Ohio DOT Plant Relocations: Rare, Yet Necessary

Relocating a drove of rare plants from an environmentally sensitive transportation construction site is a meticulous operation – and often state departments of transportation are running the show.

[Photos courtesy of Ohio DOT]

Take Ohio, for example, home to 400 species of rare plants accompanied by a spate of state laws designed to protect rare, endangered species at certain hotspots, like one in the Oak Openings Region of Toledo – an area known for its sandy soil, where only certain varieties of rare plant life thrive.

So when transportation construction beckons in such locations, biologists within the Ohio Department of Transportation suit up for action.

“The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) tells us where to move the rare species,” said Matt Raymond, ecological program manager for the Ohio DOT, who stressed that the federal National Environmental Policy Act as well as state laws help guide such plant relocation endeavors.

The agency started the relocation at the Oak Openings site by excavating the plants, which included Bowles’ golden sedge (Carex aurea), Baltic Rush (Juncus balticus), hairy pinweed (Lechea villosa), Scaly blazing star (Liatris squarrosa), prairie thimbleweed (Anemone cylindrica) and wild lupine (Lupinus perennis).

“We moved them to a park that’s located several miles from of the excavation and then helped get them planted,” Raymond said.

Given the delicacy of such operations, he explained that intermittent follow-up on the progress of the plants in their new home occurs at various intervals.

“Just how many plants are moved depends on what’s growing on the site,” Raymond noted. For instance, he pointed to the 2014 Portsmouth Bypass project, a 16-mile, four-lane highway that built to connect U.S. 52 near Wheelersburg to U.S. 23, just north of Lucasville. That job called for the removal of 150 Southern Monkshood (Aconitum uncinatum) and 800 Primrose-leaved Violet (Viola primulifolia) to nature preserves.

“So we moved 950 endangered plants,” said Raymond. “We sent our biologists to oversee the excavation, because the crew needed direction as to what to look for and where to dig. We also received help from ODNR employees of the preserves that receive the plants, too.”

Lastly, Raymond offered the example from 2012, where ODOT relocated the threatened Drummond’s aster (Symphyotrichum drummondii) from the construction limits of a federally sponsored bike/towpath project along the historic Ohio and Erie Canal, in Stark and Tuscarawas counties. During the ecological survey, the agency’s team also documented in detail about 500 of the plants living throughout the project area before relocating them elsewhere along the towpath site.

Relocating sensitive plants is only been required in Ohio “every three or four years,” Raymond explained said, “but it’s easy to know when it’s the right move to make. It’s basically the same thing we’ve done in other efforts with ODNR to support the environment with various animals and insects, like the Monarch Butterfly, the bee population, animals, etc.”

It all comes down to common sense and having the laws in place to take appropriate action, he pointed out.

“Right-of-ways are typically not the best places for plants, due to road salts, [vehicle] exhaust, mowing, and other disruptive activity,” Raymond emphasized. “So we re-plant in areas where new pollinator programs reduce the frequency of mowing and heighten the effectiveness of the native habitat.”

Other state DOTs are also engaged in similar efforts.

For example, biologists from the Arizona Department of Transportation conducted a multi-day mission in 2018 to protect native hedgehog cactus from a bridge replacement project on U.S. 60 – carefully relocating them to local greenhouses for two-year stay well away from the bridge construction site.

The biology team at the California Department of Transportation also performs another key duty: overseeing the removal of invasive plant species, ones that that threaten California’s sensitive natural areas and complete with native plants. To do that, Caltrans coordinates with various state and federal agencies including the California Invasive Plant Council, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

At the Texas Department of Transportation, another key role performed by its biologists is the planting and nurturing of more than 5,000 species of wildflowers along with native grasses that flourish along the state’s roadsides. “TxDOT’s wildflower program not only helps our highways look good but also reduces the cost of maintenance and labor by encouraging the growth of native species that need less mowing and care,” the agency noted.

