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Watch our webinar: How to Reconnect Communities

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, we held a webinar to discuss how to maximize the impact of the new Reconnecting Communities Program.

Divisive infrastructure projects, like highways and overpasses built through neighborhoods, continue to restrict travel in cities across the country, creating congestion, hindering development, restricting access to economic opportunity, and worsening public health. Because many of these projects were built in close proximity to communities of color, these communities face disproportionate health, safety, and economic impacts.

In the new infrastructure law, the federal government finally provided a direct funding stream to address this problem. The Reconnecting Communities Program is a valuable federal investment that can begin to move the needle, but the extent of the problem has many wondering if this program’s budget will be enough to make a difference.

Watch our webinar from September 14, 2022 to find out how the Reconnecting Communities Program can be best leveraged to achieve an impact in your community. Director Beth Osborne and Policy Director Benito Pérez will unpack the Reconnecting Communities Program, explaining in clear terms how this program came to be and what it can accomplish. We will also be joined by Erik Frisch, Deputy Commissioner of Neighborhood & Business Development at the City of Rochester, who will describe how Rochester tackled the successful Inner Loop project long before the Reconnecting Communities Program existed, plus share insight into how the city plans to leverage this new source of funding in future projects.

Watch

Special guest: Erik Frisch

Erik Frisch is Deputy Commissioner for the City of Rochester’s Department of Neighborhood & Business Development.

In this role since January 2022, Erik oversees the City’s Bureau of Business & Housing Development which is responsible for affordable, market-rate, and mixed-use housing programs, economic development initiatives, and real estate management. Mr. Frisch has been with the City of Rochester since 2007, also serving as Manager of Special Projects in the Department of Environmental Services (2018-2021), overseeing coordination of the ROC the Riverway initiative, a bold plan for Rochester’s urban waterfront along the Genesee River, and the Inner Loop North Transformation, and as the City’s Transportation Specialist (2007-2018), where he managed the City’s transportation planning, traffic calming, and traffic control functions. He has played a key role in many other major City initiatives, including the Inner Loop East Transformation, Bicycle Master Plan implementation, Midtown Rising, and Downtown Two-Way Traffic Conversion. Prior to working for the City, Erik served as a Program Manager with the Genesee Transportation Council for nearly six years. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Geography from Clark University in Worcester, MA and a Masters Degree in Urban Planning from the University at Buffalo (NY).

looping gif showing 2014 view of sunken Rochester inner loop freeway, replaced in second image with current view of new housing and surface streets where freeway once stood

Learn how three cities are using arts and culture to address their transportation challenges

Hear from local leaders in three communities who are using the arts and creative practices to address pressing transportation challenges. (Updated)

Dothan’s Artist in Residence, Cosby Hayes, captures the stories of residents living along a dangerous high-traffic corridor.

(Updated: 9/20/2018) Catch up with the recording of the webinar here.

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It’s been about a year since T4America kicked off the Cultural Corridor Consortium to equip three cities to use arts and culture to tackle entrenched transportation challenges and come up with more creative solutions. On Monday, September 17, we’ll feature project leaders from each of these three cities—Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Dothan, AL—who will share stories about their creative placemaking work.

On the hour-long webinar, you’ll have the opportunity to learn about the integral role that art, culture, and artists themselves have had in transforming typical community engagement processes and the design of streets in these communities. From hiring an artist-in-residence to lead community outreach for a highway corridor revitalization project in Dothan, AL to creating artistic interventions along Indianapolis’s new bus rapid transit lines to boost ridership, the 3C participants have found a myriad of ways to use the arts to bolster transportation projects.

Join us on the webinar at 2:00 p.m. EST, on Monday, September 17 to hear from local leaders about their projects’ successes, challenges, and next steps. It may even leave you inspired with ideas for how arts & culture can play a role in solving your own community’s unique transportation-related challenges.

Catch up with the launch discussion of our new guide for improving & expanding transit

Catch up with yesterday’s launch webinar for T4America’s new guidebook, Fight for Your Ride: An advocate’s guide for expanding and improving transit, which offers tangible ways to improve transit in your city and region.

