(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 429: Zero Emissions Delivery Zones

This week we’re joined by Hamilton Steimer of the World Resources Institute to talk about their report: Zero-emission Delivery Zones: A New Way to Cut Traffic, Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases. We chat about electrification of fleets, what cities have the best programs for ZEDZ, and the current moment in urban delivery.

To listen to this episode, you can find it on Streetsblog USA or our archive site.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript:

Jeff Wood (1m 53s):
Well, Hamilton Steimer, welcome to the Talking Headways podcast. Thank

Hamilton Steimer (1m 58s):
You very much for having me. I really appreciate it

Jeff Wood (1m 59s):
Jeff. Well thanks for being on the show. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Hamilton Steimer (2m 3s):
I’m a research analyst at the World Resources Institute. This is a nonprofit think tank based out of Washington dc. We focus on a host of different environmental sustainability policy topics. I currently work with our electric school bus initiative. My team in particular, we’re helping to try and accelerate the electric school bus adoption wave across the United States. But this paper that we’re talking about is when I was working with our mobility team that seems more focused kind of on mobility policy and topics generally.

Jeff Wood (2m 31s):
And how did you get into this? How did you get into this topic? Was it something that you like found when you were young that you were interested in transportation urban policy, or was it something that kind of evolved later on in life?

Hamilton Steimer (2m 40s):
Definitely something that involved more later on in life. My graduate background was more in kind of the energy policy space, but I was really interested kind of in the EV space, now that it’s fully starting to develop and grow, I was kind of the intersection between transportation and energy. So working kind of with wri, this was a research topic, it was funded by U UPS foundation. You know, we don’t do any work that’s tailored to benefit ups, but it’s just more kind of freight topics generally. And this is something that’s really developing in Europe and something that we thought could be interesting to talk about and study in the US context.

Jeff Wood (3m 13s):
That’s really interesting. I, I mean, I understand how funding works for a lot of different projects and stuff, but you know, it feels like something that might, and we’ll get to the topic in in a second, but it feels like something that might push them to go in a direction that they might not be interested in or they’re tangentially interested in because somebody else is making them do it.

Hamilton Steimer (3m 29s):
Yeah, that’s an interesting point. You know, I can’t speak too much about what their inclination is, but I know there’s a lot of interest kind of in the freight sector right now about, you know, there’s obviously a lot of policy push and a lot of policy pressure to kind of push towards more sustainable, environmentally friendly fuel sources and transportation modes. And so kind of what our research kind of focuses on is what some options are. You know, obviously what are best practices that are underway and we kind of focused on a US policy context

Jeff Wood (3m 56s):
And also for the folks who might not know, what is the World Resources Institute specifically and then also like what kind of stuff do you work on generally?

Hamilton Steimer (4m 4s):
So we are a large environmental nonprofit, think tank based out of Washington DC international focus offices located in the us, Mexico, Brazil office, England. It’s all over the world. We have over a thousand employees total focused on, like I said, post the different topics ranging from, you know, mobility within the city space. This could be clean energy, could be food systems, could be related to maritime, like focus. So a broad focus. We do a lot of research kind of in the policy advocacy space.

Jeff Wood (4m 35s):
Well, so you all released a a working paper last fall, zero emission delivery zones, decarbonizing urban freight and goods delivery in US cities. So why is freight and urban freight specifically such an important topic at

Hamilton Steimer (4m 46s):
The moment? So I think maybe the public is mostly thinking about kind of the light duty vehicle, but a lot of policy tension right now is kind of on that medium heavy duty freight sector. Part of the reason is historically that sector is contributed a lot to air pollution, especially within urban and cities and within underserved communities. So there’s been a lot of tension on kind of our air pollution, how can we go about reducing its contribution to that? And also probably the reason why this sector is getting a lot of attention kind of as we go about decarbonizing the transportation sector has been, you have a lot of fleets that are, it’s much more, it’s seen as much more manageable sector to kind of take a first stab in. Even though the technology itself is maybe less developed than light duty vehicles from a policy implementation standpoint, it’s a little bit easier to talk to a bunch of your fleet owners and go about implementing a policy that will affect them versus the general public.