Virginia DOT Launches Anti-Litter Campaign

The Virginia Department of Transportation recently launched Virginia is for Lovers, Not Litter – a public outreach campaign aimed at raising awareness about Virginia’s roadway litter problem.

[Photo courtesy of Virginia DOT]

The agency noted that its spends nearly $3.5 million annually to remove litter from Virginia’s roadways, with more than half of that litter coming from motorists with another 25 percent from pedestrians.

“Virginia DOT and our partners across the state are committed to promoting ways to reduce litter,” added Rob Cary, Virginia DOT’s chief deputy commissioner and chair of the newly formed Environmental Subcommittee of the Commonwealth Transportation Board. “Having litter-free highways is something we should all be working toward. The first step is to ensure everyone recognizes the role they can play in preserving the beauty of our Commonwealth, which should change the mindset of littering on our roadways.”

He noted that roadway litter negatively affects the environment and the state economy; impacting “our quality of life, safety, economic development, and recruitment of businesses and families to the Commonwealth.”

Shannon Valentine, Secretary, VDOT
Photo courtesy of Virginia DOT

“This campaign is yet another important step in Virginia’s transportation sector to promote environmental stewardship,” noted Shannon Valentine, Virginia’s secretary of transportation, in a statement. “Through his campaign, we are emphasizing the responsibility each of us has to respect and protect the public spaces we share.”

Several state departments of transportation have ramped up litter campaigns in recent months.

The Alabama Department of Transportation initiated an anti-litter campaign entitled “Trash Costs Cash” in early August. That campaign uses television, radio stations, and social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube to highlight a major increase in litter fines and penalties authorized by the state legislature in 2019.

The Tennessee Department of Transportation, the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation, and Keep Tennessee Beautiful recently joined forces to reduce personal protective equipment or PPE litter during the COVID-19 pandemic, while highlighting the proper ways to dispose of PPE and facemasks.

The California Department of Transportation and the California Highway Patrol resumed litter removal on state highways in mid-June; cleanup activity that has been limited since March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Litter increases the risk of fire, pollutes our waterways, threatens wildlife and costs taxpayers millions of dollars to remove,” explained Toks Omishakin, director of Caltrans, in a statement. “We ask all Californians to be part of the solution, dispose of trash responsibly, and secure cargo loads before getting on the road.”

Environmental News Highlights – September 23, 2020

A roundup of headlines curated for state transportation environmental professionals

Creating Advisory Bike Lanes in the Nation’s Capital

Change is in motion in the nation’s capital to see if two different modes of mobility can co-exist – at least on portions of five residential streets in Washington, D.C.

[Photo courtesy of the District of Columbia DOT]

The District Department of Transportation is launching project to study if bicycles and cars can truly share the road, in part by converting a section of E Street SE into an “advisory bike lane,” which features dedicated bicycle lanes near the curbs that bookend one wide vehicular lane split by a centerline. Car drivers avoid oncoming vehicles by easing to their right into the bike lanes while yielding to the bicyclists.

Advisory bike lanes – deployed for decades in Europe and Canada – tend to work best on low-volume roads that are too narrow for bike lanes but have more than enough width for two travel lanes.

Though usage of advisory bikes lanes in the United States remains rare, many transportation agencies – including state departments of transportation – are experimenting more frequently with them. The city of Portland, Oregon, for example, installed one of the first advisory bike lanes in the country several years ago, as have Minneapolis and Alexandria, Virginia.

DDOT officials suspect increased bicycle usage and the drive for lower carbon-emission vehicles could make advisory bike lanes a popular tool for its planners.

“This was part community-driven and part departmentally driven,” explained DDOT’s Will Handsfield, a bicycle program specialist. “As part of our work as planners and engineers, we try to keep our finger on the pulse of things.”

Photo courtesy of the District of Columbia DOT

The pulse was rapid in a few neighborhoods, where residents were complaining about speeding cars and the lack of bicycle lanes, which are more in demand since the pandemic.

