Buttigieg Appoints Transportation Equity Advisers

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has revived an Obama-era panel of “leading experts” to advise him on “transportation equity,” together with some who declare that vehicles perpetuate “systemic racism” and ought to be banned due to their unfavorable impression on the surroundings.

Buttigieg not too long ago appointed 24 new members to the Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity, which had been scrapped by the Trump administration, together with “spatial policy scholar” Andrea Marpillero-Colomina, who has argued “ALL CARS ARE BAD,” as a result of they trigger “a myriad of environmental issues and conditions.”

Another Buttigieg appointee, Veronica Davis, claimed, in an August essay, that cars are “the problem” in American’s transportation system as a result of they uphold “systemic racism.”

Shortly after taking workplace in 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that required federal companies to “pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all.” Agency heads should conduct an “equity assessment” beneath the order to determine insurance policies that create “systemic barriers” for minority communities.

According to a Transportation Department press launch, the committee is slated to satisfy for the primary time this fall and can advise Buttigieg on “promising practices to institutionalize equity into agency programs, policies, regulations, and activities.”

While she shouldn’t be “advocating for the complete erasure” of vehicles, Marpillero-Colomina advised The Washington Free Beacon that she plans to advocate for a coverage that strikes America away from its reliance on privately-owned motor autos.

“My interest in being on the [equity committee] is to raise the question and push the Department of Transportation to really think about: What are some equitable, environmentally sustainable, economically beneficial, and feasible alternatives to policy that is car-centric?” she requested. “How can we reimagine streets to prioritize people instead of cars? How can we create streets that are inclusive of modes other than cars?”

In July, Davis released a book on “inclusive transportation” that requires “a different way of thinking” to “address healing the damage done by cars.”

“Not to oversimplify the problems of transportation, but all roads lead back to cars,” Davis wrote in an essay final month derived from her guide. “This isn’t anti-car propaganda but vehicles have wreaked havoc on the environment and communities. … Racism shaped the urban and suburban areas, where even today we see the residual effects.”

Buttigieg additionally appointed Oliver Sellers-Garcia to the committee, who manages Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s Green New Deal program. The metropolis’s Green New Deal requires Boston to transition from vehicles to a “multimodal” transportation plan.

“We need to make it not only possible but also preferable for residents to leave traffic- and pollution-inducing fossil fuel-powered vehicles behind,” the Boston plan states.

This is not the primary time Buttigieg has seemed to cut back America’s dependence on automobile journey. In January, his workplace launched a local weather plan that known as for a discount in “commuting miles” by an “increase in remote work and virtual engagements.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted major opportunities for telework, with some studies showing the possibility of 10 percent long-term reduction in annual vehicle miles traveled,” the plan says.

In current months, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Safety Administration unveiled new laws that may require automakers to promote primarily electrical autos by 2032.

Despite Biden’s aggressive push for electrical autos, fairness committee member Marpillero-Colomina, advised the Free Beacon that electrical autos “are not the silver bullet” they’re being marketed as.

“If we just replace all the gas-powered cars with EVs, we’re going to have many of the same problems that we have with gas-powered cars,” she mentioned.