Maryland should study the climate effects of highway expansion before committing to it

Maryland needs a new vision for transportation, one that focuses on moving people vs. cars as swiftly as possible while protecting our health, environment and planet. The first step toward this vision is to recognize that the current process does not work. Now, no Maryland or federal law requires an analysis of greenhouse emissions associated with major transportation projects. Though the Obama administration had issued guidance for agencies to consider greenhouse gas emissions and impacts of climate change in National Environmental Policy Act reviews, the Trump administration promptly scrapped this with an executive order in 2017.

Traffic flows along interchanges that link Interstates
 495 and 270 in April 2018 in Bethesda. 

Transportation is the largest source of climate-disruption carbon pollution in Maryland. More than 8 in 10 Marylanders now live in counties that do not meet federal clean-air standards for ozone, in large part because of tailpipe emissions from gas and diesel-powered vehicles. If we continue on our this trajectory, the state will be 1 million passenger cars worth of pollution above our state’s climate goal of reducing greenhouse gas pollution 40 percent by 2030. Using a 1960s approach to solving our state’s congestion issues — investing in more highway infrastructure — is only going to exacerbate the problem by encouraging more people to drive, resulting in more toxic air pollution, more cancers and respiratory illnesses and more damage to our environment while only temporarily addressing congestion.

Read the story from The Washington Post by Parris N. Glendening - “Maryland should study the climate effects of highway expansion before committing to it.