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Congratulations 2016 TIGER Award Winners!

On June 29^th, the United States Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) announced the 2016 TIGER Award winners. Congratulations to the Transportation for America Members receiving funding amongst two U.S. territories, 32 states, and 40 communities across the country. U.S. DOT awarded approximately $500 million in grant funding. Find more information on the T4A member TIGER grantees below.

Lexington, KY– Awarded $14,095,887

Project: Town Branch Commons Corridor

Photo credit: Lexington Herald Leader

Broward MPO – Awarded $11,443,371

Project: Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization Regional Complete Streets Initiative

Photo credit: Broward MPO

In March, over 170 elected officials and local, civic and business leaders from 45 U.S. states sent a letter to congressional appropriators urging them to provide at least $500 million for another round of TIGER competitive transportation grants as well as the full amount authorized in last year’s FAST Act for new transit construction. Read the full letter here.

How can the arts and design help neighbors envision the future?

Developing an inclusive vision for a community’s future is challenging work and it frequently suffers from not including enough voices. What role can artists and designers play in improving the visioning process? Join us for the first in a new series of webinars further exploring the role of arts and culture in transportation planning and community development.

Back in February, T4America launched The Scenic Route, our online interactive guide to creative placemaking in transportation with an online conversation designed to introduce the concept of creative placemaking to transportation planners, public works agencies and local elected officials who are on the front lines of advancing transportation projects.

To continue building on that work, we’re launching this new series of webinars further exploring the role of arts and culture in transportation planning and community development. Join us for the first of this series, as we discuss the practice of community visioning exercises, and how artists and designers can help improve those processes. Join us on Thursday, August 11, 2016 from 4-5 p.m. EDT.

About our speakers

James Rojas, PLACE IT!
James Rojas is an urban planner, community activist, and artist. He has developed an innovative public-engagement and community- visioning method that uses art-making as its medium. He has collaborated with municipalities, non-profits, community groups, educational institutions, and museums, to engage, educate, and empower the public on transportation, housing, open space, and health issues.

Renata Soto, Conexión Américas
Renata Soto is co-founder and Executive Director of Conexión Américas, a nonprofit organization based in Nashville and founded in 2002 to promote the social, economic and civic integration of Latino families.

Ben Stone, Smart Growth America
Ben Stone is Director of Arts & Culture at Smart Growth America and its program Transportation for America. Ben leads the organization’s broad efforts to help communities across the country better integrate arts, culture, and creative placemaking into neighborhood revitalization, equitable development, and transportation planning efforts.

A large congressional delegation asks USDOT to improve the proposed congestion rule

Updated 7/28 11:50 a.m. Earlier this week, a large group of senators and representatives sent a letter to USDOT Secretary Foxx, requesting that USDOT change a flawed proposed rule for measuring congestion. They asked that USDOT assess the movement of people, rather than vehicles, as a better measure of congestion and also reward the improvements that can come from transit, toll lanes, or encouraging travelers to choose other options like walking or biking.

As we’ve been discussing here for a few months now, a new draft rule from USDOT will govern how states and metro areas will have to measure and address congestion. That proposal as written would define “success” in incredibly outdated ways, and old measures lead to old “solutions,” like prioritizing fast driving speeds above all other modes of transportation and their associated benefits.

The shortcomings in the proposed rule got the attention of some members of Congress, and earlier this week Senators Tom Carper (D-DE) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) were joined by 64 other members from the House and Senate on a letter to Secretary Foxx about the rule. (19 senators and 48 representatives total.)

From the (Senate) letter: (pdf)

“How we measure performance and outcomes directly affects the choice of investments that will be made. If we focus, as this proposed rule does, on keeping traffic moving at high speeds at all times of day on all types of roads and streets, then the result is easy to predict: States and MPOs will prioritize investments to increase average speeds for cars, at the expense of goals to provide safe, reliable, environmentally-sensitive, multimodal transportation options for all users of the transportation system, despite those goals being stated in federal statute. Encouraging faster speeds on roadways undermines the safety of roads for all road users, as well as the economic vitality of our communities.”

We’re encouraged to see this large group of elected leaders on board with the idea that how we measure congestion matters. It certainly matters for the communities — of all sizes — that they represent, and getting it wrong will have real impacts. In the letter, they note that the proposed rule doesn’t quite line up with some of the stated goals of Secretary Foxx, his Ladders of Opportunity program, and the Every Place Counts Challenge intended to help communities and neighborhoods that have been cut off or isolated by poorly-planned highway projects.

Yet, for far too long our transportation investments have focused solely on moving vehicles through a community rather than to a community, and without regard for the impacts to the community. In the process we have created real barriers for millions of Americans to access essential destinations. These barriers are most present for low-income communities and communities of color.

Nail on the head.

Our streets are about far more than just moving people through a community as fast as possible. They’re community assets and the framework for creating value and economic prosperity, and should be treated like more than just a simple pipe moving one thing quickly all day long.

Note: the House letter is here (pdf)

UPDATE: Representative Earl Blumenauer added his personal thoughts to the release of the letter:

Our federal highway system is stuck in the 1950s. By failing to properly evaluate the billions we spend on road maintenance and construction, we’ve created a transportation system that is unsafe, is increasingly harming the environment despite improving technology, and has left a legacy of racial exclusion and segmented communities. We have to do better. The Department of Transportation has an opportunity to make sure that federal spending can help meet our goals of safety, sustainability, and accessibility. I hope these comments are considered.

And in case you missed it, Senator Tom Carper also wrote a short note about the congestion rule for the T4America newsletter yesterday. (Don’t get our bi-weekly newsletter? Rectify that immediately by signing up right here.)

Our federal transportation system’s ability to move people and goods is key to an efficient and growing economy, which is why it’s critical for the Department of Transportation to focus on the movement of people instead of vehicles in its congestion relief measures. In order to improve the safety of our roads, and build a world-class transportation system that revitalizes our regional economies, we need to invest in innovative congestion relief techniques that facilitate the movement of people without encouraging faster speeds or incentivizing costly highway expansions.

