Steve Davis, Author at Transportation For America

About Steve Davis

Stephen Lee Davis is the AVP for Transportation Strategy at Smart Growth America.

Transportation for America’s guiding principles for an infrastructure plan

As we continue to await either broad principles or specifics of the Trump’s administration much-anticipated infrastructure plan, T4America has released these four simple guiding principles to inform and evaluate any such future plan.

It’s past time to elevate the national conversation about infrastructure beyond just the breadth and cost of it. We need an examination of exactly which projects we are investing in and why. Whether the $50 billion we currently spend each year or the $1 trillion originally suggested by the administration, we need to do more than just pour money into the same old system for planning and building transportation projects.

America’s current federal transportation program does not bring us the returns we deserve for the sums we invest. There’s far too little accountability for accomplishing anything measurable and tangible with the billions we spend.

We urgently need a new way of doing business.

To get us there and truly realize the benefits of robust federal transportation infrastructure investments, we need a renewed focus on fixing our existing system first and foremost, on investing new dollars in only the smartest projects, and on creating new mechanisms to measure what we get in return for our money.

In lieu of any substantive details offered by the administration, Transportation for America offers its own set of guiding principles to help inform or evaluate any standalone infrastructure bill, aimed at influencing the national dialogue and encouraging members of Congress and White House officials to talk plainly and honestly about a smart approach to infrastructure planning and funding. They are:

1 – Provide real funding

We need real federal funding, not just new ways to borrow money or sell off existing assets, to rebuild our transportation systems. Historically, economic development and opportunity have depended on federal investments in transportation that connect communities and allow businesses to bring goods to market. Direct federal investment funded the construction of our highways, bridges, and transit systems, creating economic opportunities. Today, deteriorating transportation infrastructure—the result of years of reduced federal investment—is a roadblock to continued economic growth. Real funding, invested according to the principles outlined here, will rebuild the nation’s transportation infrastructure and restore economic opportunity.

2 – Fix the existing system first

We must immediately fix the transportation system we have and fund needed repairs to aging infrastructure. If we have a house with a leaky roof, it’s only prudent to fix the roof before building a new addition. Our transportation systems are no different.

Congress should dedicate federal transportation formula dollars to maintenance to make sure the system is returned to a state of good repair, is resilient, and works for all users; before funding new projects that bring years of additional maintenance costs. The application of federal performance measures to both the state and metro area programs would help prioritize needs and ensure that the greatest of them are addressed first.

3 – Build smart new projects

At a time when transportation resources are scarce, it is critical that funds go only to the best new projects. Competition, local control, and objective evaluation can ensure that federal funds flow to the projects that deliver the greatest benefit to communities. When communities are given the opportunity to compete for federal funds, they work harder to put forward projects that maximize return on investment, provide creative solutions, and involve a diverse range of stakeholders. Congress should direct new federal transportation dollars through competitive processes, such as the TIGER and transit Capital Investment Grant programs, which are accessible directly to city, county, regional, and state governments. Merely adding new funding into existing and outdated formula funding programs will not deliver the transformative projects that deliver long-term economic growth.

4 – Measure success

Investments in transportation are not an end in and of themselves. They are a means to foster economic development and improve all Americans’ access to jobs and opportunity. Agencies should be held accountable by evaluating how well their investments help achieve their regions’ goals. Newly available data and tools allow agencies to measure—better than ever before—how well transportation networks connect people to jobs and other necessities. The federal government should harness these tools so that state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations can ensure that federally funded investments are effectively connecting people to economic opportunity.

Download these principles as a sharable one-page PDF here or by clicking below:

USDOT is trying to eliminate a new requirement to track carbon emissions from transportation

USDOT is attempting to rescind a federal requirement for states and metro areas to measure their carbon emissions as part of a larger system of accountability for federal transportation spending.

This is from last year’s campaign about the measure for congestion, but the principle holds here: If buses are prioritized because of emissions targets, for example, a road can move more people more efficiently and with fewer emissions.

Update: The comment period has closed and we submitted a large batch of letters to USDOT. Check the blog for updates.

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 hold them accountable for making progress on important goals, like congestion, traffic fatalities, reliability, road/bridge condition, mode share and carbon emissions. For two years, USDOT worked to establish this new system, soliciting reams of public feedback, and finalizing the measures in January of this year.

Climate impacts aside, tracking carbon emissions is one of the best ways to judge how efficiently we’re moving people and goods. More on that in a minute.

The Trump Administration is attempting to repeal this carbon emissions measure. Take action and provide an official comment to USDOT in support of keeping it intact. (Official notice here)

TAKE ACTION

You may have been one of the thousands of folks who joined our coalition to successfully push USDOT to revise their measure for congestion and put value on providing transit, shared rides and safe walking or biking — rather than just incentivizing the construction of more expensive road capacity in every case in a vain attempt to “solve” congestion. During that process, we also succeeded in pushing USDOT to consider and include a carbon emissions measure to track the percent change in CO² emissions generated by on-road mobile sources on most of our bigger roadways.

After first attempting to rescind the rule directly by fiat, USDOT was sued by environmental groups, and rightly so — once federal rules are implemented, they can only be undone by Congress or by a new rulemaking process that allows public feedback. So USDOT backed down and is going through the official channels, which means opening up a new comment period where interested groups and citizens can weigh in and urge them to preserve this CO2 rule as part of the new performance measure system.

But we’ll have to act fast — we need to have your letters by Monday, November 6, at noon, so we can deliver them before the deadline.

Measuring carbon emissions is a good yardstick for how efficiently a state or metro area is moving people and goods. Emissions will almost certainly go up if you’re only building new highways and not providing a wide range of transportation options in a congested corridor or region. Agencies should be encouraged — or at least rewarded — for finding ways to invest their transportation dollars so that trips can be taken on transit, on foot or by bike, or coordinated with land use so that trips can be shorter altogether. Measuring carbon emissions doesn’t give you the entire picture, but it is another valuable piece of the puzzle for evaluating the effectiveness of the spending decisions made by states and metro areas.

If USDOT manages to dump this measure, we will lose an important metric for determining who is using their funding to most efficiently connect people with destinations and move goods to market. Shouldn’t states and cities be aiming to move people more efficiently, emitting less carbon per trip? Or, if they decide that less efficiency is the way to go, shouldn’t taxpayers at least have a mechanism for tracking that and holding them accountable?

This administration is attempting to let transportation agencies make decisions while hiding the emission impacts from the public, removing a valuable metric for assessing how they’re spending your dollars. Let them know that we, the people who are paying for the transportation system, deserve to know what we are getting.

Comments are due by the end of the day on November 6. Click here to sign a letter that we’ll produce and deliver on your behalf.

—

For those of you who prefer to submit comments on your own, you can do so through the official rulemaking on Regulations.gov here and you can grab the letter text from our page here to paste in.

Catch up and learn about what’s at stake for small and rural transit providers in the budget

Smaller cities and rural areas are facing potential funding reductions, phase-outs or the total elimination of vital federal programs they depend upon to provide transit service — whether as a lifeline or a powerful economic development tool.

A few weeks ago we released a new detailed memo (pdf) to explain these specific threats facing rural areas, and detail the efforts by the administration and Congress to cut or eliminate vital funding programs for public transportation.

Earlier this week, we held a short webinar with our federal policy experts and some sharp local leaders that have experience in providing transit service in rural areas to explain that memo in more detail. We talked through the status of the current appropriations process, what you can do today, the impact on formula transit grants and the Small Starts capital program, and the overall outlook for the transit program.

If you missed the session, you can catch up with the full recording here:

Transit providers of all sizes, in all parts of the country, should band together and start making the strongest possible case for preserving the federal transit program. Read our full summary and learn how you can take action.

New report: Transit funding supports manufacturing jobs from coast to coast

Public dollars devoted to making capital improvements to public transportation systems support thousands of manufacturing jobs, in communities small and large, in nearly every state across the country.

This new short paper from T4America examines the supply chain for public transportation, and illustrates how proposed cuts to federal transit funding threaten thousands of manufacturing jobs at more than 2,700 suppliers from coast to coast.

The supply chain for public transportation is as deep as it is wide, touching every corner of the country and employing thousands of Americans who produce everything from tracks, to seats, windows, communications equipment, wheels and everything else in between. As just a snapshot, recent capital improvements made in just four transit systems — San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, and Portland — supported jobs in 21 states.

Heavy cuts to federal transit spending, as proposed by Congress, would have a devastating effect on these local businesses and the tens of thousands of jobs they support. Without continued federal support, transit projects underway could stall, new or planned projects would be postponed or canceled, and transit agencies would scale back or cancel orders of new railcars or buses. The factories and suppliers that produce or manufacture components for transit systems would have to downsize or shutter without a steady pipeline of projects.

To preserve these jobs and support main streets from coast to coast, Congress and the administration should support and fund the Transit Capital Investment Grants (CIG) Program at or above FAST Act levels of $2.3 billion.

View the full report here, which includes a handful of maps and graphics, and rankings of the top ten states and congressional districts by the number of transit manufacturers located within their borders.

Celebrating a month of arts and culture in transportation

Throughout the rest of September, along with our parent organization Smart Growth America, we’ll be celebrating the positive, measurable impacts that arts and culture can have on transportation projects by sharing a handful of inspiring local stories, culminating with the release of a new examination of creative placemaking we produced with ArtPlace America at the end of this month.

