Opinion ID: 717461
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: transportation projects

Text: 18 As noted above, transportation plans, programs, and projects are subject to specific conformity requirements to which their non-transportation counterparts are not. The Agency's transportation conformity rules define transportation project to encompass only highway or transit projects. 40 C.F.R. § 51.392. Petitioners challenge this limited definition, arguing that the Agency has ignored Congress' intent to apply the conformity requirements specific to transportation to all manner of transportation. The effect of the Agency's definition is to leave air, water, and rail transportation projects and their emissions subject only to the general conformity requirements--if they are subject to any requirement at all: petitioners argue that because projects included in transportation plans or improvement programs are exempted from the general conformity rule, non-highway and non-transit transportation projects slip all statutory punches. 19 The Agency counters that it reasonably construed transportation projects to include only highway or transit modes. It argues that the statute, read as a whole, clearly contemplates conformity requirements only for plans encompassing transit or highway projects. The only statutory references in section 176(c)(2) are to statutes concerned with highway and transit projects: 23 U.S.C. and the Urban Mass Transit Act, 49 U.S.C. § 5301, et seq. Non-highway and non-transit transportation facilities, such as airports, ports, and interstate railroads, are covered by statutes not set forth in section 176(c). The Agency acknowledges that 23 U.S.C. § 134(a) identifies promotion of intermodal transportation as an important national goal. Toward that end, however, metropolitan planning organizations are given no authority over non-highway and non-transit modes of transportation. Given the metropolitan planning organization's inability to control the development of air, rail (other than transit rail), or water transportation, and Congress' manifest intent in section 176(c) to prescribe special conformity requirements for highway and transit forms of transportation, the Agency contends that it reasonably limited the definition of transportation projects. 20 We have little difficulty upholding the Agency's definition of transportation project. It is hardly insensible to conclude that the types of transportation that Congress wished to reach with the special transportation conformity rules were those modes over which the entities listed, metropolitan planning organizations and recipients of funds under Title 23 or UMTA, have authority. As the Agency notes, metropolitan planning organizations and recipients of highway and transit funds (at least in their capacity as recipients of highway funds 14 ) have no authority with respect to airports, shipping, or non-transit rail transportation. Petitioners contend that metropolitan planning organizations' responsibility for intermodal planning ought to be sufficient to regard airports, ports, and interstate railroads as part of the metropolitan planning organization's bailiwick. In fact, however, both statutory sections imposing the intermodal planning requirement list air, water, and rail modes separately from intermodal transportation facilities, suggesting that, e.g., an airport is not an intermodal transportation facility. See 23 U.S.C. § 134(f)(7) (metropolitan planning organizations must consider [i]nternational border crossings and access to ports, airports, intermodal transportation facilities, major freight distribution routes, national parks, recreation areas, monuments and historic sites, and military installations.) (emphasis added); see also 49 U.S.C. § 5303(b)(7) (same). Congress has also stated that the National Intermodal Transportation System shall provide improved access to ports and airports, 49 U.S.C. § 5501(b)(4), further suggesting that a requirement of intermodal planning does not give the metropolitan planning organization control over airports--it merely requires that access to airports be accounted for in intermodal planning. 15 Given Congress' clear focus in section 176(c)(2) on projects that are adopted, approved, or accepted by metropolitan planning organizations or highway fund recipients, we think that the Agency properly limited the reach of Congress' transportation rules to projects over which these entities have authority. 21 Nor are we persuaded by petitioners' contention that air, water, and rail modes of transportation will fall into a regulatory nether region if they are not subject to the transportation rules. The regulation to which petitioners point as providing the supposed loophole, 40 C.F.R. § 51.858(a)(5)(ii), permits activities specifically included by a metropolitan planning organization in a conforming plan or improvement program to proceed without a further conformity determination. We doubt that the Agency could argue that the projects over which a metropolitan planning organization has no authority--a lack of authority on which it relied in not requiring transportation conformity determinations for these projects in the first place--could nonetheless be specifically included in a metropolitan planning organization's transportation plan or program. 16