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Don’t let transportation get lost in the political shuffle; send a letter to your local paper

Newspaper pile Originally uploaded by Valerie Everett to Flickr.

When President Obama announced his vision on Labor Day for investing in 21st century infrastructure, he put our country on the right path toward smart transportation reform — a path that could transform communities across America and create desperately needed jobs.

But his bold vision to invest in safer streets, road and bridge repair, and high speed rail immediately came under fire from many of the usual suspects who prefer the current system of earmarks and oil industry tax breaks.

We need to respond to these attacks on transportation reform – publicly and quickly – to show the country and our lawmakers that the plan’s supporters greatly outnumber its critics.

Take 5 or 10 minutes and write a letter to the editor of your local paper today

Letters published in local papers are read carefully by members of Congress and their staffs – they represent the pulse of their communities. Getting a flood of supportive letters published will go a long way in helping shore up support for a transformational change in our country’s approach to transportation.

Plenty of old guard transportation insiders in Washington, DC – from the highway lobby to the oil companies – would love to see us pour twice as much money into the same old broken system, but we stand with Americans who want accountability for how we invest in transportation, ensuring that we invest in things that can get us moving again and create the most jobs.

Write your letter of support now – we’ll give you talking points to make it fast and easy, and we can even send your letter for you! Use our tool to write and submit a letter to your local paper.

USA Today on infrastructure spending: what do Americans want?

USA Today had a timely graphic up yesterday, considering the continuing media coverage around President Obama’s recent proposal for infrastructure spending and a reformed long-term transportation bill.

First, the graphic:

Though we can’t see the rest of the questions or the context, it affirms a few things we already know about Americans’ attitudes about transportation — as evidenced in our own 2010 national poll — and how to fund what we need.

While Americans are actually voting in favor of taxing themselves to improve transportation in state and local ballot measures at a rate of about 70 percent, they often know exactly what they’re going to get in those cases: a new bridge, an expanded transit system, a system of repaired roads, or the like. But the federal program is much fuzzier in most people’s minds. The current system is broken and unaccountable, and putting more money into a broken system is like trying to bring more water up from a well using a bucket with a hole in it.

As James Corless wrote in an Infrastructurist guest post yesterday, “Some of the old guard transportation insiders in D.C. would be thrilled with doubling the overall size of our transportation program and pouring more money into the same broken system, but Americans know better. They want more accountability, safer streets, and more transportation options so seniors can maintain their independence and low wage workers can get to jobs.”

It’s also interesting that the sentence to the left of the poll summarizes it as “Americans would rather use tolls than taxes to build more roads,” when it could have just as easily been “Americans are OK with building no new roads if it means raising the gas tax or instituting tolls to pay for them.”

Maybe the poll asks the wrong question?

We’re not in favor of a moratorium on any new roads whatsoever, but this survey clearly reinforces the fact that Americans in urban and rural areas have moved beyond the idea that the solution to every transportation problem can and should be a new road.

We cooperated on a poll in 2009 with the National Association of Realtors, showing that Americans don’t think expanding roads and highways are the best use of scarce transportation dollars:

“As the federal government makes its plans for transportation funding in 2009, which ONE of the following should be the top priority?”

Maintaining and repairing roads, highways, freeways and bridges	Expanding and improving bus, rail, and other public transportation	Expanding and improving roads, highways, freeways and bridges	Not sure
50%	31%	16%	3%

And as our 2010 poll showed, more than four-in-five voters (82 percent) say that “the United States would benefit from an expanded and improved transportation system, such as rail and buses” and a solid majority (56 percent) “strongly agree” with that statement. Fully 79 percent of rural voters agree as well, despite much lower use of public transportation compared to Americans in urban areas.

If you saw this graphic and your curiosity was piqued, perhaps it’s worth going back and poking through our national poll for a fuller picture.

National Geographic on Dangerous by Design

We mentioned this on Twitter when the issue came out back in July, but National Geographic had a nice one-page feature on Dangerous by Design, our study from 2009 ranking metro areas on their relative danger to those on foot and bike, focusing on Florida’s overall risk based on having 4 of the top 10 most dangerous metros. In the last 15 years, more than 76,000 Americans have been killed while crossing or walking along a street in their community, and it’s high time that more attention was paid to this preventable loss of life that we far too often ignore or simple believe to be inevitable.

Click the image to download a PDF of the one-page article, and while you’re at it you could just go ahead and subscribe to one of our country’s best magazines for only 15 bucks.

Access denied: gaining a disabled person’s perspective

We’ve talked a bit here for nearly two years about the need to make our streets safe and accessible for all users — whether young, old, walkers, bikers, drivers, or wheelchair users. Almost every time we post pictures like this or this showing inaccessible conditions on our streets, it’s a reminder of how shocking it is that we build infrastructure in our communities that is almost impossible for certain citizens to use comfortably or at all.

Yesterday, we got an invite to add one of our photos to a Flickr group we’d not noticed before. Taking a few moments to scan through all 50 or so pictures can give you fresh eyes for looking at the streets and sidewalks around us.

