically volatile to adopt. Only San
Francisco seriously considered - but did not
adopt - such policies during the study period.
7It was not until later in 1995 that Congress passed
legislation making ECO voluntary.
The adoption of the RCAP program in
Baltimore shows that under some circum-

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
85
stances the conformity regulations can give
both external stakeholders and public agencies
policy leverage that they might otherwise lack,
but a commitment to initiate a voluntary
regional program ten years hence is a quite
limited outcome. Conformity incentives,
moreover, did not prove strong enough to
prevent Maryland's elected officials from
defying the federal ECO mandate, even though
it was a TCM written into a SIP, which there-
fore required timely implementation under the
conformity regulations.
Land Use Planning and Regulation.
Neither the CAAA nor the conformity rule re-
quire that areas consider or adopt land use
controls to constrain transportation and thus
mobile source emissions. The conformity rule,
however, does require the use of a network-
based transportation demand model that
relates travel demand to land use patterns, as
well as demographic and employment trends,
transportation infrastructure, system perfor-
mance, and policies. Some proponents of con-
formity hoped that modeling the transpor-
tation/land use links would also lead to consid-
eration of alternative land use scenarios in the
planning process and wider acceptance of land
use regulation as a viable policy option for re-
ducing mobile source emissions.
As described in Chapter 4, this requirement
spurred transportation modeling enhance-
ments, some of which were targeted spe-
cifically at improving MPOs' capacity to
forecast the reciprocal impacts of transporta-
tion and land use and relate these to air qual-
ity. In turn, better information about how land
use patterns, transportation facilities and ser-
vices, and air quality interact over time, has
contributed to regional discussion of alter-
native land use scenarios. In Denver, these is-
sues have gotten substantial public attention.
Existing public concern about the con-
sequences of growth increased in response to
the area's conformity difficulties and the con-
troversy over the PM10 budget. In 1995, new-
ly re-elected Governor Romer kicked-off a
year-long "smart growth" campaign that
brought together a large group of business and
environmental leaders from around the state.
Spurred by this initiative and expanding public
interest in regional growth issues, DRCOGun-
veiled its Metro Vision 2020 plan, which
recommended constraining metropolitan
growth within a 700 square mile area,
protecting open space, and committing to
transportation alternatives that would support
these land use policies. Although DRCOG
lacks policy tools to enforce the plan on local
government land use decision makers, its
transportation policies have sought to promote
growth along the lines proposed in Metro
Vision 2020. In some other areas - e.g.,
Milwaukee and Philadelphia - transportation
infrastructure plans are intended to support
specific land use and development scenarios.
As the Denver example indicates, however,
the impact of conformity on actual land use
decision making is limited by the distribution
of institutional responsibilities and the politics
of land use regulation in the 15 study sites.
Except in Portland, authority for land use reg-
ulation is a prerogative of individual municipal
or county governments, not the state and
regional institutions that largely control
transportation and air quality deci-

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
86
sions.8 In other states, municipal and county govern
ments tend to resist efforts by higher level
governments to regulate their land use au-
thority. Although federal transportation plan-
ning regulations require local governments to
be represented on MPO boards, not all muni-
cipalities in an area serve; and in no situation is
the full set of municipal land use decision
makers for a given locality involved. Conse-
quently, the public entities with land use deci-
sion making authority are not systematically
involved in conformity. In San Francisco, for
example, at the urging of a coalition of
environmental advocates, MTC modeled a
transit-oriented land use scenario. Although
this scenario showed significant air quality
benefits, MTC rejected it as a plausible basis
for transportation decisions, arguing that
neither the probable actions of land use
regulators nor market trends for the location
of residences and economic activity were
actually likely to produce the patterns of land
use that the scenario presumed. Even in the
sphere of land use planning, only some of the
MPOs in the study sites - e.g., in Atlanta,
Denver, Philadelphia, SaltLake City, Houston,
and Milwaukee - are comprehensive planning
agencies whose scope of responsibility
includes regional land use planning. In a
number of areas, land use planning is the
province of other entities that are less centrally
involved in conformity than the MPO.
Portland is the single major exception. As
related above in discussing the LUTRAQ poli-
cies, Metro, which is both the regional land
use agency and the MPO, has legally but-
8Maryland also has a growth management regul-
atory system; however, it is much weaker than Ore-
gon's.
tressed its growth management policies by get-
ting the state air agency to incorporate them
into the SIP, which makes them federally en-
forceable through conformity. By contrast, in
most other study sites, land use decisions are
only weakly coordinated with transportation
planning and air quality regulation; and the
government bodies that hold and implement
the actual regulatory authority over land use
operate quite independently.
Conformity and Air Quality
Planning
In examining the impacts of conformity on
transportation plans and policy, this chapter
has been focusing primarily on the effects of
air quality regulation on transportation. But
through conformity, transportation has also
had significant effects on air quality planning,
an outcome that deserves close attention. As
intended, conformity links the sequential
development of transportation plans and
programs through the years, on the one hand,
and the similarly sequential preparation of state
implementation plans to fulfill CAAA
requirements, on the other. In what ways and
how well has it done so? This section
examines the degree to which conformity has
influenced the first post-1990 air quality plans
and subsequent SIP planning efforts.
1992 CO and PM10 SIPs
Several factors were at play during the start-
up phase of CAAA/ISTEA implementation that
prevented conformity from having a larger
influence on the first round of SIP planning. As

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
87
discussed in Chapter 4, the timing of the federal
conformity regulation's promulgation limited
conformity's impact on the initial phase of air
quality planning. Transportation and air quality
planners were under tremendous pressure
juggling the myriad new demands placed on
them by the CAAA and ISTEA. Because the
conformity regulation was not written until after
the submission date for CO and PM10 SIPs in
late 1992, these plans were developed without
knowledge of the regulation's final form or clar-
ity about its implications for SIP planning.
1993 VOC Reduction SIPs
Although the subsequent notice of pro-
posed rulemaking for conformity, issued in
January 1993 as the Bush administration was
leaving office, alerted some ozone nonattain-
ment areas to the importance of conformity at
a relatively early stage of developing their 15%
VOC reduction SIPs, the final conformity
regulation, developed under the new Clinton
administration, was not published until Nov-
ember 1993, a few days after the 15% SIPs
were due. Some states were closely attuned to
the national discussions about how the con-
formity regulations should be written9, while
others more passively awaited the final regula-
tions before turning attention to the im-
plications of this new procedure. As a result,
the degree to which conformity considerations
9The San Francisco and Denver MPOs, for ex-
ample, followed these discussions closely. In some
states in the study - notably Pennsylvania and New
York - state air agencies and DOTs were actively in-
volved but took quite different positions in lobbying
nationally on how the conformity provision of the
CAAA should be operationalized.
did influence planning for the 15% SIPs varied
widely.
Even in areas where the importance of the
issues was clearly appreciated, the delayed re-
lease of the final version of 1993 regulations
left working-level transportation and air
quality planners with an incomplete picture of
the requirements that would be placed on
them. In a few areas - including Boston,
Houston, and Milwaukee-broad-based stake-
holder task forces participated actively in SIP
planning. In these areas, because an overall
SIP strategy was debated, stakeholders,
including transportation agencies and interests,
came to understand the tradeoffs inherent in
selecting specific control measures. They also
began to address what would be necessary to
bring the area into attainment. Through this
process, the forthcoming regulations were
conceptually addressed, even though the final
conformity requirements were still uncertain.
In some other areas, even though a com-
prehensive stakeholders process was not con-
vened, the future implications of air quality
regulation for transportation were also clearly
addressed. In the San Francisco Bay area, the
MPO was responsible for drafting the mobile-
source elements of the SIP and was broadly
experienced with emissions forecasting issues
as a result of the litigation of the late 1980s
and early 1990s. In Phoenix, where the MPO
was also the lead agency for air planning and
the state legislature was proactively involved,
mobile source issues figured prominently in
policy making. In Oregon, a state-level
Governor's Task Force on Motor Vehicle
Emissions developed strategies that influenced
the Portland SIP.

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
88
In other areas, however, the air agency
dealt separately with the stakeholders in each
source category and focused primarily on
short-term regulatory requirements. In some
of these areas - e.g., Atlanta, Baltimore, Chi-
cago, Milwaukee, New York, and Philadelphia
- transportation agencies, concerned about
future conformity requirements, made efforts
to influence mobile source emission budgets.
However, lacking both the need to implement
measures beyond those federally mandated and
a broad stakeholder forum in which difficult
decisions could be discussed, the air agencies
chose not to broach directly the politically dif-
ficult question of how emission budgets would
be allocated over time. In several areas
(including Baltimore, Chicago and Milwau-
kee), air planners nonetheless responded to the
transportation agencies' concerns. They expli-
citly chose to accommodate mobile source
growth in their 15% SIP budgets by using
liberal VMT growth estimates. These created
a future mobile source cushion for SIP pur-
poses as well as for conformity.
Of the 15 study areas, decisions made
during this period subsequently created con-
formity problems for both Charlotte and Salt
Lake City, moderate ozone nonattainment
areas that decided to seek redesignation to
attainment rather than write a 15% VOC
reduction SIP. Redesignation was attractive
because, as attainment areas, they could avoid
implementing some SIP measures that were
required in moderate nonattainment areas and
could escape the disadvantages faced by
nonattainment areas when trying to attract new
business locations or expansions. To avoid the
penalties associated with a finding of failure to
submit the 15% SIP, these areas were under
tight time constraints to develop attainment
demonstrations and write ten-year mainten-
ance plans. In neither case, however, did
transportation and air planners fully probe the
inter-relationship of this choice with the
emergent conformity regulations.
In Charlotte, transportation planners did
too little to explore and call to the attention of
air planners the implications of conformity for
future transportation policies; and air planners
were focused on fulfilling the immediate
regulatory requirements for redesignation. As
refined transportation demand modeling
subsequently showed that VMT growth rates
would be significantly higher than anticipated
in the maintenance plan, the emission budgets
caused the severe conformity difficulties
described in Chapter 3.
In Salt Lake City, the MPO realized late in
the redesignation process that the maintenance
plan mobile source budgets would cause future
conformity problems. However, because a
CAAA sanctions clock for failure to submit
the 15%) SIP was about to expire, the MPO
supported the maintenance plan and later
sought to address the budget problems
through a SIP amendment. In both areas,
transportation planners eventually came to
believe that stationary sources had actively
sought a growth cushion in their budgets
during bilateral negotiations with the air
quality agency. Whether or not the percep-
tions expressed above are correct, it is clear
that transportation planners in these areas were
not aware of or engaged enough during the
redesignation process to fully understand the
future impacts on mobile sources and thus to

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
89
make sure that intersectoral tradeoffs were
clearly addressed in setting emission budgets.
Effects on Subsequent SIP
Planning
As areas have moved through subsequent
rounds of air quality and transportation plan-
ning, conformity has had more impact on the
setting of mobile source budgets. In most ar-
eas, transportation planners have been much
more involved with the 9% and attainment
year budgets, although in several (e.g., Atlan-
ta, Philadelphia and New York City)
transportation planners have not been deeply
involved in negotiations until after preliminary
budgets have been set and transportation
agencies must react through comments. In the
face of conformity problems some areas have
adjusted or amended mobile source budgets.
Other areas have proactively reassessed
emission budgets to anticipate and deal with
looming conformity problems.
Overall, this activity represents a major
change in the practice of transportation and air
quality planning. Even where bureaucratic
relations have been far from smooth, the
previously separate planning and regulatory
processes have become far more tightly linked
than ever before. Just as air planners have be-
come more significant and involved stake-
holders in transportation planning - as describ-
ed in Chapter 4 - transportation planners have
become more active stakeholders in air
planning.
Conformity has spurred this process in two
main ways: (1) by stimulating greater scrutiny
of and refinements in the current data and
forecasting techniques for transportation
demand, and (2) by forcing planners and policy
makers to identify, confront, and more directly
assess the options they have for reducing mo-
bile source and other emissions. In some
areas, this has resulted in refinements of
mobile source emission budgets to accom-
modate transportation needs or, less fre-
quently, adoption of additional control mea-
sures to mitigate transportation emissions. In
other areas, however, transportation interests
have not secured the SIP changes they have
sought to alleviate conformity problems
resulting primarily from higher rates of VMT
growth than anticipated. Unresolved differ-
ences about how to deal with these problems
account for the conformity lapses that existed
in Charlotte and Atlanta at the conclusion of
the study period. Nonetheless, to a far greater
degree than in the past, the implications of
transportation growth are being carefully
considered in air pollution regulation.
Modeling Complications. The com-
plexity of the modeling process and the inter-
relationships between conformity and SIP
modeling, however, have frequently made it
difficult to get to the heart of these issues
about transportation growth. As discussed in
Chapter 3, passing the emissions budget tests
has been the most difficult conformity hurdle.
Although VMT growth rates are fundamental
to most budget test problems, some difficulties
have been caused or exacerbated by modeling
issues. These include the reliance on HPMS
data for VMT estimates in SIP budgets and
the requirements that areas use the latest
planning assumptions and the most recent
emissions model for the conformity analysis.

