TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

States across the region are trying to protect the climate and improve transportation with the Transportation & Climate Initiative. The more we limit pollution from motor fuels, the more jobs are created, the more the economy grows, the healthier our air is and the more lives we save.

Governors from across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic released a draft agreement to limit climate pollution from motor fuels and invest in an economy built on clean transportation. These changes will reduce traffic congestion, make clean vehicles more accessible, increase jobs, and grow the economy.

Our Climate supports science-based equitable policy.

25% pollution reductions is not science-based. The price must be aggressive enough to drive significant behavior change, or it is not science-based.

Equity protections that are not numerically specific are not truly protections. A carbon price is without those protections is regressive. RGGI is regressive.

If you're wondering what numerically specific protections look like, check out the Massachusetts Youth Climate Coalition's policy principles: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P8dN3Eunb7BmU-HcSqHxSCoSNS3GpS-yKiyvsz114cI/edit?usp=sharing

Camden County Municpal Authority in Camden, New Jersey turns waste water into sludge. CCMUA assured residents that the sludge would be turned into petroleum. Biofuel is much needed to control clean air. I suggest to use biofuel on space shuttle to weigh and measure the emissions of carbon dioxide when biofuel is combusted that's it that's all.

Maine’s largest source of climate pollution is our antiquated mid-20th centrury transportation system. It is inefficient and inadequately meets the needs of Maine people.
Maine people deserve clean, modern, affordable transportation options that deliver economic, health, and climate benefits to local communities.
It makes sense for Maine to work with neighboring states through TCI’s bipartisan, proven policy model.

One quick partial solution to our carbon output would be to provide funding for electric buses for all school districts throughout the state. Probably (I'm guessing, have no statistics) more fuel is consumed in bussing kids to and from school and other activities than any other transportation system in Maine and this would go a long way toward mitigating our output.
Providing public transportation throughout the state is a really thorny problem since we are such a sprawled population but I am convinced that here on the coast at least affordable housing would help resolve some of that. Every morning and every afternoon in Camden, Rockland, and other midcoast communities where the jobs are, hordes of mostly large SUVs, often with heavy snowplows attached, and usually with just one occupant, flood in from Washington, Appleton, Hope (the hinterland), as workers drive from where they live to where they work. Housing costs in the midcoast have soared so high, often with out-of-state demand for a piece of the coast of Maine, that employees at all levels can no longer afford to live in the town where they work.
Beyond that, of course, is the problem of public transportation which almost seems insoluble in a state as large and with a population as sprawling as Maine's. I will be looking for creative solutions to this--tax relief for shared vehicles? more and safer bicycle lanes? more power outlets for electric vehicles? Everything I come up with seems like a minor stopgap measure but there HAS to be a way to get people where they want to go (and, equally important, when they want to go there) that doesn't involve massive single-person transit by the most energy-wasteful form of population that humankind has invented, the personal automotive vehicle. Perhaps a good way to start would be by funding a huge research effort at the University of Maine.

Please find below Paired Power's comments as it pertains to TCI jurisdictions policy measures to implement low-carbon transportation models. As TCI jurisdictions have designed a workplan with the goal of developing a policy that accelerates the transition to a low-carbon transportation future and delivers a better, cleaner, more resilient transportation system that benefits all communities, while making significant reductions in greenhouse gases and other harmful air pollution across the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern region, Paired Power would like to comment that renewable energy, such as on-site solar systems, can be deployed to support electric vehicle charging infrastructure for resilient multi-modal transportation needs (e-bike, passenger vehicle, private and public fleets, electric buses, etc.). Please see World Resource Institute working paper attachment titled "Using Renewables For Electric Vehicle Demand" for more information on this cost-effective policy measure to achieve low-carbon transportation goals and eliminate GHG pollution for the region. Please let us know if we can clarify or add to any part of this submission. Thank you.

Too many of our public buses and trains run on dirty energy and contribute to air pollution and climate change. Many trains, buses, and stations haven’t been retrofitted in decades. For many people in rural parts of our states, there are zero viable public transportation options, which forces them to drive.

By making polluters pay and creating a dedicated source of funding through TCI, we’ll finally be able to move our state to a 21st-century regional transportation system that is cleaner, more reliable, more accessible, and more affordable. We’ll see less traffic, thousands of new jobs, and less dangerous air pollution. All communities — whether urban, suburban, or rural — will benefit.

Absolutely NO MORE TAXES without voted approval of the citizens (LEGAL) of Massachusetts! We have made this VERY CLEAR before. This 'initiative' is a sleazy, political scam against the wishes of honest, law abiding citizens.