Buttigieg Plan: Vision Zero Plus Other Goodies But will his funding plan pay for it?

Pete Buttigieg’s long-awaited transportation plan would create a national Vision Zero plan, charge drivers more for their use of the roads, build more public transit, and create “sustainable infrastructure” jobs — but it also has some typical car-culture proposals that might undermine all of it.

Yes, requiring states to “actively improve their safety records or road design processes, or else lose federal funding for other roadway projects” is a major shift from current policy, but for voters who want a president who would end auto-dependency in America, Buttigieg’s plan isn’t all good news.

Here are a few of the highlights — the good, the bad, and the too-soon-to-tell — from the plan:

The Good

The Bad

More money for highways. The Highway Trust Fund has been insolvent since 2008 — largely because we’ve never charged highway users the real costs of the roads they use at any point in American history. Some might say that’s a pretty good reason to stop building them and invest in solvent modes of transportation, like transit, biking and walking. Buttigieg, though, apparently thinks it’s a reason to give the HTF an injection of $165 billion.

The Highway Trust Fund has been insolvent since 2008 — largely because we’ve never charged highway users the real costs of the roads they use at any point in American history. Some might say that’s a pretty good reason to stop building them and invest in solvent modes of transportation, like transit, biking and walking. Buttigieg, though, apparently thinks it’s a reason to give the HTF an injection of $165 billion. More autonomous vehicles. Driverless cars are still a nascent and largely untested technology that’s already killed American pedestrians, and won’t do a thing to help us reckon with an autocentric development pattern that makes people outside cars an afterthought in our city planning process. But apparently Pete is a fan! He wants to “l ead the world in safe and zero-emissions autonomous vehicle technology,” according to his proposal. The campaign doesn’t commit to a concrete budget on this one, but any dollar on AVs is poorly spent when we have so many proven tools to make our streets safer for all users. (See: basic bike/ped infrastructure.)

Driverless cars are still a nascent and largely untested technology that’s already killed American pedestrians, and won’t do a thing to help us reckon with an autocentric development pattern that makes people outside cars an afterthought in our city planning process. But apparently Pete is a fan! He wants to “l More electric vehicles. Say it with us now: electric cars are still cars, and car drivers kill people. Putting $6 billion into EV charging infrastructure, as Buttigieg would, is a dubious use of money, especially considering that when you look at their complete life cycle, today’s electric cars are worse polluters than cars that run on diesel. Here’s hoping other presidential hopefuls will invest their dollars into a climate change solution that works right now: shifting more trips to sustainable transportation.

The Vague: