Which States have the Best (and Worst) Transportation Policies? – StreetsBlog USA
By Kea Wilson
As the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law continues to dump billions into state transportation budgets, a new scorecard ranks which states are most likely to use that money to reduce emissions and make roads more equitable — and which are only making matters worse.
In a new report, the Natural Resources Defense Council ranked the transportation policies of all 50 states based on 22 equity and environmental metrics, such as how much money they've spent on transit in the last three years per capita, whether they've set ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles (if they even bothered to set a goal at all), and whether they'e taken steps to incentivize housing developers to build near transit lines or not.
Few Americans may even know about those sort of wonky policies, but the report authors explain that they have massive implications for our everyday lives — especially in the wake of the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which nearly doubled the amount of largely unrestricted mobility money that flows from Congress to the states every year. That cascade of cash, though, could also be the perfect opportunity to step out of the "well-worn grooves" that policymakers have fallen into over the years, and finally carve a new path.
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