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
90
When conformity problems are primarily
caused by the disparity in modeling techniques,
resolving the problems has frequently proved
time-consuming but possible for the agencies
concerned. However, when the conformity
difficulties reflect underlying problems of sub-
stantively meeting Clean Air Act mandates
rather than modeling artifacts, the process of
clearing away the modeling confusion has ten-
ded to delay dealing with the basic issues of air
pollution reduction.
In the 1993 conformity rule and guidance
on VMT forecasting and tracking, EPA, with
FHWA concurrence, specified the use of
HPMS data as the preferred method for cal-
culating VMT to establish the emissions levels
on which SIP budgets are set. However, the
conformity rule also required that areas use
network-based transportation demand models
to generate the VMT forecasts on which
emissions estimates are calculated for the
conformity analysis. Thus, in some cases,
because different methods may have been used
to calculate emissions in the budget and
analysis years, conformity problems may not
be due to actual changes in emissions. Some
areas, including Charlotte in 1994, have dealt
with this problem by making adjustments in the
conformity analysis. Others (e.g., Boston and
New Jersey) have chosen to amend their SIP
budgets using VMT forecasts from the travel
demand models to avert future conformity
problems. Three areas (Baltimore, Phoenix
and San Francisco) avoided this problem al-
together by using VMT estimates from the
travel demand models to set the SIP budgets
initially.
In addition, the conformity rule requires
that areas use the most recent planning as-
sumptions in their conformity analyses. To
comply with this requirement, areas have up-
dated their estimates of population, employ-
ment and travel for use in the transportation
models, significantly refining the parameters
that had been used to develop the budgets and
thus sometimes "finding" more emissions than
were reflected in the budgets. Likewise, the
use of updated versions of the MOBILE model
increased the estimates of certain emissions,
under the same conditions. Thus, if an area
used MOBILE 4 to set its budgets and
MOBILE 5 in the conformity analysis, an
increase in emissions might be due to the
difference in the models.
An example of this occurred in Salt Lake
City in 1994 when the area's first budget test
problems occurred, and the area lapsed after
failing to pass the NOx budget test for PM10.
Transportation planners eventually convinced
EPA that this failure was not due to real
emission increases, but was due to changes in
the MOBILE model. The PM10 budgets were
established using MOBILE 4, prior to the
promulgation of the 1993 conformity reg-
ulations, while the conformity analysis later
used MOBILE 5, which calculated much
higher levels of NOx from mobile sources.
With permission from EPA, also granted to a
few other areas, Salt Lake City has since
continued to use MOBILE 4 for NOx con-
formity for PM10.
Changing SIPs to Solve Conformity
PROBLEMS. All of the areas that have had
serious problems passing the budget tests
(Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Houston, and Salt
Lake City) have responded by attempting to
alter the modeling underlying mobile source
emission budgets or to enlarge the mobile

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
91
source share of the aggregate budget to
accommodate high VMT growth rates. At the
urging of transportation planners, air planners
for Atlanta and Charlotte discussed budget
amendments, but chose not to alter them. Air
agencies did amend the Denver and Salt Lake
City budgets and in Houston made technical
corrections to a submitted, but not yet
approved, budget to solve conformity prob-
lems. (For further discussion of these areas'
conformity problems, see Chapter 3.) Pro-
actively, Portland established out-year emis-
sion budgets in its 1996 ozone maintenance
plan to make future conformity determinations
less difficult.
Atlanta's budget problems began to
emerge as the area updated its modeling as-
sumptions in 1995. When the area could not
pass conformity in 1996, planners considered
amending the mobile source budgets using
modeled VMT estimates rather than HPMS
projections. However, they quickly realized
that, due to much higher than anticipated
VMT growth, if the budgets were revised, the
SIP would no longer demonstrate attainment,
as the planned measures could not offset the
higher emissions levels. Under these cir-
cumstances, the area lapsed and is in the pro-
cess of re-examining SIP budgets and control
measures in the attainment demonstration and
developing a long-range transportation plan
that can conform.
When Charlotte encountered its first con-
formity problems in 1994, the area attributed
the budget test failure to the differences in the
methodologies used in the budgets, based on
HPMS VMT projections, and the conformity
analysis, based on modeled VMT levels. The
air agency used a reconciliation technique to
make the two methodologies more comparable
and thus demonstrated conformity. In
subsequent years, new modeling revealed
higher than predicted VMT growth rates,
making it impossible to demonstrate con-
formity and leading to a conformity lapse.
Efforts to resolve the problem have been
complicated by differences over modeling.
Transportation planners continued to consider
changes to the assumptions on which the
budget was based as part of an overall strategy
to pass conformity. For example, they
weighed the possibility of re-examining some
of the default inputs in the MOBILE model,
believing that the functional class percentages
did not accurately represent the area's vehicle
fleet. By the end of the study period, it was
clear that modeling changes alone would not
resolve the conformity problem. It was not
clear, however, how the area could or would
address the underlying problem.
As described in Chapter 4, Colorado
amended Denver's mobile source PM10 bud-
gets to resolve its 1994 conformity lapse. The
result was establishment of out-year budgets
that increased regionally overtime, while emis-
sions in the core area were mitigated to keep
them within allowable limits. In addition, the
area is required to use dispersion modeling to
ensure that the spatial distribution of the emis-
sions does not cause violations of the standard.
In 1995, Utah amended the Salt Lake City
budget in its ozone maintenance plan to ease
problems passing the NOx budget test for
ozone. By adding ten years to the budget, the
area was able to demonstrate that, without
adding any additional control measures to the

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
92
SIP, N0X emissions could rise after the first
ten years of the maintenance plan without
causing a violation of the NAAQS. With the
extended, higher budgets, the area could show
conformity to the end of the 20-year
transportation planning horizon.
In Houston, planners made technical cor-
rections to a submitted (but not yet EPA-ap-
proved) budget in 1997 to pass the VOC bud-
get test for ozone. By switching to modeled
VMT estimates rather than HPMS VMT and
by correcting for an over estimation of VMT
on local streets, the area revised the budgets
and demonstrated conformity.
In developing its 1996 ozone attainment
demonstration/maintenance plan, Oregon took
a proactive approach to future Portland con-
formity determinations by setting emission
budgets for ozone precursors for the years be-
yond the milestone year of the maintenance
plan. Quantifying its safety margin between
total emissions in the attainment year (1992)
and 2006, it gradually allocated part of this
safety margin to create somewhat larger mob-
ile source emission budgets for 2010, 2015,
and after 2020. This established a budget to
accommodate some possible future VMT
growth in the area.
As they look ahead to planning for attain-
ment, several other areas expressed the belief
that their mobile source budgets will need to
be increased. It is unclear, however, how this
would occur as overall budgets continue to
shrink and areas begin planning for the new
NAAQS. A few areas suggested trying to
negotiate a shift of emissions from area source
budgets to mobile sources, realizing that area
sources have been regulated much less than
stationary sources in the past and present a
much less cohesive and powerful lobby.
Conformity Effects on SIP TCMs
To ensure that nonattainment areas ac-
tually implement TCMs written into SIPs, the
conformity regulations require that imple-
mentation of SIP TCMs proceed according to
the schedule in the SIP. Although the con-
formity rule does not require areas to put
TCMs in the SIP, some environmentalists be-
lieved that the protection given SIP TCMs
would encourage areas to do so. During the
initial round of SIP planning, however, con-
formity proved to be a disincentive for in-
clusion of TCMs in SIPs. Most areas decided
that placing TCMs in the SIP would be too
risky because delay of a SIP TCM could cause
a conformity lapse, jeopardizing the flow of
federal funding for all transportation projects.
This feeling was especially intense in areas like
Boston and Philadelphia that had experienced
problems with TCMs in previous SIPs. Given
the risks, the small emission reduction benefits
of most TCMs, and the reality that reductions
from TCMs were not necessary to meet the
SIP emission reduction goals or conformity,
five of the study areas chose not to include any
TCMs in their 15% SIPs or maintenance plans.
Most other areas included only a few TCMs,
the majority of which were TSM projects that
they regarded as certain to be implemented on
schedule.10
10As discussed earlier in this chapter, all areas
have included some form of TCMs in their transpor-
tation plans/programs, even if they have not written
them into SIPs.

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
93
There were a few exceptions, however.
San Francisco was required, as a result of the
MTC suit, to include a number of TCMs in its
redesignation request. These were carried
forward from its 1982 SIP and were aug-
mented with new TCMs in the contingency
plan. In Chicago, planners included more than
100 TCMs in the 15% SIP, believing that any
TCMs credited in the conformity analysis
should be in the SIP; however, these were
primarily traffic flow improvement measures
that were deemed certain to stay on track for
implementation. In New Jersey, the state
DOT proposed including 136 TCMs in the
15% SIP, believing that they would help the
area reach its air quality goals. Only later did
transportation planners realize that by placing
TCMs in the SIP, they helped ratchet the
budget down, making conformity more
difficult. Although NJDOT originally believed
it had included only TCMs that were secure,
implementation of some was later held up,
with the result that the air agency requested
that EPA postpone final approval of the TCMs
in the SIP. Now neither the state DOT, nor
the air quality agency has any desire to place
TCMs in future SIPs.
Portland is the only study area that placed
TCMs in the SIP specifically to ensure their
implementation. Facing regular challenges in
the legislature on the state growth manage-
ment law, the area included its urban growth
boundary and related transit measures in the
SIP to protect them from possible changes in
the political climate.
Several areas expressed the belief that issu-
ance of promised federal guidance on TCM
flexibility would make it much easier to place
TCMs in SIPs. Although TCM flexibility was
one of the issues raised by stakeholders during
deliberations over the amendments to the 1993
conformity rule, EPA determined that a rule
change was not necessary to allow areas to
substitute a new TCM for one already in an
approved SIP. EPA pledged to issue federal
guidance on TCM flexibility but had not done
so by the end of the study period. Oregon and
Texas therefore developed their own state
TCM flexibility rules. Air quality planners in
Oregon believe that their TCM flexibility
provisions were instrumental in gaining the
agreements necessary to put TCMs into the
SIP. EPA found the Texas rule unapprovable
but did approve Oregon's as part of the area's
1996 ozone maintenance plan.
The most dramatic recent effect of con-
formity on SIP TCMs occurred in Atlanta,
which is pursuing a strategy of adding TCMs
to the SIP.11 Also, the air agency planned vol-
untary ozone action days, both to help demon-
strate attainment and to aid conformity. In
December 1997, Governor Miller strengthened
this measure by signing an executive order that
required state employees to reduce single
occupant trips by 20% on ozone action days.
Other SIP Impacts
Additional Control Measures. Al-
though some areas considered the ramifica-
uThe November 1995 amendments to the 1993
conformity rule allow SIP TCMs to proceed during a
lapse. EPA believes that in the future this provision
may offset some of the disincentive that the timely
implementation requirement creates for placing TCMs
in the SIP.

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
94
tions of conformity when choosing SIP mea-
sures other than TCMs, few adopted mobile
source control measures that were not man-
dated by the CAAA. In Arizona, however, the
state legislature, which was deeply involved in
selecting the measures that comprised the
Phoenix 15% VOC reduction SIP, wanted to
offset emissions growth that would occur as
the area continued to build highways.
Legislators therefore explicitly chose to
implement mobile source technology measures
more stringent than federally mandated for
moderate ozone areas, such as enhanced in-
spection and maintenance and more stringent
Reid Vapor Pressure standards for fuel.
As implementation of the conformity rule
progressed, some study areas considered SIP
amendments that would expand or strengthen
I/M to ease difficulties passing the conformity
tests. In Denver, when the area faced con-
formity problems in 1996, an agreement was
reached through interagency consultation to
tighten the I/M cut points to make passing
conformity easier. By decreasing the amount
of NOx emissions cars would be allowed under
the I/M program in 2001, budget test problems
for 2015 were resolved. Most areas, however,
decided against such a strategy, given the high
level of controversy encountered in many
states over the I/M program. For example,
although the Texas legislature had initially
delegated authority to the Governor for
decisions regarding the I/M program, it
subsequently passed a law that enabled the air
agency to expand I/M to additional counties
only if they requested to be included in the
program. Because none volunteered,
consideration of expanded I/M in the Houston
area came to a halt.
In Baltimore, although conformity did not
influence the initial form or extent of the I/M
program, it did help to protect I/M from legis-
lative action that would have made the pro-
gram voluntary. If the program had become
voluntary, EPA would have disapproved the
area's SIP, and conformity of the trans-
portation plan/TIP would have been frozen.
The governor vetoed the voluntary I/M bill
after he was made aware of these ram-
ifications.
In Atlanta, where conformity problems are
closely linked with difficulties demonstrating
attainment, planners proposed adoption in the
SIP of a new mobile source control, "Georgia
fuel," which by reducing future emissions
would contribute to resolving the area's
difficulties.
NOx TRADES AND WAIVERS. Two study
areas, Baltimore and Salt Lake City, consid-
ered stationary source/mobile source NOx
trades as a way of dealing with conformity
problems; however, neither found it necessary
to follow through with their plans. When Salt
Lake City faced NOx conformity problems in
1994 due to the change from MOBILE 4 to
MOBILE 5, the area considered a NOx trade.
One of the major stationary sources had
recently modernized and, as a result, had a
permit for unused emissions. It agreed to sell
these outside the area to compensate for the
higher mobile source NOx emissions generated
by MOBILE 5 in the conformity analysis. The
need for this trade was alleviated when EPA
allowed the area to continue using MOBILE 4
for PM10 NOx conformity.
As the Baltimore area faced the aspect of
setting its first NOx budget in 1996, trans-

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Chapter 5: Conformity Effects on Transportation and Air Quality Plans
95
portation and air quality planners feared that
they would have difficulty passing the NOx
budget test. The MPO had just completed a
new household travel survey, which was ex-
pected to show substantial NOx increases. The
air agency therefore suggested writing a clause
in the SIP that would allow it to trade sta-
tionary source NOx credits if it encountered a
minor mobile source shortfall in the conformity
analysis. The MPO hesitated to agree to this
plan and the issue became moot when the new
data showed NOx emissions to be substantially
lower than previous levels.
Three study areas, Chicago, Houston and
Phoenix, requested NOx waivers, at least in
part to avoid problems with the conformity
NOx build/no-build tests. Chicago and Phoe-
nix were given waivers because they were able
to demonstrate that NOx reductions would not
contribute toward their efforts to reach
attainment. Houston's NOx waiver was tem-
porary, pending the outcome of a study to de-
termine whether the area was NOx limited.
When the waiver permanently expired at the
end of 1997, the area was uncertain how it
would pass future NOx budget tests.
Mitigation Measures Outside of the
SIP. Denver adopted air quality measures
outside of the SIP to pass conformity, while
avoiding the hurdles of an amendment to add
measures to the SIP. As a part of its strategy
for dealing with its PM10 problems, Denver's
MPO negotiated agreements with municipal
governments to implement non-regulatory
street sanding and sweeping measures that are
credited in the conformity analysis, even
though they are not in the SIP.