Hamilton Steimer (5m 39s):
So it’s seen as something that’s more manageable kind of as like a take them on first and then kind of expand to policies that impact the larger public

Jeff Wood (5m 47s):
And the difference between say light duty and medium duty is basically cars and trucks that people buy to move themselves around versus delivery vehicles, UPS trucks, those types of things.

Hamilton Steimer (5m 57s):
Yeah, exactly. So for example, you could see deliveries done on, you know, sometimes you may see like your uber deliveries on like a regular car or you may have someone kind of moving on like a moped or something. So that kind of falls into your, your your light duty category. But your larger duty as you mentioned is gonna be more of your commercial fleets. Something that you see kind of as you mentioned, like the UPS or even like your tractor trailers as well, those kind of fall into your medium to heavy duty side, but mostly based on kind of like the weight of the vehicle.

Jeff Wood (6m 26s):
And what are some of the impacts of these urban deliveries? What are some of the things that, you know, cities are seeing as major impacts that they wanna solve? For

Hamilton Steimer (6m 34s):
Sure, as I mentioned, the medium heavy duty market has received a lot of policy attention over the years. But I think especially kind of during the start of the Covid pandemic, you saw a spike in delivery services as everyone had to go and purchase a lot of their goods online. So I think for the general public there was maybe kind of a, a peak of their interest and they seemed to more notice kind of the increased delivery activity. I mean, as I mentioned, this kind of coincided with, you know, growth in kind of the EV sector itself generally. So there’s been a lot of push from policy makers in the cities as well as I think within the federal national level to think different solutions to help decarbonize the sector.

Jeff Wood (7m 14s):
How fast are these companies and you know, small fleets moving that direction? Is it, is it something that’s coming quite quickly or is it something that’s taking a little longer than maybe expected?

Hamilton Steimer (7m 24s):
That’s a good question. Yeah, I’m not an expert really on kind of the pace of the electrification of the freight sector. So I would say it is, it’s happening slower than I think we need. You know, like for example, Amazon I think has committed by a couple tens of thousands hundred thousand or so plus zero emission delivery vehicles. I think from Rivian. USPS obviously is making strides and trying to gain EV postal delivery vehicles. But you know, from our conversations with fleets has, it’s kind of been a bit of a slower process. A lot of this has kind of related to the Covid pandemic just as supply chains. Obviously you have slowed, prices have gone up, it’s a very expensive transition.

Hamilton Steimer (8m 6s):
There’s a lot of moving components that they have to consider. So it’s something that policy makers, you know, I think who are prioritizing those climate reductions goals. You know, I think there’s some concern. So trying to think of ways to kind of help businesses make that transition and also kind of increase the pressure on them to accelerate that transition.

Jeff Wood (8m 23s):
So a potential solution to some of the issues that we’re seeing and and maybe to speed up some of this electrification of fleets or at least in certain areas is the, is the zero emission delivery zone. So what specifically is a zero emission delivery zone as it’s defined?

Hamilton Steimer (8m 38s):
Sure. I have to give a little bit of background context before getting into the definition. Sure. So if you look across, you know, you have a Europe based audience or not, but if you go to Europe you may hear low emission zones. That’s something that’s much more familiar, especially within Europe. These are designated areas within cities, typically at the city center where vehicles have to meet certain emissions requirements in order to enter or they may have to pay a fee or something like that. So zero emission zones are kind of seen as the next step where now to enter the area you have to have a zero mission vehicle, zero delivery zones or subset of zero emission zones.