Quality transit service is increasingly becoming a “must-have” for economic development. Amazon’s HQ2 search is only the most public example of major businesses choosing locations with quality transit to expand. Quality transit is also vital to improving access to jobs and opportunity and creating pathways to prosperity for residents in your region. But how can business leaders, local elected leaders, or transportation advocates improve their local transit service?

T4America’s new guidebook, Fight for Your Ride: An advocate’s guide for expanding and improving transit, offers tangible ways you can make these needed improvements to transit in your city and region.

On a webinar to release the guide earlier this week, two local transit leaders—Karen Rindge, Executive Director of WakeUp Wake County in the Raleigh, NC area, and Christof Spieler, board member for Houston METRO—presented lessons from their successful transit initiatives. View the full webinar here:

Fight for Your Ride includes tactical guidance on how to build your coalition, how to hone your message, and how to advocate to your federal representatives. On the launch webinar, Karen Rindge shared her firsthand lessons from organizing a coalition and successful campaign in Wake County.

Rindge explained that the most important asset that helped power Wake County’s transit referendum campaign was a broad and diverse coalition. WakeUp didn’t wait until a referendum was on the ballot to build this coalition, but began nearly ten years ago engaging key partners in the effort to develop a regional transit plan and build up community support for new investments in transit. Having partners who could talk directly to different constituencies—like seniors, environmentalists, and African-American communities—allowed the campaign to cut through the crowded campaign news cycle and directly inform key voters about the referendum.

Fight for Your Ride also helps to diagnose transportation challenges in your region and offers examples of how other regions have made improvements to transit. The guide illustrates more than a dozen different approaches. Some, like building new transit lines, carry a large price tag and will take years to complete. But many of the solutions offered in the guide are smaller and can be implemented much more quickly. These include adding late night transit service, speeding buses through congested chokepoints, reducing fares for low-income youth riders, adding shuttle service to reach job sites, and realigning transit service.

On the webinar, Christof Spieler offered an example of this last tactic, presenting the story of how Houston Metro reimagined their bus system map to provide better service for riders without more funding.

Speiler explained that for METRO to change its service map, it first had to acknowledge that it was not providing useful service to all potential riders across the region.

It wasn’t that Houstonians wouldn’t ride the bus—data showed that on commuter corridors with quality bus service, more that a third of commuters were already choosing transit. But many dense corridors outside of downtown lacked frequent service, or were served by meandering routes that were too confusing for anyone except daily riders to understand. Spieler described the effort he and METRO’s leadership led to reroute all of Houston’s bus routes, all at once, to offer quality, frequent service across the city. He spoke about the obstacles they faced and how political support was critical for moving the new plan forward.

As he closed, Christof reminded us that improving transit is about more than just the right techniques or strategies — we have to be storytellers too.

“We need to talk about transit,” he said. “The more we tell the story of what transit does well, the more we tell the story of how to make transit effective, and the more we keep this on the front of people’s minds, the more success we’ll have in getting things done.”

We hope you will use Fight for Your Ride to plan efforts to improve transit in your community. We can help by leading workshops or leadership academies in your region to bring together diverse leaders and organize a transit improvement or turnaround plan.

Read the guide.

Webinar recap on State of the Art Transportation Training

Catch up with our webinar on new creative placemaking technical assistance workshops

This past Tuesday, Ben Stone, T4America’s Director of Arts & Culture, and Patricia Walsh, Americans for the Arts’ Public Art Program Manager, spoke about our upcoming State of the Art Transportation Training. During the webinar we discussed the opportunity for three communities in 2018 to gain hands-on technical assistance to improve collaboration between local arts agencies and departments of transportation. The ultimate goal: use art to better address transportation challenges.

In the webinar, we explored relevant case studies, reviewed the application process, and answered questions. If you missed the webinar, you can find a recording below.

FAQs:

Where can I find more information on this opportunity?

Visit our State of the Art Training webpage to learn more about this opportunity and view the full webinar recording if you missed it. On the webpage you can find the PDF application and the link to apply. We recommend having your responses prepared in advance of starting the online application form.

Who are these workshops geared towards?

Please find more details of the eligibility requirements in the PDF application, but if you are looking to collaboratively and creatively solve your community’s unique transportation challenges and put into practice the concepts T4America explored in our recent Creative Placemaking Field Scan, we encourage you apply. As a reminder, the deadline to apply is 5:00 p.m. EST, February 23, 2018.