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Chapter 6: Toward a New Planning "Arena"
Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the
Transportation Conformity Regulations
in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
A Report to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Department of Transportation
Publication Number
EPA420-R-99-011

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Chapter 6
Toward a New Planning "Arena"
Among conformity's purposes was to es-
tablish an institutional and procedural frame-
work - a new planning "arena" - within which
the set of state and regional agencies and
stakeholders concerned with transportation
and air quality would organize their many
policy interactions. Although securing compli-
ance with Clean Air Act mandates was a
presumed minimum requirement, some ob-
servers expected that conformity - combined
with other innovations prescribed by ISTEA,
such as regular updating and fiscal constraint
of regional plans - would have more far-
reaching impacts. More and better demo-
graphic, economic, land use, travel, and air
quality data would be gathered and evaluated
with sharper analytic tools. Agencies and
stakeholders would articulate and openly dis-
cuss their goals, propose alternative policies to
achieve them, assess feasibility and tradeoffs,
and consider whether and how to implement
them. The improved planning process, in turn,
would inform public discussion of trans-
portation and air quality issues and provide a
stronger basis for deliberation by appointed
policy makers and elected officials.
Given the historic separation of these do-
mains, this was an ambitious set of expecta-
tions. In conclusion, therefore, it is well worth
focusing on whether and how much conform-
ity has contributed to creating such a planning
arena in the 15 study sites and what limitations
exist.
Better Data and Analytic Tools
The interviews conducted for this study re-
veal a broad professional consensus that, at
least in the study sites, conformity-related im-
provements in planning methods are genuine
and valuable not only for air quality regulation
but also for other planning purposes.
A few individuals pointed to the opportun-
ity costs of conformity-induced modeling
enhancements, arguing that they come at the
expense of other potential changes in analytic
practice, especially more extensive analysis of
alternative planning scenarios. This outcome
results not so much because these practices are
mutually incompatible but because limited time
and resources make it difficult or impossible to
do both.
But most individuals interviewed for the
study believe that the conformity requirement
that transportation planners use advanced anal-
ytic tools and the latest available planning
assumptions to forecast transportation demand
and mobile source emissions - coupled with
the infusion of ISTEA funds to hire technical
staff and collect more recent, often more
detailed, data about demographic trends, land
use, and travel behavior - has led to significant
improvements in planning capabilities in all of
the study sites, though in varying degrees.
Moreover, one might expect these changes to
have increased impact as they are used and re-
fined in successive planning cycles.

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Chapter 6: Toward a New Planning "Arena"
97
Although enhanced modeling and planning
methods might eventually have been adopted
as a result of ISTEA planning requirements
alone, most transportation planners
interviewed for the study believe that con-
formity pushed technical planning changes
significantly faster than would otherwise have
happened. A number of environmentalists,
however, expressed impatience with the scope
and pace of these changes, arguing that MPOs
often took too long to implement changes and
have not gone far enough in adopting new
methods. Transportation planners asserted, in
turn, that the advocates underestimated the
difficulty of instituting change, especially in the
context of the sweeping scope of new ISTEA
planning requirements.
While the balance between these views is
arguable in any particular situation, it seems
more striking that across the study sites the di-
rection of change is consistent, even if the re-
sults are not equal in all cases. Interviews for
this study strongly suggest that the culture of
transportation planning, which at the working
level had previously given little attention to air
quality, has been significantly affected.
Improvements in transportation modeling and
the principle that air quality impacts should be
taken into account by transportation planners
are widely accepted by transportation planners.
Improvements in transportation planning
have served not only to focus transportation
planners on the goals and requirements of the
Clean Air Act but also have had a direct effect
on air quality planning. Improved forecasts of
VMT, the finer detail achieved through
technical enhancements, and the increased
frequency of the regional analysis provide air
planners with a better understanding of the
geographic distribution of transportation
impacts and changes over time. New planning
tools have thus been deployed to achieve far
greater integration of transportation and air
quality analysis than previously existed. In
several areas, air quality planners have
capitalized on the modeling improvements by
incorporating VMT estimates from the travel
demand models into the budget setting
process. Most agree that using the same VMT
growth assumptions in the budgets and the
analysis of transportation plans/programs
better integrates transportation and air quality
planning and creates a more valid comparison
for conformity. Use of the improved models
and data also enhances the air quality planning
process by giving air planners information
helpful in selecting appropriate and sufficient
SIP measures.
Analysis and the Regulatory
Process
It is important to distinguish, however, be-
tween acceptance of air quality analysis for
planning purposes as opposed to regulatory
purposes. Conformity shapes policy decisions
that affect air pollution, mobility, economic
development, and quality of life in the
metropolitan areas in this study. Large sums of
federal aid - as well as legal authority to
proceed with projects using that money - are
also at stake in the process. As a result, many
transportation and air planners continue to
have significant differences about how the
conformity analysis is conducted and what
impacts it has on the quality of decision mak-
ing.

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Chapter 6: Toward a New Planning "Arena"
98
While most transportation planners in
MPOs and state DOTs regard the results as
valuable for thinking about transportation and
air quality "futures" and the possible effects of
alternative policies, some resent the absolute
priority that air quality goals have over all
other goals in transportation planning. Many,
moreover, question the validity of using the
model outputs for making conformity
determinations, arguing that conformity con-
veys an alarmingly false image of precision.
These planners point to baseline estimates that
at best approximate actual conditions, the
plausible range of assumptions about future
rates of change in key variables, the known im-
perfections of even state-of-the-art transporta-
tion demand models, the acknowledged short-
comings of the emission models, and the
incompatibility of model structures that makes
it analytically problematic to use the output of
the demand models as input for the emission
models. Many transportation planners
therefore express deep skepticism about using
current modeling techniques, which taken to-
gether have a wide band of possible error, to
make long-range forecasts of future pollution
- especially when these results are used for a
threshold regulatory test in conformity poten-
tially affecting the flow of large amounts of
federal funds for their plans and projects.
These feelings are sometimes intensified
because of inconsistencies between the plan-
ning assumptions incorporated in SIPs and
those in the conformity analysis. Not all areas
have used the outputs of travel demand models
for estimating transportation emissions in their
SIP development process, particularly during
the initial years after the CAAA of 1990 was
enacted. Moreover, because the conformity
regulations require transportation planners to
use the latest planning data and assumptions
available, the data and assumptions used for
conformity may differ significantly from those
used - perhaps a few years earlier - in de-
veloping a pertinent SIP.
Inconsistencies between the data and plan-
ning assumptions in a SIP and a later con-
formity analysis do not always make it more
difficult to demonstrate conformity. Indeed,
sometimes the assumptions embedded in SIPs
make it easier to conform a transportation plan
than would be the case if the SIP were up-
dated. But if the reverse is true, transportation
planners often express frustration that the
complexities and slowness of the state reg-
ulatory and federal approval processes make it
quite time consuming - and often impractical
within the time frame of regular transportation
planning cycles - to update SIP planning
assumptions.
By contrast, many air planners and en-
vironmental advocates, while acknowledging
some shortcomings, contend that the modeling
results used in conformity analysis provide a
sufficiently good approximation of current
reality and future development patterns to
warrant their use for conformity, especially
given their view that it is critically important to
achieve Clean Air Act goals. Others argue
that emission models underestimate mobile
source pollution, so that transportation
projects get the benefit of the doubt. Some
suspect that MPOs shade the transportation
demand analysis to produce favorable results.

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Chapter 6: Toward a New Planning "Arena"
99
Another divergence in the perspectives of
transportation and air planners on the regul-
atory process deserves mention. Conformity
permits the modeling to take "credit" for im-
provements in vehicle emission control sys-
tems or beneficial changes in fuel composition
only when these are mandated by federal
regulations and/or adopted in legally enforce-
able regulations by the state.
Many transportation planners and advo-
cates regard this as an artificial feature of the
planning system. They contend that it is poor
policy to be forced to forgo what they regard
as transportation improvements which would
otherwise be permissible simply because the
time frame of decision making on national
technology policies is independent of - and
therefore imperfectly synchronized with - the
timing of their conformity decisions.
For example, a nonattainment area may be
experiencing serious conformity problems
while, simultaneously, significant changes in
national regulation of automobile emission
control systems and fuels may be under debate
and likely to have major impacts on mobile-
source emissions during the time frame of the
conformity analysis. For example, while Char-
lotte has been experiencing a conformity lapse,
there has been intense national discussion of
the Tier II controls, possible extension of con-
trols to new vehicle types (e.g., to sports util-
ity vehicles), and possible changes in the sulfur
content of gasoline.1
'It should be noted, however, that these controls
would not affect Atlanta's conformity problems, which
arise from an inability to demonstrate conformity in
1999, its ozone attainment year.
Many air agencies and environmental ad-
vocates argue that until such controls are le-
gally mandated, it is inappropriate for con-
formity to recognize still-speculative emission
reductions. Once transportation projects are
approved, they are difficult or impossible to
reverse if emission reductions from technology
measures do not materialize.
Confronting Conformity Difficul-
ties
In the framework of the CAAA of 1990,
conformity is an analytic "trip-wire" to alert
policy makers to inconsistencies between two
sets of policies - air quality planning (codified
in state implementation plans) and trans-
portation planning (codified in transportation
plans and programs). Indeed, in many instan-
ces, conformity results in serious reconsider-
ation of evolving mobile-source emission is-
sues more quickly than would occur through
periodic SIP revisions alone.
In the 15 study sites, this reconsideration
tends to occur in distinct phases. First, plan-
ners carefully re-examine the modeling on
which the conformity analysis is based to con-
firm that a problem exists and to discover its
magnitude. When conformity difficulties are
significant, they must then deal with the in-
stitutional and political dynamics of changing
either the transportation plan/program or the
applicable SIP so that conformity can be
demonstrated.