Hamilton Steimer (9m 18s):
You know, as I mentioned with the sector being seen as something that’s a little more manageable from a policy perspective, but kind of focusing on, you know, how can we just tailor it towards delivery vehicles. So kind of the way we describe define as Azure mission delivery zone is like a designated area targeting delivery vehicles in which to have unlimited road access, you need to be a zero emission vehicle.

Jeff Wood (9m 42s):
From a policy perspective, why would you wanna focus on deliveries only and not just make it a, you know, low traffic zone or whatever, you know, the definition that anybody’s using these days for, for congestion pricing or sure, you know, cordons or whatever it is, why wouldn’t you just make it blanket rather than just freight?

Hamilton Steimer (9m 58s):
So you know, a lot of the early development regarding this policy is in kind of in Europe, as I mentioned, particularly within the Netherlands in 2019, their national climate plan. And I think they require between 30 and 40 cities to implement zero emission zones by 2030. And so a lot of these cities, you know, obviously those zero mission zones that will be implemented will cover all types of road traffic. But right now as they kind of take those initial steps, you know, they’re thinking, you know, EVs are still very expensive. We don’t necessarily have the infrastructure for everyone to transition, you know, what is a more manageable market aspect that we can target. And for them they’re targeting this delivery freight sector, which, you know, historically they’ve targeted with their low emission zones.

Hamilton Steimer (10m 42s):
There’s a lot of policy work targeting the freight sector historically. So for them it’s a more manageable, it’s not easy, it’s more manageable kind of first step to target them, see how it goes, start developing that infrastructure, start to understand what are the pros and cons of the policy itself before then later ramping it up to the larger vehicle market.

Jeff Wood (11m 2s):
So then what do these look like? What would his own look like in terms of, you know, the map that you see on, on a Google map or whatever, or you know, an implementation, how would it be implemented?

Hamilton Steimer (11m 11s):
So, well we talk about in the paper is they actually can look many different ways. I think maybe the most widely well-known is kind of what a low emission zone looks like. Or if you’re familiar with the ultra low emission zone in London, you may have a sign that tells you you’re going into a low emission zone and there could be an access point that you have to pass through with maybe like a toll or there may just be an area that has cameras that are then tracking your license plate to see, you know, what’s the emissions rating for the vehicle that they’re taking a picture of. So that could be a larger area. Traditionally at the city center has kind of been the, a lot of the focus, what we talk about in the paper is there’s other alternatives to just this kind of city-centric policy.

Hamilton Steimer (11m 53s):
And I think it doesn’t have to be even the large city center can be even smaller. So we talk about in the paper for example, Los Angeles is implementing a more distributed, smaller, more tailored policy called your initial commercial loading zones. What that is is basically reserving a loading zone within a, you know, a heavy commercial district for only zero emission delivery vehicles. And the reason why they’re doing that is they recognize that curb space, especially within a heavily trafficked urban environment, is of value to your delivery businesses. So by reserving it for or emission delivery vehicle, you create that incentive for a transport or carrier to maybe use Azure emission delivery vehicle on that route to have access to that.

Hamilton Steimer (12m 38s):
And so basically what you could do is you could eventually implement a few of those, you know, you’re not really in disrupting the local transport market. You’re not, you know, not infringing on people’s ability to get anywhere. But then you can then scale the policy up and then create what we call like a defacto Z where you, if you wanted to, you could just have basically every parking spot or every loading zone can become a zero emission commercial loading zone or zero emission parking space, which would then create, in essence a zero emission delivery zone.

Jeff Wood (13m 8s):
Are we gonna see this also, you know, I guess at the time when electric vehicles become ubiquitous, which as I am guessing in the next 30 years, I, I, you know, who knows what that timeline that actually is gonna fall upon. But then what happens to something that’s focused on zero emissions? Is it just become regular like curb management or does it become a regular cordon or, I’m just wondering what like the implementation of the policy might lead to in the future once you get to the policy goal, which you’ve reached with the zero emissions tagline.

