If your drive to and from work seems to be taking longer, one cause may be the Environmental Protection Agency.
A sophisticated series of EPA programs helps sustain a network of activists eager to curb road building nationwide. The programs, which are linked to the Clinton administration's ''livability'' agenda, could actually increase traffic congestion and pollution.
The EPA gives tax dollars to anti-car groups that lobby the state and local agencies in charge of traffic and development issues. While the money involved isn't large, its impact can be.
Just 10 months after Congress passed a record six- year, $217 billion highway bill, the EPA's ongoing efforts to shape local and regional transportation policies have barely drawn notice in Congress.
But this stealthy federal interference in state and local politics is starting to raise hackles in city halls and among some road users.
''It infuriates me, because (the EPA) is supposed to improve the environment,'' said William Fay, the president and CEO of the American Highway Users Alliance, a Washington-based group tracking the issue. ''It's pretty evident that they're not really interested in that.''
Still, one group that receives EPA grants says this lobbying activity really isn't odd.
''There are different levels of government and different parts of the government that are trying to solve different problems using a variety of strategies. Sometimes those come into conflict with each other,'' said Michael Replogle, the federal transportation director for the Environmental Defense Fund.
The EPA declined repeated requests to comment on the details and goals of its programs.
In any event, plenty of the action takes place outside Washington.
In a speech delivered in February to a group of developers in Boston by John DeVillars, head of the EPA's New England region, noted the agency's ''unwavering commitment to use the full force of environmental law to oppose or seek modification of those projects which - by their very nature - contribute to sprawl.''
DeVillars credited the EPA for stopping construction of the Nashua Circumferential Highway in New Hampshire. He also pledged that the EPA would shoot down New Hampshire's North Conway bypass as well as Connecticut's Route 6 projects if its conditions weren't met.
How would the agency accomplish its goals? DeVillars said the EPA would fork over $2.5 million in local grants over two years to support so-called smart growth projects.
Smart growth has become the buzz phrase describing all sorts of development the EPA prefers. For the most part, the EPA wants growth to take place in urban areas near train stations and bike paths.
The agency runs a ''Smart Growth Network'' out of its Urban and Economic Division's Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation.
Smart growth is just one aspect of wider efforts to divert federal funds from building new roads or expanding old ones.
In December, EPA chief Carol Browner praised a $100 million pilot program in which home mortgage heavyweight Fannie Mae offers bigger mortgages to families who use mass transit.
The president's 2000 budget proposes using most of the $1.45 billion in higher-than-expected gas taxes for transportation programs unrelated to extra road capacity.
The idea, which may well violate provisions in last year's highway bill, is given little chance on Capitol Hill. Even the GOP's leading environmentalist, Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I., rejected it.
Journalist Peter Samuel, who publishes the monthly ''Toll Roads Newsletter,'' unearthed the EPA's program of giving money to anti-road groups while covering what he calls ''road wars'' taking place across the country.
''I kept hearing that U.S. EPA local offices were collaborating with these opponents, helping them and exchanging information,'' Samuel said. ''I guess there's nothing wrong with exchanging information. But then I heard that (these groups) were getting money from (the EPA). So I started delving into it,'' he said.
Among Samuel's discoveries was funding for a Washington nonprofit called the Surface Transportation Policy Project.
The STPP drew national headlines when it published a report in March that ranked the ''aggressive driving death rates'' of major U.S. cities. The report's recommended solutions to aggressive driving include spending more than 90% of federal highway funds on non-highway projects and adopting the White House's livability agenda.
By Samuel's calculation, the STPP has snared at least $775,000 in EPA grants over the past five years. From documents Samuel culled through Freedom of Information Act requests, he found that the STTP received funds as one of eight ''principal partners'' in the EPA's Transportation Partners program.
Each of the STTP grants totaled six figures. They were used ''to assist citizens and organizations'' like grassroots activists, local elected officials and businesses.
Other EPA grant recipients include:
$465,000 to the Bicycle Federation of America.
$175,000 to the Association for Commuter Transportation.
$695,000 to the Environmental Defense Fund to promote smart-growth programs nationwide.
A March 26 e-mail the EDF's Replogle sent to green allies offers a clue to the groups' tactics. The e-mail urged groups to rely less on courts to tie up road projects and instead get involved in local politics.
''I encourage you to consider how we're bringing together a broader multi- racial coalition in Atlanta, paying a lot more attention to who gains and who suffers harms from transportation,'' Replogle wrote, as he asked recipients to attend a briefing at STPP's offices.
''This is where we have a vital opportunity to help empower residents of communities that have suffered most from America's automobile-centric transportation policies,'' the message continued. ''I hope we can do this in the Baltimore/Washington region and beyond in future years.''
Other leading environmental groups like the Sierra Club oppose at least 44 projects running through 20 states, including 14 in California ee chart). At least 37 states have road projects facing some sort of opposition.
Meantime, scientists, engineers and environmentalists differ on the causes of and solutions to traffic congestion. From a scientific standpoint, traffic congestion and stop- and-go driving cause more pollution than cruising on the open road.
But environmentalists say new roads eventually become congested anyway.
''Can you solve obesity by loosening your belt?'' Replogle asked in an interview.
''History and experience has shown us that building more roads at the outer edges of metropolitan areas tends to fuel sprawl and increase the amount of traffic so much that it undoes the congestion relief effects that we get in the short term,'' he said.
Halting scheduled road projects doesn't get drivers out of their cars, either. Fay cites what happened in the Washington metro area when it planned to build 14 new roads in the 1960s. Only one was finally completed.
''As a result of the failure to build those 13 other roads, (area leaders) ended up with the second worst congestion in the nation,'' Fay added.
Samuel cites delays in the planned expansion of New Jersey's State Route 92. It's designed to relieve traffic tie-ups on U.S. 1 between Trenton and New York City.
''Both state and local governments support this project,'' Samuel said. ''This project (gathered) wide political support, because it would channel traffic from an overcrowded U.S. 1 onto the New Jersey Turnpike going north-south.''
The Route 92 spur could be open today, Samuel says. But repeated calls for more studies, led by the EPA and its allies, have delayed the project by four or five years.
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