Our Alliance is seeking justice on three important dimensions: climate, environment and equity.
Today, let’s look at climate. We need to limit planetary warming to the 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius range. The paths to do that require very quick reductions in greenhouse gas reductions. A recent paper (PDF) from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy summarizes this in a very succinct chart.
Basically this tells us that the only way we limit warming to the target range is to combine electrification of our vehicle fleet with aggressive shift to non-auto modes of transportation.
That’s why we’re pushing to maximize transit opportunities and limit lane capacity on the Interstate Bridge Replacement. See our take on the climate impact of the proposed auxiliary lanes.
As a bonus, the same report points out that aggressive mode shift also decreases combined public and private costs for transportation. That’s also a win for equity!