Why spend the better part of a month talking about arts and culture? And what does it have to do with building better transportation projects?

Every great place — whether small town, big city, local neighborhood — also has a unique sense of itself that’s reflected in or supported by the arts and local culture. Because the arts are a core part of strengthening the social, physical, and economic fabric of communities, they’re also a key part of smart growth, which is all about building great, sustainable, lovable places.

We’re going to spend the rest of this month sharing a handful of stories about how arts and culture are essential to building better transportation projects that do more to lift up and celebrate what’s unique about the local communities where they are located.

Hopefully you’ve already pored over The Scenic Route, T4America’s primer to creative placemaking in transportation. But we’ve got more coming: ArtPlace America selected T4America to partner with them to undertake a rigorous national examination of creative placemaking to better understand how and where artists, designers, and cultural workers are collaborating with local governments and community partners to solve transportation challenges.

As we get prepare to release this “field scan” later in September with ArtPlace America, we are going to share a handful of stories that bring this issue to life; stories that show how arts and culture are not a “nice to have” when it comes to transportation or local community development projects — they’re essential.

Tune in throughout the rest of September as we share stories each week on our blog and on social media. Here are the stories that we’ve shared so far:

El Paso’s Transnational Trolley: How art can help imagine creative transportation solutions

September 8, 2017
What began as a sort of arts-driven guerilla marketing campaign for the fictional return of a historic streetcar in the border communities of El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is becoming a reality, a demonstration of the power of art to capture the imagination of a community and help them look at old problems in different ways and imagine creative solutions. Read more >>

Engaging east Portland to plan a more inclusive bus rapid transit line

September 12, 2017
When roughly 14 miles of a bus rapid transit line was proposed along Division Street in East Portland, the effort was greeted with interest in an often-neglected area of the city, but also concern about the possibilities of displacement and development poorly engaged with the unique local culture. To address those concerns, community members throughout the Jade and Division Midway districts were engaged through arts and culture projects to recalibrate the plan to better serve community needs. Read more >>

House abdicates methodical policymaking for new regulations on automated vehicles

Congress has taken the first major legislative step to encourage & govern the roll-out of automated vehicles, passing the SELF DRIVE Act of 2017 by a voice vote today. Unfortunately, the House only consulted a narrow range of stakeholders like automakers and technology companies to produce this flawed legislation.

House policymakers were eager to move quickly after facing heavy pressure from private sector groups like automakers, mobility providers (such as Uber or Lyft), and tech industry groups that are working on self-driving technology.

“This bill was produced quickly and voted upon in committee within hours of replacing the entire bill text with an amendment,” said T4America interim director Beth Osborne. “As a result, the unanimous subcommittee and committee votes are less about bipartisan agreement and more the product of a lack of interest in thoughtfully producing sound policy on a critical issue with the potential to reshape our towns, suburbs, and cities dramatically.”

“Without bringing mayors, city or state transportation officials, law enforcement, and others to the table, the House hastily legislated on an issue about which they’re poorly informed, with impacts that will be felt for decades primarily by people and groups who were never invited into the room,” Osborne said.

Cities aren’t opposed to producing legislation to govern how automated vehicles (AVs) operate on our streets — far from it.

But many are concerned by this rush to legislate without their input. They’re convinced of the long-term benefits that self-driving technologies could offer, but want a legislative framework that allows them to experiment, innovate and bring these new technologies to the market in their cities in flexible ways that help them meet other goals.

While no one wants to see a patchwork of regulations that stifle innovation, one of our primary concerns — and that of many of the cities — is that this legislation will preempt local authorities from managing their own streets and fail to give local leaders the confidence that manufacturers and operators will be aware of and follow local laws and regulations.

As written, depending on how certain terms are interpreted, any state and local laws could be at risk if they are found to be an “unreasonable restriction.” This vague language will almost certainly lead to costly legal battles to determine what that term even means when the rubber meets the road.

AVs absolutely need to be tested in real-world situations. But they also need to be tested in manner that ensures public safety and builds public confidence in the technology. Allowing huge levels of safety exemptions per manufacturer each year, increasing from the current level of 2,500, to 25,000 in the first year, up to 100,000 in just three years, is too much too fast. Especially considering that this technology is still very much in its infancy and these vehicles are likely to be clustered in urban centers and not evenly distributed.

What if three manufacturers all want to test the bulk of their vehicles in one or two cities? Shouldn’t federal safety watchdogs like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have some role to play in assessing their safety along the way and deciding whether or not exemptions should increase based on actual results from testing?

When it comes to safety, cities (and others) also need access to the data on how these vehicles are performing on their own streets. While the bill does require manufacturers testing AVs to report all crashes to NHTSA, it doesn’t require data-sharing on disengagements, near misses or other vehicle movement, safety, and performance indicators. There are also no requirements to share any data with cities, states, academics or relevant parties such as safety advocates for independent review and wouldn’t be subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) either.

This legislation ensures that no one other than the private companies doing the testing will be able to learn anything from the massive amounts of data produced by the tests. In order to create more hospitable conditions for all modes of travel, especially AVs, cities and states need these data to inform and optimize their planning, policymaking and operations to prepare for the coming wave of automation.

It’s important that Congress take this issue more seriously and bring all the stakeholders together to produce thoughtful legislation that balances the needs of private industry with the public’s desire for safety, transparency, and improved mobility.

The next step will be a Senate version of the bill and we’re eager to work with them and bring cities to the table to produce something stronger than the House’s first attempt.

House making final decisions on cuts to TIGER, transit construction & rail this week

With the current federal transportation budget expiring at the end of this month, this week the House is considering a handful of amendments and taking a final vote on the 2018 fiscal year budget. Up for debate are amendments that could improve — or further damage — the House’s already problematic transportation budget for 2018.

With the September 30th deadline rapidly approaching, appropriations committees in both the House and Senate have been debating and setting funding levels for transportation programs for next year, including the discretionary programs that the Trump administration has targeted for cuts (i.e., those not funded by the Highway Trust Fund.)

While the Senate largely rejected the Trump administration’s request for cuts to programs like TIGER, new transit construction, and passenger rail programs (read our detailed breakdown of the current House/Senate bills here), the House’s version of the 2018 budget eliminated TIGER funding and reduced the transit capital program down near levels that would only fund transit projects that already have signed funding agreements in hand.

This week the House is scheduled to consider their final House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill, and there are crucial amendments that could improve the bill by restoring funding for some of these programs — or make the damage far worse.

We’re asking T4America supporters to take action and send a message to their representatives this week urging them to protect and preserve the TIGER competitive grant program, funding for new transit construction, and passenger rail programs that keep towns and cities of all sizes connected to one another. It’s important that the House pass a bill with robust funding for these programs to set their starting point for negotiations with the Senate on the final product.

TAKE ACTION

Read about the amendments that we’ll be watching closely in the tracker below. Feel free to include information on these amendments as you send emails or make phone calls to your reps, and follow along on Twitter @t4america for updates as the debate begins this week. (Some of these amendments may be rejected by the House Rules Committee before they reach the floor — they are expected to only allow a few amendments for full floor consideration.)

Logged-in T4America members can read our detailed summary of the House THUD appropriations bill and vote below.

[member_content]Members can read T4America’s full members-only memo here.[/member_content]

Number	Sponsor	Description	Outcome
7	Maxine Waters (D-CA)	Provides $7.5 billion for the TIGER program.	Ruled out of order
8	Maxine Waters (D-CA)	Provides $550 million for the TIGER program, includes the current TIGER project eligibility criteria, specifically requires the Secretary to award the funds using the 2016 NOFO criteria, and requires that the Secretary distributes the grants 225 days after the enactment of the bill.	Ruled out of order
13	Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)	Provides $500 million for the TIGER program.	Ruled out of order
66	Rod Blum (R-IA)	Provides $200 million for the TIGER program and reduces HUD tenant rental assistance by $200 million as an offset.	Ruled out of order
46	Mark Amodei (R-NV)	Requires the Secretary of Transportation to continue administering the current transit Capital Investment Grant Program and enter into a grant agreement with any Small Starts project that has satisfied the current eligibility requirements.	Ruled out of order
38	Darren Soto (D-FL)	Increases the amount of funding for Small Starts funding by $48 million and decreases funding for intercity passenger rail projects by the same amount as an offset.	Withdrawn
48	Mo Brooks (R-AL)	Eliminates funding for Amtrak's National Network only.	Failed by a vote of 128-293
50	Mo Brooks (R-AL)	Eliminates both the funding for Amtrak's Northeast corridor and Amtrak's National Network.	Ruled out of order
51	Mo Brooks (R-AL)	Eliminates funding for Amtrak's Northeast Corridor only	Ruled out of order
54	Jim Himes (D-CT)	Increases funding for Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor account by $30 million and decreases essential air service funding by $30 million as an offset.	Ruled out of order
83	Ted Budd (R-NC)	Eliminates the $900 million allocation for the Amtrak gateway program, increases funding for national New Starts Projects by $400 million and applies savings from the elimination of the TIGER Grant program to deficit reduction.	Failed by a vote of 159-260
78	Al Green (D-TX)	Restores $250,000 in funding for the Department of Transportation Office of Civil Rights and reduces U.S. DOT salary and expenses by $250,000 as an offset.	Ruled out of order

TIGER amendments

T4America supports efforts to fund TIGER because it is a crucial program that gives local governments direct access to federal dollars for innovative projects. TIGER projects are overwhelmingly multimodal and multi-jurisdictional projects – like rail connections to ports, complete streets, passenger rail, and freight improvements – that are often challenging to fund through the traditional, narrow formula programs. However, T4America opposes paying for a TIGER program by cutting other necessary programs like the HUD tenant rental assistance program. Recent appropriations bills show that there is enough resources to sufficiently fund both of these two important programs.

