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A policy proposal to undo the damage of “urban renewal”

Today, Transportation for America and Third Way released a policy proposal to undo the damage of “urban renewal” projects that have displaced more than a million Americans since construction of the Interstate Highway System and that continue to harm communities of color today. These four federal policy recommendations can be included in a COVID-19 stimulus bill or infrastructure package, or considered as stand-alone legislation.

A highway is replaced by a park

So-called “urban renewal” initiatives of the 1950s and 1960s ostensibly provided money to cities across the country to revitalize neighborhoods. But in practice, these new interstates razed housing and ripped through neighborhoods, displacing more than a million Americans during the first two decades of the federal interstate system.1 These projects deliberately targeted communities of color and particularly Black neighborhoods, wreaking havoc on their health and local environments for decades.

The American public has made it very clear that they want the federal government to prioritize revitalizing our nation’s infrastructure. Both parties in Congress and the incoming Biden Administration ostensibly agree on this need. Absent a new approach, however, even re-investment risks perpetuating the inequitable highway construction practices of the past while locking in air, water, and climate pollution that are a drag on our health and the economy.

To undo the far-reaching damage of “urban renewal” projects, Third Way and Transportation for America recommend a suite of policies, including the creation of a new competitive grant program, to reconnect communities, repair the damage, and invest for sustainable and equitable growth. This includes:

  • Creating a competitive grant program to redesign or deconstruct the outdated infrastructure that has hindered the growth of low-income and minority communities;
  • Establishing land trusts to help generate wealth for the communities that already reside in these neighborhoods; and
  • Updating federal transportation modeling tools so that decision-makers and communities can see how these infrastructure projects really impact traffic patterns today;
  • Requiring federal agencies to issue guidance on identifying communities with infrastructure barriers, measuring the degree of harm to that community, and providing incentives and prioritizing resources to address those disparities.

This critical investment could feature in a COVID-19 stimulus bill or separate infrastructure package, or as stand-alone legislation.

Background

After Congress enacted the 1956 Highway Act, cities and states used primarily federal funding to build highways through the middle of cities. White families used these interstates to move to the suburbs. City planners worried that their city centers would empty out if the suburbs were disconnected from downtown, so they intentionally ran new highways downtown to ensure suburban residents would regularly drive into town. But city developers also often deliberately chose highway routes in order to displace, disrupt, or segregate neighborhoods of color.2

The displacement has caused profound and generational impacts on these communities and has created huge physical divides in areas that would otherwise be among the most valuable for the city, especially at a time when cities’ downtowns are revitalizing. These highways destroyed the wealth built up through property by the families whose homes cities took through eminent domain or that developers destroyed. Now, residents cannot enjoy the current benefits of a downtown resurgence because of the infrastructure next to them.3

The urban highways cutting through these communities also brought additional, longer car trips; more congestion on the roads; and more pollution. The air quality issues associated with vehicle emissions disproportionately impact communities of color, with these communities facing higher exposure to harmful pollutants4and greater risk of asthma and other health issues5 than predominantly white communities. These highways, and the sprawl they enabled, have also harmed the climate by increasing Americans’ reliance on motor vehicles: Transportation is now our largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, most of which come from cars and trucks.6

Increasingly, state and local governments are reaching an inflection point. Many of these highways are aged half a century or older and have either fallen into disrepair or are no longer needed because of changing traffic patterns. Rather than simply replace or expand these highways, cities and states should reconsider whether these highways are necessary routes or unnecessary barriers that continue to cut off neighborhoods of color from opportunity.

The idea of legislating to undo the damage of past “urban renewal” policies isn’t new: under President Barack Obama, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx convened stakeholder meetings on how to make transportation more affordable, accessible, and equitable.7 President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration—and House and Senate infrastructure leaders’ commitment to improving America’s roads and bridges—could give new currency to this work.

Policy recommendations

Authorize $10 billion for a new Restoring America’s Neighborhoods Grant program to correct the economic, environmental, and social damage of “Urban Renewal” highway projects that destroyed the core of many small, medium, and large US cities and displaced communities of color.

Half of this funding would be awarded to state DOTs to redesign or deconstruct highways or other transportation infrastructure that was built through communities of color (“obstructive highways”). The other half would fund the creation of land trusts in those neighborhoods to ensure the land freed up from the removal of obstructive highways will generate wealth for the people who already live there.

Redesign or deconstruction of obstructive highways

The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) should make grants available to state DOTs in partnership with the affected cities. Eligible projects for grants under this program would be for removal or repurposing of obstructive highways, including bringing the highway to grade, reconstructing the local roadway network, turning the highway into a boulevard, etc. There should also be a planning set-aside for assessing, designing, permitting and engineering alternatives for specific obstructive highways as well as setting up a land trust, including forming the trust and providing it authority to operate in the area. This work could include measurements of the air and water pollution impacts of retaining or repairing existing disruptive highways versus removing or replacing this infrastructure.

A $5 billion investment could fund a couple of large projects and 6-10 smaller ones, depending on the size of the obstructive infrastructure. These grants will be sufficient to fully fund a project, to ensure these projects can move forward quickly. USDOT should give preference to applicants with a demonstrated capacity—including any locally matched funding—to develop and manage the project; those that have an existing partnership with the communities impacted; and those whose projects demonstrate equitable economic development, a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, supportive land uses, new transit service, or explicit protection of housing affordability.

To maximize the impact of these investments for economic stimulus, USDOT should reward the first grants no later than nine months after the program is enacted and should strongly prioritize funding to projects that can be completed within 5 years. USDOT should also require projects receiving grant funding to adhere to the labor provisions that usually come attached to federal-aid highway funding, such as Davis-Bacon prevailing wage standards and Buy America domestic content provisions.

Land trusts

The interstates that the Highway Act supported consistently destroyed wealth in the communities they traversed and divided, particularly in communities of color. Therefore, any projects that begin to reverse this damage should rebuild that wealth. Highway update projects that remove a barrier, create new greenspace, or connect the community to commercial centers will also increase land values. To ensure that neighborhoods around the highway receive the benefits of its removal or modification, the project sponsor for any award under this program should be required to establish a land trust or land bank that would receive initial ownership of any property that becomes developable through activities supported by a grant under this program. The land trust would help locals buy the property, preserve and build affordable housing, support the opening of locally-owned small businesses, and preserve greenspace and parks.

A $5 billion investment could support 1-2 dozen land trusts for five years. The sale of property and development of land recovered should both fund the land trust beyond its first five years and help existing homeowners pay the increase in property taxes once their property values appreciate due to gentrification. The program should also protect renters, as well as homeowners who have owned affected buildings for generations but who cannot show title. It must ensure that housing affordability remains protected before, during, and after development. The USDOT should work directly with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to establish the land trust portion of this program, determine awards and manage the grants.

Policy considerations

This paper only introduces the Restoring America’s Neighborhoods Grant program and its key principles; it’s not meant to spell out every detail or present legislative text. However, policymakers and others interested in advancing this program will need to think through some additional policy considerations regarding the land trust component of the program, such as:

  • Whether to include a requirement that the land trust act with a fiduciary duty to the local community;
  • Whether to require that a grantee already have a land trust, or similar non-profit, already established and operating in the area; and
  • Whether to funnel this money through an existing program like the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program in order to get funding awarded quickly.

