ITS Benefits the Environment: Interview with ITS America’s Leslie Bellas

The application of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) offers benefits that reach across all aspects of transportation systems performance, from crash prevention and safety to roadway operations and maintenance. While some of these benefits are very prominent in supporting the widespread applications of ITS, others are often difficult to measure, such as environmental benefits. Leslie Bellas, who has been appointed to ITS America’s newly created role of director of environmental affairs, recently spoke with NTOC Talks about her efforts to develop and implement a climate change program that will quantify and capture the environmental benefits of ITS.

Prior to joining ITS America in March 2008, Bellas worked as an attorney in the Division of Investigations at the Federal Energy and Regulatory Commission. Her experience includes 10 years as a trial attorney working in the Environmental Enforcement Section at the U.S. Department of Justice, and she served as lead trial and settlement counsel for the largest environmental enforcement action ever filed by the United States of America.

As an expert on the Clean Air Act and relative newcomer to transportation, Bellas says she plans to draw upon the expertise within ITS America’s membership to identify, quantify and promote the environmental benefits of ITS in an effort to develop innovative policies and promote technologies that will reduce the greenhouse emissions caused by transportation. She plans to work with both public and private members of ITS America as well as the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to quantify the emissions reductions that can be achieved by implementing ITS at a reasonable cost. One of the first steps Bellas will take is to establish a relationship between ITS America and the EPA.

Bellas has already formed an Environment Task Force within ITS America that is comprised of four subcommittees: science and technology; legislative; environmental policy and regulation; and DOT policy and regulation. The task force, which has seventeen members from a range of sectors and viewpoints, is first examining how it can calculate emissions benefits in the precise manner needed to develop and implement legal policies. According to Bellas, one of the challenges is that the benefits need to be examined on a technology-by-technology basis, and in many cases multiple technologies are deployed at the same time. For example, while technologies such as electronic tolls that allow vehicles to pay fees without stopping offer measurable reductions in emissions, congestion mitigation strategies as a whole involve many more variables. As part of its effort to quantify benefits, the task force will examine how the recent findings that congestion pricing in London resulted in pollutant emission reductions were calculated in order to determine how emissions reductions related to congestion pricing might be measured in the United States.

According to Bellas, “The environment can highlight the need for new transportation policy.” The ITS America Environment Task Force seeks to promote the ways ITS can positively impact the environment, and by measuring those impacts, it can support efforts to increase ITS implementation for a more efficient, sustainable transportation system. NTOC Talks will continue to follow up on the issue of IT and the environment in upcoming features, and the NTOC Web site resources page will highlight sources for more information. Visit www.ntoctalks.com/resources/index.php for more information.