Hamilton Steimer (13m 37s):
That’s a good question. That’s something I’ve not really thought of before. If I had to guess. I

Jeff Wood (13m 43s):
Love, I love wild speculation too. So

Hamilton Steimer (13m 46s):
Yeah, my guess is, you know, first, for example, using LA as an example, they’ve only done five of these zero emission commercial loading zones. So it’s a very small scale policy. It’s very much kind of in that pilot. Let’s see, kind of what happens phase, hopefully as successful, they plan to, I think maybe expand to a hundred potentially. As I said, they could just expand to all over the city. And it’s related to, they have a bunch of plans that kind of implement, they’re prioritizing decarbonizing transportation sector that’s partially related to the, they have the 2028 Olympics and they’re trying to do some work in that area by that point. So, you know, my guess is, you know, eventually if this kind of becomes a standard, EVs becomes a standard, you, you may no longer need to have something that’s explicitly like reserve space for, you know, zoom commercial loading zone or Zoom commercial vehicle or something like that.

Hamilton Steimer (14m 32s):
It’ll just become, everyone’s using EVs, everyone’s, you know, switched over if transitioned away from, you know, a lot of these states are implementing bands on new internal combustion engine vehicle sales about 2035 in some places. So I would assume in those markets maybe right now you would have these more tailored policies that are targeting these vehicles, but eventually they probably would, maybe I’m assuming, would go away once the whole market space has been converted.

Jeff Wood (14m 57s):
And what about vehicle sizes? I mean, you know, in some cities, especially in places like the Netherlands, there’s, you know, narrow streets and, and it’s hard to get through for larger vehicles and so maybe they, you know, get to a, a micro hub or whatever and they give it off to an e cargo bike or Yeah, some other delivery system. I’m interested in that too in terms of the vehicle sizes, like what this policy is, zero emissions zzi as, as it would say what that would mean for converting to smaller vehicles or more pedestrianized spaces or areas that aren’t going to allow cars. You know, there’s low traffic neighborhoods and, and then there’s car-free zones, especially in places like Europe. So yeah, I’m curious what that might look like as well.

Hamilton Steimer (15m 33s):
And that’s an excellent point and it’s actually what we’re seeing in Europe right now is we spoke with some policymakers and Roam and Amsterdam as well and as you mentioned kind of in their historic city centers, you know, those are very old cities, they weren’t built around cars like our cities were. They have much more tail smaller streets. So they are using kind of those zero mission cargo bikes or like mini buses to help with local deliveries. And as you mentioned, they may have a consolidation center or something located outside the zone that baby is using a regular diesel truck and then they have goods moved onto these smaller vehicles to go into the city center for deliveries. That’s something I think could potentially happen in the us.

Hamilton Steimer (16m 15s):
The US is a little weird just in the sense that, you know, a lot of our cities are built around cars, so we kind of have, you know, it’s easier for these larger delivery vehicles to have access to areas throughout our cities. So, you know, I would, I hope that we see more use of e cargo bikes in these other smaller delivery vehicles just cause I, you know, I think they’re safer. I think they’re just a more, you know, economical transport mode currently. But it may just depend on kind of what policy priorities, you know, city policy makers have

Jeff Wood (16m 45s):
From a commercials perspective. I’m wondering also what companies or or what stores or shops are who benefits the most from these types of implementations. What happens to smaller stores or smaller delivery companies or those types of things. So I’m curious about the impacts too.

Hamilton Steimer (17m 1s):
That’s a great question and you know, one of the things about Paper that we’ve thought was unique is, you know, we kind of have a, a real emphasis on equity, you know, asking kind of people who are implementing or considering these policies, you know, how are you considering equity? You know, obviously first off, from a underserved community standpoint, a lot of these communities are centered around distribution centers. There’s a lot or near major transportation hubs, so they get exposed to a lot of the air pollution. But also from an economic standpoint, you know, there’s a lot of small businesses who may be freight dependent who might be unable to afford transitioning their fleet at the moment just due to the high cost that it would demand. How are these policies kind of considering their needs as well? And so, you know, I think what I find interesting is like for example, using again LA’s policy tool, you know, kind of having that more, that smaller scale kind of allows you to tailor the impacts of your policy more specifically.