Some of the problems in these photos are certainly systemic issues with how we build and design our streets or other public spaces. Some others, like having doors open outward, result from a lack of understanding or a failure of design. Until you’ve been in a wheelchair trying to get down the street to the movie theater or the drugstore, you probably don’t notice doors that are slightly too narrow, ramps that are too steep, or sidewalks without entry ramps.

They’re not all transportation-related, but this group’s photos are well worth a look.

Wildkat: Access Denied!

LA residents rally for transit, jobs and an economic boost for region

Thousands rallied last Friday at the Los Angeles City Hall in support of the jobs that could be created by a visionary program to fast track a slate of planned public transportation projects — if the federal government will do what’s necessary to help a metro area that’s helping itself.

At the rally, Transportation for America’s deputy director Lea Schuster stood shoulder-to-shoulder with prominent labor leaders and California lawmakers to tell Washington to help speed up the 30/10 Plan – a plan to build 12 major local transit projects in 10 years rather than 30. The plan would spur economic growth and protect the environment, create 166,000 jobs, ease congestion, and reduce air pollution and dependency on oil.

LA Labor Rally Denny: Lea Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

Move LA’s Denny Zane speaks at the podium, flanked on his right by T4 deputy director Lea Schuster, holding the Move LA banner touting the 30/10 plan for the LA metro area.

If Congress establishes the programs needed to move 30/10 forward, cities and regions around the country that have local transportation tax measures could receive up-front loans from the federal government to speed the construction of vital public transportation projects and programs. Fast-tracking the projects and speeding up the timetable would save millions in escalating material costs, while creating thousands of new jobs in the short run. Guaranteed and preapproved local tax revenues would then be used to repay the loans.

In the case of Los Angeles, voters approved a measure at the ballot box (Measure R) to tax themselves for 30 years to pay for transportation. Implementing 30/10 would allow them to get the money up front to build 12 projects over 10 years and pay back the loans over 30 years.

Speakers supporting the effort to establish the federal lending programs included Senator Barbara Boxer, AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, LA County Federation of Labor leader Maria Elena Durazo, and Move LA’s Denny Zane.

All the speakers cited 30/10 as a job creating and environmentally progressive transportation model for the rest of the country. As Senator Boxer said, “We know if we do embrace this notion of 30/10, we will create thousands of good-paying union jobs and we will reduce our billion-dollar-a-day addiction to foreign oil.”

LA area Representatives Jane Harman and Judy Chu both stated their support for the initiative with Jane Harman declaring, “30/10”’ will be my number one priority in Congress. And LA labor leader Richard Slawson hailed it as “our stimulus package.”

As roads, freeways and bridges have grown increasingly congested and fallen into a state of disrepair and federal transportation funds have become scarce, taxpayers in communities across the country have voted to tax themselves to raise money for long-term transportation programs to expand public transportation and fix aging infrastructure — proving again that Americans will increase their own taxes to pay for transportation if they know what their taxes are buying.

As with 30/10, well-planned transportation programs can provide the immediate economic stimulus needed to put people back to work and provide safe, clean, and affordable transportation options.

As Denny Zane, Executive Director of Move LA and one of the founders of the 30/10 Plan stated, getting the legislation needed to establish the federal lending programs to provide the upfront loans will take a national effort, a national coalition, and national leaders. He cited the success of Transportation for America and its leadership in putting together a coalition of more than 500 organizations and elected officials fighting for federal transportation reform as performing the “type of work that we need” and being the campaign that will “help put the votes together” to establish the programs to ensure that the 30/10 Plan and other initiatives like it become a reality.

Walk Score expands into Transit Score; housing plus transportation costs

An exciting new service that launched this morning from our friends at Walk Score will help people all across the country find out how transit-accessible a home or a neighborhood is while gaining a better understanding of the true cost of buying a home — the cost of housing plus transportation.

Starting today, when you visit Walk Score you’ll also get information about nearby transit options, commuting details, and the expected cost of housing plus transportation. Some of the new features:

A Transit Score for the 40+ cities that provide open transit data. See the list of cities here
By entering a work and home address, you can get custom commute reports for all cities showing hills on your route for biking or walking, nearby transit lines, and travel times and directions based on mode. Select walking, biking, transit or driving and see the route update dynamically. (See example below)
They’ve also joined with the Center for Neighborhood Technology to allow users to calculate their expected transportation costs to give a fuller picture of the cost of a home.
They’re partnering with the real estate site ZipRealty to have this provided with all of ZipRealty’s home listings. So anyone looking for a home on their site will get exposed to these ideas on a regular basis.

Together with the Center for Neighborhood Technology, Walk Score and CNT have done more than almost anyone to help raise the visibility of the issue of housing and transportation costs in the minds of consumers and adding transit to the mix is the next obvious step. After all, you may live in a neighborhood with a 75 Walk Score but you’re a five minute walk away from a bus or train that can take you to a neighborhood with a 100 Walk Score in just a few more minutes. Being able to walk to and use a variety of of other transportation options expands your “walkshed” — something that Walk Score doesn’t recognize on its own.