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Chapter 6: Toward a New Planning "Arena"
100
Re-examining the Models
When an MPO encounters difficulties in
showing that its transportation plan or pro-
gram satisfies the requirements of conformity,
the most common initial response, as Chapters
3 and 4 have shown, is exhaustive re-examin-
ation of modeling data, methods, and results.
Through the process of reconsidering plan-
ning assumptions and modeling techniques, the
transportation agencies seek to reduce the
possibility that conformity penalties might
result from "technical" difficulties in the mod-
eling rather than "real" future problems re-
vealed by conformity forecasting of emissions.
Environmental agencies, in turn, seek to
discover whether the analysis has been
conducted appropriately and whether genuine
conformity problems exist. As a result of such
scrutiny on both sides, errors have been dis-
covered, improved estimates of key para-
meters have been secured, and refinements of
modeling methods have been introduced.
The character of consultation and stake-
holder participation appears to have important
consequences for the credibility and longer
term effects of the analytic process.
In areas with less intense interagency con-
sultation practices, reassessment of modeling
methods is likely to be performed primarily by
MPO staff, sometimes with little visibility to
other agencies and stakeholders. In a number
of these cases, as described in Chapter 4, air
agencies and environmental advocacy groups
lack sufficient staff resources or technical skills
to participate actively and effectively scrutinize
the MPO's work. But MPO autonomy comes
at a cost: reduced confidence by outsiders in
the results. The opacity of the process tends
to increase suspicions that the MPO's interest
in "passing" the conformity tests has colored
its analysis.
By contrast, when the analytic issues of
conformity have been the focus of careful "up-
front" discussion and debate among interested
agencies and stakeholders, either early in the
planning cycle or in previous cycles, recon-
sideration is more likely to be an open process.
While sometimes contentious and not always
fully eliminating doubts on either side, these
efforts have nonetheless tended to strengthen
confidence in the results. Transportation
planners are more likely to regard any re-
maining problems in demonstrating conformity
as "real" rather than modeling artifacts; and air
planners and advocacy groups are less likely to
harbor suspicions that conformity has been
demonstrated by technical manipulation.
As successive cycles of conformity analysis
are undertaken, effective interagency consulta-
tion creates greater mutual confidence in the
analytic process. In turn, this allows both sets
of planners and other stakeholders to focus
more clearly on substantive issues and policy
choices rather than on disputes about mod-
eling.
Generating Policy Debate
Conformity was also clearly intended to
get policy officials, elected executives, legisla-
tors, and a broad array of stakeholder groups
to confront the policy dimensions and

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Chapter 6: Toward a New Planning "Arena"
101
tradeoffs of transportation and air quality.
Nonetheless, data from the 15 study sites sug-
gests that it can sometimes be problematic to
move discussion of conformity problems be-
yond the relatively small circle of transpor-
tation and air quality professionals and the few
stakeholder representatives who deal with it on
a regular basis. In some of the study areas,
this has led to considerable delay in con-
fronting the roots of their conformity prob-
lems.
As discussed in Chapter 4, the complexity
of conformity modeling and analysis can be a
barrier for less technically sophisticated
participants. This has been a problem in areas
like Charlotte and Atlanta, where, encoun-
tering severe conformity problems, the trans-
portation and air quality professionals have
spent a year or more probing the models and
analysis, looking for technical fixes to the
problem, but only slowly getting high-level of-
ficials and the public to address the underlying
issues. Thus, the expectation of conformity
architects that public debate would be spurred
by conformity problems has been partially
frustrated by the technical nature of -
conformity discussions.
It is not the case that public discussion is
suppressed. Denver's experience with PM10
conformity difficulties demonstrates that vigor-
ous policy debate can develop as an area wres-
tles with its conformity problems. Similar
public debates have emerged in Atlanta and
Charlotte during 1998 (a period outside the
time frame of this study). In these instances,
the causes, consequences, and possible sol-
utions of the area's air quality and transpor-
tation difficulties have gotten a good deal of
public attention, including from key elected
leaders.
Nonetheless, there seems to be a substan-
tial lag period as conformity difficulties move
from a primarily bureaucratic setting that
involves a small number of technical personnel
from public agencies (and perhaps similar
people from a few private groups) to a more
visible, public policy process that addresses the
underlying issues and debates options and
tradeoffs.
The Institutional Dynamics of
Changing Transportation and
Air Quality Plans
In the event of conflict between transpor-
tation plans and air quality commitments, the
conformity regulations permit an MPO or
state, in principle, to resolve the inconsistency
by making changes to its transportation
plans/programs, its SIPs, or both. To resolve
a conformity problem, an area might choose to
make changes in transportation plans/programs
(e.g., by dropping, scaling back, or exploring
alternatives to major highway capacity
expansion projects, or by adding air quality
beneficial projects). Alternatively, policy mak-
ers might decide in a given case that it made
sense to add new mobile source control
measures to the SIP (e.g., fuel requirements or
a strengthened inspection and maintenance
system) or to make tradeoffs between mobile-
and other sources.
Giving nonattainment areas flexibility in
deciding how to meet national pollution stan-
dards was a key element of the underlying
philosophy of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amend-
ments. As a practical matter, however, it has

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Chapter 6: Toward a New Planning "Arena"
102
often proven more difficult to make such chan-
ges than some of the architects of conformity
anticipated.
Many environmental advocates and air
planners have been frustrated that the trans-
portation planning/programming process has
proven less pliable than they hoped or expect-
ed. MPOs are not autonomous, hierarchical,
executive-driven decision-making bodies; and
project selection is not the result of a small
group of policy makers acting at a single
decision point. Instead, MPOs build policy
and political consensus on the projects that
comprise transportation plans through bar-
gaining and negotiation, over extended periods
of time, among diverse interests inside and
outside of government. To disaggregate the
final package of projects that appear in a
regional transportation plan or program is
therefore politically arduous and time consum-
ing.
This problem is exacerbated by the weak
link between transportation planning and land
use regulation that exists in virtually all of the
study sites. Although conformity must take
account of the likely outcomes of land use
regulation, the core regional and state agencies
responsible for conformity - the MPO, the air
agency and the state DOT - generally have no
direct authority over land use decision making
and regulation. So development projects
independently initiated by local governments
or private developers may create pressures for
transportation improvements that have the
potential to cause conformity difficulties.
Even where MPOs have land use planning
responsibilities, which not all of them do have,
they do not have land use regulatory authority
- with the exception among the study sites of
Portland's Metro. Local and county govern-
ments typically wield this power - and these
entities are not direct participants in conform-
ity except through their representation on the
MPO board.
From the transportation side, therefore, it
frequently seems attractive to resolve con-
formity difficulties by seeking changes on the
air quality side - i.e., in the state implementa-
tion plan. But this path encounters other kinds
of difficulties.
Although legally required practices vary, in
many states revising a SIP may necessitate not
only a process of drafting and internal agency
clearance by legal counsel and policy officials
but also public hearings and adoption by some
form of environmental regulatory board.
Depending on the state, this may take many
months, sometimes more than a year. During
the study period, moreover, SIP amendments
also had to be reviewed and approved by EPA
before they could be used in conformity
determinations. This frequently took longer
than a year. The August 1997 conformity
amendments are intended to reduce this aspect
of the problem by permitting nonattainment
areas to use a newly submitted emission
budget after 45 days instead of waiting for
formal EPA approval of the budget.
This time frame for SIP revision is rarely
compatible with the rhythms of the transpor-
tation planning process, which is often con-
nected to an annual cycle of project program-
ming and the triennial long-range planning pro-
cess required by ISTEA. To go through the

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Chapter 6: Toward a New Planning "Arena"
103
SIP revision process is almost always to delay
the normal schedule for developing and
initiating new plans/programs.
Seeking changes in a SIP is also burden-
some for air planners. They often have com-
peting priorities for time and resources, in-
cluding meeting new SIP development respon-
sibilities. Not unlike the political process that
produces transportation plans, emission bud-
gets usually represent consensus policies es-
tablished after long periods of negotiation
among stakeholders from different emission-
source sectors. Reopening budget allocation
decisions can ignite politically potent inter-
sectoral disputes. Air planners are therefore
often reluctant to manage SIP revisions. Giv-
en these facts, it is not surprising as Chapter 5
reported, that making SIP changes was not a
common approach to solving conformity prob-
lems in the 15 study sites.
While changing plans is difficult on both
sides, it is ultimately transportation plans that are
placed at risk by conformity difficulties. This
was clearly intended by the legislative architects
of the conformity provision of the CAAA of
1990. Federal transportation funding is a large,
politically significant sum in most states. A
threat to its use is a way of getting attention
from policy makers and many stakeholder
groups that a problem exists in transportation
and air quality plans. Whether or not the
solution lies on the transportation side - and
what that solution ought to be - may be less
important than getting decision makers and
constituencies focused on the air quality problem
and searching for a solution.
But it is also true that the officials with dir-
ect responsibilities for the program at risk - in
MPOs and state DOTs - have direct influence
over only some of the potential ways of
resolving inconsistencies between
transportation and air quality plans. Air
planners have far less incentive to consider SIP
changes. To the extent, therefore, that
conformity is meant to allow even-handed con-
sideration of the means of resolving
inconsistencies between transportation and air
quality plans, the difficulties in changing SIPs
and the disparities in the timing of the two
planning processes is problematic. It will be
instructive to see whether the August 1997
conformity amendments make a material dif-
ference in the way nonattainment area policy
makers seek to resolve conformity difficulties.
Conformity as an Evolving Pro-
cess
This study is a snapshot of conformity during
a particular period, but like any regulatory
process conformity is evolving and responding
to new situations. In addition to the issues noted
in this chapter, conformity must adapt to the
new National Ambient Air Quality Standards for
ozone and particulate matter, which will make
new areas subject to regulation. New tools for
analyzing transportation demand and the effects
of transportation policies on pollution are in
development. The impact of conformity over
the long run on transportation planning/program-
ming may be greater than it has been to date - as
new plans and projects take account of
conformity in their formative stages, not just as
they are being finalized.
EPA and FHWA, the sponsors of this study,
are planning a second phase to follow these
developments, which will certainly warrant anal-
ysis to measure progress and identify problems.

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Appendix I: Glossary of Abbreviations
Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the
Transportation Conformity Regulations
in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
A Report to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Department of Transportation
Publication Number
EPA420-R-99-011

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Appendix I
Glossary of Abbreviations
Terms:
CMAQ
CO
ECO
EMFAC
HOV
HPMS
I/M
ISTEA
LEV
LUTRAQ
MIS
MOBILE
NAAQS
NEPA
NOx
NPRM
PM10
RCAP
RFG
RFP
ROP
RTP
RVP
SIP
SOV
STIP
TCM
TDM
TIP
TSM
UAM
VMT
VOCs
Agencies:
ABAG
ARC
BMC
Caltrans
CATS
Congestion mitigation and air quality
Carbon monoxide
Employee Commute Options
California motor vehicle emissions model
High occupancy vehicle
Highway Performance Monitoring System
Inspection and maintenance
Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act
Low emission vehicle
Land Use, TRansportation, and Air Quality study conducted in Portland
Major investment study
EPA motor vehicle emissions model
National Ambient Air Quality Standards
National Environmental Policy Act
Nitrogen oxides
Notice of proposed rulemaking
Particulate matter smaller than or equal to 10 micrometers
Regional commuter assistance program
Reformulated gasoline
Reasonable further progress
Rate of progress
Regional transportation plan
Reid vapor pressure
State implementation plan
Single occupancy vehicle
State transportation improvement program
Transportation control measures
Transportation demand management
Transportation improvement program
Transportation systems management
Urban airshed model
Vehicle miles traveled
Volatile organic compounds
Association of Bay Area Governments (San Francisco area)
Atlanta Regional Commission
Baltimore Metropolitan Council
California Department of Transportation
Chicago Area Transportation Study

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Appendix I: Glossary of Abbreviations
105
CDPHE
Department of Public Health and Environment (Colorado)
CTPS
Central Transportation Planning Staff (Boston MPO staff)
DEC/EnCon
Department of Environmental Conservation (New York State)
DENR
Department of Environment and Natural Resources (North Carolina)
DEP
Department of Environmental Protection
DNR
Department of Natural Resources
DRCOG
Denver Regional Council of Governments
DVRPC
Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (Philadelphia area)
EDF
Environmental Defense Fund
EOTC
Executive Office of Transportation and Construction (Massachusetts)
EPA
Environmental Protection Agency
FHWA
Federal Highway Administration
FTA
Federal Transit Administration
GDOT
Georgia Department of Transportation
H-GAC
Houston-Galveston Area Council
IDOT
Illinois Department of Transportation
MARTA
Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority
Metro
Metropolitan Service District (Portland area)
MDE
Maryland Department of Environment
MDOT
Maryland Department of Transportation
MTC
Metropolitan Transportation Commission (San Francisco area)
NJDEP
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
NJTPA
New Jersey Transportation Planning Authority
NYMTC
New York Metropolitan Transportation Council
OTAG
Ozone Transport Assessment Group
PennDOT
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
SEWRPC
Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission
TxDOT
Texas Department of Transportation
TNRCC
Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission
USDOT
US Department of Transportation
USEPA
US Environmental Protection Agency
WFRC
Wasatch Front Regional Council (Salt Lake City area)
WisDOT
Wisconsin Department of Transportation

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the
Transportation Conformity Regulations
in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
A Report to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Department of Transportation
Publication Number
EPA420-R-99-011

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Appendix II
Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
Atlanta
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Serious
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
13 Counties: Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, Coweta, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett,
Henry, Paulding and Rockdale.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
10 Counties: Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry, and
Rockdale.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent
Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
1,989,341




1990
2,653,159
81,472,984
2.9%b

30.7
1995
3,038,050
105,218,456a
2.8%c
4.4% d
34.6e
al 996	C1990-1995 e Per capita rates are calculated using 1995 population and 1996 VMT.
bl 980-1990 dl 990-1996
Key Institutions:
MPO: Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC)
State Transportation Agency: Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT)
State Air Agency: Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
1995	- ARC began implementing model and data upgrades that captured higher emission levels than had been
reflected in earlier analyses. As a result, Atlanta barely passed the NOx budget test.
1996	- Passing the budget test proved even more problematic than it had in 1995. Because the area was
experiencing higher than expected VMT growth and was slow to implement inspection and maintenance and
reformulated gasoline programs, its 1999 NOx budget for ozone set an emissions cap that the area could not
meet in developing a new TIP. ARC, the Atlanta MPO, and Georgia DOT struggled to develop strategies that
would close the large gap between allowable and projected emissions. Ultimately, the northern arc of the Outer
Loop was barred from moving into the TIP, the road to the massive new Mall of Georgia was scaled back, and
only exempt and grandfathered projects from the previously conformed 1995 TIP were allowed to move for-
ward.
1997- Difficulties continued throughout 1997 during which ARC could not develop anew long-range plan that
conformed. In August 1997, FHWA granted a six-month TIP extension, during which a controversy over
grandfathering projects surfaced. Not able to develop a full conforming TIP, the MPO drafted an interim TIP
(ITIP) that contained only TCMs written into SIPs that had received EPA approval, as well as grandfathered