Have you sent a letter to USDOT yet? There’s still time to generate a letter that we’ll deliver on your behalf before the comment period closes in a few weeks. We’ve already delivered 2,400 letters, but we’re aiming for far more.

Send yours today.

How best to stitch a community back together divided by an interstate?

USDOT is in the midst of a new initiative to address some of damage created by interstates driven through the heart of urban areas. Last week a group of experts traveled to Nashville to discuss ways to repair the damage inflicted upon a part of North Nashville by a segment of Interstate 40.

Jefferson Street overpass over Interstate 40. Photo by Rochelle Carpenter

More than a half-century ago, the new Interstate Highway System connected millions of Americans, creating new, valuable economic connections between cities and speeding the movement of goods and people across the country in a new network of roads that were the envy of the world. But the social costs weren’t shared equitably, and inside many urban areas, interstates were most frequently constructed through communities of color, disrupting, disconnecting, and displacing them.

Acknowledging this unfortunate reality, Secretary Foxx and the US Department of Transportation announced the Every Place Counts Design Challenge in May, which “seeks to raise awareness and identify innovative community design solutions that bridge the infrastructure divide and reconnect people to opportunity,” according to USDOT. Through an open competition, USDOT selected Spokane, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Philadelphia, and Nashville to receive pro bono design guidance to mitigate the disastrous effects of urban highways in each city.

On July 11th and 12th, a team with representatives from Transportation for America, USDOT, The Congress for The New Urbanism, Toole Design Group, and others participated in Nashville’s design challenge, focusing on North Nashville’s Jefferson Street corridor and its two intersections (one overpass, one underpass) with Interstate 40.

Jefferson Street in Nashville during a walk through the corridor. Photo by Rochelle Carpenter

North Nashville, and especially Jefferson Street, has been the cultural and educational heart of black Nashville, and is still home to three historically black colleges and universities (Meharry, Fisk, and Tennessee State University). Though more than a dozen music venues once called the corridor home, all but one have been demolished — some by the construction of I-40, and some from the later decline aided by it. (Some of the historic venues were also torn down before Interstate 40 was built.)

Today, Jefferson Street suffers from a relatively high rate of vacancy, a lack of adequate sidewalks and connections across I-40, and property owners holding on to buildings with the hope that property values will increase, rather than selling or developing. Despite this, the corridor is also home to a collection of small cultural institutions, including the Art History Class Lounge and Gallery, Woodcuts Gallery, and the nearby Norf Walls street art project. In Nashville’s hot real estate market, the very real physical barrier of I-40 encircling downtown here has contributed to slowing development in North Nashville — much to the relief of renters and the chagrin of many property owners.

It was in this context that the design team met with stakeholders representing local, state, and federal government agencies, local residents and business owners, anchor institutions, and design professionals for two days of visioning exercises. Ideas generated included everything from widening sidewalks and removing right turn lanes, to decking over I-40 and building aerial parks à la downtown Dallas.

Thaxton Abshalom Waters, founder of the Art History Class Lounge, asked the designers and experts to “focus on tapping back into the same sources that made the neighborhood a beautiful and culturally rich landscape in the first place.” It’s a reasonable request: much of the positive momentum on Jefferson Street today comes, as it did before I-40, from artists and performers, building community through cultural production, art walks, and creative resuse of structures and spaces along Jefferson Street.

Discussions during the design charette. Photo by Rochelle Carpenter

Long before the term was coined, Jefferson Street has benefited from creative placemaking, an approach to community development that acknowledges the integral role that arts, culture, and creativity play in community development and in ensuring that communities better reflect and celebrate local culture, heritage and values.

Creative Placemaking

To learn more about the ways in which corridor revitalization and transportation projects benefit from the arts, explore T4A’s guide to creative placemaking, the Scenic Route.

The design interventions generated by the two-day charrette are a good start, but on their own, they won’t be enough to produce the kind of positive change sought by the local leaders and residents who’ve been fighting an uphill battle to see some of the pride and glory restored to their neighborhood. But the process proved to be a great organizing tool for bringing together leadership from the neighborhood, government, business community, and transportation planners and engineers.

USDOT, with assistance from The Congress for the New Urbanism and Toole Design Group, will release a report summarizing findings and suggestions from the two-day event in the fall.

Three separate ballot measures for transportation in the Atlanta region cleared to proceed

After the crushing defeat of a huge regional transportation ballot measure back in 2012, Atlanta is poised to rebound this fall. After recent action by city and county leaders to place measures on the ballot, voters in metro Atlanta will be making at least three critical decisions this fall about sizable new investments in transportation.

People biking along the booming Atlanta Beltline’s east side trail, which would get a big boost through two separate ballot measures in November to help buy additional right-of-way and start to add transit to the mix.

Thanks to a law passed by the Georgia legislature (SB 369) in the dying hours of the 2016 session, the city got the go-ahead to put at least two questions on the ballot that will raise funds to finally add transit to the one-of-a-kind Beltline around the city, expand existing bus and rail service, fund other new transit projects, and make other general transportation investments in the city.

We wrote about the legislation back in March:

The legislation enables three new local funding sources, each dependent on approval through voter referenda. 1) The City of Atlanta can request voter approval for an additional half-cent sales tax through 2057 explicitly for transit, bringing in an estimated $2.5 billion for MARTA transit. 2) Through a separate ballot question the city could ask for another half-cent for road projects. 3) And in Fulton County outside the city, mayors will need to agree to a package of road and transit projects and ask voters to approve up to a ¾-cent sales tax to fund the projects.

The first of these three options got the go-ahead back in June when the Atlanta City Council approved a tentative list of transit projects to fund with a new half-penny tax for MARTA and placed the measure on the ballot — though this list of projects could still change as they move into planning and public meetings following a successful vote.

