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How Can a State Department of Transportation Do Right by the Locals?

A key theme in a recent Washington State DOT conference was a recognition that the state DOT needs to do more to engage with local constituents and agencies and meet local needs, particularly in cities. Those cities are the engines of economic growth, and where the default approach of the past half-century — road widening to speed driving at the expense of other goals — did not, does not, and will not work.

A sizable crowd at the WSDOT Innovations & Partnerships in Transportation summit

I attended the conference on September 22, entitled Innovations & Partnerships in Transportation, which strived to train WSDOT staff and local agencies in Washington State on partnership and innovation.

With Secretary of Transportation Lynn Peterson at the helm since early 2013, WSDOT is one state DOT that is working hard to be more innovative and responsive to evolving transportation needs. T4A member Transportation Choices Coalition worked with T4A and Smart Growth America to organize a training for WSDOT leadership staff in Olympia in November, 2014 on performance-based planning. In some ways, the 2014 training helped seed interest in this most recent symposium of WSDOT and local agency staff from across the state.

Roger Millar, recently departed from SGA, is starting work as Deputy Secretary at WSDOT in October.

Many of the same speakers we brought in 2014 came back to discuss many of the same issues in this bigger forum. Jeffrey Tumlin of Nelson Nygard returned to speak about new approaches to practical design. SGA’s Roger Millar, also featured prominently in the 2014 workshop, was incidentally just hired as WSDOT’s Deputy Secretary starting in October.

State DOTs typically concern themselves with longer distance or inter-city travel, and not necessarily with the local needs that drive local economies, but this conference pointed to a different direction for WSDOT. Multiple speakers discussed the changes leading the agency to a more multimodal approach to transportation that does a better job of meeting the needs of cities and their residents. Households are shrinking, Millennials especially are driving less, buying fewer cars and getting their drivers licenses later if at all. More people are moving to downtowns and walkable neighborhoods, and companies are moving to these places to attract and retain talent.

The economy is shifting from an emphasis on ownership to an emphasis on sharing, experiences, and more efficient use of resources.

To illustrate the pace of change we could expect to see because of new mobility options like Lyft, Uber, bike share and autonomous cars, speaker Gabe Klein, a former director of both Chicago’s and D.C.’s DOT, asked the audience how many of them owned a smart phone 10 years ago. No one raised their hands — smartphones weren’t even available just ten short years ago, but today nearly every participant owned one. “That’s how fast change can take place.”

Several speakers, Jeffrey Tumlin in particular, talked openly about the problem of induced demand — the phenomenon where increased roadway capacity induces more driving resulting in a failure to solve congestion problems. This topic is not one typically broached at state DOT functions.

Can a state DOT re-orient toward the new realities of multi-modalism, urban economic development, and unknowns like autonomous vehicles? WSDOT, with Lynn Peterson at the helm, is one of the state DOTs that has a shot. In closing the conference, Lynn called on the several hundred of her staff in attendance to work through these issues in partnership with local agencies and constituencies.

The intersection of arts, culture and infrastructure: why transportation agencies should embrace “creative placemaking”

A Members-Only Preview of T4America’s Forthcoming Arts & Culture Resource

When arts and culture collaborations include a deliberate emphasis on community values and assets, they fall under an umbrella known as creative placemaking. In the transportation context, creative placemaking is an approach that deeply engages arts, culture, and creativity — especially from underrepresented communities— in planning and design so that the resulting infrastructure project better reflects and celebrates local culture, heritage and values.

T4America Midwest Organizer Erin Evenhouse

This post was written by Erin Evenhouse, T4America Midwest Outreach Manager, and author of our forthcoming guide to creative placemaking

This fall, Transportation for America will be releasing a new resource exploring examples, unpacking successful strategies, and establishing a suite of approaches for working with members of your community to put arts and culture to work for you; to help your region create the next great story of a transportation project with payoffs for your local economy, social cohesion, and culture.

We’re still in the throes of developing this resource but we want our members to know about it first and help with feedback along the way. If you’re interested in hearing more as we develop it, email erin.evenhouse@t4america.org with a short note and we’ll reach out directly sometime this fall.

