Climate Action Plans and Long-Range Transportation Plans in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska State of the Practice in Adaptation Planning

It is difficult to determine whether specific weather events like the storms in Washington can be definitively attributed to climate change or if they are severe storm occurrences within otherwise natural weather patterns. However, consensus in the scientific community indicates that major storms and other events including inundation of coastal roads from a rising sea level, erosion of roadways and bridge supports from heavy precipitation, road and rail failures due to temperature extremes, and travel delays due to wildfires are occurring more frequently and with greater intensity as a result of a warming climate. These types of events have the potential to significantly damage the transportation system and impose costly delays on travelers; to date, relatively little has been done by government agencies to assess transportation system vulnerabilities and prepare for the unavoidable impacts of climate change. Recent studies indicate that climate change planning efforts conducted by governments have overwhelmingly focused on mitigation strategies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with few addressing adaptation approaches to climate change (3). Mitigation is an important strategy to reduce the future impacts of climate change and possibly avoid the worst potential impacts. However, mitigation alone is not sufficient. Scientists agree that existing GHGs already in the atmosphere will continue to warm the planet. Even in the highly unlikely circumstance that all GHG emissions were halted immediately, some climate change would still need to be addressed to moderate or avoid damage, including damage to transportation infrastructure and system delay (3). Thus, adaptation strategies are critically important in transportation planning to identify system vulnerabilities, to build resiliency, to reduce risk, and to capitalize on any opportunities presented by climate change. This report includes a discussion of projected impacts of climate change on surface transportation infrastructure and operations. Furthermore, this report explores the climate change literature at multiple levels of government to identify the response of the transportation sector to climate change adaptation, with a focus on actions undertaken by agencies in the Pacific Northwest. The report examines how agencies in the Pacific Northwest are preparing for these impacts in their climate action plans (CAPs) and the level to which the goals and objectives of those plans have been incorporated into long-range transportation planning (LRTP) documents. Because CAPs and climate change adaptation planning efforts are relatively new planning concepts, recent climate change planning activities undertaken by agencies may not be revealed solely through review of publicly available planning documents. Thus, in addition to the literature review, representatives from transportation planning agencies were contacted to participate in a survey to identify recent and ongoing Climate Action Plans and Long-Range Transportation Plans in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska State of the Practice in Adaptation Planning