As environmental policy, public transportation incentives don’t work. Road pricing is the clear alternative.
Motivated by the threat of climate change, local governments across the United States are striving to reduce emissions. Indeed, compared with federal gridlock, cities provide a source of hope for climate activists. Municipalities as disparate as Seattle, Pittsburgh, and New Orleans, for example, committed themselves to upholding the U.S. Paris Agreement climate pledge even after the Trump administration announced a U.S. withdrawal from the pact in 2017. In 2020, the two largest cities in Texas, Houston and Dallas, submitted climate plans of their own, showing that the city-first idea has legs even in a part of the country that has relied historically on fossil fuel production for its economic development.
One specific policy area in which local governments have frequently pursued emissions improvements is transportation.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Breakthrough Journal
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Jordan McGillis is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute.
This piece originally appeared in Breakthrough Journal