But for now, according to the presentation from MARTA (pdf), the $2.5 billion that would be generated by the new half-penny sales tax raised locally would help fund subway extensions, hefty improvements in bus service, new light rail on the Beltline project which will eventually encircle the city with transit, a walking/biking trail and linear parks, and improvements to bike and pedestrian connections near stations and bus stops. The half cent tax would run for 40 years.

marta tax transit projects` marta tax bike ped projects

The state legislation also allowed The City of Atlanta to additionally raise up to another half-cent sales tax for a shorter period of time (five years) for other local transportation projects within the city limits. The Atlanta City Council chose to use only part of that taxing authority, putting a second measure on the ballot asking voters for 0.4 cents in additional sales tax, which will raise $260 million over the five-year life of the extra 0.4¢, and go toward a range of projects, according to a release from Mayor Kasim Reed’s office:

$66 million for the Atlanta BeltLine, which will allow the BeltLine to purchase all the remaining right of way to close the 22-mile loop;
$75 million for 15 complete streets projects;
$3 million for Phase 2 of the Atlanta Bike Share program;
$69 million for pedestrian improvements in sidewalks; and
$40 million for traffic signal optimization.

Note: The traffic signal optimization was a core part of the city’s application to the USDOT Smart City Challenge.

Mayor Reed said in his press release:

Infrastructure investments are vital to Atlanta’s quality of life and continued economic competitiveness. Between the $250 million being spent through the Renew Atlanta bond program and these TSPLOST funds, Atlanta will reap the benefits of more than a half billion dollars invested in new and improved roads, sidewalks, neighborhood greenways, parks and congestion reduction efforts. Combined with a $3 billion expansion of our public transit system through MARTA, Atlanta residents will see unprecedented new investments in strengthening our transportation networks.

If both of these ballot measures for transportation are approved — half a penny for MARTA and 0.4 cents for transportation — Atlanta will have a local sales tax rate of 8.9 percent, certainly among the higher rates in the country but still lower than Seattle, New Orleans, Chicago, nearby Nashville and other cities.

There’s also a third measure on the ballot this fall, but it only applies for residents of Fulton County that live outside of the city’s borders. There, voters will be deciding on a 0.75 percent sales tax for transportation projects that would fund only projects outside of the city limits in unincorporated Fulton County and in other cities. Fulton is a large county that stretches far enough to the north and south to encompass suburbs on both sides of Atlanta proper.

This Fulton-only measure would be explicitly for road projects, with nothing going toward public transportation. Widening roads, safety projects, resurfacing roads, and some streetscape improvements including bike lanes and new sidewalks.

This roads-only measure for the county is the result of the legislature’s lack of agreement on a larger bill that would have enabled a bigger single transit measure in Atlanta and both adjoining counties, Fulton and DeKalb. The larger MARTA ballot measure would have raised somewhere around $8 billion for MARTA. Opposition to new transit measures — especially in parts of Fulton County — sunk that legislation.

So Fulton County gets this roads-only ballot measure, but no chance at MARTA expansion further into the county for the immediate future.

In 2012, Atlanta’s large regional transportation measure that would have split over $7 billion between road and transit projects across the ten-county region failed miserably at the ballot, for a number of reasons. Yet voters in the City of Atlanta and Dekalb county strongly voted in favor of it, and we suggested at the time that an Atlanta-only measure could be the next path forward for the city.

Four years on, Atlanta voters will soon be deciding whether or not to make one of the biggest investments in infrastructure of any city of its size over the next few years. Taken with the $250 million Renew Atlanta infrastructure bond measure that passed last year, these measures would raise over $3 billion to invest in transportation over the next 40 years, with about $500 million of that coming over just the next five years.

Keep up with all of the notable local ballot measures we’re tracking with Transportation Vote 2016

T4A Advisory Board Member testifies before Congress on the power of passenger rail as an economic catalyst

The success of Uptown Normal’s (IL) multimodal station as a catalyst for redevelopment was center stage as Normal Mayor Chris Koos testified before the House Oversight Committee last week.

The Town of Normal is located on the 284-mile Chicago-to-St. Louis passenger rail corridor, which received federal support to increase service, reliability and speed (up to 110 miles per hour). Additional federal support was paired with state and local resources to build a brand new multimodal station to replace an old, dilapidated Amtrak station in downtown (they call it “Uptown”) Normal, Illinois.

That new multimodal station has been the anchor of a new economic boom in Uptown Normal. (Read T4America’s more detailed profile of Normal’s can-do aspirations and the multimodal station here.)

While years of tireless work by local officials to make the station a reality were fundamental for success, it wouldn’t have happened without support from federal transportation programs.

That support primarily came through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s TIGER grant program. The House Committee on Oversight’s Subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets, in its role as overseer of the federal government, held a hearing on July 14th titled Lagging Behind: the State of High Speed Rail in the United States to cover the success and failures of the federal high-speed passenger rail program.

Normal Mayor Chris Koos is seated at the far right of the dais. Photo courtesy of Brad Tucker, CHG & Associates.

Mayor Koos joined the witness bench alongside Federal Railroad Administrator Sarah Feinberg, and others. While there were a range of opinions about the overall success of the federal government’s high-speed rail program, everyone in the room made it clear that our nation’s passenger rail system is an important asset for this country and we should do more to improve and expand the network where appropriate.

The “only Normal mayor in America” was greeted with friendly introductions led by his hometown Representative Rodney Davis (R-IL) and the ranking member of the subcommittee, Tammy Duckworth (D-IL). Rep. Davis has firsthand knowledge of the success of Uptown Normal station and its surrounding development, as his congressional district office is located in the Uptown Normal government building.

T4America advisory board member Mayor Chris Koos with Representative Rodney Davis (R-IL) at last week’s hearing.

Transportation-oriented development has been integral for Normal as the city “has experienced growth, but a lot of that growth has been centered around the infrastructure,” cited Rep. Davis.

