Joining the Transportation and Climate Initiative Program (TCI-P) will help New York fund a seamless transition to a zero-emissions transportation sector, according to Department of Transportation Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez.

TCI-P would cap and reduce transportation emissions across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions by close to 25% by 2030, while raising revenues for investment in electrification and public transportation and prioritizing investment in disadvantaged communities, Dominguez said in a presentation of the Climate Action Council Transportation Advisory Panel’s recommendations to the full council on Monday.

Funding from a cap-and-invest program like TCI-P would support the panel’s suggested regulatory changes, she said. Those recommendations include requiring all new car sales to be zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) by 2035 and new truck sales to be ZEVs by 2045.

Without a dedicated source of revenue, the transportation panel’s recommendations are unlikely to come to fruition, said council member Anne Reynolds, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York.

While three states and D.C. joined the official launch of TCI-P last year, eight states, including New York, agreed only to support and monitor the initiative. (See NE States, DC Sign MOU to Cut Transportation Pollution.)

The panel, according to Dominguez, also looked at other market-based strategies to facilitate a clean transportation transition. Those options included congestion pricing to discourage driving into downtown areas and pricing parking and vehicle miles traveled.

“There’s also a very important role for private financing,” Dominguez said. “Funding provided by these market-based programs can be used to leverage private financing of clean transportation, particularly for fleet electrification and EV infrastructure.”

The package of transportation sector decarbonization polices made by the panel would reduce sector emissions 16% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 77% by 2050.

Those reductions are “impressive,” Dominguez said, but the panel may need to consider alternative policies to achieve better results.

Public Transportation

As part of its package of recommendations, the panel said that investing in public transportation would bridge the council’s emphasis on energy efficiency, housing and land use. Opportunities for investment include transit, micro-mobility and long-distance passenger rail.

“Incentivizing transportation-oriented development and mandating the coordination of transportation with land-use plans and smart growth can increase the availability of public transportation, reduce the need for single-occupant trips and mitigate GHG emissions,” Dominguez said. Investments, she added, must prioritize infrastructure for transit accessibility in low- and moderate-income communities as well as safe pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure.

The panel stressed the importance of smart growth and land-use patterns in its public transportation targets. Dominguez said the panel worked with the Land Use and Local Government (LU-LG) Advisory Panel to develop suggestions for smart growth through compact, mixed-use, diverse and mixed-income communities that are walkable, bikeable and transit accessible.

“We can’t achieve our goal of significantly expanding public transportation without complementary smart growth and land-use policies at the state and local levels,” she said.

The panel’s smart growth recommendations, however, are not one-size-fits-all.

“We must adapt the basic formula to vastly different conditions in rural, suburban and urban communities with particular attention to disadvantaged communities,” Dominguez said.

Land Use and Local Government

Supporting local and regional initiatives to promote smart growth opportunities as described by Dominguez was a key theme in the recommendations made by the LU-LG panel on Monday.

“We’re compelled both morally and statutorily to ensure that we achieve smart growth in its most complete forms through all our land-use and local government recommendations, which means equity is ubiquitous,” said Sarah Crowell, director of the Office of Planning, Development and Community Infrastructure at New York’s Department of State.

Achieving smart growth, Crowell said, will require strengthening regional, accounting-based land-use planning to encourage equitable, sustainable decisions at the municipal level.

Examples of an accounting-based approach are in practice in New York through programs that identify priority local development and conservation areas and guide development to or away from those areas. Thompkins County, according to Crowell, has designated natural resource areas where growth is not preferred and directs development to what they deem development-focus areas.

The panel also recommended accelerating transit-oriented development (TOD) through strategies that align with the transportation panel’s smart growth plans. TOD emphasizes walkable, bikeable, mixed-use and mixed-income communities.

“[This approach] offers an opportunity for New York State to promote socio-economic equity and environmental justice by embracing affordable and mixed-income housing near transit through inclusionary zoning and incentives by providing opportunities for greater outdoor physical activity and social interaction,” Crowell said.

The options for achieving smart growth include:

• direct planning assistance in the form of grants, technical assistance and capacity building; and
• allocating tools and resources for localities to independently make decisions about where and how to grow.

“Municipalities … don’t have the staff, resources, time or expertise to do this independently,” Crowell said. “That’s where the state can help by empowering, not mandating, communities to plan, zone and develop in a smart, sustainable and equitable way.”

Carbon Sequestration

The guided development strategy recommended by the LU-LG panel provides opportunities for natural carbon sequestration in conserved areas.

Crowell said the panel’s recommendations on sequestration build on the work of the agriculture and forestry panel. They include increasing carbon sequestration and storage capacity in freshwater wetlands, coastal and tidal wetlands, submerged aquatic vegetation, coastal habitat and other natural areas.

The panel’s strategies for bolstering sequestration in wetland systems included expanding regulations and increasing investment in restoration monitoring through, for example, the state’s conservation partnership program.

A key measure in supporting the panel’s wetlands recommendations is the comprehensive update of wetlands and coastal habitats and other natural areas. Crowell said a statewide conservation framework is part of that recommendation.

“The framework will use current maps and data sets to inform conservation decision-making and provide a shared vision for prioritizing state funding, land protection and technical assistance programs,” Crowell said.

In addition, she said that it’s important to support research, monitoring and demonstration projects on the carbon storage and sequestration potential of natural systems.

“There’s just a lot of research to be done in order to properly understand the value of these types of ecosystems,” she said.

That’s a Wrap

The Climate Action Council on Monday wrapped up the presentation of recommendations by all its advisory panels and looked ahead to next steps.

NYSERDA President Doreen Harris suggested that the council should examine topics, such as climate finance, that cut across the panels’ recommendations.

To help support that directive, Harris said the council could benefit from cross-cutting expert engagement over the coming months.

The council will hear feedback from the Climate Justice Working Group on the panels’ recommendations at the next full council meeting, which is tentatively scheduled for June 8.