When the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission decrees that 82 percent of all new housing in the region should be multi-family apartments—and that its climate policies will be paid for via a new regional tax of $1.75 per gallon of gas—it should acknowledge who will bear the greatest burden. (We can guess: low-income workers, mostly people of color, commuting from outside the region.)
When the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research proposes to intentionally increase road congestion to make commutes longer—and force more people to use transit—it should also tell us which workers and employers will be most impacted. (Pretty much all of us, since less than 10 percent of jobs, even in our dense coastal areas, can be accessed within an hour via transit.) When advocates for extending and reinventing cap-and-trade make similarly expansive climate proposals—calling for doubling or tripling the cost of carbon or for applying new carbon taxes on all products imported into the state—they should be required to explain how these new measures will impact prices. (Our best estimate: by increasing the cost of pretty much everything.)
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