Feds Move to Boost Sustainable Transportation

To be housed at the University of California, Davis, the National Center for Sustainable Transportation is "one of five new university-based national transportation centers — each dealing with a different subject area — that won awards from the DOT’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration," writes Bill Lascher.

According to the UC Davis website, the Center "will help federal, state, regional, and local agencies reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions from passenger and freight travel that contribute to climate change through research in four thematic areas: toward zero-emission vehicle and fuel technologies; low-carbon infrastructure and efficient system operation; low-impact travel and sustainable land use; and institutional change."

As the EPA indicates, transportation contributes approximately 27 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, so it's past time that a coordinated effort to reduce emissions was undertaken. "Despite decades of progress in mitigating other transportation-related impacts on the environment — such as air and water quality degradation — the transportation sector has only recently started to figure out how to address climate change, [the center's director Susan] Handy said."