Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program

The Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement (CMAQ) Program is landmark legislation passed in the first months of the Clinton Administration as part of its commitment to assist metropolitan areas that were routinely subjected to air quality warnings due to poorly-managed high-volume traffic congestion.

It remains the first and only federally funded program aimed specifically at addressing air quality through surface transportation improvements. The program was part of the Clinton Administration's overall vision of responsible, cost-effective environmental policy that could go hand in hand with economic development.

Congestion mitigation has long been a critical element in transportation planning. Indeed, the evolution of the American nation was tied to surface transportation management. Unprecedented development over the past century and half of an increasingly sophisticated network of surface transportation systems has been intrinsic not only to uniting the country and building a national economy but also to sustaining the spirit of mobility that has become an essential element of a restless nation proud of its pioneering spirit.

Surface transportation evolved within decades from hastily fashioned trails west and south to a system of maintained roadways, then to the introduction of a massive system of rail lines. Within a generation came the automobile, streets and highways, and an increasingly complex system of interstate freeways. Thus, congestion mitigation has long factored in transportation planning.

Unlike other urban and industrial development—such as housing or building construction—transportation systems have more widespread and longer lasting impacts on their environments. Roads and highways are around for generations. It is far easier, after all, to raze a factory and replace it with one more efficient than it is to remove an entire highway system. However, in the 1970s environmental scientists, climatologists, and mechanical engineers first began gathering hard data on ambient air quality and the growing problem of air pollution from fossil fuel vehicles—even as the number of those vehicles skyrocketed.

From the beginning, the goal in the government's endeavor to manage vehicular congestion was both practical and pragmatic. With the cooperation of congressional oversight committees, blue-ribbon committees made up of academics and field specialists, as well as federal agencies responsible for transportation and highway maintenance, the emerging policy focused on developing realistic, short-term goals that would have immediate and measurable impacts on air pollution, particularly in urban areas that consistently failed to attain federal minimum air quality standards.

By the early 1990s, in the closing months of the first Bush administration, principal goals had been outlined to reduce congestion and improve air quality: (1) reduce fossil fuel emissions, (2) encourage multipassenger and/or public transportation systems to reduce traffic volume, (3) step up vehicle inspection and maintenance, and (4) develop workable alternatives to vehicular transportation, most notably bicycling and pedestrian programs.

The sweeping Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) passed by Congress in 1990 had begun to tackle the problem of urban air pollution by imposing hard deadlines for cities to meet nationally set air quality standards. So-called nonattainment areas were most often in large cities with sprawling highway systems built during the 1950s and 1960s and, therefore, not up to the high capacity demands of late 20th-century traffic. Determined to bring those zones into compliance, the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transportation Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency considered stringent compliance requirements the best way to mitigate urban traffic congestion. Within a year of the passage of the CAA amendments, Congress established the CMAQ program to fund project proposals for initiatives that addressed surface transportation problems.

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