Transit construction grants

T4America supports legislative language that increases the likelihood that the transit capital program will continue operating as it should and also moves future Small Starts projects forward by ensuring these projects get grant agreements when they are ready. T4America opposes proposals to offset funding for Small Starts by taking money from intercity passenger rail.

Passenger rail

T4America opposes eliminating funding for passenger rail, which is crucial to the economy vitality of our nation and communities across our country. The full national network provides mobility options for and acts as an economic catalyst to small and rural communities across the country. For many residents in these communities, the Amtrak connection is their primary way of traveling around the country, especially in areas that are losing Essential Air Service. Similarly, Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor is the primary travel option for millions of people traveling that congested corridor every year. Not only does it take cars off our congested roadways, benefiting train and road users alike, but is a huge economic driver for communities located along the Corridor. Cutting funding for Amtrak’s National Network and Northeast Corridor would decrease our nation’s prosperity, harm the economic vitality of communities that Amtrak serves, and greatly lower the amount of personal mobility and freedom that people that use Amtrak currently have. The House of Representatives rightly voted down these amendments two years ago and should do so again.

T4America opposes cutting funding from the Essential Air Service program to pay for the Northeast Corridor. While rail funding is important to the urban communities along the corridor and our nation’s economy as a whole, we need both and T4America opposes amendments that pit one infrastructure priority against another.

Elected officials and local organizations: Support TIGER & public transit funding

Facing the prospect of severe cuts from the Trump administration and Congress, T4America is looking for elected officials and organizations to show their support for investing in smart projects to move goods, move people and support the local economies that our nation’s prosperity is built on.

Updated 9/6/2017 9:00 a.m. — The letter is closed. We’ll publish the final letter and share the signatories soon. Thanks!

Calling all elected officials, local, civic and business leaders, and local, regional or state organizations! Sign a letter urging those currently assembling the federal transportation budget for the upcoming year (FY 2018) to prioritize funding for TIGER competitive grants, new transit construction, and passenger rail programs.

Read the full letter and sign it today — we’re aiming to deliver it before the end of August. Ed note: This letter is intended for organizations and is not open for individuals, other than elected officials at any level.

(letter is closed)

Where do we stand in the budget process?

For these three programs, this simple chart below shows four things: the current funding levels for this year, what the President proposed in his budget earlier this year, and what was recently approved by appropriations committees in the House and the Senate.

	Enacted 2017 levels	President Trump's request for 2018	House 2018 Appropriations	Senate 2018 Appropriations
TIGER Grants	$500 million	$0	$0	$550 million
Transit Capital Grants	$2.4 billion	$0	$1.75 billion	$2.133 billion
Amtrak & passenger rail	$1.495 billion	$795 million (All cuts come from eliminating federal funding for all long-distance routes)	$1.4 billion	$1.6 billion
TOTAL THUD FUNDING	$57.65 billion	$47.4 billion	$56.5 billion	$60.058 billion

As you can see, while committees in the Senate ignored the president’s call to eliminate TIGER and funding for new transit construction outright, those final decisions will be made by Congress as they debate the budget on the floor and then try to reconcile their different versions. (Worth noting: The House proposed eliminating TIGER funding and a barebones budget for keeping in-progress transit projects moving, which means that’s their starting point on negotiations.)

What we’re asking for is for Congress to approve a budget that fully funds the FAST Act, the current transportation authorization, already agreed to by Congress and approved by a bipartisan vote back in 2015.

More background is below:

TIGER

The majority of all federal transportation dollars are awarded to states and metro areas in a way to ensure everyone gets a share, regardless of how they’re going to spend those dollars or how well-conceived their projects are. TIGER operates differently.

The TIGER program has illustrated a productive way to use a small amount of money (about $500 million annually since 2009) to incentivize smarter projects based on their merits. This fiercely competitive program is one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects. Projects vying for funding compete against each other on their merits to spend the dollars more effectively. They also bring more private, local, or state dollars to the table. Through the first seven rounds, each TIGER dollar brought in 3.5 non-federal dollars, in contrast to federal money for building new roads, for example, which only bring in about 20 state/local cents for each 80 federal cents.

Transit Capital Investment Grants

The Transit Capital Investment Grants program (often broadly referred to as New Starts) supports metro areas of all sizes that are investing their own money in building or expanding transit service.

While making the case for eliminating the program, the Trump Administration recently stated that “localities should fund these localized projects,” but local voters and leaders are doing that already, putting their own skin in the game to meet the growing demand for well-connected locations served by transit. At the ballot box last November alone, voters approved more than $200 billion dollars in tax increases to invest in these projects. But cities of all sizes are counting on the federal government to continue supporting these bottom-up efforts, as they’ve done for decades. Eliminating this program or even just reducing its funding will threaten their economic prospects and their ability to satisfy the booming demand from residents and employers alike for well-connected locations served by transit.

Passenger rail

President Trump proposed cutting Amtrak’s budget nearly in half, with nearly all cuts coming from eliminating long-distance passenger rail service. Funding for the Northeast Corridor would survive, as would the funding for state-supported routes.

But neither chamber heeded this call from the administration: the House approved slightly less funding compared to last year, while the Senate provided the full amount outlined in the FAST Act, allocating competitive funds for safety, state of good repair for the Northeast Corridor, and operating and capital support for restored or new passenger service throughout the rest of the country.

A Colorado city in the Smart Cities Collaborative partners with Uber for a “quicker way to deploy transit to our residents”

Lone Tree, Colorado, one of the 16 members of our Smart Cities Collaborative, successfully launched a new pilot project last week. The small Denver suburb is evolving their existing fixed-route circulator served by four small buses by adding an on-demand component through a partnership with Uber.

Screenshot from the Lone Tree Link’s “How to Ride” video. http://www.lonetreelink.com/link-on-demand

For nearly three years, the city of Lone Tree southeast of Denver has been operating a fixed-route shuttle line every ten minutes on a loop that connects a Denver RTD light rail station with most of the city’s major employers. The Lone Tree Link has been funded through a unique public-private partnership that includes some of those employers. This helps cover the cost and provide the rides for free to customers, but running four buses on a predictable loop and maintaining ten-minute headways also limits the reach of the service.

In an evolution for the service, last week the city launched Lone Tree Link On Demand, which pairs Uber’s technology with the city’s vehicles and drivers to expand that service to more residents and increase accessibility. Now through the end of December anyone can use the Uber app to hail a Lone Tree Link shuttle for a free ride between any two points within the City of Lone Tree.

Screenshot from the Lone Tree Link’s “How to Ride” video. http://www.lonetreelink.com/link-on-demand

“We wanted to extend the reach of the successful circulator,” Seth Hoffman, the city manager of Lone Tree, told T4America last week. For the fixed-route service, “to get the headways we wanted to achieve, we had to keep the initial route narrow in scope. But that meant that it served employers but didn’t really serve retailers or residents. Putting it on demand makes it available to every address in the city.”

The genesis of Lone Tree’s partnership with Uber came about through the Smart Cities Collaborative.

“Our inclusion in the Smart Cities Collaborative got us in the door with Uber,” said Jeff Holwell, the economic development director of Lone Tree, referring to the ‘Industry Day’ portion of the Collaborative. “That connected us with Uber’s Denver office, which is what made this happen.”

“We were really floundering before that meeting,” Hoffman told us, but the connection with Uber at the Collaborative meeting helped them clear the final hurdle.

“Early on, we thought we’d find someone to help us develop our own app and start from scratch. But what we realized based on others’ experiences in the Collaborative, and through our contacts with T4A, was that smartphone real estate is really hard to compete with. If we could find someone that’s doing it and doing it well, that’s a quick path to our pilot.”

This partnership with Uber — which is as much a pilot for the private company as it is for the city — has simplified some of those tech issues. For example, as Holwell noted, adding one of the city’s extra shuttles to the service is “so easy with Uber’s technology — [the service] is as scalable as Uber is and they have incredible technology that we don’t have to create or update.”

The Denver Post covered the launch last week, and included a story that illustrates how the expanded service allows the city to connect residents and visitors to even more destinations in the city of about 10,000 people:

Divya Sheshathri and her friend Mugdha Maneesh used the service on Tuesday to get from Sheshathri’s home on Park Meadows Drive to her husband’s office on the Charles Schwab campus. They used it again to get from Schwab to Park Meadows mall for afternoon shopping. “It’s a very good service,” said Sheshathri, who does not own a car. “Without this it would be very hard to get around. We’re comfortable walking, but not in this hot sun.”

