Rayla Bellis, Author at Transportation For America

Minnesota takes important steps to drive down emissions

To address urgent climate needs, every state will need to make it possible for their residents to drive less every day. But too many shy away from taking concrete steps to do so, putting all of their efforts into improving fuel efficiency and electric vehicle adoption. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) just took a key step in the fight against climate change: setting an ambitious target for reducing driving (measured as vehicle miles traveled, or VMT).

Riders on a bus in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, June 2020. Photo by Metro Transit.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) recently made a highly anticipated decision to adopt a number of recommendations from the state’s Sustainable Transportation Advisory Council (STAC) made in December 2020, including setting a preliminary statewide goal for a 20 percent VMT reduction statewide and per capita by 2050. For the average Minnesota driver, that will mean traveling about 45 miles less per week in 2050 than today.

MnDOT’s VMT reduction target is preliminary, and will be finalized after engaging the public and stakeholders through the Statewide Multimodal Transportation Plan process that will occur throughout 2021. MnDOT may also set interim targets, as well as different targets for the Twin Cities region (which already has locally-established targets) compared to the rest of the state.

Minnesota has already had some success reducing emissions from the transportation sector in recent years, particularly compared to some of its peers, but setting VMT reduction goals has been a gap in the state’s efforts. We highlighted the need for VMT reduction targets with our partners at Move Minnesota in our Minnesota case study for our Driving Down Emissions report, as have local advocates and stakeholders, so it is great to see the state step out as a national leader working toward reducing the need to drive.

This step is a big deal—most states are still heavily focused on improving fuel efficiency standards and electric vehicle adoption with little or no emphasis on how growing VMT is undercutting those efforts. This is shortsighted and leaves valuable strategies that would also create more livable and equitable communities on the table.

Importantly, MnDOT also plans to develop an approach for estimating the VMT that will result from its program and proposed projects by assessing both induced demand from adding lanes and reduced demand from increasing walking access. MnDOT will also evaluate the accuracy of existing travel demand forecasting methods—an important step, since many traditional forecasting models have a poor track record of accuracy and can prompt premature or unnecessary highway expansions that induce more driving and more emissions.

Minnesota isn’t the only state taking action this month to reduce emissions by reducing the need to drive. The California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA) recently released a public discussion draft of its plan to reduce VMT. The Climate Action Plan for Transportation Infrastructure (CAPTI), created in response to Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order, will be finalized later this year. It includes 28 action items with a number of potential strategies aimed at reducing driving, including pricing, using state transportation funds to incentivize land use decisions that reduce the need to drive, and establishing VMT mitigation banks that allow transportation project sponsors to purchase VMT allowances if their project will induce more driving, creating a fund for VMT-reduction projects.

California’s plan also includes strategies aimed at addressing the transportation system’s entrenched inequities, such as pollutants that disproportionately affect low-income and minority communities. And California has also already developed an approach for estimating the induced driving that will result from its highway projects, which other states can and should adopt.

We are very excited to see MnDOT take bold steps to address climate change emissions in transportation by addressing the role the transportation system plays in forcing people to drive more and further. They are showing themselves to be leaders and we hope to see many more states follow.

What service cuts are transit agencies facing around the country?

Public transit agencies are approaching an unprecedented funding crisis. To get a better sense of the magnitude of that crisis, we conducted a scan of media coverage about transit budget shortfalls and service cuts during the pandemic. The results paint a clear picture: most major transit agencies have either already been forced to cut service or are anticipating significant cuts on the horizon without emergency funding support for Congress.

Voters sent a strong message by passing the majority of transit initiatives on the ballot on November 3—including some larger funding initiatives to expand transit service like Austin’s Project Connect. Americans want to see transit survive the COVID-19 economic downturn, know transit will be a critical part of economic recovery, and are willing to step up to help make that happen.

Unfortunately, that local commitment won’t be enough without emergency funding to get transit agencies through the immediate crisis. Transit agencies need at least $32 billion in emergency federal funding for transit operations—funding that a stimulus bill could provide—but Congress has so far failed to act since its initial assistance in the CARES Act in March.

We’ve heard from transit agency executives, riders, union leaders, researchers, and others and the takeaway is clear: there will be no economic recovery without transit, and transit won’t survive this crisis without help from federal policymakers. Service cuts will have devastating impacts on millions of people who rely on transit everyday to reach jobs, medical care, groceries, and services, and the burden of these transit cuts would fall overwhelmingly on people of color.

But just how severe is the looming crisis many agencies are facing? T4America surveyed recent media coverage of agencies’ financial outlooks and potential service cuts and found that most major transit agencies have either already cut service substantially or are expecting significant cuts on the horizon without emergency assistance. And while smaller transit agencies aren’t necessarily getting the same media attention, we know many rural agencies are facing their own catastrophic cuts.

A wave of service cuts on the horizon

While the CARES Act provided much-needed temporary support to transit, it was never intended to be a permanent fix or provide sustained funding—and those funds are about to run out for many agencies that are already struggling. We have compiled a list of some of the major pending cuts below:

San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) will run out of its CARES Act funding next month. Director of Transportation Jeff Tumlin recently called attention to the agency’s $148 million operating loss.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) in the DC region will also run out of its CARES funds by the end of 2020. Without additional federal support, WMATA may need to make approximately $200 million worth of cuts through service changes and layoffs beginning in December—and today announced devastating future service cuts, including the complete elimination of weekend service and the closure of 19 stations.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City has been outspoken in warning that it could be forced to cut service by as much as 40 percent without more emergency funding. A recent study found service cuts in NYC could lead to the loss of 450,000 jobs.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) in Philadelphia will see its CARES funding run out in 2021. These cuts could have devastating economic impacts. A recent study found that SEPTA stimulated more than $3 billion in economic activity across the state last year, and has issued about 19,000 contracts worth more than $1.3 billion to companies in 38 of the state’s 67 counties since 2015. SEPTA General Manager Leslie Richards said it well: “We need to be up and running. If we are not functioning, the recovery of our area and the recovery across the state will be slowed.”

Boston area officials have begun planning for possible service cuts in response to a forecasted $300-$600 million shortfall for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2021, when Boston’s CARES Act funds are set to run out. The T could eliminate all ferry service, reduce bus service and stop commuter rail service on weekends as a result of that shortfall.

The Maryland Transportation Administration is reducing service on its MARC commuter trains and buses for the Washington DC and Baltimore areas. This is a change of plans after the state saw significant backlash in response to an initial proposal to cut Baltimore city bus service instead.

The Denver region’s transit agency, the Regional Transit District (RTD), has discussed the elimination of up to 550 positions to balance its 2021 budget, facing a $215 million deficit next year once its CARES Act funds run out. Earlier this year, RTD cut back its daily service to 60 percent of pre-COVID levels, and the agency expects to run reduced service for the foreseeable future.

The Richmond region faced a $2.6 million hole in its transit agency’s budget as a result of the pandemic. While CARES Act funding has temporarily helped fill the gap, the agency will face a $10 million to $12 million shortfall in its fiscal year 2022 budget.