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
107
and exempt projects from the 1995 regional transportation plan update. Several dozen projects that ARC orig-
inally wanted to regard as grandfathered were not ultimately included in the ITIP because FHWA felt they
could not meet the applicable NEPA requirements; EPA simultaneously reviewed the NEPA documents.
FHWA's regional office was then prepared to approve the ITIP, but EPA's regional office raised concerns
about several of the remaining grandfathered projects in the ITIP.
This led to sharp policy disagreements among the federal agencies. Even though the 1995 plan had received
a conformity determination, EPA's regional office argued that the conformity analysis had not satisfied all of
the applicable requirements of the conformity rule. EPA therefore believed that the disputed projects should
not be grandfathered because they would ultimately substantially increase highway capacity, worsening air
quality problems. Staff from the White House Council on Environmental Quality ultimately brokered a region-
al-level agreement among EPA, FHWA, and FTA that allowed five of six disputed projects to move forward
in the ITIP, with two of these limited to planning and design. ARC removed the sixth project from the ITIP.
The EPA-FHWA-FTA agreement also established dates by which the Atlanta area should complete a
conforming long-range plan and an ozone attainment demonstration.1 Conformity lapsed in Atlanta on January
17, 1998.
'In addition, it recognized the need for national-level staff of EPA, FHWA, and FTA to develop a national memo-
randum of understanding or make changes in the conformity regulations to ensure proper use of the grandfathering
provision, particularly to see that it was not used to evade the consequences of a conformity lapse.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
108
Baltimore
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Severe 1
Carbon Monoxide	Moderate 2 (Redesignated to Attainment 1995)
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
6 Counties: Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Baltimore City, Carroll, Harford, and Howard.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
6 Counties: Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Baltimore City, Carroll, Harford, and Howard.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
2,173,989




1990
2,348,219
49,900,000
0.8%a

21.3
1995
2,432,993
55,900,000
0.7%b
2.3%b
23.0
al 980-1990 bl 990-1995
Institutions:
MPO: Baltimore Metropolitan Council (BMC)
State Transportation Agency: Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT)
State Air Agency: Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
1993 - During Interim Conformity, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Environmental Defense Fund
jointly challenged the MPO's modeling practices. This temporarily delayed the area's conformity determin-
ation.
1995	- The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund questioned the MPO's use of emission reductions from the ECO
program to pass the build/no-build test because ECO had been made voluntary and its funding had been cut
by the legislature. The MPO therefore dropped ECO from the conformity analysis and substituted a regional
commuter assistance program that it developed and pledged to fund and implement in 2005.
1996	- The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund again raised issues with the conformity determination, questioning
whether Baltimore could claim full emission reduction credit for the enhanced I/M program, which had not yet
been implemented. EPA, however, advised that the conformity analysis should be calculated assuming
implementation of the measures in the submitted SIP, whether or not they were moving forward on time.
1997	- The Maryland legislature passed a bill to make the I/M program voluntary. The Governor vetoed this
bill at least in part because of the conformity implications of failing to implement the required form of I/M. If
the program had become voluntary, EPA would have disapproved the SIP and conformity of the transportation
plan/TIP would have been frozen.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
109
Boston
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Serious
Carbon Monoxide	Moderate 2 (Redesignated to Attainment 1996)
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
9 Counties: Barnstable, Bristol, Dukes, Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymouth, Suffolk, and Worcester. (But
study focused only on geographic area congruent with that of the Boston MPO.)
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
The Boston MPO covers 101 towns and cities within the larger ozone nonattainment area.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area
Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average
Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
4,945,835




1990
5,204,103
59,816,200
0.5%b

11.5
1995
5,274,317
64,412,700a
0.4%c
1.2%d
12.2e
al 996	C1990-1995 ePer capita rates are calculated using 1995 population and 1996 VMT.
bl 980-1990 dl 990-1996
Institutions:
MPO: Boston MPO, staffed by the Central Transportation Planning Staff (CTPS)
State Transportation Agency: The Executive Office of Transportation and Construction (EOTC)
State Air Agency: Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
1994	- Boston could not pass the build/no-build tests for CO, NOx and VOCs, due to an error in a spreadsheet
supplied to CTPS by DEP for the conformity analysis. The conformity determination was delayed for about
two months while the agencies discovered and corrected the problem.
Conformity was also held up in 1994 over fiscal constraint issues. During the approval process for the FY
1995-97 SUP, FHWA's Massachusetts division office cited two fiscal constraint problems. First, FHWA
believed that the second year of the STIP (FY 1996) was 100% over-programmed because the state had
budgeted the sum of its highway apportionments, plus its unobligated balance. Second, the state was counting
on money from a bond bill not yet approved by the legislature to fund a maj or proj ect during the first two years
of the STIP. FHWA and FTA therefore deferred approval of the STIP pending resolution of these issues.
Although highway funding was held-up and TIP conformity could not proceed, this was not technically a
"conformity lapse," having been caused by a funding dispute between FHWA and the state over the STIP.
1995	- When trying to conform the FY 96-98 TIP, CTPS encountered problems with the build/no-build test for
NOx, VOCs and CO due to a technicality in the way the conformity analysis is calculated. These problems arose
because, for some milestone years, the build and no-build scenarios were the same. For example, in analysis of the
1996	milestone year, FY 96 was in both the no-build scenario (because it had already been conformed in the FY 95-
97 TIP) and the build scenario. Because there had been no substantial, regionally significant changes made to
projects, the analysis showed no decrease in emissions in the build scenario, which is required by the conformity rule.
To solve the problem, CTPS added a CMAQ project to the TIP and did an off-model analysis to pass the test.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
110
1997 - The Boston metropolitan region could not pass the NOx build/no-build test due not to road projects but
to high NOx emissions from diesel commuter trains. However, because the nonattainment area encompasses
the entire eastern half of the state, Boston's conformity analysis is combined with those of nine other MPOs.
When Boston's NOx emissions were averaged across the entire nonattainment area, passing the NOx build/no-
build test was not a problem.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
111
Charlotte
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Moderate (Redesignated to Attainment 1995)
Carbon Monoxide	Not Classified (Redesignated to Attainment 1995)
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
2 Counties: Mecklenburg and Gaston.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
2 Counties: Mecklenburg and Union.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
566,838




1990
686,574
14,515,000
1.9%"

21.1
1995
760,939
18,442,000
2.0%b
4.9%b
24.2
al 980-1990 bl 990-1995
Institutions:
MPO: Mecklenburg/Union MPO, staffed by the Charlotte Department of Transportation
State Transportation Agency: North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT)
State Air Agency: Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
1994 - During its first conformity determination under the 1993 conformity rule, the area found that future
VOC andNOx emission projections derived from the transportation plan were higher than the emission budgets
in the ozone maintenance plan. Planners at the state air agency believed that the higher emissions in the trans-
portation plan were due not to an actual increase in pollution, but to the difference between the methods used
to calculate VMT in the base year for the emission budgets (using HPMS and other data) and that used to de-
velop the new transportation plan (using the MPO's travel demand models). To rectify this problem, the area
developed a reconciliation methodology that applied a corrections factor to the base-year inventories to make
them comparable to the 1990 emission levels in the transportation plan. The air agency argued that once the
difference in the base-year VMT calculations was reconciled, the area should conform if the emissions growth
rate in the transportation plan stayed below the growth rate in the maintenance plan. Although the area passed
conformity in 1994 using this methodology, EPA subsequently required that the area develop a technique that
adjusted base-year VMT to match the SIP's base-year emissions inventory rather than vice versa, as any
adjustments applied to the budget would require a SIP amendment. The state and MPO subsequently
accomplished this.
1996 - In 1995, the MPO had decided that a conformity analysis was not required since the projects in the new
TIP came from a conforming plan and had not undergone any major changes. Later in the year, however, the
air agency discovered an error in its emission budget calculations. When the error was corrected and the new,
much lower budgets were used in the 1996 conformity analysis, the area showed substantial exceedances of
both the VOC and NOx emission budgets, especially for the 2005 and 2015 analysis years. Charlotte continued
to move forward grandfathered and exempt projects while the MPO, state DOT, and state air agency worked
at the staff level to find a solution to this thorny problem.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
112
1997 - Charlotte's conformity lapsed in January 1997. The area had enough grandfathered projects to continue
building through the year with only three projects being held up by the conformity lapse. In late 1997, under
pressure from the backers of one of the stalled projects, the Governor directed the transportation and air quality
agencies to do whatever was necessary to resolve the lapse. However, by the end of the study period no
resolution was forthcoming.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
113
Chicago
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Severe 2
PM10	Moderate
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
8 Counties: Cook, Du Page, Grundy (Only Aux Sable and Goose Lake Townships), Kane, Kendall (Only
Oswego Township), Lake, McHenry, and Will.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
7 Counties: Cook, Du Page, Kane, Kendall (Only Oswego Township), Lake, McHenry, and Will.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area
Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average
Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
7,171,420




1990
7,332,926
127,402,856
0.2%a

17.4
1995
7,641,329
140,834,243
0.4%b
2.0%b
18.4
al 980-1990 bl 990-1995
Institutions:
MPO: Chicago Area Transportation Study (CATS)
State Transportation Agency: Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT)
State Air Agency: Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
1994	- Chicago had begun a conformity analysis under the interim guidance; however, by the time it went to
public comment in early 1994, the 1993 final conformity rule was in effect. During the comment period, US
EPA and a coalition of local environmental groups, aided by technical experts affiliated with EDF, questioned
the validity of the VMT growth rates predicted in the CATS travel demand models. These were significantly
lower than the VMT generated from IDOT's HPMS data that had been used to set the budgets. CATS
developed a supplemental conformity submittal that documented and explained its modeling procedures. This
was ultimately accepted by the federal agencies; however, FHWA required CATS to improve its modeling for
future conformity determinations.
During the 1994 analysis, Chicago had difficulty passing the NOx build/no-build test. The situation was
resolved when transportation planners realized they could take credit for new alternative fuel buses through
off-model analysis. The area subsequently applied for a NOx waiver, which was granted in 1996.
1995	- Chicago had to forgo a conformity analysis in 1995, as the required upgrades to its network models had
not yet been completed. The area therefore had to delay implementation of some projects, advancing only those
that were grandfathered and exempt until the next conformity cycle.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
114
Denver
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Transitional
Carbon Monoxide	Moderate (reclassified to Serious 1997)
PM10	Moderate
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
6 Counties: Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Denver, Douglas, and Jefferson.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
8 Counties: Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Clear Creek, Denver, Douglas, Gilpin, and Jefferson.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area
Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average
Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
1,618,461




1990
1,848,319
39,100,000
1.3%b

21.2
1995
2,085,158
50,900,000a
1.7%c
4.5%d
24.4e
al 996	C1990-1995	ePer capita rates are calculated using 1995 population and 1996 VMT.
bl 980-1990 dl 990-1996
Institutions:
MPO: Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG)
State Transportation Agency: Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT)
State Air Agency: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE)
Lead Agency for SIP Planning: Regional Air Quality Council (RAQC)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
1993	- Denver did not have difficulty satisfying the requirements of the interim conformity guidance.
However, in anticipation of a more stringent final federal conformity rule, environmental advocacy groups
strongly criticized a non-federal project proposed by a public toll authority. The advocacy groups feared that
this project, the E-470 segment of a circumferential roadway, would open new land to development, creating
more PM10 emissions than planners were forecasting. The transportation agencies also had concerns about
emissions from this project and sought assurances that E-470 would not jeopardize the area's ability to
demonstrate conformity in the future. Project sponsors eventually agreed to certain specific mitigation
measures and created an escrow fund to finance additional mitigation, if that proved necessary.
1994	- During the conformity analysis of the 1994 TIP, transportation planners could not demonstrate that
emissions in the final horizon year of the transportation plan (2015) would stay below the 1997 PM10 budget
of 44 tpd in the maintenance plan. The area lapsed for almost a year and advanced only grandfathered and
exempt projects while it undertook the difficult and contentious task of amending the PM10 budgets. Working
together, transportation and regional air quality planners determined that the regional PM10 emissions budget
could be raised from 44 to 60 tpd - without either imposing new controls on stationary and area sources or
causing violations of the NAAQS. This could be accomplished by adopting mitigation measures that would
reduce 2015 emissions to the 60 tpd level in the Denver core, while allowing the permissible level of PM10

