Democrat President Joe Biden’s “woke” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has formed a team of “equity experts” that seeks to end private car ownership.
Buttigieg has been busy allocating tax dollars to appoint a group of “leading experts” to advise him on “transportation equity.”
Several members of Buttigieg’s Marxist “equity” team argue that cars cause “climate change” and “promote racism” and therefore should be phased out.
The target is not just traditional gas-powered vehicles, however, as the “experts” insist that “all cars are bad,” including EVs.
Earlier this month, Buttigieg appointed 24 new members to his Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity.
The committee is an Obama-era body that Buttigieg is reviving after President Donald Trump’s administration scrapped it.
Included on the committee is Andrea Marpillero-Colomina.
Marpillero-Colomina is a so-called “spatial policy scholar” who says “ALL CARS ARE BAD” given that they cause “a myriad of environmental issues and conditions.”
ALL CARS ARE BAD. https://t.co/gdtF2U390C
— Andrea Marpillero-Colomina (@urbandrea) February 4, 2023
Another Buttigieg appointee, self-described “transportation nerd” Veronica Davis, argued in an August essay that cars perpetuate “systemic racism” and are therefore “the problem” in America’s transportation system.
Buttigieg’s appointments—and his decision to revive the equity advisory committee—reflect the Biden administration’s whole-of-government emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
President Joe Biden shortly after taking office in 2021 issued an executive order that called on federal agencies to “pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all.”
Under the order, agency heads must conduct an “equity assessment” to identify policies that create “systemic barriers” in minority communities.
The committee will advise Buttigieg on “promising practices to institutionalize equity into agency programs, policies, regulations, and activities” and plans to meet for the first time this fall, according to Buttigieg’s August announcement.
Marpillero-Colomina told the Washington Free Beacon that she is not “advocating for a complete erasure” of cars but intends to push Buttigieg to move America away from its reliance on private motor vehicles.
“My interest in being on the [equity committee] is to raise the question and push the Department of Transportation to really think about: What are some equitable, environmentally sustainable, economically beneficial, and feasible alternatives to policy that is car-centric?” she said in an interview.
“How can we reimagine streets to prioritize people instead of cars?
“How can we create streets that are inclusive of modes other than cars?”
Davis is likely to pursue similar goals on the committee.
Davis in July released a book titled, Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities, which advocates for “a different way of thinking” to “address healing the damage done by cars.”
“Not to oversimplify the problems of transportation, but all roads lead back to cars,” Davis wrote in an August essay adapted from her book.
“This isn’t anti-car propaganda but vehicles have wreaked havoc on the environment and communities. …
“Racism shaped the urban and suburban areas, where even today we see the residual effects.”
In addition to Marpillero-Colomina and Davis, Buttigieg tapped to serve on the committee Oliver Sellers-Garcia, who serves as Democrat Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s Green New Deal director.
The city’s Green New Deal program, which Sellers-Garcia manages, calls for Boston to transition away from cars and embrace a “multimodal” plan of transportation.
“We need to make it not only possible but also preferable for residents to leave traffic- and pollution-inducing fossil fuel-powered vehicles behind,” the city’s plan states.
The Department of Transportation told the Free Beacon the equity committee “will provide advice and recommendations” to ensure Biden’s climate spending brings “jobs and opportunities … to every community across the country.”
This is far from the first time Buttigieg has shown an open hostility toward car transportation, however.
In January, Buttigieg’s agency released a “climate plan” aimed at lowering the transportation sector’s “carbon emissions.”
Included in the plan is a call to reduce “commuting miles” through an “increase in remote work and virtual engagements.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted major opportunities for telework, with some studies showing the possibility of a 10 percent long-term reduction in annual vehicle miles traveled,” the plan says.
Biden has similarly moved to phase out gas-powered cars in favor of electric ones.
The Democrat president’s Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Safety Administration in recent months unveiled regulations that would require automakers to ensure that two-thirds of the vehicles they sell are electric by 2032.
For equity committee member Marpillero-Colomina, however, electric vehicles “are not the silver bullet.”
“If we just replace all the gas-powered cars with EVs, we’re going to have many of the same problems that we have with gas-powered cars,” she told the Free Beacon.
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