MATBUS, serving the Fargo-Moorhead metropolitan area in North Dakota and Minnesota, is facing a shortfall of more than $1 million annually in coming years without federal support, prompting the agency to consider changes to its governance structure.

Already operating well below normal service levels

While action from Congress would help prevent some of the service cuts agencies are considering or expecting to make, it could also help restore service we have already lost. Many transit agencies (including some of those above) aren’t just contemplating future service cuts—they have already reduced service at the beginning of the pandemic and haven’t been able to restore it since. For example, MARTA in the Atlanta region eliminated most of its bus routes back in April, reducing 110 bus routes down to a staggering 41 routes, and is still operating at reduced capacity.

Other agencies have had to make cuts more recently. Louisville’s Transit Authority of River City cut 15 routes (about one-third of their total service) in August, citing budget challenges. King County Metro in the Seattle region cut service by 15 percent in September. The list goes on.

Tell us about transit cuts in your community

Not all transit cuts nationwide are getting media coverage. If your local transit agency has been or will likely be forced to reduce service or layoff workers, we want to hear about it. Email us at info@t4america.org.

Answers to your questions about Driving Down Emissions

We recently hosted a webinar to discuss our new report, Driving Down Emissions. We received many more great questions during the webinar than we had time to address, so we are answering some of the big ones here.

Our report, Driving Down Emissions, recommends strategies to reduce growing transportation emissions by making it possible to drive less. On our recent webinar about the report, Transportation for America’s Director Beth Osborne gave an overview of why reducing how much Americans need to drive is such a crucial—and achievable—step we can take now to address urgent climate needs and make communities more equitable, and how current transportation and land use policies are standing in the way. We also heard from our partner Sam Rockwell at Move Minnesota who worked with us to produce a state-level case study.

You can view the webinar recording here.

Since we weren’t able to get to many of the great questions we received during the Q&A portion of the webinar, we grouped together (and sometimes paraphrased) a few of the big ones and answered them below.

Measuring accessibility to jobs and services came up on the webinar as a key strategy for reducing emissions. Where can I find more info about why and how to do so?

We were heartened to hear a lot of interest in measuring accessibility on the webinar. Transportation is fundamentally a means for getting people and goods where they need to go. Our historical reliance on metrics like traffic speed as proxy measures for accessibility-related outcomes has led to expanding highways whether or not those investments actually improve access—producing unintended consequences like increased sprawl, more driving, and rising transportation emissions. For decades, measuring accessibility has traditionally fallen to academic researchers and advanced modelers, but new computing power and data make it possible to measure accessibility between households, jobs, and services and apply that to transportation and land use decisions.

Here are some resources with more information about measuring accessibility:

Connecting people to destinations in federal surface transportation policy: This Transportation for America two-pager discusses how to bring measuring accessibility into the next federal surface transportation reauthorization bill. You can also learn more about accessibility in federal policy on our blog here.

The State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI’s) work measuring access: A project of the University of Wisconsin and Smart Growth America, SSTI’s team of researchers, analysts and policy experts works with state departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations, and local governments to conduct meaningful accessibility analyses and incorporate them into decision-making. Their research also helps tie accessibility to other outcomes like vehicle miles traveled (VMT), mode choice, and transportation costs.
Virginia DOT’s use of accessibility in project prioritization: SSTI supported VDOT in pioneering the use of accessibility as a criterion in transportation project prioritization with Virginia’s statewide Smart Scale program. Other states and MPOs have since begun to follow VDOT’s lead. Learn more about how VDOT evaluates accessibility here.
Accessibility in Practice: A guide for transportation and land use decision-making: This guide for practitioners outlines general concepts, data needs and availability, analysis tools, and other considerations in measuring accessibility and using the results in decision-making.

My region continues to fund new and wider highways, with no acknowledgment of induced traffic and the fiscally and environmentally unsustainable trajectory it puts us on. How do we get elected officials to understand that building more roads does not reduce congestion?

Earlier this year, we released our report, The Congestion Con, to help do just that. We analyzed the 100 largest urbanized areas in the US and found that lane-miles of freeway in those regions grew by 42 percent between 1993 and 2017, significantly outstripping the 32 percent growth in population over the same time period. Yet those investments in road capacity have utterly failed to “solve” the problem—delay is up in those urbanized areas by a staggering 144 percent. In some regions, delay even grew substantially despite very low (or even shrinking) population growth.

Using visuals to help explain less intuitive concepts like induced demand can also help make the case to elected officials facing pressures to widen highways.

What about how automobile parking creates induced demand and congestion? It’s not just about adding lanes.

True. And while cities tend to blame state departments of transportation for the role their highway investments play in inducing more car travel, local parking policy and management plays a significant role in how people choose to get around and can seriously undermine other work to manage traffic or increase walking, biking, and transit use. We hosted a webinar earlier this year entirely focused on why and how to reform parking policy. You can read a detailed recap here.

What effect will autonomous vehicles have on vehicle operation and resulting emissions?

That will depend significantly on how they are deployed and regulated, which is why we think it is so crucial to have the right policies already in place as autonomous vehicles begin to come on the market. Autonomous vehicles will hopefully provide real benefits (for example, improving access for those unable to drive), but they also have the potential to undermine safety, exacerbate inequities, increase vehicle miles traveled, and worsen land-use policies that promote sprawl and create congestion—and increase emissions in the process. You can read our recommendations to Congress for addressing autonomous vehicles in federal transportation legislation in this 2019 sign-on letter.

It is very hard to forecast bicycling trip growth if we install networks of safe comfortable facilities. How large of an obstacle do you all think this is in developing these networks, and relying on them as a part of a VMT reduction goal?

This is absolutely a challenge for determining how to prioritize investments that support biking and walking, but our tools for forecasting non-automobile travel demand are getting better—for example, the Accessibility in Practice guidebook mentioned above includes a discussion of how measuring accessibility can help predict mode share.

That said, current models for forecasting car travel generally aren’t accurate either! Transportation agencies just rely on them as if they are. This often prompts highway expansions that induce more traffic and more emissions in the process. Transportation for America has been urging federal policymakers to require the use of demand models with a demonstrated track record of accuracy in the next federal transportation reauthorization bill.

Do you think denying states funding if they do not upzone or reduce car use is a good approach to reducing transportation emissions? What about increasing the gas tax? Or having insurance companies provide a credit for reducing VMT year-over-year?

Requiring that states make progress toward climate-related goals to be eligible for federal funding is a great approach. We are advocating for language in the next federal transportation reauthorization bill that requires state departments of transportation to measure and make progress toward emissions and VMT reduction targets. The House’s reauthorization proposal over the summer, the INVEST Act, took significant steps in the right direction.

Federal policy should also help guide better land use decisions—not by requiring upzoning, but by providing modern zoning guidance to localities and updating federal laws, regulations and procedures that contribute to local land use decisions. While federal decision-makers tend to see land use as outside their purview, the federal government actually played a significant role in many of the outdated zoning codes we still see across the country today by providing model zoning ordinance language in the Standard Zoning Enabling Act of 1925. Federal decision-makers could play a similar role in creating a new template for growth that promotes shorter trips and makes it safer and easier to walk, bike, and take transit between destinations.