The crossroads of transportation planning, arts and culture

Jack Becker, Forecast Public Art

Transportation for America is developing new tools and approaches to tap community arts and culture and improve transportation and development projects at the same time. Sound like a stretch? A conversation with Jack Becker, executive director + principal of Forecast Public Art, helped changed my mind on the relationship between these topics. Jack and I bonded over our respective fields because like transportation policy, public art isn’t always well understood.

“There’s a difference between art in public places and public art,” he says. “The field is evolving and it’s much more about creating something that fits in a local context than these policies give room for. Consider fireworks: I would call that public art. How many small towns already have a public art program and don’t even know it?”

T4A’s research found that many public agencies with a public art program have rigid processes in which a percentage of funding can be used to commission specific works on selected and vetted sites. This typically plays out by locating a place that could use a little something and commissioning art. Done well, these projects are valuable additions; done poorly, the result can be dubbed “plop art,” a pejorative term for art in the public way that doesn’t resonate or seem to fit into its environment.

Color Jam in Chicago. Photo by Kevin Shelton, courtesy Chicago Loop Alliance.

Many professionals in Jack’s field and beyond feel that this setup sells short both art and the important role it can play in the community. He believes the key to harnessing art and creative processes is to embed artists into the decision-making process.

This is exactly what the City of St. Paul, Minnesota did in their planning and economic development department in the 1980’s. Matching department consulting funds dollar-for-dollar with a now-defunct NEA grant program, the city provided $10,000 to three artists to join the planning, economic development and public works departments for three months. The city provided the artists with a desk, a phone, and exposure to how the departments worked.

In the first month, the artists learned day-to-day processes and got to know their peers. In the second month, they looked at projects to make suggestions (e.g., repurposing materials from a previous work site to construct a railing for a new bridge). And for their last month, artists provided recommendations (e.g., commissioning a welder to build that railing). The fresh energy and new ideas introduced by the artists were received so well that St. Paul continues to fund an artist-in-residency in its public works department. Its successful spin-offs include a now standalone program to embed lines of poetry into new sidewalk tiles.

“You can give an artist a plot of land, or you can give them your entire city as a canvas,” Jack says. He acknowledges that the latter is not without risk because the final results are less predictable, which is why regular communication is key, and temporary installations or pilot projects can be a good first step, as our forthcoming resource will illustrate.

But the impact of integrating the arts and artists into the process are more profound to him. Jack Becker has seen artists serve as professional problem-solvers, change how people think and help illuminate a transformative potential for public leadership. The arts inspire and unite people, change perceptions and contribute new ideas, all of which can be helpful when you’re dealing with the complex ecosystem of a city or town.

One of John Mackie’s dance steps installations in Seattle. Creative Commons Flickr photo by John Henderson. View on Flickr

Involvement through local arts & culture

The idea behind creative placemaking is that this is all the more true when those artists work in service to local community members, or are members of the community themselves. Arts-based collaborations between local units of government and nonprofit or community-based partners are becoming more popular. For one, national funders are betting on the theory that bringing local artists and local culture into the process is an important — and often overlooked — piece of the puzzle for building better places. There are links to the commonly recognized approaches promoted by organizations like the Project for Public Spaces, but creative placemaking also has roots in longstanding community based arts practices, which leverage arts participation — particularly by low-income residents and people of color— as a transformative process to empower people, foster new relationships, improve culture, and ultimately catalyze positive social change.

It involves a lot of brainstorming, testing, and trying new things along the way, which is far from the typical planning document that’s finalized before implementation and generally remains static for years at a time. Ultimately, Jack says, artists and local governments make natural partners and can do great things when they work hand-in-hand, because they both play the same connecting role.

“Expose artists to the stories of the community and build their relationship with what’s happening, and they can use their creative process to raise the profile and value of your work and your community.”

Interested in hearing more about creative placemaking in the weeks to come? Email erin.evenhouse@t4america.org with a short note and we’ll ensure you don’t miss a thing.

