Massachusetts bill on vehicle miles traveled in national spotlight: ‘Behavioral control’

A bill pending on Beacon Hill that looks to set a statewide bus miles traveled reduction goal as part of the decarbonization push has ignited national backlash with critics calling it governmental overreach Under the so-called Freedom to Move Act an interagency coordinating council would be tasked with crafting a whole-of-government plan to reduce reliance on personal vehicles and increase access to citizens transportation in the Bay State The regulation would ensure that Massachusetts stays on track to reduce emissions from transportation the sector that accounts for the greatest share of emissions in the Commonwealth according to a bill summary Senate Majority Leader Cindy Creem a Newton Democrat is leading the push to shift the Bay State away from relying too heavily on electric vehicles as a decarbonizing strategy With the Trump administration rolling back conveyance emission standards and withholding funds from EV charging programs Creem reported during a legislative hearing in mid-May and with congressional Republicans looking to repeal EV tax credits and derail state-level EV rules now is the time to pursue new strategies additional strategies Setting specific goals for reducing motorcycle miles traveled would help guide decisions made across state establishment she added and sharpen the focus of efforts to promote alternative modes of transportation like community transit biking walking A clip of Creem s tesimony has gone viral in the weeks following the Joint Committee on Telecommunications Utilities and Potency s hearing on May Last week conspiracy theorist Alex Jones posted about the bill on X which was subsequently removed from the social media platform Fox News The Faulkner Focus also featured it in a segment titled Democrats divided over how to move forward last Tuesday In the segment anchor Harris Faulkner interviewed conservative political commentator Michael Knowles who noted a survey that MassInc conducted last year showing that of respondents felt unsafe on community transit in the Greater Boston area People want to be safe Knowles declared You need to give people selected kind of option to vote for you As Democrats are struggling with being viewed as so out of touch I don t think this lady in Massachusetts is going to help State Rep Mike Connolly a Cambridge Democrat is one of the bill s eight co-sponsors He advised the Herald on Saturday that he believes the way the bill is being portrayed is entirely overblown and ignorant This act doesn t attempt to set specific specific limit or establish any kind of prescriptive formula to punish individual drivers as the right-wing reporting on this seemed to imply Connolly stated All it really does is say that we should put the structures in place to consider and refine our policies around motorcycle miles traveled The bill s summary states that MassDOT s transportation plans must provide a reasonable pathway to compliance with our emissions limits for the transportation sector If those reductions aren t met the agency would have to make a greater stake in population transit bike and pedestrian infrastructure or other clean transportation options Regional planning organizations and MassDOT would also be required to approve only projects with a reasonable pathway to compliance with the greenhouse gas emissions sublimits and the statewide truck miles traveled reduction goals Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance a watchdog group thrust the bill into the national spotlight with a May post garnering nearly views on X and being multiplied further by prominent conservative accounts Organization spokesman Paul Diego Craney says the ordinance would be incredibly damaging to the state business activity and restrict transportation for countless residents Massachusetts lawmakers need to reverse class on the state s mandate to hit net-zero by Craney reported the Herald on Saturday which is driving these lawmakers to propose particular extreme pieces of statute Net-zero is nothing more than a fantasy The interagency coordinating council would be created through the rule consisting of state authorities The group would assess and overview on strategies necessary to reduce statewide vehicles miles traveled through the establishment of an equitable interconnected accessible and reliable structure of non-personal automobile transportation options and through land use policies that reduce the need for personal vehicles according to the bill Sen Michael Barrett a Lexington Democrat who chairs the Joint Committee on Telecommunications Utilities and Power has raised concerns that the bill may not be practical in all parts of the Commonwealth I do worry about an unintended and subtle bias against rural Massachusetts Barrett reported at the hearing on the bill He added it raises the question of what someone is to do in a place where one has to excursion a long distance to work A statewide coalition of environmental organizations informed last December that transportation represents of total emissions statewide and it is one of the sectors where we have made the least progress toward our statutory Clean Strength and Circumstances Plan goals One of the targets in that plan is for there to be zero-emission vehicles on the road by but the Bay State was below half that total at end of last year according to the coalition State facts shows that light-duty vehicles traveled million miles in a figure projected to grow to about million in Seth Gadbois a clean transportation staff attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation highlighted that the bill is based on laws in Minnesota and Colorado which redirected funding away from highway projects towards bus corridors Massachusetts clean vigor and weather plan lacks clear measurable guidelines or targets to reduce miles driven Gadbois mentioned at the legislative hearing This absence leads to disparate and uncoordinated efforts to give people more options for how to get around he declared all while miles driven by car and emissions continue to increase year over year New Bedford resident Elijah DeSousa founder of the ability advocacy group Citizens Against Eversource stated the Herald on Saturday that he believes the bill is not just another context proposal but a blueprint for behavioral control disguised as environmental initiative I refuse to quietly surrender the the greater part fundamental right we have as citizens the right to move freely without needing permission from unelected councils or state-issued metrics he mentioned