Forecasting tools

Transportation agencies do not yet have the necessary tools to understand the impacts of various highway project alternatives on traffic, urban development, and climate change. Today’s traffic forecasting tools are not built to consider individual trips that shift to other corridors; occur at a different time of day; involve a different mode of transportation; or disappear due to telecommuting or a shifted trip. Our proposal includes $25 million for USDOT to develop twenty-first century tools capable of accounting for these shifts in traffic in order to help plan and to preserve affordability in travel.

Study on obstructive infrastructure

Too many communities suffer the burden of infrastructure barriers without the political or economic power to oppose harmful projects and secure beneficial investments. Meanwhile, the federal government spends billions in formula and discretionary funds, often perpetuating the cycle of harm to communities. To break this cycle, and better target investments, our proposal will require USDOT to conduct a broader study, with the support of state DOTs and impacted cities, identifying the communities with infrastructure that creates barriers to mobility (such as highways that slice through a community) and measuring the degree of harm to that community. This study will culminate in the creation of a national map of communities torn apart by infrastructure, and will help prioritize resources for the communities most badly harmed by obstructive highways in the future.

Examples of successful reversals

Many cities across the country have already removed urban freeways and other infrastructure that has hindered the growth and vitality of their communities. These successes can serve as a model for a federal program.

In the 1970s, Portland became the first major city to remove an existing highway when it tore out Harbor Drive and replaced it with a public park that has served as an anchor for new development. Milwaukee tore down the Park East Freeway in the early 2000s, attracting over $880 million in private investment to the 24-acre corridor. In Greenville, South Carolina, the city replaced a four-lane highway bridge with a pedestrian bridge and public park, a project that revitalized its West End and spurred over $100 million in private investment in its first two years.

The pedestrian bridge in Greenville’s Falls Park on the Reedy that replaced a highway, spurring over $100 million in private investment in its first two years.

There are also examples of communities establishing land banks to bring economic value to low-income communities and communities of color and help underserved families stay in their homes. Launched in 2003, Denver’s Urban Land Conservancy preserves and develops permanently affordable real estate to ensure underserved communities are not displaced by rising property values. Through the conservancy and other partners, the Denver Transit-Oriented Development Fund is working to secure over 1,000 affordable housing units on transit corridors. In Minneapolis, the Twin Cities Community Land Bank has acquired at least 1,000 vacant or distressed properties since 2009, keeping these properties affordable and helping low-income families stay in their homes.

Positive impacts

The United States has an opportunity to replicate these success stories by providing cities with the proper resources and tools to tackle these projects. Through a $10 billion program, dozens of cities could plan and repurpose their disruptive highways and reclaim significant acreage for tax-paying, job-creating redevelopment.

This grant program would improve regional air quality and health outcomes in disadvantaged communities by reducing exposure to smog. It would reconnect impacted neighborhoods, create new open spaces and allow people to take shorter trips to reach daily necessities like the grocery store or community center. It would increase access to less polluting modes of travel, like walking and biking. It would reduce climate pollution in areas that research already indicates will suffer a greater burden from the impacts of climate change. Most importantly, it would be a step toward rectifying the mistakes of past federal policy and moving us forward in a brighter direction.

Endnotes

  1. Pyke, Alan, “Top infrastructure official explains how America used highways to destroy black neighborhoods.” Think Progress, 31 Mar. 2016, https://archive.thinkprogress.org/top-infrastructure-official-explains-how-america-used-highways-to-destroy-black-neighborhoods-96c1460d1962/.
  2. Kruse, Kevin M, “What does a traffic jam in Atlanta have to do with segregation? Quite a lot.” New York Times Magazine, 14 Aug. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/traffic-atlanta-segregation.html.
  3. Semuels, Alana, “The role of highways in American poverty.” The Atlantic, 18 Mar. 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/role-of-highways-in-american-poverty/474282/.
  4. De Moura, Maria Cecilia Pinto and David Reichmuth, “Inequitable exposure to air pollution from vehicles in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.” Union of Concerned Scientists, 21 Jun. 2019, https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/inequitable-exposure-air-pollution-vehicles.
  5. “Disparities in the impact of air pollution.” American Lung Association, 20 Apr. 2020, https://www.lung.org/clean-air/outdoors/who-is-at-risk/disparities.
  6. “Fast facts on transportation greenhouse gas emissions.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, accessed 4 Dec. 2020, https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions.
  7. Beyond Traffic 2045, U.S. Department of Transportation, 9 Jan. 2017, page 206, https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/BeyondTraffic_tagged_508_final.pdf.

What service cuts are transit agencies facing around the country?

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

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

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

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

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

A wave of service cuts on the horizon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Already operating well below normal service levels

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

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

Tell us about transit cuts in your community

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

Three things to know about the Senate’s FY21 appropriations for transportation

Last month, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development released a proposal for fiscal year 2021 that cuts funding for important transit and passenger rail grant programs. With only 10 days until the government runs out of funding, the clock is ticking for the House and Senate to reach an agreement on their two very different appropriations bills. 

An empty Amtrak station. Photo of Buffalo Exchange Street Station by Adam Moss on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

During this year of tumult, it came as no surprise that Congress failed to reach an agreement on fiscal year 2021 appropriations in September. With 10 days until the continuing resolution passed to keep the government open expires on December 11th, Congress needs to move quickly to reach an agreement. 

Problem: The Senate’s transportation appropriations and the House’s transportation appropriations are very different. 

Last week, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development released its dismal proposal for fiscal year 2021 appropriations. This bill provides significantly less funding than the House-passed FY21 appropriations, and it doesn’t include any supplemental emergency appropriations for COVID relief.

Here are the three most important things to know about the Senate’s transportation appropriations. 

1. No emergency relief for transit or passenger rail grant programs

COVID-19 has hit U.S. public transportation and passenger rail hard. Transit agencies are in desperate need of at least $32 billion in emergency operating relief to maintain base levels of service, and Amtrak has repeatedly requested at least $4.9 billion from Congress to avoid further cuts to jobs and service. But it’s not just operations that need a boost: transit and passenger grant programs, like the Capital Investment Grants program, need supplemental emergency funding too. There are $23 billion worth of projects in the CIG pipeline, demonstrating the demand for additional public transit across the country. 

But there’s no emergency funding for either transit or passenger rail grant programs in the Senate’s appropriations bill. The Senate has also failed to pass a separate relief bill (like the House’s HEROES Act), and are missing a chance to appropriate any emergency money—be it operating support or emergency funding for discretionary programs, as the House included in its appropriations bill—in this proposal. 

2. Capital Investment Grants program takes a beating

The Senate bill cuts funding for the Capital Investment Grants (CIG) program, the federal government’s primary discretionary program for new transit projects. The Senate proposes $1.889 billion, which is less than the House-proposed level of $7.175 billion—$5 billion of which is supplemental emergency funding. With COVID-19 shutdowns and the ensuing economic slowdown throwing off the financial calculus of these large infrastructure projects, this emergency funding will ensure that critical CIG projects can proceed without delay. 

3. Passenger rail funding slashed

The Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) program provides funding for capital projects to invest in rail infrastructure. This is the key program supporting new and expanded passenger rail service across the country. We have this program to thank for successful projects such as the upcoming return of passenger rail to the Gulf Coast. 

Yet the Senate bill undercuts the House’s proposal for this critical program, proposing $340 million where the House appropriated $500 million. In addition, the Senate bill requires that 25 percent of CRISI appropriations be reserved for rural areas. 