“We asked DDOT to come up with something for an east-west bike path and to slow down the traffic,” explained Corey Holman, an elected advisory neighborhood commissioner; a post that serves as a liaison between residents and local Washington D.C. officials. “Will came up with a plan that creates opportunities for people to slow down, maintains parking and gives us a new bike route. I think that’s the value of this.”

The one-third mile segment of E Street SE from 11th Street to Potomac Avenue provides an “ideal candidate” to create an advisory bike lane, DDOT noted. At 35 to 40 feet wide, it is too narrow to accommodate on-street parking and dedicated bicycle lanes, while street-side parking spots left two 13-foot travel lanes that encouraged drivers to speed through the residential neighborhood.

The advisory bike lane on E Street SE has only been open since around Labor Day, but Holman said initial neighborhood reaction has been positive. He credited DDOT with “coming up with answers that no one else thought of. DDOT is good at letting their people on the front lines use their creativity to come up with their own solutions.” DDOT plans to study the performance of its new advisory bike lane installations, monitor how well drivers and bicyclists adjust to the new configurations, then share reports of its observations with the Federal Highway Administration to provide information to other communities considering implementation of such lanes.

Website Tool Created to Support Roadside Solar Array Establishment

The Ray – a corporate venture devoted to roadway technology testing – and the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas-Austin are creating an interactive web-based tool to help state departments of transportation map out potential highway right-of-way (ROW) locations for solar energy arrays.

[Photo courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration]

According to the Webber Energy Group’s recent analysis, most states have more than 200 miles of interstate ROW suitable for solar energy development, which combined could generate up to 36 terawatt hours (TWh) per year of clean energy – providing approximately $4 billion in economic value to state DOTs.

The group analyzed the unpaved roadside areas at exits on the U.S. interstate system for solar energy generation potential and through this new interactive web-based tool hosted at www.TheRay.org, each of the lower 48-states now have access to projections of how much solar energy could be generated on their interstate exits.

“Interstate solar just makes sense,” said Harriet Langford, founder and president of The Ray, in a statement. “As our transportation systems become smarter and electrified, we will need more energy available, closer to the interstate and interstate exits, and more funding to support the infrastructure demands. By enabling renewable energy generation using the idle roadsides, our state DOTs can help to fill this gap.”

Photo courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management

“The aim of this project is to provide a report and mapping tool by which state DOTs or other interested parties can assess the potential for installing solar in the interstate ROW in all contiguous 48 states,” added Michael Webber, a professor of mechanical engineering at UT. “Our goal with this study: to help people understand the potential for interstate solar so that policymakers, developers, and investors have a clearer view of the opportunity.”

Interstate roadsides are appealing areas for renewable energy development for many reasons, he said, including: unshaded acreage; ease of access; public ownership status; and lack of competing development efforts. Because exits have more room to accommodate the transportation safety requirements, such as safety setbacks, they are ideal locations for solar development, Webber noted.

Individually, most states have interstate solar potential in the thousands of gigawatt hours (GWh) per year. At a typical retail price for electricity of roughly 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (KWh) and a wholesale price of two cents per KWh, this means states could generate carbon-free electricity with millions of dollars’ worth of value – anywhere from $2.5 million to $181.4 million annually, the group’s research indicated.

State DOTs can also take advantage of operational cost savings, the Webber Energy Group noted – such as through reduced roadside maintenance and reduced energy costs – and even build new revenue streams over the lifetime of such solar array projects, which could be 30 years or more.

“On day one of these projects, state DOTs win,” emphasized Laura Rogers, director of strategic partnerships at The Ray. “State DOTs have a lot of options when structuring ROW renewable energy projects.”

Depending on their priorities and goals, state DOTs can own the renewable energy system and use or sell the clean energy generated, she said – or they can work with a solar developer who owns the system and collect a land fee, while at the same time transferring land maintenance obligations to that developer. “No matter how they decide to structure the deal, state DOTs win on all fronts by optimizing underutilized land to generate clean renewable energy that benefits their communities, the environment, and their budgets,” Rogers added.