When you search for the Walk Score now, you also get a Transit Score. And if you live in one of the 40 cities with open transit data, you can enter a second address and get a commute report, complete with directions. As an example, here’s a commute from a neighborhood north of downtown D.C and the T4 America office., where some of our staff live and ride their bikes to work. Click on the bike commute, and it shows you the profile of the hills, the time and mileage, and the route on a map:

These commute reports will be available for all cities, though the transit data will be left off for cities without open data.

Now I know what you’re thinking: only 40 cities with transit data? Indeed, Transit Score unfortunately only has access to a limited set of open transit data, because not all agencies have chosen to open up this publicly-owned data as a public resource. But there’s hope. You can petition your local transit agency to release their data publicly to make exciting tools like this and others possible. Visit www.citygoround.org to see a list of the 695 agencies with no open data and find information on how to request your local agency provide that data. (Read our post about the release of CityGoRound.)

Transit Score was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, and had this to say in the official press release this morning:

“The Rockefeller Foundation’s transportation initiative is committed to helping Americans re-think our transportation future as a way to expand economic opportunity, and we are excited about the potential impact Transit Score will have in helping Americans make more informed decisions about where they will live and work,” said Benjamin de la Pena, Associate Director at The Rockefeller Foundation. “Transportation costs are often the second highest expense for working Americans and Transit Score will give families more control over their household budgets by providing them with information about their transit choices.”

The housing+transportation calculator is cool, but at the risk of going on too long on a Monday morning, if you really want to dive into finding out more about housing and transportation costs today, you need to check out Abogo from the Center for Neighborhood Technology. Type in an address, and it gives you the cost you can expect to pay for transportation at that address and an estimate on emissions. With one glance at the color, you can see where transportation costs are low, and where they are higher, helping to make a more informed decision.

These kinds of tools are certainly important for helping consumers make more informed decisions when purchasing a house, but the greatest value is really what they do to help shatter the myth that the cost of a home is the only major cost of a home. With multiple trips taken each day to all the places we need to go, the locations of our homes have profound impacts on our pocketbooks, wallets and time. We applaud Walk Score, Transit Score and CNT for working hard to make the case that we need more walkable, transit-accessible places in our communities — and that the market is demanding them.

Increased traffic is hazardous to our health

Much of the discussion around health and transportation has zeroed in on how a lack of travel options and an unwalkable built environment in our communities reduces physical activity. But when traffic is the leading cause of death among children worldwide and the leading cause of death among Americans between the ages of 1 and 34, something far more urgent is at stake. Shouldn’t we be outraged that tens of thousands die in preventable traffic accidents each year?

The Centers for Disease Control deserves credit for prioritizing increased seat-belt use and reductions in impaired driving as paramount to traffic safety. Where CDC and other agencies fall short, as Greater Greater Washington points out, is the role of traffic itself in health outcomes, rather than simply traffic safety. Ken Archer writes:

The flaw in this exclusive focus on traffic safety is that increased safety only matters when vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are kept static or reduced. Instead, safety improvements that reduce fatalities per VMT have been offset by rising VMT.

Ken is exactly right. Under the status quo, vehicle-miles-traveled will continue to rise, offsetting much of the progress we make on safety-related measures. Until we build roads to safely accomodate all users, whether in cars, on foot, bike or transit, Americans will continue to be at risk. Streetsblog asked why traffic reduction isn’t a top public health concern. That’s a question we hope more will start asking.

InfrastructureUSA sits down with T4 America Director James Corless

At T4 America, we often lament that transportation policy is a page eight issue as opposed to a page one issue. Groups like InfrastructureUSA help bring our priorities to the forefront.

James Corless, our director, spoke with the folks at InfrastructureUSA on the phone last week about an array of topics, including high-speed rail, reauthorization and articulating an infrastructure vision for the 21st century. Listen to the full audio of the discussion here at InfrastructureUSA, conveniently broken up into shorter bits.

James cited some of the challenges facing transportation advocates in trying to catch the spotlight.

…everybody depends on transportation every single day. In many ways it’s in front of our face, but it’s hidden in plain sight. I don’t think that there is yet enough resonance with the public compared to things like the economy, national security, jobs, the environment, health care, there just hasn’t been enough resonance. At the end of the day, it’s often a very local issue; it’s not seen necessarily as something that rises to the level of national policy. That’s the challenge.

Another factor may be the message itself. James said transportation advocates have “gotten very wonky over the years. We tend to talk in terms of acronyms and funding programs and very arcane and outdated and scientific and very unimaginative language.”

James also discussed the need for high-level leadership, similar to the leadership President Eisenhower deployed in the 1950s to push through an enormous and unprecedented interstate highway system. James praised President Obama for making a signature issue out of high-speed rail, which will do a lot at the state and local level to spur economic development and travel access.

Citing the need for a broader vision, James called on advocates and policymakers alike to stop just asking for more money and start talking about what transportation is going to look like in the coming decades.

I think we actually have to reestablish trust with the American people and give them a new vision for the future, and tell them that this is not merely spending, this is an investment. We won’t do that simply by saying, “boy we’re really short on money and we need $120 billion just to keep pace.” That’s not going to excite people, especially with the kind of fiscal anxieties that exist out there. Asking simply for more money for transportation is putting the cart before the horse. We’ve got to sell people on a vision and we’ve got to reestablish their trust.

