What are the challenges & opportunities?

At our next meeting a panel will take up the thorny issue of how to more effectively manage the greenhouse gas emissions generated by commuters in the city and county.

As we know from the recent thaca 2030 District annual reports, commuter transportation emissions are by far the hardest nut to crack. We’ve already met the 2025 targets for energy and water usage reductions, but based on our annual commuter surveys, we haven’t even attained the 2020 targets for commuter emissions, except in 2020 when the city was shut down for most of the year due to the pandemic.

Dawn Montanye, environmental team leader at Cornell Cooperative Extension – Tompkins County, will moderate the panel. Dawn has a longtime interest in sustainable transportation and transportation equity. Before her current position, she headed up Way2Go, focusing on  transportation education, improving community access to transportation, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Other members of the panel include Matthew Rosenbloom-Jones, general manager of TCAT; Thomas Knipe, director of the Ithaca-Tompkins County Transportation Council; Laura Vineyard, executive director of the Center for Community Transportation; and Niki Ray-Israelsohn, director of Bike Walk Tompkins.

The panel will address the following questions:

• Sustainable, shared transportation is good for a number of reasons — among them, GHG reduction, health, communitybuilding, and equity. What is the approach that you find most effective when marketing your services?
• What is the main barrier to having more uptake of sustainable, shared transportation and how is your organization trying to address that barrier?
• How do all of you partner with each other as transportation service providers with similar missions?
• What new and innovative projects are in the works?

Be sure to attend the 2030 District quarterly meeting on December 17 to participate in this important discussion about sustainable transportation in our community.