None of this would have been possible without a $22 million TIGER grant received in 2010. The previous station was inadequate and ill-equipped for the ridership demand, leading to the station’s unfortunate moniker of “Amshack” that was bestowed upon it by many residents over the years.

This all changed with the completion of Normal Illinois’ Uptown multimodal station in 2012. All told, the $49.5 million project received $22 million from TIGER, $10.6 million in additional federal funding and more than $13 million in state and local contributions.

The public funding has spurred significant private investment in the Uptown Station area.

“Thus far, public investment of approximately $85 million in federal, state, and local monies in the transportation arena has generated over $150 million in private investment in the Uptown district,” Mayor Koos told the subcommittee last week. An additional $45 million in private investment is planned.

“Uptown Normal is now a vibrant neighborhood with residential, commercial, and entertainment opportunities. Local transit ridership is up 34 percent and transit oriented development continues to abound,” Mayor Koos said.

Normal’s success doesn’t have to be so rare.

Predictable funding for TIGER and passenger rail programs provide great economic benefit for cities large and small. The FAST Act took great strides by including the passenger rail title in the transportation authorization for the first time. Yet, because these programs are entirely discretionary, their funding is in question every year during the annual appropriations fight.

Mayor Koos provided the House Oversight Committee a glimpse into what is possible with a strong federal, state, local and private partnership, and we hope the members of the committee will work across the aisle to provide more communities the opportunity to follow in the transportation footsteps of Normal.

Catch up on the launch of our guide to the FAST Act

Last week, we launched our guide to the FAST Act, covering the shortcomings, omissions and opportunities in the federal transportation law that sets policy and funding for transportation until the year 2020. Download your copy of the guide below and if you missed the launch webinar, catch up with the presentation at the end of this post.

Click to download the guide to the FAST Act.

Though the bill will provide a level of funding certainty through 2020, to accomplish this feat, Congress essentially killed the concept of a trust fund for transportation by transferring $70 billion in general taxpayer funds into the highway trust fund, offset by accounting maneuvers and budget gimmicks.

For example, the bill is virtually silent on the issue of emerging tech-enabled mobility options or other coming innovations, provides no increase in local control over funding — continuing to defer almost all authority to states — and fails to move the ball forward on performance measures after the first steps made by MAP-21 in 2012, among other shortcomings and missions.

This short guide explores the shortcomings and opportunities presented by the law in further detail, and provides several short tables that show the funding available to states and metro areas over the life of the bill.

Get your copy here.

On July 14th, our policy team was joined by Mayor Chris Koos, T4America advisory board member and Mayor of Normal, Illinois, to discuss the FAST Act in detail, with a focus on the impacts for local communities.

Did you miss the webinar? You can catch up with a recording of the presentation, the slides, and the questions that were asked & answered here.

T4A Advisory Board Member testifies before Congress on the power of passenger rail as an economic catalyst

The success of Uptown Normal’s (IL) multimodal station as a catalyst for redevelopment was center stage as Normal Mayor Chris Koos testified before the House Oversight Committee last week.

That new multimodal station has been the anchor of a new economic boom in Uptown Normal. (Read T4America’s more detailed profile of Normal’s can-do aspirations and the multimodal station here.)

While years of tireless work by local officials to make the station a reality were fundamental for success, it wouldn’t have happened without support from federal transportation programs.

Normal Mayor Chris Koos is seated at the far right of the dais. Photo courtesy of Brad Tucker, CHG & Associates.

T4America advisory board member Mayor Chris Koos with Representative Rodney Davis (R-IL) at last week’s hearing.

Transportation-oriented development has been integral for Normal as the city “has experienced growth, but a lot of that growth has been centered around the infrastructure,” cited Rep. Davis.

The public funding has spurred significant private investment in the Uptown Station area.

Normal’s success doesn’t have to be so rare.

What would a better measure of congestion look like? Unpacking an alternative

USDOT’s draft rule that will govern how states and metro areas will have to measure and address congestion would define “success” in incredibly outdated ways. In a webinar earlier this week, we discussed better ways to measure congestion and a proposal we’re sending to USDOT.

Nearly 3,000 of you have already sent letters to USDOT telling them that their draft rule takes the wrong approach. But is there an alternate proposal that could get traction with USDOT as they modify the proposal based on the feedback they receive?

In a webinar on Wednesday, July, 13th, our policy team discussed alternative measures for congestion and unpacked the proposal that we’re submitting to USDOT for their consideration, which was developed in collaboration with a handful of MPOs, transit agencies, state DOTs, and advocates throughout the country.

Click the image at right (or here) to view the presentation from the webinar and hear more about the proposal we are submitting to USDOT this week. Update: For those of you who are more technically inclined, you may download our full 12-page proposal (pdf) that we submitted to USDOT on July 14th.

Deciding how to evaluate which projects are “successful” will influence which transportation projects are selected and built for years to come. And the problem with using old measures for assessing traffic congestion is that it leads directly to old “solutions,” like prioritizing fast driving speeds above all other modes of transportation and their associated benefits. We’ve been illustrating this with some simple graphics that show what results when “moving cars fast” becomes the prime or only consideration:

Congestion We All Count

Have you sent your letter yet? There’s still time.

Success is about a lot more than moving cars fast. Tell USDOT to improve their proposed rule. Sign an individual letter that we will deliver on your behalf to USDOT.

Crucial transportation and transit-related ballot measures coming up in 2016

Throughout 2016, ballot measures and referenda that will raise new revenue for transportation at the local or state level will be decided during elections across the country. As in years past, we’ll be keeping a close eye on several of the most notable questions in the 2016 edition of Transportation Vote.

We’ll be profiling a few at length on the blog over the next few months and keeping all the relevant information organized in a table: https://t4america.org/maps-tools/state-policy-funding/2016-votes

Two years ago in 2014, a handful of states moved to create “lockboxes” for transportation funds and several others raised new funding. At the local level, cities and counties from Atlanta to Seattle approved important ballot measures to raise new funding to either preserve or massively expand public transportation service. The voters in a growing list of states and localities will be deciding similar questions this November, and we’ll be keeping a close eye. Stay tuned for more, and bookmark Transportation Vote 2016.

