Today, a coalition of New York State transportation, business, health, clean energy, and environmental advocates launched ‘NY for TCI’ — a campaign focused on achieving equitable, sustainable, and accessible transportation options through the multistate Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI). TCI is a regional collaboration of 12 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, including New York and the District of Columbia that seeks to transform transportation, supercharge the clean energy economy, and curb emissions from the transportation sector–a major source of harmful local air pollution and New York’s largest source of carbon pollution. New York’s outdated networks of roads, bridges, sidewalks, transit systems, and other modes of travel are plagued by problems decades in the making such as congestion, delays, underfunding, inaccessibility, high costs, and pollution. These issues make getting to work, school, doctors’ offices, recreation, stores, and back home stressful and unsafe for all New Yorkers.
Communities of color and low-resourced communities are disproportionately harmed by inequitable pollution burdens exacerbated by vehicle traffic, particularly from diesel-burning vehicles as transit depots and freight hubs tend to be sited in these communities. Many of these same communities as well as people with disabilities, veterans, older residents, rural residents, and others too often face transportation barriers to healthcare, social services, and jobs.
