Transportation for America
2023 – $15,000 Reduce VMT/zero emissions vehicles report
Smart Growth America (SGA) envisions a country where no matter where you live, or who you are, you can enjoy living in a place that is healthy, prosperous, and resilient. SGA works across the nation with elected officials at all levels, real estate developers, chambers of commerce, transportation and urban planning professionals, and community members to improve everyday life for people across the country through better development. SGA’s team includes experts in land use, real estate development, transportation, and economic development.
SGA currently focuses on three specific priorities: Climate change and resilience, advancing racial equity, and creating healthy communities. Solving huge challenges like climate change, affordable housing, the need for vibrant local economies, or how to affordably connect people to jobs and services requires an interdisciplinary approach across a span of interrelated areas: housing, zoning, planning, land use, economic development, transportation, and others.
At the core of SGA’s overall approach is empowering communities through direct technical assistance, powerful advocacy, and thought leadership to realize our vision of livable places, healthy people, and shared prosperity.
We are known for path breaking reports like:
- Driving Down Emissions, a report on the climate impacts of the transportation system that can and will undermine the benefits of electrifying the vehicle fleet if left untouched.
- Dangerous by Design, which shows how the standard design of American roads lead to increased deadly mistakes and proposes ways to fix it in the nation with the highest level of roadway fatalities in the developed world.
- Divided by Design, a report on the damaging effects of highways built through Black and Brown communities and how the approaches that led to this damage are still core to America’s transportation program today.
- Electric Vehicles and Smart Growth, which looks at how we push transportation electrification in a way that supports essential smart growth goals since, the U.S. must remake our transportation and land use system to be less car-dominated at the same time that we electrify if we are going to meet our climate targets.
The organization also comprises a number of sub-brands, including Transportation for America, which focuses on creating a transportation system that connects people to jobs and essential services no matter how they travel, how much money they earn or their physical abilities. Our transportation priorities are to:
Transportation for America currently partners with the Clean Vehicles Coalition to manage the Coalition for Helping America for Rebuild and Go Electric (CHARGE) to decarbonize the transportation sector through both electrification and improving the efficiency of the transportation system to require less driving.
Transportation for America is currently examining the question: What balance of fleet conversion and reducing driving is needed to keep emissions low enough to stave off catastrophic global climate change? To answer this question, we will:
- Identify the total carbon budget to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius and calculate transportation’s share of that carbon budget based on its current share.
- Develop several scenarios that meet that carbon budget with different levels of driving-reduction and fleet transition.
- Examine the costs and impacts of each of those scenarios to gain insight into the trade-offs of different approaches.
- Explain the results graphically.