For the pilot, Holwell said that they removed one of the four buses from the fixed route and reassigned it to the on-demand service, allowing the city to better calibrate their service with the need. And the returns have been positive thus far.

“There was an immediate effect on day one,” Holwell said. “We’re already getting more ridership on that one vehicle than it was providing on the fixed route.”

While operating the fixed-route service is still their “bread and butter,” according to Holwell, with an additional RTD light rail station slated to open in 2019 just to the south that will replicate a portion of the fixed route service, shifting all of their resources to an on-demand service could be the roadmap for the future.

“We only operate during weekdays during office hours because it doesn’t make sense to run on weekends through empty office parks,” Holwell said. And even then, the fixed-route Link shuttles are obviously more heavily used at certain times like the start and end of the workday, leaving excess capacity during the day while they carry fewer passengers. With an entirely on-demand service, the city could better utilize their capacity and reduce empty miles traveled, which is one of their broader goals for the new on-demand service.

Lone Tree’s leaders are proactively using technology to become the kind of place they want to be long-term. And finding ways to better utilize their existing resources to serve residents, visitors and employers — whether transit vehicles or roadway space — is what this project is all about.

“Our big picture goal is to leverage the assets that we already have,” Hoffman said. “We can’t build additional lanes to fit more cars, so we’re going to try to use the lanes we have more efficiently. People are taking it to restaurants and taking it shopping, which helps out the local economy. As a medium dense suburban community, the density isn’t there in a way that would make a [larger] fixed route system work efficiently. This is a quicker way to deploy transit to our residents.”

House & Senate reject president’s request to end all federally supported transit construction

Over the last week, House and Senate committees have both passed transportation budget bills for the upcoming year. While the House made a few cuts, the Senate flatly rejected President Trump’s requests to eliminate the TIGER grant program, halt all new federally supported transit construction, and slash passenger rail service.

After a budget deal was struck in May that avoided most cuts for the rest of this year, negotiations begun on the budget for the 2018 fiscal year which starts this October. This means appropriations committees in both the House and Senate setting funding levels for transportation programs for next year, including the discretionary programs that the Trump administration has targeted for cuts (i.e., those not funded by the Highway Trust Fund.)

In the span of the last week, House and Senate appropriations committees & subcommittees have finalized and voted to approve spending bills for the upcoming year. And while the House did make some cuts, the Senate appropriators unanimously repudiated many of the president’s budget requests for transportation and even made an interesting change when it comes to selecting the best TIGER grant applications.

But first, how does each committee’s bill stack up to what the president requested in his budget outline from earlier this year?

Comparing House & Senate 2018 appropriations

	Enacted 2017 levels	President Trump's request for 2018	House 2018 Appropriations	Senate 2018 Appropriations
TIGER Grants	$500 million	$0	$0	$550 million
Transit Capital Grants	$2.4 billion	$0	$1.75 billion	$2.133 billion
Amtrak & passenger rail	$1.495 billion	$795 million (All cuts come from eliminating federal funding for all long-distance routes)	$1.4 billion	$1.6 billion
TOTAL THUD FUNDING	$57.65 billion	$47.4 billion	$56.5 billion	$60.058 billion

Logged-in T4 members can read our House appropriations summary below.

[member_content]T4A members, you can find the full House appropriations summary here. (pdf)[/member_content]

When it comes to the popular TIGER grant program that the Trump administration had targeted for outright elimination, the Senate actually proposed increasing its funding by $50 million.

And they didn’t stop there.

Senate @USDOT funding bill for FY18 requires Trump Admin to give out $550m in #TIGER grants using Obama Admin FY16 selection criteria.

— Jeff Davis (@JDwithTW) July 27, 2017

While the new administration at USDOT had produced their own criteria for how to choose winners for the competitive TIGER grants, the Senate appropriators apparently didn’t approve of them. This language directs USDOT to continue using criteria developed under the last administration to select the winners, the same used for the last eight rounds of TIGER grants. (The Senate Appropriations bill was approved by a bipartisan 31-0 vote, it’s worth noting.)

Though the House did eliminate all funding for TIGER, this is likely unrelated to the president’s request. This has been the norm for the last several years. The House eliminates the funding, the Senate preserves it, and then the Senate number for TIGER has been taken during conference as the House and Senate hammers out the differences. But this doesn’t happen automatically. When/if the appropriations process moves forward, your representatives will need to hear once again your support for TIGER.

Neither House nor Senate appropriators heeded the president’s call to eliminate the federal funding for building shovel-ready transit projects; funding that always gets paired with local or state dollars to make those projects a reality. While the House’s version did make cuts, the Senate provided exactly what’s required to support all of the projects that currently have full-funding grant agreements and are ready to break ground (or are already underway), though the amount is indeed slightly less than the current year’s funding level ($2.13 billion vs $2.4 billion.)

While the House didn’t follow the president’s request to eliminate the program, under no circumstances should a 27 percent cut to transit funding be received as good news.

This cut would result in a handful of transit projects that have local or state dollars already in hand not receiving the full funding they were promised to proceed. And it would delay every other transit project in line behind them waiting for their turn to get a share of this tiny annual amount of federal funding.

We all need to be prepared to continue fighting these cuts to the transit capital grants program. (Get more info on the threats to transit funding here below)

Building public transit back better

About that infrastructure package

Lastly, the appropriations bill included some interesting language about President Trump’s so-called $200 billion infrastructure package. Does the Senate Appropriations Committee know anything about it, and do they believe the stated goals are the right ones?

To date, no such proposal has been submitted to the Committee. While the Committee fully supports additional spending for our nation’s infrastructure, it strongly disagrees with the administration’s assertion that providing federal dollars for infrastructure has created, “an unhealthy dynamic in which state and local governments delay projects in the hope of receiving federal funds.” Without federal investment in infrastructure, particularly in our nation’s highway network and transit systems, the ability to move freight across the country and the free movement of people between states with vastly differing abilities to fund infrastructure would be compromised.

The budget process will continue moving forward, though as with the last several years, Congress is not expected to complete any of these individual FY 2018 appropriation bills before the fiscal year begins on October 1. In all likelihood, they’ll once again have to resort to an omnibus budget or continuing resolution to just keep things moving forward without any agreement to be had on the individual bills.

Announcing the winners of our three creative placemaking grants

Transportation for America is pleased to announce the selection of three communities to receive $50,000 creative placemaking grants through our Cultural Corridor Consortium program. The three winners, from Dothan, AL, Los Angeles, CA, and Indianapolis, IN, all propose to apply artistic and cultural practice to shape transportation investments — positively transforming these places, building social capital, supporting local businesses, and celebrating communities’ unique characteristics.

“After reviewing more than 130 applications from cities and towns representing nearly every state in the country, the demand for new and creative approaches to transportation planning and design is clearly evident,” said Ben Stone, T4America’s director of Arts and Culture. “I’m encouraged by the level of sophistication with which transportation professionals and artists across the country are proposing to collaborate, and I’m thrilled to work with Dothan, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis over the next year.”

These three new projects are made possible by a generous grant from the Kresge Foundation, which also supported the last two years of similar work with groups from Nashville, TN, San Diego, CA, and Portland, OR.

In those three cities, our partners have integrated an approach known as creative placemaking, incorporating arts and culture into the process of transportation in order to elevate the voices of local community members, enabling and empowering true community-led visions for these transportation projects. We’ve witnessed artistic and cultural practice sparking lasting public engagement, facilitating the difficult — but necessary — conversations required to create better projects that more fully serve the needs of these communities and celebrates what makes them culturally vibrant and distinct. (Read more about those three projects here.)

And the three winners this year are no different, proposing creative solutions to address a diverse range of new transportation investments — a highway project, a bus rapid transit project, and a light rail project. We’re excited to support their efforts as they use arts and culture to produce better end products and processes that not only better serve their communities, but reflect their unique culture and heritage.

Here’s a short summary of the three winners, drawn in part from information in their applications.

City of Dothan / Dothan, AL

Dothan, Alabama is a small southern city in lower Alabama (pop. ~68,000) with a retail and medical services hub-market serving over 600,000 that has fallen victim to the adverse impacts of years of sprawl and auto dependency. The vast majority of the area’s recent transportation funds have been utilized solely for roadway construction and expansion, often out at the fringe of this small city. There is no mass transit service, the sidewalks — where they exist — are generally in poor condition, and there are no designated bicycle lanes within the City of Dothan. Within the historical core of Dothan, there are pockets of “extreme poverty” as defined by census tract data.

Compounded by both struggling communities and auto dependency, those who walk or ride bicycles as a regular means of transportation face challenging and dangerous circumstances.

This winning group from the City of Dothan intends to integrate arts and culture into the development of a four-mile segment of the Highway 84 corridor to address mobility, connectivity and aesthetics to tell a story of their history, people, achievements, and future. As they wrote in their application, “the city will have an opportunity to shape a new and exciting development format which places livability at the forefront of how we utilize the built environment. It’s a format that makes possible the use of transportation corridors for alternative means of transportation, promotes active lifestyles, engages visual poetry in the design of infrastructure, streetscapes, and landscapes, and enables mixed-use developments that in-turn generate vibrant communities within the urban context.”

