I spent this past weekend in Carlton Landing, Oklahoma, where I toured a new development and gave a talk as part of the town's speaker series. In my travels there and back I did my due diligence reviewing information and trying to get to the point where I felt I could speak intelligently on the specific issues being discussed. I'm technically way more confused now then when I started, but a few things are abundantly clear.

An Incoherent Transportation Program

First, it is not possible to have a more incoherent program than one with the combined objectives of making it easier to drive and reducing auto emissions. That is what the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program is. While CMAQ funds are not to be used for additional capacity, eligible projects include those that:

...improve traffic flow, including projects to improve signalization, construct HOV lanes, improve intersections, add turning lanes, improve transportation systems management and operations that mitigate congestion and improve air quality.

I'm sure some of you can send me notice of the happy local projects that have been funded with CMAQ dollars. The only ones I have known are the ones that add turns lanes, build interchanges and "improve intersections" by making it easier for cars to make corners without slowing down. There is an engineer in an ivory tower somewhere that has studied how this theoretically reduces emissions. That person's findings should be the subject of ridicule, not the basis of serious policy discussion.

A Convoluted Transportation Framework

Another thing that is abundantly clear is that, as we try to do more and more complex and hyper-local things out of Washington DC, the entire policy framework becomes more and more convoluted. I have a graduate degree, an engineering license and many years of experience along with having an above average reading ability. How can I recommend that all of you take some type of advocacy action in support of a policy when I can't understand even this one proposed rule? Here's one of my favorite examples of the incoherence, this on system performance metrics: