Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Equity in infrastructure pricing

Set an equitable cost distribution on pollution. Infrastructure pricing should reflect the burden of polluting the biosphere. The model is tier pricing in energy.

Examples:
CA needs to develop a model off-street parking ordinance that implements "Intelligent Parking" similar to what SF wants and Redwood City may have the begining off (from Mike Bullock).

Traffic impact fees, estimated at 40k per car per ten year period would fund zero pollution changes to the way the air and water basin are destroyed.

PAYD road financing should replace the highway gas tax using GPS or license-plate RFID tags. Roads should be priced so that they produce an agree-to rate of return on the VALUE of the lane. Note that I said value. Value is the price of land plus construction, at the time of collection. Privacy concerns should not allow drivers to permanently impact growing lungs by large roads (Mike Bullock).

A revenue neutral carbon tax to address imports. The market partially addresses this but the impact varies with the price of CO2 intensive fuels like gasoline. Without an extraction fee 96% of fossil fuels won't stay in the ground through 2250 for 350 ppm of CO2.

Universal single payer health care to address pollution through environmental justice.

Tie Federal funds to a tangible goal like reduced traffic or carbon emissions.

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