Click here for a complete transcript of James’ responses. (PDF)

20 years after the ADA, continuing the fight to improve access for all

Sonia at East Beasley Bus Stop 004 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr. (Credit to Dr. Scott Crawford)

Still working toward accessible and complete streets for all users, 20 years later.

A couple of years ago, my colleague Stephen Lee Davis profiled Dr. Scott Crawford, a wheelchair user and resident of Jackson, Mississippi who has long fought for accessible buses with wheelchair lifts, curb ramps and better sidewalks.

As Dr. Crawford’s story reminds us, there is still a lot of work to do in making our communities accessible for all users. But he’s had a powerful legal tool in his fight to make Jackson’s streets and transit services equitable and accessible for all users: The Americans with Disabilities Act, which turned 20 years old just this week. President George H. W. Bush signed the ADA in 1990, and his son, George W. Bush, put his signature on the 2008 amendments to the Act, which broadened protections and addressed provisions that had been weakened by the Courts.

The ADA defines a disability as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity.”

The ADA made reasonable accommodation in workplaces and businesses for people with disabilities the law of the land, ensuring that a disability wouldn’t automatically marginalize anyone. Before it was signed, Americans who were blind, deaf, wheelchair-bound or with chronic injuries or limitations had no legal recourse against inaccessibility. Public and private sector institutions could ignore them as a silent minority — and they often did.

Reasonable accommodation does not mean that every corner of every building can be reached by everyone. It does mean that an employer or government agency must make a concerted effort — through ramps, elevators, doors wide enough for a wheelchair and other resources — to make the workplace accessible for people with disabilities.

Meeting ADA requirements has certainly been a challenge for many communities, especially those with older buildings and smaller economies. Jackson, Mississippi has had the same bus fleet for decades with broken chair lifts and has struggled to find the resources to upgrade. Many transportation departments are more interested in expanding existing roads and broadening access between towns and cities, forgetting what happens within them.

Difficulties aside, many of us are now realizing that the focus on “reasonable accommodations” has actually improved the quality of life for everyone. Older Americans, whether technically disabled or not, face similar challenges with access, have benefited from lifts on public buses. Mothers pushing strollers appreciate new sidewalk ramps.

Beyond mere ADA compliance, everyone is better off with a focus on “Complete Streets,” ensuring that roads accommodate all users regardless of how they get around. Two Mississippi cities, Tupelo and Hernando, recently adopted complete streets policies, and the Michigan State Senate is poised to do the same. Complete streets fit nicely into the universal design approach, which emphasizes the benefits to everyone rather than perpetuating “us” and “them” delineations. The ADA won’t be enough to make our streets truly safe and complete, as Jeff Peel of the League of American Bicyclists pointed out (h/t Streetsblog.net). “…don’t forget, the ADA [doesn’t] require sidewalks — it says that if they are present, they must be made accessible,” he says.

As we celebrate the ADA, it is worth reminding ourselves not to take progress for granted. Progress happens because we pursue the right policies —and the people force our elected officials to listen up. That’s a point worth remembering for everyone who envisions an America with greater transportation options for all.

America’s transit systems require $77.7 billion just to reach a state of good repair

Old Train Car with Broken Glass Originally uploaded by The Upstairs Room to Flickr.

Failure to keep up with regular maintenance and repair in many of our country’s public transportation systems due to tightened budgets is literally slowing us down, through longer commutes, unreliable service and reduced access, exacerbating the effects of a down economy and high unemployment.

This is part of what prompted Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to seek a report on the cost of bringing our nation’s transit systems into a state of good repair.

The Federal Transit Administration study reveals chronic underinvestment in the nation’s transit systems and estimates $77.7 billion is needed just to rehabilitate what we already have. Unfortunately, that figure is more of a floor than a ceiling. The $77.7 billion would simply modernize and repair existing transit systems, without even beginning to build the tracks or build the new projects urgently needed to keep up with burgeoning demand.

Sadly, we are nowhere near where we need to be.

Rather than matching the needed level of investment, public transit spending in 2008 clocked in at less than $13 billion. According to the FTA, “the Study’s findings — in particular the magnitude of the investment backlog — emphasize the need for a more comprehensive understanding of transit reinvestment needs.”

The New York Times echoed that theme in a recent story. The Times noted a recent incident on Maryland’s commuter rail system (MARC) in which 900 commuters on a train home to Maryland from Washington, D.C. were stuck near Union Station for two hours, with temperatures reaching as high as 110 degrees. One especially disgruntled rider ventured that air-conditioned jails in Georgia would be preferable to staying on the train.

Though important, this isn’t just about comfort. Millions of Americans, young and old, urban and rural, rely on transit system each day to get to work, school or other daily needs. Disruptions to these services are much more serious than a mere inconvenience. In tough times, we should be making it easier for people to go about their lives and get to work, but chronic underinvestment in transit is making these things harder instead.

One of the biggest contributors to incidents like those on the DC Metro is simply the age of the equipment. Every year, the price of buying new parts and repairing rail lines goes up, and every year the upgrades or repairs don’t happen, keeping the trains running becomes more expensive and difficult.

Despite this, the Times notes that “the federal government is unlikely to step in to help the strapped city, state and local transit agencies,” despite what AASHTO spokesman Tony Dorsey described as “the perfect storm” that is “causing people in the transportation industry to feel very concerned.”

The Times’ outlook aside, there is a plan in Congress to provide aid to struggling agencies hit hard by shrinking state and local budgets. T4 America has strongly encouraged Congress to pass the Public Transportation Preservation Act, which would provide $2 billion in emergency operating funds to help keep systems afloat during this crisis of state and local budgets, as the Times noted.

Whether this bill passes or not, Congress must keep the FTA’s sobering numbers in mind when moving to reauthorize the nation’s surface transportation bill. Some will surely ask whether we can afford these investments, but the question we should be asking is how we afford not to make them.

Blueprint America on complete streets in Atlanta

Do yourself a favor and check out this short video from PBS’ Blueprint America series that aired on the program “Need to Know” recently.

The overall package is about “disappearmarks” — earmarks totaling millions in the last federal transportation bill that have never been allocated or spent, according to the Sunlight Foundation. But this story from Atlanta focuses much more specifically on how unsafe, incomplete streets that don’t adequately meet the needs of all users in Atlanta results in pedestrians that have little choice but to take their lives into their own hands each and every day, just to get to work, school, or the closest bus stop.

They used the numbers from Dangerous by Design, our report on pedestrian safety nationally, to help give some broader national context to the situation in Atlanta.

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

What does the FREIGHT Act really mean for our freight and ports?

Port of Oakland originally uploaded by ingridtaylar

There were a few questions bouncing around via Twitter and elsewhere about the new FREIGHT Act introduced yesterday by Senators Lautenberg, Murray and Cantwell. We issued a joint press release with a few other groups, but it’s worth spelling out in plain language some of the benefits of the bill.

For context, it’s worth understanding how freight transportation policy currently works now to understand how much of an improvement this bill would provide.

Today, there is no national freight program or specific national policy. There’s no dedicated federal transportation money that states, regions or ports can spend to improve throughput or operations at ports, intermodal facilities and freight corridors. And among the traditional federal transportation programs, freight rail projects in particular (much like passenger rail) aren’t eligible projects.

So if a port is congested or wants to expand, there’s little available federal money to spend directly on rail or any other mode. Your choices are highways or highways. When a state or port does spend to improve operations, there is no accountability to make sure they’re actually reducing port/freight congestion, moving freight faster, or reducing air pollution in surrounding communities — a significant issue of environmental justice.

Under this new bill, there would finally be a coordinated national policy for freight and ports across the country, and for the first time public health and air quality surrounding freight hubs and facilities become strong criteria for awarding dollars.

No matter what ports decide to spend money on to improve their operations, they’d have to consider air quality, greenhouse gas reductions, and noise and water pollution in the surrounding communities with future federal investments. On top of that, there would be a merit-based grant program for projects that do the best job of improving freight operations while using money most effectively and hitting the benchmarks laid out in the bill.

Benchmarks? The goals in the bill set a powerful framework for accountability, spelling out what they money should accomplish, so taxpayers can know that their money is being spent wisely.

Reduce delays of goods and commodities entering into and out of intermodal connectors that serve international points of entry on an annual basis.
Increase travel time reliability on major freight corridors that connect major population centers with freight generators and international gateways on an annual basis.
Reduce by 10 percent the number of freight transportation-related fatalities by 2015.
Reduce national freight transportation-related carbon dioxide levels by 40 percent by 2030.
Reduce freight transportation-related air, water, and noise pollution and impacts on ecosystems and communities on an annual basis.

For example, a port in a coastal city in California would have to consider the impacts on the health of those communities surrounding the port. Would investing in more freight rail capacity ease congestion, lower overall emissions, and reduce local air pollution? These are the kinds of questions that would have to be answered.

“A truly multimodal national freight program that is accountable to measurable performance targets and benchmarks is something the U.S. has needed for a long time,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America in our press release.

“We applaud Senator Lautenberg for recognizing that our freight system can move our goods from coast to coast and power the economy while also being part of the solution for many of our most pressing problems: air quality, dangerous emissions, oil dependence, and congestion on our highways and interstates, to name just a few.”

Helping kids get active and healthy by “keeping them moving”

Toks Nashville Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Adetokunbo Omishakin, the Director of Healthy Living Initiatives for the City of Nashville, Tennessee, explained the barriers facing children and parents he met in parts of E. Nashville who want to walk or bike outside — but find their neighborhoods not only lacking sidewalks or bike lanes, but often facing crime that can keep them indoors.

A healthier transportation system for America’s kids requires change in federal policy. But change will remain out of our grasp absent a sense of urgency from the everyday people on the ground.

The need for a meeting point between policymakers in Washington and citizens in their neighborhoods was evident in today’s roundtable on childhood obesity, titled “Keeping Kids Moving,” sponsored by Transportation for America, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity, The Convergence Partnership and PolicyLink.

We’re facing an epidemic of childhood obesity and poor health, and as a few people pointed out, this could very well be a generation of children who live shorter, less healthy lives than their parents if we don’t act now to change things.

The shape and structure of streets, sidewalks and the ability to safely use them has an enormous impact on whether children become overweight or obese. Kids get more physical activity and lead healthier lives when they can bike and walk to school, play in local parks and reach recreational opportunities with ease. Among American children between the ages of 10 and 17, 32 percent are overweight or obese, and many are at risk for more serious conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Obesity rates are disproportionately high among low-income and minority children.

In search of a solution, many routes invariably lead to transportation policy.

During the panel, several federal officials stressed the need for partnerships that cross departments and jurisdictions, with Roy Kienitz, undersecretary for policy at the Department of Transportation quipping, “transportation is too important to be left to transportation professionals.” Kienitz also emphasized the need for Americans to speak up and utilize the democratic process, noting that “the distance between the top [at DOT] and that sidewalk on your street is vast.”

Chip Johnson, mayor of Hernando, Mississippi, knows just how much of a difference one repair can make. As part of a broader push to repair his town’s streets, Johnson oversaw the pouring of concrete for a new sidewalk right outside his office window. On the old, cracked sidewalk, Johnson used to see a handful of pedestrians every morning, but he saw dozens more walking by once the improvements were completed.

“People want to exercise,” said Johnson, a Republican first elected mayor in 2005, adding that it’s up to officials like him to provide them the chance to do it.

keepkidsmoving2 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

While people like Undersecretary Kienitz, Special Assistant to the President Martha Coven and others are moving the levers where they can in Washington, local officials like Johnson are stepping up and refusing to wait, behavior encouraged by the federal officials who were present.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean didn’t wait for Washington. He made safe and accessible streets for all users a top priority and hired a director of healthy living initiatives — Adetonkunbo Omishakin, also a panel participant — to help make it happen in Nashville. Child wellness advocate Julia Lopez, herself a teenager, didn’t wait either. Along with being an instigator of change on the ground around her home of southern California, she has traveled the country to bring a youth perspective to the obesity challenge, calling on elected officials to step up and help make healthy transportation the norm, not the exception.

It’s clear that these advocates on the ground and policymakers at the top can meet in the middle to make real change, but it will take continued pressure on Congress from both ends to get the job done.

American Conservative magazine “rails against the machine,” promotes alternatives to the automobile

Sound Transit Link Light Rail at Columbia City Station Originally uploaded by Thomas Le Ngo

It seems like everything in Washington these days is politically charged — economic recovery, health care and Wall Street reform, to name a few. Unfortunately and often without good reason, transportation becomes one of them.

William Lind, a respected figure in right-wing circles, is adamant that public transportation shouldn’t be, explaining why in “Rail Against the Machine,” featured in this month’s American Conservative magazine — part of a special package in American Conservative on public transportation with contributions from a host of special authors.

Lind is the co-author with the late Paul Weyrich of a recent book called “Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation” and was featured in a Transportation for America online debate late last year. His argument is simple: there is nothing inherently conservative about favoring highways — and nothing un-conservative about alternatives to the automobile.

For starters, Lind points out, conservatives ride public transportation in large numbers. Among residents in Lake County, Illinois, a Republican enclave in suburban Chicago, 11 percent of those earning more than $75,000 per year use the METRA commuter train. They are using public transportation because they like and it meets their needs. Lind writes:

So why are conservatives using the public transportation we are told they oppose? Because being stuck in traffic isn’t fun, even if you are driving a BMW. On a commuter train or Light Rail line, you whiz past all those cars going nowhere at 50 or 60 miles per hour — reading, working on your laptop, or relaxing, instead of staring at some other guy’s bumper.

In addition to praising alternatives to driving, Lind also dismisses the oft-repeated myth that our preference for automobiles in this country is a free-market outcome. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he writes, pointing out that 100 years ago, Americans relied on a variety of systems, including intercity trains and streetcars, all of which were privately owned and free of government support.

But they were wiped out by massive government subsidies of highways. Today’s situation, where “drive or die” is the reality for most Americans, is a product of almost a century of government intervention in the transportation market.

No one, least of all Lind, is arguing that we should roll back the Interstate Highway system — still the envy of the world though we need to better maintain that investment. Many of the decisions made in the 1950s gave Americans a ticket to greater prosperity and quality of life. But Lind says we should stop pretending that all transit is subsidized, while roads and highways stand on their own as 100 percent paid for.

All transportation infrastructure requires some government support, so we ought to make sure we invest wisely and give people more options rather than less.

Lind’s case for public transportation is very pragmatic and results-oriented, but he appeals to conservatives on a philosophical level as well. Citing conservative thinker Russell Kirk, Lind calls upon prudence as a virtue, adding that “there is nothing prudent about leaving most people immobile should events beyond the pale cut off our oil supply, as happened in 1973 and 1979. …Prudence suggests the first goal of a conservative transportation policy would be to provide options, ways to get around without a car.”

Lind offers several prescriptions. First, he wants to see a National Defense Public Transportation Act that would “seek to recreate that lost network of trains and buses, bit by bit as we can afford to do so,” while giving counties a choice as to whether to participate. He also envisions a revival of urban streetcars and a greater focus on cost control in all new projects, so limited taxpayer dollars are protected and accountable.

The full collection of articles, including columns by our partner Christopher Leinberger, the president of the Congress for the New Urbanism John Norquist and others are available in the current print edition of the American Conservative or here as a pdf.

For more information on Lind’s book Moving Minds, click here.

Active transportation, more walking and biking can help us confront obesity

Obesity is on the rise in 28 states and is one of the biggest public health challenges facing America, but taking some concrete steps to boost walking and biking and invest in more active modes of transportation all across America could be a major factor in turning the tide.

That is the conclusion of F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2010, a new report sponsored by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Most striking about the report are the persistent demographic and geographic disparities in obesity rates, as well as rising rates among children. One’s zip code or income should never be the greatest determinant of health.

In 40 states and the District of Columbia, adult obesity rates were higher for blacks and Latinos than whites. The South was home to 10 out of the 11 states with highest obesity rates — Mississippi clocked in on top with 33.8 percent of adults considered obese. And, accounting for income, 35.3 percent of adults earning less than $15,000 per year were obese, as opposed to 24.5 percent of adults earning more than $50,000 per year.

Childhood obesity rates were up, but fluctuated by state, from just 10 percent in Wyoming to 21 percent in Kentucky. You can view a complete map with obesity rates in all 50 states and the district here.

The authors write:

Reversing the obesity epidemic will require individuals, families, schools, communities, businesses, government, and every other sector of American society to reduce the barriers to healthy eating and active living. Every American must have the chance to lead a healthy lifestyle.

F is for Fat’s transportation plank calls for a bold and comprehensive reauthorization of the surface transportation law, similar to the draft proposal released by key House chairman Jim Oberstar last year. The report compels Congress to act on Complete Streets legislation to ensure that people who walk, bike and use transit can use roadways safely, and a reauthorization of the Safe Routes to School program, in hopes of reversing the trend of more and more kids getting driven to class each day.

The report also identifies three legislative vehicles for reorienting our transportation policy and increasing travel options.

The Active Communities Transportation Act would give cities and localities added funds for increasing walking and biking rates and making it safer. The National Transportation Objectives Act would attach safety, efficiency and economic competitiveness benchmarks to federal dollars, making our transportation spending much more accountable to the taxpayers. And the CLEAN TEA bill would cap greenhouse gas emissions and target revenue toward clean transportation projects that can get us where we need to go while reducing emissions at the same time.

As the report points out, we are already moving forward on a number of fronts and many policymakers get it.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 signed by President Obama earlier this year funds a number of wellness and prevention programs that have the potential to be expanded. A number of states have taken steps toward healthier school lunches, and Congress may act on legislation as well. And First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign is calling attention to how we can ensure children live healthier lives, including through walking, bike and physical activity.

To view the entire report, you can visit the Trust for America’s Health website here.

America’s military families have diverse transportation needs

Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Just as America’s veterans rely on transportation options to access crucial health care, military families face unique travel challenges as well.

One challenge is getting kids to school and recreation in new locations. The average child in a military family moves and switches schools three times as often as a civilian child. Many military bases and installations are located in remote areas and surrounded by restricted land use zones, making it difficult for families living on base to connect to regional transportation networks.

In the 1970s, roughly half of all school-aged children walked or biked to school. Today, this figure is less than fifteen percent. By working to make our streets safer and more accessible for biking and walking, we can ensure the children of military families are able to get to school and increase physical activity at the same time. The Safe Routes to School National Partnership has done important work highlighting these needs for all families.

Expanding local transportation options would also help military families to visit friends and family members off-base, or to go shopping or take their kids out for recreation. The existence of more travel options would save military families money, since households located near transit save an average of $9,000 per year.

As Congress moves toward reauthorizing a comprehensive surface transportation law, let’s push for programs that honor the sacrifices of military families by increasing their options for getting around.

America’s veterans need more and better transportation options

Disabled American Veterans is a key provider for veterans’ transit.

As we celebrate the birth of our country this Fourth of July, we should also honor the men and women who have served in uniform. Keeping our promise to America’s veterans means giving them the resources they need when they return home, and that includes their transportation needs.

All veterans rely on a diverse network of travel options, but disabled and rural veterans in particular need a transportation policy that increases their mobility to find employment, commute to work and access regular medical care for both chronic and acute conditions.

Access to automobiles and driving are strongly correlated with employment opportunities. Among veterans with spinal cord injuries, only 16 percent of those unable to drive were able to obtain permanent employment, compared with 58 percent of those who could drive themselves to work. These disabled and injured veterans need other options to get to work – and a new transportation bill can help them get there.

Many veterans endure chronic medical conditions or face long recoveries that require specialized medical care. In rural parts of New Hampshire and Vermont, for instance, 29 percent of veterans reported that travel considerations impacted their decision to access routine medical care, while 28 percent of veterans said transportation issues had impacted their access to care for chronic conditions.

The same study found that increased distance from health care treatment facilities was a statistically significant factor in explaining “care-seeking behavior.” Across several key categories, longer travel times from health care locations had a negative impact on a veteran’s ability to receive care. This included older veterans’ outpatient care, outpatient and inpatient care for veterans with spinal cord injuries, outpatient care after myocardial infarction, aftercare for substance abuse treatment and mental health resources.