Incentives designed to change individuals’ travel behavior can certainly be helpful, whether through insurance companies, employer programs, or other transportation demand management strategies. However, they will have limited impact until we address the policies that are driving sprawling, car-oriented development.

How can we get lawmakers to understand that reducing car use is imperative, and that even the most ambitious climate plans do not go nearly far enough? Climate targets of net zero by 2050 are too little, too late.

Some lawmakers will be more receptive to discussing the urgency of the climate crisis than others. Yet as Driving Down Emissions discusses, there are a number of other benefits to policies that promote walkable, transit-accessible communities where residents can drive less and still meet their daily needs. It can be helpful in some cases to focus on the significant economic benefits. Polling and consumer preference research has consistently shown that millions of Americans would prefer to live in walkable, connected places where trips are short and there’s a menu of options for getting around. Businesses continue to locate in those types of neighborhoods to attract talented workers.

But aren’t we seeing a different housing trend during the pandemic—people and businesses moving away from cities toward more suburban and rural areas? Aren’t inner city properties not selling well right now?

That narrative has definitely taken hold, but it doesn’t match what we’re actually seeing in data so far. For example, research from Zilllow in May and more Zillow research in August show that suburban housing markets have not strengthened at a disproportionately rapid pace compared to urban markets—if anything, both urban and suburban areas seem to be hot sellers’ markets right now. There has been a lot of reporting from the New York Times, Wallstreet Journal, and others about the flight from cities, but it seems to be based on anecdotal data and the fact that they are located in New York City — one of two metropolitan areas (along with San Francisco) that continue to face movement out due to extremely high home prices.

How does advocacy around overturning “jaywalking” laws and addressing the over-policing of people on bikes (see NYPD targeting delivery bikes) play into shifting reliance on vehicles?

Focusing more attention on roadway design instead of enforcement is good in many ways. For one, enforcement is used disproportionately to target Black travelers and other people of color. Further when you design a road well, there is less to enforce. For example, many examples of jaywalking occur in places where there are no crossings nearby. Many mistakes made by drivers are a result of design problems. Having to fall back on significant enforcement is a sign of design failure. Better design means that walking will be safer and more attractive, and police attention can be turned elsewhere.

How do you deal with “global” factors that impact spreading out? For example, what about rural hospital and healthcare access, and the centralization that’s happening in that sphere.

Transportation planners and agencies cannot fix every development and land use decision that creates transportation problems. In fact, consolidations might be more carefully weighed with other options if the transportation impacts—like longer travel times, higher infrastructure costs, higher travel costs and paratransit costs, and more emissions—were actually considered during the decision. Transportation agencies should stop chasing development. We can’t afford to provide unfettered car access at all times of day no matter where destinations are located.

Further, these decisions have extremely negative impacts on those that do not have access to a car—there are more than one million households without a vehicle in predominantly rural counties in the US.

How do you get the general public to understand the gas tax doesn’t pay for all the roads? Around here people seem to think the roads should only be for cars because no one else pays for them.

Point to the general fund transfers at the federal level.
Show how many non-gas tax funds go into transportation coffers. Here is a useful resource from US PIRG.
Point out that we wouldn’t have a backlog if the gas tax covered the cost of roads. And there are backlogs even in states that prohibit their state gas taxes from being spent anywhere but roads.

What are the biggest factors affecting people’s decisions about how to travel? It seems like GHG reduction does not factor in for most people.

Agreed. People look for travel that is safe, reliable, affordable and convenient. Many people have no mode of travel that provides all four of those factors, but they tend to choose the one that comes closest.

Driving Down Emissions in Minnesota

State and local policymakers have an important role to play in making it possible for people to drive less, which is essential for lowering transportation emissions. With our partners at Move Minnesota we produced a new case study companion to Driving Down Emissions looking at how Minnesota has seen some success reducing transportation emissions, why that progress won’t be sufficient, and how to stop leaving valuable strategies to create more livable and equitable communities on the table.

Our new report, Driving Down Emissions, identifies strategies that can help make a significant dent in growing transportation emissions while building a more just society simply by allowing Americans to drive less to accomplish daily needs. While national policy changes will be needed to address that goal, many state and local governments continue to create barriers by over-investing in new highway infrastructure and imposing onerous government regulations that make it nearly impossible to build more housing in walkable and transit-accessible places.

There is a lot that other states could learn from Minnesota. The state and its localities have taken a number of valuable steps to make it possible to drive less. Yet Minnesota also faces challenges common to many other states—including an overreliance on future electric vehicles to reduce emissions at the expense of strategies that can be used right now to help people get around outside of a car.

Read on for a summary of our Minnesota case study, and download the full version here.

The good news: progress reducing transportation emissions, and clear opportunities to do more

Minnesota has had some success reducing emissions from the transportation sector in recent years, particularly compared to some of its peers. The state’s annual transportation emissions peaked in the mid-2000s and then dropped 13 percent between 2005 and 2009. The state achieved this reduction partially by keeping driving per person in check, with annual miles driven per-person declining slightly between 2005 and 2017 (total miles driven annually has risen slightly). Minnesota has maintained that lower level since in contrast to national transportation emissions which began to climb since the last recession.

Minnesota also has a solid foundation to do more to make it possible for residents to drive less. The Twin Cities region (home to 65 percent of the state’s population) has made several strategic investments in light rail and bus rapid transit expansion, and has seen ridership increase on those lines in contrast to declining transit ridership elsewhere in the U.S. Outside of the Twin Cities, communities from Alexandria to Biwabik have made real progress making their streets safer for walking and biking, thanks in part to the state’s Complete Streets program and related initiatives.

The City of Minneapolis passed a comprehensive plan in 2018 to allow the addition of more housing in neighborhoods throughout the city while eliminating parking requirements, changes that have the potential to make a significant impact. In most urban areas in the U.S., the supply of affordable housing in walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods is artificially constrained by government-mandated zoning requirements. Removing those restrictions will allow more housing in the region and make it more affordable to live in the city, mitigating future sprawl and the additional driving it would cause while addressing a continued source of economic and racial discrimination in the region.

Leaving valuable strategies on the table with an over reliance on electric vehicles

Despite those successes, Minnesota’s progress is just a start, and the state is not currently on track to meet its emissions reductions targets. Like many states, Minnesota has a legacy of prioritizing highway infrastructure that continues to have lasting impacts without further change. Sprawl continues to force more driving—in fact, the counties surrounding the Twin Cities are the main contributor to the state’s overall growth in driving annually.

Unfortunately the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s (MnDOT’s) plans for decarbonizing the transportation sector largely downplay reducing driving as an option. Instead, they rely heavily on ambitious assumptions about future electric vehicle adoption—and even on as-of-yet undeveloped biofuels technology—despite the fact that Minnesota has lagged behind the national average in adoption of electric vehicles.

