Ensuring the safety of travelers is a priority for all government agencies engaged in transportation, whether the trip is motorized or non-motorized. Efforts to reduce collisions, fatalities and injuries include making strategic investments in safety education, enforcement and engineering. The public also expects transportation facilities to be kept in a state of good repair, which requires diligence in attending to ongoing maintenance and rehabilitation needs. Maintaining the condition of the Bay Area’s transportation infrastructure will enhance the region’s economic growth potential and will help ensure the continued livability of existing neighborhoods and downtowns.

Air quality planning in the Bay Area is designed to have the region attain and maintain standards for healthy air set by the federal and state government. Over the last two decades, state and regional air quality agencies have made steady progress in reducing ozone precursors (smog) and carbon monoxide emissions from all sources, but new, more stringent standards for ozone and fine particulate matter will pose new challenges. Long-term trends show a continued decline in emissions of both ozone precursors and carbon monoxide emissions from cars and trucks, primarily as a result of strict state emission requirements for new cars. While new federal controls on commercial trucks will reduce emissions from these engines, additional motor vehicle and freight travel will lead to increased levels of particulates overall. The public health impacts of localized particulate matter emissions for communities located near port/railroad activities and truck corridors must be mitigated.

MTC must consider the needs of all travelers in order to determine equitable distribution of mobility benefits. Certain segments of the population have fewer mobility options and therefore require special attention in transportation planning: households without a car, school children, older adults, and persons with disabilities. As the Bay Area’s aging population grows and the physical challenges associated with aging increases, more attention needs to be focused on where older adults and persons with disabilities live and how they travel. Removing existing barriers to mobility—physical, informational, and/or financial—for older adults, the disabled, low-income persons, and school children is a shared responsibility between the individual rider and many organizations, including transportation and social service agencies.

The continued warming of the earth’s atmosphere will have numerous implications for the State and Bay Area, from health and environmental issues to impacts on the Bay Area’s transportation infrastructure with rising sea levels. While climate protection is a global issue that requires global solutions, the Bay Area can be a model for California, the nation, and the world. Transportation is nearly completely reliant on petroleum for fuel, thus the amount of regional travel and the efficiency of the vehicles used to transport people and goods will be a major determinant of the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced by Bay Area travel activity. At the same time, critical elements of the transportation infrastructure (highway, rail, and airports) could face flooding as sea levels continue to rise. The state is committed to reduce its GHG emissions to 2000 levels by 2010, to 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.