There was a lot of talk among transportation advocates and bloggers about this New York Times article last week, Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy:

While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.

Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of “environmental zones” where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.

Think for a moment about the question left begging after seeing the headline and reading these opening paragraphs: “why?” As in, why are these changes being made in these cities? Is it a pernicious top-down scheme to make driving miserable? Or is it something else entirely?

Just like in a handful of American cities that are bucking the conventional street engineering wisdom of the last 50 years, this isn’t happening by nefarious top-down diktat in these democracies. These changes are the product of consensus emerging over time about just what kind of city people want to live in and how it should work. The residents of these cities are making it clear that they want places that are enjoyable to traverse on foot; that they’re all pedestrians first. They want alternatives to driving, because gas is almost unbearably expensive. Streets should be safe to walk or bike, no matter your age or ability. They want and expect public transportation that is fast, efficient and gets them to the destinations they want to visit. And leaders are responding to demand by changing the city in accordance to these wishes.

Again, these changes are not happening because an oppressive regime has repressed the voice of the people and foisted unwanted transformations on their cities to bring chaos to their lives. These changes are happening because citizens are asking for them of their democratic governments.

But the policies themselves are one thing. We were intrigued by a strategic question, which we asked on twitter over the course of several tweets:

Do you think the framing in this heavily-forwarded NYT story on Euro traffic is wise to use by US transportation advocates? Or phrased another way: is it wise to talk about these positive changes in a way that sounds like punishment for majority of people (that drive?) And again, our question is not about the policy or the actual changes themselves — it’s about the messaging and framing. Should we use it?

The opinions shared on twitter spanned the spectrum, but a handful of people felt that it would do more harm than good if the ultimate result is resentment from a significant segment of the population. The tide is turning in the U.S. in many cities and suburbs, with more than 100 jurisdictions passing complete streets policies, for example, but if the discussion devolves to an argument with clear winners and losers and an us-versus-them mentality, we’ll lose that momentum as changes become increasingly polarizing and politicized. (Or moreso, in many places.)

Of course, it’s all a matter of perspective, as so neatly summed up by Grist’s Sarah Goodyear. If you view moving speeding traffic as the primary point of our streets, you might view these changes — no matter how democratically implemented — as unwanted and “stifling.” If you think that our streets should be places for moving people, no matter what they’re using to move along, you might view them a little more positively:

The Times piece itself could have just as easily been titled “Europe Encourages Alternatives to Driving.” By adequately funding public transit and creating safe places for people to walk and bike, that’s what so many of the continent’s cities are doing.

High-speed rail investment has the potential to yield great economic and environmental rewards for California, but only if communities make smart decisions about land-use and growth at and around new stations.

A new report prepared by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association offers prescriptions for how communities can prepare for rail investments.

“The new statewide rail system presents a once-in-a-century opportunity to reshape their local economies and set the course for more compact, less automobile-dependent growth,” according to the report.

The first leg of California’s high-speed rail is the backbone of the system through the state’s Central Valley, including population-rich Bakersfield and Fresno. Once all 26 stations have been completed, the system will reach northward to Sacramento and include service from San Francisco to Los Angeles and further southward to San Diego.

The benefits are plentiful. For starters, by shortening travel time between successful metro areas, high-speed rail brings geographically distant focal points closer, connecting more people to opportunities and jobs. The new stations and ease of travel can also revitalize downtowns, bring economic opportunity to low-income communities and reduce suburban sprawl.

By providing a viable alternative to the car — and, in the case of longer journeys, to energy-intensive air travel — high-speed rail is also a terrific means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and assisting California in meeting the targets of its groundbreaking climate change law, AB 32.

But each of these potential benefits comes with a cautionary tale. The BART system in the San Francisco Bay Area, for instance, was intended to fuel compact and transit-oriented development, but many of the more suburban stations were surrounded by parking lots and built away from town centers, missing the opportunity to add ridership by building up those areas or spurring new walkable centers. Similarly, most of California’s airports are surrounded by parking lots and access roads, making nearby development less desirable. Policymakers must make a concerted effort to avoid a similar fate near high-speed rail stations and be willing to prioritize growth in strategic areas.

The station sites face myriad challenges and opportunities. Some, like San Francisco and Sacramento already have traditional downtowns, while San Jose and Anaheim have emerging downtowns with the potential for growth. Stockton, Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield have downtowns as well, but struggle with high unemployment and a lack of private sector investment. Reconciling rail with more traditional suburbs and major airports will be the focus at other stations.

SPUR offers ten recommendations for planning preparation, which include:

• Developing station area plans for each high-speed rail station area
• Drafting statewide station area planning and development guidelines to inform local decision-makers
• Drafting a statewide implementation plan
• Providing financial support for local planning as needed
• And, establishing local development corporations to facilitate local area development

To see the rest of SPUR’s recommendations and the entire report, you can visit their website here.

Last Wednesday before 800 people in downtown Chicago’s Millennium Park, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) unveiled a vision for the Chicago region’s future called “GO TO 2040,” a document that lays out a roadmap for the future of the city of Chicago and the metro area toward a more sustainable future.

GO TO 2040 serves as the region’s first comprehensive plan since Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago. CMAP spent five years compiling the plan with direct input from thousands of residents across the region, resulting in a compelling vision of the future and concrete steps needed to realize it.

Obviously, a large component of the document focuses on transportation planning, where they echo many things T4 America believes about the future of investing in transportation, like using limited funds more wisely, repairing existing transportation assets first, making all investments transparent and accountable, increasing access to different travel options, and making sure that housing and jobs are planned in concert. From the plan:

Our region’s congestion is already among the nation’s highest. Without new approaches, it will only increase due to the projected growth of our population, jobs, and traffic. Current revenues are not keeping up with maintenance and operation costs. Underinvestment and deferred maintenance have strained our transportation system, leaving us with aging infrastructure that is deteriorating in some places. As a region, we need to make better use of existing funds and identify new sources of revenue that will encourage more efficient travel patterns.

…Our seven-county region needs to take better care of existing roads and transit while strategically investing in the transportation system to reduce congestion, strengthen our communities, and foster a robust economy.

Making our system “world class” is not simply a matter of raising taxes to generate more revenue, nor is it about massive expansion of the system. Instead, the primary goal is to prioritize spending on maintenance and modernization, which will account for more than 97 percent of the proposed transportation funding over the next three decades.

Compared with some other long-range plans, CMAP set fairly modest and realistic goals, such as completing the Elgin-O’Hare Expressway and building a western bypass around O’Hare International Airport. The plan also says the CTA’s Red Line should be extended south from 95th Street to 130th Street and a transportation center should be put in the West Loop to improve transfers among rapid transit, buses and all types of rail services. There’s a clear call for a national freight plan to keep the economy moving without choking the region with traffic (echoing our Blueprint) and other recommendations include improving several Metra and transit service.

At first many critics of the plan felt it was too conservative “We know the (funding) resources just aren’t there to do everything there is to do,”said  Randy Blankenhorn, Executive Director of CMAP, echoing the call for investing wisely and with more accountability. “We have to invest what we have more wisely and focus on improving the economy and the environment.”

However the following day, the Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded a $4.25 million Sustainable Communities Regional Planning grant to CMAP to help implement GO TO 2040.

Senator Durbin, pictured, spoke at the event, saying in statement, “GO TO 2040 is a forward-thinking plan that will help Chicagoland maintain its position as one of the nation’s foremost economic and cultural centers. Today’s funding will give GO TO 2040 more resources to achieve their goal of helping the nearly 300 communities around Chicago create and implement a comprehensive plan for a sustainable future,” he said.

As the Metropolitan Planning Council States: “GO TO 2040 is both a milestone and a breath of fresh air. Livable communities with ample open space, housing choices, and efficient use of water and energy. Economic and educational innovation to cultivate our region’s human capital. Tax and investment policies that lead to efficient governance and investment of public dollars, not just spending. A transportation system that moves people and goods where, when and how they want to go, greatly enhancing our regional mobility.”

Senator Durbin and Randy Blankenhorn were joined by Gary Hanning, Secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation, Sam Skinner, former USDOT Secretary, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, Gerry Roper, President and CEO of Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, and John Canning Jr. Chairman, ExecutiveCommittee of Chicago Community Trust.

Check back each day for a new post and read the full series of livability case studies as they’re posted. The intro can be found here.

Laconia, New Hampshire

Laconia worked with the U.S. EPA on three neighborhood plans to enhance the safety and accessibility of their streets and add more vitality to the community.

Laconia, New Hampshire is a longtime tourist destination and hotspot for vacation homes and retirees. However, the absence of a longer-term plan was putting a strain on year-round residents and had the potential to leave core neighborhoods in the dust.

In 2006, Laconia officials applied to participate in the U.S. EPA’s Smart Growth Implementation Assistance program. The EPA assisted residents and staff in a visioning process that eventually resulted in a comprehensive Master Plan.

“I think what the EPA process did is it really got the creative juices flowing,” said Shanna Saunders, Director of Planning and Zoning for the City of Laconia. “It gave the decision- makers and citizens the energy and the enthusiasm and the excitement to move forward with those ideas on their own.”

The Master Plan, titled “Three Neighborhoods, One Vision,” was designed to maintain the city’s small-town character while encouraging investment in core neighborhoods. Three major neighborhoods – Downtown Laconia, Weirs Beach and Lakeport – emerged with concrete plans as a result of EPA assistance.

In the Weirs Beach area, for instance, EPA traffic engineers helped transform a congested area that was unsafe for both driving and walking. Now, bicyclists and pedestrians have easy access and driving is safer as well.

Although the economic downturn forced Laconia to delay some improvements to downtown, officials said EPA assistance has created a foundation for future action.

“A lot of the information once we do hire professionals could easily be handed over to be used for the design,” Saunders said.

Source: Environmental Protection Agency (pdf.) Saunders, Shanna. Telephone Interview. April 2, 2010.

Two weekends ago, the 12-foot-wide bicycle and pedestrian lane of the Woodrow Wilson interstate bridge over the Potomac River held its grand opening in Washington DC, filling with bikers and walkers who can now join the thousands of cars that cross the bridge each day.

The bridge, which connects Virginia and Maryland on the southern part of the Capital Beltway, is a vital transportation link in the region, where Interstate 95 (and the large majority of truck traffic) bypasses Washington, continuing north or south along the eastern seaboard.

Hundreds of bicyclists enjoyed a ride across the bridge for the first time ever last weekend, and the renovations to the bridge also added dedicated space for a future transit line — not something you see everyday on an interstate bridge in the United States.

Building a new bridge to replace the 1961 bridge had been discussed for decades, but the planning kicked into high gear in the 1990’s, with Maryland, Virginia, and the federal government all engaged in the process (DC relinquished control to the states.)

The King Street (Virginia) and Branch Avenue (Maryland) Metro stops are separated by just a few miles and the Potomac River, but require a long ride into DC to travel between the two on the Metrorail system. One day, Metro might cross the Wilson Bridge instead.

Looking at a map of the Metrorail public transportation system, one can see that only a few miles separate the end of the green line in Maryland and the yellow and blue lines in Virginia. There was no active work to connect the two lines, but a handful of people in the planning process wondered about dedicating some space on the bridge for a future, useful Metro connection.

Parris Glendening, Governor of Maryland from 1995-2003, said that planning for a future transit connection was just common sense.

“Those stations are just a few miles apart as the crow flies, but no one in Maryland who has a choice is going to ride all the way up into DC to switch trains and ride all the way back out to Virginia — and end up only a few miles from where they started,” he said.

Gov. Glendening said they discovered that adding lanes for rail transit was more complex than simply adding more space. “Not only did we have to add space, but we had to account for the additional weight of heavy rail cars and the strong vibrations trains produce that cars do not,” he said.

As a result, the bridge got more expensive.

When the cost of the bridge went up, the feds said that regardless of how much money would be saved in the future by doing it right, the states had to bear the extra costs. When Virginia initially refused to pay more money, it appeared that the project might stall.

Gov. Glendening told us that he was widely pilloried for standing fast on the plan to include space for public transportation, and was accused by some of “threatening commerce in the region and guaranteeing gridlock.” With key Republican allies in Congress from Virginia who were thinking long-term, including Sen. John Warner and Rep. Tom Davis, and some help at the federal level, the federal and state governments were able to work out an agreement for the redesigned bridge.

As Governor Glendening noted, the point isn’t the higher upfront cost for the bridge. It’s that we’ll have to pay less over the long term.

“Think of the prospect of building an entirely new bridge one day to connect those metro lines — and how much more difficult and expensive it would be. When we begin planning the connection one day, think of how streamlined the process will be, knowing we already have dedicated space on this bridge for the connection.”

“We did it right the first time, perhaps paying more money up front to do so, but saving millions for our children and their children — and building something that will help reduce congestion, give people transportation options and serve the region for decades to come.”

The connections created in the bicycling and pedestrian network will pay large dividends over time. On the Virginia side, the Mt. Vernon Trail — which runs through Old Town Alexandria, past National Airport, and all the way up to Washington — is filled with commuters during the week and cyclists, rollerbladers, walkers and runners on the weekends. And National Harbor, just over the bridge on the Maryland side, is a new destination hotel, convention center, and retail center for the region.

One day, public transportation connections on the bridge will give an economic boost to the region as demand grows for high quality transit service, and new growth will be possible in those areas without choking the entire area with more traffic.

Citizens of Alexandria, National Harbor and the surrounding areas will increasingly have a wealth of transportation options from which to choose — including driving, walking, biking, and public transportation — which will save them money each year in transportation costs and shield them from the crippling effect of high gas prices.

People are generally supportive of spending more money on transportation infrastructure, but as Governor Glendening points out, people need to know that the money will buy us something useful.

“We can’t simply add more lanes and build more interstates and expect to alleviate congestion and improve mobility in the region. We have to think outside the box and do something other than what got us into this traffic mess in the first place. Investing our transportation money into projects that can give people better transportation choices is a good place to start. And the Wilson Bridge is a great example of doing it right.”

• Alex Marshall stresses the importance of anticipating demand in transportation planning. (Governing)

• Gas prices near $3 a gallon leave some feeling stressed out. (Detroit Free Press)

• The Hummer brand goes to a company in China. (New York Times)