Hamilton Steimer (17m 53s):
So if you were to have a larger zone policy, you know, may be harder to mitigate some of these unintended consequences, but having a more tailored policy that’s maybe more specific to, in this instance a commercial loading zone, you’re able to kind of control, you know, who’s being actually being influenced by it. And a lot of these policy makers that we talked with, you know, they are going about differently how they’re considering equity, but all of them are considering equity. They are thinking about, you know, the impacts economically and socially and environmentally on the communities that they’re serving. They’re usually talk talking to residents as well as small businesses about implementing these policies to see if they wanna participate. Another example is Santa Monica, which has maybe the, I think probably I would say the first traditional concept of a zzi in the us.

Hamilton Steimer (18m 39s):
This is a pilot program, I believe it ended at the end of last year. I was actually just in contact with the city recently and they said that their final report on that is coming out sometime soon. So I think maybe next month they mentioned, you know, that was a volunteer z Z. So you know, it’s a, I think it was a for the size of the area, but it was focused within their downtown area up against the beach. You know, that was volunteer in the sense that, you know, they tried to encourage people to participate in the Z z but they didn’t mandate it. So there may be some issue concerns about, you know, how does that, does that limit the effectiveness of the zone? But it also though, in another sense, it’s not putting too much of an undue burden on local businesses so they’re not having forced to convert.

Hamilton Steimer (19m 24s):
So you’re having to kind of balance that effectiveness demand as well as kind of that equity priority.

Jeff Wood (19m 29s):
Since the report came out, have you gotten a lot of interest from cities thinking about doing these commercial Z Zs or has it been something where they’ve focused on other things, other implementations of downtown kind of restrictions or, or urban area restrictions?

Hamilton Steimer (19m 43s):
We have gotten a lot of attention from this paper, you know, with it just coming out in November, you know, I think there’s still some time to see if other cities are interested in, you know, wanting to pursue further. I think right now these, as far as I’m aware, it’s usually it’s a lot of the same people we had talked with for this paper. So for example, we had talked with LA obviously we had talked with Santa Monica, Seattle’s actually another city that’s heavily considering this policy tool. They are part of a C 40 cities pledge, I think it’s called Green and Healthy Streets Declaration, where they basically have committed to implementing a zero emission area in their city by 2030. They have a report analyzing, you know, potential areas for a Z sea and they’re looking at an area called the Duwamish Valley, which is historically a heavily polluted, a very diverse community.

Hamilton Steimer (20m 30s):
A lot of distribution centers are around there and I actually just saw, I actually pulled it up before this call, I just realized they released a report earlier this month, a study recommendations report where they’re also looking at zero emission commercial loading zones and also smaller neighborhood zero emission delivery hubs. So I think there’s a lot of cities that are interested in this, you know, hopefully they’re using this our working paper as a resource. But I’m hoping to see more interest kind of over the coming years. Cause I think it’s something that, you know, cities need to be thinking about and probably are.

Jeff Wood (21m 2s):
You mentioned talking to a lot of experts in the US and and around the world about this specific topic. I’m wondering if there’s anything that stood out to you about your conversations with them or is there anything that surprised you about some of your conversations with them?

Hamilton Steimer (21m 15s):
Ooh, that’s a good question. I think one of them I would say is it’s a very tricky policy to implement just due to some of the requirements that freight businesses operate under. So for example, you know, a lot of the freight traffic that may be regulated based off of like times are allowed to drive into the city for deliveries. Businesses kind of govern a lot of the delivery times. You know, they don’t just come whenever they come when the business wants ’em to come. So you have to think about those kinds of considerations. So at least from my perspective was kind of learning a little bit more of kind of some of the restrictions that carriers are operating under.