Robust and consistent appropriations are critical to supporting transit and rail projects across the country. As the House and Senate negotiate a final FY21 appropriations bill, we hope lawmakers remember how essential these programs are to our communities—especially as COVID-19 continues to demonstrate that essential workers, and therefore all of us, are reliant on public transit. We must invest in these systems to support our economy today, and recovery tomorrow.

Cities’ priorities must be the heart of any universal curb standard. These 5 principles pave the way.

Cities and towns face a massive hurdle to managing their curb space: the lack of a  uniform way to define the curb and its users. Without a universal curb standard, it’s difficult for local governments to coordinate with each other and private entities and assess the effectiveness of their curbside management policies. Participants in our Smart Cities Collaborative joined together to develop five principles that should inform any universal curbside language and standards.

Click to download the PDF

Demands on the curb have skyrocketed in the last decade, while the amount of curb space has largely remained the same. Due to increased vehicle congestion, commerce delivery, the increase in parklets and outdoor dining, and access to modes like shared bikes and scooters and app-based ride-hailing, the curb has become a scarce and sought-after resource. 

Curbs are no longer simply for parking. They’re key to the movement of goods and people, and now even our COVID-19 response. The pandemic has only crystallized the importance of the curb, as an exponential amount of curb space has been needed for safe recreation, retail, restaurants, and more. 

Yet curbs are massively underutilized by cities and towns. Although many local governments have created or are in the process of creating strategies to manage curb space, there is no uniform way that local governments define the curb and its users. This makes it difficult for local governments to assess the effectiveness of their curbside management policies—to truly utilize curb space for the public good—because there isn’t a uniform way to evaluate data or share lessons learned with other municipalities. 

That’s why participants in our Smart Cities Collaborative joined together to create five principles that should inform the development of any universal curbside language and set of standards. These five principles for a national standard will ensure that the public interest is embedded within the standard and language itself, giving cities and towns a shared definition of the curb and its users while empowering them to customize curbside management to best serve the unique needs of their residents. 

Here’s a quick summary of our five principles for a universal curbside language and standards (UCLS). You can read much more in-depth on these principles and the need for a UCLS created by the public sector in our new report, “Principles for Universal Curbside Language & Standards.” 

PRINCIPLE 1 | LOCAL PUBLIC AGENCIES SET THE POLICY

A successful UCLS will be one that is shaped by the public agencies who manage the curb. 

Curbs within the public right-of-way are funded and regulated entirely with public funding and should serve community needs. For that reason alone, local public agencies—who are in charge of the curb—are best suited to lead this effort. 

While input and data from private companies—especially freight operators—is important, creating a language and standards that caters primarily to the needs of any one stakeholder would be a disservice to all users, especially the most vulnerable.

PRINCIPLE 2 | EQUITABLE 

The design of a UCLS is an opportunity to assist local governments in their effort to shift and reallocate curb space from being a free resource that serves few (primarily through car parking) to a resource that serves everyone—especially those who deserve better and more affordable access to curbs. This includes people with disabilities, people using transit; those walking, biking, or rolling; low-income people; Black, Indigenous, and people of color; and those not connected to the digital network. 

Equity must be embedded within any UCLS so that local governments can prioritize their most vulnerable right-of-way users and disadvantaged community members. You can check out our recommendations for incorporating equity into a UCLS in our full report.

PRINCIPLE 3 | OPEN & PUBLICLY OWNED DATA

Any UCLS needs to be developed with an open data approach where public agencies own the data and data is collected and shared in a secure and transparent manner that protects personally identifiable information. Open data provides transparency and ensures data can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone. Public agencies—or non-profits or academic institutions—need to be the stewards of any and all curbside data. 

You can read the metrics we recommend a UCLS track in our full report. 

PRINCIPLE 4 | EASILY TRANSFERABLE

To be truly universal, the language and standards must be easily accessible, understandable, and transferable to communities of all sizes, land uses and street typologies, and densities. A scalable and customizable UCLS based on a jurisdiction’s resources, tools, and capabilities ensures mass buy-in, giving local governments the ability to share lessons learned from curbside management in the same language. 

PRINCIPLE 5 | CLEARLY COMMUNICATED

There was a considerable shift in how the curb has been used in the last decade, and in the last two years in particular due to rapid changes like the growth in e-commerce. This presents a unique opportunity for local governments, as the stewards of the curb, to rethink how to internally and externally communicate the value and importance of the curb and the benefit of a UCLS. 

Internal and external curb stakeholders must understand—through a UCLS—the changing nature and value of the curb, as well as the short and long-term benefits of more proactive curbside management.

Final thoughts: it’s critical that universal curbside language and standards are created by the public sector, for the public 

The curb is public space and a public asset, and as such it should be utilized to the greatest benefit of the public. It is the responsibility of local governments to prioritize who can use the limited amount of curb space, for what and when. Because of the many demands on the curb, without regulating and prioritizing access, our curbs cannot reflect or respond to the rapidly changing needs of the city and its users. And without applying an equity lens to prioritization of curbspace, certain users (such as people who do not own, cannot afford, or are unable to drive cars) will continue to be left behind as they do not benefit from “free” parking. 

That’s why it’s critical that the public sector informs the creation of any universal language and standards. We hope that these principles can help shape any and every UCLS to come. 

How the Biden administration can make immediate strides on climate and racial equity

The spread of COVID-19 has sent the United States plummeting into an unprecedented national crisis, but it has also illuminated the path forward. Transportation for America teamed up with our sister organizations at Smart Growth America to identify immediate executive actions and long-term policy changes that the incoming Biden administration can implement to eliminate structural inequities and address catastrophic global climate change. 

EDIT, December 2020: We updated the recommendations! Check out the full set of recommendations here and read our summary below.

Earlier this month, Transportation for America teamed up with our partners at Smart Growth America to send recommendations to the Biden transition team on executive actions and legislation. Read the full memo here, updated December 2020.

With years of federal advocacy and public service under our belts, all of us here can say this for certain: simply pumping more money into existing federal programs won’t help the United States recover from the COVID-19 crisis. In fact, taking that approach will just make our economy more unequal, lead to more pollution from transportation, and result in more expensive housing that still isn’t getting built where it’s most helpful. Money alone cannot rectify the structural inequities we are facing. 

To truly unlock our economic potential in a fiscally responsible way, tackle climate change and promote racial equity—the three goals of our recommendations—we need a new playbook. We must reform and better utilize the vast quantities of direct spending, tax credits, loan programs, formula funds, and financing that already exist. And only through a holistic approach that connects transportation, housing, and infrastructure policy can we provide Americans with freedom of transportation choice, access to affordable housing, and healthy, resilient communities.

Our recommendations to the transition team are best summed up with two simple messages. One, do not overlook how housing, land use, and transportation are interrelated in determining household costs, access to opportunity, wealth accumulation, and how much emissions we produce. And secondly, climate change and equity must be addressed together—the best strategies to improve the built environment to address one challenge also address the other.

Smart growth is the affordable, equitable, and sustainable path to recovery and prosperity. Now is the time for change enabling us to build back better, and we are glad for the opportunity to provide these recommendations to the incoming presidential administration. Read the full list of recommendations.

Here are some highlights from Transportation for America’s recommendations for immediate executive actions—most of which stem from our three principles for transportation policy.

