Abstract
The challenge of jointly addressing transportation and air quality concerns has been the subject of research for some time, but it reached its apex after passage of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991. Since that time, the legislative and regulatory context that prompted extensive research has been in continual flux, leading to ever-new areas even as the original agenda set in the early 1990s has yet to be completed. Critical relationships between transportation behavior and air quality impacts have yet to be clarified, and more data and better analytical tools will be necessary before greater understanding is achieved. The advent of new strategies related to telecommuting, e-commerce, vehicle insurance, car sharing, and “sustainability” poses serious questions for the research community. Concurrently, new challenges abound spawned from current and future developments. New air quality standards have redefined the meaning of “clean” air. Air toxics loom as the next focus area from the 1990 amendments. New vehicle and fuel standards are being adopted. Greenhouse gases and global warming pose particular challenges for transportation, but radically new vehicle-fuel systems for cars, trucks, and buses show promise that the transportation community can again rise to meet these challenges. Knowing where the greatest air quality problems exist and how best to address them is the stuff of cutting-edge research, which will pose a challenge into the next decade. It is an exciting time to be in transportation and air quality.
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