This is shortsighted and will lead the state to miss major opportunities. It also won’t address the needs of Minnesotans who can’t afford a car or are otherwise unable to drive, perpetuating existing inequities. Reducing the need to drive in Minnesota is not only doable, it’s what many Minnesotans want. Outreach conducted by MnDOT has shown broad public appetite for more walkable and less car-dependent communities. In fact, “walkable and bikeable communities” and “improved public transit” received the greatest support as a decarbonization strategy in MnDOT’s outreach, along with electric buses and trains.

It makes no sense to leave any emissions reduction strategy untouched, especially when Minnesota has had success reducing driving in the past. The state should do more of what it knows works.
Read the full case study.

Transportation ballot initiatives to watch this November

A bus in Austin, Texas approaching an intersection at dusk. There is a bike rider crossing the street in the foreground.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of ballot initiatives for transit and transportation funding passed during the 2020 spring and summer primary elections, and a surprising number will head to voters in November. Here is a look at some of the major initiatives to watch next month.

A Capital Metro bus in Austin. Photo courtesy of Capital Metro.

Providing sustained funding for transit is more important than ever with potential service cuts looming across the country. Congress has yet to step in to provide sufficient relief funding, but some regions have a shot at raising local transit funding in November.

A few weeks ago, we shared a summary of how transportation ballot initiatives fared during the spring and summer primary elections. While some regions and states opted to delay or cancel ballot measures due to COVID uncertainties, a number of initiatives moved forward in the primaries, and the vast majority passed.

Many of the successful measures earlier this year were renewals of existing funding, and we’ll see some similar renewals on the ballot in November. However, there are also a surprising number of larger, forward-looking proposals headed to voters to raise new funding for transit expansion. Supporters in these regions see transit as a key part of economic recovery. Here are a few measures we will be watching especially closely.

Three big transit measures to watch

Voters in Austin, TX will consider a proposal to fund the first phase of Project Connect, a package of transit investments totalling $10 billion. For this initial phase, residents will vote on a property tax increase to raise $3.85 billion and leverage federal funds for a total of $7.1 billion. The proposal includes new light rail lines, a tunnel to house light rail in the downtown area, expanded bus routes, a transition to electric buses, and bus rapid transit service. It also includes $300 million for transit supportive investments, anti-displacement efforts and affordable housing along the proposed lines.

The region has a history of unsuccessful initiatives to fund light rail expansion. This proposal received unanimous approval from the Austin City Council but has faced some opposition locally, including in response to the cost and relative permanence of new light rail lines compared to improved bus service.

Portland, OR’s Let’s Get Moving measure (Measure 26-218) would raise a 0.75 percent payroll tax for large businesses to fund dozens of light rail and bus transit expansion and safety projects for people walking and biking along identified priority corridors. The measure is expected to generate around $4.2 billion and leverage an additional $2.84 billion in matching funds. It also includes funds for anti-displacement work in predominantly Black and Brown communities along the corridors.

Supporters argue that the investments will create 37,000 jobs and help jumpstart economic recovery. Critics have argued that the cost is too great. The business community has largely withdrawn support, and a number of larger businesses have contributed to a campaign against the measure.

These initiatives in Austin and Portland share some commonalities, including a forward-looking transit vision for the future, an emphasis on racial justice and preventing displacement, and robust campaigns supporting the measures as well as vocal local opposition.

In suburban Gwinnett County, GA in the Atlanta region, residents will vote on a proposed 30-year, 1 percent sales tax for transit expansion in the county that would raise a total of $12 billion for bus and rail expansion. This vote comes less than two years after a failed measure to fund transit expansion for both Gwinnett County bus and MARTA rail that would also have integrated Gwinnett County transit into the MARTA regional transit system—a change that county voters have rejected several times over the past few decades. This time around, the proposed improvements will primarily expand the existing Gwinnett County Transit bus system, with bus rapid transit, more local and express service, and paratransit, and some local leaders hope to see a different outcome as a result.

We heard from Gwinnett County Commissioner Charlotte Nash at T4America’s Capital Ideas conference in 2018 about the region’s work building support for transit incrementally, so we are especially interested to see how this vote unfolds.

Other local and state initiatives of interest

Voters in Seattle, WA will decide whether to renew funding for the Seattle Transportation Benefit District via a six-year 0.1 percent sales tax and a car-tab fee that expires this year. The proposal will reduce total service below existing levels, but it will focus the remaining service more heavily in communities of color. The measure would generate $20 to $30 million annually over six years.

Three smaller municipalities in Gratiot County, MI are seeking a 1-mill levy (one dollar per $1,000 dollars of assessed value) to join their region’s Alma Transit system. The St. Louis and Ithaca city councils and the Pine River Township board all passed the measure unanimously over the summer. Voters in each locality will decide in November whether they are willing to pay a property tax for public transit service in their communities. All three jurisdictions need to pass the measure for it to move forward.

Missoula, MT will ask voters to approve a property tax increase to expand Mountain Line bus service frequency, help fund the area’s zero-fare program, and support conversion to an electric bus fleet.

Newton County, GA is seeking a 1 percent Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax for transportation. Revenues will be shared among the cities located within the county using a formula, and each city will decide how to allocate its funds—a decentralized approach in contrast to Gwinnett County’s package of proposed transit investments above.

Voters in the Bay Area, CA will consider a 1/8 cent sales tax to provide dedicated funding for the region’s commuter rail, Caltrain. The tax would generate an estimated $108 million annually, which could help provide a lifeline for the rail line as it faces the possibility of a shutdown during the pandemic due to low ridership.

In North Carolina, residents will vote on a $1.15 billion bond measure to fund the construction and renovation of highways, roads, bridges, and related road infrastructure. The measure also includes $1.95 billion in education bonds. The state is facing a potential $5 billion shortfall due to lost tax revenue from the pandemic.

The State of Arkansas, Bellingham, WA, Monroe, MI and Wheeling and Bethlehem, WV will all decide whether to renew existing transportation and transit funding. Similar renewals have generally done well so far in 2020 despite COVID uncertainties.

What’s next

It’s worth noting that a number of planned ballot measures have been postponed or canceled in response to COVID—see our previous post for a non-exhaustive list.

We’ll watch these scheduled initiatives closely as we head into the November election and will share updates on the results. Stay tuned!

How have transportation ballot initiatives fared during the pandemic?

Woman walking by a bus stop in Anchorage, Alaska. The bus is stopped to pick up passengers.

Regional ballot initiatives are a powerful tool localities can use to raise funding for transportation projects, especially in the face of uncertain federal funding. The COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis are creating a different landscape for ballot measures than we have seen in the past, but many are still moving forward and a number have already passed.

Check out our latest blog in this series on transportation ballot initiatives to watch this November.

We are big proponents of regional ballot initiatives (RBIs) here at Transportation for America. They can be transformative for localities, giving them more control over the growth of their transportation systems, making them less reliant on federal and state funding, and making voters partners in deciding the future of the system and contributing to maintaining it. In fact, we have been working for several years with our partners in Massachusetts to encourage the state legislature to grant localities the authority to go to their own voters seeking support for important infrastructure priorities. The state is one of only a handful of states that do not allow their localities this authority.

