Happy Birthday TCI!

This month marks the 5^th birthday of the Transportation and Climate Initiative, an extraordinary collaboration of the transportation, environment, and energy agencies of the 11 northeastern states and DC.  TCI (with staff support from the Georgetown Climate Center) works on all sorts of issues in the transportation and climate change arena, including finding practical ways to facilitate greater proliferation of electric vehicles in the region (for more, see their website here).

I have something of a “paternal” interest in the group, having served as one of the founding facilitators, and was happy to celebrate with members of the group during the NASTO (Northeast Association of State Transportation Officials) annual meeting in Wilmington, DE.  Wilmington was the right place for the 5-year update session, as the group was founded the last time NASTO met there in 2010.

What I have always found most encouraging about the group is the way it came together.  The group was not founded as a result of a new federal law or regulations, or of a lawsuit, or of direction from the governors.  It was founded because a diverse, multidisciplinary group of agency heads from an entire region of the country decided that transportation and climate change issues were pressing and important and that they should sit down as a group and try to figure out ways to deal with them.  At a time in our political history when cooperation and effective action seem elusive, TCI is a cause for optimism.