Transportation-related ballot measures tend to do well with voters — whether statewide or exclusively local measures — passing at around twice the rate of all other ballot measures. And transit or multimodal measures always do well, passing about 71 percent of the time since 2009.

As soon as election day is over, the focus will shift to 2017 and especially the state legislative sessions beginning around the beginning of the year. If you want to know more about state legislation related to transportation revenue, you need to join us in Sacramento for Capital Ideas II. There’s still time to register and make travel plans to meet us there. Don’t miss your opportunity to be a part of this terrific event that will help equip you to make things happen in 2017 and beyond.

Note: We don’t track 100 percent of all transit-related measures — for an overview of all transit-related ballot measures, turn to the Center for Transportation Excellence, the authority on tracking such data. Questions about measures or know of a significant one we should be following that doesn’t appear here? Reach out to Dan Levine on our staff.

Illinois legislature passes new policy that will aid the financing of transit projects

A just-passed bill in Illinois will make it easier to finance the construction and expansion of transit service across the state, making it easier for several crucial transit projects to go forward in the Chicago region.

This post was written by Peter Skosey, the Executive Vice President of the Metropolitan Planning Council in Chicago, Illinois, and reprinted here with his permission. MPC is a T4America member. Curious about membership with T4America? Find out more here.

Transit in Chicago just got a whole lot better, thanks to the General Assembly in Springfield — not the actor normally credited with such matters.

On July 1, 2016, the House and Senate approved the Transit Facility Improvement Area (TFIA), an innovative approach to finance specific transit projects in the City of Chicago. MPC has long supported this solution that many other cities across the country use, including Denver, San Francisco, Atlanta, New York and Milwaukee.

For decades, the entire country has neglected maintenance of existing trains, roads and bridges in favor of building new infrastructure. However, the latest federal transportation bill created a new “core capacity” provision, championed by Illinois’ own Sen. Dick Durbin, which allows critically needed maintenance projects [that will improve capacity], such as rebuilding the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red and Purple lines from Belmont north to the end of line in Evanston, to receive significant funding from Washington. These federal transit grants have one “catch:” locals must match those dollars, in this case about one-for-one.

chicago amtrak expansion By authorizing TFIA, the Illinois General Assembly created a way for Chicago to provide the necessary match for Red/Purple Line modernization and critical improvements to Union Station — for which Amtrak is currently doing phase 1 engineering and seeking a master developer.

Here’s how TFIA works: The added value that enhanced transit service brings to the surrounding property is captured in the form of property taxes and used to finance the improvements to the transit facility [that catalyzed the increases in the first place].

In the case of Union Station, Amtrak is seeking a developer to build on three parcels it controls. (Indicated in blue in the image above.) The additional property tax generated from those three new developments would be captured for up to 35 years to finance critical improvements to Union Station allowing for wider platforms, a roomier concourse and more trains in and out of the station. This is imperative, as Union Station is at capacity now and future growth of Chicago’s downtown depends on people being able to access their jobs via transit.

Many deserve kudos and thanks for supporting the TFIA measure: the original Senate and House sponsors of SB277, Heather Steans (D-Chicago) and Ron Sandack (R-Downers Grove); House leader Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago) and Sen. Toi Hutchinson (D-Chicago Heights), who sponsored the ultimate bill, SB2562; members of the House who voted 78 to 27 in favor; and the Senate, which unanimously approved the measure.

Passage of TFIA was a great step forward in the battle to maintain our region’s transportation infrastructure and remain competitive in the global economy. Next up: Illinois must identify $43 billion in new revenues over the next 10 years to take care of the rest of the system.

These kinds of important changes to state policy are exactly what we’ll be discussing at Capital Ideas II this November 16-17 in Sacramento. Join us there and learn lessons to take back to your state. Register today!

New Jersey shuts down almost all transportation projects amidst fight over nearly bankrupt transportation fund

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie shut down almost all ongoing state transportation projects this week after a legislative stalemate over rescuing the state’s bankrupt Transportation Trust Fund — a debate that hinged on pairing a gas tax increase with cuts to the state’s sales tax.

Flickr photo by Bob Jagendorf. /photos/bobjagendorf/5492860578

Flickr photo by Bob Jagendorf. http://flickr.com/photos/bobjagendorf/5492860578

This week New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) ordered a halt to all of the state’s transportation projects, other than those that are “absolutely essential”, to conserve the dwindling cash in the state’s Transportation Trust Fund.

With an incredibly low gas tax that hasn’t increased since 1988, the state has relied on bonding, rather than new revenue, to pay for road and transit projects. As a result, an astonishing 100 percent of all fuel tax revenues are now devoted to paying down debt on past projects.

Since hitting a borrowing limit on June 30^th, the fund is quickly running out of cash for new projects. The Governor, state Assembly, and bipartisan groups of senators have all backed various plans that would include a big hike in the state’s gas tax — the second-lowest state fuel tax in the country at 14.5 cents-per-gallon — to boost transportation funding.

But negotiations stalled over what tax cuts or new policies would accompany the increase in the gas tax.

While this funding crisis has been looming for years, state leaders — especially Gov. Christie — have long opposed any increases to the fuel tax as a solution. But last week, when facing a funding cliff, legislators seemed to agree on a plan to pair a 23-cent-per-gallon increase in the state fuel tax with cuts to the estate tax and an increase in the earned-income tax credit. This package had bipartisan sponsors in the state Senate when it was introduced last Monday.

But that same day, Gov. Christie came out of negotiations with Assembly leaders with a new plan: keep the 23-cent gas tax increase, but pair it with a one-percentage-point cut to the state sales tax. That plan (A12) cleared the Assembly on a 53-23 vote and was publicly backed by the governor.