City leaders from Indy, Raleigh and Nashville get inspired by the secrets to Denver’s transit success

Delegations of city leaders from Nashville, Raleigh and Indianapolis wrapped up the latest two-day Transportation Innovation Academy workshop in Denver last week, where they learned firsthand about the years of hard work that went into Denver’s economic development plan to vastly expand the city’s transportation options, including new buses, light rail and commuter rail.

The three delegations underneath the new train shed on the platform at Denver Union Station last week.

The Transportation Innovation Academy is a joint project of Transportation for America and TransitCenter.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos 2 The three delegations saw the tangible fruit of Denver’s successful transit investments first laid out by their FasTracks plan in the early 2000s, and they learned how Denver went about the monumental task of building support and raising the funding required to make it all happen.

Analyzing Denver’s success so closely provided participants an opportunity to evaluate their own ongoing city and/or regional campaign efforts, and all were clearly struck by just how much work is plowed into the earth before you taste the fruits of success. It’s do-able and the benefits are sizable, but the task is not easy or quick. The participants know they have a challenge on their hands, but they were encouraged to see how Denver made it all happen and are taking imminently practical lessons back home to help build their coalitions and engage supporters back home.

From the very first discussion, the academy participants learned about the unique factors in Denver’s success. One factor was education — Denver succeeded in their ballot campaign by throwing out assumptions about who would and would not support transit. Polling and focus groups revealed who support Denver’s efforts and why. Women over 60 and suburban drivers — groups often assumed to be neutral to or against transit — became key supporters. On the other hand, it could not be assumed that transit riders would support the plan.

In the end, leaders from these three cities saw the possibilities of reaching out to key constituencies who haven’t been engaged in their efforts so far.

Denver Union Station transportation innovation academy

With years of actual construction behind them at this point, participants also experienced Denver’s story in a tangible way. They ooh’ed and aah’ed inside the jewel of the new system — the redeveloped Union Station in downtown — took a ride along a new light rail line, and toured a mixed income housing development constructed by MetroWest Housing Solutions — the former city public housing authority which the City of Lakewood has reimagined and reconstituted as an opportunistic community developer. That project and the surrounding 40W Arts District are using arts and creative design to engage the community and build support for new projects. The delegates learned that one of the most vocal opponents to the arts district and development quickly changed his tune when the city sponsored a mural on his industrial building.

Denver light rail transportation innovation academy

A key to all of this success is the way Denver’s regional leaders stayed together as a region throughout the first failed ballot measure for transit, the successful FasTracks ballot measure and the subsequent drop in anticipated revenues brought on by the recession that made implementation a challenge.

Mayor Bob Murphy, mayor of the suburban city of Lakewood and past chair of the Metro Mayors Caucus, showed how that cooperative forum among mayors — from Denver, major suburbs, and even towns as small as 500 in population — builds cohesion. Cities in the region don’t try to poach jobs and industries from neighboring cities, but work collectively at economic development across the region. “Sometimes we are competitors,” Murphy said, “but we are [ultimately] colleagues.”

The leaders from Indy, Nashville and Raleigh will meet in Nashville for the last session of this year’s Academy in December, where they’ll build their own action plans for campaigns in their regions, while also learning more about Nashville’s growth and development, its challenges in building bus rapid transit and how they’re moving forward despite a few setbacks.

While only these three regions are participating this year, they’re emblematic of a burgeoning group of mid-sized U.S. cities that are either in the midst of or planning new transit service to meet the demand and help them stay competitive in the race for talent.

This post was written by Michael Russell with contributions from Dan Levine and Stephen Lee Davis.

Stories worth reading – September 24, 2015

Good afternoon. Here are a few curated stories we’re reading and talking about this week.

Members-only stories

How to use performance measures: Performance measures for members, part IV
Performance measures should be used to prioritize and account for public spending and, through this, demonstrate to the public that their dollars are being used wisely. There are four ways to deploy performance measures: 1) create a dashboard, 2) prioritize projects, 3) optimize investments and 4) check on the performance of past investments.