NOAA Research Grants Include Surface Transportation Focus

The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science – a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – recently issued a notice of funding opportunity for the fiscal year 2021 Effects of Sea Level Rise (ESLR) program; one with two surface transportation focal points.

The ESLR Program is soliciting proposals to evaluate and quantify the ability of natural and nature-based features to mitigate the effects of sea level rise and inundation – including storm surge, nuisance flooding, and/or wave actions. The NOFO focused on two areas: coastal resilience and surface transportation resilience.

It aims to support research to inform adaptation planning and coastal management decisions in response to sea-level rise and coastal inundation via the advancement of models of physical and biological processes capable of evaluating vulnerability and resilience under multiple sea-level rise, inundation, and management scenarios, including evaluation of nature-based solutions. A letter of intent is required prior to submission of a full proposal and those letters are due to NOAA by October 16. For additional information, visit the ESLR website.

Environmental News Highlights – September 16, 2020

A roundup of headlines curated for state transportation environmental professionals

FEDERAL ACTION

Letter Calls on Congress to Make ‘Turn-Key’ Transportation Deal – AASHTO Journal

Congress Returns for Fall Legislative Sprint – CitiesSpeak

Maryland, Chesapeake Bay Foundation sue EPA, claiming failure to enforce cleanup plan – Baltimore Sun

Highlights Of Joe Biden’s Energy Plan – Forbes

House Lawmakers to Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Advance Agencies’ Use of Electric Vehicles – Route Fifty

House Transportation Leaders Call for Investigation Into EPA – Transport Topics

EPA’s birthday gift to America: More pollution – The Hill (Opinion)

COVID-19

COVID-19 Could Slow City’s Efforts to Curb Water Pollution – City Limits

COVID-19 disrupts local-level efforts to clean up Chesapeake Bay – Bay Journal

Hazardous Air Pollutant Exposure Linked as Contributing Factor to COVID-19 Mortality in the United States – SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry

NEPA

White House Environmental Review Rule Survives Legal Test – Bloomberg Law

INFRASTRUCTURE RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY

FHWA Issues Emergency Funds to Louisiana for Storm Recovery – AASHTO Journal

Uber Pledges to Go All-Electric, but It Doesn’t Own the Cars – Wired

How states can finance coastal resilience before the next disaster – Environmental Defense Fund (Blog)

Leading political environmental organization opposes NJ Transit “Transitgrid” microgrid project – Insider NJ (Press release)

AIR QUALITY

How to read and understand air quality numbers and maps – Los Angeles Times

A misguided strategy – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Editorial)

The Struggle to Crack Down on a Cottage Industry Sabotaging Vehicle Pollution Controls – FairWarning

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

WITF’s ‘Toward Racial Justice’ panel links environmental justice with health, human rights and self-determination – StateImpact Pennsylvania

How NC can tackle the climate crisis and address environmental justice – NC Policy Watch

NATURAL RESOURCES

EPA funding impacting Twin Ports research projects – KBJR-TV

Why We Still Can’t Stop Oil Spills From Damaging the Environment – Bloomberg Green

New Mexico Environment Department Works To Combat Wetland Loss – KRWG

Why some in Nevada see Utah pipeline plan as ‘first salvo in coming water wars’ – Las Vegas Sun

Kentucky Officials Award Funds to Freight-Moving River Ports – Transport Topics

HEALTH AND HUMAN ENVIRONMENT/ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION

How micromobility has transformed the transportation industry – Governors’ Highway Safety Association

Revel Moped Representatives To Meet With NYC DOT Over Safety Concerns – WCBS-TV

San Jose revised bike plan aims to tackle city’s traffic-related accidents, make roads safer – KRON-TV

Appeals Filed Against SFMTA and SF Planning Department Put Roadblocks in Front of City’s Slow Streets Program – SFist

