TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

We must do everything we can to stop impacting our climate. Please do all you can to create and enact a strong Transportation and Climate Initiative to protect our planet for the future. All forms of pollution must be curbed.

Transportation is the largest source of air pollution in the region, and we need to build a modern, clean, safe, and accessible transportation system for the 21st century. The more we limit pollution from motor fuels, the more jobs we create, the more the economy grows, the healthier our air becomes, and the more lives we save. Florida should join TCI to fund better transportation infrastructure, reduce traffic, and make my community a cleaner, safer place to live.
It is clear that air pollution from cars, trucks, and buses have become a huge detriment to my community’s health. Air pollution has been linked to a variety of health problems, including asthma, heart disease, and lung cancer, and the more ambitious TCI is, the more our community stands to benefit from a cleaner transportation system. I urge Ron DeSantis to join TCI and push it to be as ambitious as possible, for the sake of my community’s health and livelihood.

It is urgent that we have comprehensive transportation planning which takes into account the need to minimize climate change. We've only got a short time left to address climate change. The Eastern and mid-Atlantic states are very densely populated, so reliable transportation is essential for people to be able to get to work. Taking climate change into account is particularly important for this region as rising oceans will make some coastal areas uninhabitable.

Reducing pollution from transportation is a key component to reducing Pennsylvania's emissions
Public transit investments that could be made with TCI proceeds would be valuable
Leaders should choose the aggressive greenhouse gas reduction target that the most recent climate science tells us we need. The policy needs prioritizes clean investments in areas overburdened by pollution and/or for those who don’t have access to transportation choices.

We should absolutely join. We aren't part of RGGI despite being the third largest greenhouse gas polluter in the US. We've also just had one of the warmest winters ever here in PA. We have to do something to curb GHG NOW, just to avoid the worst effects of global warming. This initiative would be an encouraging first step to doing it (although we need to be doing much, much more).

Climate change has gone beyond the point of crisis. Transportation is a major contributing factor. Any and ALL steps that can be take to reduce fossil fuel consumption must be taken as fast as possible. There is no time left.

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

Please develop and implement a policy that caps/reduces carbon emissions from transportation