  • Reduce emissions from transportation by re-establishing the greenhouse gas (GHG) performance measure for transportation that the Trump administration repealed, with annual state ratings.
  • Require federal agencies to issue guidance on identifying communities with infrastructure that creates barriers to mobility (such as highways that slice through a community), measuring the degree of harm to that community, and providing incentives and prioritizing resources to address those disparities by removing infrastructure barriers or creating new connectivity.
  • Require the Federal Highway Administration to update the Highway Capacity Manual to improve standards for pedestrians and cyclists which are based on accurate measures of safety and the perception of safety, including the level of traffic stress and crossing delays as opposed to volume and capacity.
  • Help transportation agencies measure access to jobs and essential services by directing research funds to create a national Geographic Information System (GIS)-based resource that allows transportation agencies to measure current levels of access to jobs and services by all modes of travel and assess the impact of planned projects.
  • The Department of Transportation should issue guidance clarifying the appropriate use of the common transportation design standard known as level of service (LOS), taking into account the impacts on induced demand, climate change, equity, and health outcomes.
  • Make a statement of support for the existing national network of state-supported and long distance passenger rail routes routes as essential connections for people in smaller and rural communities.

We’re taking TransportationCamp online! Join us on Saturday, January 16th

With public transit and passenger rail in fiscal crisis, cities and towns redesigning their streets to accommodate social distancing, and a new president preparing to take office, we need TransportationCamp DC more than ever. Join this annual unconference online on Saturday, January 16th to discuss the fight for better transportation in our new pandemic world. 

TransportationCamp DC is an important tradition for the transportation community. Every January, advocates, practitioners, business leaders, professionals, students, and anyone else who might call themselves a “transportation nerd” gather for this in-person unconference—where attendees plan and lead the sessions themselves—to take stock of where we’re going and how we got here. (Transportation pun intended.) 

This January, COVID-19 will make gathering in-person for this important (and fun) unconference impossible. Yet we still need to gather to take a holistic view of everything happening in transportation—and how we can fight to make our transportation system safe, affordable, equitable and sustainable in this new world. 

So we’re taking TransportationCamp DC 2021 online! Register today to join us on Saturday, January 16th. 

Register for TransportationCamp DC

We’re striving to keep virtual TransportationCamp very similar to the in-person event, but we’re making a few changes to accommodate (and take advantage of) our online digs. Here are the changes. 

More time to submit sessions 

At in-person TransportationCamp, almost all session proposals are submitted to the event planners the morning of Camp. To make it easier for our tech-fried brains, we’re opening up session submissions three days in advance of Camp. 

Shorter day to avoid Zoom fatigue 

In-person TransportationCamp DC has five, one-hour sessions slots throughout the day. This year, we’re only holding four. Camp will kick off at 10:00am ET with a half hour morning welcome, and will end at 4:30 pm ET. 

Slack workspace to promote discussion

Since all of the  informal introductions in the lunch line and valuable new relationships can’t be so easily made this year, we’re inviting all attendees to join a TransportationCamp DC Slack workspace three days in advance of Camp. During Camp, the workspace will serve as a discussion forum and a place to meet new people. The Slack workspace will expire six months after Camp, so Campers will have a lot of time to mix and mingle and find ways to stay in touch with people that you meet.

Answers to your questions about Driving Down Emissions

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

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

You can view the webinar recording here. 

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

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

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

Here are some resources with more information about measuring accessibility:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which transportation ballot initiatives passed last week?

Last week’s election saw significant support for transit. While some of the larger local transportation ballot initiatives failed, voters approved the overwhelming majority of transit funding measures—several by a large margin. Here’s a rundown on how transportation ballot initiatives fared from Austin, TX to Wheeling, WV, and every place in between, updating our earlier blog.

The Mountain Line bus service in Missoula, MT. Photo courtesy of Mountain Line.

It wasn’t just the next president of the United States or the balance of power in Congress on the ballot last week: voters across the country decided on the future of transportation in their hometowns. From forward-looking proposals for transit expansion and renewals of existing transportation funding, here’s what passed and what failed on this extraordinary, pandemic Election Day. In short, it was a pretty great day for public transit funding. 

(Before diving in, don’t miss our summary of how transportation ballot initiatives fared during the spring and summer primary elections. While some regions and states opted to delay or cancel ballot measures due to COVID uncertainties, a number of initiatives moved forward in the primaries, and the vast majority passed.) 

One win, two losses: three big transit measures 

PASSED (58%-42%): Voters in Austin, TX passed the first phase of Project Connect, a package of transit investments totalling $10 billion. This initial phase includes increasing property taxes to raise $3.85 billion and leverage federal funds for a total of $7.1 billion. As our colleague Rayla Bellis wrote a few weeks ago, the proposal includes new light rail lines, a tunnel for light rail in the downtown area, expanded bus routes, a transition to electric buses, and bus rapid transit service. It also includes $300 million for transit supportive investments, anti-displacement efforts and affordable housing along the proposed lines.

This win comes in the wake of Austin’s history of unsuccessful initiatives to fund light rail expansion. Project Connect was unanimously approved by the Austin City Council yet faced some opposition, both in response to the cost and relative permanence of new light rail lines compared to improved bus service. 

FAILED (43%-57%): Voters rejected Portland, OR’s Let’s Get Moving measure (Measure 26-218), which would have levied a 0.75 percent payroll tax on businesses with more than 25 employees. The business community largely withdrew support for the measure, with a number of larger businesses contributing to a successful opposition campaign.

With the $4.2 billion generated by the payroll tax and an additional $2.84 billion in matching funds, the measure would have funded dozens of light rail and bus transit expansion and safety projects for people walking and biking along identified priority corridors. It also included funds for anti-displacement work in predominantly Black and brown communities along the corridors. 

FAILED: In suburban Gwinnett County, GA in the Atlanta region, residents rejected a proposed 30-year, 1 percent sales tax for transit expansion in the county that would raise a total of $12 billion for bus and rail expansion. This rejection—failing by only a margin of approximately one thousand “no” votes, although a recount might be possible—comes less than two years after a failed measure to fund transit expansion for both Gwinnett County bus and MARTA rail that would also have integrated Gwinnett County transit into the MARTA regional transit system—a change that county voters have rejected several times over the past few decades. 

Other local and state initiatives of interest 

PASSED (82%-18%): Voters in Seattle, WA decided to renew funding for the Seattle Transportation Benefit District via a six-year 0.1 percent sales tax and a car-tab fee that expires this year. The plan will reduce total service below existing levels, but it will focus the remaining service more heavily in communities of color. The measure would generate $20 to $30 million annually over six years. 

PASSED (61%-39%): Voters in three small municipalities in Gratiot County, MI passed a 1-mill levy (one dollar per $1,000 dollars of assessed value) to join their region’s Alma Transit system. The St. Louis and Ithaca city councils and the Pine River Township board all voted unanimously over the summer to put the measure on the ballot.

PASSED (59%-41%): Missoula, MT voters approved a property tax increase to expand Mountain Line bus service frequency, help fund the area’s zero-fare program, and support conversion to an electric bus fleet. 

FAILED (45%-55%): Newton County, GA’s proposal for a 1 percent Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax for transportation was rejected by voters. Revenues would have been shared among the cities located within the county using a formula, and each city would have decided how to allocate its funds. 

PASSED (70%-30%): Voters in the Bay Area, CA passed a 1/8 cent sales tax to provide dedicated funding for the region’s commuter rail, Caltrain. The tax is expected to generate an estimated $108 million annually, which will help provide a lifeline for the rail line as it faces the possibility of a shutdown during the pandemic due to low ridership. 

WITHDRAWN: Residents of North Carolina were set to vote on a $1.15 billion bond measure to fund the construction and renovation of highways, roads, bridges, and related road infrastructure. The measure also included $1.95 billion in education bonds, but it was withdrawn.ALL PASSED: Voters passed measures to renew existing transportation and transit funding in the State of Arkansas (passed), Bellingham, WA (passed), Monroe, MI (passed) and Wheeling and Bethlehem, WV (passed). Similar renewals largely also passed in 2020 despite COVID uncertainties, as we covered in a blog earlier this fall.

It’s time to fund public transportation and highways equally

With a new Congress preparing to take office—bringing hopes of an infrastructure stimulus with them—it’s time to end an outdated agreement keeping American transportation stuck in the ‘80s: restricting public transit to only 20 percent of federal transportation funding while highways get 80 percent. Sign our petition today to tell Congress to fund them equally. 

Can you imagine what we could accomplish if transit was funded as much as highways? Photo of Metroway (bus rapid transit in Northern Virginia) by BeyondDC on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

It’s critical that Congress funds public transit and highways in the next transportation authorization, ending an outdated rule that makes it near impossible for states and local governments to deliver the high-quality public transportation Americans want. Sign our petition to urge Congress to fund transit as much as highways.

Since 1982, thanks to an agreement signed by President Reagan, spending from the federal Highway Trust Fund has followed this formula: 80 percent for highways, 20 percent for public transportation (though in reality, transit gets much less). The logic behind this was that since the Trust Fund’s funding came from the gas tax drivers pay at the pump, most of the funding should be spent on highways. 

As our colleague Emily Mangan wrote this summer, this logic no longer applies because the Highway Trust Fund hasn’t been a trust fund by any definition of that term in a long time. It hasn’t been exclusively funded by the gas tax since 2008, when it ran out of money because the gas tax was no longer sufficient to cover expenditures. To stay afloat, the trust fund received huge infusions of general taxpayer dollars totaling over $144 billion—meaning that every taxpayer is funding  transportation, whether they bought a single gallon of gas or drove a mile this year or not. 

Yet we still applied this arbitrary funding split to the influx of new transportation funds in the Recovery Act of 2009, which was sourced entirely from deficit spending from the general fund and not a single dime from gas tax user fees. Yet roughly 75 percent of the Recovery Act dollars went to roads.

The consequences of not funding transit and highways equally

Even though highways receive the overwhelming majority of federal transportation funding, they fail to solve our transportation problems on their own. In fact, this huge amount of  highway funding makes our problems—congestion, carbon emissions, dangerous roadways, reduced access to jobs and services—worse. Because there’s no rule requiring that states spend highway funding on maintenance before expansion, or any performance measures requiring that states improve people’s access to jobs and services by all modes, our highway investments wind up just increasing congestion and carbon emissions while disconnecting Americans from the daily services they need.

Guaranteeing that highways receive 80 percent of federal funding also reduces states’ and local governments’ freedom to choose for themselves what they want to build and how they want to solve their own transportation challenges. According to recent polling, voters overwhelmingly believe that their communities and the country as a whole would benefit from increased transit investment. But Congress has hampered states’ and communities’ ability to deliver this for decades by putting their thumb on the scale and incentivizing highway expansion with huge amounts of funding, making it incredibly difficult to choose a transit solution to a transportation problem.

This 80/20 split also leaves the transit infrastructure that already exists out to rot. According to the American Public Transportation Association, addressing the backlog of deferred transit maintenance backlog would cost $90 billion—or just two years of highway funding.

It doesn’t have to be this way. If Congress were to end the arbitrary 80/20 split and fund transit and highways equally, we could fix our aging public transportation infrastructure and provide the frequent and reliable service necessary to connect people to jobs and services. With more transit funding, states would be incentivized to make roadway investments that accommodate transit, not compete with it, such as investments in complete streets and land-use changes that make it safe and easy to bike and walk and therefore to access transit. 

Meaningful and consistent investment in public transportation is critical to reducing our carbon emissions, improving public health, dismantling barriers to opportunity—especially those faced by people of color—and supporting our economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. It’s time for Congress to free states and local governments from this arbitrary 80-20 split in transportation funding and let them invest in transit.

Congressional leadership and junior members offer hope

There are numerous elected officials in Congress who understand the power of transportation policy to strengthen our economy, save lives, dismantle barriers to opportunity, and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. From the innovative Future of Transportation Caucus, to leaders like Rep. Peter DeFazio, and to bipartisan members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the incoming Congress has a real shot at reforming transportation policy to work for all Americans—regardless of if they drive or not. 

The House of Representatives has a great jumping off point with the INVEST Act, a bill they passed this summer, that starts to finally connect transportation funding to the outcomes Americans want. Instead of pumping more general funds into the existing program, the bill employs performance measures and requirements to align funds with our goals: reducing our enormous backlog of roadway maintenance, decreasing congestion and carbon emissions, and making our streets safe for all road users. We strongly urge the incoming House of Representatives to pick up this bill again—and fund transit and highways equally this time. 

To kick off that effort, next month Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (a founding co-chair of the Future of Transportation Caucus) will introduce a resolution to the House of Representatives urging members to support funding transit and highways equally in the next surface transportation authorization. A resolution like this would have been unthinkable just three years ago—a real testament to the changing attitudes towards transportation policy. 

Tell Congress: it’s time to end the 80-20 split

With federal transportation policy up for reauthorization this year and hopes for an infrastructure stimulus hitting the floors of Congress running high, now is the time for our elected leaders to solve our transportation problems and fund transit and highways equally. Sign our petition to urge Congress to end the 80/20 split and fund transit and highways equally.

SIGN THE PETITION

Driving Down Emissions in Minnesota

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

State safety targets show need for Congress to further prioritize safety

People on bikes waiting at a stop sign to cross a congested intersection

The following blog post is co-authored and published in partnership with the League of American Bicyclists, a national non-profit advocating to make cycling accessible and safe for all Americans, and the National Complete Streets Coalition, a non-profit, non-partisan alliance of public interest organizations and transportation professionals committed to the development and implementation of Complete Streets policies and practices and a program of Smart Growth America.

For decades, state departments of transportation have treated pedestrian and cyclists fatalities like weather events: something that increases simply as people drive more, putting these deaths outside of the control of DOTs. But with COVID-19 proving this to be false, it’s past time for state DOTs to implement performance measures to reduce the number of people killed while walking or biking. Here’s our comparison of state safety targets.

People on bikes waiting at a stop sign to cross a congested intersection

(Update: 2/2021 – This post originally stated that the number of states setting targets to improve fatality/injury numbers was increasing each year, which is not the case. 18 states set negative targets in 2018, and 20 states did so in 2020. That language has been changed. – Ed.)

Transportation policy can take a long time. In 2012, Congress passed the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) which required the US Department of Transportation (US DOT) to establish a safety performance measure to assess federal investments in transportation. In 2016, the Obama administration promulgated a final rule. And now, in 2020 the US DOT has assessed state safety performance measures.

Most transportation advocates believe that performance measures are critically important to the future of federal transportation policy. Performance measures require data collection by states, regular reporting assessed by US DOT, and result in financial impacts for states that do not meet performance targets. While this concept is pretty simple, it is a profound shift in transportation policy towards accountability. It is also more important than ever in 2020, as the rate of roadway fatalities jumped 20 percent, even though driving was down 17 percent due to Coronavirus-related travel restrictions

Non-motorized safety performance measures were opposed by 23 state DOTs and the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials. They exist thanks to the work of many advocates, including nearly 10,000 individuals who contacted the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) during the rulemaking process. 

