Recent Blog: Half-Mile Circles Articles

LA Metro Wins Award for Sustainable Communities Planning Policy

Tue, 21 May 2013 06:00:00 -0400

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Countywide Sustainability Planning Policy was adopted by the Metro Board in Fall 2012, and is based on work by Metro staff and a consultant team led by ARUP, and including Center for Transit-Oriented Development partners Reconnecting America and the Center for Neighborhood Technology, as well as Fehr and Peers and Barrio Planners. We at Reconnecting America want to congratulate Metro on getting recognition for this huge step forward in sustainability planning. Separate Metro policies address sustainability in operations and construction.

The Countywide Sustainability Planning Policy document can be found here.

As an authority dedicated to the sustainability of Los Angeles County's people, environment, and economy, Metro faces the enormous task of ensuring that transportation investments adequately serve a 4,700 square mile area with almost 10 million residents. With a geography as diverse as its population, Metro's Countywide Sustainability Planning Policy & Implementation Plan uses an innovative approach to ensure that transportation investments are tailored to the context of individual communities in a way that reduces congestion and vehicle miles traveled.

Addressing actions to improve mobility, the policy emphasized the benefits of “bundling” strategies together, because people’s complicated lives don’t lend themselves to single transportation solutions. A range of activities from new rail investments to safety programs demonstrate Metro's commitment to action across the spectrum of transportation initiatives.

The original data analysis conducted as a foundation for Metro’s Countywide Planning activities illustrates the importance of residential density and employment centrality in creating accessibility for Los Angeles residents and businesses. This confirms that Los Angeles shares basic characteristics with US urban areas generally, that residential density and employment centrality (a measure representing both number and nearness of jobs) are keys to lowering Vehicle Miles Traveled (See Figure Below), and retail in a mixed-use environment is a valuable contributing factor.

As Residential Density and Employment Centrality Go Up, VMT Goes Down

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Though casual observers may view Los Angeles County as a place where the land-use and transportation systems are poorly matched, the project analysis offered some very positive perspectives on land-use patterns. Over 70% of the population lives in areas characterized as having medium or high residential density, as well as medium or high job accessibility, with 66% of county jobs located in those areas, reflected by both high residential density and high employment centrality. In contrast, less than 15% of the Los Angeles County population lives in areas with relatively weak job accessibility.

And of course, transit has to be reliably available for people to use it. One fascinating finding about travel behavior from our partners at the Center for Neighborhood Technology during this work was that based on this data from Los Angeles County, income turned out to be a less important factor in how much people drive on average than we might have expected. But access to transportation is key. Where you live is more important than who you are.

Neighborhoods (Census Tracts) were Clustered Based on Density and Centrality

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Once calculated by neighborhood, the place-based policy directs Metro to context-sensitive policies that create the best fit between service and investment decisions and the places they will serve (see above). By sorting neighborhoods in the county into four key Accessibility Clusters based on their proximity to jobs and residential density, the plan offers "place-based" policies that could improve the sustainability performance of the transportation system in each of the four Accessibility Cluster types. These policies cover Sustainable Transportation, Local Government Planning, Transit Services, and Street Operations (see below).

Clusters Tied Together with Policies Determine Strategies

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In the future, Metro will determine what strategies will be needed to implement policies that are targeted specifically to the clusters. Through this approach, every different type of community throughout the county can receive investments that will help improve its sustainability, but that are cost effective and contextually appropriate. This simple framework advances the field of sustainability in transportation by investing with thought to both local land uses and regional proximity to jobs.

The Countywide Sustainability Planning Policy document can be found here..

For more information about this project, contact Sarah Jepson at Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority or Ellen Greenberg at ARUP.

Are We There Yet? Voters Champion Transit

Tue, 21 May 2013 05:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: Many voters across the country have willingly taxed themselves in order to fund major expansions of transit systems in recent years. This week's excerpt from Are We There Yet? explores this trend and the examples of Denver and Los Angeles. Unfortunately, as the report explains, in many places the dollars for construction have not been matched by funding for operations, a problem proving particularly hard on systems serving low-income, transit-dependent populations.

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

Voters have proved to be enthusiastic supporters of transit ... and have stepped up to tax themselves in order to make up for the shortfall in state and federal funding. Twenty-three sales tax measures for transit were passed in 16 states in the 2008 election. These sales tax measures are sometimes criticized as regressive because they impose a greater burden on lower-income families. Many states mitigate this by excluding necessities — such as food, medicine, clothing and rent — from the sales tax. But because of these concerns it is critical to ensure that the people hardest hit by sales tax increases benefit from the transit investment.

Denver took a bold step in 2004, voting to fund the full build-out of a light-rail system in a dozen years, the largest system expansion since the 1970s when Washington, D.C.’s Metro system was built. And Los Angeles County voters upped the ante in 2008 by passing Measure R, a 30-year transportation sales tax that raises a stunning $40 billion for transportation, including $30 billion for transit — providing enough money to double the size of the fixed-guideway transit system. A 30-year extension of the sales tax goes before voters in November 2012; if passed the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority could use the longer revenue stream to secure loans enabling the agency to accelerate the construction of seven rail lines over the next decade.

Los Angeles County has two other sales taxes for transit as well. In fact, in many parts of the country a large portion of transportation funding for highways and roads now comes from local sales tax measures. In Southern California local funding for transportation — as opposed to state or federal funding — has climbed to more than two-thirds the total amount, according to the Southern California Association of Governments.

The 2012 federal transportation bill called MAP-21 significantly expanded the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) low-interest loan program, which will provide opportunities for Los Angeles as well as other regions to use revenue streams such as sales taxes to secure very low-interest loans to build transit projects as well as highways — and TIFIA enables borrowing for not just one line but several. U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has called this loan program “the largest transportation infrastructure financing fund” in the history of the U.S. DOT.

However, some transportation experts have expressed concern that federal loans — and not grants — could be the future of federal transportation funding. That is because gas tax revenues, the major federal source of revenue for transportation projects, have been declining for some time and are expected to continue to decline due to decreases in driving and increases in fuel efficiency, and because Congress shows no interest in increasing gas taxes. See chart: Successful transit sales tax ballot measures 2010-2011.

FUNDING TO BUILD BUT NOT OPERATE

Because the availability of transit funding hasn’t kept up with demand, the federal government — in order to sort out the best and most competitive projects — has made it harder to win funding. While this makes sense, it has ironic consequences: The federal funding process has become so time-consuming and costly that it is estimated to drive up the cost of transit projects significantly. This has resulted in fewer projects entering the federal funding pipeline, in spite of the heightened interest. Recent changes in the law and in the way that the Federal Transit Administration evaluates proposed projects are intended to make the federal process somewhat less burdensome.

Highways, in contrast, are not required to go through such a difficult and time-consuming process. The result is an enormous disincentive for building transit. Meanwhile, the rules for highway building make it much easier to build roads — even though driving has a much more deleterious effect on health, and has been attributed to much higher rates of asthma in children, and of poor lung function in people of all ages.

Buying buses and laying track for new rail systems — the capital expenses — are just part of the problem. While the federal government allocates funding each year for capital expenses, federal law forbids subsidizing operating expenses, which leaves local and state governments on their own when it comes to paying to operate the systems the federal government has helped build.

Yonah Freemark writes about this on his blog, The Transport Politic, noting that the result of this policy is that “metropolitan areas with higher poverty rates and lower median incomes [which need transit more] are likely to have less money to spend than peer cities with lower poverty rates and higher median incomes.”

The recession, meantime, has forced cutbacks in service and fare increases at the very same time that transit use is at an all-time high. Conventional wisdom is that ridership is significantly lower if trains and buses don’t come at least every 15 minutes, so service cutbacks won’t help transit make these new users into regular riders, or help people who rely on transit get to their jobs on time. That’s why both Los Angeles and St. Louis included funding for transit operations as well as for transit construction in their sales tax packages. Salt Lake City adds a surcharge to diesel fuel when prices spike above $3 a gallon, so that the transit agency has revenue to pay these higher prices.

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Urban Living Entrepreneur: Creating A Social Community For People Living An Urban, Car-Lite Lifestyle

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:22:19 -0400

Reconnecting America, Smart Growth America, and Transportation for America are preparing to launch a new venture and we are looking for an experienced entrepreneur to join us in co-founding a startup opportunity. The new venture will create a social community for those living an urban, car-lite lifestyle by providing news, events, and local resources, an easy connection to urban goods & services and bring people together on and offline.

Candidates must have previous experience running or playing a senior role in a startup as well as have an understanding of and passion for the urban lifestyle. Experience in a startup with a significant web/mobile presence and successfully promoting brand affinity preferred. Experience with market segmentation, customer discovery and validation, taking a product through launch, and scaling to multiple cities are all core to the position. We are looking for someone to work with us to take our concept, develop a business plan, test the offerings, and help us bring it to fruition.

While we don’t expect this person to do it all, they will need to manage projects across a number of divergent disciplines including financial modeling, affinity branding, marketing, operations, mobile and web development, hiring and managing appropriate staff as well as market testing and product launches. The position is in Washington D.C.

Equal Opportunity Employment: Equal opportunity and having a diverse staff are fundamental principles at Reconnecting America, Smart Growth America and Transportation for America. Employment and promotional opportunities are based upon individual capabilities and qualifications without regard to race, color, religion, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation/preference, age, national origin, marital status, citizenship, disability, veteran status or any other protected characteristic as established under law.

How to Apply: Interested applicants should send their cover letter, resume, three references and business examples samples to jobs@smartgrowthamerica.org. Please include “Urban Living Entrepreneur” in the subject line. Applications will be accepted immediately on a rolling basis until the position is filled.

Best Practices For TOD Strategies & Legislation

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:39:38 -0400

Documents detailing transit-oriented development efforts in Seattle and Dallas have been added to the Resource Center's best practices database.

Sound Transit TOD Program Strategic Plan describes Sound Transit’s vision, goals and strategy for creating transit-oriented development on and around its stations, transit centers and park-and-ride lots. This plan was adopted in September 2011.
DART Transit Oriented Development Policy was originally adopted in 1989 and amended in January 2008. DART's transit-oriented development policy seeks to use the district's real property assets to leverage the viability of the transit system and to add to its value to the community. By promoting high quality transit-oriented development on and near DART owned properties, the transit system seeks to attract riders and generate new opportunities to create revenue for DART, and environmentally sustainable liveable communities that are focused on transit accessibility.

Are We There Yet? Ticket To Ride

Tue, 14 May 2013 20:49:16 -0400

Editor's Note: Transit ridership is growing and communities across the nation have been responding with new transit systems and major expansions, with mayors often leading the way. But as this week's excerpt from Are We There Yet? illustrates, and recent updates to the Transit Space Race underline, federal funding is falling further behind what is necessary.

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

Interest in transit has boomed during the past two decades, and transit ridership is up 13 percent since 2000. The American Public Transportation Association, in its 2011 analysis of transit use, found that “Americans took 10.4 billion trips on public transportation in 2011, the second highest annual ridership since 1957. Only ridership in 2008, when gas rose to more than $4 a gallon, surpassed last year’s ridership.”

Regions across the country are responding by building new transit systems, often starting with one line that connects the downtown to major destinations. Since 2000, 12 regions have added new fixed-guideway transit lines, and 879 new stations have been built, according to CTOD. Denver, Salt Lake City, Houston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Portland, St. Louis, and Baltimore are all planning large expansions of their transit networks. Smaller regions — including Detroit, Orlando, Kansas City, San Antonio, Indianapolis, Grand Rapids, and Oklahoma City are planning bus rapid transit lines (BRT) and small streetcar systems. See map at right: Building fixed-guideway transit.

So many fixed-guideway transit projects are proposed — 643 in 106 regions according to Reconnecting America’s 2011 “Transit Space Race” report — that if they are built they could transform the nation’s transportation system into one that is safer and healthier and less reliant on fossil fuels. Moreover, if all the planned projects that have already decided on station locations are built, Reconnecting America’s research shows they would connect workers to 25 percent more jobs.

Despite the upward trends in transit ridership, Congress continues to provide far more funding for roads. Traditionally there’s been an 80/20 split with about 80 percent of federal surface transportation funds going to build and maintain roads and about 20 percent going to public transit.

In the “Transit Space Race” report Reconnecting America was able to find cost estimates for 413 of the 643 proposed projects, which added up to $233 billion. If these projects were funded at the 2011 rate of federal investment in new transit projects — $1.6 billion a year — and included the standard 50 percent match from the federal government, building these projects would take a whopping 73 years, according to the report. This country’s transit investment stands in sharp contrast to China, which is investing 11 times more than that amount in transit, and India, which is investing seven times more.

Mayors As Transit Champions

Mayors — both Republicans and Democrats — have championed transit in cities large and small, including Houston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Lakewood, Oklahoma City, and Denver. When voters defeated a sales tax for roads and transit in 2007, Greg Nickels, who was then mayor of Seattle, resubmitted it to voters as a transit-only initiative, and won. He then championed a downtown streetcar, with half the money put up by property owners, which has proven so popular that the City Council immediately planned a five-line expansion.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has become a champion both locally and nationally by making the case for transit in a highly publicized campaign on Capitol Hill and with President Obama. Following passage of the Measure R half-cent sales tax that will fund 12 new transit lines in LA over 30 years, Villaraigosa lobbied for a “30-10” plan to get federal low-interest loans and long-term bonds that could be secured by the 30-year sales tax revenue stream and allow the region to frontload the construction program and build all 12 lines in 10 years.

In order to keep the 30-10 program on track — Congress did not include a bond program in the new transportation reauthorization — Los Angeles County officials have decided to ask voters in November 2012 to extend the Measure R sales tax another 30 years, so that the longer revenue stream can be used to secure more upfront financing to build out the system.

Former Santa Monica Mayor Denny Zane, executive director of the business-labor-environmental “Move L.A.” coalition that sponsored the sales tax measure, notes that local transportation sales taxes have become the fastest growing source of revenue for transportation projects, due in part to the fact that voters sense that they can provide due diligence and have more control over local projects funded by local sources; that the funds are raised and spent in the counties that enact them so voters directly experience the benefits; and that most of them expire automatically.

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Transit-Oriented Development in the Chicago Region

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:25:47 -0400

A new report from the Center for Neighborhood Technology, one of Reconnecting America's Center for Transit-Oriented Development partners, has been added to the Resource Center best practices database.

"Transit-Oriented Development in the Chicago Region: Efficient and Resilient Communities for the 21st Century" details findings and recommendations of a report on transit zone performance in the Chicago region that CNT did for the Chicago's RTA. CNT found that Chicago was the only extensive-system transit city where household growth was greater away from transit than within the half-mile walking/transit shed.

Quick summary:

The report evaluates performance of Chicago Region’s 367 fixed Metra and CTA rail stations and station areas between 2000 and 2010
Development of transit zones in Chicago declined between 2000-2010; peer cities (NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco) saw positive growth
Household transportation costs in the Chicago Region rose at a faster rate than median household incomes between 2000-2010
Six station areas were chosen as case studies as they show commitment to TOD in diverse locations (Berwyn Metra, Elmhurst Metra, Grand Red Line, Highland Park Metra, Orland Park Metra, 18th Street Pink Line)
CNT recommends 5 policy actions to get Chicago’s transit-oriented development on track

Read the Executive Summary and download the full report

Funding the Future: State Transportation Funding Proposals

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:39:16 -0400

T4America will host a special online presentation on May 16th to get the inside scoop on state transportation funding proposals from the people making these changes happen.

The panel will feature:

Washington State Representative Marko Liias, Vice Chair of the Transportation Committee
Dru Schmidt-Perkins, Executive Director, 1000 Friends of Maryland
Jaime Rall, Transportation Senior Policy Specialist, National Conference of State Legislators
James Corless, Director, Transportation for America

With federal transportation funding holding flat yet facing a cliff in 2014, states are stepping out with their own plans to fund critical repair needs and make investments in new infrastructure. This year, nearly twenty states have already passed or are currently debating new transportation revenue plans. Join this special online presentation to learn how states are leading the way in funding transportation.

This webinar will offer information for civic leaders, state officials and legislators looking to boost support for transportation funding in their states. Please pass the invitation on to your allies in state government.

Register Here

Are We There Yet? 'Smart Mobility' Options

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:09:01 -0400

Editor's Note: There are many ways to weave walking, biking, and transit into a seamless tapestry of transportation choices and today's excerpt from Are We There Yet? examines some of the myriad smartphone apps and other efforts that are creating the safe and pleasant connections to transit opportunities that are critical in order to give people more choices for getting around.

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

The growing demand for more safe and pleasant environments for walking, biking and taking transit is being aided by transportation engineers like Dan Sturges, who are focused on making it easier for people to get to and from transit stations and bus stops — the so-called “first mile/last mile” connection. Because so many neighborhoods have been built to accommodate the automobile — with wide streets, deep lots and long distances between things — it isn’t always easy to get to stations, and there’s growing interest in the development of “intelligent multimodal transportation” or “smart mobility” options that rely on information and communications technology.

“Smart phones allow us to instantly rent a bike, carpool with someone just a mile up the road, find a bus, and even ‘ping a ride’ with a car service or cab,” says Sturges. “Transit service plus options like these will enable millions of people to get where they need to go without needing to own a car.”

Focusing on creating safe and pleasant first-mile/last-mile connections to transit stations is critical if we want to give people more choices for getting around, and retrofitting sprawling employment centers and big box shopping centers could take many years and require a near-term investment in shuttle services. But there are many ways to weave walking, biking, and transit into a seamless tapestry of transportation choices, including driving, even when transit service isn’t that frequent.

Myriad cell phone apps and Internet services provide real-time information about when trains and buses are arriving at stops nearby, eliminating hours of wait time. Google Maps and Next Bus are two popular applications available nationwide. Google Maps helps riders time and program routes on foot, bike, transit or by car, while Next Bus provides info on nearby bus arrivals. Apps focusing on service in particular regions include Routesy in the Bay Area, One Bus Away in Seattle, PDX Bus in Portland, and “To a T” in Boston (where the MBTA transit system is called the “T”).

Not to be missed is the RedEye app in Chicago that not only provides info on trains, bus and taxis, as well as bars and restaurants near stations and high frequency bus lines, but also has a “Missed Connections” feature that’s sort of like a personals page for transit riders. For example: Entitled “Don’t fear Admiral Akbar. It’s not a trap!” one rider, identified as “W4M” — a woman looking for a man — posted:

“Recently I saw this tall man on the 22 bus who looked strikingly like the Rebel Alliance commander Admiral Akbar. He looked so cool in his Wilco shirt and baby blue shorts. I didn’t even mind he was wearing Oakley’s from 1993. He seemed so busy reading a book about Lego mini figs I never got to say hello. I think about you often Admiral Akbar. You in all your tall, lanky glory. XOXO” Check it out at missedconnections.redeyechicago.com.

Some agencies are also making it easier for people to plan their transit trips by providing maps that indicate service frequency and type with colors, numbers or clever names: The transit system in Allentown-Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, designates routes according to service frequency. Buses numbered in the 100s are core routes that offer the most service; 200s are key urban corridors; 300s are more suburban; 400s are special routes for students; 500s are flexible, reservation-based service; 600s serve particular markets. Boulder, Colorado, uses colorful names including HOP, SKIP, JUMP, BOUND, DASH, STAMPEDE and BOLT.

Nate Wessel, a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati, got so fed up with confusing Cincinnati transit maps that he made his own, then found investors on kickstarter.com, a funding platform for creative ventures, who paid to print thousands of the maps for distribution. His map is simple, highlighting the routes that are the most frequent and convenient to use, providing the urban and suburban context in which they operate — allowing users to see the restaurants, shops, museums and services they can get to — and to more easily understand where lines intersect and connect.

“A good transit system should structure the city around it,” Wessel says on Soapbox Media, an online news and information magazine. “If there’s a bus making 75 trips a day along a route, that’s probably a good place to locate a business. This map is a first step in thinking about how we can restructure the city.”

Also, transit stations should be placed to take advantage of existing hubs of activity. Opportunity areas – because they already contain small blocks and moderate density housing and/or jobs – are “transit-ready” places that are likely to support high ridership and won’t need to provide much parking because some residents and workers can walk and bike. Reconnecting America’s research shows that today regions that have the largest number of stations in opportunity areas have either maintained a historic transit network, such as New Orleans or San Francisco, or have built new networks with stations sited in walkable places. See list at above: Top 10 regions with stations in opportunity areas.

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Modern Streetcar Vehicle Guideline

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:29:31 -0400

"Modern Streetcar Vehicle Guideline," designed to support specification and procurement of modern streetcar vehicles by identifying and describing important technical and operating principles relating to their application, has been added to the Resource Center's best practices database.

The document, created by the American Public Transportation Association's Streetcar Subcommittee Work Group, was written to promote understanding of the core technical and operational issues relating to vehicle selection. From this understanding, agencies will be able to better navigate the process of specifying a vehicle and designing compatible infrastructure. Similarly, suppliers will be provided with a better understanding of the differences between North American and world operating and regulatory environments.

John Smatlak, of RPR Consulting, in a 2012 article explaining the development of the guideline wrote:

"The APTA Streetcar Subcommittee was formed in 2000 with a mission to 'promote the development of heritage trolley and modern streetcar lines in urban centers, to foster information exchange among those planning or operating such lines, and to encourage reasonable technical and safety standards.'

"In 2009, the Subcommittee recognized that despite the growing number of projects in various stages of development, there was no comprehensive source for recommended practice guidance for modern streetcar systems or vehicles. Further complicating matters was the fact that many projects were being advanced not by transit agencies, but by other non-traditional project sponsors with varying levels of transit operating experience. Building on the successful experience of having produced an APTA standard for heritage trolley vehicle equipment in 2005, the Subcommittee embarked upon a project to create a comprehensive guideline document for modern streetcar vehicles."

As the guideline's summary explains, the purpose of this Guideline is to facilitate the successful introduction of modern streetcar vehicles into North American systems by promoting understanding of the core technical and operational issues. From this understanding, agencies will be able to better navigate the process of specifying a vehicle and designing compatible infrastructure.

Read the summary and download the report

Read Smatlak's 2012 article, Development of Guidelines for Modern Streetcar Vehicles

Streetcar Subcommittee Work Group

Are We There Yet? The Bias Of Traffic Engineering

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:58:39 -0400

Editor's Note: Walkable neighborhoods and bike-friendly streets are all the rage but its road rage and the legacy of decades of auto-oriented bias slowing the creation of complete communities. The impact of the automobile bias of traffic engineering is the topic of today's excerpt from Are We There Yet?

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

The shift away from auto-oriented neighborhoods to a design that is more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists is difficult because the tools used on a daily basis by traffic engineers have a built-in bias toward the interests of drivers. Travel models, for example, predict the future need for roads based on the need in the past, instead of recognizing that the priorities of Americans are changing.

Studies have shown that people who live or work near transit are more likely to use it. This may seem like a no-brainer but conventional transportation models that are used to determine how many roads and how much parking should be built assume that every person, no matter where they live, will make the same transportation choices.

“Level of service” or LOS standards are geared so as to always prioritize the movement of cars: Every change to a street — whether it involves adding a bike lane or painting a crosswalk — must be assessed in terms of the impact on car traffic. If the change slows car travel, cities must spend significant time and money on additional analyses and “mitigation measures” before even minor changes can be made.

Before 1991 all roads built in the U.S. and paid for — partially or in full — with federal funds had to meet guidelines in the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Green Book, the official book of highway design. This book, long considered the bible of traffic engineering, referred to pedestrians as “traffic flow interrupters” during the 1990s.

“Travel models and LOS standards are a deadly duo used to get rid of traffic congestion — it’s tantamount to using a rototiller to get rid of weeds in a flowerbed,” writes Gary Toth, transportation director for the national nonprofit Project for Public Spaces (PPS), on the PPS blog. “Sure you get rid of the traffic congestion and you get rid of the weeds, but it’s time to acknowledge that the collateral damage is too great. In ridding our communities of the weeds of traffic congestion, we have also pulled out the plants that made our gardens worthwhile in the first place.”

Amount of space required to transport the same number of people on a bicycle, car and a bus.