Hamilton Steimer (21m 54s):
Policymakers have to consider that when they’re thinking of this type of policy, what scaled, implemented, and you know, how to mitigate those unintended consequences. And I think also, you know, we weren’t, when we started this paper, we were really planning on focusing on something that what Santa Monica’s doing, which is more that traditional supervision delivery zone that’s kind of reflective of the low emission zones you see in Europe. But as we were talking to, you know, LA talking to Seattle, talking to other people, we started kind of understanding that hey, you know, maybe we need to expand kind of our understanding of what a zero mission delivery zone could look like. It could be the smaller, more tailored policy that could then build up to something that’s larger and more, you know, affects more of the, the transport system citywide.

Hamilton Steimer (22m 38s):
So I think that also is another interesting finding.

Jeff Wood (22m 40s):
Something interesting from the report that stood out to me specifically was the companies that tried to evade the low, low emission zones. And the example I think that was most prominent was in, I think it was London, where companies, large companies have large fleets of vehicles. And so if somebody implements a zone, the fleet location just changes. They move an electric truck from some other city to the place and so the actual emissions don’t go down, they just go down in that one area. And I thought that was fascinating as well.

Hamilton Steimer (23m 9s):
That’s a great point. In the yet the end of our paper, we kind of conclude with a couple recommendations for policymakers to consider to implement these Z Zs effectively and equitably. One of the recommendations we have is to consider state policy reform. This is a particular challenge I think that’s gonna be within the us So kind of going back to the Netherlands example that I mentioned earlier, you know, the ZI policy, you know, I think Roter Dam is kind of the one of the first people to pursue zis, that kind of policy. But this policy was a federal, you know, it’s, it’s from their national government. It’s something that the national government said that cities have to implement versus in the US you know, there’s no national policy mandating that cities kind of pursue this type of policy, right?

Hamilton Steimer (23m 54s):
Something that’s simply happening on a city by city basis if they’re interested. I mean that’s why we only see a handful of cities and they’re kind of traditionally the usual actors who, you know, are pursuing some of the most progressive policies out there, LA and Seattle and others. And kinda as you mentioned in your question, some of the research out there regarding other types of policies like congestion charging, low emission zones have found that a national system is a little more effective with carriers and kind of producing, you know, system-wide benefits. For example, if it was just a city implementing something, a carrier may just decide to move out its polluting vehicles to another city and put in its newest vehicles in the city with the policy to meet policy requirements.

Hamilton Steimer (24m 37s):
So for a z z to be really effective at actually influencing, you know, news, your mission vehicle adoption, it’s something that needs to be in multiple cities, hopefully something nationwide, I don’t necessarily think that’s gonna happen, but you would need, I think a lot of your major metro areas to start implementing similar types of policies. Otherwise, you know, in Amazon or UPS or your other smaller characters carriers, they’re not really gonna actually go and be incentivized, you know, adopt new vehicles cause of this policy. They’ll just go and buy, you know, move vehicles they already bought to the areas with the zero emission delivery zone. So their operations aren’t impacted.

Jeff Wood (25m 17s):
Can you tell us a little bit more about rotterdam’s implementation? I’m, I’m interested specifically in that one because it it is the main game.

Hamilton Steimer (25m 23s):
Sure, yeah. They’re a really interesting case cuz they’ve been kind of operating, they’ve been implementing similar policies for a couple years now. Rotterdam is really interesting where they, the city has a very close relationship with the business community. There’s a huge port, pretty robust economy. So back in 2014 they started thinking about making the city center emission free. They actually went, implemented I think basically the first zero mission delivery zone along a street within the city. So they’ve been kind of at this for several years now and they have a thing called the Covenant zero Mission City logistics, which is basically this relationship, this formal relationship with the businesses and the commu city to kind of talk about, you know, hey we have this priority of, you know, basically encouraging zero emission transfer freight in the city.