In the past, we have tracked ballot measures around the country during elections and profiled examples of successful initiatives, but this year is different and unprecedented. The COVID shutdown began right as the early spring primary elections were taking place, disrupting many of those votes. The economic crisis has raised questions about the wisdom of going to voters for additional funding at all right now, even as more funding for transit is sorely needed.

Despite those uncertainties, a number of ballot initiatives did move forward—and pass—during the spring and summer primaries. While it is difficult to predict what will happen in November based on those results, there are still some insights we can glean.

Here are our key takeaways from the local and state transportation votes that have already happened in 2020. Stay tuned for a follow-up post profiling the measures we’ll be watching in the November election.

Voters overwhelmingly approved renewals of existing transportation funding

A number of local property taxes that support transit were up for renewal this year, including for transit systems serving rural areas. Those votes have consistently passed—often by margins similar to prior pre-COVID votes based on the Center for Transportation Excellence’s transit campaign tracker. A few property tax renewals have also passed with small increases in the property tax rates to help keep up with existing service levels.

While those results may not be as exciting (or controversial) as big ticket campaigns to expand transit systems, the wins send a clear message. Many voters in smaller cities and rural areas served by transit want to see that service preserved, and they are willing to keep paying to make that happen despite today’s economic uncertainties. While some of these votes occurred in March before we had a sense of the extent or impacts of the pandemic, a number occurred over the summer with similar results.

For example, in Maine, which is heavily reliant on borrowing to fund transportation, voters approved a $105 million statewide bond measure during the state’s July primary, making this the sixth straight year of similar bond measures for transportation (and the 10th approved transportation bond measure in the past 13 years). The transportation bond will help plug the state’s funding shortfall by drawing down $275 million in matching federal and other funds. Most of the funding will go toward road infrastructure projects, while $15 million will be devoted to transit multimodal investments. Again, voters opted to continue funding their current system.

Voters approved new funding for transit in the Cincinnati region and Anchorage

In Hamilton County, home of the Cincinnati metro area, voters passed Issue 7 by a narrow (0.7 percent) margin during their April 28 primary election, approving an historic 0.8 percent sales tax increase for transit. These revenues will fund bus service improvements and transit-supportive infrastructure investments. It is expected to generate roughly $130 million annually, 75 percent of which will go to the Southern Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA), with the rest dedicated to road and bridge improvements along transit routes. SORTA will be able to begin implementing the Reinventing Metro plan to provide faster, more frequent service, extended hours, and better rider amenities.

Issue 7’s passage is remarkable—especially during COVID—because it marks the first time county voters have approved a sales tax hike to support transportation improvements or any sort of transit-related tax in nearly 50 years. The initiative had the backing of a strong coalition of local organizations and decision-makers.

Meanwhile, in Anchorage, voters passed Proposition 8 on April 7, approving a $5 million bond for transit and public safety improvements by a 59 percent vote. The bond will fund improvements to the City’s public safety radio network and purchase of cardiac monitors, as well as replacing public transit buses and improving bus stops. Previous transit funding initiatives in Anchorage have generally failed, though the City did pull together funding for a new route in early 2020 (pre-COVID) in response to residents and advocates. Grouping transit and public safety improvements together may have played a role in Proposition 8’s success.

While the results of these two initiatives are promising, it is worth noting that both votes occurred relatively early in the pandemic when many people still thought life might return to normal in a few months. They may not provide an accurate prediction of what will happen in November.

A number of states and localities have delayed or canceled transportation ballot initiatives

A number of localities and states have chosen not to put planned transportation measures on the ballot for their primary or November elections due to COVID uncertainties, citing more pressing priorities related to the pandemic and doubts about whether voters would approve tax increases. Transportation and transit funding votes have been delayed or canceled in Sacramento, San Diego, and the Bay Area in California; Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Orange Counties in Florida; Bend, Oregon; and several states, including Oregon, New Jersey, and Colorado.

Looking ahead

Despite the uncertainties, a number of transportation funding votes will be going forward in the November election, including several larger initiatives to fund new transit and transportation infrastructure. In this follow-up post, we profile some of the measures we’re watching especially closely leading up to the election.

This is the first in a series of posts we’re writing on 2020 ballot initiatives leading up to the November election. Keep up with T4America by subscribing to our bi-weekly newsletter, the Round-up.

Senate Democrats recommend less driving—as Senate committee approves billions for new roads

The Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis recently released a report recommending key federal actions in each sector to avert the impacts of climate change, incorporating a number of Transportation for America’s recommendations. In fact, the very first recommendation for the transportation sector is to enable Americans to choose walking, biking, or public transportation over driving.

A MUNI light rail train in San Francisco. Photo by Jim Maurer on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

We will never be able to reduce transportation emissions in time to avert catastrophic climate change without also reducing how much people must drive to accomplish daily activities. Federal transportation policy has a huge role to play in that.

Our partners at Third Way recently joined us to discuss why the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee’s transportation reauthorization bill from last summer fell far short of the broad changes needed to address climate change (particularly in contrast to the House’s more recent INVEST Act). While the Senate included a section on climate, their overall approach would actually make climate change worse by preserving the status quo approach that leads to more roads, more driving, and more emissions.

Fortunately some Senators have recently taken a broader view. In late August, the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis released a climate action report that proposes the kind of paradigm shift that’s needed. The report doesn’t merely go beyond electric vehicles—it leads its transportation section with recommendations on the importance of reducing how much people need to drive by building walkable, transit-served communities where people can live and work in the same area.

Here are three things we were encouraged to see in this plan.

Recognizes the role of land use and sprawl in increasing emissions

It is noteworthy that the transportation section of the Senate’s report begins with a discussion about how land use decisions exacerbate transportation emissions by driving sprawl. That focus is often entirely missing from climate advocates’ and policymakers’ conversations.

As the report notes, through 20th century zoning, most communities have made it illegal to build affordable, multi-family housing near job centers, retail or public transit by restricting those areas only for detached single-family homes. This practice produces spread out car-oriented development and raises the cost to live in desirable areas where walkability and viable alternatives to driving exist. It forces low- and moderate-income commuters to make long drives from suburbs and exurbs, increasing emissions and exacerbating congestion in the process. Simply allowing greater housing density, especially near job and retail centers, can have a profound impact on emissions by reducing how much people need to drive every day.

But this isn’t just a local issue. Federal policy plays an enormous role in local land-use decisions, largely due to the incentives that federal programs—like transportation and housing—often create. The Senate report recommends that the federal government provide significant new funding and financing to promote smart growth, safer streets, and public transportation options. Done right, those strategies can be a potent tool to reduce emissions, while addressing critical issues of equity and housing affordability in the process.