In a 2011 Engineering News-Record story, traffic engineer Sam Schwartz defends his profession but also opines: “We are the GEICO Neanderthals of society. As a profession we have continued to build more roads, wider roads, and faster roads while knowing full well we were running out of capacity and making transport systems less efficient.” Schwartz cites the Brooklyn Bridge as an example, writing that when it was built as a rail and walking bridge it handled 430,000 people daily, but after it was “modernized” in the 1940s to remove rail and boost car capacity, its “daily person-carrying volume dropped to 180,000.”

The inefficiency of a transportation system focused on single-occupancy vehicles has troubled some transportation experts. “Cars are immensely convenient,” says Dan Sturges, a former car designer at GM, “but we all know the problems — billions of dollars a year sent to the Middle East, growing greenhouse gas emissions, traffic, noise pollution, the paving over of green space. Across the nation about 50 percent of urban land is dedicated to transportation, and in Denver, where I live, the average car has only 1.1 occupants — making the car an immensely inefficient contraption.”

The City of Munster, Germany Planning, Department illustrated this idea with just three pictures. See graphic : How much space does it take?

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Getting More From The Direct Transfer

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 20:35:06 -0400

This week TheDirectTransfer.com celebrated its first full month of service

The Direct Transfer is a joint project of The Overhead Wire and Reconnecting America and the brainchild of Jeff Wood, Reconnecting America's chief cartographer and new media director.

TheDirectTransfer.com's goal is to be the go-to place each day for news and information about cities and moving within them. In the first month, more than a 1,000 links to articles have been cataloged in the website's six main categories -- Transport, Urbanism & Design, Urban Issues, Environment & Ecology and Other Views.

Sharing information is the key to making where we live and work better and the motivation behind TheDirectTransfer.com. Wood began curating articles for the Reconnecting America board more than 6 1/2 years ago and soon after began distributing his collections of article summaries and links to The Other Side Of The Tracks email list that today has more than 1,600 subscribers. In recent years, the content of the email newsletters have been posted here at ReconnectingAmerica.org.

TheDirectTransfer.com provides an archive for all of the links distributed in the email newsletter and additional content, including upcoming conferences, new research papers, and videos.

Today, the email that goes out to The Other Side Of The Tracks subscribers represents just the 10 most recent posts in each category. Here at ReconnectingAmerica.org we re-distribute the content of The Other Side Of The Tracks in our news section divided into the five categories of TheDirectTransfer.com plus the Quote of the Day. Clicking on the category title, for example Urbanism & Design, will take you to that category's page at TheDirectTransfer.com, where additional items and previous items can be found.

Visit TheDirectTransfer.com

Are We There Yet? Freeway Teardowns

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:26:25 -0400

Editor's Note: This week's Are We There Yet? excerpt discusses the success of urban freeway teardowns, something unthinkable not long ago, and the need for today's transportation investments to be made in the context of multiple considerations that were previously thought to be unrelated, ranging from the impact on public health to the impact on real estate development and investment to the impact on the prosperity of all people.

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

[C]hanges in the value of walkable real estate have prompted many cities to consider something that they never would have considered a decade ago — tearing down their innercity freeways. Developers and investors are keenly interested in building in downtowns, but there’s typically very little land that hasn’t already been developed. Freeway teardowns, however, can open up vast swaths of prime downtown real estate for development.

To date, four cities have torn down freeways: Portland, OR, San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Providence, Rhode Island. Syndicated columnist Neal Peirce wrote in 2012 that Portland’s Harbor Drive freeway, rebuilt as Tom McCall Waterfront Park in 1984, helped spark a 10.4 percent annual increase in downtown property values, and that San Francisco’s Embarcadero Freeway, demolished after damage from a 1989 earthquake and replaced by a pedestrian boulevard and transit, increased land values as much as 300 percent in nearby neighborhoods.

When Providence, Rhode Island, took down its inner-city freeway in 2012 to free up 40 acres of land for development, the Urban Land Institute, a national nonprofit representing the interests of developers, called it “the best economic development opportunity in the state.”

“Highways don’t pay taxes,” noted Diana Lind, the founder-leader of the Next American City organization, at a 2012 Philadelphia forum on freeway teardowns. At that forum Streetsblog founder Aaron Naparstek pointed out that the collapse of a chunk of New York City’s elevated West Side Highway in 1973 didn’t cause the traffic Armageddon that was anticipated, and the construction of an urban boulevard in its place “made some of Lower Manhattan into some of the world’s most valuable real estate.”

While less than a third (19 percent) of trips are to work, the commute trip is usually the longest regular car trip. Because most people commute in the morning and late afternoon, the road network is designed for maximum auto capacity, even though there may be few cars traveling on it the rest of the day.

While teardowns have gained popularity and momentum as urban renewal projects, they also gained credibility when the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded grants to study three teardown projects in New York City, New Haven, Connecticut, and in the New Orleans neighborhood of Treme — the historic and very low-income neighborhood that was hit hard by Katrina and has since been popularized in the new HBO series by the same name. A dozen other cities are also considering demolitions.

Peirce writes in his column that it’s easy to forget how the construction of freeways in the 1950s and 1960s created “deep gashes in America’s city fabric. The highway planners of the 1950s and 1960s seemed unfazed by pushing massive highways straight through cities, devastating minority neighborhoods as well as cutting off waterfronts. It’s a dark chapter in our history.”

Peirce cites author Peter Harnik’s 2010 book Urban Green, in which Harnik writes: “Waterfronts were blockaded in Portland, Oregon; Cincinnati; Hartford; Cleveland; Philadelphia; and San Francisco. Nooses of concrete were wound tightly around the downtowns of Dallas and Charlotte. Trenches of noise and smog cut through Boston, Detroit, Seattle and Atlanta. Stupendous elevated structures threw shadows over Miami and New Orleans. And wide strips of land were taken from large, iconic parks in Los Angeles (Griffith Park), St. Louis (Forest Park), Baltimore (Druid Hill Park), and San Diego (Balboa Park).”

It’s important that we learn from these misguided transportation investments, which were made in order to achieve one objective — mobility. The lesson is that transportation investments today must be made in the context of multiple considerations that were previously thought to be unrelated, ranging from the impact on public health to the impact on real estate development and investment to the impact on the prosperity of all people.

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National Review Of Programs That Fund Transit-Oriented Development Plans And Projects

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:12:45 -0400

In early 2011, Reconnecting America released the 2010 Inventory of TOD Programs and shortly after an interactive map detailing the local, regional and statewide programs that fund transit-oriented development plans and projects. Now, Reconnecting America has updated the map and the accompanying data, including information not previously published.

The scope of this effort has not been to compile all policies that support TOD, such as zoning codes, joint development policies or authorizing legislation, but rather to inventory ongoing, institutionalized programs that provide direct funding or financial incentives. Reconnecting America encourages people working in the field to help keep this resource current. To that end, we invite updates using this form.

Programs that provide grants, loans, tax credits, or direct financial incentives to TOD projects or plans have been sorted into three categories:

Planning – funds to conduct corridor, district or station-area TOD planning.
Implementation – funds for construction of projects or infrastructure in a TOD district.
Property Acquisition – funds dedicated to acquiring property or land banking in locations near transit.

The report includes three recommendations regarding TOD funding programs.

TOD programs must be tailored to fit the local conditions and needs of the place they are designed to serve.
TOD-supportive programs are important, but they are just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to implementing TOD. In addition, removing policy barriers to TOD may prove equally important.
TOD programs may be able to include an incentive for localities to zone for appropriate levels of affordable housing near transit, for agencies to acquire properties for mixed-income TOD, or for developers to include below-market rate units in their projects.

View the updated Inventory map

Are We There Yet? The Value Of 'Walkable'

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 06:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: Location, location, location is the mantra of the real estate industry. This excerpt from Are We There Yet? explains why being able to leave the car at home and walk to nearby amenities can be the pivotal element that creates a desirable location.

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

At the same time that the interest in driving has been declining, the interest in walking — or at least in living in a walkable neighborhood — has been increasing, and this interest is reflected in an increase in land and property values in walkable neighborhoods. A number of recent studies have shown that cities and neighborhoods with the highest land values are those where people can easily interact and connect both within neighborhoods and to destinations outside, and they have held their value even in the recession.

Several of these studies are based on the Walk Score website, which measures walkability by calculating the number of “amenities” within walking distance of any address. The national nonprofit CEOs for Cities used the Walk Score algorithm to analyze 94,000 real estate transactions in 2009 and found that walkability was directly linked to higher home values in 13 of 15 major real estate markets. The study found, after controlling for factors that are known to influence housing value, that one point on the 100-point Walk Score scale was worth anywhere from $500 to $3,000 in terms of a house’s value.

This chart shows the average percentage of blocks measuring 6 acres or less in geographic regions of the U.S.

Researcher Gary Pivo at the University of Arizona found in 2010 that properties scoring 80 on the Walk Score scale were worth 29 to 49 percent more than properties with a score of 20. Another 2010 study, in the Journal of Sustainable Real Estate, found that higher Walk Scores “were negatively related to mortgage default,” (and, conversely, that each additional household vehicle owned increased the probability of default).

The Walk Score website has become very popular with real estate agents as well as the general public, and property owners placing ads on Craigslist brag about locations with high Walk Scores.

In 2012 the Brookings Institution released a study based on a five-tiered scale of walkability for the Washington, D.C. region, with level one being a completely non-walkable place to level five being very walkable. The study found that while a renter would pay about $300 more for an apartment in a level two place than a level one place, an apartment rental in a level five place would cost $1,200 more. Moreover, the study found that each step up the scale equated to an 80 percent increase in retail sales and $9 per square foot increase in office space.

The images above show a range of blocks in four different regions (all shown at the same scale). Typically, people will walk move often when blocks are less than eight acres. Regions of all shapes and sizes have some walkable blocks, but some regions have more than others. The neighborhood of Phoenix shown above has large blocks that are pretty unfriendly to walkers.

“It is mindboggling,” Brookings Institution real estate expert Christopher Leinberger told The Atlantic Cities blog. “These were much more dramatic results than I would have guessed going in to this. It also shows our lack of understanding and why it’s important to measure this phenomenon.”

The average size of blocks in a neighborhood provides way to determine whether a place is walkable. While “walkable blocks” come in many shapes and sizes, most researchers concur that if they are less than 8 acres in size — which roughly equates to 200 steps long — people are more willing to walk. See graphic: What is a walkable block?

Opportunity areas — as defined in this report — include a preponderance of walkable blocks as well as a density of homes and/or work places. The regions with the smallest blocks tend to be the most walkable and typically are places where this development pattern was established before the dominance of the car, including historic cities in the Northeast region. See chart: Walkable blocks across the U.S.

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Federal Policy Update: President's FY2014 Budget

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:55:30 -0400

President's FY14 Budget

Today the President released his FY14 budget. This package of proposals

is the Administration’s annual request to Congress. Congress will have the ultimate decision-making power over what programs get funded as they develop appropriations bills later this year. Many of the proposals in the budget will face a steep uphill climb in Congress.

A short summary of the Key Proposals in the Administration's FY14 Budget for Transit, TOD, and Sustainable Communities is available here.

John Robert Smith Comments On Budget

A statement of John Robert Smith, President and CEO of Reconnecting America, on the Administration's Proposed FY14 Budget is available here.

Reconnecting America provides occasional updates on federal activities related to transit, TOD, and sustainable communities. Updates may include key legislative or regulatory actions, grant opportunities, relevant resources, or original analysis. To update your email preferences, visit our Join Our Network page.

Are We There Yet? Older Americans

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:43:38 -0400

Editor's Note: In this excerpt from Are We There Yet? we return to the Moving section and address automobile use and the critical need to provide alternatives for the aging Baby Boomers, who represent 20 percent of the nation's population. (Read the Moving chapter introduction: Getting Out Of Gear)

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

The situation of older Americans is more difficult since most want to “age in place,” according to AARP, which means they want to live independently in their homes and communities for as long as possible. The problem is that many of the communities in which they live do not provide alternatives to the car: three AARP surveys of older adults in 2010 found that almost 40 percent of the respondents did not have adequate sidewalks near their homes; 60 percent do not live within a 10-minute walk of public transportation; and 38 percent said their public transportation choices were not reliable.

The sheer size of the aging Baby Boomer population — 20 percent of Americans will be over the age of 65 by 2030, according to the U.S. Census — suggests that providing aging Americans with alternatives to driving will become a high priority. AARP says that one in five Americans aged 65 or older does not drive, and Americans over the age of 70 have an increased risk of accidents.

“For anyone living in an auto-reliant community, choosing not to drive can be associated with a dramatic lifestyle change and can produce feelings of dependence and isolation,” writes Emily Salomon of the Center for Housing Policy, which partnered with AARP on a 2010 report called “Linking Transportation and Housing Solutions for Older Adults.” “Nondrivers are often faced with limited alternatives. Many communities have poor pedestrian infrastructure, making walking an unsafe means of getting around.”

In fact, driving — typically measured as “vehicle miles traveled” or VMT — is in decline across the U.S. as it has been in many developed countries around the world. VMT peaked in most developed countries by the year 2000, says Todd Litman of the Victoria Transportation Institute; in the U.S. it peaked in 2007 and then started to decline. Litman attributes the decline to the aging population, rising fuel prices, improvements to other modes of travel, increased interest in city living, and increased health and environmental concerns, and says the implications are obvious: It no longer makes sense to invest so much money expanding roads and providing more parking.

Despite the overall decline in driving, however, the average American family with two drivers still drives about 20,000 miles a year, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s 2009 National Household Travel Survey. This is expensive. The American Automobile Association (AAA) revised its estimate of the annual cost of owning and operating a car up 1.9 percent over 2011 to $8,946 a year in 2012, largely due to increased gas prices, which rose 15 percent from 2011 to 2012.

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Federal Policy Update: CTOD Comments On FTA Joint Development Circular, FTA Webinar Recording

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:17:02 -0400

CTOD Comments On FTA's Proposed Circular On Joint Development Projects

Reconnecting America, Strategic Economics and the Center for Neighborhood Technology have released comments on the Federal Transit Administration's proposed circular on joint development.

The three are partners in the Center for Transit-Oriented Development, the only national effort dedicated to providing best practices, research, and tools to support equitable market-based transit-oriented development (TOD), and therefore uniquely qualified to discuss the FTA's proposed guidance to transit agencies on joint development projects.

Joint development projects are undertaken by transit agencies and public, private, or nonprofit entities to create transit-supportive development near transit stations. Joint development projects often take place on land owned by the transit agency, and can be stand-alone projects or part of larger TOD efforts. Transit agencies' contribution to TOD through joint development activities have been shown to both increase ridership on their systems and to promote economic development in the surrounding communities. FTA's draft circular is intended to clarify the federal rules for transit agencies engaging in joint development activities.

Read CTOD's comments on the circular.

FTA Webinar Recording Available

The Federal Transit Administration has posted a recording and slides of the March 28, 2013 webinar on its proposed Joint Development Circular to the Joint Development page on its website. In the webinar FTA explains the sections of the circular and answers questions about its provisions.

The Tramway Revival In France

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 20:26:01 -0400

A 2012 report on the return of tramways to France by the Ministry for Ecology, Stustainable Development and Energy has been added to the Research Center best practices database.

The Tramway Revival In France explores the use of tramways in France as part of a mobility strategy and as an urban planning tool. The report describes where French tramway companies are working and traces the French efforts to overcome the 1950-1970 era of the supremacy of the car.

Are We There Yet? Not Everyone Works For Google

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:16:11 -0400

Editor's Note: This week's excerpt from Are We There Yet? explores why communities need to pay attention to the ongoing reorganization of job markets in order to provide people of all skill levels with the transportation choices they need to access opportunity. This is what will make regions more competitive nationally and globally.

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

[N]ot everybody works for Google or has the option of using transit. Even though transit ridership has been at record highs — transit use has increased 38 percent since 1995 — transit agencies across the country are facing unprecedented fiscal crises in this recession, and they are laying off workers, cutting back service and raising fares at the worst possible time. The transit riders who are being left stranded tend to be older, African-American or Latino.

“As employers and commuters everywhere know only too well, public transportation is an essential service that is critical to our economy,” says James Corless, director of Transportation for America, a project of Reconnecting America and Smart Growth America. Corless says only 18 cents of every transportation dollar supports public transit and that, while the federal government requires a 25 percent match for every dollar of funding it provides for highways, it requires a dollar-for-dollar match for new transit projects.

Transportation for America is one of hundreds of national and community-based organizations, business leaders and others who contend that the nation needs a massive investment to repair crumbling transportation infrastructure — which would create jobs as well as make regional economies more sustainable, helping to make the U.S. more economically competitive.

Many employers across the country recognize the importance of easing worker stress: for example, the CEO of Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd., in Rosemont, Illinois pays employees 75 cents a mile to commute by bike. Christopher Burke built lockers and showers, gives away bike equipment, and at the end of the year buys new bikes for the male and female employees who’ve ridden the most. Five years into the program 22 percent of staff is commuting by bike. The National Center for Transit Research at the University of South Florida keeps track of “Best Workplaces for Commuters,” and they include:

Cambridge Systematics in Cambridge, MA, reimburses money spent on transit passes; provides an on-site cafeteria, fitness center, showers and bike storage; and a location proximate to bike trails, a major commuter station, local grocers, shops, banks and restaurants.
The Grand Hyatt in Manhattan offers employees the federal government’s “pre-tax transit benefit” program, allowing commuters to save up to 40 percent on commuting costs by purchasing tickets before taxes.
IDF International provides a monthly subsidy for transit as well as the pre-tax benefit, flexible work schedules, laptops, and the choice to telework and telecommute.
Consumer Reports in NYC offers free van service to three rail stations, a carpooling program and database on the company’s intranet, guaranteed rides home, the opportunity to work from home, and bike racks, lockers and showers.
Fairfax County Government in Virginia helps employers implement “green commuter programs,” by assisting with commute surveys, computerized ride-matching, rideshare coordination with nearby companies, and will help implement the pre-tax benefit by providing a 50 percent match per employee.
University of California at Irvine’s Zotwheels self-service bikesharing program has automated stations at four key locations, and North Carolina State University’s WolfWheels bike loan program allows anyone with a campus ID to rent bikes for a day, week or all semester.
North Carolina University for Greensboro Transit Authority’s HEAT (Higher Education Area Transit) service — ridership doubled in one year.

A good job is not solely defined by the wages it pays but it also must be stable, and provide benefits as well as opportunities for advancement. For less-skilled workers, it’s also important that there’s a low barrier to entry. Middle-skill jobs usually require long-term on-the-job training. Harry Holzer, a leading expert on workforce training, says middle skill jobs make up nearly half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, and that some of these jobs — for nurses, health technicians and construction workers, for example —are growing rapidly.

The challenge is ensuring that lower-skilled workers can qualify for these jobs and take advantage of the higher wages and greater job stability, which means they must be able to get to training and education programs, which are often not accessible by transit.

Some jurisdictions, however, are working to ensure there are transit connections: The Northwest Arkansas Community College partnered with Ozark Regional Transit to improve mobility for students, faculty and staff — and the general public — with three new routes providing access to college and training facilities. And when Durham Technical Community College in Durham, North Carolina, moved to a new site, it enhanced transit connections so as to minimize the impact on low-income students.

“Jobs in the transportation sector — including construction, maintenance and operations — provide middle-class career paths for all workers,” says PolicyLink CEO Angela Glover Blackwell. “By providing training and apprenticeships, access to capital, new networks and partnerships, and by enlisting emerging businesses that are owned by women and people of color, we can strengthen and expand the small businesses that are critical to the goal of creating and sustaining good jobs throughout the nation.”

The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) has negotiated “local-hire” agreements that increase access to construction careers for local residents. Moreover, because these are union jobs with apprenticeship programs that provide training, especially in safety — which many nonunion jobs do not — these policies create a skilled workforce that completes projects safely and on time, which is a win-win for both workers and taxpayers.

Madeline Janis, LAANE’s national policy director, notes these good jobs help stimulate the local economy by ensuring that local residents and businesses see the benefits of public spending. “By setting job standards and creating career paths, we are guaranteeing that public funds are not being used to create low-wage jobs with meager benefits that put a strain on taxpayers,” she says. “These workers will spend their earnings at local businesses, creating additional jobs. This economic activity will also contribute to our local tax revenues, which are in turn used to build these public projects.”

Complete communities are integral to the new economy, and cities and suburbs need to develop their opportunity areas into complete communities to help attract new talent. Moreover, we need to pay attention to the ongoing reorganization of job markets so we can provide people of all skill levels with the transportation choices they need to access opportunity. This is what will make regions more competitive nationally and globally. The Top 10 lists on the following pages highlight some of the regions that are doing well according to our Working metrics, which means they are getting closer to building complete communities.

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Transportation For America Is Looking For A Field Director

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 23:30:00 -0400

The Transportation for America (T4America) campaign is seeking a smart and motivated individual to jump into a vibrant national campaign and be a high performing Field Director to direct the day-to-day operations of a diverse coalition of prominent leaders from a multitude of constituencies working to reform transportation policy.

Experience managing field organizing on a political or issue campaign is required. The Field Director reports to the Campaign Director and works with the seven-person field and outreach staff to develop and implement field plans for the campaign.

For more information, visit the Transportation for America website.

Reconnecting America co-chairs the Transportation for America campaign with Smart Growth America. T4 includes a coalition of more than 500 members including business, housing, environment, development, labor, health, aging and transportation interests to focus on the next federal transportation bill. T4 advocates for a transformational Federal transportation policy and investments that are economically sound, respond to markets and improve the lives of people.

Filling the Financing Gap for Equitable Transit-Oriented Development

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 21:07:33 -0400

The March 2013 draft of a report from Enterprise Community Partners and Low Income Investment Fund on financing equitable transit-oriented development has been added to the Resource Center best practices database.

"Filling the Financing Gap for Equitable Transit-Oriented Development: Lessons from Atlanta, Denver, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Twin Cities" indentifies ways to make TOD projects that contribute to equitable TOD outcomes easier to finance and build. To that end, the authors reviewed existing equitable TOD financing tools, using four regions as examples: Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul and the San Francisco Bay Area.

"We believe that equitable TOD is a strategy for approaching land use, economic development and community development that requires integration among disciplines that traditionally do not interact in ways that create the desired results. Financing equitable TOD is one of several important components of a strategic approach; others include planning, policy and community engagement," the report authors explain.

The Center for Transit-Oriented Development (CTOD) supported the project by compiling a literature review of the numerous studies that preceded our effort.

Read the forward and download the full report

Are We There Yet? Painless Commutes

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:01:52 -0400

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

Some places just don’t have the density of jobs and residents and intensity of activity that justifies an investment in rail transit. Many of these communities are investing in bus and shuttle service as well as in programs that make it easier and more pleasant to carpool, walk and bike to jobs in an urban or suburban downtown, and to get healthier while doing it. Des Moines, for example, which has a population 400,000, has been investing nearly $2 million a year to make the downtown more walkable and create a network of bike lanes and trails.

Google — which offers job perks that are the envy of Silicon Valley, including chef-prepared food at all hours — is trying to make commutes as painless as possible by ferrying its pampered workers on shuttles that run on biodiesel, with leather seats, wi-fi, and even room for dogs. The Google shuttle carries a quarter of the company’s workforce, making 130 trips a day to 40 pick-up and drop-off points in the six-county San Francisco Bay Area.

Colleges and universities are some of the biggest employers, and also provide perks for faculty, staff and students. With a single parking space costing upwards of $40,000 on campuses where the land value is high, parking structures divert significant resources away from education.

Marquette University, Milwaukee, provides free bus passes and a student-run intercampus shuttle.
Lewis & Cark College, Portland, Oregon, operates a free campus. shuttle with hourly service to a local supermarket and into downtown.
Boston University has eight rail stations and offers discounted semester-long “T” transit passes as well as late night shuttle service.
The University of Texas in Austin has the largest university shuttle system in the U.S. with 14 routes and 7.5 million annual passengers annually, with service off-campus to jobs and housing centers.
Colleges and universities in and around Denver, many of which have negotiated with the transit agency for free student transit passes.
The University of Montana linked its transit service with the City of Missoula’s to make it easier for 15,000 students, faculty and staff to leave their cars at home — the university has only 4,500 parking spaces.

