Congress amended the Clean Air Act in 1990. One of the goals of these amendments was to attain National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) by reducing vehicle tailpipe emissions. It was determined that one of the best ways to reduce these emissions was to link air quality and transportation planning. The Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ) was implemented to support projects that simultaneously relieved transportation congestion and improved air quality.
CMAQ is a potential source of funding not only for light-rail projects, but also other alternative transportation projects, such as bicycle lanes, pedestrian walking, hiking, or running trails, etc. Often CMAQ funds are one of the only sources that proponents of these pedestrian or bicycle based projects have available to them.
Recently, the Sonoma County Transportation Authority (SCTA) awarded the Sonoma Marin Rail Transit (SMART) $6.6M in CMAQ funds to purchase additional rail cars. While this is consistent with the type of projects usually funded by CMAQ, there has been some minor controversy. The heart of the issue appears to be how quickly the funding request was railroaded through the approval process. Other regional groups (such as the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition) also dependent upon CMAQ funds for their projects were not given much warning or opportunity to prepare their objections, suggestions, or alternatives.
Proponents of the deal say that the rush was necessary because there were $10M in overall funds that would have been lost if SMART had not acted before the end of the year. The rail cars needed to be ordered, and if they had not acted quickly the window of opportunity would have been pushed back several years.
No one benefits if potential funding is lost because of a failure to act. Overall, light rail projects and other pedestrian or cycling projects work best when developed together. While it is a shame that this had to be pushed through at the last minute, to me it still seems smarter to act than to miss the opportunity entirely. Hopefully both groups will learn from this, and will plan ahead better to develop their mutual interests. With ever-tightening budgets and limited money available, groups like this need to maximize every dollar.
