> Political Opinion: Don’t Fall for Trump’s Point on Congestion Pricing
> Tags: Politics, New York, Transportation, Opinion, Congestion pricing
> In a recent tweet, President Donald Trump objected to congestion pricing, an idea that’s gaining steam in cities around the world. It would have New Yorkers dole out a fee to drive into Manhattan.
> There are a few reasons to reject this suggestion from the leader of the free world.
> First, reducing emissions through congestion pricing won’t solve the world’s carbon problem. “The point should be clear,” Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman John Podesta said in 2016, “electric cars at scale are the most important step in solving our climate problems.”
> Unlike Europe, where mass adoption of electric cars is already happening, the United States is just starting to shift to vehicles that run on electricity. “Electric cars,” explains environmental campaigner and Facebook favorite, Bill McKibben, in an argument order further in March, “are now the single best way to fight climate change.” The argument for congestion pricing, with increasing numbers of electric cars entering the American market, is diminishing.
> Here’s one more reason.
> Trump’s own Department of Transportation did a study, released this week, on congestion pricing and found that it “provides a proven method for generating revenue to invest in additional transportation improvements that motorists want.”
> “Motorists?” Taxis and ride-hailing services, such as Uber and Lyft, don’t want to pay. Those services spent $100 million on lobbying against similar pricing in San Francisco this year. As long as their presence on city streets is increasing — exponentially — they’re going to spew pollutants deeper into the suburbs and collect lower fares in developing nations around the world.
> Getting back to Podesta’s point, Metro has placed an order for 1,000 electric-hybrid buses. “These new buses are not just zero emissions,” Metro emphasized, “figuring on 1.4 million passenger miles using fewer fossil fuels per year than today’s diesel-only buses.” The fight to incentivize Metro’s adoption of these new vehicles has led to the passing of the federal “Investing in a New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation Act,” or “INVEST” in urban America.
> Perhaps, under an INVEST-ed Metro administration, a small, twinkling red light would begin to blink on the dashboard of Elon Musk’s personal Tesla. This would inform him of the large number of Metro electric-hybrid buses that have begun enjoying carbon-free independence on roads and highways increasingly free of congestion.
> Under a Trump INVEST it would be safe to assume that this scene would not exist. None of this new technology would exist.
> Trump has consistently worked against renewable energy and has helped engineer the largest single roll back of environmental protections in the country’s history. He has denigrated California’s leadership in building charging stations for electric cars. He’s even rolled back fuel standards laws already on the books that are helping to reduce carbon emissions and save money at the pump.
> To defeat emissions from America’s “personal vehicles,” hydrogen technology is being developed that will transform the fuel they use into green energy. Maybe, just maybe, your next Volkswagen will not only be electric, it’ll produce zero emissions. And best of all, maybe, just maybe, its carbon footprint won’t extend past the manufacturing line — or even across the Pacific Ocean.
> Sydney just announced a similar program to address the rolling problems that will sap New York’s congestion pricing of its power to stop climate change in the cradle of innovation. They’re doubling Tesla’s 1,000 down-under. This would mean that Sydney will have 2,000 electric buses.
> In 2019, “Jerusalem has joined an elite club — nine cities that have made a bold commitment to replace their public-transportation fleets with a new generation of electric buses,” Spectrum News explained this week.
> Recently, Edinburgh announced plans to “electrify its bus fleet entirely by March 2023.” Capital amman in jordan is “soon to be home to the Middle East’s first fully electric bus fleet.” And in Africa, the “100% electric bus for Johannesburg’s Rea Vaya BRT system will have zero emissions.”
> This forceful new movement towards de-congesting a future full of electric vehicles and renewable transportation options from California to Jerusalem, Cambridge to Johannesburg and Gothenburg to Sydney and beyond is a global showcase that towers over the limited horizons of a war-weary president fearful of the very future whose development is being bet on by the world community.
> Here’s one more thing: As the rest of the world has made most of the original promises that emerged from the Paris Agreement, Trump made a few. “We’re going to” cut greenhouse gases, he has said, “and we’re going to clean up our environment and we’re not going to, like, put you out of business.”
> Unfortunately, those “goings-on” have been much louder than those “going-ins.” The contradiction is stunning. But there is, however, also a silver lining.
> More than three-quarters of Americans are in favor of getting behind the goal of 100% renewable energy sources, according to the Pew Research Center. Opposition to this kind of order is diminishing rapidly. Despite what the leader of the free world seems to believe, Americans can manage to preserve both their independence and their planet.
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