LA Commons / Los Angeles, CA

Hyde Park, one of the oldest communities in Los Angeles, is a working-class neighborhood (median income: $39,600) with relatively low levels of college education and many single parent households in the heart of African American L.A. While the neighborhood today lacks connections to the city’s growing network of rail lines, that will soon change. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (Metro) is hard at work on the new Crenshaw-LAX (C-LAX) transit corridor that will connect Hyde Park (and Crenshaw Boulevard) to the Los Angeles International Airport, scheduled to open in 2019.

These direct connections to the airport and the rest of the city will provide Hyde Park residents with greater mobility, and employment and education opportunities. But in today’s climate where businesses and residents alike are clamoring to be in places that are well-connected to transit, real estate in close proximity to light rail will also become much more attractive to investors.

The real estate market is bigger than any one neighborhood and it’s hard to address the potential negative effects of gentrification block by block, but it’s crucial for local groups to lead the conversations and engagement around this topic. Through this grant, a group known as LA Commons will implement a process of gathering stories, led by a team of artists and local youth, who will ultimately transform them into an artistic intervention with high local resonance.

With Metro’s vision to create “transit-oriented communities” (TOCs), an approach to development focused on compact, walkable and bikeable places in a community context (rather than focusing on just a single development parcel), integrated with transit, it’s critical to foster a community-based response to such investment during early planning phases that aligns with and highlights the unique assets and identity of the area. Using arts and culture, LA Commons will be a part of crafting these transit oriented communities around the new station (TOCs).

Transit Drives Indy / Indianapolis, IN

Indianapolis is hamstrung by an inadequate transit system that not only poorly serves those who depend on it, but makes talent retention and attraction a challenge for the region’s business community. According to a Brookings Institution report profiling transit in the U.S.’s top 100 metro areas, Indianapolis is the 14th largest city, yet boasts only the 83rd largest bus fleet, and t he majority of riders experience an average 60-minute wait time.

Improving that service has been a top priority for Indianapolis’s business community and many of the city’s elected, civic and faith-based leaders, who recognize that investing in transportation options is vital both for connecting low-income workers to economic opportunity and for the competition for talented workers and new businesses. And their new transit expansion plan, paid for by voters through an income tax increase approved at the ballot last November, will deliver a 70 percent increase in frequency and extend hours of operation s, while also starting the buildout of an impressive bus rapid transit network to connect yet more neighborhoods and people to opportunity.

As a coalition of businesses, organizations, and individuals whose collective-impact mission is to engage and educate around public transit, Transit Drives Indy, the winning applicant, aims to encourage, monitor, and facilitate the implementation of the new transit plan.

Transit Drives Indy sees an enormous opportunity to create a new culture of public transit in Indianapolis. Their primary strategy with this grant is to activate artists, communities, and arts partners through a multi-year creative placemaking program that integrates the arts into the design and implementation of the Marion County Transit Plan, specifically the 2019 opening of the Red Line, the first of the three planned all-electric bus rapid transit corridors.

We’re eager to get to work with these three communities and are looking forward to sharing stories of their progress. Stay tuned here at t4america.org to read more about them as their projects unfold over the coming year.

Our Smart Cities Collaborative rolls on as cities get down to the nuts and bolts

During the third meeting of our Smart Cities Collaborative in Miami-Dade County, FL, earlier in June, our 16 member cities continued working to develop projects that harness innovation and technology to solve their transportation challenges.

We’re just past the halfway mark of the yearlong Smart Cities Collaborative we launched last fall in partnership with Sidewalk Labs. And, thanks to support from the Knight Foundation, The Miami Foundation, and Miami-Dade County, teams from all 16 cities gathered in person for the third time to discuss their pilot projects, meet with new mobility vendors, and continue collaborating with each other as they seek to leverage new technologies to improve mobility and quality of life in their communities.

In Miami, we turned the focus back on the cities and devoted a full day to each city sharing a ten-minute presentation on their particular pilot project and action plan.

With seven months of work under their belts at this point, cities have a wealth of information to share and were eager to interact and learn from each other. Whether designing an automated vehicle pilot, experimenting with mobility hubs or improving first- and last-mile connectivity to transit, every city shared their progress and their upcoming plans. Other cities then asked questions, shared similar experiences and provided constructive criticism to sharpen those pilot projects.

In a world chock-full of conferences focused on passively listening to others discuss emerging trends, the Collaborative creates a venue for cities to actively cooperate and learn from one other in a focused way. And this full day of presentations was a golden opportunity for cities to do so.

Their presentations showed us not just the outcomes they’re driving towards, but also some of the challenges they’re facing as they design and implement their projects.

One of those challenges is an ongoing struggle to develop productive partnerships with the private sector. When it comes to private companies, up to this point in the Collaborative, we’ve tried to create an environment that’s largely been free of vendors and products so cities can talk openly and determine their goals first.

But over the past few months, cities have expressed their desire to better understand the benefits and consequences of specific technologies and transportation models, how vendors operate and what their real operational capacity is and how they can craft agreements that serve their outcomes. We’ve also heard from the private sector that cities often don’t know what they want; and that they [vendors] struggle to understand government structures and processes and are frustrated by often slow and difficult procurement processes.

In an effort to bridge this gap and serve both sides’ needs, we organized an “industry day” with representatives from leading mobility and data companies like Sidewalk Labs, Uber, Cubic, Urban Insights, Ford, Via and more. More than a dozen companies joined us to discuss how they could work together to achieve shared outcomes and collaboratively shape the future of transportation.

Instead of listening to another pitch deck or panel discussion, we were determined to cultivate intimate and productive conversations. To foster strong relationships between participants and vendors, we organized rotating, small groups comprised of a single company meeting with just 3-4 participants, providing a setting for them to speak openly and honestly about their respective struggles and identify where common solutions can be developed.

One city participant shared that they had a “fascinating discussion with a [private] firm about the challenges of innovating within a bureaucracy.” And another participant valued the ability to have a discussion with the vendor at the same time as other cities, describing it as a “great opportunity to engage with a bunch of companies at once and learn about each other’s desires and challenges.“

The vendors also relished the opportunity to “meet in the middle” with these cities. Sidewalk Labs, our partners in the Collaborative, participated in the industry day as well. “We benefit from understanding the real-world challenges and use cases that cities wrestle with on a daily basis, and public agencies can benefit from the technology and development capacity of their private-sector partners,” Rohit Aggarwala, the co-head of labs for Sidewalk Labs, told us after the meeting. “The best outcomes are going to occur when cities and technologists meet in the middle to address tough problems.”

—

Last summer as we launched, calling this yearlong project a “Collaborative” was an aspirational term. Almost seven months after a roomful of strangers gathered in a Minneapolis hotel and worked to break the ice in our first meeting, those same city leaders walked into a meeting room at Florida International University, greeting each other by first names with warm handshakes, catching up on the progress being made across the country and making extracurricular plans to talk further.

While it’s worthwhile to see these former strangers getting along, what really matters is how they’ve begun to treat their peers from other cities as extensions of their own teams, almost like extra staff for their own city — certainly an added benefit in a time of strained local resources. They’ve leveraged others’ knowledge, weighed in on each others’ projects, and learned from the progress (and mistakes!) made by other cities.

With everything moving and changing so fast, the decisions these cities are making will go a long way toward shaping the smart city movement overall, making their individual efforts more valuable as part of a whole to make all of our cities more affordable, connected, enjoyable, and livable places for everyone.

T4America’s creative placemaking work gets another boost from the NEA

T4America is pleased to announce that we’ve received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support our ongoing work to help transportation professionals learn how to engage with artists and design better transportation projects that better reflect and serve local communities.

“The American people are recognized for their innovative spirit and these grants represent the vision, energy, and talent of America’s artists and arts organizations,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “I am proud of the role the National Endowment for the Arts plays in helping advance the creative capacity of the United States.” This grant comes from the NEA’s “Our Town” program:

Our Town is the NEA’s signature creative placemaking program that supports partnerships of artists, arts organizations, and municipal government that work to revitalize neighborhoods. This practice places arts at the table with land-use, transportation, economic development, education, housing, infrastructure, and public safety strategies to address a community’s challenges. Creative placemaking highlights the distinctiveness of a place, encouraging residents to identify and build upon their local creative assets.

Within the transportation sector, creative placemaking is an approach that incorporates arts, culture, and creativity to allow for more genuine public engagement in planning processes. This can be a particularly impactful tool for historically underrepresented communities, providing a platform and process to more directly involve community members in the systems that impact them. This produces transportation projects that better serve the needs of the local community and reflect the local culture and heritage of the populations that these projects serve.

For nearly two years, T4America has been on the leading edge of translating this emerging topic area and explaining its benefits to transportation professionals (planners, engineers, local elected officials and others). This grant will help us continue a transition from defining how this approach works in transportation, into actively equipping and training both transportation professionals and artists to work with each other on transportation projects.

Our arts & culture team is currently wrapping up a field scan — 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.

Through this grant — and incorporating what we learn from the aforementioned field scan — we’ll be partnering with Americans for the Arts to actively train transportation professionals to engage with artists and arts organizations and vice versa, equipping them with the requisite skills to complete creative placemaking projects. (Stay tuned soon for more on this training opportunity.)