From the T4A blog

Pilot program to support smart planning around new transit lines will benefit 21 different cities
It’s important that communities make the best use of land around transit lines and stops, efficiently locate jobs and housing near new transit stations, and boost ridership — which can also increase the amount of money gained back at the farebox. 21 communities today received a total of $19.5 million in federal grants from a new pilot program intended to do exactly that.

How can MPOs and citizens better engage with each other?
Building on the range of new ideas for metropolitan planning organizations outlined in our Innovative MPO Guidebook, join us on September 30, 2015, at 3 p.m. EDT for the fourth webinar in our series as we address a common complaint from both metropolitan planning organization (MPO) staff and citizen activists: how to best engage one another to shape the regional planning process.

Headlines

House lawmakers push to increase transit tax break
The Hill
“With 2.7 million commuters using the transit benefit to get from home to work, Congress should take action to ensure that riders of public transportation are provided with the same benefits as other commuters,” the lawmakers, lead by Reps. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) and Pete King (R-N.Y.), wrote in a letter to leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Is Uber’s ultimate goal the privatisation of city governance?
The Guardian
This continual growth – new services, new regions, new markets – has many wondering about Uber’s ultimate goals. Uber is flush with cash, explicitly expansionist across the globe, and engages in strong-arm politics. Its goals, and its methods for achieving them, will make an impact.

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says highway bill needed to boost economy
The Clarion-Ledger
“We should be focused on transportation infrastructure, not just for the construction jobs, but for the economic competitiveness it gives us and all of the jobs that accounts for in the economy,” Barbour said. “This is about global competitiveness… A big part of this is about economic growth.”

House Dems: We Won’t Support a Transpo Bill That Cuts Bike/Ped Funding
Streetsblog
House Democrats won’t stand for any cuts to federal funding for walking and biking infrastructure. That was the gist of a letter signed by every Democratic member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week.

VP Joe Biden In Detroit Linking Mass Transportation To Breaking Cycle Of Poverty
CBS Local Detroit
Citing a Harvard study as to the best way for populations to break the cycle of poverty — Biden said: “It’s not early education, it wasn’t other things … they wrote transportation is the single strongest factor in the changes that someone can move up the economic ladder.”

Bonus: Check out these cool parklets from PARK(ing) Day 2015 – Streetsblog

Effectively linking transportation with economic development: Beth Osborne visits the Pacific Northwest

On September 10 and 11, T4A brought Senior Policy Advisor Beth Osborne to the Pacific Northwest to speak with audiences in Seattle, Portland and Eugene about the links between transportation investment and economic development. There are countless examples of these links in each city, and local speakers shared those stories at all three events.

A good crowd gathered at Metro’s policy breakfast with Beth Osborne in Portland.

This November, Seattle voters will decide whether to support the Move Seattle levy, an ambitious plan to invest in five bus rapid transit (BRT) lines and a range of complete streets projects to improve Seattleites’ mobility and safety by updating the design of city streets to better match the demands being placed on them by a greater range of users. Mayor Murray’s transportation policy director Andrew Glass-Hastings was there to share details on that effort. (The City of Seattle is a T4A member.)

The Portland event was hosted by Metro, another T4A member. Years of hard work have come to fruition with both the Portland Milwaukie Light Rail (PMLR) line and Tilikum Crossing over the Willamette River opening immediately after the event on September 12, and the region is hard at work planning a Bus Rapid Transit line from Portland to Gresham. (Both cities are members of T4A as is TriMet, the region’s transit district.) Brian Newman from Oregon Health & Science University shared the story of the hundreds of millions of dollars of current and planned economic development in the South Waterfront spurred by the new light rail line, streetcar, the aerial tram and TIGER-funded improvements to S.W. Moody Avenue. Duncan Hwang from the Jade business district spoke about their efforts to minimize or prevent displacement of disadvantaged communities when the Powell Division BRT line is built in the next 5 years.

