Air Quality Conformity

The air quality provisions of the Clean Air Act [CAA] as amended and the transportation planning provisions of Title 23 and Title 49 of the United States Code are intended to ensure that integrated transportation and air quality planning occurs in the areas designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] as non-attainment or maintenance areas. The transportation conformity process establishes a major connection between transportation planning and emissions reductions from transportation sources.

Transportation conformity is a federally mandated, analytical process of Metropolitan Planning Organizations [MPO], through which MPOs must demonstrate that the transportation investments, strategies and programs they choose have corporate air quality impacts consistent with those contained in the State Air Quality Implementation Plan [SIP] for achieving the National Ambient Air Quality Standards [NAAQS] and that emissions do not exceed the SIP targets ("budgets") for emissions from mobile sources.

The nine-county DVRPC planning area is part of:

• Philadelphia-Wilmington-Atlantic City Fine Particulate Ozone Non-Attainment Areas
• Philadelphia-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE PM_2.5 Non-Attainment Areas
• New York - Northern New Jersey - Long Island, NY-NJ-CT PM_2.5 Non-Attainment Areas
• Carbon Monoxide(CO) Maintenence Area.

ADOPTED Conformity Document

The DVRPC Board adopted the following document in May 2007. This is the CURRENT Transportation Conformity document for:

• the FY 2007-2010 TIP for Pennsylvania,
• the FY 2007-2009 TIP for New Jersey,
• and the Year 2030 Long-Range Plan.
  
• Transportation Conformity of the DVRPC Transportation Improvement Programs and the Destination 2030 Long Range Transportation Plan under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (May 2007) [1.90 M | .pdf]