Google employees epitomize the creative class, who are attracted to the vitality of urban centers and unlikely to move to the suburban locations where many large employers continue to build their campuses. Google has recognized this trend, and is building new offices in New York City. This shuttle service is a generous fringe benefit that is now being offered by other employers, including Yahoo, eBay and Genentech to help attract and retain the best and the brightest employees.

Bishop Ranch, a suburban office park outside of San Francisco, has succeeded in getting 33 percent of its 30,000 workers to take transit by buying its own fleet of buses and working with the city and county transit agencies to subsidize bus passes for workers and bus routes that serve the campus. The program’s success is enhanced by a transit coordinator who “works the gig more like an Avon lady,” according to a 2011 story in The Atlantic, hand-delivering bus passes to offices in the park so she can get cozy with receptionists who then refer frustrated commuters.

Marci McGuire, the park’s transit coordinator, can tell stories about workers who have saved in excess of $10,000 a year on car payments, maintenance, gas and tolls, but she finds transit’s stress-reducing and health-promoting aspects an even easier sell. Having herself lost 40 pounds sprinting to make transit connections, she encourages employees to get off the bus a stop or two early and walk home — so they can avoid having to spend time on the treadmill.

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The Direct Transfer Of Information And Knowledge

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 21:27:35 -0400

About 6½ years ago we started collecting articles of interest for folks in the office. That turned into collecting articles for the Reconnecting America board and then an email list that was shot off to members. The email list has grown now to more than 1,600 members of Reconnecting America and folks who like to receive news articles about issues related to cities.

As the group who wishes to receive the emails continues to grow, we didn’t want to feel like we were spamming people or leaving them out by not making the list available to more people. Additionally, we wanted to be able to archive articles and allow people to search for older news without fumbling back through emails. And if you miss a day, you can find two days at once in each subject area.

The site is called the Direct Transfer because that’s what we hope to do. Transfer information and knowledge to you. We know that sometimes it’s like drinking from a fire hose, but this becomes a window through which we can see what’s going on in cities around the world on any given day. And as busy as we all are, five minutes each morning is all it takes to skim over the list. Happy Reading.

Visit The Direct Transfer

Uses of Social Media in Public Transportation

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:02:05 -0400

The Transit Cooperative Research Program's 2012 report on "Uses of Social Media in Public Transportation" has been added to the Resource Center's best practices database.

"TCRP Synthesis 99: Uses of Social Media in Public Transportation" explores the use of social media among transit agencies and documents successful practices in the United States and Canada. Susan Bregman, Oak Square Resources, LLC, Brighton, Mass., collected and synthesized the information and wrote the report, under the guidance of a panel of experts in the subject area.

The synthesis series reports on current knowledge and practice, in a compact format, without the detailed directions usually found in handbooks or design manuals. Each report in the series provides a compendium of the best knowledge available on those measures found to be the most successful in resolving specific problems.

Read the summary and download the full report

Public Markets: Anchors for Neighborhood Economic Development

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:27:12 -0400

"Public Markets: Anchors for Neighborhood Economic Development," the 2010 report from Reconnecting America's CTOD partner, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, has been added to the Research Center's best practices database. The report notes that sustainable employment growth comes from business creation, and public markets play a critical role as local business incubators. Attractive markets anchor a business district, the authors explain, and bring in a greater number of customers. The report includes case studies from the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, Eastern Market Detroit, Easter Market DC and Pike Place Market.

Are We There Yet? Some Jobs Are Less Transit-Oriented

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:36:25 -0400

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

Research by CTOD in 2008 found that people who commute by transit tend to work in the professional, technical or financial services sectors, or in insurance, government, or quasi-public agencies such as utilities — because these are jobs that are typically clustered together. Other industries that generate considerable ridership are hotels and some types of clothing stores. Not coincidentally this mix of businesses closely resembles what is typically found in transit-rich downtowns.

It’s not quite so easy for lower- and middle-skilled workers to commute by transit, however, either because they work at all hours — while transit service is most frequent during regular business hours — or because they work in manufacturing, warehousing or big box retail, which can’t be built at the densities and concentrations that are required to make it financially feasible to build transit to serve them.

Many people work into the evening and during the weekend, but this is especially true of lower-paid workers, including cleaning crews, security guards, restaurant workers, as well as people who work in the health care and service industries. These employees are the least likely to own cars and may be transit-dependent, and they sometimes work very late into the night, when it can feel unsafe to wait at a lonely bus stop with infrequent service.

It isn’t enough to create jobs if workers can’t even get to them, either because of where they’re located or the hours they require. The disconnect between jobs and transit service is discussed in a 2011 report by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), which observes that in California cities more jobs have been created in areas not served by transit, and that in some instances jobs have also moved away from transit stations.

The report also notes that transit generates higher ridership when it connects people to jobs rather than to housing and apartments. This is why successful transit systems such as BART — which is reaching its capacity to carry workers into San Francisco’s financial district during morning rush hours — are looking for ways to better serve “reverse commuters” who can ride the trains back out of the city to suburban job centers. Higher employment density is also associated with higher ridership, and it is easier to connect transit to jobs with high employment density.

Chicago’s South Side used to be one of America’s principle freight hubs with a density of freight and passenger rail lines that made it one of the most well-connected and prosperous regions in the U.S. Moreover, it was a place where industrial workers were able to live and shop within walking distance of the plants where they worked — residential and industrial neighborhoods were able to co-exist because driving wasn’t required by either car or by truck since both people and freight traveled by rail.

The south suburbs fell on hard times when shipping by truck gained favor over freight rail. But there’s a redevelopment effort underway, an initiative of the nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology and the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association, that’s grown to include 42 cities that are reinvesting in their historic assets: dense, mixed-use neighborhoods near stations; underutilized land available for development; a ready manufacturing workforce of both skilled and unskilled laborers; clusters of manufacturing and logistics businesses; and still-frequent freight and commuter rail service.

The idea is to organize a regional economic cluster anchored by intermodal freight terminals, green manufacturing and supportive businesses to provide jobs and prosperity for those who live nearby. The project has become a test case to see if linking transit-oriented development around commuter rail and “cargo-oriented” development around freight rail could be an effective and sustainable redevelopment strategy. By coordinating development around rail it will once again become possible to create communities where workers can minimize the money and time they would otherwise spend commuting, in the meantime helping to create local jobs and a thriving local economy, as well as a robust housing market.

The “Green Time Zone” project is now expanding this initiative with the goal of creating a supportive cluster of green manufacturers and businesses interested in reducing the pollution caused by freight movement. Cargo-oriented development can help drive demand for their green products because the enhanced logistics of the freight increases reliability and reduces costs, meantime creating jobs where they are needed most. While many people still associate south Cook County with the slow death of American industry this project suggests the enormous promise of a green “Made in America” label that could make the south suburbs the new crossroads of opportunity.

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Reconnecting America Publishes First in Series of Articles for Surdna Foundation Sustainable Environments Storybank

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 07:00:00 -0400

The Surdna Foundation is developing a Sustainable Environments Storybank, the focus of which is to feature innovative ways to update infrastructure and foster healthy, sustainable and just communities. In this vein, Surdna has asked Reconnecting America and other Surdna grantees to contribute real-life stories about the green economy and sustainable infrastructure.

Today Reconnecting America published the first in a series of stories submitted to the Surdna Foundation Storybank.

Enhancing Food Access and Creating a Healthy Lifestyle for Residents in Spartanburg, SC

Are We There Yet? Job Sprawl

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:44:39 -0400

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

Job sprawl has been especially bad news for low-skilled underemployed or unemployed workers because it creates a “spatial mismatch” between where they live and where jobs are located. A number of studies have found that while minority and lower-skilled workers still tend to live in core urban neighborhoods in disproportionately high numbers, lower-skilled jobs are often located in outlying suburban areas that tend to be more white. A 1997 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development study found, for example, that 87 percent of lower-skilled service jobs were being created in suburban areas.

“People sprawl has long been known for its effect on the environment, infrastructure, tax base, quality of life and more,” Brookings Institution analyst Elizabeth Kneebone writes in a 2009 report on job decentralization. “Now we must recognize what ‘job sprawl’ means for the economic health of the nation. The spatial distribution of jobs has implications for a range of policy issues — from housing to transportation to economic development — and should be taken into account as metro areas work to achieve more productive, inclusive and sustainable growth and, in the near term, economic recovery.”

The big problem with the decentralization of employment, as with the decentralization of housing, is that it’s hard to get to far-flung jobs without a car, and it’s expensive to build transit to get people to faraway locations. It’s no surprise that New York, Boston and San Francisco lead the nation in the number of jobs that can be accessed by transit, since they all have extensive transit systems and — perhaps because of this — jobs have remained concentrated in downtowns and urban neighborhoods. Some smaller cities — including Portland and Eugene in Oregon as well as New Orleans — also perform well when ranked according to the number of jobs near transit, proving that smaller regions with smaller transit networks can also succeed. See list on opposite page: Top 10 regions connecting jobs to transit and list below: Top 10 regions connecting new transit to jobs.

Bigger systems are better, however. The average station along an extensive system has more than three times as many jobs within walking distance as a station in a smaller system, according to Reconnecting America’s research. This is because larger systems connect more job centers to more residential neighborhoods, making it possible to build at higher densities without having to provide acres of parking. This means that more employers can locate near transit and more people can find jobs near transit — a virtuous cycle.

But there’s another downside to job sprawl, explains Greg LeRoy of the nonprofit Good Jobs First, who says that as jobs thin out geographically, the quality tends to diminish. Without a geographically dense labor market and the higher levels of unionization found in the urban core, he adds, suburban employers tend to pay lower wages and provide fewer benefits.

Working families that do buy cars in order to adapt to suburban living are taking on an expensive burden. “This creates a discriminatory labor market when new jobs locate in suburban areas not accessible by transit. For working families with or without a car, sprawl amounts to a tax on their standard of living. It suppresses their incomes and raises their bills,” says LeRoy. “Enabling everyone to reach good jobs via public transportation means more money for family savings, health care, home equity, and college educations.”

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Batch Of Research Papers Added To Best Practices Database

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 20:08:48 -0500

Five research papers covering a broad range of topics have been added to the Resource Center best practices database. The reports include:

Histories of Transit-Oriented Development: Perspectives on the Development of the TOD Concept by Ian Carlton. (Fall 2007) This paper looks at a long history of transit served real estate development and evaluates TOD’s position in a long history of social and urban theory. The paper is meant to serve as a foundation for further work that will seek to define the term TOD in its many uses across the fields of planning, design, transportation, and policy.

Rails To Recovery: The Role of Passenger Rail Transportationi in the Post-Katrina New Orleans and Louisiana by James R. Amdal. (June 2011) This research, funded through the Gulf Coast Research Center for Evacuation and Transportation Resiliency, investigates two case studies of rail projects in Louisiana. The two cases, a potential intercity rail connection project between New Orleans and Baton Rouge and a streetcar project in downtown New Orleans, show both the significant promise of rail as a recovery tool and the logistical and political barriers to successful implementation.

Evolving Strategies for Asia – USA Containerized Supply Chains: Implications and Policy Recommendations by Robert C. Leachman. (June 2011) The nature and sophistication of Asia – USA containerized import supply chains has evolved dramatically over the past decade and continues to do so. Recommendations are provided for changes in land‐use policies relative to infrastructure accommodating import supply chains. This paper was part of the Proceedings of the 2011 Industry Studies Association Annual Conference, Industry Studies Association, Univ. of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, June 1‐3, 2011.]

Place Matters for Health in Cook County: ensuring Opportunities for Good Health for All by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Health Policy Institute and the Cook County Place Matters Team. (July 2012) This study examines the relationships between health, community characteristics, and food access in Cook County, IL, and attempts to address specific questions raised by the Cook County Place Matters Team.

Targeting Transit: Assessing Development Opportunities Around New Jersey’s Transit Stations by New Jersey Future. (September 2012) The purpose of this report is to present and describe an analytic tool for prioritizing TOD investments that has been developed by New Jersey Future: an inventory of the state’s transit stations, populated with key data items pertaining to each station and the area surrounding it. The report will also provide examples of the kinds of questions that can be answered with results generated from the inventory. From such a tool for quantitatively assessing and ranking transit stations and their host neighborhoods, a systematic, targeted TOD promotion strategy might evolve.

Federal Policy Update: FTA Joint Development Proposed Circular

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:30:02 -0500

FTA Joint Development Proposed Circular

After much anticipation, the Federal Transit Administration released its Joint Development Proposed Circular today. The proposed circular defines the term "joint development", explains eligible activities for FTA funding, describes the legal requirements applicable to the acquisition, use and disposition of FTA funded real property, and outlines the most common crosscutting requirements. The FTA is requesting comments on the proposed circular until April 5, 2013.

National Online Dialogue

FTA has announced an online dialog seeking ideas on how to effectively include transit operators on Metropolitan Planning Organizations. FTA's recent authorization law, MAP-21, requires that providers of public transportation be represented on MPOs, but there are many opportunities in how FTA implements this provision.

To connect to the conversation, click here.

Reconnecting America provides occasional email updates on federal activities related to transit, TOD, and sustainable communities. Updates may include key legislative or regulatory actions, grant opportunities, relevant resources, or original analysis. To subscribe to these Federal Updates, visit our Join Our Network page.

Are We There Yet? Refurbishing The Suburbs

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:38:04 -0500

Editor's Note: This week’s excerpt from Are We There Yet? is all about the challenges – and opportunities – associated with suburban employment. Suburbs that suffered least during the economic downturn tend to be those that are more walkable, have a mix of moderate density housing and jobs. Many regions are using transit as an organizing principle to rethink the suburbs, and the sidebar discusses one national example doing exactly: Tyson’s Corner, VA, in the Washington, DC, region, which is rethinking a suburban office park as the area gains three new Metro Rail stations. More prosperous and connected suburbs should also be a key component in any regional economic strategy, since suburbs are where more than half of all lower- and middle-skilled jobs are located.

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

Suburban employers say it can be difficult to recruit employees, a situation that sparked national interest last year when an email from a Michigan patent attorney appeared on blogs across the U.S. With a subject line reading “Why our growing firm may have to leave Michigan,” Andrew Basile Jr., CEO of Young, Basile, Hanlon & MacFarlane, PC, writes: “Our recruiters are very blunt. They say it is almost impossible to recruit to Michigan without paying big premiums above competitive salaries on the coasts. People — particularly affluent and educated people — just don’t want to live here.”

“Things are spread too far apart,” he notes, with “thousands of miles of streets and dingy strip malls” and “poor quality of place.” He adds, “You have to drive everywhere. There’s no mass transit. There’s no open space. It’s impossible to get around on a bike without taking your life into your hands. Most people lead sedentary lifestyles.” And while his company would like to stay in Michigan, he says: “We have a problem. It’s not taxes or regulations. . . We spend more on copiers and toners than we do on state taxes. Our problem is access to talent.”

Tysons Corner is Virginia’s mightiest jobs hub, a car-dominated five-square-mile tangle of 6,000 businesses, 14 hotels, two shopping malls and a dozen auto dealers that is criss-crossed by four wide highways and has more parking spaces — 167,000 — than the number of people who live and work there. The traffic congestion is legendary — caused in part by the fact that five times as many workers drive in (105,000) than actually live there (18,000). And while Tysons serves as suburban Fairfax County’s downtown, it doesn’t seem like a downtown, with few grocery stores, no churches, and just a smattering of aging high-rise apartment buildings and condos.

Tysons is expected to continue to grow, given its proximity to Washington, D.C., but property owners worry about how that can happen given the traffic and the fact that there are no options to driving, even to a nearby restaurant. “Growth is good. Growth is inevitable. Growth is coming,” Doug Carter, an architect who has been working with property owners, says in the Washington Post. “But we’re going to kill the goose that laid the golden egg for the entire Washington, D.C. area unless we do something constructive.”

The decision to build the Silver Line extension of Metrorail through Tysons has galvanized a plan to turn it into something like nearby Arlington, which has over several decades been transformed from a declining suburban commercial corridor into one of Washington, D.C.’s most highly desirable neighborhoods. Dense development around five closely spaced Metrorail stations has succeeded in generating enormous investment and tax revenues, in the meantime minimizing the increase in traffic — most residents walk to rail stations and take transit to jobs in downtown Washington, D.C. — and preserving the quiet single family neighborhoods on the periphery.

The plan is to turn Tysons into an urban center by clustering office, retail and residential development around the four new Metrorail stations, with tree-lined walkable streets, sidewalk cafes, a performing arts center, parks and plazas, an urban elementary school, athletic fields and other uses that will turn Tysons into a 24/7 city where people can work, play and live.

Richard Florida notes in a 2010 Wall Street Journal article that “the suburbs that have continued to prosper during the downturn are those that share many attributes with the best urban neighborhoods: walkability, vibrant street life, density and diversity. The clustering of people and firms is a basic engine of modern economic life. When interesting people encounter each other, they spark new ideas and accelerate the formation of new enterprises. Renewing the suburbs will require retrofitting them for these new ways of living and working.”

That means quality transit, sidewalks, bike lanes and housing for people with a mix of incomes, jobs and retail located close enough together that you can get from one to the other on foot or by bike.

Regions across the U.S. have begun suburban retrofits that show enormous promise, including a handful of suburbs in Atlanta; Phoenix; Prince George’s County, MD; Minneapolis; Lakewood, CO; Tyson’s Corner, VA. In some suburbs and outlying areas shopping malls and strip malls have been converted into “lifestyle centers.” Roofs have been taken off, and they’ve been redesigned as small towns, with sidewalks, curbs, streetlamps and benches, and are walkable by design.

Successfully retrofitting the suburbs is important for many reasons, not the least of which is that the suburbs are where more than half of all lower- and middle-skilled jobs — those requiring less than a four-year college degree — are located, according to the Brookings Institution’s “Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America” study in 2011. Ensuring that lower- and middle-skilled workers can afford to commute to these jobs, and that these are jobs that make the commute worthwhile, is critical if prosperity in this country is to be shared.

But as Aaron Renn notes on his Urbanophile blog, “Suburban revitalization will prove to be a much more challenging task than urban redevelopment . . . This gives us two great challenges: How to redevelop yesterday’s struggling suburbs, and how to make sure that new suburbs are built on a more sustainable base.”

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Olde Town Arvada TOD RFQ

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 14:13:43 -0500

The Arvada, CO, request for qualifications for its Olde Town Arvada TOD project has been added to the Resource Center best practices database.

This is Arvada's first TOD Pilot Project to go out with a competitive RFQ. It is a unique situation where the town is trying to alter the station condition prior to opening of the rail line.

Read the executive summary and download the RFQ.

Federal Policy Update: Final New Starts / Small Starts Regulation

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:43:54 -0500

Reconnecting America has released two documents related to the Federal Transit Administration's New Starts / Small Starts final rule and proposed policy guidance. The first is a broad overview of key features of the rule, along with a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). The second provides a detailed look at the changes to the project justification criteria and FTA's new methodology for evaluating and rating projects.

The documents are available here.

Using MAP-21 to Strengthen Rural Communities

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:49:29 -0500

In January, Transportation for America released Making the Most of MAP-21, a 109-page handbook that explains the many changes in federal transportation policy — positive and negative — and outlines how local officials and advocates can help get involved and urge states to make sure that MAP-21 — Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century — money is used for the priorities of local communities. On Feb. 27, Transportation for America held a webinar focused on helping rural communities to take advantage of the MAP-21 changes. Among the speakers was Reconnecting America's President and CEO John Robert Smith.

The best of our thriving rural cities, towns and communities offer safe roads and transportation options—from vanpools to walkable main streets—especially for those who are unable to drive or want to leave the car at home. MAP-21 has changed the way rural communities will access transportation dollars, what these funds may be used for and who will make funding decisions.

A two-page summary entitled "Using the federal transportation bill to strengthen rural economies" summarizes the changes discussed in the webinar.

A recording of the webinar that includes the slides is available here. The MP3 recording of the webinar is available here.

Transportation for America's Webinars and Online Presentations can be found here.

SF Plans For TOD Opportunity At Downtown Railyards

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 19:13:14 -0500

A memo outlining transit-oriented development opportunities surrounding the downtown San Francisco railyards at 4th and King streets has been added to the Resource Center best practices database.

The 4th And King Stret Railyards final summary memo explains the findings of a study of the conditions, opportunities, and development capacity, feasibility and economic value of the site and to serve as a reference for future planning, design, and implementation efforts that can take place once the ultimate configuration of the railyards is more certain. The findings of this study may also inform decisions made about rail investments and alignments themselves that would affect layout and development of the site.

The overarching purposes of the study were to evaluate the potential for transit-oriented development on the site and related potential for both one-time and ongoing revenue to support both the Downtown Rail Extension and High Speed Rail investments as well as to improve physical conditions in the neighborhood.

The purpose of this study for was not to create a specific land use proposal for adoption or endorsement by any decision-making body, but should be regarded as an informational study intended as an important step in determining the potential for, feasibility of, and likely parameters for future development of the site and to inform future decision-making regarding this site.

Read the letter to stakeholders and the full memo

Are We There Yet? The Move Back To The City

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:19:16 -0500

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

While the creative class is causing seismic shifts in the urban landscape — bringing investment, entrepreneurship and creative class jobs into downtowns and urban neighborhoods — shifts are also underway in the suburbs. For every decade since the 1920s the suburbs have grown faster than their city centers but this summer census data showed that between 2010 and 2011 city centers grew faster than suburbs in 27 of the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan areas. From 2000 to 2010, in contrast, only five metro areas saw their cores grow faster than their surrounding suburbs.

There is also anecdotal evidence of a similar shift in commercial real estate. The Wall Street Journal, for example, noted in 2012 that the big box chains Lowe’s and Best Buy are saddled with poorly performing stores “whose problems may have less to do with how they are run but more where they are located . . . Through much of the decade, expansion-minded retailers followed a strategy of chasing rooftops. As home-builders plunked down houses farther and farther away from urban centers, retail real-estate developers followed with new shopping centers. But the recession and housing bust put an end to that.”

The Journal notes that with population growth in the suburbs at a standstill, store customers never showed up and higher-income households — the customers most valued by retailers — are gravitating closer to the urban core. “It’s a demographic shift that could potentially be as disruptive for retailers as the previous push to the suburbs, which eventually did in the likes of Montgomery Ward,” the Journal article concludes.

Crain’s Chicago Business was blunt in a special issue in 2011 entitled “Corporate Campuses in Twilight,” declaring: “Like the disco ball, the regional shopping mall and the McMansion, the suburban corporate headquarters campus is losing its charm . . . Remote, sprawling and splendidly isolated, these headquarters epitomized corporate America in the last quarter of the 20th century.”

Below are shout-outs to some of the agencies that have been able to go the extra mile to serve non-rush-hour commuters, who include food servers and retail clerks, attendants who work in hospitals and nursing homes, and cleaning crews. The Federal Transit Administration has provided funding through its Job Access and Reverse Commute (JARC) program for transit service at night, on weekends and along less-traveled routes, and to help families get their children to childcare. But the JARC program was eliminated in the 2012 federal transportation reauthorization, creating an uncertain future for many of these services.

San Antonio’s VIA Metropolitan Transit service from 4 a.m. to 1 a.m.
Portland’s Swan Island Shuttle after-hours service to FedEx and UPS.
NYC’s Request A Stop allows late-night riders to get out anywhere along a bus route from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.
Laughlin, Nevada’s 24-hour shuttle service for casino employees.
Chicago’s 24/7 Night Owl service, with an owl logo on bus maps.
Bay Area All Nighter shuttle service to BART and Caltrain stations.
Essex County, New Jersey’s demand-responsive night owl service to Newark Penn Station and surrounding neighborhoods from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m.
Indianapolis late-night IndyGo bus service from low-income neighborhoods to industrial areas and the airport.
Monroe, Louisiana’s Night Rider service for late-night workers at retail outlets.
The Niagara Frontier Transit Authority’s after-midnight service between Buffalo and its suburbs.
The Research Triangle Park in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill region’s “emergency ride home” program.

