TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

In Massachusetts today, because of our reduction of coal and oil fuels in power plants, the largest source of CO2 is transportation. I am encouraged and excited that there is a regional and bipartisan effort to deal with this issue. My particular interest is to replace diesel buses with electric ones, especially school buses. Here, in western Massachusetts, where public transportation is relatively scarce ( a whole other issue), having diesel school buses pouring particulates as well as CO2 into the atmosphere and into kids lungs is truly undesirable, as the forests of this area should be a major source of clean oxygen locally and for the larger region as well. In addition, funds are desperately needed to increase clean public transportation here. Clean trains and buses are needed for both urban and rural populations as well as electric charging stations along roadways and in urban housing districts. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts should join the twelve state Transportation and Climate Initiative with the intention of swiftly acting to reduce the burning of fossil fuels and biomass in this region of our nation.

Man made global warming is nonsense. The Earth's temper has always changed from several centuries of warm weather to several centuries of cold weather. It will likely continue to warm until the sun changes and then we go into several centuries of bitter cold.

Ernst Wall, Physicist

I support the TCI because our state and country needs to invest in clean transportation options in order to reduce green house gas emissions and improve the respiratory health of our citizens. Please take this opportunity for Connecticut to lead in this important effort.

I am a scientist with over 35 years of experience in teaching and research in biology including environmental toxicology, such as air pollution. I strongly support the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) for several reasons:
1. TCI will bring much needed reductions in toxins from transportation and this pollution reduction will save lives and reduce health care costs.
Reducing the amount of commuter car traffic and replacing fossil fuel transit of goods and people with low-carbon methods reduces the toxins emitted from combustion engines in cars and trucks. For example, these toxins include nitrous oxides and volatile organic compounds that harm lungs and also cause ozone formation, another substance that triggers asthma and heart attacks in sensitive people and scars lungs in healthy individuals. I have lived in cities with serious air pollution from traffic congestion and in rural towns with truck emissions and studied the peer-reviewed science of transportation pollution effects on public health. The scientific evidence is clear that a wide range of people need reductions in air pollution. For example, areas of Southwestern Pennsylvania have 10% of school children with asthma and about 50 % of people in the sensitive category because they have one or more of the following conditions: asthma, diabetes, lung impairment, cardiovascular illness or advanced age. TCI is critical because the alternatives of piecemeal change in transit and tinkering with combustion engines are too slow and ineffective to make reductions we need now in transportation toxins. Much of the technology to change transit is available; TCI provides the organization to implement it and accelerate cleaner transit systems.

2. TCI fosters job growth through American development and manufacturing of transportation innovations. Growth in this job sector requires the power of large scale projects fostered across all of the Mid-Atlantic and New England. For example, I lived many years in Pennsylvania and know many counties where underemployed workers have the skills to be reemployed in transportation and manufacturing jobs TCI will create. These workers are ready now to become part of projects, but investors and entrepreneurs need help to organize projects, especially across state borders. TCI provides this organization.

3. TCI builds better local economies through better access to employment, health care and education. Our economy suffers now because we need better public transportation and affordable housing near transit networks. I have seen how poor public transportation impairs quality of life when people cannot reliably get to jobs, the doctor or classes for vocational or other schools. For example, I have participated in many revisioning sessions in rural/suburban Pennsylvania where county officials admit they cannot overcome public transportation gaps that impair economic development. Now, as a resident of New Hampshire, I see similar problems in rural areas. This is a problem throughout Mid-Atlantic and New England states. TCI is essential to help small towns get this help quickly to stem the downward spiral in declining small towns.

4. The Fee and Reinvest component in TCI can be used to provide fair incentives to make the changes we need and have funds for continuing innovation. Those who criticize this approach are often large companies who cause transportation pollution and other problems, but do not pay their share of solving problems. No one state or even the federal government could act efficiently to provide incentives for coordinated change because laws and regulations take too many years to enact. With key incentives through TCI, however, those transportation companies that are willing to change could benefit.

Cynthia Walter, Ph.D.
22 West Concord St.
Dover, NH 03820

I am against this initiative because it will hurt my cost of doing business, hurt employees, and in the end, not reduce our use of fossil fuels at all. To us, it will merely be a cost increase, with no good outcome. I founded and distribute a FREE weekly newspaper across northern Rhode Island. We sell advertising in person. We gather news, face to face. (Collecting news electronically is a poor substitute). Finally, we deliver those newspapers.
Your efforts will cost the company more money, which will translate to smaller annual raises and profit-share funds to my employees. They will earn less, and spend more on the gasoline they need to do their jobs.
If your hope is to gather more money, you will succeed. If you hope is to lower the use of fossil fuels, you will fail.
Frankly, I think you know that already.

Secondarily, I urge you to consider the impact on a single mom out there. You are simply cutting her pay and hurting her family. So many of the same political officials behind TCI claim to care for poorer people. What nonsense! People see right through this.

Thomas V. Ward, Cumberland, RI