Resource Information: Office of Transportation and Air Quality on the World Wide Web

EPA420-F-01-005, February 2001
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Transportation and Air Quality (OTAQ) maintains a site on the Internet's World Wide Web to provide up-to-date information on the Federal Government's efforts to meet the mobile source provisions of the Clean Air Act.

What does OTAQ do?

OTAQ is responsible for controlling emissions from motor vehicles, farm and construction equipment, marine engines, aircraft, locomotives, and other mobile sources of air pollution. OTAQ also conducts research on the effects of different fuels on pollution from these engines.

How can I access the OTAQ Web site?

You can access the OTAQ home page directly by typing the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) http://www.epa.gov/otaq. You can also access it from the EPA's Internet home page at http://www.epa.gov by selecting "Offices, Labs and Regions," then selecting "Air and Radiation," and then selecting the "Automobiles" graphic.

What kind of information is available at the OTAQ Web site?

The OTAQ Web Site contains a wide variety of information:

Consumer and educational documents such as fact sheets, presentations, and an evironmental quiz on air pollution from transportation sources.
Information about emissions from cars and light trucks including regulations, certification, fuel economy, and inspection/maintenance.
Heavy-duty highway engines (trucks and buses) information including regulations, bus retrofit/rebuild, certification, and test procedures.
Information on nonroad engines and vehicles like lawn mowers, boats, tractors, aircraft, etc. that covers regulations, modeling, consumer information and certification.
A Green Vehicle Guide to help consumers make more environmentally-informed choices when purchasing a vehicle. Consumers can select a vehicle model, determine how clean it is relative to other vehicles, comparison shop for similar vehicles, and choose the cleanest vehicle that meets their needs.
Transportation control measures, market incentive-based programs, and voluntary measures.
Gasoline, diesel, fuel additives, alternative fuels, and other fuel issues.
Air toxic emissions.
Motor vehicle and nonroad emission modeling software and databases.
Test Procedures and Laboratory Methods (fuel analysis, emission testing, equipment calibration, maintenance, etc.).

Who would be interested in the OTAQ Web site?

The information contained on the OTAQ Web site would be of interest to the general public, environmental groups and public interest organizations, business and industry, and federal, state and local government officials. As well as technical documents, there are non-technical documents written for the average consumer.

How is the Web site organized?

From the OTAQ home page, you have two choices for finding information. You can choose a specific emission source (e.g., fuels or vehicles), or you can choose a topic from a set of questions (e.g., what is EPA doing to control the pollution?).

The emission sources are divided into:

Vehicles/Driving

The highway vehicles page (www.epa.gov/otaq/hwy.htm) links to the following pages:

automobiles and light trucks
motorcycles
heavy-duty highway engines
transportation planning
fuels

(www.epa.gov/otaq/ld-hwy.htm)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/roadbike.htm)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/hd-hwy.htm)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/traq)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/fuels.htm)

Nonroad Engines/Vehicles

The nonroad engines page (www.epa.gov/nonroad/) links to the following pages:

compression-ignition (diesel) engines
small spark-ignition (gasoline) engines
large spark-ignition (gasoline) engines
marine compression-ignition (diesel) engines
marine spark-ignition (gasoline) engines
recreational vehicles
locomotives
aviation

(www.epa.gov/nonroad-diesel/)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/equip-ld.htm)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/largesi.htm)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/marine.htm)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/marinesi.htm)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/recveh.htm)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/locomotv.htm)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/aviation.htm)

Fuels

The fuels page (www.epa.gov/otaq/fuels.htm) links to the following pages:

reformulated gasoline
MTBE
Tier 2/gasoline sulfur
alternative fuels

(www.epa.gov/otaq/rfg.htm)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/fuels/mtbe/mtbe.htm)
(http://www.epa.gov/tier2/)
(www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/fuels/altfuels/altfuels.htm)

Travel Choices

The Transportation and Air Quality Center home page (www.epa.gov/otaq/traq).

The OTAQ home page also links to a consumer page (www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer.htm) for concerned citizens and a page describing the office (www.epa.gov/otaq/oms-def.htm): its organization, contacts, etc.

Another feature of the OTAQ Web site is the "What's New" page (www.epa.gov/otaq/whatsnew.htm) which contains links and descriptions of documents added to the web site during the last three months.

How can I get more information?

E-Mail:

OTAQ Web Manager: otaqpublicweb@epa.gov

Listserver:

The OTAQ listserver is an automated mechanism for receiving announcements on new documents, regulations, etc. that have been posted on the OTAQ Web site. To subscribe, send a message to: listserver@unixmail.rtpnc.epa.gov.

In the body of the message, type "subscribe otaq-announce (yourfirstname yourlastname)"

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