TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

We need clean transportation immediately. What we started in the 1970s should have been finished long before now. We need to build and sell electric vehicles to replace combustion engine buses, trucks and cars. I purchased an all-electric car, the Volkswagon eGolf and paid $20,000 for it after rebates. Not everyone can afford to buy a new car, however, even if it is only $20,000, so the government needs to give incentives to people so that they can afford them. Cities and towns across the country need to replace their old buses and city vehicles to electric vehicles. Companies that use trucks need to purchase electric trucks.

First we need to implement a carbon fee and dividend program that will tax any company that extracts fossil fuels based on the ton of greenhouse gases the extracted fuels will emit when burned. Once the tax is collected by the government, the government will rebate all of that money back to every American household in the form of a dividend check. To incentivize other countries to reduce their carbon footprint, a border tax should be imposed on imports again based on the ton of greenhouse gases that were emitted to produce that product. Once a carbon fee and dividend law is enacted, innovation will be unleashed and manufacturers of electric vehicles will flood the market with them and their prices will decrease.

There is no time to waste on this.

I strongly oppose the TCI gas tax. With Maine being very rural, this tax will only hurt its population. Prices of goods are already rising to high and adding a gas tax would raise them even higher. Low to middle class Mainers would be hit the hardest.

I am totally against this initiative. It will do nothing to fight "climate change". It will only hurt Maine people. Especially lower income, rural folks who HAVE to commute to find work.

This increase will increase gas prices slowing the economy of central and northern Maine. I further believe this will lead to high home heating oil prices, food and other goods of our aging population. Please vote no on this issue.

Transportation is the largest source of pollution in the Northeast region, comprising more than 40 percent of total regional global warming emissions. In addition to the health impacts associated with rising temperatures, soot and ground-level ozone from the region’s cars
and trucks are responsible for more than 50,000 asthma attacks, 1,000 deaths, and other pollution-related illnesses that incur approximately $27 billion in total health care costs every year. The health impacts of transportation affect all of us, but especially vulnerable are children, the elderly, the chronically ill, and people in low-income communities. Our transportation system is also expensive. More than
15 percent of US household income goes toward purchasing, fueling, and maintaining personal vehicles, making it the second-largest household expense behind housing. What we need and can achieve is a transportation system in which a shared network of electric vehicles, working in concert with a first-class public transportation system, gets everybody where they need to go without burning a gallon of gasoline or wasting time in traffic. A transportation system that doesn’t contribute to air pollution or climate change, and isn’t vulnerable to the volatile swings of oil prices. It will require cooperation between local, state, regional, and federal governments, and between government and the private sector. And most importantly, it will require policy leaders to identify and prioritize new sources of funding for clean transportation priorities. If everyone works together, it can be achieved. Some may need to make sacrifices and that is never easy.

The transportation sector is the largest source of planet warming greenhouse gas emissions both regionally and nationally. As such, it is imperative that we reduce emissions from this sector as quickly as possible to insure this planet is safe and livable for generations to come. I request that the state of New York heavily collaborate with other states in the region and the District of Columbia to accomplish the goals of this initiative as it will help our economy adapt to the 21st century and improve the quality of our environment. I am grateful that this initiative enjoys broad support across the political spectrum and hope to see more examples of this in the future. Finally, it is extremely important that the investments and actions created by this initiative benefit overlooked communities that are often hit the hardest by pollution and other forms of environmental degradation.