San Joaquin Valley Transportation Coordination - 1560
To coordinate the transportation and air quality planning activities within the San Joaquin Valley Non attainment Area to further the achievement of the goals, objectives and regulations of the federal Transportation Act and the federal Clean Air Act, in coordination and cooperation with regional and state transportation and air quality planning and regulatory agencies.
Federal transportation legislation and air quality legislation require coordination and cooperation among transportation and air quality agencies in areas designated as non attainment of federal clean air standards. Further, to encourage the attainment of clean air standards, transportation plans and programs are required to conform to air quality plans adopted by the respective regional and state air quality agencies.
In the San Joaquin Valley, the eight regional transportation planning agencies, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, and the Department of Transportation have taken innovative institutional actions and pursued cooperative and coordinated activities to insure progress toward achieving both improvements in the transportation system and ambient air quality standards.
In 1991, the San Joaquin Valley TPA Directors began meeting regularly to discuss and develop strategies to address state and federal air quality/transportation issues. Staff from the SJVAPCD and Caltrans also attended the meetings. Shortly thereafter, two memoranda of understanding were developed among these agencies. First, the eight transportation planning agencies have entered into a joint memorandum of understanding for the purposes of coordinating transportation planning activities. A second memorandum of understanding exists among the eight TPAs and the SJVAPCD for the purposes of coordinating transportation/air quality planning activities. Both of these memos define the respective agencies' institutional responsibilities, address general processes and procedures for institutional cooperation, and describe specific work elements to be prepared.