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
115
emissions to rise to the 60 tpd level in the suburban areas of the region. This proposal provoked months of
controversy and criticism from environmental and public health advocates regarding the health effects of
increased particulate levels. The state environmental agency approved this increase for only three years, which
would have created conformity problems later on. The state legislature intervened to permit the increase for
the full SIP period. The area was then able to conform the plan and TIP in 1995.
1996 - Denver had difficulties in 1996 demonstrating conformity for the annual TIP revision. Having
upgraded its transportation demand modeling, DRCOG found additional amounts of forecasted VMT and hence
higher levels of PM10 emissions from re-entrained dust and from NOx precursors of PM10. To resolve the PM10
problems, DRCOG negotiated agreements with local governments to alter their street sanding and sweeping
practices to reduce the dust kicked up by automobiles. To deal with the NOxproblems the air agency, after
discussions with stakeholders, committed to lower I/M NOx cut-points after 2001.
In 1996, Denver area environmentalists raised fiscal constraint issues during the conformity process. Arguing
that the MPO was mitigating emissions from the E-470 tollway project by claiming credit for transit expansion
proj ects that did not have secure funding, they threatened to sue on the grounds that the plan was not adequately
fiscally constrained. The MPO counter-argued that the emission benefits of the transit projects were so small
that the projects could be totally removed from the plan without threatening the conformity determination.
Ultimately, no litigation was filed, and there was no delay in the conformity determination.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
116
Houston
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Severe
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
8 Counties: Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, and Waller
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
13 Counties: Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Colorado, Fort Bend, Galvston, Harris, Liberty, Matagorda,
Montgomery, Walker, Waller, and Wharton.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area
Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily VMT
Growth:
Average
Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
3,118,480




1990
3,731,029
90,400,000
1.8%a

24.2
1995
4,164,393
105,800,000
2.0%b
3.2%b
25.4
al 980-1990 bl 990-1995
Institutions:
MPO: Houston-Galveston Area Council (HGAC)
State Transportation Agency: Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT)
State Air Agency: Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission (TNRCC)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
1994	- Houston had difficulty passing the VOC budget test. As a result of this, and also due to fiscal
constraint difficulties, the large Grand Parkway project was scaled back and spread out over several years.
In 1994, Houston was also unable to pass the build/no-build test for NOx for ozone and, as a result, conformity
was delayed while waiting for a NOx waiver.
1995	- Houston was granted a temporary NOx waiver until 1997.
1997 - Houston attempted its first conformity analysis using a 1999 VOC budget which tightened the
emissions cap from the 1996 budget level. The conformity analysis showed that at the end of the twenty year
planning horizon, Houston would not be below the 1999 levels for VOCs. By switching to modeled VMT
estimates rather than HPMS VMT and by correcting for an over-estimation of VMT on local streets, the area
revised the budgets and demonstrated conformity.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
117
Milwaukee
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Severe 2
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
6	Counties: Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Washington, and Waukesha.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
7	Counties: Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Walworth, Washington, and Waukesha.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area
Population:
Average
Daily
VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average
Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
1,693,289




1990
1,735,364
33,072,000
0.2%a

19.1
1995
1,780,769
35,900,000
0.3%b
1.7%b
20.2
al 980-1990 bl 990-1995
Institutions:
MPO: Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC)
State Transportation Agency: Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT)
State Air Agency: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
The most significant conformity issue which confronted the Milwaukee area was passing the build/no-build
tests, but this never caused the area a major problem or delay in making its conformity determinations. The
Milwaukee area was helped in dealing with conformity by the results of a broad-based SIP planning task force
was established through which all actors came to the table (including both public and private interests from
mobile, stationary, and area sources) to evaluate various strategies for reducing emissions within each source
category; to consider carefully the trade-offs among mobile, stationary and area source controls, and thus to
set budgets with an understanding of their future implications.
1995 - Milwaukee was saved from a conformity lapse by the February 1995 conformity amendments which
increased the time for areas to submit complete SIPs to two years, effectively aligning the SIP conformity lapse
with imposition of CAAA highway sanctions.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
118
Northern New Jersey
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Severe 2
Carbon Monoxide	Moderate 2
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
11 Counties: Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Morris, Ocean, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, and
Union.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
13 Counties: Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, Passaic, Somerset,
Sussex, Union, and Warren.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average
Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
4,961,510




1990
5,108,929
125,153,923
0.3%b

24.5
1995
5,243,598
129,352,902"
0.4%c
0.6%d
24. T
al 999	C1990-1995	e Per capita rates are calculated using 1995 population and 1999 VMT
bl980-1990 dl990-1999	predictions.
Institutions:
MPO: North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA)
State Transportation Agency: New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT)
State Air Agency: New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
The most significant conformity issue which confronted the northern New Jersey area was passing the
build/no-build tests, but this never resulted in a serious problem or delay in making the area's conformity
determination.
In regard to the modeling requirements of conformity, NJTPA, a relatively new MPO, received help from
NJDOT and New Jersey Transit. The creation of the model was a public process with significant contribution
from environmental advocates. In northern New Jersey, advocacy groups affiliated with the Tri-State
Transportation Campaign, supported by staff from the Rutgers Environmental Law Center, have actively par-
ticipated in area transportation planning. They began pushing for technical upgrading of transportation
modeling during the interim conformity period and sought public access to conformity consultations.
1997 - Due to the delayed implementation of New Jersey's enhanced I/M program, in December of 1997 EPA
declared a conformity freeze, effective the following April. Without implementation of enhanced I/M, New
Jersey's previously conditionally accepted SIP was revoked and the state was unable to demonstrate the
necessary 15% reduction of VOC. This freeze continued into 1999 as the state revised the 15% VOC SIP and
worked to implement its I/M program.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
119
New York
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Severe 2
Carbon Monoxide	Moderate 2
PM10	Moderate
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
10 Counties: Bronx, Kings, Nassau, New York, Orange, Queens, Richmond, Rockland, Suffolk, and
Westchester.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
10 Counties: Bronx, Kings, Nassau, New York, Putnam, Queens, Richmond, Rockland, Suffolk and
Westchester.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
11,063,184




1990
11,379,764
133,577,052
0.3%a

11.7
1995
11,462,260
132,284,161
0.2%b
-0.2%b>c
11.5
al 980-1990 bl 990-1995 CNYMTC does not regard the negative VMT rate for this period as indicative of
future trends.
Institutions:
MPO: New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC)
State Transportation Agency: New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT)
State Air Agency: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC or EnCon)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
1994 - New York demonstrated conformity using qualitative analysis and sketch planning techniques.
1995 - New York did not have the required network model in operation by the January deadline. The region
advanced only exempt and grandfathered projects in 1995. New York's inability to develop the required
modeling capacity stemmed in part from a state-mandated hiring freeze, which made adding technical staff
or outside consultants impossible.
1996	- The network based models continued to be non-operational through 1996. To compensate, the area
sought and received a third-year extension of its 1994 TIP, continuing to advance only exempt and grand-
fathered projects.
1997	- An interim network model was approved and New York was able to complete the required conformity
analysis to adopt a new TIP.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
120
Philadelphia
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Severe 1
Carbon Monoxide	Moderate 1 (Redesignated to Attainment 1996)
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
5 Counties: Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
9 Counties: Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties in Pennsylvania;
Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, and Mercer in New Jersey.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area
Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent
Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent
Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
3,682,450




1990
3,728,991
64,565,000
0.1 %b

17.3
1995
3,731,703
70,195,000a
0.0%c
1,4%d
18.8e
al 996	C1990-1995 ePer capita rates are calculated using 1995 population and 1996 VMT.
bl 980-1990 dl 990-1996
Institutions:
MPO: Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC)
State Transportation Agency: Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT)
State Air Agency: Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
The most significant conformity issue which confronted the Philadelphia area was passing the build/no-build
tests, but this never caused the area a major problem or delay in making its conformity determinations.
1995 - Philadelphia was saved from a conformity lapse by the February 1995 conformity amendments which
increased the time for areas to submit complete SIPs to two years, effectively aligning the SIP conformity lapse
with imposition of CAAA highway sanctions.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
121
Phoenix
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Moderate (Reclassified Serious in 1997)
Carbon Monoxide	Moderate (Reclassified Serious in 1996)
PM10	Moderate (Reclassified Serious in 1996)
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
2 Counties: Maricopa2 and Pinal.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
1 County and Two Tribal Communities: Maricopa County, the Gila River Indian Community, the Salt
River Pima Maricopa Indian Community.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area
Population:
Average
Daily
VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
1,600,093




1990
2,238,498
49,600,000
3.4%"

22.2
1995
2,563,582
57,000,000
3.2%b
2.8%b
22.2
al 980-1990 bl 990-1995
Institutions:
MPO and Lead Agency for SIP Development: Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG)
State Transportation Agency: Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT)
State Air Agency: Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
1994	- Realizing that it would not be able to pass the build/no-build test for NOx as a precursor to ozone,
Phoenix applied for a NOx waiver. This application process delayed the area's conformity determination by
several months during which time MAG advanced only exempt and grandfathered projects. Phoenix was
eventually granted a permanent waiver for NOx.
1995	- Model enhancements to the area's existing network model briefly delayed conformity determination.
MAG obtained the assistance of outside consultants for several years in order to improve its modeling
capability.
2Ozone nonattainment area only includes those parts of Maricopa county which are included in the Maricopa
Association of Governments (MAG).

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
122
Portland
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Marginal (Redesignated to Attainment 1997)
Carbon Monoxide	Moderate 1 (Redesignated to Attainment 1997)
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
3 Partial Counties: Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
3 Counties: Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area
Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average
Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
1,050,418




1990
1,174,291
20,413,000
1.1 %a

17.4
1995
1,300,729
22,437,000
1,4%b
1.9%b
17.2
al 980-1990 bl 990-1995
Institutions:
MPO: Metropolitan Service District (Metro)
State Transportation Agency: Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT)
State Air Agency: Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
1994 - Portland experienced difficulties in interpreting the build/no-build requirements and as a result, the
MPO incorrectly assigned projects to the baseline and action scenarios, invalidating the conformity analysis.
When the mistakes were uncovered, the area decided to let conformity lapse for a year rather than expending
the resources to re-do the analysis. All current projects were either exempt or grandfathered and therefore not
affected by the conformity lapse.
1996- In developing its 1996 ozone attainment demonstration/maintenance plan, Portland took a proactive
approach to future conformity determinations by setting emissions budgets for ozone precursors for the years
beyond the milestone year of the maintenance plan. Quantifying its safety margin between total emissions in
the attainment year (1992) and 2006, it gradually allocated part of its safety margin to create somewhat larger
mobile source emission budgets for 2010, 2015, and 2020. This established a budget to accommodate some
possible future VMT growth in the area.
Portland placed TCMs in the SIP specifically to ensure their implementation. Other areas were reluctant to
place numerous TCMs into their SIPs as their presence could trigger a lapse of conformity if the area could
not demonstrate timely implementation. Facing regular challenges in the legislature on the state growth
management law, Portland included its urban growth boundary and related transit measures in the SIP to
protect them from possible changes in the political climate.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
123
Salt Lake City
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Moderate (Redesignated to Attainment 1997)
Carbon Monoxide	Not Classified
PM10	Moderate
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
2 Counties: Davis and Salt Lake.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
5 Counties: Davis, Morgan, Tooele, Salt Lake, and Weber.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area
Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average
Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
765,606




1990
913,897
20,130,479
1.8%b

22.0
1995
1,023,7659
25,864,357a
2.0%c
4.3%d
25.3e
al 996 C1990-1995 ePer capita rates are calculated using 1995 population and 1996 VMT.
bl980-1990 dl990-1996
Institutions:
MPO: Wasatch Front Regional Council (WFRC)
State Transportation Agency: Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT)
State Air Agency: Utah Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ)
Summary of Conformity Issues:
1993	- Salt Lake City submitted an attainment demonstration and maintenance plan for ozone rather than put
forth a 15% SIP. Conformity was frozen until the SIP was found complete.
1994	- The area had difficulty passing the NOx budget test for PM10. This was partially due to the region's
previous SIP for PM10 which had been developed in the late 1980's before the budget concept for pollutants
or the conformity procedures. Additionally, the city's previous budget for NOx had used MOBILE 4 while the
conformity analysis mandated MOBILE 5, which calculated much higher emissions from mobile sources. The
area's conformity lapsed from November 1994 to October 1995. Advancing only grandfathered and exempt
projects, the area tried to convince EPA that the budget problem was not the result of real increases in
emissions but of differences in the way MOBILE 4 and MOBILE 5 projected NOx emissions. EPA was even-
tually persuaded and has since allowed the Salt Lake City area to use MOBILE 4 in the conformity analysis
for NOx (as a precursor of PM10, but not of ozone).
In 1994, the area was also unable to show that at the end of the 2005 planning horizon the city would be within
the approved levels for NOx for ozone. To correct this situation, the area extended the maintenance plan to
2015. By adding ten years to the budget, the area was able to demonstrate that, without adding any additional
control measures to the SIP, NOx emissions could rise after the first ten years of the plan without causing a
violation of the NAAQS.
1995	- With the extended plan for ozone maintenance, the area was able to demonstrate conformity and has
not experienced conformity problems since that time.

