Public transportation plays an important role in reducing a community’s environmental impacts from transportation and enhancing the quality of life for its residents. Public transportation can facilitate compact development, conserving land and decreasing travel demand, as well as reducing fuel use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that contribute to climate change.

Climate Resources

• FTA’s Transit Resilience Guidebook: FTA created this Transit Resilience Guidebook to assist transit agencies, local government officials, metropolitan planning organizations, and other entities responsible for planning, funding, operating, or coordinating with transit agencies to anticipate, adapt to, and recover from service disruptions caused by extreme weather events, natural disasters, and climate change impacts. The guidebook presents recommendations and examples of how to identify and address climate vulnerabilities and risks and build resilience into transit assets throughout the life-cycle process, while ensuring priority is given to protecting vulnerable populations.
  • For a brief synthesis of the contents and components of the Guidebook refer to the Transit Resilience Guidebook Summary Document.
     
• FTA’s Sustainable Transit for a Healthy Planet Challenge: On June 15, 2021, FTA announced the Sustainable Transit for a Healthy Planet Challenge to encourage transit agencies to take bold actions and investments to support President Biden’s goal of achieving a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 2005 levels by 2030.
   
• FTA Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Transit Projects: Programmatic Assessment: This programmatic assessment is a National Environmental Policy Act streamlining tool that serves to (1) report on whether certain types of proposed transit projects merit detailed analysis of their GHG emissions at the project level and (2) serve as a source of data and analysis for FTA and its grantees to reference in future environmental documents for projects in which detailed, project-level GHG analysis is not vital. This programmatic assessment updates and supersedes the 2017 Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Transit Projects: Programmatic Assessment.
   
• FTA's Transit Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimator v3.1 (2024) is a spreadsheet tool that allows users to estimate the partial lifecycle GHG emissions generated and energy used in the construction, operations, and maintenance phases of projects across select transit modes.
  • Transit Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimator v3.1: User Guide
     
• FTA Transit Bus Electrification Tool v1.1 (2024) is a spreadsheet tool that allows users to estimate the partial lifecycle greenhouse gas emission savings associated with replacing standard bus fleets with low-emission or zero-emission transit buses.
  • Transit Bus Electrification Tool v1.1: User Guide
  • Bus Electrification Tool: Video Tutorial
     
• Transit and Climate Change Adaptation: Synthesis of FTA-Funded Pilot Projects (2014): This report is a synthesis of the research funded through FTA’s Climate Change Adaptation Initiative to pilot climate adaptation projects in seven geographically-diverse locations, involving nine transit agencies. Each of the pilot studies sought to identify current and future climate hazards, assess transit system vulnerabilities, and develop adaptation strategies, as appropriate to the geography and the system, with regard to four primary areas: flooding and extreme precipitation; extreme heat; sea level rise; and tropical storms and hurricanes. Below are the seven individual climate adaptation pilot studies:
  • Transit Climate Change Adaptation Assessment/Asset Management Pilot for the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority
  • Sound Transit Climate Risk Reduction Project
  • San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) Climate Change Adaptation Assessment Pilot
  • Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Climate Change Adaptation Pilot Project Report
  • Gulf Coast Climate Change Adaptation Pilot Study - Final Report
  • An Integrated Approach to Climate Adaptation at the Chicago Transit Authority
  • A Vulnerability and Risk Assessment of SEPTA’s Regional Rail
     
• Flooded Bus Barns and Buckled Rails: Public Transportation and Climate Change Adaptation (2011): This report examines anticipated climate impacts on U.S. transit and climate change adaptation efforts by domestic and foreign transit agencies. It further examines the availability of vulnerability assessment, risk management, and adaptation planning tools as well as their applicability to public transportation agencies. The report provides examples of adaptation strategies and discusses how transit agencies might incorporate climate change adaptation into their organizational structures and existing activities such as asset management systems, planning, and emergency response.