The good news: In every year that states have set safety targets, most states (at least 30) have set targets that would reduce non-motorized fatalities and serious injuries. If state DOTs are serious about reaching zero traffic deaths, this must continue and they must do more to make these targets come true.

The bad news: Many states are setting safety targets that anticipate more people dying or being seriously injured while biking and walking. In 2020, 20 states set safety targets of more deaths and serious injuries—more than the 18 that did so back in 2018. For those 2018 targets, six of those 18 states exceeded even their grim targets of increased fatalities and serious injuries. At least 10 states have targets that are clearly trending up, sometimes dramatically, including in states with very poor safety records for people biking and walking. This implies that those states do not have a serious theory for reducing non-motorized fatalities and serious injuries or are not serious about reaching zero traffic deaths. And these bad targets are in the context of the US making much less progress on traffic deaths than peer countries.

Pennsylvania’s safety targets versus average fatalities and serious injuries

For example, Pennsylvania has never set a non-motorized safety target that was lower than the 5-year baseline average for fatalities and serious injuries. The FHWA assessment was that Pennsylvania has not met its target or made significant progress. The state’s targets have trended up significantly, implying that the state has no serious plans to reverse its poor performance. 

A little more than a third of the states that FHWA found met their safety performance target across all modes had higher levels of non-motorized fatalities and serious injuries than their 5-year baseline average. This means that despite data showing that people who bike and walk are less safe, these states will not be incentivized to spend Highway Safety Improvement Program funds on safety improvements for people who bike and walk.

Safety performance target assessments

The FHWA cautions against drawing conclusions based upon its safety performance target assessments. Each state sets its target in a unique way and missing a target may mean different things in different states. Sometimes these differences are notable, like Florida setting a target of zero, although the state has no chance of meeting that target (the state of Florida also notes by their own target that they expected the rate of driving to have a greater impact on safety than anything else).

We believe that there are still lessons to be learned from comparing state targets assessments and here are a few.

1. The non-motorized safety performance target as the worst performing safety target.

More states failed to meet their target and more states failed to improve relative to their baseline than any other type of target. 

2. Only four states—Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Vermont—set a goal to decrease non-motorized fatalities and serious injuries and achieved it.

This low rate of meeting reduction targets is unlikely to be due to overly ambitious targets (like Florida’s target of zero) because more than 75 percent of the states that missed their target to reduce non-motorized fatalities and serious injuries performed worse than their 5-year baseline average.

3. Only 32 percent of states performed better than their five-year baseline average.

This is understandable given that pedestrian and bicyclist deaths hit 30-year highs in the period assessed, but highlights the widespread nature of pedestrian and bicyclist safety problems.

4. Four of the five states with the most bicyclist and pedestrian fatalities—California, Florida, New York, Texas, and Georgia—performed worse than their five-year baseline average.

New York was the only state to improve upon its average. Florida and Georgia were the only states in this group that set targets to improve.

States that fail to meet their own targets (some of which are targets to have less safe roadways) suffer very minor consequences—all states have to do is spend safety funds on safety projects and submit an implementation plan. But for the first time, thanks to Congress requiring performance measures, we can see how they are performing and hold them to account.  

For decades, many departments of transportation (like Florida stated in their safety report) and transportation experts have claimed that increases in driving dictate increases in traffic fatalities and serious injuries. This claim allows transportation agencies to treat traffic fatalities somewhat like weather events — outside of their control. However during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen that this claim cannot be true. The National Safety Council found in the first six months of 2020, the rate of roadway fatalities jumped 20 percent, even though driving was down 17 percent. Transportation agencies must recognize their responsibility to make safe systems rather than claiming they are powerless to make roads safer. 

The United States has reached a point where the transportation sector is the go-to example of a sector where deaths are tolerated. Congress, and decision makers at all levels of government, need to take decisive action to reorient the transportation sector to prioritize safety. The House INVEST Act took important steps to prioritize safety and Congress should build upon those steps in the future.

Playing politics with safety: “Anarchist” transit agencies caught in the crossfire

press release

In blocking New York City, Portland, and Seattle from receiving Federal Transit Administration research grants, the Trump Administration is using arbitrary and politically-motivated pretext to deny cities and transit agencies the funding they need to make transit safer amidst the ongoing pandemic.

Transportation for America joined the National Association of City Transportation Officials, TransitCenter, NRDC and and Alliance for a Just Society in a statement condemning the Trump administration’s decision. 

 

NACTO: Alex Engel | alex@nacto.org
TransitCenter: David Bragdon | dbragdon@transitcenter.org
Transportation for America: Jenna Fortunati | jenna.fortunati@t4america.org
NRDC: Mark Drajem | MDrajem@nrdc.org

As a coalition of cities, transit agencies, and transportation advocates, we oppose the Trump administration’s decision to withhold federal funds from cities the Attorney General labeled as “Permitting Anarchy, Violence, and Destruction.” Following instructions from the White House, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) disqualified transit agencies in New York City, Seattle, and Portland from participating in a new grant program to research methods to slow the spread of coronavirus on buses and trains. This move puts transit operators’ and riders’ safety at risk and sets a dangerous precedent that could undermine future economic recovery efforts.

Denying transit agencies funding obstructs their ability to develop best practices to make transit safer for millions of riders and workers, and the people with whom they interact. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York, TriMet in Portland, and King County Metro and Sound Transit in Seattle together make up nearly half of national transit ridership and have already made major contributions to our understanding of how to keep riders and operators safe from the virus. From testing vehicle filtration and UV light sanitation systems to instituting mask outreach and mandates, the ability of these larger, urban transit systems to evaluate new interventions is especially instructive for operators serving smaller, rural communities where Covid-19 outbreaks are currently most acute and resources are limited.

The Trump administration’s attempt to condition FTA grants on political criteria unrelated to need or merit sets a disturbing precedent. If applied to other forms of federal funding, this “guidance” has the potential to thwart cities’ long-term economic recovery efforts. Cities and transit agencies need a strong federal partner to maintain and restore service, invigorate local economies, and create new jobs.

Withholding federal funding from cities in retaliation for political disagreements is not only legally dubious but vindictive and undemocratic in its intent. Our organizations, representing cities, transit agencies, and transportation experts and advocates, stand in firm opposition to the Justice Department’s designation of New York, Portland, and Seattle as “anarchist jurisdictions” and against the arbitrary and capricious decision to deny some of the world’s most-used transit systems acutely-needed funding solely to serve a political agenda.

“Cities and transit agencies serve the public regardless of political affiliation or party. Withholding funds from jurisdictions in an attempt for political gain puts cities, transit agencies and our democracy at risk,” said Corinne Kisner, Executive Director of NACTO. “This decision endangers millions of transit riders and operators across our nation, and blocks those most equipped from studying new ways to make transit even safer.”

“Secretary Elaine Chao’s willingness to expose innocent transit riders and essential transit workers to greater risk of COVID just because of Donald Trump’s unrelated personal vendetta against certain local elected officials is both reckless and un-American. No American, in any city or state, should be sacrificed to a pandemic because of a President’s petty whims,” said David Bragdon of TransitCenter, an organization dedicated to improving public transportation.