Beth Osborne sharing with the crowd in Eugene

The third event was in Eugene, where the neighboring city of Springfield (another T4A member) has a TIGER application in for streetscape improvements on Franklin Boulevard that could spark substantial infill development — including new hotels to serve the visitors at the 2021 World Track Championships hosted by the region. Springfield Mayor Christine Lundberg shared those aspirations, and Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy, Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce president Dave Hauser and PIVOT Architecture principal Kari Turner all testified to how Eugene-Springfield’s growing regional BRT network is part of their economic development strategy. In fact, T4A member Lane Transit District received federal Small Starts funding for its West EmX BRT project on the same day as our event in Eugene.

The local stories at all three events helped provide context for Beth’s Ms. Osborne’s message: if your region wants to get the best economic development results from transportation investments, it’s imperative to carefully measure the outcomes against your region’s values. Measure outcomes like congestion the wrong way, and you could be inhibiting economic development in favor of moving cars around quickly for no economic gain.

Referencing a series of recent T4America and Smart Growth America reports – Measuring What We Value, Core Values, The Innovative MPO – Ms. Osborne pointed to new approaches yielding better results.

These recent events are sparking productive conversations in each region. Interested in organizing an event like these in your area for members and non-members? Get in touch with us and feel free to share ideas for topics and speakers.

performance-measures-members-featured Relatedly to the topic of measuring outcomes, don’t miss Beth’s ongoing series on performance measures, available only for members.

Feel a little lost when it comes to the concept of transportation performance measures? In this short series expressly for T4A members, our resident expert and USDOT veteran will help bring you up to speed on an issue that’s complicated but represents a smart way forward on transportation planning and spending. Read more.

How can MPOs and citizens better engage with each other?

Building on the range of new ideas for metropolitan planning organizations outlined in our Innovative MPO Guidebook, join us on September 30, 2015, at 3 p.m. EDT for the fourth webinar in our series as we address a common complaint from both metropolitan planning organization (MPO) staff and citizen activists: how to best engage one another to shape the regional planning process.

In next week’s webinar, we will offer examples of reliable and cost-effective options to interact with the public, including a preview of a new resource we’re producing on an approach known as “creative placemaking” which will be released this Fall.

Innovative MPO web graphic 2 Join experts from T4A and the Indian Nations Council of Governments (INCOG) from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to learn helpful techniques that support planning processes and community partnerships.

Register today for our Innovative MPO webinar on Wednesday, September 30th, at 3pm.

By the way, if you haven’t yet read it, our Innovative MPO Guidebook offers examples that both groups can use to bring them closer together. Cost effective techniques such as scenario planning, new technologies and toolkits are just a few of the innovative examples the guide covers. You can read and download the guidebook for free.

How to use performance measures: Performance measures for members, part IV

Beth Osborne

Performance measures should be used to prioritize and account for public spending and, through this, demonstrate to the public that their dollars are being used wisely. There are four ways to deploy performance measures: 1) create a dashboard, 2) prioritize projects, 3) optimize investments and 4) check on the performance of past investments.

This is the fourth post in a series on performance measures by Beth Osborne, T4America Senior Policy Advisor. Catch up on the series with a high-level overview of the concept, find out how and why you should go beyond the federal requirements and learn more about choosing the best measures for addressing your priorities. -Ed.

A dashboard

A visualization of data or metrics known as a “dashboard” can be a useful snapshot of current conditions or the direction an area is moving. Dashboards are useful because they are visual and quickly lay out in one glance the region’s goals and the current status. Two examples are Salt Lake City and the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Sample dashboard from VDOT

The development of a dashboard can help determine what the public wants to prioritize — the public has an easy-to-digest summary of core statistics about your transportation network to help them choose what’s important. But this tool has a notable limitation: it’s not responsive to those public priorities if it isn’t also connected to decisions about public spending. After all, you could have an elegant dashboard that’s easy for anyone to understand rating the safety of the roadway…while making no investments in roadway safety.

A dashboard doesn’t automatically make it clear that any investment decisions are being made to impact the statistics being measured or displayed.