Emphasizes high-quality transit and roadway safety

Providing frequent, reliable transit service will be a crucial step in reducing how much Americans need to drive, yet as the Senate’s report notes, the current approach fails to help make that a reality. The federal government has chronically underfunded transit, particularly transit operations, resulting in a major backlog of repairs and reliability issues caused by decades of neglect that have undercut transit ridership. Federal support for transit is more important than ever, as agencies are spending more to clean transit vehicles, provide personal protective equipment to keep their employees safe, and continue to provide access to work, healthcare, and other necessities for the millions of Americans who rely on transit.

The Senate’s report also explicitly calls out the need to improve safety for pedestrians, especially pedestrians of color. It echoes Transportation for America’s principles, noting that many U.S. roads are designed to move vehicles at the highest speeds possible, with little consideration for walking, biking, or transit. It calls to stop treating pedestrians as an afterthought and explicitly encourage other transportation options for trips under three miles. It recommends adoption of a Complete Streets approach.

Many of the same strategies apply in rural areas

The report also notes that while rural areas have their own challenges, many of the same land-use strategies will still be crucial in those communities. Promoting mixed-use development in existing historic rural downtowns and main streets over office parks and regional malls can have a profound impact on how much people drive, and emit. It can also help leverage rural communities’ unique character, historically significant architecture, and valuable public spaces to promote economic vitality and reduce the risk that these local assets are forsaken in favor of new development on the fringes of the community that is far more expensive to maintain while generating less tax revenue.

The Senate’s report is a good step but more education is needed

It is heartening to see this emphasis in the Senate’s climate report, but it isn’t enough. Reports like this are only meaningful if they actually impact federal transportation policy.

Too many congressional leaders still aren’t seeing the importance of investing in a transportation system that allows people to drive less by making shorter trips, biking, walking, and riding transit possible. While we often hear support in theory, few realize that this means both supporting those types of projects while also opposing projects that add new dangers in the name of letting drivers drive faster. It also means supporting fundamental reform in the federal transportation program that makes walking, biking, and riding transit a priority through funding and policy, at the expense of more money for the status quo road-building approach. Even the Senate’s report arguably downplays the significant role that federal—not just local—policy has played in incentivizing sprawl and increasing how much Americans need to drive, as well as the crucial role federal policy will need to play in making change happen.

We are encouraging advocates to help educate their members of Congress about the real connection between climate and transportation. You can help by:

(1) Sending a letter to your members of Congress explaining why the Senate EPW Committee’s long-term transportation bill is actually bad for the climate. We have a draft letter you can use, which you can find here.

(2) Tweeting at your members of Congress (particularly your Senators) to urge them to pass a climate-friendly transportation bill. You can use our social media toolkit.

(3) Submitting a short letter to the editor to your local newspaper explaining what it takes to truly reduce transportation emissions: investment in a transportation system that makes shorter trips, biking, walking, and riding transit possible.

Biden/Sanders Unity Task Force report falls short on climate

Last week, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign jointly released policy recommendations across a range of issues in partnership with Bernie Sanders supporters through a Unity Task Force. Climate change takes a prominent role in the 110-page report, but the proposal fails to call for the comprehensive changes needed to address transportation emissions. Here’s how the Unity Task Force recommendations fall short, particularly in comparison to the House’s new climate blueprint and the INVEST Act.

We evaluated presidential candidates’ climate plans last November based on how well they address transportation emissions, and in February we scored their transportation proposals against our three guiding principles. Most candidates were heavily focused on promoting electric vehicles and strengthening fuel efficiency standards. Fewer offered concrete goals and targets for (or even addressed) the need to reduce driving by making it safer to walk and bike for short trips, making transit more convenient, supporting passenger rail, and prioritizing maintenance over road expansion projects that induce more traffic.

So how does the Unity Task Force’s proposal compare to its predecessors in addressing climate and transportation? It largely follows in the same footsteps, with nods to investing in transit and passenger rail but no acknowledgement of the need to reform the base national transportation program that has produced communities where transit can’t serve people well. While the report includes brief language on the need to prioritize allocating transportation funds to transit and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, it says nothing about reforming the policies that prioritize car travel and congestion reduction above all else—policies that make it inconvenient, dangerous, or impossible to travel outside a car in much of the US.

Candidate	Electrify vehicles	Reduce driving	Promote bikeable/walkable communities	Invest in transit	Support passenger rail
Biden's Unity Task Force	Support “cash-for-clunkers” style approaches to incentivize accelerated adoption of zero-emission passenger vehicles. Provide incentives for manufacturers to build new factories or retool existing factories in the United States to assemble zero-emission vehicles or manufacture charging equipment.		“Encourage states to prioritize allocation of transportation funds for public mass transit, and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and ensure transportation options and infrastructure meet the needs of tribal, rural, and urban communities to fully participate in zero-emissions transport.”	“Encourage states to prioritize allocation of transportation funds for public mass transit, and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and ensure transportation options and infrastructure meet the needs of tribal, rural, and urban communities to fully participate in zero-emissions transport. Make major improvements to public transit and light rail. Preserve and grow the union workforce within the rail, transit and maritime sectors.” “We commit to public transportation as a public good, including ensuring transit jobs are good jobs.”	Invest in high speed passenger and freight rail systems, while reducing pollution, helping connect workers to quality jobs with shorter commutes, and spurring investment in communities more efficiently connected to major metropolitan areas and unlocking new, affordable access for every American.
Biden, circa November 2019	500,000 new public charging outlets by the end of 2030 and restore the full electric vehicle tax credit.	Altering local regulations to eliminate sprawl and allow for denser, more affordable housing near public transit would cut commute times for many of the country’s workers while decreasing their carbon footprint.	Communities across the country are experiencing a growing need for alternative and cleaner transportation options, including transit, dedicated bicycle and pedestrian thoroughfares, and first- and last-mile connections.		Ensure that America has the cleanest, safest, and fastest rail system in the world and will begin the construction of an end-to-end high speed rail system that will connect the coasts.
Sanders, circa November 2019	100 percent electric vehicles powered with renewable energy.	For too long, government policy has encouraged long car commutes, congestion, and dangerous emissions. Create more livable, connected, and vibrant communities.		$300 billion investment to increase public transit ridership by 65 percent by 2030.	$607 billion investment in a regional high-speed rail system.

Check out how we scored Democratic candidates like Senator Warren and Andrew Yang on climate in this November 2019 blog

We can’t “prioritize” transit, biking, and walking without addressing the underlying problems with our highway program

As we said when we evaluated Biden’s transportation plan back in February, layering good programs on top of a program that causes the problems isn’t smart policy. We can’t simply invest more in transit on top of our current highway program and expect to see the emissions results we want, let alone by simply “encouraging” states to invest more in transit as the report calls for. Likewise, just investing more in pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure won’t be enough to make it safer to bike and walk. Adding a bike lane to a dangerous high-speed, car-oriented corridor running through a community without making any other changes to reduce speeds isn’t giving more Americans the option to bike. And investing more in transit in a community where you have to wait for the bus on a busy road with nowhere to cross safely won’t bring us closer to making transit a public good as the Task Force envisions.

