Skip to main content

Tag: staff

Introducing Benito Pérez, T4America’s new policy director

people talking at a table during smart cities meeting

Transportation for America is pleased to announce that Benito Pérez, a veteran of the District Department of Transportation in Washington, DC, is joining the staff as the new policy director.

The Transportation for America and Smart Growth America staff are pleased to welcome Benito to the team, and are excited to work together to help bring about urgently needed reforms to our country’s transportation policies. Benito begins work on June 7.

Learn more about our new policy director with this short Q&A:

How did you get into transportation policy? What makes it interesting for you?

My passion for transportation started young, experiencing mobility and its influences on land use as a military child growing up in Europe. That led to my educational pursuits in urban planning, sociology, and engineering. I got into the transportation policy space at the Maryland State Highway Administration, working on equity and inclusion policy and implementation. There, I got to see firsthand how policy influences opportunities and life experiences in our communities. In Hampton Roads, I worked on long range planning, focused on facilitating a livable and sustainable transportation vision for the future and identifying not only the projects and resources to implement the vision, but policy tools to support and enhance the vision. I became intimately involved in District transportation policy in 2012 at DDOT, working a diverse portfolio involving curbside management, public transit, and public space. I joined the operations team in 2015 to reorient curbside operations to operate within the regulatory framework, and deliver an improved curbside experience for all users by considering issues of inclusion.

With your local, city-based perspective, how have you seen the rubber meet the road with federal transportation policy in DC? What needs to change with federal policy to better meet the needs of cities of all sizes? What’s good about it? 

people talking at a table during smart cities meeting
Benito Perez, second from left, participating in one of the T4America’s Smart Cities Collaborative meetings back in 2017

All transportation is local and it impacts everyone. Transportation moves the goods we consume and get us around within and between our communities. However, federal transportation policy doesn’t always line up with what’s needed on the local level. At DDOT, I was involved with creating a more accessible transportation system, from the curb to the cycletrack. However, federal accessibility policies and guidelines are still very suburban and auto-oriented, making it a challenge to implement and accommodate in a dynamic, intense city environment. One of the ways we tackled that challenge was to partner with other peer cities and federal agencies in an effort to adapt federal transportation policy to the diverse unique community experiences—one of the key aims of the Smart Cities Collaborative at T4America that I was able to participate in while at DDOT. 

What are some issues that policymakers should be paying very careful attention to right now, but are not currently thinking about?

There is a lot of change happening in transportation right now, especially thanks to technology. However, it’s important to focus on the basics of transportation system management versus the shiny new technology. Things like state of good repair and asset management programs. However, even more importantly, is rethinking how transportation impacts the end user. So issues such as accessibility, inclusionary and participatory planning/involvement in transportation decisions are critical to be on the same page across the country, ensuring that transportation is developed and managed for all.

You are arriving at T4America at a very interesting time, with both an infrastructure bill moving as well as long-term reauthorization proposals from the House and the Senate. Do you feel like the debate over transportation and infrastructure has changed? 

It is an exciting time to be joining T4America. There are many new ideas and concepts being discussed in the transportation and infrastructure debates on Capitol Hill.  However, the central discussion points remain the same. Legislators need to focus more on how to maintain, increase, and enhance mobility in their community to stimulate economic opportunities. And then how to balance those localized aspirations with the need to deliver a federal transportation program that collectively benefits the greater national good.

The ultimate point of transportation policy is to manage our transportation system and orient it toward specific outcomes and goals. Similarly to how T4America’s third principle proposes measuring “access to jobs and services” as a core way to measure whether or not the system is working. That kind of focus is what I’m eager to bring to these debates on Capitol Hill.

—

More about Benito

Benito O. Pérez, AICP CTP CPM CAPP (he/him) is the Policy Director of Transportation for America. He previously served in various roles at the District Department of Transportation since 2012, which included Curbside Management & Operations Planning Manager, Curbside Management Planner, and Transportation Policy Specialist. During his DDOT tenure, he worked on and managed a team involved with creating, accessing, analyzing, visualizing, disseminating, and working with stakeholders to leverage data for policy development, resource allocation, and operations management of the District’s curbside and its intersection with the greater transportation network. Prior to DDOT, he was a Transportation Engineer with the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization, working on long range transportation planning and its intersection with active transportation and land use. Additionally, he previously worked with the Maryland State Highway Administration, working on equity and inclusion issues in transportation. Mr. Pérez earned his Master of Arts in Urban Planning and Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Florida in 2009.

Talking about transportation in the Trump administration with the “CodCast”

Beth Osborne, senior policy advisor for T4America, sat for an interview last week on one of the best-named podcasts around — The CodCast — to talk about the uncertainty of just what transportation means in the Trump administration.

As you may have seen on Twitter last week, a contingent of T4America staffers were in Boston last week to discuss transportation needs with state officials and policy advocates. While there, Beth sat down with Transit Matters board members Josh Fairchild and James Aloisi on Commonwealth Magazine’s Codcast (yes, the CodCast!) to talk about Trump’s ongoing promises for a $1 trillion infrastructure program, how his now-released budget reflects his true priorities and what advocates need to know going forward in an era with great uncertainty about federal transportation funding.

Listen to the full show below.

Do our federal transportation priorities match the rhetoric we use to justify more spending?

Photo via WSDOT/Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/wsdot/8670279118

With the Trump administration readying both an annual budget and discussing a possible large infrastructure package, Transportation for America yesterday urged a key Senate subcommittee to protect the investments in programs that promote innovation, encourage collaboration and maximize benefits for local communities.

Photo via WSDOT/Flickr httpswww.flickr.com/photos/wsdot/8670279118

The President’s first budget will almost certainly propose big cuts to discretionary spending programs. While the bulk of annual federal transportation spending is sourced from the highway trust fund and should be more insulated from these cuts, discretionary cuts would fall disproportionately on funding for new transit construction (New and Small Starts) and multimodal and local priority projects (TIGER).

House and Senate appropriators will have two decisions to make: a) whether to appropriate the amounts prescribed by the current long-term transportation law (the FAST Act) for the core programs, which is uncertain as well, and, b) how much to allocate for these other discretionary transportation programs.

As expected, with the heads of a few national trade groups also testifying yesterday alongside T4America before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, there was the usual rhetoric about America’s “crumbling” infrastructure amidst calls to invest more money overall in the federal transportation program.

And while T4America agrees on the need for greater levels of overall investment, T4A senior policy advisor Beth Osborne (pictured above) differentiated our overall position.

“As everyone testifying today will say,” she noted in her opening remarks, “we have great need to invest in our transportation system, including our roads, bridges, and transit systems. However, Transportation for America also believes that our problems run far deeper than just an overall lack of funding.”

When we have these discussions about the need to invest in infrastructure — especially in Washington — all sorts of ominous numbers are thrown around. Tens of thousands of deficient bridges. Pavement condition that’s worsening by the day. Backlogs of neglected maintenance and repair.

But where does the money go once we increase transportation spending and dole it all out to the states? Beth Osborne explained:

In fact, while we talk about the need for more funding to address our crumbling infrastructure, that is not necessarily where the funding goes. A 2014 report conducted by Smart Growth America called “Repair Priorities” found that between 2009 and 2011 states collectively spent $20.4 billion annually to build new roadways and add lanes. During that same time, states spent just $16.5 billion annually repairing and preserving the existing system, even while roads across the country were deteriorating. As we talk about large infrastructure packages, it’s only fair to ask that the priorities of our transportation program more closely match the rhetoric we use to justify more spending on it.

Why do we keep spending hefty sums on new roads and new lanes while repair backlogs get ignored? One reason is that transportation and development decisions are rarely well coordinated and we end up trying to address bad land use decisions with more transportation spending, and vice versa.

More from Beth:

I think about the two houses in Florida that are 70 feet apart but require a seven-mile drive to get from one to the other. Such a roadway and land use pattern seems almost designed with the express purpose of generating traffic snarls. But the problem is not categorized as a development or local road connectivity problem. It is put to the state and the federal government as a congestion problem that requires big spending to widen roads. Now no one is calling for the federal government to get involved in local land use decisions. However, there should be a way to reward cities and states consider these and take action improve outcomes and lower costs. Competitive programs can help to do that.

One of those competitive programs is the TIGER grant program, which could be one of the programs targeted for severe cuts — or elimination — in this looming budget proposal from the President.

TIGER has awarded more than $4 billion since 2010 to smart local projects, bringing 3.5 local dollars to the table for every federal dollar through just the first five rounds. Though only 5-6 percent of all applicants have successfully won funding, local leaders still love the programs, and the process encouraged applicants to try new strategies or approaches to be as competitive as possible to win funding — “like design-build project delivery or complete street designs or public-private partnerships,” Beth noted.

Rather than just sidling up to the table for their share of dollars allocated by some federal formula, communities have been trying to produce the best, most competitive applications that will bring the highest returns on both the federal investment and their local commitment.

This is the kind of innovation that Congress should be encouraging, not targeting for cuts.