The article focuses on Chicago, which saw a tripling of private-sector employment in the suburban “collar counties” in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but which is now seeing companies such as Allstate, Motorola, AT&T, GE Capital and even Sears reconsidering their suburban locations. Crain’s quotes Joe Mansueto, chairman and CEO of Morningstar, an investment research and analysis firm based in downtown Chicago: “The whole corporate campus seems a little dated,” he says, adding that downtown locations help keep companies competitive because their employees are aware of cultural and technological trends.

The Crain’s article also concludes that if these trends continue transportation planners need to focus less on building suburban highways and more on moving people in and around central city business districts. “Your transportation investments ought to be driven by your desire to grow the economy, not to spread investment across the state like peanut butter, which is what we do now,” says Frank Beal, executive director of Metropolis Principles, a nonprofit group of business and civic leaders. “The global economy is changing in ways that demand higher densities that can only be serviced with transit.”

It is hard to imagine what some of the larger downtowns in the U.S. would look like if everyone had to drive to get there. For example, more than 125,000 workers commute into downtown Pittsburgh every day, according to the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, and if every one of them drove alone, the entire 50-acre downtown would be a parking lot. Fortunately, more than half commute on foot, by bike or on transit, providing the downtown with a vibrant, animated streetlife — which is good for business.

A number of news stories have also suggested that downtown office space is rebounding from the recession more quickly than suburban business parks. The Wall Street Journal reported that at the end of the third quarter in 2010 the national office vacancy rate was 19 percent in the suburbs, compared to 14.9 percent in downtowns. In suburban Los Angeles and Orange counties, for example, more than 5 percent of the total office space inventory was vacated between January 2009 and September 2010 — while downtown Los Angeles, in contrast, lost just 1.8 percent.

The Journal also found that the property values of downtown office space increased 40 percent since the low point in 2009, whereas the value of suburban office space fell 4 percent. The article suggested that this was because downtown space was perceived as a lower risk and more likely to retain its value over time.

In 2012 the New York Times cited a study on aging office parks, called “What’s Old Is New Again,” that predicts by 2025 more than 6.3 billion square feet of vacant office space will exist in the U.S., at the same time that demand will grow for multifamily rental housing. Much as Arthur Nelson suggests in the Living chapter that McMansions and single-family homes be turned into multifamily housing, this study suggests that office parks could be rezoned for this purpose. The study also notes that the most successful office park retrofits are those with access to rail lines or major highways that also provide access to transit.

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Ontario Urban Form Case Studies

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 16:45:55 -0500

The Ontario Growth Secretariat has completed two new case studies of completed projects that illustrate key policies in the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. The case studies are King Street Reconstruction in Kitchener and Artscape Wychwood Barns in Toronto. These projects were selected because they:

Illustrate density targets established in the Growth Plan.
Support nearby transit, encourage walking, and are mixed use.
Demonstrate high quality urban design and built form.
Are highly marketable, economically successful, and award-winning.
Have environmentally sustainable features.
Are located in the Greater Golden Horseshoe

The original Urban Form Case Studies were published in 2009. (See this blog post.)

Case studies have been divided into five categories:

Residential / Mixed-Use: 150+ Residents and Jobs per Hectare
Residential / Mixed-Use: 50-150 Residents and Jobs per Hectare
Employment Lands
Intensification Corridors
Public Realm Improvements

In addition to the new studies, the case studies cover Canadian projects in Calgary, AB; Montreal, QC; Vancouver and Victoria, BC; Mississauga, ON; and projects in the United States from Boulder, CO; Arlington, VA; Cambridge, MA; and Portland,OR. - See more at: http://reconnectingamerica.org/news-center/half-mile-circles/2009/urban-form-case-studies/#sthash.CNxjbGJP.dpuf

For more information about the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, please visit www.placestogrow.ca.

Are We There Yet? The Creative Class

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 23:30:00 -0500

Editor's Note: Metropolitan Areas across the United States are competing against each other to attract new business investment and an educated workforce – coined the "creative class" by Richard Florida. Many believe these are key ingredients to help regions remain economically resilient and strong in the 21st century. Yet, at a time when there is a rising demand for an educated workforce that meets the definition of the "creative class", we face the fact that one in four children under the age six are living in poverty which statistically leads to poor quality of life outcomes as they grow older. This excerpt from Are We There Yet discusses these disparate realities, raising the point that they are intimately intertwined, and that building complete communities is a way to address both.

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

Much has been made in this country of the changing preferences of the younger generation of workers called the “Millennials” or “Gen Y” — the children of Baby Boomers born between 1980 and 1995 — who show a preference for living and working in dynamic urban settings. Many Millennials qualify as members of the “creative class,” the main players in the knowledge-based economy. See map below: Top 10 regions with the most highly educated 18- to 34-year-olds.

Creative class workers are scientists, engineers, artists, musicians, university professors and other educators, architects, designers, and professionals whose economic function is, according to Richard Florida — who coined the term in his 2001 book The Rise of the Creative Class — to think up new approaches to problems. Caroline Dowd-Higgins, a career and professional development expert, writes that among Gen Y workers, “owner” is the fifth most popular job title because this is an entrepreneurial generation. “Even though most of their companies won’t succeed,” she writes on Huffington Post. “They are demonstrating an unprecedented entrepreneurial spirit.”

The national nonprofit CEOs for Cities attributes 58 percent of a city’s success, as measured by per capita income, to the percentage of the adult population with a college degree. In 2011, after updating its 2005 “The Young and Restless in a Knowledge Economy” study with new census data, the organization reported that since 2000 the number of college-educated 25-to-34-year-olds increased by 26 percent in the close-in neighborhoods of the nation’s large cities, twice as much as in further-out neighborhoods.

In part because of the nature of creative work and the conditions required for a “culture of innovation,” this younger generation of workers prefers lifestyles that offer myriad opportunities for social interaction and the exchange of ideas. This generation doesn’t want to commute by car — in fact many Millennials don’t own cars — though they are likely to own the latest technology to help them communicate and engage with the world, whether corporally or virtually, socially or for business.

A 2011 story in Fortune magazine adds that this generation is also weighing corporate values when making decisions about where they will work – and “going green” is quickly climbing the list of values they care about. The article quotes Wayne Balta, IBM’s VP of corporate environmental affairs, who says these younger workers may be using a company’s sustainability record as a proxy for other positive qualities: “They’ve figured out that companies that are progressive and innovating in this area are themselves more innovative [overall],” says Balta. Adds Jason Jeffay, senior VP at a consulting firm named Mercer, “Millennials also understand that social responsibility can affect a company’s financials.”

Florida has deemed the presence of the creative class to be the biggest predictor of a region’s economic success — because while these workers makes up 30 percent of the U.S. workforce, according to Florida, they account for nearly 50 percent of wages. Other pundits agree the creative class is hugely important to a region’s prosperity not only because they are the future but also because the American workforce won’t continue to expand in the way that it has in the past.

For the past half century the American economy was buoyed by an increasing number of Baby Boomers, college graduates and by the entrance of women into the labor force. But this dynamic is changing. According to the CEOs for Cities report, the number of college graduates has reached a plateau, there are now as many women employed as men and Baby Boomers are reaching the age of retirement en masse.

During the last 50 years the strength of America’s middle class and workforce was supported by robust public investment in education and job training as well as in infrastructure that connected people with affordable housing, jobs and markets. The comparison with conditions for the up-and-coming generation couldn’t be in sharper contrast: A 2011 study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that over the last decade child poverty in the U.S. surged 38 percent. The U.S. Census shows that one in four children under the age of 6 currently lives in poverty.

Casey Foundation CEO Patrick McCarthy told the Huffington Post that children who experience even a bout of poverty are less likely to graduate from high school, are more likely to become very young parents, have more difficulties learning and earn less money than their non-poor peers as adults. “Child poverty is in some ways a leading indicator of how the country is going to be doing down the road,” McCarthy says.

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More Papers Added To Research Center's Best Practices Database

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:34:45 -0500

A trio of research papers have been added to the Research Center’s best practices database.

“Shared Parking in the Portland Metropolitan Area,” originally published in July 1999, is a region specific resource for businesses, neighborhoods, developers, and jurisdictions to promote greater understanding and use of shared parking. The study creates model ordinance provisions and a shared use agreement that local governments can use when implementing shared parking as a growth management tool.

“Transitioning to TOD: A Transit-Oriented Development Plan For SEPTA's Wawa Station On The R3 Regional Plan,” from July 2007, provides an array of recommendations to help guide future growth and development in the vicinity of the Wawa station site. These recommendations cover areas including land use, comprehensive planning, zoning, development opportunities, and access management. The framework of this case study is oriented toward an asset-based approach that aims to identify and capitalize on the existing strengths of the surrounding communities, specifically Middletown Township and Chester Heights Borough.

“Household Attributes in a Transit-Oriented Development: Evidence from Taipei,” published in October 2009, empirically analyzed correlations between household attributes and the decision to live in a TOD built environment by applying binary logit model to survey data for 388 households near metro stations in Taipei. The empirical findings of this work provide a basis for recommending possible TOD planning strategies given considerations of property demand.

Urban Land Institute’s Premier Housing Event Is Coming This March

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 23:27:22 -0500

The Urban Land Institute's Terwilliger Center for Housing will host its conference, Housing Opportunity 2013, March 20-22, 2013, in Seattle. Housing experts from across the country will discuss the challenges and opportunities facing all sectors of the housing industry.

Financing Mixed-Use. Housing Veterans. Developing Micro-Units. Planning for Demographic Change. These are just a few of the cutting-edge topics that will be discussed at this educational program with plenty of networking opportunities.

New session details and confirmed speakers are included on the updated preliminary program available here. Housing Opportunity 2013 participants will have a chance to:

Network with hundreds of housing, planning and real estate professionals from across the country.
Discover innovative solutions for financing transit-oriented and mixed-use development.
Explore how changing demand across multiple demographic segments, combined with finance opportunities and limitations, will shape the housing market and how you can make the most of it.
Understand where local, state, and federal housing policies are heading and what it means for your business.

Those who register for the conference by Feb. 22 save $100. Group registration options are also available.

Are We There Yet? Staying Competitive

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:49:26 -0500

Editor's Note: This week’s excerpt from Are We There Yet? introduces a growing tension in America. The shift in the American economy from manufacturing and production to services and information has been decades long, and have major implications for our economic success. Attracting talent, through investing in complete communities is one method for region’s to capture some of that elusive “talent” that drives economic competitiveness, but the challenges facing the shrinking middle class (as those jobs that were once the backbone of the American middle class disappear) are real and growing.

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

In order to address the growing income disparity, and stay competitive in this 21st century reorganization of markets, labor and resources, the American landscape is likely to change at least as much as it did in the years following World War II. Then the U.S. built a national highway system that opened up new markets and propelled the country into decades of prosperity. Now the same factors that are changing the housing market — rising gas prices, the recession, the high rate of housing foreclosures in suburban locations, the loss of construction and real estate industry jobs that had emerged during the housing boom — are changing the commercial real estate market too.

While jobs in virtually all industries have moved out to the suburbs over the last several decades, there is anecdotal evidence that this trend is reversing as corporations compete with each other to attract and retain talent. At the same time, there’s increasing interest in retrofitting the suburbs so that they remain strong during this time of changing consumer demands, demographic shifts and market forces.

This is a hugely important task because two-thirds of working-age residents live in the suburbs, as well as the majority of low-income households, according to the Brookings Institution’s 2011 “Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America” report. Moreover, the suburbs are home to twice as much office space as central business districts, according to a 2010 story in the Wall Street Journal that cites statistics from the real estate data firm Reis, Inc. Ensuring that these places continue to attract residents and workers and remain financially stable will help ensure that the U.S. as a whole remains globally competitive.

Opportunity areas — neighborhoods or parts of neighborhoods with smaller blocks and moderate density housing and/or jobs — can and should play a significant role in this reorganization. Opportunity areas in both urban and suburban locations can provide the foundation for high transit ridership and streets filled with pedestrians and people on bikes. This is good for business and helps support a thriving economy.

Opportunity areas offer density and an intensity of activity that is the kind of environment that has been shown to attract “talent.” The Memphis Smart City Consulting blog put it this way in a 2010 post: “Talent remains the top priority for Memphis . . . downtown redevelopment, neighborhood revitalization or economic growth [can] keep us from the hardest work [which is] to create, attract and retain talent. It’s easy to build big projects. It’s not as easy to build the creative ecosystem, the culture of innovation and the connectivity that joins creatives into a force for a stronger future.”

According to Reconnecting America’s research, 25 percent of all jobs in the U.S. are located in opportunity areas, while only 10 percent of all jobs are located within walking distance of fixed-guideway transit — suggesting we could be doing a much better job of siting new transit lines to connect people to jobs. See map at left. Top 25 Regions with jobs in opportunity areas.

However, planned transit projects would connect another 3.5 million people, a 26 percent increase, to jobs across the U.S. These fixed-guideway transit projects — rail or bus rapid transit lines on a dedicated right-of-way set apart from traffic — connect downtowns with major job centers and residential neighborhoods. Reconnecting America’s research only considered fixed-guideway transit but people are connected to many more jobs when you factor in high-frequency bus.

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CNN's Alarming Naiveté About Nation's Rail System

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:30:28 -0500

When you get annoyed with people you tell them to take a hike, or get outta town. In my case, I’d like to tell CNN to take a ride, in particular, a train ride; even more specific, a loooong train ride across America through big cities and small towns. I’d be happy to escort them.

Recent comments by CNN reporters such as Drew Griffin and David Clack have shown an alarming sense of naiveté about the value of our nation’s rail system and the need to improve and upgrade it. Griffin bashed the California high speed rail project last May on Anderson Cooper 360°, labeling it “a huge economic blunder that few [will] want to ride” and then took out his sword again in January, practicing his investigative journalism skills on the state of Vermont, criticizing federal funds that went to them as if they were for high speed rail when they were in fact, ready to use those funds and put people to work to make substantive improvements to the state’s rail system. Clack followed up with an article this week on the 100^th anniversary of Grand Central Terminal, opening up an otherwise celebratory story on the history of this esteemed landmark, with this gem: “For the most part, train terminals are desperate places. They’re an unavoidable evil linking us to somewhere else….”

What Griffin and Clack don’t realize is that people actually do rely on trains to get around. Not only that, but train stations themselves, particularly when renovated and upgraded, serve to drive the economic development of re-imagined city centers in places large and small all over this country. They only need to check out San Jose, CA; Normal, IL; Memphis, TN; or Brunswick, ME; for recent examples.

I’ve seen this firsthand. In my hometown of Meridian, MS, where I served as mayor, we rebuilt the historic Union Station. What was a dinosaur became a modern showpiece that served a region and drew $135 million in investment into what had been a dying downtown. Meridian is now thriving, with Union Station as the economic engine that fueled the rebirth. Union Station itself is an active place of commerce and congregation, hosting more than 250 events a year with 300,000 people going through it. And that is just in a town of 40,000. Imagine what goes on in bigger cities across the country.

What is happening in California and Vermont that CNN chose to ignore, is improved intercity passenger rail. This is all part of the program the federal stimulus dollars supported. There was not supposed to be a Japanese bullet train in Vermont or a French TGV train in California. America’s rail program needs to grow and it can only do so in increments. People need to have transportation options and riding a train that gets you somewhere faster, with pleasant vistas and room to stretch your legs, should be something we should all work toward.

So, my invitation stands. Messrs. Griffin and Clack, I’d be happy to take you on a train ride through America’s cities and towns to show you that rail travel is an important, viable, critical mode of transportation in this country, and one that cannot be ignored.

John Robert Smith is currently the President/CEO of Reconnecting America, formerly the Great American Station Foundation, which he co-founded. He is the former Mayor of Meridian, Mississippi, and a long-time leader on behalf of passenger rail and the station-centered community development movement. He is co-chairman of Transportation for America, a former Chairman of Amtrak’s board, and a former member of the transportation committees of the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, as well as former co-chairman of the National Forum on the Future of Passenger Rail.

Creating Equitable, Healthy, And Sustainable Communities

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 16:26:25 -0500

A new report from the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Sustainable Communities and Office of Environmental Justice has been added to the Research Center's best practices database.

"Creating Equitable, Healthy, And Sustainable Communities: Strategies for Advancing Smart Growth, Environmental Justice, and Equitable Development" details strategies for advancing smart growth, environmental justice, and equitable development.

The report provides a menu of land use and community design strategies community-based organizations, local and regional decision-makers, developers, and others can use to revitalize their communities:

Facilitate meaningful community engagement in planning and land use decisions
Promote public health and a clean and safe environment
Strengthen existing communities
Provide housing choices
Provide transportation options
Improve access to opportunities and daily necessities
Preserve and build on the features that make a community distinctive

Case studies highlight seven communities that have used these strategies: Edmonston, MD; Chicago, IL; Spartanburg, SC; New Orleans, LA; Ohkay Owingeh, NM; Boston, MA; and Seattle, WA.

Read the Executive Summary and download the ful report

New Study Shows Potential of Transit-Oriented Development in Pittsburgh Region

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 09:59:47 -0500

The Center for Transit-Oriented Development (CTOD) today released results of a year-long study into the potential for transit-oriented development to unlock economic, environmental and fiscal benefits for Pittsburgh and Allegheny County.

"In an environment where we're asked to do more with less, and make the most of our existing transit assets, the Pittsburgh region is poised to be a model," said Abigail Thorne-Lyman, Director of CTOD. "This strategy has been developed with deep involvement from the nonprofit, public, and business sectors, meaning everyone is ready to act."

The CTOD report, "Transit-Oriented Development Typology Strategy for Allegheny County," was commissioned by the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group under the auspices of its GoBurgh initiative and funded by the Heinz Endowments.

The study revealed some interesting findings about what is needed to support TOD in Pittsburgh, including new sources of funding for smaller scale infrastructure improvements such as pedestrian pathways and signage to help link the stations to nearby communities. It also identifies priority areas for TOD investments out of 100 stations in the rail, busway, and incline transit network, based on the readiness of those stations to be transformed into walkable, transit supportive communities. The study prioritizes stations based on three types of investments: infrastructure, new development, and building the capacity of community groups, which is a specialty of the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group and its GoBurgh initiative.

"The great news is, in the world of transportation, these are relatively low-cost investments that can catalyze significant gains for these communities," said Chris Sandvig, Regional Policy Director for the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group and leader of its GoBurgh initiative. "We need to capitalize on that existing infrastructure in a comprehensive and systematic way so we can realize the economic, access, environmental and fiscal benefits of transit-oriented development."

Download the Executive Summary and the full report

Listen to radio interview with CTOD Director Abigail Thorne-Lyman discussing this report.

Are We There Yet? A Sputnik Moment

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:28:18 -0500

Editor's Note: What do the housing bust, major demographic changes (more families without children and more older Americans), and employment centers all have in common? The answer found in this excerpt from Are We There Yet? is that together, they point to an enormous opportunity for the US to rethink where our homes go and what they look like. We quote Urban Land Institute CEO Patrick Phillips in calling this a “Sputnik moment,” giving US towns and cities the chance to link downtowns and those closer-in suburbs with housing in walkable, compact neighborhoods. The challenge is capturing this moment and turning it into opportunity for families of all incomes. As the interest in walkable, “gritty,” urban places grows, the lower-income families that have lived in many of those close-in neighborhoods can be vulnerable to being priced out. Capturing the next round of housing growth in opportunity areas equitably will be the indicator of our success in the future.

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

The U.S. population will grow — the U.S. Census Bureau expects it to climb from 308 million in 2010 to 341 million in 2020 — and so will the housing market. But an estimated 90 percent of the population increase will be households without children, and 47 percent of those households will be aging Baby Boomers who are quickly becoming senior citizens. According to the Census Bureau, 20 percent of Americans will be 65 or older by 2030.

Rental housing, townhomes, condos, live-work spaces and lofts are all housing types that will appeal to these renters and homebuyers, especially if the housing is located in neighborhoods that are “friendly” to older Americans and to families with children. An Internet search for “child-friendly neighborhoods,” for example, makes it clear that a large number of people are searching for them.

Directing that development into complete communities and opportunity areas near transit could be one “sweet spot” for development. See list on page 21: Top 5 regions that are growing in opportunity areas.

How often does Laredo make a Top 5 list? When it comes to the share of households living in opportunity areas, Laredo, Texas, ranks fifth in the nation after New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. This is because Laredo has long adhered to the historic “Law of the Indies” — a body of laws used in Spanish colonies and thus throughout the Southwestern U.S. to guide the development of communities and favoring a development pattern with small blocks surrounding a central square.

Even in regions where the population is decreasing it makes the most sense to focus resources in these places. In Detroit, for example, five companies have pledged $4 million over five years to convince their 16,000 employees to live downtown in the hopes of creating a 24-hour community that will liven things up — including the real estate market.

These employees are eligible for a forgivable $20,000 loan toward purchase of a primary residence, and new renters receive a $2,500 allowance for an apartment, followed by another $1,000 the second year. Current renters get $1,000 to renew their leases, and homeowners receive matching funds of up to $5,000 to improve their homes’ exteriors.

Urban Land Institute CEO Patrick Phillips told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2011 that he believes the city’s close-in suburbs are going to be the sweet spot for redevelopment because they are close to transit, culture, entertainment, parks and other infrastructure. “They have a distinct urban feel but don’t have the urban grit,” he said. “They are walkable, architecturally interesting — and they are employment centers.”

Phillips believes the housing market bust could be the development industry’s “Sputnik moment” — a time when re-thinking how and where we build could spark a wave of innovation and investment that could in turn fix both the housing market and the American economy.

BETTER NEIGHBORHOODS, SAME NEIGHBORS

The biggest question, however, remains unanswered: How do we get the right mix of affordable and market-rate housing, and how do we build more housing and transit and other neighborhood improvements but still leave in place the unique character and attributes of the neighborhood, and ensure that the people who already live there don’t get pushed out?

Sci-Fi Outpost: Building An Opportunity Area

In A Hostile EnvironmentAn astonishing development has arisen in the sea of big box retail and empty parking lots eight miles north of downtown Seattle, described thusly by blogger Dan Bertolet: “Cruising by Northgate Mall on I-5, the nearly completed Thornton Place evokes images of sci-fi outposts rising from the barren landscape of distant planets. In reality, Thornton Place is a daring pioneer in a built environment that is likewise hostile to human life. The conversion of nine acres of asphalt into the development is a phenomenal accomplishment.”

The development includes 200 condos and 300 apartments, 20 percent of which are priced below the market and 143 of which provide assisted living for seniors, as well as 50,000 square feet of retail, a 14-screen cinema and great urban public space that serves as an ambitious counterpoint to an alluring stream restoration and stormwater treatment project. This effort brought the long-buried Thornton Creek back to life to treat urban stormwater runoff using a necklace of channels, pools and terraces that mimics the landscape of a natural creek, with lush native plantings, overlooks and paths.

Thornton Place is full of sustainability bells and whistles: It has its own district heating system, energy efficient and resource-conserving LEED-certified buildings, preferred parking for alternative-fueled vehicles, and it is near a major bus transfer station and a planned light rail line. Meantime, the development also:

Increases open space by 50 percent.
Provides pedestrian links to adjacent. neighborhoods that shorten walking distances by 50 percent.
Reduces impervious surfaces by 78 percen.
Stormwater treatment project removes 40-80 percent of suspended solids from 91 percent of the average annual volume of stormwater.
85 percent of the project’s plant palette is native species.
Created a new habitat that was quickly colonized by native plants and birds that migrated to the site.

A Reconnecting America study for the Los Angeles Housing Department found that 75 percent of Los Angeles residents who commute to work on public transportation make less than $25,000 a year. But Los Angeles has begun an ambitious transit expansion that will put the neighborhoods where these lower-income residents live within an easy 15-minute transit ride of hundreds of thousands of jobs, and even before transit construction began there has been an uptick in property values in these neighborhoods.

The redevelopment effort around three subway stations in Hollywood provides a complicated picture: Hollywood had been on the skids for decades before the stations opened, but in the dozen years following the incomes of households near stations and the number of cars owned by these households increased — and property tax revenues for the city increased six-fold.