Am I eligible to apply if my organization doesn’t have a transportation agency?

A chief goal of the State of the Art Transportation Training is to improve collaboration between local arts agencies and departments of transportation to better address transportation challenges. We recommend that you demonstrate in your application the role of local transit agencies (or the local equivalent) in helping to address your transportation challenges.

Additional questions? Feel free to email Sophie Schonfeld.

Photo courtesy: Jade District

Get more information about year two of our Smart Cities Collaborative

Earlier this week, we held a webinar to explain and answer questions about year two of our Smart Cities Collaborative. Catch up with a full video of the short informational session here and apply soon — the deadline to apply is next Friday, February 16.

Transportation for America launched the Smart Cities Collaborative to build a forum for collaboration and provide direct technical assistance to 16 leading-edge cities advancing smart mobility policies and projects. Applications are open now for year two.

Learn more and apply

 

The second year of the Collaborative will focus on how emerging technologies and new mobility are reshaping the right-of-way. Content and curriculum will be separated into four sub-topics; design, measure, manage and price. We’ll cover how the right-of-way and curb space are evolving; measuring and analyzing project, modal and system performance; managing public and private mobility providers in tandem; and pricing road and curb space in service of long-term outcomes.

Last week we held a short informational webinar to provide an overview of how cities can apply for year two, discuss our planned curriculum and recap our lessons learned in year one. We also answered questions on the types of cities that can apply (all sizes!), pilot projects that were implemented in year one and the types of projects we anticipate cities will be working on in year two. Watch the full session below

Get more out of transportation by incorporating art

A new opportunity for your transportation agency to become State of the Art

If there’s one industry that’s ruled by forms and regulations, it’s transportation. The ideal width of a bike lane, font on a street sign, and the length of a light-rail platform are all laid out in design manuals. And while there are often important safety and accessibility reasons for these standards, it doesn’t inspire a lot of creative thinking.

And that’s where art comes in–artistic involvement can help solve entrenched transportation problems by thinking outside the manual. It can help heal communities divided by destructive infrastructure, generate more local buy-in for transportation projects, bring diverse constituents to the table, and create a sense of place that reflects local values of the communities transportation systems serve.

To help communities better integrate artistic and cultural practices in transportation projects, Transportation for America is pleased to announce our State of the Art Transportation Trainings, a new technical assistance program made possible through funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and ArtPlace America, in collaboration with Americans for the Arts.

To learn more about this opportunity, register for our information webinar on Tuesday, February 6 at 3 p.m. EST.

“An artist thinks differently, imagines a better world, and tries to render it in surprising ways. And this becomes a way for his/her audiences to experience the possibilities of freedom that they can’t find in reality.”

– Guillermo Goméz-Peña

Next Tuesday, Ben Stone, T4America’s Director of Arts & Culture, and Patricia Walsh, Americans for the Arts’ Public Art Program Manager will be speaking about collaborating with artists to solve your community’s unique transportation challenges. In the webinar, we will explore case studies, review the application process, and answer your questions.

This is an excellent opportunity to see how your city can leverage creative placemaking in transportation projects and get tailored advice for your city’s unique challenges.

You can find more information about the application and the program on our website.

Applications are due by 5:00 p.m. EST, February 23, 2018!

The application process is online and can be completed via this form at https://t4america.org/creative-placemaking-workshops/apply/ . We recommend downloading the full application information (pdf) and preparing your responses before submitting the online form.

Coming soon: A new report on how metro areas are building more and better bicycling and walking projects

Metro areas of all sizes across the country are strategizing, developing, and implementing new ways to improve bicycling and walking in their regions. Over the last year, T4America worked with metro areas across the country to collect and document these stories, ideas, and strategies into a guidebook that we’re releasing on December 11.

Join us on December 11th at 12 p.m. EST for a launch webinar where we’ll release Building Healthy and Prosperous Communities: How Metro Areas are Building More and Better Bicycling and Walking Projects and hear from three of the agencies featured in it.

Over the last two years, Transportation for America, in conjunction with the American Public Health Association, has worked with metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) across the country to collect and document stories about how they are planning, funding and building more and better walking and bicycling projects in communities. (Find our previous resources on this topic here and here.)

As the gatekeepers of billions of federal transportation dollars, MPOs have an influential role in expanding and improving options for walking and bicycling. They may establish policies, develop plans, direct funding, and help design transportation projects to allow more people to easily walk, bicycle, or ride in a wheelchair. Doing so can help people get the physical activity they need to be healthy — and healthier residents bring economic benefits for an entire region.

Places that have made biking and walking from place to place a safe, convenient, and enticing choice have produced positive impacts on businesses, jobs, and revenue. When it’s safer and more convenient for people to walk or bicycle as part of their regular routine,  more people get the amount of physical activity that science proves they need to reduce their risk of certain chronic diseases.

The following MPOs and scores of others are excelling, but there’s much more that can be done to build the necessary infrastructure to keep people thriving, safe, active, and connected to the places they need to go. The examples in this guidebook can inspire and inform your efforts, help tailor them for your region, and improve upon them to give the residents of your region the bicycling and walking infrastructure they demand and deserve.

The guidebook has detailed profiles of the work of these metropolitan planning agencies:

  • Atlanta Regional Commission (Atlanta, Georgia)
  • Broward MPO (Broward County, Florida)
  • Chattanooga-Hamilton County/North Georgia Transportation Planning Organization (Chattanooga, Tennessee)
  • Corpus Christi MPO (Corpus Christi,Texas)
  • Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
  • Denver Regional Council of Governments (Denver, Colorado)
  • Mesilla Valley MPO (Las Cruces, New Mexico)
  • Metro (Portland, Oregon)
  • Metropolitan Transportation Commission (Bay Area, California)
  • Nashville Area MPO (Nashville, Tennessee)
  • Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (Columbus, Ohio)
  • Puget Sound Regional Council (Seattle, Washington)

During the webinar we’ll hear from three featured MPOs: The Chattanooga TPO will share how they created a new performance measures framework to prioritize multi-modal projects for funding. The Corpus Christi MPO will talk about how they customized a Bicycle Mobility Network through accessibility planning and community engagement. Finally, we’ll hear how Metro in Portland, Oregon encouraged higher rates of active transportation by changing the design of walking and bicycling projects.

Register today!

Catch up with the launch webinar for Arts, Culture and Transportation: A Creative Placemaking Field Scan

Catch up with the launch webinar for Arts, Culture and Transportation: A Creative Placemaking Field Scan, our recently released national examination of creative placemaking in the transportation planning process. 

We spent the month of September talking about arts and culture and explaining how they can help contribute to producing better transportation projects that more fully serve communities. It all culminated with the launch of this new field scan that explores seven of the most pressing challenges facing the transportation sector today, identifies how arts and culture contribute to solutions, and offers case studies from diverse community contexts.

Last Friday, we held a terrific discussion about the report with a handful of experts, including some of the people behind the inspiring story of El Paso’s Transnational Trolley. Catch up with the full recording of last week’s session here:

Transportation systems can and should be a powerful tool to help people access opportunity, drive economic development, improve health and safety, and build the civic and social capital that bind communities together. And when artists team up with transportation professionals at a project’s outset, their collaboration can lead to new, creative, and more comprehensive solutions to today’s transportation challenges. This process known as creative placemaking is happening in communities across the country and transportation professionals are eager to know, what are the key trends and best practices?

Download the report

 

Webinar recap: What is asset recycling?

Catch up with our webinar on Asset Recycling: An Alternative Approach to P3s with the full recording of the presentation.

In light of the current administration’s intense focus on public-private partnerships (P3s), last week we discussed a specific type of P3 known as asset recycling, the practice of selling or leasing existing, publicly-owned infrastructure and using the proceeds to pay for building or maintaining other infrastructure.

Along with T4America expert Beth Osborne, Robert Puentes, President and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, discussed the strengths, weaknesses and potential pitfalls of this approach for transportation, and shared three specific case studies from Australia, Virginia, and Indiana.

View the full session below.

Is your organization a Transportation for America member?  Transportation for America is dedicated to building strong coalitions and delivering policy wins, funding opportunities, and more to our members. Proudly supporting public entities, businesses, non-profit organizations, and universities, our members receive exclusive transportation policy information and a host of other benefits. Contact us about joining today. 