“President Trump is putting ideology ahead of essential needs in the middle of a deadly pandemic,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America. “There simply is no excuse for leaving essential workers without a way to work and, therefore, all of us without essential services. But that is what the Trump Administration is doing to New York, Portland, and Seattle by taking away funding intended for their transit agencies.”

“This order undercuts essential workers and families who are trying to safely go back to work and school. Investments in fully-funded safe transit are critical to rebuilding an equitable and sustainable economy,” said LeeAnn Hall of Alliance for a Just Society, a national network of 15 racial, social and economic justice organizations.

“By denying funds to cities that need them, the Federal Transit Administration is putting the lives of Americans and the safety of our public transit systems at risk,” said Ann Shikany of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We need new research into how to keep our buses and trains safe during this pandemic; it’s unconscionable that this administration would play political games with something that important.”

 

About the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO)
NACTO is an association of 86 major North American cities and transit agencies formed to exchange transportation ideas, insights, and practices and cooperatively approach national transportation issues. The organization’s mission is to build cities as places for people, with safe, sustainable, accessible, and equitable transportation choices that support a strong economy and vibrant quality of life. To learn more, visit nacto.org or follow us on Twitter @NACTO.

About TransitCenter
TransitCenter works to improve public transportation in ways that make cities more just, sustainable and prosperous, with applied research, events and publications.

About Transportation for America
Transportation for America is an advocacy organization made up of local, regional and state leaders who envision a transportation system that safely, affordably and conveniently connects people of all means and ability to jobs, services, and opportunity through multiple modes of travel. That work is conducted through direct technical assistance, analysis of transportation system performance, and policy development and advocacy. Learn more by visiting t4america.org or following us on Twitter @T4America.

About the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
NRDC is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world’s natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Bozeman, MT, and Beijing. Visit us at NRDC.org and follow us on Twitter @NRDC.​

We’ll never address climate change without making it possible for people to drive less

With transportation accounting for the largest share of carbon emissions in the U.S., we’ll never achieve ambitious climate targets or create more livable and equitable communities if we don’t find ways to allow people to get around outside of a car—or provide more housing in places where that’s already an option. Our new report shows how we can reach those targets while building a more just and equitable society. 

Join us on October 28th for a short online discussion about what’s in Driving Down Emissions. We’ll be walking through the report briefly and sharing some stories about how one state has had some success—and the limitations of electric vehicles. Register here.

It seems like climate-focused policymakers have a single-minded obsession with the silver bullet solution of everyone in America buying a brand new electric car, while ignoring an underlying system that requires everyone to drive further every year, kills people walking in record numbers, and creates communities that cuts people off from jobs and opportunities. Yet the simple truth is that we’ll never achieve our ambitious climate targets or create more livable and equitable communities if we don’t find ways to allow people to get around outside of a car. 

We need a different set of solutions to pair with one day being able to convert our current gas-powered vehicle fleet to electricity.  Driving Down Emissions, a new report from Transportation for America and Smart Growth America, explores how our land-use and transportation decisions are inextricably connected, and unpacks five strategies that can make a significant dent in the growth of emissions while building a more just and equitable society:

  • Getting onerous government regulations out of the way of providing more homes where people naturally drive less;
  • Making safety the top priority for street design to encourage walking, biking, and shorter driving trips;
  • Instituting GHG reduction and less driving as goals of the transportation system;
  • Investing heavily in other options for getting around, and;
  • Prioritizing access to destinations. 

Reducing transportation emissions and reducing the distance we drive is both needed and possible. The vast majority of Americans are clamoring to spend fewer hours behind the wheel, not more. Only a cynic would declare that Americans want to drive more and more each year to accomplish all they need to do each day. Polling and consumer preference research has consistently shown that millions would prefer to live in walkable, connected places where trips are short and there’s a menu of options for getting around.

Yet that demand is going unmet, and some of the biggest obstacles to meeting it are onerous government regulations and policies (at all levels) that make it nearly impossible to build more housing in places that fit this bill, or to retrofit streets to make more areas safe to walk or bike in. These factors combine to make existing housing in walkable places unaffordable and unattainable.

Let that sink in: millions of Americans would love to live in places that guarantee shorter trips, fewer trips, more ways to get around, and less emissions—whether climate change is their motivating factor or not. But millions can’t find a place they can afford because of zoning requirements that make it either incredibly difficult or downright illegal to meet this demand, and because transportation designs and objectives that make it dangerous to try to get around elsewhere without a car. 

If lower-income Americans can’t afford a car then they have no choice but to limit the possibilities for their lives to what can be reached on dangerous streets by foot or bike, or via infrequent buses or trains on underfunded transit systems that fail to connect them to opportunity, even if the emissions are low. Finding ways to put more housing in places where people can drive less—and making those homes attainable and affordable—will be a key aspect of transitioning to a low-carbon economy without placing a new burden on lower-income Americans. 

This report shows that reducing emissions from transportation is entirely doable—which is a good thing, because there are other areas where making significant reductions will be far more difficult. While we don’t want to repeat the economic conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the massive drops in traffic and emissions during the shutdown showed us the potential benefits of lowering driving rates, even if just a modest amount. And while we have no idea how to completely electrify our fleet of vehicles or how long that transition will even take, we can absolutely lower emissions in a short timeframe by meeting the demand for more housing in smart locations—helping millions of Americans who want to live in places where they can emit less and drive less find ways to do so. 

The urgency of our climate crisis requires it.

Download Driving Down Emissions

If we want equitable smart cities, we need support from philanthropy

A close-up of the handlebars of a Lime electric scooter. The scooter has a small computer screen that reads "Scan to Ride". To the right of the screen is a QR code.

Everyone agrees that smart cities—places that deploy technology to deliver government services and improve quality of life—are the future. City leaders and staff are inundated with these new mobility products but have limited capacity to ensure that they are deployed in ways that lead to equitable and sustainable outcomes. Our director Beth Osborne explains why cities, states, and non-profit actors need philanthropic support to pursue policy research and projects that make equitable, sustainable smart cities a reality. 

Close-up of the handlebars of a Lime e-scooter, with “Scan to Ride” written on the scooter’s small computer screen.

Technology holds great promise to help cities monitor and allocate limited public space in ways that ensure safe, equitable, affordable, and sustainable access to jobs and services for everybody, no matter their financial means or physical ability. That’s where we should be heading as a country.  

We hear about the endless possibilities of new mobility technology—like flexible curb management tools and smartphone access to shared scooters, bikes, and cars—in the news and at transportation conferences. However, we know that technology can be deployed in ways that allocate these benefits only to those who can pay, or to the wealthiest neighborhoods, or in ways that benefit the technology provider more than the public. Historically, this has been the case. (Think: automobiles, broadband, and more.) 

To date, the power has been in the hands of those who develop and sell technology. Most of these companies are trying to produce good results for cities and people. But to survive, they have to pay attention to their bottom line. Plus, businesses can only really support cities that have the capacity to explain what kind of technology they need, and are then able to effectively manage that product once deployed and ensure that it supports broad societal benefits, like equity and sustainability. 

That capacity requires funding. Philanthropies are traditionally a powerful force for this support, ensuring that modernization and innovation are used to ways that connect to broad social goals. Philanthropy is already doing this in so many areas, from electric vehicle deployment, transit advocacy, housing affordability, criminal justice reform and more. However, they have been largely absent as cities and non-profits pursue policy research and innovations to make smart cities a reality. 

