1. Vehicle Technology—Making vehicles more energy efficient through better technology,
2. Fuel Technology—Reducing the carbon content of fuels by using alternative fuels, such as natural gas, biofuels, and hydrogen,
3. Travel Activity—Reducing the number of miles that vehicles travel, or traveling those miles with efficient vehicles or more efficient kinds of transportation, and
4. Driving Conditions—Improving the efficiency of the transportation network so that more driving occurs under the best. If traffic lows smoothly at optimal speeds, driving will be more efficient.

• reducing the amount of vehicle travel,
• getting people to travel in ways that use less fuel (e.g, walking, bicycling, riding in a bus or train, or carpooling), or
• reducing the amount of fuel used in travel by improving the transportation system.

• GHG Reduction—How much GHG reduction could we achieve and when?
• Implementation Costs—What will it cost to enact a strategy or bundle of strategies?
• Change in Vehicle Costs—How will strategies affect fuel costs and the costs of owning and maintaining a vehicle nationally?
• Equity Effects—How would different bundles affect different groups, and can we do if they impose a greater burden on some groups more than others?

1. Pricing and taxes: raising the cost of using the transportation system (taxing fuel consumption or the number of miles traveled). The study looks at pricing at both the facility-level (e.g., congestion pricing) and the national level (e.g., carbon tax).
2. Land use and smart growth: using land in a way that makes travel more efficient. This will reduce the overall need to make trips as well as the length of trips taken.
3. Public transportation improvements: expanding public transportation by subsidizing fares, increasing service on existing routes, or building new infrastructure.
4. Nonmotorized transport: encouraging more walking and bicycling as alternatives to driving.
5. Ride-sharing, car-sharing, and other commuting measures: expanding ser¬vices and providing to use them instead of driving alone.
6. Regulatory measures: enacting regulations that limit vehicle travel or reduce speeds. This improves fuel efficiency.
7. Operational and intelligent transportation system (ITS): improving the way the transportation system operates to make better use of the existing capacity and encourage more efficient driving.
8. Capacity expansion and bottleneck relief: expanding highway capacity to reduce congestion and improve the efficiency of travel.
9. Measures affecting commercial shipping: promoting more efficient freight movement within and across various ways of shipping freight.

DEPLOYMENT LEVELS USED TO TEST STRATEGY EFFECTIVENESS

Each of the individual strategies is defined at three levels of deployment to test their effectiveness at different degrees of implementation. These levels of deployment are defined in terms of: (1) Geographic scale—Where and how broadly are these strategies implemented? (2) Time frame—How quickly are these strategies deployed, and when will they take effect? and (3) Intensity—How aggressively are these strategies structured? Using this combination of factors, three levels of deployment were defined to estimate potential GHG emission reductions for each strategy and bundle of strategies:

• Expanded Current Practice, which assumes the steady expansion of existing practices that could reduce GHG emissions focused predominately on major metropolitan areas;
• More Aggressive, which assumes that the strategies are implemented sooner, more broadly geographically, and more aggressively than under the expanded current practice deployment; and
• Maximum Effort, which assumes that the strategies are implemented within the framework of major changes in national policy and levels of investment, consistent with a singular commitment to the reduction in GHG emissions nationally, regionally, and locally.

The intent of defining these levels of deployment is to provide insight into the magnitude of GHG reductions and other socioeconomic impacts that might occur over a wide range of “what if” assumptions.



MOVING COOLER STRATEGY "BUNDLES"

In practice, most strategies would be packaged in certain groups and enacted together. To test the effects of combined strategies, Moving Cooler considered six ways of bundling strategies together and estimating the total GHG reduction that would result. Each bundle brings together strategies that have a similar focus or plan of action.

The six strategy bundles” used for the Moving Cooler analysis are as follows:

1. The Near-Term/Early Results Bundle: strategies we can implement broadly in the near term (i.e., before 2015), with early GHG reduction benefits. Examples include: reducing speed limits, increasing urban center parking fees, expanding transit services, enacting eco-driving programs, and electrifying truck stops.
2. The Long-Term/Maximum Results Bundle: strategies that maximize the reduction of GHG emissions regardless of cost, scale, or time frame. This bundle includes most of the transportation strategies this study evaluates.  Examples include: implementing in the near term (i.e., before 2015) strategies with early GHG reduction benefits as enacting land use and smart growth policies, expanding transportation services with infrastructure improvements, raising the cost of using the transportation system, improving the way the transportation system operates, and promoting more efficient freight movement.
3. The Land Use/Transit/Nonmotorized Transportation Bundle: strategies that reduce the average length of trips by increasing urban density (that is, by making typical destinations such as work or school closer to the traveler’s home) and encouraging travelers to use more energy efficient means of travel, including walking and biking, which would eliminate some vehicle trips.
4. The System and Driver Efficiency Bundle: strategies that improve the overall efficiency of the transportation system by reducing speeds and improving the way we drive. This would maximize the use of existing capacity, expand the capacity of various modes of transportation, remove highway bottlenecks, reduce traffic congestion, and improve traffic flow.
5. The Facility Pricing Bundle: strategies that induce changes in travel behavior by changing the cost of travel. Examples are charging tolls, pricing in congested and imposing parking fee. These strategies could be combined with expanding highway capacity.
6. The Low Cost Bundle: strategies that maximize GHG emission reductions and cost the least to enact.
   

While these bundles are logical combinations of strategies, other combinations could just as well be tested. The bundle analysis in Moving Cooler aims to demonstrate potential GHG reductions that arise from interaction when strategies are combined and coordinated.



MOVING COOLER BASELINE

The measures how effective each strategy reduces GHG emissions against a baseline. The authors derive this baseline from a projection of GHG emissions from years 2010 to 2050. They draw on an annual rate of vehicle and fuel technological change, consistent with forecasts of the U.S. Department of Energy in its annual “Alternative Energy Outlook” and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s examination of alterna¬tive Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE). This baseline shows that innovations in vehicle and fuel technology will substantially reduce GHGs but that increases in travel and growth in the U.S. population will largely offset these gains. Consequently, the Moving Cooler baseline shows GHG emissions remaining roughly at 2005 levels through 2050.

The reductions in GHG emissions estimated to result from enacting different transportation strategies and bundles are expressed as a reduced percentage from  this baseline.

The figure below illustrates the relationship between the Moving Cooler baseline and some targets for national GHG emission reductions. The American Clean Energy and Security Act (HR 2454) (ACESA)  sets economy-wide GHG reduction targets in 2012, 2020, 2030, and 2050, compared with 2005 emission levels. The Moving Cooler baseline projects GHG emissions that are 104 percent of 2005 emissions. This projection is 21 percent higher than the 2020 targets in the ACESA and assumes that the ACESA reduction targets are distributed proportionately across all sectors.





The study authors developed three baseline scenarios because the results of the strategy analysis are tied to the values in the baseline, and there is a degree of uncertainty with a forecast that extends more than 40 years. The alternative scenarios investigate the sensitivity of individual strategy and strategy bundle GHG reduction estimates to different baseline assumptions. The alternative scenarios assume:

1. High prices of fuel prices and low level of VMT;
2. Low prices of fuel and high level of VMT; and
3. High degree of technology expansion and high levels of fuel economy combined with high levels of VMT