Transportation advocates have criticized the high percentage of CMAQ funds devoted each year to NYC Transit's capital rebuilding program, arguing that the legislation authorizing the program only permits it to finance new transit programs that can clearly demonstrate an ability to reduce traffic and pollution. Critics hold that most MTA air quality analyses justifying the use of the CMAQ funds for its capital projects are substantively indefensible and only undertaken to secure funding. The argument is not against the transit projects per se, but instead that their use of the CMAQ fund crowds out other projects (many of which complement transit and could boost ridership) unlikely to receive grants from other sources. The transit rebuilding funds should come from some other flexible ISTEA account. Yet transportation officials indicate that roadway agencies like the NYC and NY State Departments of Transportation work together to steer the MTA toward CMAQ so that other flexible federal funding accounts remain available to DOT roadway projects (which would be difficult to fund via CMAQ because of the need for an air pollution analysis).

Fewer traffic flow projects are funded this year than in prior CMAQ allocations. That some such projects are funded points to the continuing failure of the region's transportation agencies to resolve the contradiction of accommodating traffic increases while trying to reduce car dependence. In prior years, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign has called upon the region's transportation agencies to articulate a traffic reduction plan and fund CMAQ projects that work together to accomplish the plan's goals. This year's project selections again demonstrate that individual agency budget imperatives remain the driving force behind federal fund allocations. The NY Metropolitan Transportation Council remains ineffective in forging unified regional transportation goals and the policies needed to meet them.

With all available CMAQ funds now allocated, some NYC transportation advocates are looking ahead with ideas for improving CMAQ-type programs in future federal transportation legislation. A strong current of thought would have the program oriented toward new transportation system performance standards like reducing vehicle-miles traveled or vehicle-trips (perhaps controlling for factors like economic growth). A traffic reduction program free of the need to yield short-term vehicle emission reductions would promote such performance goals far better than CMAQ has. It would promise cleaner air in the long term because of its emphasis on transportation system reform. Such a program would dovetail with the ongoing reaction against the complex layers of vehicle tailpipe emission regulation in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and expressed public desire for more transportation options. The program should provide explicit funding for transit- and pedestrian-oriented land-use reform, for bicycling, pedestrian and traffic calming systems, roadway pricing and new transit services. The traffic reduction emphasis would knock harmful traffic flow projects and dubious alt-fuel programs out of the running. Many European countries have passed explicit national legislation on transit funding levels, funding for bicycling infrastructure, standards for traffic calming plans, and other transportation reform policies. The U.S. should learn from the problems of ISTEA's CMAQ program and from the many good examples abroad.