Transportation advocates list priorities by CommonWealth Magazine

Three leading transportation advocates – Jim Aloisi of TransitMatters, Chris Dempsey of Transportation for Massachusetts, and Stacy Thompson of the Livable Streets Alliance – ring in the new year on The Codcast with a discussion about priorities.

One of the biggest is putting a price on transportation carbon and using the proceeds to invest in expanded transit options, cleaner vehicles, and climate resiliency. Massachusetts and eight other states plus the District of Columbia plan to spend the next year developing the initiative. Dempsey calls it a “really big deal,” largely because it will provide badly needed revenues that can be used by the participating states to bolster their transit systems and reduce emissions.

According to Gov. Charlie Baker’s Commission on the Future of Transportation, which recommended pursuing a regional price on transportation carbon, the initiative could raise somewhere between $150 million (at $4.50 per ton of carbon) and $500 million (at $15 a ton) a year for Massachusetts. For the average driver, that works out to between $24 and $84 a year.