The Senate balked at this alternative and the $1.7 billion hole it would blow in the state’s general fund. Cutting the state’s sales tax would jeopardize many state programs that depend on general funds, including slashing the main source of operating funds for the state’s transit agency while increasing the primary source of funds for roads.

Already, the state has cut operating funds for NJ Transit from $278 million in 2005 to just $33 million in 2016. Some extra money for transit has come from shifting long-term capital funds (including money originally set aside for Access to the Region’s Core trans-Hudson tunnel project that Gov. Christie canceled in 2010) to day-to-day operations. But the rest of the funding gap has come at transit riders’ expense, from fare hikes and service cuts, all while road users have enjoyed the same low gas tax rate since the year President Ronald Reagan left office. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign illustrated this in a picture:

The slice on the right should have a topping by now. Instead, NJ has shut down #transpo projects. #ThrowbackThursday pic.twitter.com/67Kcwus2oI

— Tri-State (@Tri_State) July 7, 2016

Gov. Christie is blaming the transportation shut down on the Senate. But transportation advocates in the state accuse the governor of holding transportation projects hostage in a bid to win bigger tax cuts.

The shutdown will have real consequences for the state. Christie’s order has halted more than 1,100 active state, county, and local highway and transit projects. Stopping and eventually restarting construction projects can add considerably to their costs. People driving and people riding transit will wait longer — at least as long as the standoff lasts — for relief and improved service the projects would offer.

The short-term crises are a disaster at the time the state needs long-term funding to complete critical, major projects, like the Gateway Tunnel into New York City, the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail extension, and the Glassboro-Camden line.

We’re closely watching New Jersey to see how the state resolves this funding crisis. Many state legislators have expressed an unwillingness to increase the gas tax in the past because they believe their citizens don’t have faith that the existing money is well spent. How can these legislators implement smarter policies to boost the confidence of those citizens in order to raise new money for transportation?

Join us for Capital Ideas II in Sacramento November 16-17 for in-depth conversations on state transportation policy and politics. Register today!

Introducing a new suite of resources to support transit-oriented development

In December, Smart Growth America announced a new initiative to help communities across the country advance transit-oriented development (TOD) projects to grow their economies, achieve their social equity goals, and improve quality of life for everyone. As part of this initiative, yesterday SGA launched TODresources.org, an online hub for national information and ideas that will help users develop outstanding transit-oriented development projects.

That effort, the Transit-Oriented Development Technical Assistance Initiative, provides on-the-ground and online technical assistance to communities working on — or planning to work on — transit-oriented projects across the country. The initiative is designed to help elected officials, municipal staff, advocates, developers, transportation professionals, and urban planners discover new ideas, connect with one another and, ultimately, build great projects.

As part of the initiative, today we launch TODresources.org, an online hub for national information and ideas that will help users develop outstanding TOD projects. The new site includes a dynamic database of leading research on TOD, information about funding and financing options for TOD projects, and opportunities for TOD professionals to connect with one another. Anyone interested in TOD can join the project’s mailing list to get news about new resources and opportunities.

The TOD Technical Assistance Initiative is a project of the Federal Transit Administration administered by national non-profit Smart Growth America. In addition to the new website, the project includes on-site technical assistance for communities. In April 2016, nine communities were selected for the inaugural round of this assistance. The project also includes a collaborative network of TOD professionals, which is open by invitation only.

The TOD Technical Assistance Initiative is one of the ways the U.S. Department of Transportation supports the efforts of communities across the country to build compact, mixed-use, equitable development around transit stations and foster sustainable economic development related to planned transportation projects. When done well, TOD can create convenient, affordable places to live and work for people from all walks of life. This new website and our broader work is designed to help the people building those projects learn how to make that happen.

Crossposted from TODresources.org and Smart Growth America. Transportation for America is a project of Smart Growth America.

Join us on 7/14 for the release of a helpful new guide to the FAST Act transportation law

Next week, T4America will be releasing a new guidebook intended to help you understand the changes made in 2015’s five-year transportation law and provide you with the necessary information to best leverage the federal transportation program. Sign up for a kickoff webinar next Thursday afternoon and receive an early copy by email.

FAST Act Guide Promo

Join us Thursday, July 14th at 4 p.m. as we briefly discuss Falling Forward: A Guide To the Fast Act with some of our policy experts and other special local guests who will add some insight on what the bill means for local communities. Register for the webinar and we’ll email you a copy first thing on July 14.

About the FAST Act and this new guide

In 2015, Congress adopted their first long-term surface transportation law in more than a decade. Known as the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, the bill provides federal transportation policy and funding for five years (FY2016-2020). Though the bill will provide a level of funding certainty through 2020, to accomplish this feat, Congress essentially killed the concept of a trust fund for transportation by transferring $70 billion in general taxpayer funds into the highway trust fund, offset by accounting maneuvers and budget gimmicks.

While there were a few positive changes, the FAST Act doubled down on the status quo of federal transportation policy and failed to make virtually any of the changes so urgently needed by our rapidly urbanizing and changing country. For example, the bill is virtually silent on the issue of emerging tech-enabled mobility options or other coming innovations, provides no increase in local control over funding — continuing to defer almost all authority to states — and fails to move the ball forward on performance measures after the first steps made by MAP-21 in 2012, among other shortcomings or omissions.

There were also a few notable changes (positive and negative) made in the FAST Act, and we’ll explore the shortcomings and opportunities presented by the law in further detail in this guide.

Register today and join us on Thursday, July 14th to hear more and get your copy.

USDOT’s congestion measure is not good — what would a better one look like?

Thousands of you have sent letters to USDOT on their draft rule that will govern how states and metro areas will have to measure and address congestion — a proposal that currently defines “success” in outdated ways. It’s clear that USDOT’s proposed measure doesn’t cut it, but if you want to hear more about a better way to measure congestion, join us next week.