We’ll be holding trainings in three competitively selected cities on specific transportation issues, such as improving pedestrian safety or reducing disruptions caused by road construction, all while working to reflect local culture and bolster local capacity. We’re aiming for the trainings to lead to tangible policy improvements that will facilitate more collaborations between artists and transportation professionals. As a product of these trainings, we will also produce web-based toolkits to help others lead similar efforts in their own communities.

“We have increasingly heard both from transportation professionals who are interested in creative placemaking, and from arts and culture practitioners who are eager to deepen their civically engaged practice,” said Ben Stone, Director of Arts and Culture for Smart Growth America/T4America. “These two fields have a lot to gain from working together to better engage communities in transportation planning processes, and this generous grant from the NEA will allow us to help make that happen.”

Avoiding displacement while making a vital Nashville corridor function better for everyone

As one of the fastest growing regions in the country, Nashville needs to make some intentional decisions about its future. Nolensville Pike, an auto-oriented corridor ripe for infill development running south out of the city, is ideally situated to meet the booming demand for more housing and small business space close to the urban core. But doing so without careful planning could displace the unique immigrant communities and long-time residents that have been living there for years.

Download the full report.

This week, in partnership with Conexión Américas in Nashville, T4America released a new report that provides an analysis of this corridor’s assets, challenges to overcome, and a list of recommendations that Metro Nashville decision-makers could use to make the busy corridor safer for everyone and improve the economic prospects of the area while avoiding displacement of existing residents and businesses.

Nashville is booming

The Middle Tennessee region, anchored by the city of Nashville, is one of the fastest growing in the entire country, and there’s immense pressure to accommodate growth within the city while also preserving existing affordable neighborhoods.

One factor driving up prices is that demand for housing is mismatched with available supply. There’s growing, unmet market demand in Nashville for well-connected neighborhoods in close proximity to jobs, services, and good schools that have safe streets for walking or cycling, and/or public transportation. But there are only a small number of neighborhoods that fit this bill regionally, and they are mostly within Nashville’s urban core.

The result is that some of the neighborhoods that are most attractive to new residents are the same neighborhoods that are currently home to those most in need of affordable housing.

This brings us to Nolensville Pike, one of the many spokes connecting downtown Nashville with suburban areas, a typical arterial state highway funneling traffic in and out of the city while also serving adjacent commercial uses and residential neighborhoods.

The road itself is clearly auto-oriented with wide, straight lanes and intermittent sidewalks immediately adjacent to fast-moving traffic that make walking an unpleasant and often dangerous experience. But it’s also filled with traffic lights and scores of local uses that slow down the thru-traffic. As a result, it’s neither fish nor fowl, neither a street nor a road; it’s a street/road “stroad” hybrid that does a poor job of either efficiently connecting two distant places or serving as a framework for creating lasting value and effectively serving local trips. It’s also the anchor of the most diverse area of the city that’s home to the largest number of immigrant families in the region.

Preventing displacement in the corridor

Rather than attempting to prevent new development along Nolensville Pike, which could bring jobs, increase the tax base, and improve quality of life for existing and new residents alike, the goal should be to ensure that improvements to the corridor include housing and commercial opportunities for immigrants, minorities, low-income households, and long-term residents who have called the neighborhood home or operated businesses there for many years.

The corridor possesses numerous assets, like its unmatched cultural diversity, relative affordability, close-in location and available space.

But there are numerous challenges to overcome to improve life on the Pike, including a lack of transportation options, auto-oriented design and land uses, the fact that the existing infrastructure doesn’t serve any of the necessary functions particularly well, and a looming potential for greater displacement.

Redevelopment pressures can already be felt along Nolensville Pike, though not yet to the extent of other parts of the city. As the region continues drawing new residents, Nashvillians new and old will be looking for affordable homes, access to jobs, health care, and strong schools, walkable shopping and entertainment districts, and more alternatives to sitting in traffic. Nolensville Pike could be an important part of meeting that coming demand.

Our detailed analysis offers specific recommendations to help decision-makers in the city and region make the corridor safer for everyone, improve the economic prospects (and equity) of the area, and provide new opportunities for adding housing and jobs — all while avoiding displacement of the vital communities of residents and businesses that call the Pike home.

Now is the time to take proactive measures to prevent displacement and preserve the unique identity of the area, while simultaneously making Nolensville Pike safer for everyone, improving the economic prospects (and equity) of the area, and providing new opportunities to add housing and jobs. By tackling these issues now, before development pressures have driven large-scale business closures or widespread displacement of current residents, the region will have the best chance of seeing its future growth occur in an equitable way, shared by all.

Download the full report (pdf). Our thanks to the Convergence Partnership for their support of this project.

Trump admin’s full budget proposal makes clear their intent to end federal support for transit construction

The Trump administration released their full budget proposal for 2018, ending any possible uncertainty about their belief that highway projects are always inherently in the national interest, transit of any type is explicitly a local concern, and leveraging greater local and state investment in transportation is not a trend to be encouraged.

Flickr photo by Michael Vadon – https://www.flickr.com/photos/80038275@N00/32744150430/

Update (5/24/17): Comments from Seattle added. In the full budget proposal from the White House, released this morning, the administration fleshed out the specifics of their “skinny budget” proposal from back in March. In this longer document that now includes line-item amounts for individual programs, the administration calls to end the TIGER grant program, cut all funding for new transit construction (other than projects that already have federal funding agreements in hand), and terminate the funding for long-distance passenger rail.

[member_content]Logged-in T4America members can view and download our more detailed members-only summary here.[/member_content]

The administration reiterates their belief that transit is just a minor, local concern.

“Future investments in new transit projects would be funded by the localities that use and benefit from these localized projects,” they write, making it clear that they see no benefit in providing grants to cities of all sizes to build new bus rapid transit or rail lines, or expand existing, well-used lines so they can carry more passengers.

Unfortunately, they provide an extremely misguided justification for eliminating this funding.

Several major metropolitan regions have recently passed multi-billion dollar revenue measures to fund transit projects, and the Administration believes that is the most appropriate way to fund transit expansion and maintenance efforts. Localities are better equipped to scale and design infrastructure investments needed for their communities. Several major metropolitan areas, including Denver, Los Angeles, and Seattle, have already begun to move in this direction by asking residents to approve multi-billion dollar bond measures to speed the delivery of highway and transit investments. These regions realize waiting for Federal grant funding is not the most efficient way to meet their local transportation needs.

They’ve taken note of the positive trend of voters approving scores of ballot measures to raise taxes or fees to invest in transit, but have sorely mistaken that trend to mean that federal funding is no longer necessary and that these metro regions can make these ambitious projects happen all on their own.

We were wondering how the local leaders from Seattle, Los Angeles or Denver felt about being used as examples for why federal transit funding is no longer needed, so we reached out and asked a few for their thoughts.

Here’s Denny Zane with Move LA, the organization that led the grassroots effort to pass last year’s successful ballot measure in Los Angeles. (Mr. Zane is also a member of T4America’s Advisory Board.)

It is shocking that the Trump administration would play so fast and loose with such a longstanding and effective local-federal partnership to build transportation infrastructure — and to call out for abuse cities in western states simply because we took that partnership seriously. Yes, we have each gained the support of our local voters — Americans all — for investment in our transportation infrastructure. We were successful in part because we could assure them that our larger, more significant projects like the Wilshire subway, or the Sepulveda pass light rail, or the West Santa Ana light rail would all be good candidates for federal partnerships. Suddenly, without notice, the federal partner wants to pack it in. This is no way to unite the nation.

In Seattle, voters approved over $27 billion for transit at the ballot box last November. Seattle Department of Transportation director Scott Kubly made it clear that those voters were counting on using those dollars to leverage federal transit grants:

We are incredibly disappointed that President Trump’s budget proposal cuts infrastructure funding and is totally out of step with his administration’s rhetoric promising to increase infrastructure investments. He needs to put his money where his mouth is. Seattle voters have done their part. They have stepped up to provide local dollars to leverage federal resources. Our local funds are meant to complement federal investments, not replace them. His proposal slashes important city initiatives. We will work closely with our coalition, community partners and congressional leadership to ensure continued support for the Seattle’s transportation priorities.

In their justification for eliminating all funding for the extremely popular TIGER program, the administration describes all of the benefits as local, and direct the towns, cities or states seeking TIGER grants to other ill-suited federal programs. As we wrote back in March:

The administration blithely suggested in their proposal that local communities instead turn to other programs that are explicitly designed not to meet same needs as TIGER. ‘DOT’s Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects grant program, authorized by the FAST Act of 2015, supports larger highway and multimodal freight projects with demonstrable national or regional benefits. This grant program is authorized at an annual average of $900 million through 2020’ Well, sure, but only $100 million of that $900 million in any year can be used on projects that aren’t on the national freight highway network, so if your project is multimodal or otherwise not on a key national highway, you’re probably out of luck.

What about that “big” infrastructure package?

People from across the political spectrum were energized by candidate Trump’s promises to invest in infrastructure; excitement that ramped up after inauguration as Trump continued talking about a $1 trillion infrastructure package. Aside from the dissonant and jarring promises to invest in infrastructure while proposing to take an axe to vital transportation programs that support smart investments today, these promises have been slowly downgraded.

After starting with the mind-bending $1 trillion number, it was soon revealed to be an anticipated $1 trillion in total economic benefit (or combined investment/financing, including private dollars, depending on who was being quoted) with a total direct investment of around $200 billion. That’s nothing to sneeze at though — $200 billion would be a little over four times current federal surface transportation spending in any given year.