Hollywood has staged a major comeback and business is booming, even in the recession, but are the new residents driving their cars, walking or biking, or taking transit? What happened to the lower-income people with fewer cars who were living there before? And what are the policies that work best to manage this change in a way that benefits everyone and ensures high transit ridership?

For example, what is the right mix of incentives and exactions that can convince developers and investors to build near transit, but that also captures some of the land and property value that will be created, and uses that value to help subsidize affordable housing and other investments that improve neighborhoods?

A nonprofit organization in Los Angeles named SAJE (Strategic Actions for a Just Economy), which has positioned itself to address “the collision course that redevelopment and gentrification have set in motion in downtown Los Angeles” — where many of those transit riders who make less than $25,000 live — captured the essence of this balancing act in the title of a publication: “Better Neighborhoods, Same Neighbors.”

As the demand for housing near transit increases, it’s important that lower-income people who are the most frequent users of transit can continue living where they will get the benefit of lower cost housing and transportation costs. Nationally, a larger percentage of lower-income households live near stations and in opportunity areas: 50 percent of all households in station areas are low-income, and 53 percent of all households in opportunity areas are low-income. As a point of comparison, nationally only 40 percent of households are lower-income.

In the online magazine Grist, Claire Thompson speculates on one solution to the threat of gentrification in her own suburban Seattle neighborhood: “One of the best ways would be for the neighborhood’s newcomers to invest their resources and energy in its existing infrastructures instead of totally taking and making them over — newcomers could send their kids to local public schools, which are starved for parental involvement. They could patronize the Ethiopian restaurant and Vietnamese nail salon, and the Mexican taco trucks — as well as the new foodie cafes. They could ride public transportation alongside their neighbors, to send the message that they want to be a part of the community that’s already there.”

In fact, communities are always in flux. The key to smart planning is how we manage the changes so that “the community’s that’s already there” continues to be a vital part of the ever-evolving neighborhood. The Top 10 lists on the following pages highlight some regions that are doing well by our Living metrics, and are getting closer to becoming complete communities. The full list of metrics for 366 regions can be found on our website: reconnectingamerica.org/arewethereyet

More Blog Posts In This Series

How to use the 2012 federal transportation bill to strengthen rural economies

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 13:13:27 -0500

Transportation for America will hold a webinar Wednesday, Feb. 27, at 1pm EST to explore how the new 2012 federal transportation bill affects rural communities.

Investing in a variety of transportation options -- public transportation, vanpooling, bicycling, walking and safe roads and bridges -- are crucial for stronger, more resilient communities in our nation's rural areas. It's important to know how the new federal transportation bill (MAP-21) has changed the way communities can access transportation dollars and what these funds may be used for. This online presentation will explain how to use MAP-21 to fund rural transportation priorities and strengthen communities.

Our panelists for this discussion include:

Commissioner Kathy Rinaldi, Teton County, Idaho
Charles W. Fluharty, President and CEO, Rural Policy Research Institute
Chris Zeilinger, Director of Policy Development, Community Transportation Association of America
Georgia Gann, Deputy Director of Government Affairs, Transportation for America
John Robert Smith, President and CEO, Reconnecting America and Former Mayor of Meridian, MS (moderator)

Secretary LaHood's Legacy: Stronger, Safer Transportation Choices for All Americans

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 17:02:08 -0500

This morning, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced his intention to step down from his position as soon as his successor is confirmed. Reconnecting America thanks him for his work and will be sorry to see him go. Secretary LaHood has been a champion for transportation policies that will benefit every American, whether they use roads, buses, rails, bicycles, or their own two feet to get where they need to go.

Secretary LaHood is a former Republican Congressman who has served under a Democratic President. As Reconnecting America's President and CEO, John Robert Smith, a former Republican Mayor, has often stated, "There are no red or blue potholes." The Secretary's ability to work across the aisle and garner bipartisan support for transportation funding and reform is a credit to his belief in the critical role of our nation's infrastructure and the importance in finding innovative ways to offer transportation choices to all.

Secretary LaHood had many laudable accomplishments during his tenure. As part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, Secretary LaHood made sure that the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program was not bound by traditional silos. As a result, TIGER has supported a multimodal set of projects, in all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico. He developed a groundbreaking partnership with the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, which aligned disparate federal policies into a single set of goals. The Secretary also spearheaded a federal commitment to developing high-speed and improved intercity passenger rail service. Under his leadership, the Department has supported construction or improvements to 6500 miles of rail corridors and upgrades to 40 stations.

Secretary LaHood, when he steps down from office, will be missed. His presence within the department in Washington, his work with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, his travel across the country, his commitment to cities and neighborhoods that were in need of infrastructure improvements, and his open communication through blogging and other social media have all proven him to be one of the most high profile Secretaries of Transportation in recent decades. He has elevated transportation in the national conversation; so much so that President Obama mentioned it in his recent inaugural address. We wish the Secretary well in his future endeavors, and we hope that the Department will carry his legacy forward through the President's second term and beyond.

Are We There Yet? Affordable Housing Yields Revenues

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:25:25 -0500

Editor's Note: This excerpt from Are We There Yet? makes an economic case for affordable housing, providing specific examples of the type and amount of revenue affordable housing can deliver to local governments and to local businesses. Yet, despite the revenue generating possibilities, producing enough affordable housing to keep pace with demand continues to be a challenge. This has led to the formation of numerous collaborative efforts across the country focused on developing the financial tools and the political will to increase the production of affordable housing, particularly in high-access neighborhoods well served by transit.

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

A 2012 study by the National Association of Home Builders shows that affordable housing not only helps people in need, it also pumps millions of dollars into the economy and creates hundreds of jobs. The study, by NAHB senior economist Elliot Eisenberg, looked at the impact of building new apartments using low-income housing tax credits in Denver’s 10-county metropolitan statistical area, primarily along transit corridors.

Eisenberg concluded that in the first year this development provided 732 jobs, resulting in $57.6 million in local income as well as $5 million in taxes and other revenues for local government. He also found that the “annually recurring impact,” once the new apartments are occupied and residents are paying taxes, would be $16.7 in local income, $2.3 million in taxes and revenues for government, and 192 local jobs — impacts that are the result of the new apartments being occupied and residents paying taxes and otherwise participating in the local economy year after year.

If You Lived Here You
Would Be Home By Now

The popular Walk Score website, where you can calculate the walkability of any address, now also helps you find apartments based on your commute time. Enter the address of your workplace, choose how much time you are willing to spend commuting and whether you want to drive, walk or bike, take the bus or train, and Walk Score finds apartments that optimize your commute.

Walk Score also helps you find an apartment within walking distance of the subway stop or express bus station nearest your office. And the “Walkers’ Paradise” feature allows you to find apartments in the most walkable neighborhoods. The website also notes that:

The longer your commute, the more likely you are to be overweight, have high cholesterol and suffer from neck and back pain. (Source: Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.)
Car ownership costs are the second largest household expense, with the average household spending more on their cars than on food and health care. (Source: Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
People who live in walkable neighborhoods are happier, healthier and more likely to volunteer and to entertain friends at home. (Source: University of New Hampshire.)

Eisenberg admits that even he was surprised by the size of the total economic impact, which he estimated to be about $200 million over 10 years. He told a meeting of the Denver Home Builders Association that “This type of housing not only provides enormous benefits to residents but it is an ongoing economic stimulus in terms of jobs and local income for the surrounding community as well. Many people think these renters don’t contribute to the economy. After all, they don’t have much money, or they wouldn’t be living in tax-credit properties. The flip side is they spend almost every dollar they earn . . . on food and services, health care, educating their kids and so on. For the city that creates a tremendous source of tax revenues. And all their money is spent locally.”

CITIES STILL SHORT ON AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Even before the Great Recession, cities were behind the eight ball when it came to building affordable housing. Now, at the moment that so many contracts on subsidized housing units are expiring, the recession has further reduced their resources, and Congress has cut back on federal affordable housing programs as well. The largest source of funding for affordable housing has been the “low-income housing tax credit” (LIHTC), which provides dollar-for-dollar reductions in investors’ federal income tax as an incentive to get private sector investment in affordable housing, which must remain affordable for 30 years – a program signed into law by President Ronald Reagan as part of the 1986 Tax Reform Act.

All but 16 states have added transit proximity to their scoring criteria when they rank the projects that have applied for tax credits — acknowledging that these locations also lower transportation costs.

The problem in this economy, according to a 2009 study by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing, is that as a result of the credit market meltdown, the corporate investors on whom the program relied — primarily large national banks and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — have swung from profitability to loss, with the result that they can no longer use tax credits. “As a result, demand has plummeted and the price of LIHTCs has fallen,” write the study’s authors, “creating funding gaps in projects that had received tax credit allocations in 2007 and 2008 but had not yet sold them. Thousands of projects and tens of thousands of units that would have otherwise been bought or rehabilitated stalled.”

Cities are also trying to entice developers to build affordable housing by providing a variety of other incentives such as property tax abatements, fee waivers, density bonuses and parking reductions. Many cities have considered “inclusionary zoning,” which requires developers to set aside a percentage of units as affordable housing in otherwise market-rate projects — a strategy pioneered by Montgomery County, Maryland, the sixth wealthiest county in the U.S.

Montgomery County has built more than 10,000 affordable housing units mixed in with market-rate projects since 1974. But critics of inclusionary zoning contend that it is an “indirect tax on developers.” Massachusetts’ Chapter 40B, which requires a set-aside of affordable units in all apartment and condo projects in that state, only narrowly survived a ballot initiative to repeal it in 2010.

In the absence of an inclusionary housing policy, affordable housing usually ends up getting negotiated on a project-by-project basis, which often leads to proposed projects becoming a protracted battle between residents, developers and other local interests.

Sometimes, however, the results are good: The Development Commission in Portland, Oregon, used a developer agreement to convince the major landowner in the popular downtown-adjacent Pearl District to build affordable housing in return for public improvements that increased the value of his property. In return for these public investments, the landowner built 7,500 housing units for families with a mix of incomes that mirrored the city’s population as a whole: 33 percent upper income, 20 percent middle income, 20 percent moderate income, 13 percent low income, and 14 percent very low income.

Zoning codes are also being rewritten to promote diverse housing choices and prices that suit the needs and budgets of singles, seniors, families with children, couples without children, and large extended families. California, for example, requires that local jurisdictions grant density bonuses of 20 to 35 percent for projects that include a percentage of affordable units and — depending on the level of affordability — developers are also offered parking reductions, which reduces the cost of development and increases the profitability.

AFFORDABLE TOD FUNDS AND COMMUNITY BENEFITS AGREEMENTS

The severity of the affordable housing shortage has also prompted government agencies to partner with charitable foundations, private investors and community developers to create financial resources that can be used to produce and preserve affordable housing near transit and provide other important amenities. Funds have been created in the San Francisco Bay Area, the City of Denver and in Washington, D.C, and funds or other types of financial tools are being considered in the Twin Cities, Phoenix, Chicago, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the $50 million Transit-Oriented Affordable Housing Fund (TOAH Fund) was created to provide flexible financing that allows non-profit and for-profit developers to purchase and/or develop property near public transportation throughout the nine-county region. The Great Communities Collaborative — a group of regional and national nonprofits and philanthropic organizations that includes Reconnecting America — sponsored the work that went into creating the fund with the goal of promoting the development of permanently affordable housing, including supportive housing (housing and services), as well as critical neighborhood services and amenities including childcare, social services, fresh food markets and retail.

The revolving loan fund is anticipated to allow developers to build on 20 to 30 acres of land and construct up to 4,000 units of affordable housing. It was jumpstarted by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the metropolitan planning organization for the nine-county region, with a $10 million investment. Other TOAH investors include Morgan Stanley and Citi Community Capital, the Ford Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation and Living Cities, a collaborative of national funders; and capital from a consortium of six community development finance institutions (CDFIs). One of the six CDFI consortium members — the Low Income Investment Fund — is the fund manager.

Continuing concerns about affordability — and the recognition that it is best to build this affordable housing in communities that are “complete” — are also prompting people to join forces by creating “equity collaboratives” that focus on the production and the preservation of affordable housing and on providing lower-income people with greater access to economic opportunity in regions that have or are building transit systems. The Great Communities Collaborative in the Bay Area was one of the first, and other collaboratives have started up in the Twin Cities, Denver, New York, Seattle and Los Angeles.

Denver’s newly formed “Mile High Connects” equity collaborative is being supported by the Ford Foundation along with several local foundations and local banks to make the case for building affordable housing near the new $6.7 billion transit system. The Central Corridor Funders Collaborative in the Twin Cities is working on a range of strategies to get the most out of the light rail line now under construction between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul, including ensuring that small businesses along the line aren’t hit hard by the transit construction.

The “community compact” negotiated by the Baltimore Neighborhood Collaborative over a $1.6 billion light rail project has become a national model for bringing communities together to articulate what — in addition to affordable housing — residents want from their public investment in transportation. This includes jobs and job training, community revitalization and economic development, progressive environmental initiatives, and protection against involuntary displacement. The collaborative is buying and stabilizing vacant properties in “livable communities where people can find jobs, go to school, and live safe, healthy lives.”

More Blog Posts In This Series

Federal Policy Update: FTA to Hold Webinars on New Starts and Small Starts Rule and Policy Guidance

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 19:54:17 -0500

The Federal Transit Administration will hold three public webinars to discuss the New Starts final rule published on Jan. 9 in the Federal Register and the accompanying proposed policy guidance, available on the website here. Comments on the proposed guidance are due March 11.

Each webinar will cover the same materials, allowing you to choose the day and time that works best for you. Each webinar is limited to 200 participants, so these are offered on a first-come, first-served basis (no RSVP required). Time will be allotted for Q&A, with questions submitted online for selective discussion. An audio of the webinar and accompanying slides will be available online at www.fta.dot.gov after the last webinar has concluded.

Thursday, Jan. 31, 10AM-Noon Eastern Time
To join this meeting go here.
Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2PM-4PM Eastern Time
To join this meeting go here.
Wednesday, Feb. 13, 1PM-3PM Eastern Time
To join this meeting go here.

Corridors Of Opportunity In The Twin Cities

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:05:03 -0500

The Metropolitcan Council in the Twin Cities has their new Corridors of Opportunity website.

Corridors of Opportunity seeks to accelerate the build out of a regional transit system for the Twin Cities in ways that advance economic development and ensure people of all incomes and backgrounds share in the resulting opportunities.

Corridors of Opportunity is focused on seven transitway corridors that are planned, under construction or operating in the region. These corridors connect valued local places, institutions and commercial districts to each other and to the entire region.

Reconnecting America has a long history in the Twin Cities providing technical assistance and serving as a strategic advisor to many of the regions’ stakeholders. Reconnecting America works closely with the Met Council and other partners in the Twin Cities, all of whom are leading the way on the HUD-grant-funded Corridors of Opportunity program.

Visit www.corridorsofopportunity.org

Are We There Yet? Priced Out & Pushed Out

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 21:00:00 -0500

Editor's Note: As Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan is quoted as saying in this excerpt from Are We There Yet?, “The cost of putting housing and jobs in the wrong place, relative to transportation, is huge - not just in environmental costs, not just because people are spending more on their commutes, but also because of the cost of this growth over the long term.” With that point in mind, this section of the report highlights the importance of understanding and proactively addressing potential displacement pressures in transit-oriented communities to ensure that the people that need transit the most, and use transit the most, can continue to live in those communities if they so desire. The suburbanization of poverty, the potential expiration of Section 8 vouchers near transit, and the loss of affordable market-rate rental housing near transit are all trends that add to the challenge of providing quality affordable housing in locations with good access to the regional economy.

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

Along with the growing demand for walkable neighborhoods near transit, though, is the potential for a disturbing consequence: The lower-income people who already live in these places — and who may use transit the most — can get pushed out as prices rise. Gentrification can bring investment to underserved communities and many historic urban core neighborhoods, but cities need the tools and capacity to manage the change so that people of all incomes can live in these places.

The threat of displacement tends to be greatest where the real estate market is active, or where new transit lines may activate an otherwise sluggish market because transit will make commuting to nearby job centers easier and faster — thereby increasingly the likelihood that more people will want to move in. CTOD’s National TOD database shows that while median income in the U.S. decreased by 5 percent during the past decade, income near transit increased 1 percent. See chart above: Top 5 regions with the greatest increase in median income near transit.

But the reasons may be different in each region: maybe people with higher incomes are moving in, maybe the people who already live there have begun making more money because there has been investment and more economic activity, or maybe low-income people are being displaced. Monitoring these changes will allow cities to determine whether displacement is occurring and if policy interventions are necessary.

During the go-go years of the housing boom many affordable units were upgraded for higher-income tenants or, in strong real estate markets, converted to condos. According to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, for every new affordable apartment built, two are lost to condo conversion, demolition or abandonment. But as more people get pushed further to the fringes they have less access to transit, and they will be living in places where there’s less chance that transit will ever be built.

According to a 2011 study by the Brookings Institution, at least 700,000 Americans don’t have cars and don’t have access to transit either, raising issues of social equity as well as economic concerns. The most vulnerable families, the report points out, live in the suburbs, and in suburban cities, including Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, St. Louis and Atlanta. Only 69 percent of Atlanta residents have access to transit, for example, compared to Los Angeles and New York, where 99 percent of residents have access to either bus or rail.

The authors of the report point to the rapid suburbanization of poverty, as well as “job sprawl,” as the two biggest factors putting carless families at risk. They also point out that the U.S. has built 655,000 roadway lane miles of highways since the 1980s, enabling development farther out and increasing distances between destinations — thereby making it even more difficult to serve people with transit.

Local and national leaders can respond to this crisis by encouraging the adoption of land use policies that promote denser development that is easier to serve with transit, as well as by expanding transit to underserved suburban downtowns. “The cost of putting housing and jobs in the wrong place, relative to transportation, is huge,” says HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. “Not just in environmental costs, not just because people are spending more on their commutes, but also because of the cost of this growth over the long term.”

EXPIRING SECTION 8 VOUCHERS

Investors are buying up empty suburban properties in part, as a 2011 Washington Post article noted, because of the steadily dropping home ownership rate and the foreclosure crisis – lenders have seized more than a million homes and it is estimated there are another 11 million foreclosures in the pipeline. These investors have started looking for renters not buyers, and they are eyeing the 2 million households with Section 8 vouchers — a government funding program that helps lower-income people find affordable housing.

“It’s guaranteed money,” David Benham, a property owner who sells bank foreclosures to investors in 35 states, says in the Post. “I love Section 8. I wish every one of my properties was Section 8.” The Section 8 program helps expand the supply of housing that is affordable by subsidizing the difference between what lower-income people can pay — 30 to 40 percent of household income — and the rents landlords are charging.

HUD’s Section 8 program also provides funding for new construction or the rehabilitation of housing units that will be set-aside as affordable housing for 5 to 30 years, depending on the terms of the contract. Reconnecting America calculates that 40 percent of these units are in opportunity areas. However, the contracts on these Section 8 units are beginning to expire, as are contracts on other kinds of subsidized housing. Many of these “at-risk” affordable units were developed under federal, state and local programs created in the ‘60s, ‘70s and early ‘80s to promote the development of affordable housing by the private sector. The majority of these units were financed and assisted by HUD through below-market interest rates and rental housing subsidies and contracts that typically lasted 40 years.

Once the contracts expire these units can be rented or sold at market-rate prices, thereby significantly reducing the supply of affordable housing. Reconnecting America quantified the risk: Contracts on 58 percent of the federally subsidized units in opportunity areas are “at-risk” within the next five years, because these property owners could decide not to renew their contracts. The risk is greatest in the Southwest — especially in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona — where 80 percent of the contracts on housing in opportunity areas are due to expire by 2016. See chart on previous page: Affordable housing at risk in the Southwest.

At the same time, ensuring that housing stays affordable in urban neighborhoods near transit also poses a dilemma: It can be expensive to construct new affordable housing as well as to rehabilitate existing sub-standard affordable housing in neighborhoods where land values are increasing at a rate far above the regional average — which is the case in many metro areas.

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Updating The Transit Space Race Interactive Map

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 14:40:46 -0500

Reconnecting America today released an updated interactive map showing all of the fixed-guideway transit projects in the United States. You can read more about the project in this Reconnecting America News report or you can go directly to the map here.

Livability Literature Review: A Synthesis Of Current Practice

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 01:00:00 -0500

The National Association of Regional Councils' review of literature about livability has been added to the Research Center's best practices database.

"Livability Literature Review: A Synthesis Of Current Practice" is designed to assist practitioners and policymakers in understanding how states and localities define, plan and implement livability.

In 2009, the Partnership for Sustainable Communities was created among the Environmental Projections Agency, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “to help improve access to affordable housing, more transportation options, and lower transportation costs while protecting the environment in communities nationwide.”

"Guided by the goals of the Partnership, the federal government has committed significant resources and attention to implementing livability in state and local governments," the authors of the report explain. But the the multitude of local, state and federal livability initiatives and the lack of widespread local and regional implementation tools led the National Association of Regional Councils to explore how practitioners and policy officials implement and integrate livability on local and regional levels.

Using the Partnership’s six livability principles as a framework, NARC identified the tactics and mechanisms local governments and their regional planning organizations used to support these principles. Among the common themes identified in literature:

Livability and Sustainability
Smart Growth
Complete Streets
Lifelong Communities
Safe Routes to Schools
Context Sensitive Solutions and Design
New Urbanism
Transit-Oriented Development Placemaking

Read the introduction and download the full report

Are We There Yet: The High Cost Of H+T

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:40:50 -0500

Editor's Note: Saving on transportation costs can be critical to household budgets staying in the black. This has never been more true than today, when many people are struggling to make ends meet. To that end, this excerpt from Are We There Yet? discusses both the importance of providing more housing choices near public transit and in walkable and bike-friendly communities, and the need to ensure that public transit actually connects people to the places they need to go such as jobs and educational opportunities.

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Housing costs have grown far faster than income over the past 50 years, and the share of households that struggle to pay their rent or mortgage has increased dramatically over the past decade, according to a recent study by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The 2012 study found that well over one-third of U.S. households paid more than 30 percent of their income for housing in 2009, while almost 26 percent spent more than half their paychecks, the highest level in half-a-century. Renters, with their generally lower incomes, are more than twice as likely to spend more than half on housing.

Household debt surged from 65 percent of disposable income in 1980 to 133 percent in 2007, William Galston writes in The New Republic in 2011, largely because of the enormous escalation in mortgage indebtedness. As a result, the rental market has been flooded not only with families who lost their homes to foreclosure but also with higher-income families who are also struggling to make ends meet. As a result, vacancies are down and rents are up. In the Western U.S. — where the shortage of affordable housing is greatest — the National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that there are only 53 units available for every 100 very-low-income families.

Add to this the fact that rising gas prices have increased household transportation costs, and household budgets are really stretched. Transportation is the second largest household expenditure after housing according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the American Automobile Association (AAA) estimates that the cost of owning and maintaining a car increased 1.9 percent in 2011 to $8,946 in 2012. As a result, homebuyers and renters are increasingly factoring in transportation costs when making housing choices.

Cody Helgeson, who moved with his wife from their home in the suburbs of Phoenix to an apartment downtown, tells the Arizona Republic, “Now we’ve got it down to one vehicle and we are able to go one whole month on a tank of gas because we walk everywhere. When we lived in [the suburb of] Queen Creek we were budgeting about $500 a month for gas.” Moving downtown, he notes, also boosted their social life.

Indeed buying a house on the far fringes of a region might seem less expensive until the hidden costs of transportation are figured in, and then what appears to be a deal isn’t — a fact made clear by the “Housing + Transportation Affordability Index,” which expands the idea of “affordability” to include transportation costs in addition to housing. The “H+T index” was developed by the national nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology, which has now created a version that will be used by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help renters and homebuyers make more informed housing choices and investment decisions.

“Affordability is much more than just paying the mortgage, it involves other costs like transportation, gas, and utilities,” says Shaun Donovan, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “The availability of a national affordability index will provide consumers better information about the true costs of a home by accounting for that housing’s proximity to jobs, schools and other services. Our goal with the creation of this housing and transportation index is to provide American families with a tool that can help them save money and have a better understanding of their expenses and household budget.”

