Spring Street Climate Fund
2024 - $20,000 Clean Transportation
2023 - $15,000 Zero Emission School Buses
Spring Street Climate Fund runs strategic, effective campaigns to win transformative climate policy that helps people in concrete ways they experience directly. Using this approach, Spring Street acts as a force multiplier in the climate movement, bringing in new grassroots constituencies of New Yorkers with shared interest in Spring Street’s priority climate policies.
One of Spring Street’s priority campaigns is its work with New Yorkers for Transportation Equity: a powerful coalition of advocates, policy experts and grassroots partners that has come together to demand that elected leaders prioritize public transit, biking and walking and deprioritize cars and highways so that the state can meet its climate goals – and help people all over the state secure access to jobs, services and all of their daily needs.
In 2024, NYFTE launched its first coordinated campaign, the Get Around New York Act: a bold new framework to reduce car use and invest in clean, equitable mobility options for all. The coalition’s policy agenda will:
- Reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): The coalition’s proposed bill sets a statewide goal to reduce VMT by 20% by 2050, a crucial step to meeting New York’s climate targets and improving air quality.
- Invest in Transit, Walking, and Biking: The NYFTE coalition is also working to require New York State to protect public investment in sustainable transportation at a pivotal moment for climate, access and mobility.
Taken together, the Get Around New York Act will not only reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled in New York - it will also create an ambitious new roadmap for addressing one of the nation’s leading sources of climate-harming emissions, pioneer a model for state investment in sustainable modes of transportation, and accelerate the pace of climate progress around the country.