good morning your honour's and may it please the court i'm david becker here on behalf of appellants our money our transit and robert masher roni i'm going to try to reserve two minutes for rebuttal and in the interest of time i want to focus on the f failure to consider the west thirteenth west eleventh avenue alternative because this court has never held that a federal agency can avoid a full and meaningful consideration of an undisputedly reasonable alternative in an environmental assessment and this would be an unprecedented ruling to affirm in this case what we're saying this court has never held that an agency can't when when that when there is no dispute that oh that a particular alternative is reasonable as the district court found here that the west thirteenth west eleven thousand new alternative was a viable alternative this court has never said has never held that that can be that the federal agency can avoid giving that ds project case relying on section one hundred two to each of the of the statute there is the requirement that all reasonable alternatives get detailed evaluation in any way the argument that the federal prison  cases involved situations where the alternatives that were rejected by the agency first of all they gave explanations why they were rejecting them but they were never there were they never have rejected a reasonable alternative  there's always been an issue of feasibility that an alternative that was rejected was an fees isn't feasible or it was too costly or much more frequently it didn't meet the purpose in need of the case so in none of the cases that where this court has said you can have a preferred alternative and a no action alternative was there as in this case and available reasonable alternative that meets all the purpose it meets the purpose in need of the project i a share this alternative was shared with the public and there is very little public support for it and that's why they didn't go on to do a more detailed analysis correct but again the purpose of the alternatives analysis that led to the locally preferred alternative that's a very limited process and here it was done outside of the need to process the purpose and all of the alternatives analysis under the regulations is only to identify what the locally preferred alternative is it is not a restriction but the court also held that the reduced grazing alternative which the ranchers in that case certainly didn't want had to be considered you know i would feel differently about this case if i thought that alternative the you want to have been considered as part of the environmental impact requirement looked as if it were radically or substantially different from an environmental standpoint what these really are two different routes and we've got a nimby problem your clients don't want it along their street  the other people don't want to along their street that's right and that's why politically in the end i mean they fought it out and politically the powers that be decided they're going to do it on the street but if this were a case where there were seriously different environmental impacts from the standpoint of water natural resources animals and so on i might be inclined to agree with your argument but the alternative you want to just another straight but again your honor the the purpose of the alternatives analysis is not just to compare specific environmental impacts like you said but it's also to form a basis of reasoned decision making an informed decision making and in this case you have a situation where you are here to decide whose back yard this gets built or that it's what is alternative that's when it is more cars in eugene instead of having busses they should they should lack of standing because the because the alternative that would have routed buses away from where were my client has his shop wasn't considered so the only project that was that was considered in the e a a was the one that directly affects and that's all that's necessary we as we as we were we addressed in the reply brief right at the intersection twenty feet away from the from the door of the shop that he works and the lanes are being reduced for through traffic from three to two so there's going to be the same volume of cars backing up not going to be rerouting around into neighborhoods but the travel analysis doesn't include any information about how many cars are going to be taken off the road by by including the  there was more traffic back out this was or people people sitting around maybe some of them get on these buses and they now have people sit in traffic all the time your honor would because that's the route they've always gone through but he have the the impacts are that are going to occur on the additional traffic congestion that he's also going to have to experience i think or i think are one of the issues that we that we believe that the the agency didn't address and the morning peterson and i represent lame transit district this alternative that they're speaking of it's not undisputedly reasonable we're reasonable even the bellwether for what alternatives have to be considered underneath this alternative was chosen following twelve hundred comments on the alternatives alone and the opi a meets the purpose and needs of the project and that's why it was chosen and the agency has the discretion to make those choices it is perfectly acceptable to eliminate alternatives and a plumber analysis pursuant to the regulations as well as to the case law and that's exactly what happened and it's laid out in the environmental assessment where there's a provision where talks about alternatives considered and then eliminated and under their standard there would be no end to the new process if the e a a also had to discuss all the all the alternatives that were eliminated in the first place especially when you look at what we're dealing with here they're putting buses on existing roads and they're choosing routes for busses there are probably a hundred different quote reasonable ways you could do that and it's just not up to the court to dictate which would be the most reasonable alternative which is exactly what they're asking to be done about standing yes i've quite a bit not only do they not want this project on a different street they don't want it all from the very beginning of the formation of this group omagh and their president they have wanted to stop the project they see it as a waste of taxpayers money they do not have prevented standing and do not have constitutional standing by wanting to kill the project they fall outside of what need does the purpose of need is to have process and as they go through the do they want to save the they want to stop the project for your to say they don't stand because all they want to stop the project is a sound like they've got standing army unless you are sure well those are different types of cases this isn't the sierra club going up against a power plant this is a group of taxpayers that have figured out the only way they can challenge the allocation of this money is to cloak themselves as as if they suddenly have environmental purposes and nothing they've ever said before they were chad standing with challenge has ever suggested that they have any environmental purposes whatsoever they're a taxpayer group that simply doesn't they say that money shouldn't be spent well that's fine but that isn't the type of analysis is done under underneath and their injury claim does not remotely particularized sitting in traffic is as was said here is something that a lot of other people are enduring and it's not going to change them but the plaintiff is not going standing because he's been sitting in traffic he's our english standing because the traffic will have an adverse impact on him the way it's been rerouted under the proposed plan the traffic well a couple things it's not redress of all what he's doing the traffic is inevitably going to be there one way or another no from what he talks about it sounds of perfectly redress will just send the buses on another route he'll doesn't work very well i don't speak for my colleagues ok thank you your honor the test isn't whether he's happy the question is will he has an injury he has a concrete injury from the project yes correct and you know people always unhappy otherwise it wouldn't be chant challenge in the project correct in this case his injury is extremely tenuous i mean it is related to pollen there's nothing in the record that somehow these clean bosses create pollen it is related to emissions well these clean buses aren't adding any missions they're not adding a road here they're repurposed they're reusing existing roads and they're adding some curbs and some bus stops his suggested injury is extremely remote and it's not particularize or different than any other person walking down that road or that has a business there the agency did not analyze increase in travel times or travel congestion is an impact on the human environment is part of the need to analysis near as i could find why is it not relevant traffic congestion an impact on  the or the increase in travel times down the street they most certainly did your honor this case has been about fly specking there is a statement in the draft traffic report that's that talks about something cuing which is a type of traffic analysis that frankly isn't used by the city of eugene and it isn't used by ota so there's an entire chapter and a study supporting it that looks at traffic based on level of service and based on volume to capacity and these are the two methodology is mandated by the city of eugene and mandated by the traffic analysis was peer reviewed by both and it was found convincing and it was found accurate and basically both of what these studies show is that there is going to be either improvements in traffic under current conditions or is going to remain the same i mean this is a this is trends of project the traffic was at the heart of all of this time  i believe i had seven and a half minutes of i've used it all the time and it's all together you have five yes all reserve time i'm sorry i misread the order that we got today not to choose the best project the correct project the most environmentally friendly project none of those are the purpose for anybody the true purpose of need is to eliminate environmental impacts and to having those environmental impacts out on the table so that the decision makers can take that information and choose the right project and to take that information to mold the project to avoid if possible significant environmental impacts or environmental impacts in general it is never the case that an agency or in this case a state program necessarily has to implement the project that is studied under in an that is simply the model that is used to illumine eight the environmental impacts certainly that was the case here this particular route would reflect environment as one of as was pointed out the  environmental impacts associated with this particular route are no different than the environmental impacts associated with the route one block over which is what counts for plaintiffs or appellant is talking about you have no this is a bus transit project it doesn't involve ground disturbing activity it doesn't involve destruction of habitat it doesn't have impacts on water resources wetlands aren't affected species are not harmed they're protecting trees there mitigating there is tree removal so see with this project they are mitigating one for one and every effort was made in the design of this project to avoid environmental impacts and that was successfully done by the district and that's why a project that was originally thought  yes ended up necessitating an environmental assessment this project is is environmentally friendly that's reflected in the environmental assessment that's reflected in the f t s fonzie and as a consequence here i believe the decision thank you your honors the focus of the reason for the alternatives analysis here is to go to judge lectures question is that it has an independent function in making sure that the f d a is making an intelligent decision they were deprived of the opportunity to get a comparison in detail of the effects on traffic of these two alternatives the preliminary alternatives the preliminary study says found that this is the west thirteenth west eleventh route was less costly would have fewer environmental impacts save about thirty six seven percent of the time so there are significant differences but in deciding whether to spend seventy five million dollars they didn't compare in detail these two reasonable alternatives as this court case law requires thank you