TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

It is a great first step in cooperation and recognizing the importance of reducing carbon emissions.

To reduce emissions from transportation we need a strong focus on the land use/transportation connection. We need to focus growth in cities and towns and in walkable, mixed-use, mixed-income, transit-oriented centers and corridors. Funding transit alone will not be enough - it must be connected to compact, walkable development. Universal adoption of electric vehicles while not addressing sprawling development will mean continued long-distance driving and highway construction, while also risking the conversion of vast acreage of farms and forest to solar arrays just to supply longer distance vehicle travel. So land use must be a primary focus. As for investments to be made - they should include transit tied to land use, reduction in transit fares, affordable housing close to transit, jobs and services, and other infrastructure that supports transit-oriented communities.

The Coalition for Smarter Growth is a 22-year-old non-profit working in DC, Maryland and Virginia and the leading organization promoting walkable, transit-oriented communities (TOD) as the best way for the DC region to grow. We have convinced the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments to make TOD the core framework for regional growth in their Region Forward Plan and in their Visualize2045 long range transportation plan, however, spending practices by state and local government still include massive highway and arterial road expansion. Meanwhile the region must do more to advance public and private investment in TOD at Metrorail stations and other high capacity transit. We received the MWCOG Regional Partnership Award in 2017.

Mills, along with any democrat will do anything in their power to get more power for their party and more money out of the people. They are corrupt and incompetent and do not care about productive policy - they care about PROFITABLE policy. That is why Mills is pushing the CMP corridor; to the horror of the entire state she is supposed to be running. She hasn't paid her inaugural bills yet, and is a known cocaine addict. How did this joke get elected? I have no doubt she would love to put multiple taxes on gasoline, which will absolutely KILL Maines young people and working class, both of which are leaving the state already for places that pay better money and don't have such a ridiculous tax burden. You can't have a mailbox in Maine without $200 a year in property taxes. Some states out west and in central America pay less than us for a hundred acres or more of land. The only way to go carbon neutral is to catapult yourself into the sun without using fossil fuels (good luck building that device) Short of that, you ARE NOT carbon neutral. These ridiculous proposals will waste our entire budget to generate 15% of our power via "renewable" sources - and half the country will die of starvation if we follow just any one of their stupid goals like not eating meat, or not using any fossil fuels. The entire society, and all of civilization will collapse if these idiots are actually given the green light on their lofty, moronic, short sighted goals. Liberals suffer from extreme cognitive dissonance, nirvana fallacys and rhetoric. Climate alarmism is not based on actual science, data, logic, theory or evidence. Transportation is not even man kinds largest contributing factor in regard to greenhouse gas emissions, farm animals are. This will also do NOTHING to alleviate the need for fossil fuels by our state or culture, it just puts more money in government pockets taken from citizens and businesses. This gesture is virtue signaling at it's heart- doing NOTHING to fix a problem while posturing to appear virtuous while in reality just exacerbating the problem or spending all of your effort on appearing to be a good samaritan instead of working on the problem. Care to guess how much time and effort Mills is spending on developing vertical farming? nuclear or thorium power? new cleaner fertilizers pesticides herbicides and fungicides? Improving solar power? None, zero - zilch - nada. These people do not work for solutions, they do not WANT or CARE about solutions, they want to preach about a problem; real or imagined, to increase their personal wealth and power. Climate alarmism is cyclical like doomsday prophecy. Al Gore said the ice caps would be melted and polar bears would be extinct by now. Earths climate and temperature has never been linear or static and it probably never will be. We have solar minimums and maximums, ice ages, and geography that essentially creates a climate cycle by itself. To think humans can control the climate other than avoiding things that do catastrophic damage is the height of arrogance ignorance and armchair activism. If you want to have a cleaner Earth and you aren't talking about China, India, and Africa, as well as nuclear or thorium power you are either stupid manipulating people with appeals to fear or full of shit.

I opposed the proposal because it would unfairly burden consumers and businesses in Pennsylvania who already pay the highest gasoline taxes in the country

I am appalled at the extremely regressive taxation bill being considered to replenish state coffers-- known as a carbon tax initiative. An across the board, regressive tax on such an essential and democratized commodity such as gasoline is a cruel punishment to inflict on Massachusetts motorists. Utilizing the climate change debate to pad patronage hiring and close budget gaps is truly an outrage. The fact that all of the states in the northeast are considering this as a monopolistic venture to prevent border competition is even more horrific. Thank you for the consideration.

A well designed cap and invest program, like a strong TCI, is needed to ensure emissions reductions in the transportation system and will ensure cooperation between all the states in this region to achieve neccessary emissions reductions, and enable these states to direct revenues raised from the program to serve the unique transportation needs of their residents. For example, by designing programs and solutions that serve both rural, urban, and sub-urban regions, which is both possible and essential. The impacts of climate change represent an urgent threat to communities, our economy, public health and people’s quality of life. To stop and reverse these trends, we must reduce emissions in the Transportation sector which generates most of the GHG emissions. TCI offers the best opportunity at this important moment for the Northeast to act collectively to improve mobility and make meaningful reductions in carbon pollution at a regional scale. A comprehensive approach like cap and invest can improve equity by helping to make clean, efficient, cost effective transportation available to everyone.

Some thing must be done and it
s a good time to being. Interest rates are lower and bonding seems to be easier to fund. As soon as we get closer to national bipartisan leadership like this project, the better we can address the outdated system we have on the east coast. We can do anything we set out minds to, we are still Americans. My caution would be to avoid building whatever by picking on the most urban areas without assisting without assisting those who live there. People who don't have access to clean air or living areas should not be further pressured. I am guessing some sort fo bullet train or other projects people will actually use?