Smart Transportation

America's transport sector accounts for about a third of US greenhouse gas emissions. Adopting smart transportation policy could go a long way in reducing those emssions, as well as energy consumption and dependency on foreign oil.

The first and easiest thing to remedy: the average fuel efficiency of America's vehicles -- among the worst in the world, behind the standards prevailing in China, Canada, South Korea, Australia, Japan and the European Union. True, the US adopted tougher standards as a result of the 2007 Energy Bill, in which auto efficiency standards were raised for the first time in 30 years. The new requirement? Average fuel economy of 35 mpg by 2020. But it wasn't until the first week of Barack Obama's administration that the federal government took the first step in actually implementing the standard. 

At the same time, President Obama ordered the EPA to immediately reconsider a waiver requested by California that the Bush administration rejected. California and more than a dozen states want to impose even tougher emissions standards on automobiles, and EPA is expected to finally give permission in short order.

That means that despite low current fuel prices, Detroit will still be required to start delivering higher fuel economy vehicles to market on an accelerated schedule. These developments remove all doubt about the direction in which the auto industry must head if it hopes for a government bailout. 

This is signal progress. 45 percent of the 21 million barrels of oil the U.S. consumes every day come out of tailpipes. That’s almost 10 million barrels a day, six million of them imported. That will now start to change, though it means that by 2020 the US will merely have caught up to where the EU is today.

That's why other smart transportation policies are needed to help the US extract even further emissions reductions from the carbon-soaked sector, and attenion is now shifting to promoting transit-oriented development and low carbon fuel standards.