In the New and Small Starts transit capital programs, there’s over $6 billion already promised to shovel-ready transit projects all across the country that have already raised local or state funding and are just waiting on capital dollars from the federal government to proceed. Projects like Indianapolis’ Red Line bus rapid transit project that has already been promised more than $70 million in federal dollars to pair with nearly $20 million in local funds from an income tax increase that Indianapolis voters approved back in November at the ballot box.

Indianapolis and a multitude of other communities small and large “are stretching themselves to raise their own funds and to innovate, but they cannot bring these important projects to fruition without a strong federal funding partner,” Beth said in closing this morning. “The programs that this committee funds are often the lynchpin for aiding states and localities in meeting these demands.”

We hope that this Senate subcommittee heard the message loud and clear and will stand up for these vital programs as the budget process moves forward. We’ll keep you updated.

Get to know our new arts and culture outreach associate

Smart Growth America and Transportation for America are pleased to announce the hiring of Mallory Nezam as an arts and culture outreach associate, assisting our efforts to help communities across the country integrate arts, culture and creative placemaking into neighborhood revitalization, equitable development and transportation planning efforts.

For the last few years, Mallory has been working in digital marketing, focusing on content strategy, account management, copywriting, and guerrilla marketing. Simultaneously, she has been operating as both a public artist and cultural organizer in community-based and social practice art, which utilizes art to engage pressing social issues in communities. One interesting project of hers worth highlighting here is Mirror Casket, a “visual structure, performance, and call to action for justice” following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and subsequent protests. (See images and more information at the bottom of this post. -Ed.)

She spent a summer with Creative Time in New York City and The Lab in San Francisco, and has worked extensively with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and the Contemporary Arts Museum St. Louis. She loves doing freelance writing and teaching yoga as well.

Get to know Mallory and more about T4America’s and Smart Growth America’s arts and culture work with this short Q&A below.

Why did you want to transition to this larger world of transportation, growth and development? Why Smart Growth America and T4America?

I’ve spent the last few years working in the Rust Belt, specifically St. Louis, MO; an incredible city. I was able to work at a very deep grassroots level while in St. Louis, but after the events in Ferguson, MO in August 2014, I realized that I needed more tools to move my community forward, and became more interested in intersectional work that bridged national and local alliances. I’ve also worked deeply in the space of art, but wanted to branch out to leverage the tools of art and culture in other ways. I’m inspired by public transportation, as I think it is one of the most democratizing resources available. I love how you can hop on a bus and be surrounded by all types of people from every part of the community — something that happens in relatively few spaces.

What kind of work will you be doing here at SGA/T4? What are you really excited about doing in 2017?

I’m going to be serving on both the Arts & Culture and Outreach Teams. I’m looking forward to helping to refine our creative placemaking strategies, processes and tools, and ultimately empower more communities to think about developing places with arts and culture at the helm. I think arts and culture can be both a tool to develop as well as an outcome that is nourished through development.

Why should those of us involved in planning, smart growth, neighborhood revitalization, transportation or the like be thinking about arts and culture? What role can and should the arts and culture play in improving neighborhoods and the places we call home?

Arts and culture can be incredible communication tools to better understand the experiences of people in communities and more deeply engage with them. And on the flip side of the process, I believe integrating arts and culture can help keep communities engaged in the changes happening where they live, making them educated, direct participants, which can ultimately lead to more sustainable implementation of projects that better serve the needs of those people.

We say in our creative placemaking guide that a smart starting point for any proposed transportation project is this question: “How can the distinctiveness of this place and the people in it contribute to the success of this transportation project and the community around it?” How can incorporating arts and culture into the process of building transportation projects — or really any projects to build parks or buildings or anything of the sort — result in better, more prosperous, more equitable places for all of us to live?

We all know there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. At least, I hope we know that! I believe that placemaking gives people ownership of their place and the changes occurring within it, and likewise makes both the process and any final product deeply relevant, functional and meaningful to a community.

Utilizing arts and culture in this way allows community members to articulate the uniqueness of their place, and allows for the project to be designed and implemented in more nuanced ways that make the final product something the community will use and love and that will improve their overall well-being.

And lastly, people need to love where they live, work and play. We need to be designing and developing communities in ways that will make people feel good, feel invited and feel special. And when people love their home, they work hard to make it the best place it can be! This builds stronger and more resilient communities, and a sense of empowered autonomy at the local level.

Thanks, and welcome to the team, Mallory!

View Mallory’s personal website at http://www.mallorynezam.com/. You can learn more about Mirror Casket from the project site and from this article in Smithsonian Magazine (image #7) about artifacts now in the collection of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, DC.