Hamilton Steimer (26m 14s):
You know, what are ways that we could work together between the city and the business community? What are ways we can work together to kind of go about accomplishing those goals while obviously maximizing economic benefits. And so, you know, now obviously the country itself has kind of implemented some of the things that’s gone on in Rotterdam now making zero mission zones, you know, national priority. But it’s kinda interesting to see that a lot of it did start kind of in Rotterdam as kind of pioneers of the policy.

Jeff Wood (26m 41s):
It’s interesting cuz they’ve just done, they’ve done a lot in, in, in all sectors including, you know, purchasing and, you know, procurement and all those things. They have a lot of zero emissions policies for that too, which is really interesting. So I find Rotterdam is kind of ahead of the game when it comes to a, a number of those things

Hamilton Steimer (26m 55s):
For sure. And if you look up Covenant z Z ECL online, you can find some of the playing documents that they’ve released over the years and you know, they, they don’t see the zero mission delivery zone as being kind of the sole policy. You know, I mean, you know, there’s a bunch of other supportive policies that they’re implementing such as consolidation centers to really kind of go about making the zero mission delivery dream, you know, a reality.

Jeff Wood (27m 18s):
So what are some of the ways that cities can take the findings in, in your report and implement them? Or what are the ways that you think that people can learn from what you all have found?

Hamilton Steimer (27m 27s):
Sure. You know, the way the the paper set up is kind of talking somewhat generically about the different impacts related to freight. Looking at comparable policies to see if there’s any best practices that could be related to this policy. Looking at current examples that are being implemented such as in Inderam LA Seattle. And then kind of concluding with a bunch of different recommendations to policymakers. And so we kind of took away some of the best practices we saw from each case. So, you know, for example, from the Rotterdam example, we thought, you know, it was really unique that they really kind of stress this mutually beneficial relationship with their community, their business community. Yeah, it helps you kind of identify, you know, who is gonna be your champions that you can work with maybe on pilots and also maybe kind of identify, you know, who are gonna be the people that may kind of offer some resistance, but you also kind of a way to understand, you know, what are the concerns that are being offered.

Hamilton Steimer (28m 17s):
So that’s one example. We talk about how this policy can be implemented as a, a lower, at a more tailored, as we mentioned, a more distributed level. So I think for cities, you know, obviously they need to go and look at their local markets. They need to think about, you know, what are the local challenges. You know, it’s probably good, I would suggest to sit down with a bunch of your local carriers to kind of hear, you know, maybe start thinking through what are your policy goals, sharing that with your carriers and try and see if there are maybe some synergies you can think about and just think about what are ways to, you know, obviously I think is, in my opinion, you know, the priority needs to be thinking about advancing this market, reducing transport freight emissions. So obviously I think, you know, you need to do a policy that’s going to actually produce those benefits and quickly, but I think it’s important to think about what are ways to do it creatively that won’t put an undue burden on local businesses as well as communities who have been underserved historically.

Jeff Wood (29m 13s):
Well, I hope folks go and check out the paper, where can folks find it if they want to read it and, and download it and get a copy.

Hamilton Steimer (29m 19s):
You can find it easily online. Google W R I dot org and you should find several links that pop up. There’s not a lot out there currently in the US so I, I think you should be easily able to find this report. You may find that we, we’ve done kind of an article related to this release that’s a little more of a summary as well as the working paper itself, which is more in depth.

Jeff Wood (29m 41s):
And the paper I believe is about 28 pages long. So it’s not like it’s 200 pages or anything along those lines. So

Hamilton Steimer (29m 46s):
Yeah, not too long. Hopefully you can find a section that looks relevant to you and be able to quickly read through it. One of the things we prioritize while making the paper is trying to make it accessible as possible for policymakers as well as laypeople.

Jeff Wood (29m 58s):
Lots of good information in there. Well, awesome. Well Hamilton, thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time.

Hamilton Steimer (30m 4s):
Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it.