Strengthening Transit Through Community Partnerships
A truly sustainable transportation future will only gain traction and widespread adoption if everyone—from policymakers, to fuel providers and fleet managers, to individual drivers—makes thoughtful, informed choices about the greenest way to get from point A to point B. But you can't make significant decisions without powerful information. A feature story in NREL's magazine quotes CNT's Greg Newmark as a proponent of the Transportation Secure Data Center (TSDC).
Greg Newmark, senior research analyst for CNT, said one of his recent clients, an affordable housing advocacy group in California, wanted help with a study and he recommended using data from the TSDC.
"The charts we made ended up being very helpful in California politicians' decisions to contribute 10% of their cap and trade funds that limit GHG emissions," Newmark said. "The TSDC provided useful data for decision-makers. And the state passed what will be a $65 million increase in affordable housing funding, but will increase to $500 million per year."
For Newmark, one of the key benefits to the TSDC is that it makes data collected by a single agency easily available for free to researchers. "Since so many of the underlying studies for urban analysis are expensive to undertake and receive some amount of federal funding, the TSDC is a fantastic way to get more value out of the initial federal investment," said Newmark.