We need to come to grips with the legacy of our highway system and fix the problem. We have invested in transportation for decades in ways that are bad for the climate and disproportionately harm low-income people and people of color, and we’ll continue to see the same results until we change the underlying policies that have led to those investments.

A far cry from stronger recent proposals from the House

It is disappointing to see recommendations from Biden and Sanders’ task force that do so little to change the status quo, especially on the heels of much stronger and more comprehensive reforms proposed by the House. The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis recently released a comprehensive legislative blueprint for tackling climate change that takes a much wider view—prioritizing repair, safety, and access in a holistic approach to promote more transit, biking, and walking and reduce the need to drive. The INVEST Act, recently passed by the House as part of the Moving Forward Act, introduced significant reforms to our core national transportation program along similar lines to those recommended by the Select Committee that could have far-reaching impacts for climate if adopted.

By contrast, the Unity Task Force report does not address reforming current federal transportation policy at all. Here are some specific ways it falls short by comparison:

1) No acknowledgement of the need to stop building needless new roads at the expense of maintenance

Unlike the Unity Task Force report, the House Select Committee’s blueprint calls for changes to our core highway program, including prioritizing maintenance over new road infrastructure. The INVEST Act would put requirements in place to hold states more accountable to doing so. While prioritizing repair may not be intuitive climate policy, it would make a huge difference in stemming the trend of inducing more driving and more emissions. The nation’s roads are deteriorating, contributing to a looming financial problem, yet states consistently underinvest in maintenance and build new roads instead. We have talked previously about how a 1 percent increase in lane miles can result in a 1 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled.

2) Lacks the focus on safety necessary to actually make walking, biking, and transit viable

As we discussed above, dangerous streets and disconnected communities pose a major barrier to taking short trips by walking and biking in many communities, and those same dangerous conditions can make it difficult or impossible to reach transit. The House Select Committee’s blueprint recommends requiring states to use Complete Streets and context-sensitive principles and makes numerous recommendations throughout to prioritize funding for walking and biking. The INVEST Act also takes a comprehensive approach to prioritizing safety. The Unity Task Force report does not address transportation safety at all.

3) Nothing on measuring outcomes that matter for climate change

The House blueprint recommends creating a new performance measure for greenhouse gas emissions, requiring states and metro areas to measure emissions and then create plans for lowering them, as does the INVEST Act. This is a major shift, and it will lead to significantly different outcomes if states are truly held accountable to these measures. The Unity Task Force’s report does not include any recommendations for measuring outcomes that matter for climate, nor does it propose any concrete goals for reducing transportation sector emissions.

These are all major blindspots in the Unity Task Force report. We must address the problems embedded in federal transportation policy to reduce transportation emissions and make our transportation system work for everyone, and it seems like Biden and Sanders still don’t understand this.

More than one million households without a car in rural America need better transit

Many people think the only Americans regularly relying on transit to reach jobs and services live in big cities. Yet the majority of counties with high rates of zero-car households are rural. In fact, more than one million households in predominantly rural counties do not have access to a vehicle. Rural Americans without cars face unique barriers and they deserve a tailored approach to their transit needs rather than just assuming they can or will drive everywhere.

Transit agencies have been hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis, and rural transit providers are no exception. Before the pandemic, most were already operating on narrow margins with tenuous funding from local tax revenues that are now rapidly dwindling. Many of these providers were already stretched thin, serving multiple counties over large geographic areas with a small staff of part-time drivers.

The Director of the Oklahoma Transit Association Mark Nestlen said it well in a recent Vice article:

Congress never sat down at the table and said ‘let’s develop a rural transit program. What should it look like?’ They sat down at a table and said, ‘here’s the urban transit program…we’re going to have everything be the same and just put it in rural,’” he said. “When you do that, you’re going to put a square peg into a round hole.

While rural transit services are often costly to operate—particularly demand-response services, which allow individuals to arrange a ride to and from specific locations rather than operating on a fixed route—they are absolutely essential for families and older residents with no other means to reach healthcare, groceries, and other crucial services. To better understand this need, we used the latest American Community Survey (ACS) five-year estimates to look at how many households in every county nationwide do not have access to a car, and what other difficulties rural carless households might disproportionately face.

The majority of counties with high rates of zero-car households are rural

More than one million rural households do not have access to a car, according to this latest ACS data. On a national level, the majority of households without a car are in urban counties (as are the majority of people), but the rates aren’t as different as you might expect: on average, about nine percent of households in urban counties do not have access to a car, compared to approximately six percent of households in primarily rural counties. And while most of the counties with the highest rates of carless households unsurprisingly are in big cities like New York City, Baltimore, San Francisco, New Orleans, and the District of Columbia, the majority of counties with overall high rates of zero-car households are in fact rural.

Based on the latest ACS data, there are 292 counties in the U.S. where at least 10 percent of households don’t have access to a car (out of 3,142 total counties nationwide). Of those 292 counties, 56 percent of them are majority rural. These 164 rural counties are primarily located in Kentucky, West Virginia, South Dakota, Arkansas, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alaska. There are pockets of rural America where a disproportionately large share of residents are completely reliant on transit, deliveries, or help from neighbors to access basic necessities, like Wolfe County, Kentucky, and Allendale County, South Carolina, where more than 20 percent of households don’t have access to a car.

Households in those counties also face other challenges likely exacerbated by low car ownership and underfunded transit

A deeper look at data for those 164 rural counties paints a troubling picture: most of them also have few or no intensive care unit (ICU) beds, meaning residents with health emergencies (such as COVID-19) must travel to a neighboring county. Rural areas around the country have seen a wave of hospital closures over the past decade—more than 120 closures nationwide as of February 2020. Cross-referencing Census data with data from Kaiser Health News indicates rural counties nationwide have significantly fewer ICU beds per person available than urban counties: about one ICU bed for every 7,000 residents on average in rural counties compared to one bed for every 4,000 residents in urban counties.

Of the 164 rural counties we identified with especially high rates of no-car households, 119 don’t have a single ICU bed. And some of those counties don’t even have a single hospital—like Knott County, Kentucky, and Lee County, Arkansas, where 12.6 percent and 16.3 percent of households don’t have access to a vehicle, respectively.

This points to some of the glaring problems with how our national surface transportation program handles rural transit like an add-on rather than a well-conceived program created to meet different needs than transit in a big city. People in rural America must travel longer distances for basic necessities, including groceries, banks, schools, and (especially important today) medical care. Because rural hospitals have been shrinking and closing, getting to a hospital for a job or for medical care requires an even longer trip. This makes rural transit more challenging to run, especially on a shoestring budget.

Many people in those 164 rural counties also face substantial poverty. Nationally 13.1 percent of the country’s population was below the poverty level in 2018 according to the ACS, versus 24.5 percent in those 164 counties. They also have very low rates of internet access compared to the national average. About 80 percent of households nationwide have a broadband subscription, compared to approximately 74 percent for all rural counties, and just 62 percent for the 164 rural counties where at least one in 10 households don’t have a car.

In other words, these are regions of rural America where residents are and will continue to be deeply vulnerable to the near-term health crisis and long-lasting economic impacts of COVID-19.

