A Breath of Fresh Air: ARB and CTC First Joint Meeting
CalBike-supported Assembly Bill 179, introduced by Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes (D-Corona), is part of a series of efforts to reform the powerful California Transportation Commission, an executive body with far-reaching impact. Transportation investments affect all Californians, and they often disproportionately burden our lowest-income communities. But the California Transportation Commission hasn’t met previously to coordinate its efforts with the California Air Resources Board.
Don’t transportation and clean air have a great deal to do with one another in California?
Transportation policy is one of the most intersectional areas of governance, affecting everything from the job market to the air our children breathe. If our transportation system creates problems our “clean air agency” has to solve, shouldn’t the CTC and ARB work together?
AB 179 requires the governor to use every effort to appoint a diverse commission, including commissioners representing or working with communities burdened by high levels of pollution, including those with racially or ethnically diverse, or low-income, communities.. It also requires the CTC to meet twice a year with California Air Resources Board to collaborate on the implementation of transportation policy.
That first collaborative meeting is tomorrow, and CalBike will be there.
The state and the country have made strides in equality and civil rights, but injustice is apparent every day on our streets and in the halls of power that make transportation policy and investment decisions. Transportation is about more than getting around; it shapes neighborhoods, freedoms, benefits, and opportunities.
That’s why we led the effort to develop this letter to the Air Resources Board and the California Transportation Commission about their first joint meeting with our coalition partners, and why we’ll be issuing forthcoming comments emphasizing the need and incorporation of transportation justice into state policymaking. Our work builds off the decades of grassroots and grasstops organizing on environmental and transportation justice in the state. We believe a transportation justice framework is fundamental not only to improving bike, walking, and transit use across our state, but also for meeting ambitious state goals of reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), greenhouse gas reduction, improved air quality, and of course cleaner zero-emission freight. We stand in full support of our partners who advocate for the above and strongly believe transportation justice encompassess a platform that is mutually inclusive.
If you’re in Sacramento tomorrow, please come to the public meeting and make your values heard!