Today, those promises are further laid bare by this budget, as the $200 billion is revealed to be the total amount invested over ten years, with just a paltry $5 billion extra included in 2018. (The amounts are reported to be higher in later years.)

$5 billion is just 0.5 percent of 1 trillion dollars. Though if you want to be as charitable as possible and go with $200 billion as the number for the total direct federal investment, then 2.5 percent of the administration’s promised infrastructure investment is included in their budget for this upcoming year.

“Our nation’s infrastructure serves as the backbone for economic growth and prosperity,” We said back in March when the preliminary budget outline was released. Few details have changed since, and just like the outline did, this full budget “falls short of prioritizing investment in the local communities that are the basic building block of the national economy.”

UPDATE: Geoff Anderson, President and CEO of Smart Growth America, issued a statement on the budget. (T4America is a program of Smart Growth America.)

This budget ignores why communities need federal community development and transportation programs. It’s not just that they need money or innovative tools — which, for the record, they do. They also need a reliable partner who can support their work, not austerity measures that punish them for taking action.

If the federal government quits being that partner — which this budget absolutely implies — it’s going to cause lasting damage to American communities at a time when they need greater security and opportunity, not less. Trump promised these very things, but this budget is a reversal on that promise. We urge Congress to reject this austerity budget and create a budget that reinvest and rebuilds America for the future.

Read the full statement here.

Avoiding a government shutdown, Congress moves to preserve TIGER and transit funding — for now

In a budget deal to fund the government through the end of September, Congress partially accommodated the President’s requests for more defense and security spending, but ignored his requests to eliminate funding for TIGER, new transit construction, and other programs vital for building strong local communities.

Congress agreed on a budget to fund the government through the rest of the current fiscal year, but they did so by increasing spending nearly across the board, avoiding any hard questions about what to cut to make room for the President’s desired defense increases (or tax cuts), performing some fiscal wizardry to keep the bill from scoring as if it won’t exceed the budget caps previously agreed to by Congress several years ago.

Though the President had urged Congress to make deep cuts to crucial transportation programs immediately this year, Congress responded to what they heard from state and local leaders of all stripes (and many of you!) and did not eliminate the competitive TIGER grant program or the funding that’s paired with local or state dollars to build or expand new public transit service.

“We applaud the appropriators in Congress for listening to the business leaders, local elected officials and advocates from across the country and protecting funding for these programs that are vital to the health and prosperity of their communities,” said T4America Interim Director Beth Osborne. “But we also know that this budget deal was underway before last November’s election and there will be real pressure in the coming months to make these same cuts when Congress considers the 2018 budget later this year.”

[member_content]T4America members, you can read our full summary of the 2017 appropriations bill, which includes the list of transit projects Congress recommends to FTA for funding this year.

USDOT 2017 Appropriations bill summary[/member_content]

Overall, transportation programs are mostly funded at levels consistent with what’s in the FAST Act, though Congress actually appropriated more ($2.4b) for transit capital construction than was proposed by the FAST Act for this year ($2.3b). They allocated the full $500 million for a ninth round of TIGER grants, though it’s unclear if USDOT will be able to move the process along fast enough to make grant awards this calendar year.

Despite the President’s previous request to completely halt the pipeline of transit construction projects immediately, the bill urges the Federal Transit Administration to keep it moving forward by writing checks for the transit projects that already have grant agreements, and — most importantly — to set aside funding this year for the scores of projects expected to sign grant agreements this year, like planned bus rapid transit projects in Albuquerque, Indianapolis, Everett (WA), and Kansas City, among many others.

This does not mean that the pipeline of transit projects is safe and back to normal — far from it. For the projects without signed grant agreements, they must still obtain them before any funds can be received, and there have been rumors that the Trump Administration would simply stop signing them — whether Congress allocates money for them or not.

Secondly, this budget only covers the rest of the year through September 30. President Trump’s blueprint for the 2018 budget is what made all the headlines a few weeks ago, in which he proposed zeroing out these vital programs. Congress largely avoided the tough questions by making Trump’s requested defense increases but not making other equivalent cuts to pair with them. How will Congress respond during negotiations on the 2018 budget?

We’ll call on you again to hold their feet to the fire then, but for now, we urge you to send all of your representatives a message of thanks for rallying on a bipartisan agreement to protect the transportation funding that local communities depend on.

Congress is expected to pass the bill before the current continuing budget resolution (CR) expires on Friday (May 5.)

California prioritizing repair, transit investments, and walking & biking with new gas tax increase

California could be the next state to raise new revenues to invest in transportation, and unlike most states doing so since 2012, CA lawmakers are prioritizing repair and pledging billions toward transit, safe streets for walking and biking, and an overall multimodal approach to solving the state’s transportation challenges.

Updated (4/7/16): The Senate voted 27-11 and the Assembly voted 54-26 to approve the measure on Thursday night. It is expected to be signed soon by Gov. Brown.

A bill (SB 1) currently before the California legislature would raise $52 billion in new transportation revenue by raising the gasoline tax — unchanged in 23 years — by 12 cents (to 30 cents per gallon), increasing diesel taxes by 20 cents (to 36 cents per gallon) and creating a new annual fee on almost all vehicles based on value. The bill has the strong backing of Gov. Jerry Brown (D). It is being considered by the Senate on Thursday and could be approved in a matter of days. The bill requires a two-thirds supermajority to pass and, though Republicans have uniformly opposed the bill, Democrats hold this majority in both chambers, but only barely.

The bill is projected to raise $52 billion in total over the next decade, directing $7.5 billion to transit capital and operations, putting $1 billion into the state’s Active Transportation Fund and reserving $4 billion expressly for bridge repair. (Interesting fact: if you sort a list of the entire country’s 60,000-plus deficient bridges by traffic volume carried, California claims more than the first 100 spots.)

The multimodal approach to solving the state’s mobility challenges, a heavy focus on prioritizing repair and maintenance, the commitment to supporting public transit and local priority projects, and dedicating about two percent of all new revenues to making it safer and more convenient to walk or bike set California’s approach apart from other states that have advanced legislative packages over the last few years.

It’s worth noting that numerous environmental groups are opposing the bill because of a provision, added late in the process with little debate, which would make it difficult for air quality regulators to create stiffer rules down the road to require cleaner trucks. Others support the overall package while urgently pressing legislators to remove this truck-related provision. (This Streetsblog CA piece fleshes out more of the details about the opposition.)

On the flip side of this equation, part of the tax increase on diesel trucks would be directed into a multimodal freight program, creating a mechanism to tax a negative externality (diesel emissions) and steer a portion of those revenues into cleaner, multimodal projects to move freight.

The bill is currently before the state Senate, and could be considered by the full Assembly in the days ahead. Read about other states that have raised new transportation revenues in the past few years, and find out more about our network for state advocates and elected leaders interested in doing the same.

162 organizations and local business and elected leaders from 30 states urge Congress to support TIGER & public transit funding

162 organizations, including elected state/local officials and chambers of commerce, sent a letter to House and Senate appropriators today urging Congress to continue investing in smart projects to move goods, move people and support the local economies that our nation’s prosperity is built on.

The letter, signed by 19 local elected officials, 9 state legislators, 9 chambers of commerce and over 120 other organizations, urges those currently assembling the federal transportation budget for the rest of 2017 and 2018 to prioritize funding for both TIGER competitive grants and Transit Capital Investment Grants — programs that have been targeted for outright elimination in President Trump’s budget requests for 2017 and beyond.

The majority of all federal transportation dollars are awarded to states and metro areas by relatively simple formulas that ensure everyone gets a share, regardless of how they’re going to spend those dollars or how well-conceived their projects are. Yet, through the TIGER grant program, the federal government has found a smart way to use a small amount of money (about $500 million annually since 2009) to incentivize the best projects possible. This fiercely competitive program is one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects. Projects vying for funding compete against each other on their merits to ensure that each dollar is spent in the most effective way possible and through the first seven rounds, each TIGER dollar has brought 3.5 non-federal dollars to the table.

The Transit Capital Investment Grants program supports metro areas of all sizes investing their own money in building or expanding transit service. While making the case for eliminating the program, the Trump Administration recently stated that “localities should fund these localized projects,” but local voters and leaders are doing that already, putting their own skin in the game to meet the growing demand for well-connected locations served by transit. At the ballot box last November alone, voters approved more than $200 billion dollars in tax increases to invest in these projects. But they’re counting on the federal government to continue supporting these bottom-up efforts, as they’ve done for decades.

Indianapolis, Albuquerque, Atlanta, Seattle, Kansas City, Minneapolis and a plethora of other towns and cities have already raised their own money to invest in building new transit service. Eliminating this program will threaten their economic prospects and their ability to satisfy the booming demand from residents and employers alike for well-connected locations served by transit.

Here’s the full text of the letter:

Dear Chairmen Cochran, Frelinghuysen, Collins, and Diaz-Balart and Ranking Members Leahy, Lowey, Reed, and Price:

As you prepare the omnibus Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 appropriations bill and the Transportation-HUD appropriations bill for FY2018, we write to respectfully request that you fund the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program at or above FY16 level of $500 million and that you fully fund the Transit Capital Investment Grants program at the FAST Act authorization level of $2.3 billion.

Local and regional governments generate nearly three quarters of U.S. gross domestic product, represent two- thirds of the nation’s population, and account for 95 percent of all public transportation passenger miles traveled. Yet, our local jurisdictions receive less than 10% of the federal highway program’s funding.

The incredibly popular TIGER grant program is one of the only ways that local communities can apply for and secure funds from the federal government for priority transportation projects. The TIGER competition spurs innovation, leverages federal funding far greater than what’s available through formula programs, and awards funding to projects that provide a high-return on investment.

Year after year, the demand for TIGER far exceeds the amount of funding available. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) received 627 applications requesting more than $10.1 billion in funding, which was 20 times the amount available. Since its creation in 2009, TIGER has made critical investments in multimodal projects in every state in the nation, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

Likewise, the transit Capital Investment Grants program (i.e. New Starts, Small Starts, Core Capacity) is the federal government’s primary resource for supporting locally-planned, major transit capital investments. The program has facilitated the creation of new or extended public transportation systems across the country.

Under this program, FTA awards grants on a competitive basis for large projects that cannot traditionally be funded from a transit agency’s annual formula funds, such as new fixed guideway systems, including heavy rail (subway), light rail, streetcars, or bus rapid transit. Projects are encouraged to leverage public-private-partnerships (P3) to participate in a streamlined grant process. Recognizing the importance of this program, Congress increased its authorization by $400 million in the FAST Act.

Both the TIGER and Capital Investment Grants programs complement DOT’s traditional formula-based programs. Both programs provide unique, cost-effective, and innovative solutions that leverage private, state, and local investment to solve complex transportation opportunities and spur economic development.

While we are writing today about the TIGER and CIG programs in particular, we also want to make clear that these programs should not be paid for by significant cuts in other essential discretionary domestic programs. The Trump administration’s budget proposal falls short in prioritizing investment in the local communities that are the basic building block of our national economy. We urge Congress to uphold its promise to the American people and reinvest in our nation’s communities.

Thank you for considering these critical programs, which invest in our nation’s infrastructure, create jobs for American workers, and boost our regional economies.

Sincerely,

See the full letter (pdf) for the full list of organizations and officials that signed the letter.

Trump admin moving to end transit construction program and TIGER immediately

New documents released this week by the Trump administration make it clear that 2018 won’t be soon enough to eliminate funding for future transit construction and TIGER competitive grants — they want them gone now, in 2017.

After months of promises to invest a trillion dollars in infrastructure, President Trump’s 2018 budget request proposed eliminating the popular TIGER competitive grant program and ending the support for helping cities of all sizes build new transit lines, among other cuts.

This week, it’s become clear that the 2018 fiscal year (which begins this October) isn’t soon enough for the administration — they are now asking Congress to make most of the same cuts and changes in (the rest of) this year’s budget for 2017.

“The Administration proposes to suspend additional projects from entering the [transit capital grants] program, and believes localities should fund these localized projects.”

That’s what the Office of Management and Budget is requesting for the federal transit capital construction program, according to Jeff Davis’ Eno Transportation Weekly. That’s paired with a request to cut funding for transit construction by about $400 million for the rest of this fiscal year. Unlike the President’s recent proposal for the next fiscal year (2018), these cuts are proposed for the budget that Congress is negotiating now to keep the government operating through October.

You can help save these vital programs
We’re looking for national, state and local organizations to demonstrate their support for fully funded TIGER and transit Capital Investment Programs. Sign onto T4America’s nationwide support letter by Friday, March 31st.

Budget background: The government is operating under a continuing budget resolution (CR) because Congress failed to pass individual spending bills in late 2016 for this fiscal year. They instead passed a single bill to keep the government functioning at 2016 funding levels for most programs. Congress must produce budgetary legislation of some kind before the current CR expires on April 28, or run the risk of once again shutting down the government.

What does this mean for transit?

For one, it means $400 million less available this year to distribute to the ready-to-go transit projects that the federal government has already promised to fund by signing a full-funding grant agreement (FFGA). That means some unknown number of transit projects that were initially recommended to receive funding from FTA this year would be left out.

Secondly, suspending the pipeline means that transit projects in cities like Indianapolis, Tempe, Albuquerque, Ft. Lauderdale and dozens of others would be at the front of a line that would not move again under President Trump. Some of these cities expected to move ahead this year and were even recommended for funding by the Federal Transit Administration. Many have already pledged millions of their own dollars or have started development, engineering or construction work on projects that are on the cusp of receiving a federal grant to help complete it. And despite the administration’s belief that “localities should fund these localized projects,” the federal government funds interstate interchanges, highway widenings and road construction projects that are inherently local in nature almost every single day. There’s nothing more “local” about a transit project at all.

The administration is not satisfied to see the pipeline of transit projects shut down in 2018 — they want it shut down as soon as possible, in whatever budget Congress produces to carry us through the rest of this year.

What’s the news for TIGER?

It could mean the end of TIGER grants this year, with no grants awarded in 2017 at all.

CQ Roll Call reports that congressional housing/transportation appropriators are being asked to cut $2.7 billion from their budget for the rest of this year and eliminate $500 million from the TIGER program for this year — the entirety of this year’s funding. In years past, spring had been the time of year when USDOT would typically open the application period for this year’s batch of awards, with the aim to award TIGER grants sometime this fall. Though TIGER is technically funded for this year, with no certainty about a budget for the second half of the year from April to October, USDOT won’t make funding available that could be rescinded by Congress. And this is exactly why.

If you represent an organization of some kind, sign onto T4America’s nationwide support letter for these programs by Friday, March 31st.

New Amtrak president supports the return of Gulf Coast passenger rail

Though overshadowed by the President’s budget proposal to make deep cuts to passenger rail, there’s encouraging momentum for the opposite, including a commitment by Amtrak to restore long-distance service to the Gulf Coast, and the broader freight-dominated rail industry speaking out for the expansion of passenger rail service.

All aboard? The future of federal passenger rail funding. Between the President’s budget proposal & Congress’ appropriations process, what possibilities are on the table, and what do local advocates need to know and do in the days ahead? Join us Tuesday, March 28 at 2 p.m. Eastern as T4America experts and guests discuss the scenarios, the potential impacts for passenger rail and steps you can take to support the important projects in your community.

Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on all aspects of the Gulf Coast’s transportation network in 20o5. After months and years of rebuilding, including a five-month rebuilding effort of the CSX-owned freight rail line (also previously used by passenger trains) to reconnect the region, every one of the region’s transportation modes was eventually restored, except for the passenger rail service from New Orleans to Florida along those same CSX tracks.

There’s been an incredible grassroots movement afoot to bring this service back, which we got to see firsthand on a special inspection train about a year ago, where we were greeted by thousands of residents eager to bring passenger rail back as a viable transportation option. It’s due in part to the work of the Southern Rail Commission, a Congressionally established tri-state rail compact with members appointed by the governors of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

Amtrak’s new president has taken notice:

New @Amtrak CEO letting Gulf Coast states know he’s on board w/relaunching NOLA-Florida route. https://t.co/NtahOlcK8m

— Lauren Gardner (@Gardner_LM) March 3, 2017

In this letter sent to the Southern Rail Commission a few weeks ago, Amtrak President Wick Moorman — a freight rail veteran as the former CEO of Norfolk Southern — outlined the railroad’s commitment to restoring passenger rail service to the Gulf Coast corridor, connecting New Orleans to Orlando.

It is thanks to the Southern Rail Commission that the Gulf Coast project is now approaching realization. Amtrak has supported the project throughout, and will continue to do so as we move through the process to inaugurate the service together. We are committed to operating both the long-distance and corridor services on the Gulf Coast route as soon as the necessary funding can be arranged, and the necessary agreements are in place to implement the service.

While the President’s budget proposed to chip away at the idea of a national system by terminating funding for long-distance passenger rail service and preserving funding for the Northeast Corridor — bifurcating rail funding — there’s a lot of momentum for making new investments in rail overall, including passenger rail.

Just a few days after the above Amtrak letter, the CEO of the Association of American Railroads, an industry group largely dominated by freight railroads, sent a letter to President Trump about their big-picture priorities when it comes to any big infrastructure package, and what’s one of their priorities?

A key focus of any infrastructure package will include adequate support for underfunded commuter and passenger railroads. Freight railroads back this, particularly if done correctly, infusing direct and indirect support, including streamlined permitting and public-private partnerships where the project provides significant public benefits or meets public needs. With the population steadily increasing, there is a unique opportunity to realize the power of intercity passenger service and moving people via train generally. As Amtrak CEO Wick Moorman stated on Capitol Hill in February, this means upgrading assets such as cars, locomotives, bridges and tunnels. Boosted support for Amtrak and other passenger services means greater economic opportunities for workers, including professional service personnel that use these rail networks to conduct business, as well as those that construct and manufacture related equipment and infrastructure.

The Southern Rail Commission agreed:

Thank you @AAR_FreightRail Infrastructure should include support for underfunded commuter & passenger railroads https://t.co/Wm9NHxLcOd pic.twitter.com/0xVOFRg0DZ

— Southern Rail Cmsn (@SouthernRailCms) March 6, 2017