We learned this the hard way. For the past four years, Transportation for America has hosted the Smart Cities Collaborative, a year-long learning cohort where city transportation officials learn from each others’ efforts to use new mobility technologies in order to improve their transportation networks. The Collaborative has been a success: we’ve brought together  cities from across the country to discuss approaches to new mobility, curbside management, and city innovation, and have launched several useful resources like the Shared Micromobility Playbook.  

However, funding the Collaborative has been difficult. We rely on a combination of fees paid by cash-strapped cities, sponsorship agreements from new mobility and technology companies, and our advocacy peers. While we are so appreciative of the support we received from city participants and our private sector partners, there was a limit to what we could provide Collaborative members with this funding. 

It’s simple: there will never exist a world in which a 1:1 swap between philanthropic dollars and private sector dollars works. Private sector companies have their own priorities that rarely, if ever, line up with city government’s priorities. This is of no fault of the private sector companies. But it’s exactly why philanthropies need to provide funding for smart cities projects and research: philanthropic funding that doesn’t need to boost a company’s profit margins. 

Our Smart Cities Collaborative, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s short-lived Smart City Challenge (the seed that inspired our Collaborative), and similar non-business projects are where cities, states, the federal government, advocates, and philanthropists need to focus their efforts. Philanthropy will be essential for cities to have the capacity to deploy these technologies in ways that promote equity and sustainability. Without them, the future will inevitably be shaped by shorter term private sector interests and as yet unknown long term outcomes of these interests.

Transportation ballot initiatives to watch this November

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three big transit measures to watch 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other local and state initiatives of interest 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s next

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

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

Transportation for America’s statement on surface transportation policy extension

press release

Late last week, Congress and the President extended federal surface transportation policy for one year after failing to reform and reauthorize the program this year before its expiration on September 30. Transportation for America released the following statement: 


“With this extension, we now have another year to enact real reform that will save lives, prioritize maintenance, and improve access and connectivity,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America. “Will Congress use this time to double down on the status quo and simply have a debate about money, or will they take advantage of this generational opportunity to truly reform the program? Congress must not waste this valuable time. A more modern transportation program is essential to an equitable economic recovery and a cleaner transportation system that no longer is the leading sector in greenhouse gas emissions. Congress must find a way to meaningfully address these issues and others by reforming our country’s transportation policy.”

New analysis shows the impact of transit service cuts—and it’s devastating

With efforts to pass federal emergency relief stalling, transit agencies across the country are warning of drastic cuts to service.TransitCenter and the Center for Neighborhood Technology teamed up to analyze the devastating impact of these cuts, reaffirming the need for Congress to pass at least $32 billion in emergency relief for transit immediately. 

Public transportation is an absolutely critical part of millions of Americans’ lives, providing needed connections to jobs, schools, grocery stores, healthcare facilities and more. And without at least $32 billion in emergency funding for public transportation to survive the COVID-19 crisis, this vital link will crumble, leaving millions stranded. 

That’s what TransitCenter and the Center for Neighborhood Technology found in their new joint report, Stranded by Service Cuts. The researchers honed in on 10 regions across the country and modeled the human impact of 50 percent cuts to peak transit service and 30 percent cuts to off-peak service. The result is a disheartening preview of the pain facing millions of Americans and the national economy.

Across the 10 regions, “more than 3 million households and 1.4 million jobs would lose access to frequent transit,” according to the report. “Second- and third-shift workers would lose an affordable way to commute, and households without vehicles would have an even harder time meeting everyday needs.” 

The burden of these transit cuts would fall overwhelmingly on people of color. In Atlanta, this is especially pronounced: “More than half of people losing access to frequent full-day transit would be Black residents, and more than two-thirds of those losing access would be non-white or Hispanic,” according to the report. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. Congress could do its job and save public transportation—a public good that so many Americans count on. Send a message to your member of Congress today, urging them to fight for at least $32 billion in emergency relief for transit in the next COVID-19 relief package.

How have transportation ballot initiatives fared during the pandemic?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voters overwhelmingly approved renewals of existing transportation funding 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking ahead

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

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

Video: Rural transit agencies warn of devastating service cuts

It’s not just big city transit agencies that are suffering debilitating financial losses due to COVID-19: the pandemic is affecting rural and mid-sized transit agencies to the point where they might have to close their doors—permanently. Agency directors in Oklahoma and Illinois shared about the impacts.

Americans rely on public transportation all over the country—not just in big cities like New York or Chicago. Yet in our own analysis, we found that more than one million households in predominantly rural counties do not have access to a car. That doesn’t include households with one car shared between multiple working adults. 

Without transit, these rural households will be stranded. And by failing to include transit in COVID-19 relief packages (aside from yesterday’s House package that included $32 billion for transit, which we hope remains in the bill and is passed by the Senate), Congress is apparently okay with that. 

In two new videos released by Transportation for America, rural and mid-sized transit agencies warn of permanently cutting transit service as a result of financial strains from COVID-19. Directors of Little Dixie Transit in southeastern Oklahoma and the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (MTD) in Illinois spoke of how COVID-19 is impacting their riders, employees, and ability to provide robust transit service now and in the future. If Congress doesn’t provide public transportation with at least $32 billion in emergency relief,  both agencies will be forced to radically cut service—or even “shut our doors,” as Little Dixie Transit director Jeannie McMillin warned.

Check out short video highlights of the interviews below, and watch the full interview with Champaign-Urbana MTD’s director here.

Tell Congress to pass at least $32 billion in emergency relief for transit in the next COVID-19 relief package. House Democrats have tentatively included $32 billion for transit in their latest relief package, but it still has to pass the House—and then the Senate.

Send a message to your members of Congress

Congress, transit needs at least $32 billion. Now.

Public transportation is in an unprecedented crisis, with the double whammy of falling ridership and a contracting economy crushing transit agencies’ budgets. Massive cuts to transit service are imminent if agencies don’t receive the emergency funding they need to survive. There will be no economic recovery if transit evaporates. Congress needs to #SaveTransit. 

Join us on Twitter all-day tomorrow (Thursday, September 17) for a #SaveTransit Tweet Storm. Tweet at your member of Congress to #SaveTransit using our social media toolkit, and send an email to your members using our action page.

Public transit is essential to millions of people across the country who rely on it everyday to reach doctor’s appointments, jobs, grocery stores, and other vital services. It’s an elevator of economic mobility, providing access to the economy to those who cannot afford to or can’t drive—including many who lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 crisis. 

Without transit, millions of Americans will be unable to get to work or find new jobs, potentially trapping them in economic stagnation. Without transit, businesses may not be able to reopen, or have customers to serve. Without transit, our pandemic response—and our hope for a strong economic recovery from this pandemic—vanishes. 

Yet Congress has passed zero emergency dollars for transit since the first COVID-19 relief package in March. And that money has already run out for many agencies, due to necessary and expensive measures meant to keep employees and riders safe—at the same time they’re losing funding from decreased fares and local sales taxes. 

Congress has hardly even proposed emergency funding for transit. The Senate’s latest COVID-19 relief proposal included zero dollars for transit, and the relief plan passed by the House of Representatives includes only half of what transit needs to survive. 

This is unacceptable. Public transit agencies are calling on Congress to provide agencies with at least $32 billion in emergency relief. This critical funding would allow agencies to restore and safely operate the transit service that so many Americans need. 

We need you to take action to #SaveTransit. Please, tweet at your member of Congress to #SaveTransit using our social media toolkit, and send an email to your members using our action page.

Want to learn more about the transit crisis? Check out some of our blog posts: