Transportation Headlines

Air Quality Conformity Lapse Puts Federal Funding on Hold

January 22, 2002 -- Federal funding and approvals for key highway and transit projects in the nine-county Bay Area were temporarily suspended as the region fell into an official air quality "conformity lapse" on Tuesday, January 22 following failure by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to approve the 2001 Revised Bay Area Ozone Attainment Plan before the January 21 deadline. The California Air Resources Board approved the plan on Nov. 1, 2001. While the duration of the freeze is not known, federal funding and approvals can resume approximately 15 days after the EPA publishes a transportation conformity budget in the Federal Register.

Attached are facts and figures relating to regional air quality and the newly adopted 2001 Regional Transportation Plan for the San Francisco Bay Area, which features a strong commitment to public transit and other air quality-friendly programs.

Also see the attached Transportation Conformity Lapse Q and A for answers to some of the more common conformity questions.

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Following is a memorandum explaining the air quality conformity lapse sent January 18 by MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger to MTC commissioners and members of the Bay Area partnership.

Memorandum

TO: Commission and Bay Area Partnership

DATE: January 18, 2002
FR: Executive Director
RE: Conformity Lapse

As you know, the region will enter a "conformity lapse" on January 21, 2002. The official notification from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is contained in Attachment 1.

We had hoped to lift the lapse shortly after the January 30th meeting of the Commission, at which we were scheduled to make a conformity finding on the 2001 Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). This expected action was based on an assurance from EPA that they would be able to publish our new transportation conformity budget in the Federal Register by January 15th; the budget takes effect 15 days after publication.

EPA informed us earlier this week that they would be unable to publish our new budget due to (a) the volume and complexity of opposing comments they had received from environmental groups and Central Valley interests, and (b) the likelihood that EPA will be sued by some or all of those groups if it moves forward with approval of the budget. We met this morning with Wayne Nastri, the new EPA Regional Administrator, and urged him to act promptly to approve our new budget and minimize the duration of the conformity lapse. He indicated that it might be at least another 2-3 weeks before EPA can take action on the conformity budget.

We have further reviewed the list of projects we released earlier that could be affected by a lapse over the next few months, including projects already in the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) awaiting federal actions as well as new 2001 RTP projects that we hope to amend into the TIP at the earliest opportunity. This list can be found in Attachment 2.

In the "silver lining" department, FHWA recently published revised guidance that will allow ongoing federally funded design and right of way work that had been approved before a conformity lapse to continue to be federally reimbursable during the lapse. Previous guidance had only permitted continuing reimbursement for construction work. The revised guidance is contained in Attachment 3.