Speak up to help build a better transportation future - Southern Environmental Law Center

We can’t meaningfully fight the climate crisis without dramatically rethinking transportation.

The transportation sector now accounts for the single largest share of carbon pollution in North Carolina. Yet long-term transportation planning in our state and throughout the Southeast has stayed mired in the past – favoring a highway-centric approach to mobility that is narrowly focused on moving people in cars over long distances as quickly as possible. But we should instead be considering innovative transportation options that can enhance our communities and improve our quality of life.

Transportation doesn’t just impact climate. Tailpipe pollution puts harmful gases in the air that worsen serious health problems, particularly among children and those with asthma or other respiratory illnesses. Stormwater run-off from roads and parking lots increase risk of floods and pollute our streams and drinking water. Poorly planned highways bisect communities and have historically placed significant burdens on Black and brown communities. Driving for hours a day makes us less healthy – in body and in mind. And a lack of affordable infrastructure limits access to jobs and opportunity.

Vehicle electrification, while a necessary component of the overall clean energy transition, cannot by itself solve all of these interrelated problems.

Transportation planners and public officials know all this to be true. But the courage to do things differently has largely remained barred by institutional obstacles, complicated funding mechanisms, and a reluctance to break from past systems.

All that changed, however, at a recent meeting of a transportation planning organization in North Carolina. The Durham Chapel Hill Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is working on a transportation plan for the next 30 years.

Initial options for the plan remained mired in the same outdated thinking that pervades such planning exercises. Advocates, however, pointed out that the plan was inconsistent with the goals adopted by local governments around reducing carbon emissions, eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries, and eliminating racial and economic disparities in access to jobs and other destinations.

The advocates spoke up and an amazing thing happened: the elected officials listened. They thought carefully. They deliberated. And, ultimately, they unanimously voted to direct staff to develop a new alternative plan that will actually reach their goals by 2050.

The importance breaking through the long-held “no can do” mindset cannot be overstated. But of course, this is only the beginning. The alternative, if done right, will set a path towards a new way of pursuing transportation planning, and will illuminate in a concrete way the roadblocks that stand in the way of making community visions a reality. Once identified, there will be work to do at all levels of government to dismantle old thinking, reimagine funding a prioritization of resources, and move forward into a cleaner, healthier and more equitable future.

In the meantime, local planning organizations around North Carolina can join the forward-looking action taken by the Durham Chapel Hill Carrboro MPO. Next week, the same group will meet jointly with the Capitol Area MPO that represents the Raleigh area. View more meeting details here.

The meeting, which starts at 9:00am September 29, will involve an opportunity for public comment.

Do your part to build a better transportation future by making a public comment 9/29.

And there is no need to stop there. MPOs are in place all across the Southeast. Each one is required by federal law to develop transportation plans for 2050. Each one must listen to the public it represents.

The time is now to rethink our transportation future. The antiquated funding systems and planning models of the past simply won’t do any more. Raise your voice and push for change. Where there is enough will, we can find a way. We must.

source: https://www.southernenvironment.org/news/speak-up-now-to-help-build-a-better-transportation-future/

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