From free electric bikes to new infrastructure, the fabric of our cities is changing – CNBC

TRB RESOURCES/ANNOUNCEMENTS

AASHTO re:source Launches Podcast – AASHTO Journal

National Competition Will Select America’s Two Best Transportation Projects – AASHTO Journal

TRB Webinar: A Resilient Path Forward for the Marine Transportation System – TRB

TRB Webinar: Advancing Transportation Equity – TRB

TRB Webinar: Determining Social and Economic Qualifications in the DBE Program – TRB

Cost, Congestion, and Emissions Benefits of Centralized Freight Routing and Efficiencies in Alternative Fuel Freight Modes – National Center for Sustainable Transportation

FEDERAL REGISTER NOTICES

Oil and Natural Gas Sector: Emission Standards for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources Review – EPA (Final rule)

National Environmental Justice Advisory Council; Notice of Charter Renewal – EPA (Notice of charter renewal)

Amtrak Expands Carry-On Bike Program with State DOT Help

National passenger railroad Amtrak recently expanded its carry-on bike program for most Northeast Regionaldepartures; allowing customers to store their bike inside of the passenger coach in a designated space.

[Above photo by Amtrak]

In addition, Amtrak said it is now offering its carry-on bike program in conjunction with its various Northeastern partners on state-supported trains – partners that include the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and Connecticut Department of Transportation.

“Bringing your bicycle onboard a train is part of the journey, as it allows our customers to explore the cities they are visiting,” explained Roger Harris, Amtrak’s executive vice president and chief marketing and commercial officer, in a statement. “To coincide with the increased popularity of biking in this country, we also wanted to provide our customers with the option of bringing their bike on more trains.”

Using newly installed luggage racks that convert to bike racks, the expanded bike program will allow Amtrak to provide storage space for up to two bikes per departure. The expansion of the program means Keystone Service and Northeast Regional customers can bring their bikes –including standard full-sized bicycles – for an additional $20 and store them inside the passenger coach in a designated space, though specific reservations are required.

“Allowing riders the versatility to bring their bikes on the train is very important to PennDOT,” explained Jennie Granger, PennDOT’s deputy secretary for multimodal transportation in a separate statement. “Increased transit options will change the way people get around their cities while creating cost savings, improved health and wellness benefits, and more environmentally conscious choices.” Amtrak added that more than 232,953 bikes have traveled around the country since it launched the carry-on program in October 2015. The program has also generated more than $1 million in revenue since its inception.

Maryland DOT Gears up for First-Ever ‘Walktober’

As part of the statewide focus on walking, walkable communities, and pedestrian safety, the Maryland Department of Transportation is partnering with state and local agencies, nonprofits, and communities to host ‘Walktober’ – a month-long series of activities and four virtual webinars to be held in October.

[Above photo via Wikimedia Commons]

Those four webinars – or ‘walkinars’ – are 90 minutes long and are being held online encourage safe practices as Maryland continues its COVID-19 recovery. Scheduled for 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. eastern time on October 1, 15, 22 and 29, the ‘walkinars’ are tailored to pedestrian enthusiasts, advocates, planners and residents.

Panelists will share resources to help build, strengthen, and sustain partnerships, and share new tools and technologies being used across the country to promote pedestrian access and safety. The series is open to all and provides the American Institute of Certified Planners with 1.5 certification maintenance credits per session to maintain certification.

“Walking is not only our state exercise, but it’s been an important strategy for Marylanders dealing with the challenges of COVID-19,” said Governor Larry Hogan (R) in a statement. “While many people have been teleworking and following ‘safer-at-home’ advice, they’ve rediscovered walking for health, recreation, and overall well-being.”

“The walkability of our communities is a critical component to Maryland’s transportation mission,” said Greg Slater, Maryland DOT secretary. “Events such as Walktober, where we’re bringing different voices to the table, encouraging action and heightening awareness, are important as we work together to improve safety and deliver innovative solutions across Maryland.”