The absence of other meaningful transportation options was even a factor in health categories such as routine immunizations and dental care. In a study analyzing why older veterans at risk for influenza did not comply with recommended vaccination protocols, 13 percent of respondents reported transportation difficulties as a major factor in their decision not to pursue immunization. With dental care, 55 percent of veterans who could drive independently or had access to public transit had visited the dentist within the last year, whereas 25 percent of homebound vets had not been to the dentist in more than five years.

There are many existing programs to help veterans get to VA hospitals, but it is clear these programs fall far short of the need. More than 37,000 men and women in uniform have been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today more than ever, our veterans need America to invest in flexible, efficient transportation networks to allow access to crucial services.

Our veterans shouldn’t have to choose between driving to the VA or missing the medical care that they need and have unquestionably earned. That’s no choice at all.

Innovation and competition make the housing-transportation connection work

A map of the Chicago Transit Authority system.

Note: a version of this post was also published on the National Journal’s Transportation Experts blog.

This country is in desperate need of innovation. We are still mired in a recession triggered by a collapse in real estate that was driven in no small part by the exhaustion of the “drive-til-you-qualify” housing market. The housing market was showing profound signs of change before the real estate-triggered financial meltdown halted all development, with surging demand for more conveniently located, walkable neighborhoods. As just one example, the city of Atlanta added nearly 120,000 new residents since 2000, a population increase of 28 percent, after decades of serious population loss.

Two summers after the devastating run of soaring gas prices in 2008, we are again suffering from anxiety over our over-reliance on petroleum as oil gushes into the Gulf of Mexico. Just yesterday, the House Livable Communities Task Force sent House leadership an urgent letter arguing that Americans must be given new options for where they live and how they get around as part of the long-term solution to this potentially crippling vulnerability. As they noted:

The transportation sector accounts for almost three-quarters of U.S. oil consumption, and Americans consume over 10 percent of the world’s oil just driving around. … Livable communities offer a safer, cleaner and more economical approach to reducing our nation’s energy consumption … .

“Livability” has become the administration’s catch-all term for providing communities the resources and expertise they need to give their citizens the living and travel options they are looking for, while sustaining a high quality of life. With the old model gasping its last breaths, our local communities and metro areas are the laboratories for emerging innovations in building the next America. The best way to sort out the most promising new ideas is through the tried-and-true American way: Competition.

The principles articulated by the three-agency partnership are an excellent prism through which to evaluate grant applications from local communities. The trick will be holding themselves and their grant recipients accountable for collecting and evaluating data on the success of these projects. Did that new neighborhood near a rail transit station draw the expected customers? Did residents and visitors drive less, walk and use transit more? Are residents satisfied, and if not, what would they change? There won’t be a one-size solution, but we should all be able to learn lessons about what works in a given region of the country or in certain types of communities.

This is an unsettling time for many of us, but it also could be an exciting time of positive change and new discoveries. The Obama administration deserves a lot of credit both for recognizing the link between housing, transportation, economic development and environmental stewardship and initiating a bold partnership to make sure this coordination happens. We should support their impulse to prod innovation, even as we hold their feet to the fire in evaluating results.

Secretary LaHood, members of Congress celebrate Pennsylvania Avenue’s new bike lanes

LaHood with Mayor Fenty, DDOT Director Gabe Klein and Reps. Blumenauer and Oberstar. Photo courtesy of USDOT.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has made a point of championing bicycling as a legitimate travel option everywhere, but he is also keeping an eye on his own backyard, including Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC. LaHood joined DC Mayor Adrian Fenty, city staff and members of Congress in inaugurating the new dedicated bike lanes on what is known to some as “America’s Main Street.”

According to the Washington Post, the new lanes are part of a pilot program on streets expected to be able to accommodate both significant automobile and bicycle traffic. They run along Pennsylvania between Third Street and 15th Street in DC’s Northwest quadrant.

One of the most important people to attend the event, held last Wednesday, June 23, was among the least known: DC Department of Transportation Director Gabe Klein. Although local bicycling advocates had differing opinions on how to construct the Pennsylvania Avenue lanes, no one can dispute that Klein has been a visionary in making DC more livable and accessible by all kinds of transit options. Klein and his staff at DDOT, many of whom attended themselves, deserve a lot of credit.

Here is LaHood on his blog, describing two bike boosters in Congress who attended the inauguration.

We should also thank two of our nation’s most effective bicycling advocates, Rep. Blumenauer and Rep. Jim Oberstar, Chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, both of whom joined us in yesterday’s heat to celebrate these new lanes–in their work shirts and ties, along with helmets, gloves, and ankle straps to keep their pants out of their bike chains.

In his remarks, Rep. Blumenauer made a terrific point, reminding motorists that, “A bike is really a driver’s best friend. Because every bike you see cruising down one of these lanes is one less car to compete with in traffic, one less bit of congestion, one less driver buying fuel.”

But it was Rep. Oberstar who may have had the best line of the day: “Bicyclists aren’t burning hydrocarbons; we’re burning carbohydrates!”