TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

It is about time to for Maryland to tackle its public transportation deficiencies, renovate aging infrastructure and come into the 21st century. Public transportation is a human right: students have the right to timely and safe transport to school. Workers are spending more time behind the wheel each year, decreasing productivity and affecting quality of life. The environment suffers via increased pollution.

This is an extraordinarily important initiative and I hope you will be wise enough to enact it.

On behalf of the City of Baltimore Sustainability Commission: we applaud the MOU emphasis on equity in implementation of TCI policies, and would like to emphasize the elevated transportation pollution burden felt by urban populations, on account of the concentration of transport in their residential and work areas. For this reason, we propose that the exiting paragraph:

"BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Signatory Jurisdictions will work with communities to ensure that the benefits of a cap-and-invest program flow equitably to communities that are underserved by clean transportation alternatives, disproportionately bear the costs of the current transportation system, or suffer disproportionate impacts of vehicular pollution and climate change;"

be edited to include a final phrase: "including urban populations burdened by vehicular pollution from non-resident commuters and from commercial and industrial vehicles."

More broadly, we urge an emphasis on coordination between State-level authorities and city governments on TCI implementation as this process moves forward.

Clean, equitable, affordable, and safe transportation is a serious issue. Having better and cleaner mass transit provides cleaner air, gets people to work, creates jobs, and helps move us towards a more carbon-neutral goal. This is an issue not just about cities, we need to be thinking about intra and inter city, but also connecting more suburban and rural areas to workable mass transit solutions as well. A 40% reduction in climate pollution created by transportation by 2030 is a challenging goal, but one that we should be striving for. Climate catastrophe is not going to allow us to sit idly by.

I support the regional transportation and climate initiative because only by working together with neighboring states can we make progress toward expanding rail service and pulling back on highway expansion.

This initiative is critical if we are to make a real attempt to reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution from cars,
buses, and trucks and push the implementation of clean, modern, multimodal forms of transportation. This partnership
could be based on the Regional Greenhouse Initiative which sets up a declining cap on the amount of carbon dioxide power plants
can emit. That program has helped cut regional emissions almost in half and has involved an investment of more than $600 million--
mainly for clean energy.

I am a resident of Maryland and living on the Chesapeake Bay has given me a profound appreciation of the importance of nature and its preservation for future generations. I completely support the TCI in their efforts to reduce green house gas emissions and to help the support of new clean energy resources moving forward.

Concerns I have with the initiative:
1. 100% of the data was provided by biased institutions and government agencies.
2. These 12 states have a population exceeding 60 million. However there were only 3 focus groups with only 1000 attendees.
3. The result of doing nothing will be a 19% improvement. The TCI plan calls for $40 billion in taxes with an overly optimistic improvement of an additional 5%
4. Reducing fuel consumption by 30% will devastate state tax coffers. What will offset this?
5. These proposed taxes will hit the lowest wage earners the hardest. They are also the least likely to purchase an electric car.
6. There is no clear path to a measurable result. Also no accountability in the impending failure.
7. This will surely spawn another govt agency that will cost much and produce nothing.
8. The result of prior initiatives like wind have taken 50 years to achieve the results promised in 5. Wind and solar are extremely inefficient due to the continued need for fossil fuel plants in the event the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine, which is often.
9. Some of the projected benefits are completely ambiguous like the health benefit from walking and riding a bike. In Baltimore both are unsafe practices.
TCI needs to do the following:
1. Produce an unbiased study which considers taxpayer impact, the inefficiency of government to efficiently execute and to identify a specific set of results with total accountability when it doesn’t work.
2. Look at other alternatives that people actually use. Solicit major public input on other options don’t just rely on environmental consultants and government agencies that are completely biased.
3. Identify and communicate a clear objective benefit to the taxpayer other than the government telling them what’s good for them.
4. Don’t exclude those from the conversation that will be most impacted, create a team of business leaders and citizens. Don’t do all the work behind closed doors.

Thanks for your consideration. This proposal needs a lot of work it’s obviously written by academics and regulators. Get private industries who will be impacted to weigh in. Let us work together for comprehensive environmental improvement.
Respectfully submitted

John Phelps
President
Highs of Baltimore LLC

443 463 3654

Traveling Maine is very difficult without a car. Cities like Bangor really need to have high speed trains to get folks to Boston and other parts of Maine.
We need far fewer cars to alleviate the stress on our highways. The air quality would improve and respect for one another would grow.
We are far behind in our infrastructure and desperately need to catch up.