Rural transit needs more funding support, and we can’t stop there

As Congress takes up the nation’s surface transportation program for reauthorization, it is important for all members—from urban and rural areas alike—to take transit seriously. But we also need to rethink what providing transportation for rural Americans who don’t drive should look like. While there are no straightforward answers, and rural transit agencies will need to be part of this ongoing conversation, there are a number of key considerations we think should be part of the discussion.

For example, rural transit agencies in particular have never stood a fighting chance at covering their costs through fare revenues or even local taxes, and it’s time we stop letting the false standard and expectation that transit should pay for itself influence policy and funding decisions. Rural areas have always needed subsidies for public services, from electricity and water to (today) transit and broadband. We should accept that fact and provide for rural transit like we do for other essential public services.

We should also equip rural areas to design their transit systems to meet residents’ needs as directly and cost-effectively as possible. That could mean additional funding to identify pockets of low-density areas where residents are especially vulnerable, or resources to determine exactly where and when people are traveling to and from to help rural agencies tailor their services. This is information that some transit providers already collect in some capacity, either formally or anecdotally, but many don’t have the resources or capacity to process that information to make service changes.

If we want to invest in the economic recovery of rural America, we need to invest in everyone who lives there. The numbers bear it out: Transit must be part of that solution.

Changing the transportation paradigm, one project selection at a time.

Ringling Bridge in Sarasota, FL. (Image: Rich Schwartz, Flickr)

Thanks to support from the Kresge Foundation, Transportation for America helped several regions around the country take tangible steps toward aligning their spending with their policy goals using performance measures. We asked them about it…here’s what they said.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

If that mantra ever needed to be applied anywhere, it’s in the world of transportation investment decision making. The state and regional transportation agencies that make funding decisions often say they want to fund the projects that best align with their community’s goals—such as increasing access to jobs and opportunity, improving health, making more equitable investments, and ensuring a good state of repair, to name a few. But too often, their practices don’t line up with intent. That’s why it is noteworthy that some regions around the country are making real headway to better align their spending with their stated priorities.

In a previous post, we explored this idea of choosing transportation projects that actually match our priorities. But what does it look like in practice to match funding decisions to a goal like economic competitiveness? And how is this process changing the transportation funding paradigm?

From the horse’s mouth

Rather than speak for them, we asked some of the professionals we worked with about how this assistance helped them address the specific transportation goals that their community is focused on. Each community has different goals, and the focus of our work shifted accordingly with each community, but the principle is the same: measure what you want to manage.

Reevaluating the status quo:

Typically, regions prioritize projects using factors like political priorities and geographic distribution, but this approach rarely produces the best set of investments to accomplish a long-term vision with limited funding. By contrast, some of the regions we worked with have established measurable goals and scoring systems to rank potential projects based on those goals. Many common policy priorities like equity and quality of life have traditionally been difficult to measure, so this systematic approach is a game-changer.

“In reviewing our past planning efforts we realized that there was not always a great connection between the projects selected for funding and our long-range plan’s goals. We also had more project requests than funding. Identifying performance measures and targets allowed us to prioritize the projects that would best help achieve our plan’s goals and make the best use of limited resources. T4America helped us refine our scoring process to ensure it was meaningful and performance-based, understood by non-technical stakeholders, and easily implementable by MPO staff.”

– Dylan Mullenix, Assistant Director of the Des Moines Area MPO

“The Lake Charles region is currently updating its long-range metropolitan transportation plan and will soon be selecting priority projects to fund. The Transportation for America team gave us ideas to simplify the measures used in project selection, eliminate duplication, consider the cost-effectiveness of projects, and make our scoring criteria publicly available. These suggestions and examples from other MPOs will allow the region to better prioritize projects based on a clear vision moving forward.”

– Cheri L. Soileau, AICP, Lake Charles MPO Director

Creating equitable and affordable transportation:

Equity was a common thread throughout this work. Many regions consider equity a priority, but have trouble effectively applying it to funding decisions. We helped these regions elevate needed investments in disadvantaged communities to improve access to economic opportunities and essential services. Some regions also wanted to prioritize investments that address community affordability. For example, the Sarasota/Manatee MPO hopes to raise the priority of projects that make it easier to walk, bike, and take transit to food, medical, or education facilities to help reduce the costs associated with accessing those necessities.

“Our partnership with T4A changed the transportation planning conversation in our region by bringing new voices to the table, from health and social service providers to environmental scientists. Using the FHWA performance measures framework, we have gone beyond traffic management and turn lanes to consider affordable housing, access to services for disadvantaged neighborhoods, and advancing best practices. We are confident this will lead to project priorities that consider all modes and that better serve all users.”

– Leigh Holt, Strategic Planning Manager, Sarasota/Manatee MPO

Supporting people who want to walk and bike safely:

Projects that make it easier to walk and bike not only improve the health of residents by providing options for exercise, they also support local economies by contributing to a quality of life that attracts residents and tourists. We helped several regions determine how to use performance measures to elevate the investments that make it easier to walk and bike safely.

“During Transportation for America’s workshop, the team encouraged us to renew our initiatives in active transportation for healthier communities. Our agency had developed a metropolitan bike and pedestrian master plan; however, as a result of the push, we began the process of actually producing every project in that plan. These 57 miles of active transportation improvements will be in place within the next six years! Furthermore, we are now replicating the same award-winning process in a neighboring urban area to further the goal of healthier communities through active transportation across our region.”

– Matt Johns, Executive Director, Rapides Area Planning Commission

Ensuring economic competitiveness:

Many regions measure their economic success by looking at how projects would reduce traffic congestion. But traffic congestion goes up with good economies and down with bad; so while it may be an important transportation priority, congestion reduction is not a good proxy for economic strength. We helped several of the regions determine how to use performance measures to invest in the right projects for the long-term economic vitality of their regions—projects that will help draw a talented workforce, retain residents, and grow a tourist economy.

“The Roanoke Valley Transportation Planning Organization is working to make the region more economically competitive by identifying places where growth is desirable and sustainable because plans for future development enable multimodal connectivity and mobility. The technical assistance provided by T4A helped us better understand performance measures and how we can more directly achieve our transportation and economic development goals through targeted investments.”

– Cristina Finch, Director of Transportation, Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission.

These regions are able to make real change:

The six regions we worked with are already leading the way by seeking new ways of doing business. And thanks to Kresge’s support, we were able to introduce them to tools, approaches, and ways of thinking to help them do so. We are excited to see more innovative practices from these regions moving forward.

“The technical assistance provided by the Transportation for America team was more than a typical workshop—it opened the eyes of our local technical experts to a revolutionary way of thinking about transportation planning. We were taught how to better identify what problem we actually wanted to solve in order to avoid jumping to the usual prescribed solutions of cookie-cutter type thinking. In a way, the team provided a deeper validity and appreciation for REAL planning working in concert with engineering, and this is a necessity for better planning in an era when we truly cannot afford to “build our way out” of our problems.”

– Matt Johns, Executive Director, Rapides Area Planning Commission