First Name | Gerald |
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Last Name | Cauthen |
Email Address | cautn1@aol.com |
Affiliation | |
Subject | AB 32 |
Comment | CARB will be playing a vital role in ensuring California's environmental and economic future viability. People are therefore counting on your agency to do its job with vigor, determination and backbone. First a word about SB 375. SB 375 was unfortunately seriously watered down, such that it grandfathers in virtually every transportation capital improvement project in sight, even those still in the early planning stages. For instance MTC's entire Bay Area transportation program covering the next 25 years was unaccountably exempted from the terms of SB 375. That leaves those of us concerned with improving California's transportation systems with AB 32 and CARB's AB 32 enforcement policies as our only hope. In fact it appears that the only hope of meeting the Governor's GHG reduction tarket lies in CARB and the way it implements AB 32. It is of great importance therefore that you adopt and enforce a tough and consistent standard in the following three areas: First, strict new land use controls must result in new residential and commercial development being clustered around transit nodes....pushback notwithstanding. Second, the era of highway expansion and huge public transit boondoggles, both of which are still ongoing in the Bay Area, must end. Highway funds should be used to maintain and improve existing roadways, but without increasing their auto-carrying capacities. Transit funds should be directed to practical projects designed to render the overall public transit system much more useful and attractive to many more people. Third, the public subsidies now lavished upon California's roadway users must be reduced. This could take the form of higher gas taxes, new roadway use fees, higher excise taxes, increased parking fees, or some combination thereof. A Japanese highway users is taxed over 20 times as much per mile as his American counterpart. Something's amiss, and it's not in Japan. Thanks for reading this far; CARB has an extremely important job to do, and we wish you well. Geralc Cauthen |
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Date and Time Comment Was Submitted | 2008-12-08 13:29:53 |
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