TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

Transportation is a major contributor to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We must take action immediately to reduce burning of fossil fuels and ease the climate crisis. The national government under Trump is failing to do its part so states and individuals must act without federal assistance. Reduction of gasoline and diesel fuel used for transportation can be reduced by a combination of economic factors controlled partly by state governments. First: states can provide incentives for switching to electric vehicles. Second: states can increase the costs of driving fossil-fueled vehicles. I am in favor of a combination of these methods, even if they increase my taxes and other expenses. I support the proposal known as the "Transportation and Climate Initiative." This will not solve the problem completely but is a reasonable step to take now. I would like our legislatures and governors to implement this plan immediately.

The US public transportation system is antiquated, unsafe, untimely, polluting and fails to appropriately serve the public at large. It is time to develop an electrified high speed comfortable rail system serving long distance, as well as well connected metropolitan light rails, metro, and electrified bus systems that serve all zip codes. This is allow children to attend school on time, will broaden access to food for underserved communities, and expand access to job opportunities while decongesting roads. Americans spend more than a month yearly behind the wheel. This increases stress, pollution, and decreases family time which is already abysmal compared to other developed countries.

We could create a whole new industry based on clean energy. Jobs, Jobs, jobs. Make the parts here, build it here - making real jobs not 3 retal jobs to not even make enough to live on. Then there is the secondary and tertiary jobs that would be created.

Think big

Greenhouse gases from transportation can be lowered by getting people to give up cars and ride public transportation, or giving people incentives to purchase electric cars and limiting the production of electricity to renewable sources.

The public transportation part is harder to do because it forces people to adapt their lives to a system. It also requires enormous amounts of money to develop systems that allow most people in urban areas to use them.

Giving people incentives to transition to electric cars, developing an adequate system for recharging, and moving from fossil fuel electric production to renewable sources seems more doable and could be moved along with carbon pricing mechanisms. But the infrastructure to deal with the increasing amount of traffic introduces the problem of investing into more roads, bridges, and tunnels. This approach allows us to keep our bad habits, but is costly too. We could have a situation develop that political resistance to spending money on infrastructure could result in people in urban areas demanding public transportation.

So maybe it would be wise to bite the bullet and invest in the public transportation alternative in urban areas such as the east coast corridor, and focus on electric individual options in rural areas. I think that public transportation is the ultimate answer for urban regions since private transportation growth always outpaces infrastructure growth. How this could be dealt with cap and invest and other pricing mechanisms is beyond me.

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I am so pleased to learn of this initiative. I have been hearing of the predicted increase of delivery trucks as people more and more do on line shopping. This is expected to lead to much increased traffic and congestion and obviously increased carbon emissions if no action is taken to encourage the use of electric powered vehicles, or at lest more fuel efficient ones.

We need to keep our planet and air clean! Do not rollback clean air standards so big corporations can make tremendous profits while destroying our planet

We need clean transportation. Just taking cars off the road and placing the occupants on trains and busses is a step forward, but putting these commuters on busses and trains that run on clean energy is a giant leap forward. We wouldn’t just be reducing pollution from gas powered cars, we would be eliminating it!

A reduction in fossil fuel usage and resultant emissions is necessary to preserve the health of residents and reduce climate effects. A regional modern transportation system that enables residents and visitors to use low impact transportation and retain convenience is highly desirable. Many countries are ahead of us in providing mass transportation that is convenient, economical and lowers impact on the environment.

The most impactful thing we can do is lower the use of fossil fuels, and transportation is a huge part of this usage. Please facilitate alternative transportation concepts and practices, including more public transportation.