Cities are trying to cut down on cars. Some states are standing in their way.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

 

Connecting state and local government leaders

Local officials are rethinking their streets, aiming for fewer cars and more sustainable ways to get around. But some state governments are keeping cars in control.

This story was originally published by Yale Climate Connections.

Earlier this summer, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul made headlines around the world by canceling New York City’s long-planned congestion pricing program, which had been hailed as a promising model for reducing cars’ domination of American city streets. Her decision has been denounced by many New York City political and transportation leaders, including Comptroller Brad Lander, who is part of a coalition that has filed multiple lawsuits challenging the governor.

This kind of conflict isn’t unique to New York. Across the nation, state and local officials frequently clash over efforts to make urban transportation less car-centric.

“You have cities that really want to do things differently, and you have states that are prohibiting that,” said John Bailey, a transportation specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental nonprofit also known as NRDC.

In recent decades, many local governments have made increasingly ambitious pledges to nudge their residents out of their cars. Motivated by concerns like climate change, urban sprawl, and traffic deaths, U.S. cities are trying to make it easier for people to get around on public transportation, on foot, and by bike. Within the past five years, even famously car-centric cities like Houston and Phoenix have announced goals to significantly cut down on driving.

These efforts could add up to substantial climate benefits. Transportation is the nation’s largest source of planet-warming gases, and the everyday vehicles most Americans rely on are the biggest source within the sector. According to think tank RMI, cars and trucks were responsible for almost 40% of all U.S. emissions in 2019. Shifting to electric vehicles will greatly reduce these emissions, but it won’t eliminate them; car use also needs to fall.

“Even if we’re hitting home runs on electrification, which we should celebrate, we’re still not going to be able to meet our climate change goals if we’re still ever increasing the amount of driving,” Bailey said.

State as Friend and Foe

Conflicts over urban transportation play out in different ways across the country. In Charlotte, North Carolina, the local government announced plans to reshape its transportation system in 2022, aiming for half of all commutes to occur by means other than a solo drive within the next two decades. But state lawmakers have refused to approve a sales tax referendum needed to fund programs designed to achieve this goal, demanding that the city instead prioritize cars. According to Charlotte National Public Radio affiliate WFAE, earlier this year local officials halved the amount of proposed sales tax revenue that would be devoted to trains in an attempt to reach an agreement with the state, calling into question ambitious plans to build a light rail network spanning the city.

In San Antonio, where Bailey lives, the state agreed to give up Broadway Avenue, an urban road running past parks, restaurants, and apartment buildings that is technically a state highway, to the city government. To help make the area more amenable to walking and biking, the city government passed a $42 million bond initiative to reduce the number of car lanes, widen sidewalks, and add protected bike lanes on Broadway. However, “the state has since rescinded its ability to do it and said, ‘You absolutely can’t do that. Our No. 1 concern is alleviating congestion,’” Bailey said. The state is effectively applying the same logic to a city street as it would to an interstate loop, decreeing that cars shouldn’t slow down on either, he noted in an email.

Not all states block efforts to reduce driving, however; some have developed innovative ways to support this goal. Washington has a long-standing program focused on reducing solo commute drives, and the Seattle government has reported significant reductions in single-driver commutes within its borders as a result. Colorado recently passed a bill that will impose fees on oil and gas extraction to help fund local public transportation.

Many states’ stances on these issues are complex. New York is one example. Although Gov. Hochul has been widely criticized for ending congestion pricing, she plays an important role in the city’s public transportation network, which enables the city to have the nation’s lowest rate of car ownership. As the state’s governor, she, not the New York City mayor, appoints the board that leads the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the city’s subways and buses, as well as its regional train network.

Many New York City residents don’t recognize the depth of influence that Hochul has over their daily commutes, said Alexa Sledge, the director of communications at Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit that advocates against car dependency in New York City. “People are often like, ‘Oh, the mayor and the MTA …’ – and it’s just completely inaccurate. The governor has complete control over the MTA. It is a state program,” Sledge said.

Following the Money

To better understand how states manage these and related issues, Bailey and co-author Dave Grossman compared state transportation policies aimed at reducing climate change and improving equity for a 2023 NRDC report. Analyzing information gathered in late 2022 and early 2023, they found that states like California, Massachusetts, and Vermont have taken steps such as setting goals for lowering transportation emissions and reducing car use. However, even the national leaders could be doing much more, the research showed: California was the only state to score more than 70 points out of a possible 100.

At the other end of the spectrum, the study found that states like Kentucky, Louisiana, and Nebraska have taken virtually no action on climate or equity in their transportation planning. The lowest-scoring state, Kentucky, achieved only 12.7 points out of 100.

This policy context is critical to understanding urban transportation in the U.S. The largest source of funding for transportation projects within cities is federal money that gets distributed to state departments of transportation, which have a great deal of discretion over how to spend it. Most of these funds have historically been directed to building and expanding roads to enable more driving – a pattern that persists today.

“States control the lion’s share of transportation funding,” said Steven Higashide, who directs the Clean Transportation Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “They can use that to help address the climate and give people more ways to get around. Or they can make things worse – they can keep pouring more money into wider highways.” He cited highway projects in Austin and Houston as an example of the latter.

One area where all states generally fall short is in funding efforts to support walking, biking, and public transit, according to Josh Naramore, a transportation policy expert at the ​​nonprofit National Association of City Transportation Officials, known as NACTO. “At the state level, regardless of if it’s a blue state or a red state, there’s a lot of competition for a limited amount of funding that can support these types of activities to give people more travel options,” he said.

Case in point: Bailey’s research found that New York had the nation’s highest per capita state spending on public transportation, $280, but census data show that the state spent much more on highways in 2021: $609 per capita. Meanwhile, Mississippi spent less than $1 per capita on public transportation but $633 per capita on highways.

These funding patterns mean that federal efforts to reduce transportation emissions can backfire. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which devoted billions of dollars to climate-friendly infrastructure projects – roughly doubling federal transportation spending in the process – is one example. The Georgetown Climate Center, a policy research organization, found that the law will substantially raise net transportation emissions if 25% or more of its funding is used to increase road capacity, since adding new lanes leads to increased driving.*

“When we did our analysis, I think perhaps the most revelatory aspect of the results was the relatively high greenhouse gas impact of [road] capacity expansion projects versus other transportation investments,” said James Bradbury, the director of research and policy analysis at the Georgetown Climate Center.

“Dollar for dollar, it hits hard in the wrong direction,” he said.

*Editor’s note: This sentence was corrected Aug. 22, 2024.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.