TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

The region needs to work on public awareness about local and global environmental issues, increase access to mass transportation, which should reach everyone despite location, be more reliable, fast, and affordable. Personal responsibility should be encouraged: walking, biking preferred to driving when possible, through the development of safe, bike friendly urban and suburban areas.

I have to drive everyday to work, and it just kills me that I have no choice but to contribute to the growing problem of climate change. If we can find a way to create a world where individuals did not have to all have cars, that would be a great world.

My name is Sarah and I am a volunteer with Citizens' Climate Lobby. I live in West Chesterfield, New Hampshire and support a price on carbon. Climate change is the biggest threat humankind has ever faced and it requires us to take swift action. As stated in the 2018 I.P.C.C. report, the world has fewer than twelve years in which to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 45% below 2017 levels.

According to over three thousand five hundred of the world's leading economists, putting a price on carbon is the most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The price should be high enough to, at a minimum, reach the goals outlined in the I.P.C.C. report. The implementation should not harm those in lower income brackets.

I support TCI and am appreciative that it is bipartisan in nature. The changing climate does not discriminate. It affects all of us regardless of political affiliation, race, gender, age, income, ethnicity, nationality or species. We all benefit from a stable climate and we will all suffer as our climate becomes less stable.

The TCI is very important for this state. Maine should use TCI as an opportunity to invest in local transportation solutions that help Maine people get to where they need to go in an affordable way that’s good for our environment. Mainers deserve creative new choices and new investments to meet our transportation needs; the one thing we know is that pouring pollution into the atmosphere and sending our hard-earned money out of state for the oil that causes that pollution are NOT the way forward. Maine needs an ambitious plan to reduce climate-changing transportation pollution,. Working together with neighboring states makes sense.

The economic benefits could be profound. Maine can see significant economic, health, and environmental benefits by transitioning to cleaner and more efficient transportation options through adoption of TCI. We must address climate change now with workable solutions. TCI is one of them!

Maine people deserve safe, clean, modern transportation solutions that are affordable, reliable, and reduce air pollution.
We need transportation solutions that deliver real economic, environmental, and community benefits. The Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI), has gained widespread momentum over the past few months and our family supports this important, and potentially historic climate policy. With the climate crisis fully underway we must support clean transportation solutions!

Our outdated transportation system is Maine’s largest source of climate pollution—and it doesn’t even meet the needs of Maine people. Maine people deserve clean, modern, affordable transportation options that deliver economic, health, and climate benefits to local communities. Finally, tt makes perfect sense for Maine to work with neighboring states through TCI’s bipartisan, proven policy model.
TCI will be in development for many months, but the core idea is based on the tremendously successful Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Through RGGI, Northeastern states dramatically reduced power plant pollution and generated revenue Maine has used to support energy efficiency and weatherization investments through Efficiency Maine. Applying the same “cap and invest” approach to transportation would help Maine redirect some of the $5 billion a year we send out of state to fossil fuel companies into our local communities and sustainable transportation solutions.

Mainers overwhelmingly support bipartisan, science-based, regional solutions to our big transportation and climate challenges and we hope that you will too!

Partnership for the Public Good is a community-based think tank with over 290 partner organizations. Many of our partners are concerned with both ecological justice and transportation issues. We have released several reports on these issues. Buffalo faces significant challenges when it comes to public transit. Over 50,000 households in our region lack access to a car, yet over half of the region's jobs are NOT accessible by public transit. Improving public transit in our region is imperative for promoting economic development, reducing racial disparities, fighting poverty, and decreasing air pollution. As part of your planning process, we implore you to incorporate a more robust busing system (more buses, more routes, and more frequency) as well a suggestion to expand the light rail through the east side of Buffalo to the airport. This addition will take advantage of existing public right of ways to make our public transit more accessible and efficient. We also ask that New York State reexamine its funding structure to more equitably fund WNY public transit.

I support this initiative whole heartedly, regardless of its affects on consumer prices. Furthermore, I support those individuals that continue to push policy that promotes green industry.

I support the Transportation and Climate Initiative states efforts to design a regional low carbon transportation policy to reduce and cap carbon emissions from the combustion of transportation fuels through a cap and invest or other pricing mechanism. This should happen in one year and then the policy could be offered for adoption by each of the nine states in the initiative.

I want transportation pollution managed and reduced asap because it is our largest source of global warming emissions (regionally and nationally). Please, Massachusetts formally join the plan to reduce emissions.
In addition, it is essential that all policies have a strong component of equity by prioritizing clean investments in areas overburdened by pollution and/or for those who don't have access.
Finally, I am grateful for the bipartisan nature of this project, moving us forward while the federal government takes us backward.