MOBILITY VS. ACCESS

Complete communities are key to reducing the cost of H+T. “Access” is central to the idea of complete communities, and access is predicated on reducing the distance, and the time and money we have to spend on getting where we need to go. In other words, explains Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, “Mobility is how far you can go in a given time. Access is how many useful or valuable things you can do in that time.”

Complete communities, and the opportunity areas upon which they are built, are the places where people can take care of their daily business on foot or on bike, and longer distances can be traveled by bus or rail, which means that households can own fewer cars. Complete communities are also the best places for older Americans, younger Americans and the disabled, who can maintain their independence because they don’t have to rely on others to get around.

These rising transportation costs are a significant driver of the upswing in demand for housing in downtowns and close-in neighborhoods, and as demand increases more of these neighborhoods will be built and existing neighborhoods will be retrofitted. In Houston, Texas, for example, the construction of a transit line and station in University Place — an urban neighborhood near Rice University with small blocks, walkable streets and a mix of uses — turned the neighborhood into a more complete community by making it easy and convenient for residents to walk and bike in the neighborhood and rely on transit to get to destinations outside.

In suburban Hillsboro, Oregon, a master-planned New Urbanist village was built on a very large tract of undeveloped land near a station on a rail line connecting Portland to its suburbs. The developer built housing, stores and commercial space on small blocks connected by walkable streets, with the result that the people who live there walk, bike and take transit more than the average resident in the region.

Transit access increases the potential of opportunity areas to become complete communities — since the goods and services that people can’t access on foot or on bike can be accessed via transit. America is already headed in this direction. Reconnecting America’s research shows that 58 percent of all transit stations are located in opportunity areas.

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Making the Most of MAP-21

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 14:38:01 -0500

Transportation for America has released Making the Most of MAP-21, a 109-page handbook that attempts to explain the many changes in federal transportation policy — positive and negative — and outline how local officials and advocates can help get involved and urge states to make sure that MAP-21 money is used for the priorities of local communities.

The two-year transportation bill passed last year -- MAP-21 -- essentially holds spending level at $52.5 billion a year. In many ways, MAP-21 looks and feels the same as the previous transportation law, SAFETEA-LU. However, MAP-21 makes significant changes to federal transportation policy that are critical to understand.

For example, federal law no longer sets aside a minimum amount of money for repairing our roads and bridges, leaving it to states to decide whether to repair or replace what we have, or to build new facilities that will themselves need to be maintained. More types of projects now compete for the money allocated to metropolitan areas. The law cuts by a third the money dedicated to make our roads and neighborhoods safer for walking or biking, but it gives localities more direct control over what remains.

Much of the impact of these changes will depend upon how well state departments of transportation manage affairs and attend to the needs of all their constituencies. Transportation for America's Making the Most of MAP-21 can help engaged stakeholders, local officials and citizens to push for genuine progress and vigilantly monitor the impact of MAP-21.

Federal Policy Update: New Starts & Small Starts Rules

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 19:38:13 -0500

New Starts and Small Starts Rules

The Federal Transit Administration today published a final rule governing evaluation of proposed New Starts and Small Starts projects. The rule is designed both to simplify the application process and to capture a broader range of benefits as part of the evaluation. The final rule is available here.

In addition, FTA issued proposed policy guidance with details of the metrics and weightings FTA intends to apply in the New Starts/Small Starts evaluation process. The proposed guidance is open for comment through March 11. The proposed guidance is available here.

Transit Commuter Benefit

In case you missed it in the drama of the fiscal cliff endgame last week, the transit commuter benefit was raised to $240/month for 2013 - equal to the monthly parking benefit - as part of the fiscal cliff deal. While the increase in the benefit was made retroactive to 2012, in practice it will be very difficult for employers or individuals to take advantage of the retroactivity. Still, the increase for 2013 is positive news for transit riders around the country.

Are We There Yet? Changes In The Housing Market

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 22:15:42 -0500

Editor's note: One issue discussed in the Living chapter of Are We There Yet? is that changing demographics aren't just influencing political outcomes, they are also influencing the kinds of houses people desire and where they want to live. People want more housing choices and more mobility choices. In many regions, this is translating into an increased demand for rental housing near quality public transportation.

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One lesson that emerges from the housing market meltdown is that people need and want more choices — in both urban and suburban locations — especially more affordable choices. If the McMansion typified one extreme, Tiny House blog typifies the other, and offers options for downsizing. This is a trend that has also been tracked on the cover of Dwell: While a 2005 magazine cover was headlined “Small Is the New Big: Homes Under 2,200 Sq. Ft.,” and a 2006 cover read “Think Small: Homes Under 1,700 Sq. Ft.,” the 2008 cover read “Small Wonders: Homes Under 1,000 Square Feet.”

Further evidence of this trend is the Katrina cottage, which ranges in size from 308 to 1,800 square feet and was designed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as an alternative to the FEMA trailer. The earliest version of the cottage was mobile, like the FEMA trailer, but of higher design quality and for the same $70,000 price. The Katrina cottage, which has gained popularity around the U.S. as an affordable housing choice, can be installed on site from a kit.

The Resilience Of Complete Communities

In a recent article on bizjournals.com a spokesman for Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, noted that while the housing crisis is likely to take a decade to rebound, the places that are seeing gains today are urban areas with infill projects. “We are seeing gains in more and more cities, and builders are more upbeat,” says Mark Vitner, senior Wells Fargo economist. “The gains are small, however, and are often in infill locations or in partially built-out projects near key employment centers.”

These projections are bolstered by studies such as one recently conducted by the Metropolitan Council in the Twin Cities, which has built one light rail line and is building another. The Met Council study shows that residents in the seven-county region are moving closer to the urban core where there’s more transit: While 67 percent of all residential units permitted in the 1990s were single-family houses, the number fell to 44 percent during the past decade. Similarly, while 8.4 percent of development was higher-density and mixed-use in 2010, the study predicts the percentage will increase to 55 percent in 2030.

Met Council analyst John Kari says in the Finance & Commerce newspaper that this shift is the most significant that he’s seen since the council began developing comprehensive plans in the 1970s. He adds that he believes the shift in demand toward apartments, condos, townhomes and small-lot detached housing is permanent.

The popularity of small is likely also due to the fact that household size is decreasing. The new census numbers show that while nearly half of the U.S. population lived in households of six or more people in 1900, by 2000 more than half lived in households of one, two or three people.

The Atlantic article mentioned earlier focuses on the housing market research of Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Research Center at the University of Utah, who offers some provocative ideas about reviving the housing market by providing more choices: Nelson suggests converting McMansions — many of which sit empty — into affordable housing for multi-generational or multi-family households. He points out that while the average 3.5-person home was smaller than 1,000 square feet in 1950; a 6,000-square-foot McMansion is roomy enough for 12, with parking for five or six cars.

Nelson also contends that homeowners could spark a housing boom by retrofitting their current homes to include granny flats, backyard studios, garage and basement apartments. What better way, he argues, to increase density and affordability in neighborhoods near public transit? His studies show that a third of American households want to live where they can own fewer cars but that less than 10 percent can find housing in these locations.

HOUSING AND TRANSIT

If small is one solution to the problem of affordability, locating housing near good public transportation is definitely another important solution in this era of dramatic gas price increases. Nelson believes the demand for housing near frequent bus lines and rail stations is so high that meeting it would require that every new residential unit constructed between now and 2050 would have to be built near transit. This supports research by the Center for Transit-Oriented Development (CTOD) in 2004 that projected the demand for housing near fixed-guideway stations by 2030 would be 14.6 million households.

Robert Lang, professor of urban affairs at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, believes that locating housing near transit provides a housing choice that could revitalize the suburbs. Lang has analyzed the fastest growing “boomburbs” in the Sun Belt, and he told USA Today in 2012 that of the 76 suburbs he studied the 43 with rail service — including Plano, Texas, Tempe, Arizona, and Aurora, Colorado — grew faster than those without rail lines. “In the last decade boomburbs grew one way: out,” Lang says. “This decade, large suburban cities can grow up around station stops.” Suburbs and smaller towns can both benefit from locating housing near transit. See chart at right: Households near transit in smaller regions.

The good news is that as the demand for more transportation choices has increased, regions are building more transit lines and more stations. Research by CTOD shows that the number of people who live near “fixed-guideway” transit — either rail or bus rapid transit that runs in a dedicated lane apart from other traffic — increased from 6.2 million households in 2000 to 6.6 million today. See list on opposite page: Top 10 regions with the fastest household growth near transit.

CTOD also found that regions with more extensive transit networks have exponentially more people living in neighborhoods around stations. See chart on page 16: Transit system size matters.

This is not only because there are more transit stations and because the neighborhoods around these stations typically allow taller buildings and higher densities. It’s also because larger transit systems connect residents and workers to more destinations, which make these station area neighborhoods more attractive places in which to live and work. Also, because these systems are bigger they provide greater potential to organize a region’s growth, thereby minimizing traffic congestion — which is key to ensuring that people and goods can keep moving, rather than idling in traffic. And this enhances a region’s economic competitiveness.

A NEW HOUSING MARKET

Building the kind of housing that people want in the locations where they want to live matters a great deal, Brookings Institution real-estate expert Christopher Leinberger wrote in The New Republic in 2010, because fixing the housing market is key to fixing the economy. Leinberger wrote that the built environment — defined as housing and commercial real estate and the transportation infrastructure that supports it — constitutes more than 35 percent of the assets of the American economy, the largest percent.

Leinberger also believes that an increasing share of the market is demanding something different. “What we need is ‘alternative’ transportation including rail, bike and walking infrastructure, and walkable development,” he wrote. “Without building this second half of the transportation system — and redeveloping our cities and transforming our suburbs with mixed-use, walkable development — we’ll be condemned to years of stagnation.”

It’s not only the real estate market that’s demanding something different. Municipalities that have been struggling because of the recession have come to understand that sprawl isn’t an efficient or feasible development pattern. This point of view was compellingly explained in a 2012 opinion piece on cnn.com by Bill Fulton, a well-known planner and former mayor of Ventura, California.

“The way in which we plan and build our towns and cities has a direct impact on how well they do,” Fulton writes. “Financial resiliency and prosperity is woven into the very fabric of cities. Where businesses go, where houses go, where roads go, where sidewalks go, where farms and natural spaces go — all of these things collectively affect a community’s economic performance and the cost of providing services. Put things closer together, the services cost less. Put things farther from each other, the services cost more for the jurisdiction and its taxpayers. But in the case of many American towns and cities, we haven’t always planned and built in this fiscally conservative way – and that’s one of the biggest reasons why cities are struggling today.”

The housing market is also challenged by the fact that home ownership is declining. While home ownership peaked in 2004 at 69 percent, according to David Shulman, senior economist at UCLA’s Ziman Center for Real Estate, the percentage fell to 66 percent in 2011 and is likely to fall to 65 percent by the end of 2012. Because of this, Nelson and others suggest that if the housing market is to deliver the choices that people need now not only should every new residential unit be built near rail stations but it should also be a rental unit.

While real estate values have fallen in the suburbs, they have risen in walkable and bikeable urban neighborhoods, a change quantified in a study by the Brookings Institution that looked at real estate values in urban communities compared to suburban communities. “Until the 1990s exclusive suburban homes that were accessible only by car cost more, per square foot, than other kinds of American housing,” writes Leinberger in the New York Times. “Now, however, these suburbs have become overbuilt, and housing values have fallen. Today the most valuable real estate lies in walkable urban locations.”

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Transit-Oriented Development in the States

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:55:51 -0500

A new report from the National Conference of State Legislatures entitled "Transit-Oriented Development in the States" has been added to the Resource Center best practices database.

The report examines state legislative action to define transit-oriented development, plan for and fund TOD, provide “last-mile” transportation solutions to get to and from a transit stop, and a number of other states strategies to encourage TOD.

Topics covered include:

An Increase in Demand for Transit
Federal Support for Transit-Oriented Development
State Support for Transit-Oriented Development
Defining TOD
Assembling Land For TOD
Zoning and Density
Catalyzing Investment in Existing Communities
Funding TOD
Solving the Last-Mile Riddle
Safe Routes to Transit
Public Bikesharing Systems
Public Carsharing Programs
Housing and TOD
Using TOD to Advance Other Policy Goals

The report also includes case studies from Utah, Minnesota, New Mexico, Massachusetts and California.

Read the introduction and download the full report

in the States

Orange Line Opportunity Corridor Report

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 18:54:33 -0500

The November 2012 "Orange Line Opportunity Corridor Report" report from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) in Boston has been added to the Resource Center best practices database.

MAPC is a regional planning agency serving 101 cities and towns of Metropolitan Boston. The Orange Line Opportunity Corridor Report is the first phase in a campaign to realize the full physical and functional potential of one of Boston’s busiest transit lines. This compilation of corridor characteristics and planned development activity will help municipalities, public and private developers, and community groups advocate for corridor investments and plan for the potential and impacts of transit-oriented development.

Read the executive summary and download the full report.

Are We There Yet? The Exodus

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 22:10:10 -0500

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The “old stereotypes” ... are the “incomplete communities,” the single family homes in single-use residential neighborhoods that became defined after WWII as the American Dream. They are connected by wide roads and freeways, and were built farther and farther out from downtowns. These are the neighborhoods that were promoted first by the loan guarantees provided by the G.I. Bill, and supported by the mortgage tax deduction, the lending policies of private banks and a massive road-building program, which together with other factors prompted an exodus from cities to the suburbs.

As Buzz Bissinger writes in the 1998 book A Prayer for the City: “The FHA, founded in 1934, was intended to help revive the nation’s dormant housing industry during the New Deal. But the ultimate influence of the FHA and its housing cousin, the Veterans Administration, went far beyond that, making the dream of home ownership available to millions of middle-class Americans, just as long as it was a dream that largely confined itself to the suburbs and not to the older cities.”

Mark I. Gelfand provides more detail in A Nation of Cities, a book published in 1975, explaining that the Federal Housing Administration “red-lined vast areas of the inner cities, refusing to insure mortgages where the neighborhoods were blighted or susceptible to blight.” Blight was defined not only in terms of the physical quality of the neighborhood, but also its racial and ethnic composition. “This action practically guaranteed that these districts would deteriorate still further and drag cities down with them.”

As a result, the suburban population increased by 43 percent from 1947 to 1953, compared to an increase of only 11 percent for the general population, according to Harvard professor Lizabeth Cohen. And over the 1950s families continued their escape to the suburbs, which grew an explosive 45 percent, compared to a growth rate in cities of just 0.1 percent. To meet this enormous demand, the home building industry developed a mass production model geared for large tracts of suburban homes linked by freeways, and the suburban population continued to grow, reaching 50 percent of the total national population in 2000, according to Cohen.

But this trend seems to have turned around, at least in the near term. As of July 2011 the U.S. Census Bureau reported that suburban growth had slowed to less than that of urban areas and that the nation’s cities were growing faster than the country as a whole, as the financial and foreclosure crises pushed more people to rent, soaring gas prices made long commutes unappealing, and high unemployment drew more people to big job centers.

“There’s a pall being cast on the outer edges,” says John McIlwain of the nonprofit Urban Land Institute, in an April 2012 USA Today story. “The foreclosures, the vacancies, the uncompleted roads. It’s uncomfortable out there. The glitz is off.” Adds Frey of Brookings, “This could be the end of the exurb as a place where people aspire to go when they’re starting their families. So many people have been burned by this . . . First-time home buyers, immigrants and minorities took a real big hit.”

Unfortunately, the real estate industry’s mass-production model doesn’t work when it comes to building infill housing on small lots in urban neighborhoods — which is where the real estate market is most active now — because there isn’t the same economy of scale. An article in The Atlantic in 2011 summed up the situation, pointing out that the suburban McMansion on a large tract of land exemplified a way of life in America at a particular point of time in the 1990s when Baby Boomer families were at the height of their income and household size, consumerism was at an all-time high and so was debt. But that moment has passed — parents are retiring, children have left home — and the foreclosure crisis has hit the suburbs hardest.

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Are We There Yet? The Push For Complete Communities

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 06:00:00 -0500

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The previous chapters on living, working and moving do not, of course, sum up all the things Americans need in order to thrive. We also need exercise and clean air, safe neighborhoods, good schools and quality childcare, healthy and affordable food, parks, shops, arts and culture — and a “built environment” in which all of this is available to people regardless of age or income or whether they can drive. but if indeed the “quality of human capital” is a key indicator of whether regions and the U.S. as a whole will be able to compete in the global economy — as discussed in the economist Intelligence Unit report at the beginning of the Working chapter — then we also need to invest in human development, an essential element of thriving.

This point was persuasively made by the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), a national community development finance institution that serves as a steward for capital in community-building initiatives, in a 2009 report entitled “Coming Out As a Human Capitalist.”

“Recent research is making the case that the communities we live in can help or harm us at every level — physically, socially, emotionally,” LIIF CEO Nancy Andrews and Christopher Kramer write. “These effects can stay with us for the rest of our lives. There is a revolution in knowledge afoot that demonstrates convincingly that investing in people, especially in children, is every bit as important as investing in markets and buildings.”

The report discusses the growing evidence that children exposed to poverty suffer from actual impairment of brain function because they experience a level of stress — from family turmoil, substandard housing and overcrowding, neighborhood and/or family violence, frequent relocation — that results in a reduction of working memory. This, in turn, affects their ability to learn and limits their chances of success.

Housing costs currently consume 66 percent of a poor household’s budget, according to the report, leaving less than $500 a month for everything else — less than $20 a day to feed the children, and pay for transportation, health care, books, clothing and recreation. “This is a budget of deprivation,” the authors write, “where families are often forced to choose between the rent and food, between heating and eating. Conditions like this can produce high levels of stress, poor nutrition and poor health. They can be crushing, especially to young children. . . . We must understand that our vision cannot be community development alone, but rather community and human development together.”

Our report is largely about the community development part of the equation — how the built environment and choices about housing, jobs and transportation can set us up for success or failure according to a number of metrics. In this chapter we broaden this discussion to include factors such as public health and access to quality education and childcare. But as the LIIF report makes clear, affordability and access to economic opportunity really are key to determining whether many of us will thrive, or only some of us, and this will determine whether America will remain competitive.

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Are We There Yet? Getting Out Of Gear

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 06:00:00 -0500

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Trends underway in the housing and jobs market portend a need for more transportation choices to help people get where they need to go as well as to enhance this country’s economic competitiveness. Market trends confirm the shift in demand away from single-use, single-family neighborhoods, corporate campuses and shopping centers connected by highways, and toward compact mixed-use neighborhoods where streets are not the sole province of fast-moving cars but are shared with pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users. Providing more transportation choices is critical to supporting this 21st century lifestyle and it seems to be what both younger and older generations want.

For the younger generation, traffic congestion, $5 a gallon gas prices, and the popularity of smartphones and social media have made driving far less appealing than it was to their parents. According to the U.S. department of Transportation, half of all 16-year-olds obtained a driver’s license in 1978 while only 30 percent of 16-year-olds got a license in 2008. A 2012 University of Michigan study found the number of 18-year-olds with licenses declined from 80 percent in 1983 to 65 percent in 2008.

From 2001 to 2009 the average annual number of miles driven by young people dropped 23 percent, according to a 2012 study by the U.S. Public Interest Research group and the Frontier Foundation. The study authors note that gas prices, new driver licensing laws, technology that supports alternative transportation, and changes in values and preferences are all triggering this decline — and suggest the change may be long-lasting.

“Federal and local governments have historically made massive investments in new highway capacity on the assumption that driving will continue to increase at a rapid and steady pace. The changing transportation preferences of young people — and Americans overall — throw those assumptions into doubt,” write the report’s authors. They note that the recession has probably played a role, but that the trend occurred even among young people who were employed and/or doing well financially. They conclude, “The time has come for transportation policy to reflect the needs and desires of today’s Americans — not the worn-out conventional wisdom from days gone by.”

Another study, by Gartner Research in 2011, found that when a group of 18-to-24-year-olds was asked to choose between having Internet access or a car, nearly half said they would choose Internet access. The researchers concluded that smartphones and computers offer the same ability to connect socially with friends as a car — but require less time and money.

“The iPhone is the Ford Mustang of today,” says study author Thilo Koslowski. “Back in the ’50s and ’60s, everyone was keen on getting their driver’s license because it was liberating. Now freedom lies in accessing data online, and people are meeting up on social media sites. Mobile devices, gadgets and the Internet are the must-have lifestyle products that convey status — instead of the car.”

This shift in the preferences of younger Americans may also have to do with demographics. The majority of Americans under the age of 18 are non-white, and many are second- or third-generation Latino and Asian Americans. University of Southern California professor Manuel Pastor told the audience at the 2011 Rail~Volution conference that America’s rapidly changing ethnic makeup is upending conventional models of how we live, work, move and play. And the data shows that minority Americans — younger Latinos in particular — are more comfortable taking transit, and have a greater interest in living in urban areas.

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Growing Station Areas: The Variety and Potential of Transit Oriented Development in Metro Boston

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:15:55 -0500

The June 2012 report "Growing Station Areas: The Variety and Potential of Transit Oriented Development in Metro Boston" has been added to the Resource Center's best practices database.

As Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) explains, transit-oriented development (TOD) is a strategy for developing residential and commercial areas in places that are already accessible by public transit. To achieve sustainable and equitable transit-oriented development in the Metropolitan Boston area requires varied strategies, and defining those strategies requires a detailed understanding of factors such as land use, demographics, and development plans of existing station areas.

MAPC, which is the regional planning agency serving the 101 cities and towns of Metropolitan Boston, conducted an analysis to define the need for different financing tools or prioritization of investments in the Metro Boston region. The analysis was conducted for the Sustainable Communities TOD Finance Advisory Committee with assistance from the Dukakis Center at Northeastern University.

That analysis found the transit station area typology can help advance equitable and sustainable TOD in a variety of ways:

Housing, economic development, and infrastructure programs can use the typology to establish funding criteria that reflect both local conditions as well as regional TOD goals.
Analysis of TOD financing needs and the design of potential new TOD finance products can acknowledge the distinct station area types and the different finance/market conditions that exist in each one.
Technical assistance from MAPC and other partners can be targeted to station areas with strong potential for TOD but few developments in the pipeline.
Municipalities and stakeholders can use the analysis to evaluate specific development proposals against the range of densities and project attributes appropriate for the station area type.
The MBTA can use the analysis of TOD potential to plan for capacity expansion or to evaluate the potential development impacts of service changes.

Read the executive summary and download the report

Growing Station Areas

The Variety and Potential of Transit Oriented Development in Metro BostonGrowing Station Areas

The Variety and Potential of Transit Oriented Development in Metro Boston

Federal Policy Update: Smart Growth & Economic Success

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:28:12 -0500

Smart Growth & Economic Success

The EPA's Smart Growth Program has released a new report, Smart Growth and Economic Success, on the economic advantages of smart growth development. As this report shows, smart growth development -- compact, walkable, and diverse -- is attractive to developers, investors, local governments, and communities because it offers new opportunities for economic growth that is also environmentally sustainable:

Compact: Using land and resources more efficiently and redeveloping old or neglected areas while retaining existing infrastructure can create economic advantages for real estate developers and investors, businesses, and local governments. Compact development can generate more revenue per acre because it uses land more efficiently. It can reduce the costs of land and infrastructure for individual projects and the costs of providing fire and police protection, utilities, schools, and other public amenities. By locating companies closer together, compact development can create a density of employment that increases economic productivity and attracts additional investment.
Walkable: Walkable neighborhoods have well-connected streets and a mix of land uses near each other, making walking and bicycling more convenient and appealing. Projects in walkable neighborhoods command a price premium, earning real estate developers and investors a higher return on investment. Improvements to streets and sidewalks can help local businesses by attracting more customers. Local governments benefit from additional property and sales tax revenue.
Diverse: People and businesses value places that bring together a variety of activities to create vibrant environments. The demand for such places exceeds the supply. Many baby boomers and their children are particularly interested in lively neighborhoods with services to meet their daily needs close by. Communities with access to transit also help people reduce their transportation costs.