T4A members can read the full summary on asset recycling here. (You may need to log in first.)

Learn about asset recycling, a financing approach for infrastructure

With the current administration’s intense focus on public-private partnerships and ways to bring more private sector dollars into building transportation infrastructure, join us on August 16th for a discussion of a specific form of public-private partnership (P3) known as asset recycling. 

Asset recycling is the practice of selling or leasing existing, publicly-owned infrastructure and using the proceeds to pay for building or maintaining other infrastructure. While we like to point out that financing is not a replacement for direct federal or state investment infrastructure, it’s clear that the current administration and Congress are both eager to encourage more private dollars to flow into infrastructure investment and financing somehow.

Join us for this short webinar at 2 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, August 16th where we’ll discuss the strengths, weaknesses and potential pitfalls of this approach for transportation through three case studies from Australia, Virginia, and Chicago. We’ll consider some key questions, like whether this approach is realistic for rural communities and the ways it may or may not generate revenue as compared to more conventional public private partnerships.

REGISTER HERE

For T4America’s members, we’ve produced a short memo explaining this topic in more detail, which you can find below if you are logged in.

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Click to read: Asset Recycling – an Alternative Approach to P3s

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Hear from a city that partnered with Lyft to increase access to their public transit network

Join us on July 13th to hear about how one Colorado city in our Smart Cities Collaborative has been experimenting with connecting more residents to their transit service by partnering with Lyft.

Updated 7/19: If you missed the webinar, you can watch the full recording here.

One of the major challenges faced by the members of our Smart Cities Collaborative is figuring out how to improve first- and last-mile connections to existing transit hubs in order to leverage existing transit service and connect more people to quality service that might not live within walking distance of it. Over the course of the Collaborative, cities have considered a number of pilot projects to solve this issue, from microtransit options, to on-demand transit shuttles, to partnerships with ridehailing companies like Uber, Lyft and others.

One of the cities in the Collaborative, Centennial, CO, recently completed their own first/last-mile pilot project. (The launch was covered here last August by Laura Bliss in CityLab.) Centennial is a mid-sized suburb southeast of Denver that has light rail access to downtown Denver, but it’s difficult for many of the residents of Centennial to reach the stations from their homes.

To help residents take advantage of this service, the city entered into a six-month partnership with Lyft to provide free rides between the Dry Creek light rail station and nearby homes within a 3.75 square-mile service area. The aim of the project was to incentivize transit use, enhance regional transportation, and reduce congestion for trips to and from downtown Denver by shifting some of those trips to transit.

One of the core principals of our Smart Cities Collaborative is encouraging cities to thoughtfully test new technologies and share those results with other cities to inform their pilots and help them learn from another city’s progress — or mistakes? So how did this pilot turn out? What was the response from their residents? Was the partnership with Lyft successful? Transportation for America and guests from the City of Centennial, CO will host a webinar on July 13th at 3 p.m. Eastern to discuss the results of the GoCentennial pilot.

REGISTER HERE

 

The team from Centennial will present on its final report, which includes metrics, lessons learned, and next steps. Full text of the report can be found here. (pdf) We’ll also provide participants with the opportunity to pose questions to Centennial on the results of their pilot, their evaluation tactics, and their plans for future projects. If you would like to submit a question ahead of time to ensure your question is answered, please share it with us via email (smartcities@t4america.org) at least 48 hours before the webinar.

[VIDEO] Training artists to collaborate with civic and municipal officials

In cities across the country, artists are helping to solve civic problems. We recently held a great discussion about how some artists and cultural workers are being trained to collaborate effectively with cities to improve transportation planning and community development.

Cities and artists are coming together, integrating arts and culture to help solve civic challenges and create places that are more meaningful to and reflective of the people that live, work, and play there. Did you miss our recent discussion on the topic? Click here or below to view a recording of the full session.

Artists and cultural workers serve an important role as co-problem solvers by bridging the conversation between local communities and civic/transportation professionals. But to do this work effectively, they must be equipped to work across sectors, communicate with diverse stakeholders, and harmonize the goals of different players. The training programs we discussed are a crucial component of working together to create places that work for everyone.

We’re looking forward to continuing the conversation about creative placemaking and the arts in transportation, so stay tuned. Sign up for email to be notified of opportunities like this in the future.

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T4AMERICA SELECTED TO LEAD ARTPLACE AMERICA’S TRANSPORTATION FIELD SCAN

We also recently announced that Transportation for America has been commissioned by ArtPlace America to undertake a rigorous national examination of creative placemaking in transportation to better understand how and where artists, designers, and cultural workers are collaborating with local governments and community partners to solve transportation challenges. Learn more about this work.

[VIDEO] The future of federal passenger rail funding

After months of talk about investing in infrastructure, one of President Trump’s first acts on infrastructure was to propose eliminating funding for several crucial transportation programs, including long-distance passenger rail. We convened a small panel of experts to explain about the impacts on passenger rail and what interested advocates and local leaders need to know.

Did you miss the session? You can catch up with the full discussion here:

When the current short-term appropriations bill runs out near the end of April 2017, Congress will be debating passenger rail funding levels for next year as well as the remainder of FY 2017. Here are few things that interested advocates should know and do:

FIND STATIONS IN YOUR AREA THAT WOULD BE AFFECTED

We’ve posted a detailed table online that lists all the stations that would be immediately affected by eliminating long-distance passenger rail service, crosswalked with House districts. Find the station(s) in your district and include that information in any letters or phone calls to your representatives.

GET UP TO SPEED ON THE ISSUE

Equip yourself with these short talking points on passenger rail and the threats posed to it in the federal budget.

CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES

Beyond just cuts to passenger rail, the Administration’s proposed budget falls short of prioritizing investment in the local communities that are the basic building block of the national economy, and we need you to help stand up and send that message loud and clear to Congress.

Take Action

WATCH OUR GULF COAST VIDEO

As mentioned on the webinar, we produced a short video about the amazing groundswell of bottom-up, grassroots support in cities and towns all along the Gulf Coast for restoring passenger rail service from Louisiana to Florida. Watch that and share it here.

How are artists being trained to collaborate with civic leaders on transportation & planning projects?

In cities across the country, artists are helping to solve civic problems. But what sort of training is helping them and other cultural workers facilitate smoother collaborations and better projects? Our third webinar on creative placemaking will continue exploring how cities and artists are working together in transportation planning and community development.

Whether it’s bringing people to an empty plaza through performance, improving navigation options through better design, or connecting neighborhoods through interactive installations, artists bring a unique perspective to many municipal challenges.

But artists and civic professionals do not always speak the same language, however. These two groups often answer to different stakeholders and work along different timelines. With the proliferation of new programs integrating arts and culture into community development—like municipally sponsored artist-in-residence programs—artists and cultural producers need to be trained to work with government agencies and community members, and to inhabit interdisciplinary roles that extend beyond the traditional duties of an artist.

Recognizing this need, several organizations have launched programs to train artists and cultural workers to facilitate smoother collaborations and better projects. Projects like the Regional Arts Commission Community Arts Training Institute in St. Louis, Intermedia Arts’ Creative Community Leadership Institute in Minneapolis, Nashville Metro Arts Commission’s Learning Lab, Creative Capital’s Community Engagement Workshop, and the Center for Performance and Civic Projects are all designed to help better integrate arts into civic and transportation projects.

Learn more about these training programs during Training programs for artist and civic/transportation collaboration, a webinar on Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 2:30 PM EDT. This is the third webinar in our series exploring the role of arts and culture in transportation planning and community development.

Register for the webinar

 

Register for the event to hear from experts who have trained, taught or worked alongside alumni of these innovative and exciting programs. We’ll also be taking your questions about how you can use these programs in your own community. We hope you’ll join us for this conversation next week.

How metro planning agencies are promoting physical activity and health

Join us for the release of a new paper showing how regional transportation planning agencies are promoting physical activity and health while improving mobility and access to opportunity.

Register for the launch of Measuring what we value: Policies to prioritize public health and build prosperous regions on February 21st at 12:00 p.m EDT.

REGISTER NOW

 

How we get around each day shapes our quality of life, especially our health. People who walk or bicycle more for transportation are shown to have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes and other conditions that can complicate or shorten lives. And the demand for more opportunities to safely walk and bicycle is at an all-time high in cities and towns of all sizes across the country.

And communities are responding by planning, funding, and fast-tracking projects to make bicycling, walking, and riding transit safer, more convenient, and more realistic as travel options.

But getting these projects planned, designed and built can be a challenge. How can regions bring more of these projects to fruition? How can they integrate them into the processes of choosing what to build? How can they upend perhaps decades of radically different priorities to make these types of projects the norm?

This new paper, produced by T4America and the American Public Health Association, outlines four policy levers MPOs have at their disposal to help increase and improve active transportation projects to meet the demand, decrease health disparities, increase access to opportunities, and strengthen local economies — with specific short real-life stories to go with each. On this launch webinar, we’ll be joined by staff from a number of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to hear how they’re successfully prioritizing bicycling and walking projects. We’ll explore the specific policies these MPOs have adopted, and how they’ve implemented them.

REGISTER NOW

 

Register today and we’ll also send you a short four-page preview of the full paper to be released on February 21st, a doc summarizing the specific strategies that MPOs are using to make more of these projects a reality.

Already joining us on February 21? Spread the word!

(Note: We profiled four of these MPOs at length in this package of related short case studies, released late in 2016.)

Recapping our discussion about states making transportation a key driver of their economic development agendas [video]

States are changing how they select transportation projects in order to save money and boost economic development. Catch up on our webinar explaining how states are attempting to focus state funds on more cost-effective investments in transportation.

We’d like to offer a hearty thanks to our two featured speakers, Kate Fichter, Assistant Secretary for Policy Coordination for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and Charles Knutson, Executive Policy Advisor for Transportation and Economic Development to Washington Governor Jay Inslee.

Kate and Charles shared how each of their states have reformed how transportation projects are selected and built to ensure every state investment delivers the greatest bang for the buck and to reduce to overall cost of megaprojects. In the Q&A in the second half of the program, we talked about balancing local and state priorities, balancing needs across different regions of diverse states, as well as how each state is preparing for new automated vehicle technology.

Catch up with the full recording above.

Briefing book for governors

This webinar follows our recent guidebook for governors and their administrations explaining how a fresh approach to transportation is fundamental to creating quality jobs and shared prosperity while running an efficient government that gets the greatest benefit from every taxpayer dollar.

Download it today.

State policy network

State legislatures around the country are beginning new sessions as we speak, and this means a renewed focus on raising new state funding for transportation and also reforming the policies for spending those dollars. As legislators take a hard look at transportation programs, the policies and strategies in this new guidebook above — and in our previous resources — show how states can save money, improve projects, and make a stronger case to transportation spending through smart policy reforms. These resources are part of our State Transportation Advocacy, Research, & Training network. We provide policy information and connect a diverse group of state policy makers and advocates through this network.

Sign up for updates and more information here.

Unpacking the final suite of new USDOT performance measures [video]

The new requirements released last week by USDOT for how states and metro areas will have to measure traffic congestion were just part of a larger package of all-new performance measures. Catch up on what you need to know about them with our detailed webinar unpacking all of it.

Many thanks to our Beth Osborne for sharing her knowledge and wisdom about performance measures with us on this helpful session. FHWA was unable to participate due to the regulatory freeze now in place preventing federal agencies from communicating further about any new regulations in process or not yet completely finalized, but we were able to roll on ahead. (2:20)

The 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) required transportation agencies to begin using a new system of performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent. USDOT’s final rule for measuring traffic congestion was just one part of a much larger package of new performance measures, including measures for safety, the state of repair, congestion, air emissions and other aspects of our transportation system. (4:00)

On this webinar, we walked through the last of three final rules that cover road, bridge and pavement condition, and overall system performance. We discussed what’s missing in the new measures (8:00), what changes we asked for along the way (10:30), what comprises the final package of rules (15:20), the changes made to the final package (18:05), the dates that states and metro areas will need to be aware of over the next year (18:50), some other helpful resources from T4America and others (20:20) and answered a handful of really smart questions from those who participated (24:00).

More about performance measures

New T4A report out today: Measuring What We Value

Learn more about USDOT’s final congestion rule and the rest of the final performance measures [webinar]

The new requirements released last week by USDOT for how states and metro areas will have to measure traffic congestion were just part of a larger package of new performance measures. Join us next week to unpack the congestion rule and the rest of the suite of new measures. 

Updated 1/26/17: Thanks to everyone who was able to join us on the webinar. Here’s the archived recording if you missed it or want to revisit. -Ed.

The 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) required transportation agencies to begin using a new system of performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent. And it was indeed big news last week when USDOT — responding to thousands of your comments we submitted — backed away from most of the outdated measures of traffic congestion that were proposed. But this was just one part of a much larger package of new performance measures and with last week’s release, USDOT has now finalized all of the new measures for safety, the state of repair, congestion, air emissions and other aspects of our transportation system.

Join us next Tuesday on January 24th at 10:00 a.m. EST as we walk through the second two (of three total) final rules that cover road, bridge and pavement condition, and overall system performance (the latter is what includes the traffic congestion measures.)

T4America experts will be on hand to unpack these final rules, discuss what states and metro areas need to know about this crucial first step toward more performance-based and data-driven decision-making when it comes to transportation investments.

We’ll also be announcing a new opportunity for technical assistance on performance measures, as well as some survey results on the state of the practice at metropolitan planning organizations across the country. Be the first to hear about both.

More about performance measures

New T4A report out today: Measuring What We Value

How do we justify transportation expenditures? To many people, the perception is that project decisions are made in a murky, mysterious process, or, even worse, through a political process where only the projects with the most connections get funded. Further, it is not clear to the average person what all the spending gets them. With public confidence in government at low levels, it’s more important than ever to quantify the public benefits of transportation investment and let voters know what their money is going to buy — especially when attempts are being made to raise new money for transportation to fill the gap.

Transitioning to a more performance-based system of transportation investment was one of the key reforms of MAP-21 and these newly finalized measures could represent the beginning of a sea change in how funding decisions are made and our transportation system performs.

Read our 2015 report to learn more about performance measures

How are states making transportation a key driver of their economic development agendas? [Webinar]

Join us in two weeks as we explore how two states have made transportation a key piece of their economic development agendas and have focused state funds on cost-effective investments in transportation.

Updated 2/2/17: Watch the full recording below.

This session is tied to the guide we recently produced for governors and their administrations which shows how a fresh approach to transportation is fundamental to creating quality jobs and shared prosperity while running an efficient government that gets the greatest benefit from every taxpayer dollar.

On a webinar Friday, January 27th at 3:00 EST, learn how two administrations – under Gov. Charlie Baker (R) in Massachusetts and Gov. Jay Inslee (D) in Washington – have utilized transportation as a tool that helps them accomplish their economic goals. The webinar will feature:

  • Charles Knutson, Senior Policy Advisor for Transportation and Economic Development to Gov. Inslee.
  • Kate Fichter, Assistant Secretary for Policy Coordination for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

State legislatures around the country are beginning new sessions as we speak, and this means a renewed focus on raising new state funding for transportation and also reforming the policies for spending those dollars. As legislators take a hard look at transportation programs, the policies and strategies in this new guidebook above — and in our previous resources — show how states can save money, improve projects, and make a stronger case to transportation spending through smart policy reforms. Download it today, and join us on January 27th for a terrific discussion.

If you want to get up to date on the legislative discussions we’re keeping a close eye on, or if you’re someone who is engaged at the state level on funding or policy, join our START network today.

Webinar wrap: How MPOs are prioritizing public health to build prosperous regions

Last week, we had a terrific online discussion detailing how public health professionals are working with regional transportation planners to plan, fund, and support building more state of the art active transportation projects — accompanying the release of Measuring What We Value: Prioritizing Public Health to Build Prosperous Regions.

For this webinar, we were joined by staff from the American Public Health Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and metropolitan planning organizations from the regions of Broward County, Sacramento, Greensboro, and Nashville.

Did you miss last week’s webinar or want to see it all again?

Stay tuned for more information targeted at MPO staff, public health professionals and local advocates on how to work with regional transportation planners to plan, fund, and support building more state of the art active transportation projects.

CDC APHA health case studies