USEPA/TP & STPP:Partners in Rage against Roads

Transportation Partners (TP) is an established multi-million dollar taxpayer-funded program by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to mobilize and sharpen organized opposition to new roads throughout America — whether free or tolled. Its annual report says: “The mission of the Transportation Partners program is to reduce the growth in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) throughout the US. The program has worked with hundreds of local (protest) organizations to achieve this mission over the past three years... (through) VMT-reducing projects. These local organizations are known as project partners. There are currently 347 project partners enrolled in the program (funded by us), ranging in size and scope from a community bicycle program in Tampa to a transit center in Phoenix.”

The program claims to have already reduced annual VMT by an estimated 1.25 billion nation-wide in 1997. The calculation look pretty dubious to me — it assumes every time someone is encouraged to ride a bike or to walk, they substitute that for driving a car, when most bike riding and walking is recreational, and most likely an addition not a substitute for car trips. But in any case the claimed 1.25b VMT relates to 2.4 trillion VMT/yr so it is about 0.05% of car travel, or about the growth of vehicle travel in the average week. Mere gesturing, even if true. Of course EPA wants to increase the number manyfold. The EPA/TP program consists of propaganda and agitation on behalf of ‘alternatives’ and protests against new road capacity

wherever it is proposed.

EPA devotes 2.5 fulltime equivalent staff to the project and in two years for which we could get numbers has provided grants of several million dollars to the project.

An EPA memo justifying the grants says in part: “EPA’s Transp Partners program furthers the goal of the transp system efficiency strategy by encouraging citizens to become involved in local transp planning; providing citizen activists with a range of technical, procedural, and anecdotal knowledge about the environmental, economic and mobility impacts of various transp policies and projects, the transp planning process, and concrete examples of successful projects; and recognizing citizens and voluntary organizations who have made positive contributions to their communities through successfully implementing transp improvements that improve both the local quality of life and reduce the growth in vehicle trips and miles treveled.... STPP has nurtued a network of local transp activists, its ‘grassoots Network’, and provided Network members and the public at large with the TransAct electronic information service...”

USEPA is central to the organization of a nationwide campaign to stop road enhancement. It has a monthly telephone conference call among the principal partners “to share information and develop shared strategies for providing coordinated assistance to localities,” the memo states.

I used the Freedom of Info Act to get access to EPA documents on TP. They show that the Surface Transp Policy Project (STPP) organization is the super-principal among the ten principal partners through which the USEPA is organizing its major nationwide campaign against roads. That’s not surprising since STPP is the leading voice of enviro activist groups in Washington DC and among the most vigorous and consistent critics of new roadwork. And in step with the USEPA’s newly interventionist policies at the regional and state level (see nearby article.) the STPP has announced it is reorganizing to boost its activities at the regional level. It has recently announced a new program involving regional offices in the west and the southwest. The former CEO Hank Dittmar heads up one of these in New Mexico.

A heap of documents obtained from USEPA under FOIA shows $775,000 as having being paid to the STPP in “cooperative agreements” and grants in the past three years. We don’t have numbers for the grants to the other nine principal partners.

STPP argues for filling potholes. It claims new highway laneage is being built at the expense of maintenance, and it is unremmitingly hostile to new roads and widening of existing roads. Its “Directory of Transp Reform Resources” funded by USEPA lists the “Transportation Partners” it is supporting and organization by organization it lists the highway projects (see sample extracts reproduced around these pages) that they are working to block. These include toll roads as much as free roads. All the material is blantantly one-sided. It focuses entirely on, and exaggerates, the costs of cars/roads while neglecting almost entirly benefits, suggesting that the major role of the car/road system in modern society is an unmitigated evil which all people of goodwill will fight to slay. It seems extraordinary to this reporter that a major US govt agency is so central to this nutty crusade. (See the following websites USEPA’s www.epa.gov/tp, also STPP’s USEPA-funded site www.transact.org and www.smartgrowth.org, also USEPA-funded. USEPA/TP documents are available through Jeralene Green FOIA USEPA fax 202 260 4499 or by contacting us about the costs of copying documents we already have.)