Smart Growth and Economic Success is the first in a series. Additional reports will explore how real estate developers and investors can overcome real and perceived barriers to infill, how decisions about where to locate will impact the bottom lines of businesses, and why smart growth strategies are good fiscal policy for local governments.

FTA Transit Asset Management Dialogue

The Federal Transit Administration has announced that it will hold an online dialogue on Transit Asset Management from Dec. 12, 2012, through Jan. 4, 2013. This Dialogue will provide public transportation stakeholders with an opportunity to provide comments to FTA on transit asset management requirements in MAP-21 in advance of FTA beginning a related rulemaking process.

For more information: fta.dot.gov/map21/TAMdialogue

To subscribe to Reconnecting America's Federal Updates, Join Our Network.

Are We There Yet? A New 9 To 5

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 06:00:00 -0500

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Just as Americans are changing their ideas about what makes a house a home, there’s a new “9 to 5” with the emergence of “knowledge-based economies” and an “information society” that capitalizes on the generation and distribution of new ideas, technology and other creative content to provide a competitive advantage. The main players in this new economic order are the “creative class” and a growing service sector that works at all hours. As the industrial age has drawn to a close the global economy has come to rely less on proximity to natural resources such as timber, coal and oil, and cities and their suburbs are assuming a heightened role as a result.

“For more than 30 years, the American economy has been in the midst of a sea change, shifting from industry to services and information, and integrating itself far more tightly into a single, global market for goods, labor and capital,” writes Don Peck in a 2011 article in The Atlantic entitled “Can the Middle Class Be Saved?” “To some degree, this transformation has felt disruptive all along. But the pace of the change has quickened since the turn of the millennium, and even more so since the crash.”

Well over half the world’s population now lives in cities, according to a 2012 study for citigroup by The Economist magazine’s Economist Intelligence Unit, which defines cities as metropolitan areas that include both cities and their suburbs (we will use the term “region” when discussing the report). The authors say that for most countries today, economic success hinges on the performance of these metropolitan regions, and that as mass urbanization continues across the world, they will wield greater and greater influence.

The study ranks regions from around the world according to their ability to be competitive — to attract capital, businesses, talent and visitors — and found that while the business and regulatory environment is important, the “quality of human capital” and the quality of life helped the highest-ranking regions sustain a high economic growth rate and harmonious business and social environment.

New York City placed first in the rankings. “I’ve always believed that talent attracts capital more effectively and consistently than capital attracts talent,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says in the Economist Intelligence Unit report.

The study found a clear correlation between human capital and overall competitiveness, and talent was cited as a key difference between many regions in developed and emerging economies, with the former focusing on skills development and the latter on low-cost labor. “Many firms fight to attract highly educated and skilled workers, and as such many choose new [regions] for growth on the basis of the potential talent pool located there,” note the study’s authors. “An ongoing shift toward a more knowledge-oriented economy is exacerbating this process.”

The study also found that while regions of all sizes can be competitive, density is a factor, with bigger regions offering a larger labor pool, higher demand and economies of scale. However, the report’s authors note, these regions must be planned correctly — or else “congestion

and other issues can actively impede their competitiveness” — as well as provide the kind of housing, transportation, lifestyle choices and quality of life that the “talent” they are competing for wants.

This shift toward a knowledge-based economy, however, is leaving some Americans behind: The production and manufacturing jobs that were once the backbone of the American middle class — which according to a 2012 Pew Research Center Study has shrunk from 61 percent

of the adult population in 1971 to just 51 percent today — have disappeared or moved offshore. The middle class is defined as those with annual household incomes in 2010 between $39,000 and $118,000 for a family of three.

“The notion that we are a society with a large middle class, with lots of economic and social mobility and a belief that each generation does better than the next — these are among the core tenets of what it means to be an American,” Paul Taylor of the Pew Research Center told the Los Angeles Times. “But that’s not necessarily the case any more.”

More Blog Posts In This Series

12th Annual New Partners For Smart Growth Coming In February

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 01:00:00 -0500

The 12th annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference will be held Feb. 7-9, 2013, in Kansas City, MO. Reconnecting America is an official cosponsor.

The three-day conference includes nearly 100 sessions, tours, networking activities, special events and specialized trainings and workshops. It will also include continuing education credits for several disciplines (including landscape architects, architects, AICP planners, and attorneys).

An interactive online engagement platform has also been created in conjunction with the conference, created and sponsored by MindMixer. EnvisionSustainableCommunities.com is powered by the ideas of engaged people from across the nation, and will provide forum for communities to share their success stories of overcoming challenges, implementing smart growth practices and creating more sustainable, equitable, and prosperous communities, now and into the future. While this tool is connected to the New Partners Conference, anyone interested in sustainable communities can participate, share and be part of this online conversation.

The registration deadline is Jan. 18. Visit the conference web site at www.NewPartners.org to register, get more program and event details, and information on making hotel reservations.

Winnipeg Transit-Oriented Development Handbook & Station Typology

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 01:14:52 -0500

The Winnipeg Transit-Oriented Development Handbook and Typology Guide have been added to the Resource Center's best practices database.

The city of Winniped describes the TOD Handbook as a synthesis of “best practice” TOD principles to help policymakers, developers, the Public Service, and members of the public guide development and redevelopment adjacent rapid transit and high frequency transit corridors.

The introduction to the handbook explains: "Transit-oriented development (TOD) is a key component of this balanced approach. By enabling density, mixed use, accessible urban design and sustainable transportation options, it:

contributes to the overall sustainability of the city,
provides a valued complement to existing land use patterns, and
offers a lifestyle option that appeals to many people."

The handbook is organized into three main sections:

Overview of TOD. This section defines TOD, presents benefits and challenges of TOD and discusses the relationship of the transit station to the surrounding land uses.
Core Principles of TOD. This section presents the six key elements every successful TOD should include. Supporting each principle is a best practice case study.
Tools for Implementing TOD. This section builds on the core principles and presents tools that can be used to make TOD a reality.

The handbook also includes in a separate publication, a guidebook to the typology of station areas.

Winnipeg TOD Handbook

Winnipeg TOD Handbook Typology

Are We There Yet? The Expanding Choices

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:21:24 -0500

Visit the Are We There Yet? home

Americans are beginning to change their expectations of what makes a house a home. We are less interested in spending three hours a day slogging to work from the fringes of suburbia — and less and less able to pay for the gas to do so. We’re beginning to return to cities as well as to closer-in suburbs that offer more housing and transportation choices. We’re looking for lofts, apartments, places where we can walk to shops, take a bus or train or bike to work, and more easily enjoy the companionship of neighbors.

The realities of the 21st century are calling for these different lifestyle and real estate choices: high gas prices and traffic congestion; the increasing expense of heating, cooling and maintaining a large home; a severe, long-term recession, tough job market and the need to reduce spending; a rapidly aging population and more single-person and single parent households; concerns about America’s public health, and our ability to compete in the global economy; concerns about the environment and climate change.

“A new image of America is in the making,” notes Brookings Institution demographer William Frey after Brookings released its analysis of 2000-2008 census data. “What used to be white flight to the suburbs is turning into ‘bright flight’ to cities that have become magnets for aspiring young adults who see access to knowledge-based jobs, public transportation and a new city ambiance as an attraction. Old stereotypes no longer apply.”

Carol Coletta, then director of CEOs for Cities, adds in a 2011 USA Today interview, “Clearly the next generation of Americans is looking for different kinds of lifestyles — walkable, with art, culture and entertainment. This is no longer anecdotal. Every metro area has good suburbs, but if you don’t have a strong downtown and close-in neighborhoods then you are not offering a choice that many of them are seeking. Offering that choice is a real competitive advantage for cities.”

More choices are indeed what Americans seem to want now, and one popular choice — not for all Americans, but an increasing number — is what some people are calling “complete communities.” These are neighborhoods in cities and suburbs where daily exercise is routine and pleasant and could involve walking or biking to work, where daily tasks, including shopping and taking the children to school, can also be done on foot or bike, where neighborhoods are clean and safe and “neighborly,” and both housing and transportation is more affordable.

These “complete communities” are built upon “opportunity areas,” a term we use to denote those neighborhoods — or even just a part of a neighborhood — with smaller blocks and moderate density housing and/or jobs so that some people can live and work in the same neighborhoods.

Opportunity areas and complete communities can be in urban or suburban places, though they tend to be in the downtowns and “first-ring” suburbs of older cities. In many downtowns and close-in suburbs the combination of vacant lots and abandoned properties as well as historic rail infrastructure offer redevelopment potential, and investment in these places could bring new life to neighborhoods that would offer people the kind of housing and transportation choices that have become popular.

According to Reconnecting America’s research, more than 1 in 6 American households are in opportunity areas, a total of more than 17 million households. See List below: Top 10 regions with households in opportunity areas.

More Blog Posts In This Series

Monday Night Football Matchup A Battle For Midsize Complete Communities

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 12:37:43 -0500

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Kansas City vs Pittsburgh is a battle between midsize contenders in the Complete Communities contest, but storied programs on the gridiron. Pittsburgh (2.3 million) and Kansas City (2.0 million) fall in the category of regions between 1 and 3 million people and competed directly against each other (and their peers) to receive their scores in Living, Working, Moving and Thriving.

While the Steelers have been shining in the last decade, economically things have been tough for Pittsburgh, so it’s hard not to delight in their current upward trajectory. Once a major player in the steel industry, Pittsburgh has a complex fixed-guideway transit system with light rail and bus rapid transit (BRT) combined, with 94 stations in the region. Local leadership has been key to making the connection between transit, land use, and revitalization opportunities. For example, Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group (PCRG), a coalition of nonprofit community based organizations and core partners dedicated to the revitalization of urban neighborhoods, was a key player in the economic revitalization around the East Liberty BRT station.

Kansas City, however, is not-quite-literally making tracks in expanding its own fixed-guideway BRT network. With 24 fixed-guideway stations on two BRT lines today, the region is studying several other corridors to determine what kind of transit makes the best fit.

Despite similar population size, Pittsburgh has more than three times as many opportunity areas as Kansas City. More compact development and smaller blocks give them a definite edge in the Complete Communities challenge. Only 7.3% of households in KC live in opportunity areas, compared to 22.5% of households in Pittsburgh. And nearly twice as many jobs are located in opportunity areas in Pittsburgh compared to Kansas City. This is the likely imbalance we’ll see on the field as well with the Chiefs having one of the worst seasons on record oscillating between quarterbacks and having a tough time on offense.

Commuters are more likely to take transit, walk, or bike in Pittsburgh compared to Kansas City, and Pittsburgh actually ranks in the top 30 safest places to walk in the country. Kansas City falls farther below at number 83. While Mendenhall is hurt, Isaac Redman is looking to walk all over the Chiefs as well.

However, when it comes to some of the other elements of a Complete Community, Pittsburgh could take a lesson from KC. Pittsburgh beats out Kansas City on Living, Working, and Moving (three A’s compared to Kansas City’s B, C and B), but under Thriving, Kansas City gets a respectable B, while Pittsburgh falls down into the C category. There are twice as many low-income households living more than a mile from a grocery store in Pittsburgh, raising serious equity concerns about low-income access to healthy food. More than twice as many households in Kansas City live near a park, and a slightly higher percent of those households are lower-income families as well, compared to Pittsburgh.

Overall, Pittsburgh wins the Complete Communities fight today, but it’s up in the air if they’ll hold onto their lead moving forward. On the field, it’s tough to see how Kansas City wins this one, but you never know on any given Sunday.

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How Far We Are Away From 'There' In Health Issues

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 20:24:36 -0500

In Are We There Yet?, Reconnecting America explains that one measure of Complete Communities is healthy outcomes that see reduced incidences of diabetes, less obesity and a more active populace.

The problem in America today is graphically illustrated by three maps added to the Resource Center Map Room. Using CDC data from 2009, these maps show the distribution of obesity, diabetes and inactivity in America.

Percentage of Adults Who Are Obese

Percentage of Adults With Diagnosed Diabetes

Percentage of Physically Inactive Adults

See more National Maps

Monday Night Football Matchup A Close Contest In The Complete Communities Battle

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 14:58:30 -0500

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Michael Vick and the Eagles meet Drew Brees and New Orleans’ Who Dat Nation on Monday night in a battle of NFC superiority. In the complete communities arena, Philadelphia and New Orleans is a close game. New Orleans leads in Working and Moving, but only by a fraction, and both regions need some work when it comes to how their people can Thrive.

Shared strengths: high share of jobs near transit, high share of households and workers in opportunity areas, many small, walkable blocks, and both regions have their transit stations in places that support transportation choices—opportunity areas

With their more extensive system, Philadelphia pulls ahead when it comes to connecting residents with fixed-guideway transit. But New Orleans is continuing to plan for both streetcar and interregional rail connections that will extend the fixed-guideway transit network. Philly has a good ground game with McCoy but the double threat of Brees and Sproles is coming quickly to match.

Shared weaknesses: Both regions need healthier food options in opportunity areas. Pennsylvania created a program that has helped build 88 new grocery stores in 34 counties, including 26 in Philadelphia, and is clearly on the right track with this metric. And both regions need to get out and move just a bit more. In New Orleans, 20% of residents don’t get any regular physical activity and in Philadelphia the number isn’t much better at 17%.

Finally, though both regions have a high share of the overall population near a park, households in opportunity areas don’t fare quite as well compared to other regions in the US. But we do know that there will be a packed house on Monday Night. In complete communities, New Orleans pulls it off before time expires. But we know Philly will punch above their weight.

Win: New Orleans – (For Entertainment Purposes Only)

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New Additions To Resource Center Best Practices

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 19:59:07 -0400

A trio of reports have been added to the Resource Center best practices database.

Ten Principles for Successful Development Around Transit (2003)

Principles presented in this report serve as reminders for communities, designers, and developers who may have forgotten transit-oriented development.

Assessing the Walkability of the Workplace: A New Audit Tool (2005)

Walking can be incorporated into most people’s daily routines if the process is made convenient by a well-designed built environment. Walkability rarely is assessed in the workplace, where adults spend much of their time. Facility planners may find this walkability instrument useful in identifying and eliminating barriers to convenient walking opportunities in workplaces such as office parks and university campuses.

Urban Public Transportation Systems (2002)

Useful glossary and definitions of the various components of urban public transportation systems.

Monday Night Football Matchup No Contest In Competition For Complete Communities

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:23:21 -0400

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It will be a battle between the cities of Sun and Fog. The San Francisco 49ers matchup against the Arizona Cardinals in a rough and tumble battle between bitter division rivals. But what about livability and complete communities?

It should be no surprise to fans of livability and complete communities that the Bay Area scores higher than the Phoenix region. San Francisco gets all A’s, while Phoenix sits just above Atlanta, Riverside, and Dallas-Fort Worth with three C’s and a D.

The Phoenix region does worst on “Living” and can thank its sprawling development patterns for much of that low score. The region has a highly successful light rail line with 27 stations, but only 2.3% of households live within walking distance of the line. A slightly higher percentage of people live in opportunity areas in the Phoenix region (and there are 82 of these places spread throughout), but still, only 9.7% of households in these walkable, compact places.

The Bay Area, on the other hand, is fifth in the nation in the number of households living near transit and third in the number of households living in opportunity areas. In comparison, you can see where Phoenix has room for improvement.

We know connecting jobs to transit is key to winning the game of connecting people to places, and 10.7% of Phoenix regional jobs are within walking distance of a light rail station. However, the planned additions to the light rail system only connect an additional 2.8% of regional jobs. For a region with only one light rail line today, that’s not an impressive addition and those future lines on the map will have to step up big like Larry Fitzgerald to make a play.

Only 2.2% of commuters in Phoenix take transit (light rail or bus), which is about the same as Missoula, MT, a town with no fixed-guideway transit.

So, what’s Phoenix doing right? Well, its first light rail line was an awesome start, and Phoenix has the potential to continue on that momentum. The region also has a decent score on some of the healthy food indicators: only 12% of opportunity areas are food deserts, the region has a low ratio of fast food establishments to healthy food ones, and most of the population stays pretty active. Phoenix also does pretty well on connecting opportunity areas to parks.

It’s going to be a hot one in Phoenix tonight with the vaunted 49ers defense taking on the Arizona offense led by some of the best in the league. Whoever the quarterback is for the Cardinals, expect a hard fought game in the desert Monday Night.

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Federal Policy Update: Effective Practices in Planning for Livable Communities at MPO Webinar

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 11:43:41 -0400

Effective Practices in Planning for Livable Communities at MPO

A Federal Highway Administration webinar, "Effective Practices in Planning for Livable Communities at Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs)" will be held November 13, from 1:00-2:30pm ET.The webinar will present innovative MPO programs that promote livability as a follow up to FHWA/FTA peer exchange (Details about peer exchange here).

Reconnecting America provides occasional email updates on federal activities related to transit, TOD, and sustainable communities. Updates may include key legislative or regulatory actions, grant opportunities, relevant resources, or original analysis. If you would like to receive these emails, visit our Join Our Network page.

Recap From Next American City Vanguard Conference In St. Louis

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:49:45 -0400

In October 2012, 43 of the nation’s young urban leaders met up in St. Louis for the Next American City Vanguard conference, an annual competition to find the “40-under-40” urban leaders who have “bright ideas for cities, experience in the field and ambition for the future.” I was honored to take part in the two-day conference and meet some of my peers from around the country while also experiencing the sights and sounds that make the city of St. Louis one of America’s great cities.

The conference was held in downtown St. Louis and included events at the City Museum, Regional Arts Commission in Delmar and a developer’s rooftop condo in the Washington Avenue Loft District. We also went on a bus tour of the city to see firsthand all of the great urban neighborhoods of St. Louis, as well as learn more about the history and revitalization of what was once America’s fourth largest city. We also had many opportunities to socialize with our fellow Vanguards at local bars and restaurants and learn more about the work we are all doing in many different cities in multiple sectors and environments.

Overall, the Vanguard conference was a great experience, and I left feeling confident that there are so many other young people out there who share my passion for sustainable and equitable transit-oriented communities. We all learned a great deal from each other and enhanced our social networks, and I feel confident that we will keep in touch as we progress in our careers and confront common challenges. It also reinforced my belief that each of our communities is different and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to what ails them. Some Vanguards are working solely in one community while others, including myself, work nationally. The cities we represented were all at different stages of growth as well—some hailed from Rust Belt cities where things are just turning around, while others like me live in growing regions that are at critical stages in their urban development. The issues we care about are also quite diverse. But we are ambitious, passionate individuals who are the future leaders of our communities, and the opportunity to spend 48 hours together created an “idea virus” that will help us all with our work back home.

To learn more about the Vanguard class of 2012, read the official announcement here.
Reconnecting America’s announcement of the Vanguard award here.
A slideshow from the conference is available here

Federal Policy Update: 2011 American Housing Survey Highlights Webinar

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:24:35 -0400

The HUD Office of Policy Development and Research will hold a half-hour webinar on 2011 American Housing Survey Highlights on Oct. 23 from 1pm to 1:30pm EDT.

The presentation will discuss highlights from the 2011 AHS, items included in the release of the 2011 AHS data, and items to be included in future releases. The presentation will last for 15 minutes, followed by 15 minutes of questions and answers from webinar attendees.

For more information on the American Housing Survey click here.

Speakers:

Shawn Bucholtz, Director of Housing and Demographic Analysis, HUD
David Vandenbroucke, Senior Economist, HUD
Tamara Cole, Survey Director, American Housing Survey, U.S. Census Bureau

Title: 2011 American Housing Survey Highlights Webinar
Date: Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Time: 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM EDT

The Windy City vs Motor City: Monday Night Complete Communities Matchup

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 19:28:14 -0400

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It’s a can’t miss divisional matchup between these two monsters of the Midwest. The Detroit Lions take on the Chicago Bears, each looking to put a critical win in the books. But how do the two places compare when it comes to building complete communities? As we saw a couple of weeks back, Chicago isn’t a high achiever, but they make a decent “B” across the board, due to the combination of the region’s extensive transit network and compact growth patterns.

Detroit’s three “C’s” and a “D” indicate while not in the bottom of the bin, there is a need for more work to be done. The region’s fixed-guideway network consists of a people mover in the downtown today, and though a high share of households in the region (17%) do live in opportunity areas, there are many places doing better than that, including some small towns without NFL teams, such as Missoula, MT, and Reading, PA. The Detroit region does even worse when it comes to concentrating jobs in opportunity areas, which is also reflected in the relatively low employment density of the region. Sprawling jobs are harder to serve with transit, meaning that more people will need a car to access those opportunities.

However, there are many people working hard to move Detroit’s grades to the next level. Planning for transit along the Woodward corridor to connect major educational institutions, hospitals, and entertainment centers is one step in the right direction. It’s an easy connection, just like Matthew Stafford to Megatron. Detroit and Chicago do a similar job of linking parks to opportunity areas (better than average, but room for improvement in both) and 47% of blocks in the Detroit region are walkable—better than the majority of regions in the US. But we suspect that the Lions defense is hoping that Cutler isn’t going to walk all over THEM.

Detroit vs. Chicago – Edge Chicago (For entertainment purposes only!)

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Compact And Complete Communities

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 18:22:04 -0400

Two reports by Professor Gary Pivo that explore compact and complete communities have been added to the Resouce Center best practices database.

The 1996 report Toward sustainable urbanization on Mainstreet Cascadia identifies growth patterns that promote sustainable development and points to "low impact cities" that might be models for other cities to follow. The paper includes a Compact and Complete Community Index.

The followup report in 2005, Creating Compact and Complete Communities: Seven Propositions For Success, expolores the example of Kirkland, WA, the most compact and complete suburb in Washington State. Detailed study of the Kirkland case produced Seven Propositions for Success.

How to Make the Most of the Federal TIFIA Loan Program For Transit and TOD Projects

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 15:05:56 -0400

The greatly expanded federal Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program under the recently enacted MAP-21 (Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act) can provide more than $17 billion in loans to eligible projects. Equally important, MAP-21 includes several key technical changes that will make it easier for transit projects to access this program and secure funding. However, time is of the essence.

On Oct. 24 from 1 to 2:30pm ET, Transportation for America will hold a free webinar to explain how transit agencies can get the most out of the program for transit and TOD projects.

The TIFIA program provides direct loans, loan guarantees, and standby lines of credit to eligible surface transportation projects, including transit, highway, bridge, ITS, port access, freight intermodal facilities, intercity bus and passenger rail rolling stock and facilities (including AMTRAK), and transit-oriented development infrastructure. Demand for TIFIA financing is high and the new rolling application process means agencies should act quickly before USDOT fully obligates all TIFIA financing.

Webinar Speakers include:

James Corless: Director, Transportation for America
Kevin DeGood: Deputy Policy Director, Transportation for America
Tina Votaw: Transit Oriented Development Specialist, Charlotte CATS
Pres Kabacoff: Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors & Chief Executive Officer, HRI Properties
Richard Allen: Financial Project Manager, HRI Properties

How to Make the Most of the Federal TIFIA Loan Program For Transit and TOD Projects
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. ET (10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. PT)
Register Here

New Report Documents Rising H+T Costs Are Outpacing Family Income

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 14:04:25 -0400

The combined costs of housing and transportation in the nation's largest 25 metro areas have swelled by 44 percent since 2000 while incomes have failed to keep pace, according to a new report. "Losing Ground: The Struggle of Moderate-Income Households to Afford the Rising Costs of Housing and Transportation" details the challenges that American households face as the combined costs of housing and transportation consume an ever-larger share of household incomes.

The report, written by the Center for Housing Policy (the research affiliate of the National Housing Conference) and the Center for Neighborhood Technology, includes a special focus on moderate-income households, defined as those earning between 50 and 100 percent of the median household income in their area. In the 25 largest metro areas, the report finds that moderate-income households spend an average of 59 percent of their income on housing and transportation. The report finds cost burdens to be highest in the Miami area, where moderate-income households spend 72 percent of their income on housing and transportation. The next highest burdens are in the Riverside-San Bernardino, CA, rea (69 percent), the Tampa area (66 percent), and the Los Angeles area (65 percent).

"If we really want to understand whether housing is affordable, we need to consider housing and transportation costs together," explains Center for Housing Policy Executive Director Jeffrey Lubell. "Along with utilities, which we include within housing costs, these are the true 'costs of place,' and our report shows they have grown much faster than incomes since 2000."

