TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

Unless we reduce pollution the planet is not going to survive. I will, I am old but my children and my grand children may not. Please do something!

Anything that minimizes air pollution is OK with me. That can include high speed rail, cap and trade rules, appropriate (i.e. higher) tolls for truck traffic, new requirements for fuels (e.g. banning diesel), subsidies for electric cars, bike lanes, bicycle boulevards.

We need to reduce carbon emissions to save the world's climate. A low-carbon transportation system represents a step in this direction. I encourage its development.

Another life-style destroying, burden creating maneuver by Tax Craving Impotents posing as “Love the Earth” champions. These same ingrates mow down trees by the acre to create solar farms. Instead, look at what MIT engineers are doing to remove CO2 from smokestacks. Stay out of my life, my wallet, and my state. Rhode Island has more than enough economic calamities to deal with…see Gina Raimondo!!!!

Transportation using fossil fuels is poisoning our atmosphere with CO2 and methane. There is already too much of those gasses in our atmosphere, and it's leading to very damaging Climate Change. We must combat this by developing cleaner ways to achieve facile transportation for all. Gas powered automobiles are a leading cause of this atmospheric pollution, and they must be phased out rapidly. We need to replace them soon. Using airplanes within the USA for transportation is also becoming unsustainable. We need fast electric powered trains to minimize their use. Look to Europe for answers to these questions.

Investment, legislation, and State and local regulation under the Initiative should support infrastructure for private and corporate electric vehicles - cars and trucks - including tax breaks for statewide (rural as well as urban) e-vehicle charging stations and dedicated transmission lines. Such transmission systems should also support local and regional public transportation systems - busses and trains- to facilitate public public acceptance. Laws must permit homeowners to void pre-existing covenants and other private restrictions on installation of rooftop solar panels as well as require remuneration to homeowners by regional electric power companies who receive power from household solar or wind power generation entering the grid. This is a start. I could continue. But so can others.

Dear TCI Initiative:

This is not a new topic for me, stuck in traffic, and Neoliberal austerity preventing the public funding of serious mass transit alternatives. The solution is the Green New Deal at the National Level, because the sums your proposals put forth in the trading regime will not be enough to build out the missing rail connections which stopped with the Purple and Silver lines in the Metro Area.
So I support your work as a holding action and interim step, better than Governor Hogan's privatization plan to build more highway lanes. That's not what we need.

I've attached my essay and publication here at the Daily Kos: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/8/1794256/-Maryland-Hogan-s-Highways-will-still-leave-us-Stuck-in-Traffic-on-the-road-to-Global-Warming

The full text of my essay from January of 2008, "A Citizen's Guide to the Missing Green Rail Visions for the Metro MD/DC Region" exceeds your submission file limit of 100 MB's so you will have to rely on the full text in the link above, which was kindly published at the Daily Kos.

Of course, we both know that the America of the Trumpian Republican Right, more traditional Republican Conservatives like Gov. Larry Hogan and the Clintonian-Biden Democratic Centrist fiscally cannot imagine anything of the scope needed to combat climate change/chaos in time, anything approaching even the scale needed to build an effective modern rail system.

To do that, we do need change beyond these self-imposed limits. That's why I am a Green New Deal Supporter and support Bernie Sanders in the coming elections.