Climate Change/Variability Science and Adaptive Strategies for State and Regional Transportation Decision Making

The objective of this study was to generate a baseline understanding of current policy responses to climate change/variability at the state and regional transportation-planning and -decision levels. Specifically, researchers were interested in the question of whether state and regional governments were currently including climate change impacts or vulnerability issues in their decision and planning processes. The focus of this report is on the basic question: are state DOTs and MPOs in the United States addressing the issue of climate change in general and, more specifically, the issue of adaptation to potential climate change and -variability impacts? The research approach included content analysis, an in-depth survey of stakeholders, and interviews with stakeholders. The aggregate findings reveal that acceptance and movement in state DOTs and MPOs on these complex climate-related issues and solutions, where they exist at all, are slow. Mitigating the impacts from transportation appears to still be the primary policy linkage between climate change and transportation for these agencies. Public interest, political acceptance, and lack of downscaled state- and regional-level data are all factors that require further attention in the climate change/transportation nexus.