The report finds that housing and transportations costs have increased 44 percent over this period while household incomes have risen only 25 percent. As a result, Americans are now substantially less able to afford their costs of place, undermining their ability to meet other critical household expenses, such as food, clothing, health insurance and child care.

"Both housing and transportation costs need to be made more affordable," notes Center for Neighborhood Technology President and Co-Founder Scott Bernstein. "Letting the public know that the full cost of a location includes both housing and transportation is a first step; targeting resources that lower the cost of transportation, such as improved public transportation, to areas where it will help America's working families, is also essential."

Read the Executive Summary and download the full report.

Federal Policy Update: American Housing Survey Data & Making Most Of TIFIA Webinar

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 14:00:20 -0400

HUD today made the American Housing Survey 2011 data available to the public. This survey provides high quality national housing data that is used by policymakers, public agencies, and others to analyze the state of housing in America. The 2011 AHS features many changes. The one that will strike data users first is that the files are a lot bigger. That’s because, for the first time, AHS national and metropolitan survey cases are integrated into the same dataset. Not only, that, but the 2011 data collection included a whopping 29 metropolitan surveys, at 4500 cases each! Thus, the core NEWHOUSE file contains 186,448 records, and the PERSON file has 339,453. The standard weighting variables (WEIGHT and WGT90GEO) allow you to use all of the metropolitan cases in your national-level analysis. There is also a new weight variable, WGTMETRO, which allows you to tabulate the metropolitan areas on their own.

The 2011 American Housing Survey Public Use File (AHSPUF) is available for download from HUD USER.

Join Transportation for America for an online presentation "Making the Most of TIFIA Financing" on October 24. The recently enacted MAP-21 significantly expanded this federally subsidized loan program and made several changes that will make it easier for transit projects to win federal financing. T4 staff will give an overview of the program and experts from the public and private sectors will discuss the benefits of TIFIA financing for public transportation projects, including the potential for transit-oriented development projects.

Making the Most of TIFIA Financing
Wednesday October 24 from 1:00 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time (10:00 to 11:30 AM Pacific Time)
Register here.

Reconnecting America provides occasional updates via email on federal activities related to transit, TOD, and sustainable communities. Updates may include key legislative or regulatory actions, grant opportunities, relevant resources, or original analysis. To update your email preferences, visit our Join Our Network page.

Interdivision Rivalry For Complete Communities On Monday Night Football

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 11:18:01 -0400

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The Denver Broncos and a resurgent Payton Manning take on a Chargers team Monday night. These division rivals have no love lost and will seek to keep each other further away from the post season with a win today.

In the realm of complete communities, unlike on the gridiron, San Diego and Denver compete in different divisions. San Diego competes with the heavyweights, with just over 3 million residents, while Denver falls in the middle division, where regions between 3 million and 500,000 population compete. That in part may explain why Denver brings home straight “A’s” in Living, Moving, Working, and Thriving, while San Diego has three “Cs” and a “B.” Denver’s competition isn’t generally as fierce as San Diego faces in the top tier.

In many cases, San Diego does a better job on individual metrics than Denver. San Diego has a higher share of households who live near fixed-guideway transit, and they’ve been investing in and building out their transit network for longer than Denver. The San Diego region currently has more than twice as many fixed-guideway stations as Denver. However, once the ambitious plans that Denver has on the books are built out, they’ll be the leaders out of this matchup, so San Diego may need to look out.

And even with the smaller fixed-guideway network, Denver has a higher share of commuters taking transit. That may be related to the fact that the Denver region is doing a better job at attracting and retaining the college educated 18- to 34-year-olds. Denver has more parks per household in opportunity areas, and both have transit lines direct to the stadium, so expect to see those light rail trains full for games.

Broncos vs Bolts. Manning vs Rivers. City vs City.

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FTA Program and Funding Information & Interim Guidance Under MAP-21

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:09:50 -0400

The Federal Transit Administration has published interim guidance and other important information regarding MAP-21's changes to FTA's programs. Primarily, the guidance focuses on the core transit formula programs, and states that future regulations or guidance will be issued for other programs, such as New Starts/Small Starts, planning, and safety. Separately, FTA issued a detailed list of apportionments, i.e. how much funding each urbanized area or state can expect to receive for the first half of FY2013 from FTA's formula programs. (Only half of FY2013's authorized funding has been made available so far by Congressional appropriators, which is why FTA can only apportion a half-year's worth of funding.)

For full details, go here

Monday Night Football: The Contest For Complete Communities

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

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Hey gridiron junkies! This week we see the Houston Texans head to the Meadowlands in New Jersey to take on the New York J-E-T-S JETS! New Jersey transit serves the stadium and fans will be rocking the trains to MetLife Stadium. It’s certainly fitting that the Texans stadium sponsor is Reliant Energy with the region’s focus on oil and gas and New York’s is MetLife, with a heavy representation of financial services.

In the city showdown, Houston has a tough time competing with the juggernaut that is the New York region. Not only does New York lead the nation in the number of fixed-guideway transit stations (800+), they have twice as many opportunity areas as any other region in the US. Unsurprisingly, this means that New York has more people living and working near transit and living and working in opportunity areas than any other region in the country.

However, Houston isn’t just fourth or fifth behind the New York region. Houston ranks 114th in the share of the population living in opportunity areas, behind Chico, Hartford, and San Luis Obispo. The region has a fair number of opportunity areas (89 total), but they aren’t being used to their full potential. This extends to food access and the availability of places for kids to play as well. The New York region is ranked 14th on food access for households without a car, while Houston has a larger share of their population living farther from healthy food. And while 55% of New Yorkers live near a park, only 30% of Houstonians do.

Don’t get us wrong. 10% of Reconnecting America staff members were born and raised in Houston, and we’re pretty dang proud of where the region has been headed over the last fifteen years. Building up the ground game with Arian Foster and Houston’s light rail has garnered astonishing results as Foster has both the highest number of carries in the NFL through week 4 and Houston has the highest ridership per mile of any new light rail system in the country. Houston is also beginning to think about how to truly offer choices when it comes to the types of communities available to people of all incomes—these are where Houston is already working to improve their grades on Living, Working, Moving, and Thriving.

Last week we saw that the team representing the region with the most complete communities won the day at Soldier Field. Can we make it two in a row?

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Are We There Yet? Monday Night Football -- Chicago vs Dallas

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 19:36:09 -0400

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The Bears have the “Super Bowl Shuffle” and the Cowboys have legends like Tom Landry, but in the complete communities arena, Chicago takes the lead over Dallas-Fort Worth.

Neither Chicago nor Dallas is a straight “A” student, but Chicago takes home a respectable set of “B”s,while the Dallas-Fort Worth region has three “Ds” and a “C.” What differentiates the two regions? Some of Chicago’s success is attributable to the region’s transit, with the “L”, Metra commuter rail, and an extensive bus network. Even with all of the good work Dallas-Fort Worth has done in building out their transit network, the Chicago region still has many more fixed-guideway stations (405 compared to 54 in Dallas-Fort Worth).

However, the real story is in how these two regions link their transportation options to land uses. The Chicago region has a higher percent of stations in opportunity areas, meaning they are located in more walkable, compact neighborhoods. And Chicago has more people who live and work near transit than Dallas-Fort Worth.

But even away from fixed-guideway transit, the Chicago region has more than ten times as many opportunity areas as Dallas-Fort Worth, and consequently, many more people living in compact, walkable, transit-rich neighborhoods. Even the stadium locations show this contrast with Soldier Field right on the transit line, and Cowboys Stadium (aka Jerry World) in the largest city in the United States without fixed route transit service.

Both regions are moving forward, but still need a good ground game to finish strong. If Chicago gives the rock to Matt Forte and Cutler doesn’t throw a pick, they’ve got this one in the bag. On the other hand, it’s just a game.

Edge – Chicago (For entertainment purposes only!)

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2013 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 19:15:01 -0400

Call for Entries

The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence is seeking entries for its biennial award.

“American cities embody our nation’s greatest triumphs and most daunting challenges. At their best they show case the rich diversity, cultural achievement, and democratic values that characterize the American spirit. At their worst they reflect our country’s most persistent social ills – economic disparity, hopelessness, neglect and abandonment. Yet there are those places that are developed with such vision and imagination that they transform urban problems into creative solutions. By recognizing these extraordinary places, the Award seeks to promote fresh and innovative thinking about cities, and to encourage us all to demand excellence in our urban environments,” according to the 2013 Call For Entries. (View official brochure.)

One Gold Medal of $50,000 and four Silver Medals of $10,000 will be awarded. Projects must be a real place, not just a plan or a program, and be located in the 48 contiguous United States. Award winners may use prize money in any way that benefits the project.

Established in 1987, the Rudy Bruner Award is distinguished from other award programs by its broad eligibility criteria, the multi-disciplinary Selection Committee, and the detailed on-site evaluation of each finalist. Each award cycle is documented in in-depth case studies of the winners, and in a distillation of the Selection Committee discussions.

The Foundation does not restrict the kinds of projects that may apply. Urban excellence is a dynamic and changing concept, and the award process is enriched by a diversity of applications. Rudy Bruner Award winners are not selected through an established set of criteria. Rather, the criteria emerge from the Selection Committee discussion of the applications.

Visit www.brunerfoundation.org/rba to learn more about the award (including a digital archive and case studies of past winners) and to download the application. For more information, questions or to request a copy of the application or Call for Entries poster, email us at rba2013@brunerfoundation.org.

The deadline for the 2013 Award is Dec. 10, 2012.

Learn About Applying For Free Technical Assistance

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 18:58:07 -0400

Smart Growth America and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Sustainable Communities will hold an informational webinar on Friday, Sept. 21, from 1:00-2:30 PM EDT. The webinar will provide a comprehensive look at the free technical assistance available to communities, including the programs, processes, and application timelines that each grant recipient offers.

The webinar will also include technical assistance from three other nonprofits – Forterra, Project for Public Spaces, and Global Green. All four organizations are gearing up for the second of five free annual technical assistance awards, made possible by the EPA’s Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program. More about EPA's Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities is available here.

This webinar is free and no advance registration is required. Maximum audio capacity is of 299 callers.

When: Friday, September 21, 2012, 1:00-2:30 PM EDT
Where: Click here to join the webinar online.
Call-in information: Call 1-888-850-4523. Participant passcode: 719661.

Bus-Oriented Development And Bus Passenger Facilities

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 15:59:55 -0400

A pair of bus-focused studies have been added the Resource Center best practices database.

"Bus Transit Oriented Development— Strengths and Challenges Relative to Rail" (2006) by Graham Currie, Institute of Transport Studies, Monash University

Currie's article describes the general concept of TOD and how this relates to features of transit modes, outlines the literature relevant to bus-based TOD, and identifies the strengths and challenges of bus-based transit systems in relation to TOD. It concludes by summarizing the relative strengths and challenges of BRT and local bus services compared to rail. The findings of the review are used to identify ways in which bus-based TOD might be better planned and implemented.

"From Bus Shelters to Transit-Oriented Development: A Literature Review of Bus Passenger Facility Planning, Siting, and Design" (2004) by Ivonne Audirac, Ph.D., and Harrison Higgins, AICP, for the Florida Planning and Development Lab, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Florida State University.

"The bus stop acting as the interface between the other mobility networks must be pedestrian accessible, ADA compliant, and must maximize the safety of riders transferring from one mode to another. As is well known and illustrated by the Bonanno case, public pedestrian infrastructure, chiefly built by local governments, continues to be disregarded or relegated to a low priority even in metropolitan planning organization’s (MPO) transportation enhancement programs in many American cities. At the same time, transit agencies are increasingly called to task over becoming more actively involved in the development review process and over strengthening interagency coordination to promote the provision of pedestrian, bicycle, and transit-friendly development," the report notes.

How Transit-Oriented Development Can Help Get America to Work

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 17:03:17 -0400

A research paper outlining the importance of investing in economic development that focuses from the earliest planning stages on equity and opportunity for low-income workers has been added to the Research Center best practices database.

"How Transit-Oriented Development Can Help Get America to Work" was written by Nancy Andrews, the president and CEO of the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) and Audrey Choi, managing director and head of Morgan Stanley Global Sustainable Finance.

As jobs have moved out of the central business districts and away from established transit services, it has been more difficult for low-income workers to reach those jobs, the authors note.

"This places a heavy burden on American families at a significant economic cost to the nation: $100 billion lost each year in time and fuel because of workers’ lengthy and inconvenient commutes, according to the Center for Transit-Oriented Development," the article reports. "For every dollar a family saves by moving to lower cost housing, 77 cents is consumed by the costs of commuting back to their jobs.3,4 And the current high demand for housing in many urban rental markets means this pressure on working families will grow, not lessen."

Today, transit-oriented development is too often planned from the outset as attractive, livable environments designed around deluxe housing developments, often displacing low-income residents.

"By pairing transportation investment decisions with plans to create affordable housing and essential services, such as schools and childcare, health care, healthy food stores, libraries and retail services, we can help communities grow in a balanced manner, with opportunities for low- and moderate-income families," the authors explain.

Read the full article

Thinking Outside the Farebox: Creative Approaches to Financing Transit Projects

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 12:56:53 -0400

Transportation for America has created a guidebook, "Thinking Outside the Farebox: Creative Approaches to Financing Transit Projects," which is designed to help community leaders to meet the demand for transit by identifying options for raising the money needed to build and operate an expanded transit system.

In an effort to spread the word, Transportation for America, with local sponsors, will hold workshops on federal transit financing in a post-earmark era in St. Petersburg, FL, on Sept. 19; Seattle, WA, on Oct. 4; and Nashville, TN, Oct. 11. The workshops bring together high level officials from the U.S. Department of Transportation, national transportation financing experts, and leaders from other regions with transit success stories.

Reconnecting America President & CEO John Robert Smith will be speaking at each workshop.

Reconnecting America co-chairs the Transportation for America campaign with Smart Growth America. T4 includes a coalition of more than 500 members including business, housing, environment, development, labor, health, aging and transportation interests. T4 advocates for a transformational Federal transportation policy and investments that are economically sound, respond to markets and improve the lives of people.

For more information, contact Russ Brooks with Transportation for America at russ.brooks@t4america.org and 202-955-5543 x211.

How BRT Improves Transit Service And Contributes to Economic Development

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:09:49 -0400

A July 2012 General Accounting Office study "Bus Rapid Transit: Projects Improve Transit Service And Can Contribute to Economic Development" has been added to the Resource Center's best practices database.

The GAO report to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, in the U.S. Senate examined (1) features included in BRT projects funded by the FTA; (2) BRT project performance in terms of ridership and service and how they compare to rail transit projects; (3) how BRT-projects’ costs differ from rail transit project costs; and (4) the extent to which BRT projects provide economic development and other benefits.

"While most local officials believe that rail transit has a greater economic development potential than BRT, they agreed that certain factors can enhance BRT’s ability to contribute to economic development, including physical BRT features that relay a sense of permanence to developers; key employment and activity centers located along the corridor; and local policies and incentives that encourage transit-oriented development," the report concludes. "Our analysis of land value changes near BRT lends support to these themes. In addition to economic development, BRT project sponsors highlighted other community benefits including quick construction and implementation and operational flexibility."

Download the full report

Designing New Light Rail: Taking Engineering Beyond Vanilla

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 14:29:20 -0400

In 2003, the Transport Research Board held its 9th National Light Rail Transit Conference in Portland. Among the papers pressented then was discussion of how light rail system designers can plan at the start for innovative operational practices to expedite train movements. The article, "Designing New Light Rail: Taking Engineering Beyond Vanilla," has been added to the Research Center's best practices database.

"Implementation of the HBLR Bayonne Flyers demonstrates that a comprehensive design approach that combines attention to the details of operational planning and critical engineering systems can yield significant dividends in system performance. It illustrates a model relationship between operations and systems design that resulted in the implementation of the first zone express service on a modern LRT system, showing the way that leads to moving beyond vanilla," the authors explain.

Download the full article

Incorporating Child Care Into TOD

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 13:19:51 -0400

A 2008 report that illustrates how developers have benefited from incorporating child care centers in transit-oriented developments has been added to the Resource Center best practices database. "Child Care At Transit-Oriented Developments—An Innovative Idea" includes case studies, tips and resources for private and non-profit developers—and for city planning, transit, or redevelopment agencies.

The report was produced by LINCC, Local Investment in Child Care, which has been working since 1998 to design and build an infrastructure that supports child care facilities development, renovation and expansion in California.

Child Care At Transit-Oriented Developments—An Innovative Idea

Transportation For America To Hold Conference Call On MAP21

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 18:26:18 -0400

Transportation for America will offer an in-depth look at the policies in the new transportation law, MAP-21 in a conference call Thursday, Aug. 2, at 2pm EDT.

Former Deputy Secretary of Transportation Roy Kienitz will moderate a panel of experts who will share insights about the specific policies contained in MAP-21. The public is welcome to join the call to learn more about the bill and ask any questions you may have.

For the call-in number and passcode, contact John Hughes.

To facilitate the discussion, T4 has created a chart comparing current law under SAFETEA-LU, the original House proposal H.R.7, and the new law under MAP-21.

Partnership Launches Sustainable Community Case Study Database

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:18:31 -0400

The federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities has launched of the Sustainable Community Case Study database. This online resource provides access to research and reports on communities that are working with HUD, DOT, EPA, and other Federal agencies to invest in transportation, affordable housing, and environmental protection.

The database includes two new case studies on the economic benefits of the partnership’s work.

Transit as Transformation The Euclid Corridor in Cleveland -- In Cleveland, public and private investments catalyzed a striking transformation along Euclid Avenue. Construction of a new bus rapid transit (BRT) system known as the HealthLine and clean-up and redevelopment of numerous vacant and abandoned properties and infrastructure have helped revitalize the area. As a result, Euclid Avenue has seen $4.3 billion in investment and redevelopment, the addition of 22,000 square feet of retail space, and the creation of 5,000 jobs since 2005.

Turning Brownfields into Opportunities for Urban Revitalization: The North End and Park East Corridor in Milwaukee -- Redevelopment in downtown Milwaukee highlights how resources from Federal agencies, combined with State and local resources, build on each other to provide economic, environmental, and social benefits. The city cleaned up downtown Milwaukee’s largest industrial brownfield, increased the number of downtown residents, and spurred additional private-sector development. The North End, an 83‐unit, mixed‐use apartment building with about 12,000 square feet of ground‐level retail space, is now located on the brownfield, which has increased property values and the city’s tax base.

The Sustainable Community Case Study database joins other resources available at www.sustainablecommunities.gov

Health Care Savings From Walking, Biking & Riding Transit

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:20:38 -0400

A 2007 study that estimates the impact that a healthy lifestyle that includes light rail transit ridership will have on health care costs has been added to the Resource Center's best practices database.

"Estimating the effects of light rail transit on health care costs" seeks to assess the dollar value of public health benefits derived from land use policies that support walking, biking, and transit. The researchers looked spefically at the potential cost savings in public health that will be realized from the investment in a light rail transit system in Charlotte, NC.

"Our results indicate that investing in light rail is associated with a 9-year cumulative public health cost savings of $12.6 million," the researchers report. "While these results suggest that there is a sizable public health benefit associated with the adoption of light rail, they also indicate that the effects are relatively small compared to the costs associated with constructing and operating such systems."

The researchers note that planning efforts that focus solely on the health impact of modifications in the built environment are likely to overstate the economic benefits.

Several members of this research team came back in 2010 and produced the report "The Effect of Light Rail Transit on Body Mass Index and Physical Activity," which concluded that improving neighborhood environments and increasing the public’s use of light rail systems could provide improvements in health outcomes for millions of individuals.

Quotable Street Standards As Parking Policy

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:37:44 -0400

Today's Quote of the Day from Jeff Wood's newsletter "The Other Side of the Tracks" comes from a Mineta Transportation Institute research paper:

A minimum width requirement of 36 feet for a residential street automatically provides two 10-foot traffic lanes and two 8-foot parking lanes, making it a de facto parking policy.

The paper explores the rationales underlying the use of minimum street width requirements to mandate street parking and concludes that these policies, in effect, hide the true cost of this excess parking capacity.

The report's authors recommend that the hidden parking policies should be made transparent and subject to public oversight, the double standard between private and public streets should be eliminated, and parking on residential streets should be optional.

The paper, "Amenity or Necessity? Street Standards as Parking Policy," explores the rationales underlying the use of minimum street width requirements to mandate street parking and concludes that these policies, in effect, hide the true cost of this excess parking capacity.

The authors recommend that the hidden parking policies should be made transparent and subject to public oversight, the double standard between private and public streets should be eliminated, and parking on residential streets should be optional.

A copy of the report has been added to the Resource Center's best practices database.

Read the Executive Summary and download the report.

A Citizen’s Guide to Context Sensitive Solutions for Better Transportation

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:33:55 -0400

"Going the Distance Together: A Citizen’s Guide to Context Sensitive Solutions for Better Transportation," originally released in September 2011, has been added to the Resource Center best practices database. The report, a National Cooperative Highway Research Program document, explains how to become a full collaborator in all aspects of transportation planning, from national, state, and local policy to operations and maintenance. The guidebook provides context-sensitive solutions (CSS), a consensus-building process.

"The purpose of this guide is to help you ask the right questions at the right time to ensure that transportation projects fit the context of your community," the authors note. "CSS is based on the principle that if transportation professionals—policy-makers, planners, engineers, designers and operators— and citizen stakeholders collaborate, all parties will have less to criticize and more to applaud."

The material covers:

Transportation and the Quality of Life
Research on Community Context, Vision, Values, and Plans: The Foundation of Context Sensitive Solutions
Shaping Transportation Decisions
Understanding Professional Responsibility and Design Flexibility in Project Design
Going the Distance Together: Partnership through Collaboration

Read the introduction and download the full report

Brookings Takes Another Look At How Well Jobs & Transit Are Linked

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:14:03 -0400

A little more than a year after releasing Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America, Brookings is back with another look at how well jobs and transit are linked.

Flipping the perspective from the demand side of the employer-employee relationship, the new "Where the Jobs Are: Employer Access to Labor by Transit" looks at transit accessibility from the supply side. While the change perspective offers some nuanced results, the bottom line remains the same: about 27 percent to 30 percent of people are able to take transit to work in a commute that takes 90 minutes or less.

Just before Brookings released its first employment and transit report, the Center for Transit-Oriented Development (Reconnecting America is a partner) released two papers on employment centers and their relationship to transit, which highlight the importance of connecting people of all incomes to job opportunities in all industries via transit.

Read the findings and introduction and download the full report

Brookings website

Revitalization Research

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 18:37:47 -0400

Three research papers covering different aspects of urban redevelopment and revitalization have been added to the Resource Center best practices database.

Market Value Analysis: Understanding Where and How to Invest Limited Resources

This 2006 article on targeted community revitalization investments from the Summer 2006 issue of Bridges, the quarterly publication of the commnity affairs department of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, discusses market value analysis, explaining that, "Building 100 affordable homes in the middle of an area of distress and disinvestment may help only the 100 families who receive the homes. But those same 100, built in another location and bundled with other related activities, may help not only those 100 households, but the hundreds of residents around them." The Market Value Analysis (MVA), the article explains, identifies where and how to invest limited resources that can transform urban real estate markets into revitalized neighborhoods.

Re-Imagining A More Sustainable Cleveland

This 2009 report of Re-imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland starts from the premise that the loss of population over the last 60 years is not likely to be reversed in the near term and that Cleveland’s future ability to attract and retain residents depends in large part on how the city adapts to population decline and changing land use patterns.

Metropolitan Business Plans: A New Approach To Economic Growth

Metropolitan business planning adapts the discipline of private-sector business planning to the task of revitalizing regional development. Such planning provides a framework through which regional business, civic, and government leaders can rigorously analyze the market position of their region; identify strategies by which to capitalize on their unique assets; specify catalytic products, policies, and interventions; and establish detailed operational and financial plans. These plans can then, in turn, be used to restructure federal, state, and philanthropic engagement in ways that invert the current top-down, highly siloed, and often ineffective approach to cities and metropolitan areas while bringing new efficiency to development activity.

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