Join T4A’s policy team on July, 13th at 3 p.m. EDT to learn about some proposed alternatives to improve USDOT’s congestion performance measure, as well as measures covering performance of the National Highway System, Interstate freight movement, on-road mobile source emissions, and greenhouse gases.

Nearly 3,000 of you have already sent letters to USDOT telling them that their draft rule takes the wrong approach. But what would a better measure look like, and is there an alternate proposal that could get traction with USDOT as they modify the proposal based on the feedback they receive?

The alternatives we’ll be discussing on this webinar were developed in collaboration with a handful of MPOs, transit agencies, state DOTs, and advocates throughout the country. Join the webinar on July, 13th at 4pm EDT to learn more, ask questions, and engage in this rulemaking process.

Congestion We All Count

Have you sent your letter yet? There’s still time.

Success is about a lot more than moving cars fast. Tell USDOT to improve their proposed rule. Sign an individual letter that we will deliver on your behalf to USDOT.

Columbus, OH takes center stage of national movement for transportation innovation – but cities nationwide are interested in connected streets

Earlier today the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) named Columbus, Ohio, the winner of its highly competitive Smart City Challenge. The win gains Columbus $40 million from USDOT, $10 million from Paul Allen’s Vulcan, Inc., as well as additional matching local public and private investments of $90 million to help the city become a national proving ground for intelligent transportation systems and a suite of new mobility-on-demand services.

Columbus’ application focused specifically on increasing social equity and access to opportunity. The city’s Linden neighborhood has “a high proportion of carless households, unreliable access to employment and health services, a lack of access to digital information, and a high portion of cash-based households,” said Mayor Andrew Ginther.

In its application, Columbus outlined plans for several significant transportation innovations: an autonomous vehicle test fleet that will connect a transit terminal to a job center; increasing travel options in poor neighborhoods to better connect expectant mothers to health services; expansion of electric vehicle infrastructure; a multi-modal transit pass payment system that will include transit as well as ride-sharing and -hailing services; and kiosks that can reload transit cards for low-income residents without credit cards or bank accounts.

Columbus is far from alone in wanting to use innovative technology to better connect disadvantaged populations to opportunity. The seven other Smart City finalists — Denver, San Francisco, Austin, Pittsburgh, Portland, and Kansas City — are all working hard on these issues, as are the 71 other applicant cities that did not make it to the final round, and many more.

T4America will be working with a number of these cities through our recently announced partnership with Sidewalk Labs and a new Smart Cities Collaborative that will help define how technology can meet cities’ pressing transportation challenges. T4America will also be helping cities win funding, tools, and authority to advance smart city initiatives. This will be a huge hurdle as current transportation policy at the federal level and within most states either underfunds or completely ignores local governments.

The collaborative network will also begin to define and design the “connected streets” of the future. Just as the popular Complete Streets approach gives leaders a framework for making streets safer for everyone, connected streets outlines tech-enabled interventions that can help create a truly balanced, multimodal approach to urban transportation that expands access to job opportunities and improves quality of life for all residents.

USDOT’s Smart City Challenge is emblematic of a giant wave of change that’s coming to cities. Technology, innovation, and new mobility solutions are changing the urban landscape and will have big implications for public transit systems, public works departments and how many of us get where we need to go. Vibrant, thriving communities are ones that provide access and opportunity for people of all incomes. Local business and civic leaders are quickly discovering that they need to get out ahead of the coming disruptions and shape the technology transforming their cities or else get shaped by it.

USDOT’s drive to innovation has generated tremendous excitement across the country — in Columbus and beyond. There’s been an explosion of cross-departmental and cross-community collaboration from both the public and private sectors. Many cities also know they’ll need to undertake a large shift in their internal cultures. T4America is here to help cities lean forward and embrace these changes and drive the discussion about what they want their cities to look like in 25 years.

Nashville business leaders voice strong support for large-scale transit plan

Nashville business leaders – including members of T4America’s Transportation Innovation Academy co-hosted last year with TransitCenter – have come out strongly in support of an ambitious, large-scale transit plan for the region.

The Moving Forward initiative, a project organized by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce that includes more than 100 business leaders volunteers, has spent the last year hosting community dialogues and engaging other leaders in the transit planning process.

Earlier this week, Moving Forward released a report supporting a large-scale transit expansion in the region. In January Nashville MTA, the regional transit agency, introduced a 25-year plan that laid out three possible transit scenarios. Moving Forward recommended the most ambitious scenario as the starting point for the region’s future transit map. This scenario, estimated to cost $5.4 billion over the next 25 years, would add streetcars, light rail, and bus rapid transit to connect Nashville neighborhoods.

Pete Wooten, Executive Vice President at Avenue Bank, vice-chair of Moving Forward, and a participant in the Transportation Innovation Academy, told the Tennessean that investments in transit are both a defensive and offensive play for the region.

“It’s really about mobility and preserving quality of life — it’s a defensive game,” Wooten said. With the region expecting to add 1 million new residents in the next 25 years, new transportation options are critical.

Wooten continued, “The offensive game is what transit can do from an investment standpoint. It can really open up tremendous value because it connects employees to employers. It provides new corridors for business.”

Business leaders are hoping for speedy action on transit. The Moving Forward report recommends the city develop a plan for downtown transit access this year. And the chamber has aimed for a groundbreaking on the first transit expansion projects by 2020. Bert Mathews, a real estate developer and one of Moving Forward’s committee chairs said, “There are a variety of short-term pieces that can be done and need to be started right now.”

The business leaders also recommend including new transportation technologies in the plan. The report calls on the Nashville Metropolitan Planning Organization to study installation of intelligent transportation systems in cities and counties across the region and encourages Nashville MTA to include autonomous vehicles in the long-term plan.

Moving Forward’s report does not recommend ways to fund the extensive transit plan. Financing option will be the next issue the group will study.

Local leaders build momentum for transit investments in Wake County, NC

Leaders in Wake County, NC – including participants of T4America’s Transportation Innovation Academy co-hosted last year with TransitCenter – are building support for transit ahead of a November ballot referendum.

Earlier this month the Wake County Commission approved a long-term transit plan and put a measure on the November ballot to raise a half-cent sales tax to build out the regional transit network. Planned service, including 20 miles of new bus rapid transit routes and new commuter rail, is expected to quadruple transit ridership in the county in the next ten years.

In his address to a WakeUp Wake County forum earlier this week in Raleigh, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx pointed out how transit can be a magnet for economic development. Foxx, former mayor of Charlotte, noted how Raleigh’s recent transit expansion helped attract new employers. Playing into the cross-state competition for jobs, he joked, “If I were mayor of Charlotte, I probably would be giving you a different speech. I would probably tell you not to do this so that we could compete with you better.”

Sec. Foxx also warned that the region would be “at the epicenter of a national crisis in mobility” if it does not invest in new transit. Commute times are “gonna get worse if you don’t do something different.”

County Commissioner Matt Calabria, one of the elected leaders who attended the Transportation Innovation Academy, recognized that “traffic is increasing [in Wake County] and we’re going to face challenges associated with growth.” He went on to add that the proposed transit plan “is the best thing we can do to stave off that congestion.”

Sec. Foxx was introduced by U.S. Rep. David Price (D-N.C.-4). Local leaders, including County Commission Chair James West and Vice-Chair Sig Hutchison, Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane, and Cary Town Councilor Jennifer Robinson, all spoke at the event about the new transit vision for the county.

Grassroots support for transit is also rolling in. The new Riders of Wake campaign is collecting first-person accounts from transit riders.

Introducing Planning for a Healthier Future

Cities and regions around the country face important choices about how to use limited resources to promote healthy communities and provide a great quality of life for all of their residents. Planning for a Healthier Future, a new resource released by T4America, helps metro areas find ways to use performance measures to improve public health, address social equity concerns, and advance environmental quality.

Download the report

Thanks to 2012’s MAP-21 legislation, all metro areas and states will soon be using a limited array of performance measures. While the in-progress federal requirements will cover a limited range of measures, this report lays out additional measures that enable MPOs and regions to understand the health impacts of transportation and land use decisions within three other dimensions: physical activity, traffic safety, and exposure to air pollution.

This report is the result of our two-year Planning for a Healthier Future collaborative with teams from the regions of Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, San Diego, CA and Nashville, TN. These four regions are actively working to improve health, increase access to opportunity for vulnerable populations, protect the environment and promote economic competitiveness by developing and implementing transportation performance measures for their respective metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs).

As part of the report kickoff, we hosted an online discussion featuring members of our team and other experts.

Watch the recording for a deeper dive into our new resource, including firsthand experience from some of the metro regions that participated in the related collaborative.

Better together: All aboard for collaboration in the Midwest

Chicago is the busiest rail hub in the United States. Every day, nearly 500 freight and 760 passenger trains pass through the region. Many of those nearby cities connected via rail have benefited from developing the areas around their stations (read about a few in our 2013 report, The Little Cities That Could), and Chicago itself will soon see a large-scale renovation of its own Union Station. But these assets and local economies are seldom talked about or considered as a whole. That’s a mistake according to a recent OECD report that found that in order to grow, leaders in the Greater Chicagoland region — Northeast Illinois, Northwest Indiana, and Southeast Wisconsin — must better coordinate.

“Regional economic development is the way of the future” says Kelly O’Brien, director of the Alliance for Regional Development, which hosts a regular series of “quarterly conversations” to support improved collaboration among the region’s economic development interests. The group mirrors efforts of regional partnerships like those in Maryland and Virginia, where leaders have worked together on economic development initiatives, or Pennsylvania and Ohio, which collaborate on workforce development issues.

On June 10^th, we had the chance to join leaders from the greater Chicagoland region — including Illinois, Northwest Indiana, Southeast Wisconsin, and even Michigan — at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning for one of these conversations, this one focused on intercity rail & freight movement. Transportation for America Chair John Robert Smith joined the day to facilitate a panel about the economic value of passenger rail. Among the highlights, we heard that:

Beyond the commercial development opportunities promised by passenger rail investment, there are also huge potential benefits to be realized by other sectors of the economy; in total, the passenger rail manufacturing supply chain provides over 90,000 jobs in the Unites States, 60% of which are in the Midwest. (See the full report from the Environmental Law and Policy Center)

Leaders from across freight industries are counting on the unprecedented $1 billion dollar CREATE program to address one of the country’s biggest, most problematic freight rail bottlenecks that affects the movement of passengers and goods across the country.

Northwest Indiana is readying land to replace pockets of postindustrial decline with thriving transit-oriented development. The region is also planning for a new, commuter rail line extension of the state’s existing South Shore Line into Chicago. (See the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority website for more information)

New research from T4America member UIC Urban Transportation Center proves what many passenger rail advocates already know: leaders from across the industry agree that more investment is needed.

While O’Brien states that supporting collaboration “can feel like pushing a boulder up a hill” at times, the connections are being made; the day’s first panel featured leaders from the Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin Departments of Transportation who are working in lockstep to more efficiently own, maintain, and operate their equipment, and collaborating through the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative.

Though a wide range of groups was represented in the meeting, leaders invoked the need for even more voices supporting these investments: such as developers, tourism leaders, the manufacturing community, and state legislatures.

“We are cooperating more than ever before, but we are still missing key players” said Tim Hoeffner, an MDOT leader who also chairs the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission. “we need to better harness the voices of local leaders,” he said.

At Transportation for America, amplifying the voices of local leaders is central to our mission. And we can’t do it without your help. For more information about getting involved in the Midwest or to recommend a local leader, contact Erin Evenhouse, Midwest Outreach Manager, at erin.evenhouse@t4america.org.

We can do more, together.

The current plan for the Midwest Regional Rail System. Photo Courtesy of the Indiana Passenger Rail Alliance