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Appendix II: Conformity Profiles of 15 Study Sites
124
San Francisco
Pollutant(s):	1990 Classification:
Ozone	Moderate (Redesignated to Attainment 1995, Proposed
Reclassification to Nonattainment, 1997)
Carbon Monoxide	Moderate 1 (Redesignated to Attainment 1998)
Geographic Boundaries of Ozone Nonattainment Area:
9 Partial Counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano,
and Sonoma.
Geographic Boundaries of MPO Area:
9 Counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and
Sonoma.
Year:
Nonattainment
Area
Population:
Average
Daily VMT:
Percent Annual
Population
Growth:
Percent Annual
Average Daily
VMT Growth:
Average Daily
VMT/Capita:
1980
5,179,759




1990
6,020,147
113,389,000
1.5%a

18.8
1995
6,302,933
123,666,900
1.3%b
1.8%b
19.6
al 980-1990 bl 990-1995
Institutions:
MPO: Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC)
State Transportation Agency: California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)
State Air Agency: California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA)
Joint SIP Development Responsibility: Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD),
Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), and MTC
Summary of Conformity Issues:
1989- The Sierra Club Legal Defense and other environmental advocates brought a litigation challenge to
MTC's modeling practices. The extensive model upgrades that MTC instituted as a result of settling the suit
influenced the national politics reflected in the conformity requirements, and they positioned MTC to meet
those requirements once 1993 regulations were promulgated.
1996 - In accordance with the settlement of a previous suit, MTC was obligated to incorporate into its ozone
maintenance plan several TCMs which originated in the area's 1982 SIP. Due to the imprecise definitions of
some of those TCMs, the BAAQMD and the EPA regional office questioned their timely implementation. In
response, MTC supplied more detailed descriptions of the TCMs and the timelines for their implementation.
MTC's response satisfied the air district and EPA that the conformity requirement was being met.

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the
Transportation Conformity Regulations
in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
A Report to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Department of Transportation
Publication Number
EPA420-R-99-011

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Appendix III
Interview Subjects by Study Site
Atlanta
Atlanta Regional Commission
Patti Schropp, Transportation Planning Division
Denise Wright, Transportation Planning Division
Jane Davis Hayse, Transportation Planning Division
Wayne Hill, ARC Member; Chair, Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners
Georgia Department of Transportation
Frank Danchetz, Chief Engineer
Georgia Department of Natural Resources
Ron Methier, Chief, Air Protection Branch, Environmental Protection Division
Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce
Jeff Rader, Transportation Coordinator
Georgia Power Company
Chris Hobson, Manager of Environmental Affairs
Myles Smith, Manager, Urban Affairs Department
Environmental Defense Fund
Michael Replogle, Co-Director, Transportation Project
Georgia Conservancy
Eric Meyer, Environmental Policy Analyst
Automobile Association of America
Ted Allred, Regional Director
Federal Highway Administration
Bob Radics, Intermodal Planning Engineer Manager, Georgia Division
John Humeston, Director, Planning and Program Development, Region 4
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Eric Maurer, Environmental Engineer, Mobile Source Planning Unit, Air Programs
Branch, Region 4
Kay Prince, Chief, Regulatory Planning Section, Air Planning Branch, Region 4
Kelly Sheckler, Environmental Scientist, Air Planning Branch, Region 4

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
126
Baltimore
Baltimore Metropolitan Council
Harvey Bloom, Director of Transportation
John Wing, Chair, Citizen's Advisory Committee
Steven Horn, Member, Transportation Steering Committee (the MPO); Chief of Planning,
Carroll County Board of Commissioners
Maryland Department of Transportation
Missy Drissel Cassidy, Manager, Air Quality Planning, Office of Systems Planning and
Evaluation
Fred Rappe, Director, Systems of Planning and Evaluation
Rick Sheckells, Manager, Air Quality Planning, Office of Systems Planning and Evaluation
Howard Simons, Systems Analyst, Office of Systems Planning and Evaluation
Maryland Department of the Environment
Diane Franks, Chief, Air Quality Planning, Air and Radiation Management Administration
Environmental Defense Fund
Michael Replogle, Co-Director, Transportation Project
Federal Highway Administration
Mario Jorquera, Air Quality Specialist, Region 3
Michelle Waxman-Johnson, Transportation Planner, Maryland Division
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Paul Wentworth, Environmental Engineer, Ozone and Mobile Sources Section, Region 3
Boston
Metropolitan Area Planning Council
Dan Fortier, Chief Transportation Planner
Central Transportation Planning Staff
Craig Leiner, Manager of Certification Activities
Anne McGahan, Senior Planner
Karl Quackenbush, Deputy Technical Director of Operations
Executive Office of Transportation and Construction
Dan Beagan, Director, Bureau of Transportation Planning and Development
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
Andrew Brennan, Manager of Environmental Affairs
Anne Galbraith, Deputy Director of Planning

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
127
Executive Office of Environmental Affairs
Sonia Hamel, Director of Air Policy and Planning
Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection
Christine Kirby, Manager, Transportation Planning Unit, Division of Air Quality Control
Conservation Law Foundation
Steve Burrington, Senior Attorney
Federal Highway Administration
Ed Silva, Planning and Research Engineer, Massachusetts Division
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Donald Cooke, Environmental Scientist, Region 1
Charlotte
City of Charlotte Department of Transportation
William Finger, Assistant Director of Transportation
David McDonald, Transportation Planner
Joseph McLelland, Transportation Planner
North Carolina Department of Transportation
David Hyder, Charlotte Area Coordinator and Air Quality Specialist, Statewide Planning
Branch
Marion Ron Poole, Branch Manager, Office of Statewide Planning
Department of Environment and Natural Resources
Deidre Hinkle, Environmental Engineer, Air Quality Section
Brock Nicholson, Assistant Chief for Planning, Air Quality Section, Division of
Environmental Management
North Carolina General Assembly (State Legislature)
George Givens, Staff Attorney, Environmental Review Commission
Sierra Club
Molly Diggins, State Chair
William Holman, Lobbyist
John Tallmadge, Transportation Planner
Environmental Defense Fund
Michael Replogle, Co-Director, Transportation Project
Federal Highway Administration
Kay Batey, Planning and Program Development Engineer, North Carolina Division

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site	128
Wendy Gasteiger, Environmental Program Specialist, North Carolina Division
John Humeston, Director, Planning and Program Development, Region 4
John Schrohenloher, Planning Engineer, North Carolina Division
Joe Stevens, Planning Engineer, North Carolina Division
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Eric Maurer, Environmental Engineer Mobile Source Planning Unit, Air Programs Branch,
Region 4
Kay Prince, Chief, Regulatory Planning Section, Air Planning Branch, Region 4
Kelly Sheckler, Environmental Scientist, Air Planning Branch, Region 4
Chicago
Chicago Area Transportation Study
Linda Bolte, Deputy Planning
Andrew Plummer, Deputy Director
Eugene Ryan, Associate Executive Director
Bob Kaiser, Consultant; Senior Project Manager, Michael Baker, Jr., Inc.
Chicago Department of Transportation
Luann Hamilton, Assistant Director of Project Development, Administration and Planning
John Tomczyk, Coordinating Planner II, Planning and Programming
Illinois Department of Transportation
Carla Berroyer, Chief, Urban Program Planning
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
Toby Frevert, Manager, Air Quality Planning Section, Bureau of Air
Mike Rogers, Environmental Protection Specialist, Bureau of Air
Chicago Transit Authority
Marty Johnson, Vice President, Capital Investment Department
Illinois State Toll Highway Authority
Ralph Wehner, Executive Director
City of Batavia
Jeff Schielke, Mayor
METRA
Jack Groner, Director, Grant Development and Programming
Jerry Hoff, Department Head, General Development
Business and Professional People in the Public Interest
Robert Jones, Attorney

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
129
Center for Neighborhood Technology
Jackie Grimshaw, Coordinator
Environmental Law and Policy Center
Robert Michaels, Attorney
Environmental Defense Fund
Michael Replogle, Co-Director, Transportation Project
Robert Johnston, Professor, Department of Environmental Studies, University of
California, Davis
Federal Highway Administration
Steve Call, Planner, Chicago Metropolitan Office
Jon-Paul Kohler, Urban Transportation Engineer, Illinois Division
Samuel Herrera-Diaz, Metropolitan Planning and Air Quality Specialist, Region 5
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Patricia Morris, Environmental Scientist, Air and Radiation Division, Region 5
Denver
Denver Regional Council of Governments
Jeffrey May, Highway and Transit Planning Coordinator
David Pampu, Deputy Executive Director
Office of the Mayor
Theresa Donahue, Deputy Chief of Staff, City and County of Denver
Colorado Department of Transportation
George Gerstle, Section Manager, Air Quality and Cultural Resources
Regional Transportation District
Elizabeth Rao, Project Manager, Planning and Development
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
Karen Kudebeh, Conformity Liaison, Air Pollution Control Division
Regional Air Quality Council
Kenneth Lloyd, Executive Director
Colorado Environmental Coalition
Lauren Martens, Environmental Health Coordinator
Norwest Technical Services, Inc.
Dick Watt, Senior Vice President

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
130
Spensley and Associates
James Spensley, President
Environmental Defense Fund
Robert Yuhnke, Attorney
Michael Replogle, Co-Director, Transportation Project
Federal Highway Administration
Duwayne Ebertowski, Transportation Planner, Colorado Division
George Osborne, Division Administrator, Colorado Division
Robin Smith, Air Quality, Urban Transportation Planner, Region 8
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Jeff Houk, Environmental Engineer Air Program, Region 8
Houston
Houston-Galveston Area Council
Alan Clark, Manager, Transportation Planning
Steve Howard, Program Director
Jacquie Lentz, Chief Air Quality Planner
Lily Wells, Senior Environmental Planner
City of Houston
Charles Frederikson, Deputy, Assistant Director of Public Works
Dewayne Huckabay, Director, Finance and Administration Department, Office of Energy
Management
Texas Department of Transportation
Roger Beall, Transportation Planner, Transportation Planning and Programming
Caroll Nixon, Transportation Planning Engineer, Houston-Galveston Regional Office
Eddie Shafie, Metropolitan Planning Manager, Transportation Planning and Programming
Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission
Hazel Barbour, Mobile Source Manager, Air Quality Planning and Assessment Division
A1 Giles, Team Leader, Transportation Unit, Mobile Source Section, Air Quality Planning
and Assessment Division
Teresa Hardin Nguyen, Transportation Planner
Bob Reese, Mobile Source Section
Wayne Young, Transportation Planner
Metropolitan Transit Authority (METRO)
Terrence Grant, Manager of Transit Systems Analysis
Gregg Rhodes, Senior Transit Capital Planner
John Sedlak, Assistant General Manager, Capital and Long Range Planning

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
131
Linda Smith, Manager of Environmental Policy
Blackburn and Carter
James Blackburn, Environmental Attorney
Greater Houston Partnership
Roger Hoard, Vice President, Chamber of Commerce Division
Office of the Governor
John Howard, Environmental and Natural Resource Policy Director
Allan Rutter, Transportation Policy Director
Sierra Club
George Smith, Air Quality Chair
Federal Highway Administration
George Hadley, Air Quality Specialist, Region 6
Mike Leary, Intermodal Team Leader, Texas Division
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Jahanbakhsh Behnam, Air Planning Section, Region 6
Tom Diggs, Chief, Air Planning Section, Region 6
Milwaukee
Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission
Kenneth Yunker, Assistant Director
Wisconsin Department of Transportation
Joe Crossett, Planning Analyst, Bureau of Environment
Sarah Dunning, Planning Analyst, Bureau of Environment
Jay Waldschmidt, Civil Engineer, Bureau of Environment
Milwaukee County Transit System
Kenneth Warren, Assistant Director
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
John Duffe, Transportation Specialist
Robert Lopez, Air Quality Analyst
Federal Highway Administration
Thomas Frank, Planning and Research Engineer, Wisconsin Division
Samuel Herrera-Diaz, Metropolitan Planning and Air Quality Specialist, Region 5

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
132
Citizens for a Better Environment
Bill Schaefer, Staff Attorney
U. S. Environmental Protection Agency
Mike Leslie, Mobile Sources, Region 5
Wisconsin Roadbuilders Association
Tom Walker, Executive Director
Northern New Jersey
North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority
Ted Matley, Director of Planning and Information Technology
William Van Dyke, Chair; member, Board of Freeholders (county legislature), Bergen
County
Joel Weiner, Executive Director
Julia Zhou, Manager of Regional and Subregional Modeling
New Jersey Department of Transportation
Dominic Billera, Air and Noise Division
Cheryl Brennan, Section Chief, Air Quality Planning, Bureau of Statewide Planning
Andy Fekete, Manager, Environmental Services, Bureau of Environmental Analysis
James Lewis, Section Chief, MPO Coordination, Bureau of State-Wide Planning
Jack McQuillan, Air and Noise Division
Robert Miller, Section Chief, Bureau of Transportation Corridor Analysis
John Moore, Manager, Statewide Planning
Andrew Swords, Supervising Planner, Transportation, Air Quality Unit, Bureau of
Technical Analysis
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
R. Bruce Benton, Bureau of Air Quality Planning
Chris Salmi, Manager, Bureau Chief of Air Quality Planning, Office of Air Quality
Management
New Jersey Transit
James P. Redeker, Senior Director of Business Planning
Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic
Therese Langer, Staff Scientist
Environmental Defense Fund
Michael Replogle, Co-Director, Transportation Project
Federal Highway Administration
Lloyd Jacobs, Planning Team Leader, New Jersey Division

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
133
Calvin Edgehill, Community Planner, New Jersey Division
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Matthew Cairns, Environmental Engineer, Air Programs Branch, Region 2
John P. Walsh, Air Programs Branch Region 2
New York
New York Metropolitan Transportation Council
Michelle Bager, Associate Transportation Analyst
Raymond Ruggieri, former Executive Director
Larry Malsam, TCC Subregional Staff Director, Region II
New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority
David Anderson, Senior Transportation Planner, Planning Division
William Wheeler, Director of Planning, Policy and Planning Department
New York City Department of Transportation
Peter Fleischer, Director of Policy and Development, Division of Administration
New York State Department of Transportation
Gary R. McKoy, Director, Environmental Analysis Bureau
Norman Schneider, former Assistant Commissioner; Division Director, Passenger and
Freight Safety Divisions
John Zamurs, Associate Environmental Specialist, Environmental Analysis Bureau
New York City Department of Transportation
Peter Fleischer, Director of Policy and Development, Division of Administration
New York City Department of City Planning
Floyd Lapp, Director, Transportation Division
New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority
David Anderson, Senior Transportation Planner, Planning Division
William Wheeler, Director of Planning, Policy and Planning Department
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
Elizabeth Bartlett, Environmental Engineer
Robert Hampston, former Assistant Commissioner of Environmental Quality
Jim Ralston, Planner
Dave Shaw, Director, Bureau of Air Quality Planning
New York City Department of Environmental Protection
Geraldine Kelpin, Director, Division of Mobile Source Control Policy and Planning,
Bureau of Air, Noise, and Hazardous Materials

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
134
Konheim and Ketcham
Brian Ketchum, Executive Vice President, Environmental Analysis and Planning
Tri-State Transportation Campaign
Janine Bauer, Executive Director
Environmental Defense Fund
Michael Replogle, Co-Director, Transportation Project
James Tripp, General Counsel
Federal Highway Administration
Joseph Rich, Air Quality/Urban Transportation Planner, New York Division
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Rudolph Kapichak, Mobile Source Team Leader, Air Programs Branch, Region 2
John Walsh, Air Programs Branch, Region 2
Philadelphia
Delaware Regional Planning Commission
Ronald Roggenburk, Manager, Air Quality Planning
Bob Kaiser, Consultant; Senior Project Manager, Michael Baker, Jr. Inc.
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
Mike Baker, Chief of Air Quality Section, Center for Program Development
Bob Janecko, Manager, Center for Program Development
Larry Shifflet, Transportation Planner, Center for Program Development
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
Arleen Shulman, Mobile Source Coordinator, Bureau of Air Quality Control
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
Bruce Benton, Bureau of Air Quality Planning
Chris Salmi, Manager, Bureau Chief of Air Quality Planning, Office of Air Quality
Management
Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority
Richard Bickel, Director, Long Range Planning
City of Philadelphia
Denise Goren, Deputy Mayor
Clean Air Council
Jason Rash, Staff Attorney
Dennis Winters

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
135
The PENJERDEL Council
Collin McNeil, President
Federal Highway Administration
Robert Hall, Supervisory Community Planner, Pennsylvania Division
Mario Jorquera, Air Quality Specialist, Region 3
Joe Werning, Air Quality Specialist, Pennsylvania Division
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Larry Budney, Transportation/Air Quality Planner, Ozone/CO and Mobile Sources
Section, Region 3
Phoenix
Maricopa Association of Governments
Douglas Eberhart, Air Quality Planning Manager, Transportation Planning Office
Roger Herzog, Engineering Manager, Transportation Planning Office
Barbara Austin Joy, Consultant; Earth Matters Environmental Consulting
City of Phoenix
Jack Tevlin, Deputy City Manager
Arizona Department of Transportation
Pat Cupell, Air Quality Planner
Jess Jarvis, Manager, MPO/COG Team
Arizona Department of Environmental Quality
Ira Domsky, Planning Section Manager, Office of Air Quality
Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest
David Baron, Assistant Director
Regional Public Transportation Authority
Ken Driggs, Executive Director
Federal Highway Administration
Dennis Mittelstedt, Division Planning and Research Engineer, Arizona Division
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Wienke Tax, Environmental Scientist, Mobile Sources Section, Region 9

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
136
Portland
Metro
Andy Cotugno, Planning Director
Michael Hoglund, Transportation Planning Manager
Terry Whisler, Senior Transportation Planner
City of Portland
Robert Burchfield, Principal Engineer, Office of Transportation
Elsa Coleman, Deputy Director of Transportation
Douglas MacCourt, Environmental Manager, Office of Transportation, Engineering and
Development
Clackamas County
Ed Lundquist, Chairman, County Commission
Rod Sandoz, Planner
Oregon Department of Transportation
Vince Carrow, Senior Air Quality/Hazardous Materials Specialist, Environmental Services
Grace Crunican, Director
Steven Lindland, Civil/Environmental Engineer, Environmental Services
David Williams, Interim Planning and Development Manager, Region 1
Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
John Kowalczyk, Air Quality Division
Annette Liebe, Manager SIP Section, Air Quality Division
Tri-County Metropolitan Transit District of Oregon
G.B. Arlington, Director, Strategic and Long Range Planning
1000 Friends of Oregon
Keith Bartholomew, Staff Attorney
Cascade Policy Institute
John Charles, Environmental Policy Director
HDR Enginnering, Inc.
Irvin Lloyd, Transportation Projects Environmental Manager
Illingworth and Rodkin
James Reyff
Oregon Economic Development Department
James M. Whitty, Industry Development Division Manager

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
137
Federal Highway Administration
Fred Patton, Division Transportation Planner, Oregon Division
Lisa Hanf, Air Quality Specialist/Metropolitan Planner, Region 10
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Wayne El son, Region 10
Salt Lake City
Wasatch Front Regional Council
Kip Billings, Transportation Engineer
Mick Crandall, Program Director
Matt Riffkin, former Planner; Consultant, Fehr and Peers Associates, Inc.
Utah Department of Transportation
El den Bingham, Air Quality Coordinator, Office of Program Development
John Njord, Engineer for Urban Planning, Office of Program Development
Utah Department of Environmental Quality
Steven Arbaugh, Environmental Health Scientist, Division of Air Quality
Mountainland Association of Governments
Kathy McMullen, Director, Regional Planning Department
Parson, Behle, and Lattimer
Shelly Cordon Teuscher, Director of Government Relations
Sierra Club
Nina Dougherty, Volunteer; Associate Director for Research, Spencer S. Eccles Health
Sciences Library, University of Utah
Federal Highway Administration
Robin Smith, Air Quality-Urban Transportation Planner
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Jeff Houk, Environmental Engineer, Air Program, Region 8
San Francisco
Metropolitan Transportation Commission
Chris Brittle, Planning Manager
William Hein, Deputy Executive Director
David Tannehill, Senior Planner

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
138
Alameda County
Edward Campbell, Supervisor, First District
Contra Costa Transportation Authority
Bob McCleary, Executive Director
San Francisco Transportation Authority
Brigid Hynes-Cherin, Executive Director
California Department of Transportation
J. Steven Borroum, Chief, Environmental Engineering, Office of Environmental
Engineering
California State Senate Transportation Committee
Mehdi Morshed, Staff Director
California Air Resources Board
Anne Geraghty, Manager, Transportation Strategies Group
Tess Sicat, Office of Air Quality and Transportation Planning
Doug Thompson, Associate Transportation Planner, Executive Office, Transportation
Strategies
Bay Area Air Quality Management District
David Marshall, Supervising Environmental Planner
Jean Roggenkamp, Manager, Planning and Transportation Section
International Institute for Surface Transportation Policy Studies
Rod Diridon, Executive Director
Regional Alliance for Transit
Matt Williams, Investment Adviser
John Woodbury
Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund
William S. Curtiss, Managing Attorney, San Francisco Regional Office
Sierra Club
John Holtzclaw
Federal Highway Administration
Karen Schmidt, Environmental Specialist, California Division
Robert O'Loughlin, Air Quality Specialist
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Mark Brucker, Environmental Scientist, Mobile Sources Section, Region 9

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Appendix III: Interview Subjects by Study Site
139
National
Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation
Lucy Garliauskas, Division of Environmental Analysis
Michael Savonis, Division of Environmental Analysis
James Shrouds, Chief, Division of Environmental Analysis
Environmental Protection Agency
Margo Oge, Director, Office of Mobile Sources
Meg Patulski, Office of Mobile Sources
Kathryn Sargent, Office of Mobile Sources
Laura Voss, Office of Mobile Sources
Environmental Defense Fund
Michael Replogle, Co-Director, Transportation Project
Robert Yuhnke, Attorney
Surface Transportation Policy Project
Hank Dittmar, Executive Director

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Appendix IV: Sources of Population
and Transportation Data
Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the
Transportation Conformity Regulations
in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
A Report to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Department of Transportation
Publication Number
EPA420-R-99-011

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Appendix IV
Sources of Population and Transportation Data
Atlanta
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996USA County General
Profile of all counties in the ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/13.html on December 17, 1998.
VMT Source: Atlanta Regional Commission, personal correspondence with Chris Chovan.
Baltimore
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996USA County General
Profile of all counties within ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/24.html on December 17, 1998.
VMT Source: Maryland State Highway Administration, "A Baltimore Region Daily Vehicle Miles
of Travel (In Millions of Miles by Jurisdiction for All Systems)" as supplied by Matthew M. De
Rouville of Baltimore Metropolitan Council.
Boston
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in the ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/25.html on December 17, 1998.
VMT Source: Boston MPO, personal correspondence with Ann McGahan, staff member of Central
Transportation Planning Staff.
Charlotte
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in the ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/37.html on December 17, 1998.
VMT Source: City of Charlotte, personal correspondence with Joseph McLelland, transportation
planner.
Chicago
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in the ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datapmap/www/17.html on December, 17, 1998.
VMT Source: Chicago Area Transportation Study, personal correspondence with Eugene Ryan,
Associate Executive Director.

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Appendix IV: Sources of Population and Transportation Data
141
Denver
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in the ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/18.html on December 17, 1998.
VMT Source: Denver Regional Council of Governments, personal correspondence with Christopher
Primus.
Houston
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in the ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/48.html on December 17, 1998.
VMT Source: Houston-Galveston Area Council, Personal correspondence with Jacquie Lentz, chief
air quality planner.
Milwaukee
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in the ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/55.html on December 17, 1998.
VMT Source: Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, personal correspondence with
Ken Yunker, Assistant Director.
New York City
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in the ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/36.html on Decemberl7, 1998.
VMT Source: New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, Personal correspondence with Mary
Vogel, staff member.
Northern New Jersey
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in the ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/34.html on Decemberl7, 1998.
VMT Source: North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, Personal correspondence with Julia
Zhou, manager of regional and sub-regional modeling.

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Appendix IV: Sources of Population and Transportation Data
142
Philadelphia
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in the ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/42.html on December 17, 1998.
VMT Source: Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, personal correspondence with Ron-
ald Roggenburk.
Phoenix
Population source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/04.html on December 17, 1998.
VMT Source: Maricopa Association of Governments, personal correspondence with Cathy Arthur.
Portland
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/41.html on December 17, 1998.
VMT Source: METRO Transportation Department, personal correspondence with Terry Whisler,
senior transportation planner.
Salt Lake City
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/49.html on December 17, 1998.
VMT Source: Wasatch Front Regional Council, personal correspondence with Kip Billings,
transportation engineer.
San Francisco
Population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Total Resident Population from 1996 USA County General
Profile of all counties in ozone nonattainment area. Accessed from http://www.census.gov/
datamap/www/06.html on December 17, 1998.
VMT Source: Metropolitan Transportation Commission, "San Francisco Bay Area, County &
Regional Vehicles Miles of Travel, Population and Employment: 1990-1995." Accessed from
http://www.mtc.ca.gOv/facts_and_figures/misc/VMT9095.html on July 13, 1998.

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Appendix V: Report Authors
Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the
Transportation Conformity Regulations
in 15 Nonattainment Areas
Arnold M. Howitt and Elizabeth M. Moore
Taubman Center for State and Local Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
March 1999
A Report to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the
Federal Highway Administration,
U.S. Department of Transportation
Publication Number
EPA420-R-99-011

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Appendix V
Report Authors
ARNOLD M. HOWITT is Executive Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local
Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He also serves as
Executive Director of the Cooperative Mobility Program, an international transportation research
program based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Howitt's research focuses on transportation, environmental regulation, and urban physical
development issues. In addition to his work on air quality and transportation in the United States, partially
reflected in this report, he is studying similar issues internationally, particularly in Japan. Dr. Howitt is the
author ofManaging Federalism (CQ Press), a study of the federal grant-in-aid system, and co-author and
co-editor of Perspectives on Management Capacity Building (SUNY Press). He is a contributor to
Essays in Transport Economics and Policy (Brookings, 1999).
Dr. Howitt earned a B. A. degree from Columbia University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in
political science from Harvard University. He has served in faculty and administrative positions at
Harvard since 1976.
ELIZABETH M. Moore is currently a transportation planner with Vanasse Hangen Brustlin,
Inc., in Watertown, Massachusetts, where she specializes in planning and implementation of trans-
portation demand management strategies. Previously, as a Research Coordinator at the Taubman
Center for State and Local Government, Kennedy School of Government, she participated in
transportation and air quality studies. Prior to working at the Kennedy School, she directed a Trans-
portation Management Association in Cambridge, MA.
Ms. Moore earned both a B.S. and M.S. degree from Colorado State University in the 1970s and
a Master in City Planning degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994.

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