Prioritizing projects

The State of Virginia recently decided to take steps to ensure that the public’s priorities were better reflected in their process of selecting projects. Their legislature passed a bill in 2014 requiring all new capacity projects to be weighed against each other based on five priority areas: congestion reduction, economic competitiveness, access to opportunity, safety and environmental protection. They created a process — now available to the public —for ranking these outcomes based on significant public input.

Optimize investments

Spurred on in part by funding uncertainty, The State of Tennessee took a step back and analyzed their entire list of planned projects with a critical eye. They looked closely at the expected outcomes of their planned projects and then searched for other less expensive ways to accomplish the same things. The results were quite impressive, with multi-million dollar projects replaced by projects that cost just hundreds of thousands, saving millions and still bringing 80-90 percent of the benefits of the more expensive project. (A presentation on their new process can be found here.)

How have past investments performed?

In the world of transportation planning where everyone is always looking forward, forward, forward, it can be incredibly useful to take a look backwards on a regular basis and see if past choices have met projections and brought the benefits promised — and recalibrate the process if they have not.

Transportation agencies do their best to project the outcomes of each investment, but no one can get it right all the time. The agencies that are making the most of their dollars are the ones that check back on their investments to see if they performed as expected and, if they did not, make changes.

To do this, the goals of each project must be clearly stated and then reviewed at major milestones to see if the expected results materialized. The public notices when we make promises that don’t come true, and being right there with them and explaining what will change with the process is an important way to build credibility. We must check our own work and continually improve our performance, especially if we want the public to continue to invest in our programs.

Pilot program to support smart planning around new transit lines will benefit 21 different cities

It’s important that communities make the best use of land around transit lines and stops, efficiently locate jobs and housing near new transit stations, and boost ridership — which can also increase the amount of money gained back at the farebox. 21 communities today received a total of $19.5 million in federal grants from a new pilot program intended to do exactly that.

Sound Transit's LINK light rail on the Seattle-SeaTac line. Six stations will eventually be added to Tacoma's current LINK line, doubling their number of stations.

Sound Transit’s LINK light rail on the Seattle-SeaTac line. Six stations will eventually be added to Tacoma’s separate LINK line, doubling their number of stations.

Building a new transit line isn’t some sort of magic wand; a new rail or rapid bus line doesn’t automatically mean that well-planned, walkable neighborhoods will spring up to help support the line by adding new riders nearby, or result in new buildings filled with meaningful destinations bringing transit riders to the area. A lot of work goes into creating a plan that can foster and incentivize the kind of private development that a community wants to see around their transit stations, and the grants in this small pilot program will be a big boost to these 21 communities either currently expanding or planning to expand transit service to their residents.

This pilot program was one of the bright spots in MAP-21, and was a priority we worked hard to see included in the final bill during those negotiations back in the summer of 2012, along with our colleagues at LOCUS, the coalition of responsible real estate investors within Smart Growth America.

Making proactive steps to plan for development along entire transit corridors – rather than just one station area at a time – can attract private-sector interest as well as stronger buy-in from the community by creating a complete picture of the development opportunities presented by the new transit line.

A wide variety of projects received grants ranging in size from $250,000 awards to support the Woodward Avenue bus rapid transit line that will connect downtown Detroit with Pontiac and a transit overlay district in the area around the planned Valley Metro light rail expansion to Tempe; all the way up to $2 million for planning around the six stations of Sound Transit’s light rail expansion in Tacoma, including street design to improve connectivity for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit riders and a plan to expand access to jobs and job training in a fairly disadvantaged area.

Therese McMillan, the acting administrator, was on hand in Tacoma to announce the grants. “Transit-oriented development is critical to the success of new projects and to the economy of the local communities they serve,” she said. “These grants will help communities like Tacoma develop a transportation system that encourages people to use transit to reach jobs, education, medical care, housing and other vital services that they need.”

We’re excited to finally see the first fruits of this small pilot program that we worked so hard to see included in MAP-21. These grants will go a long way toward ensuring that these numerous planned transit investments bring the greatest returns and the best possible benefits to all.

The full list of winners can be found on the FTA website.

Finding inspiration in another city’s successful expansion of public transportation

This week, 21 local leaders from three different regions with ambitious plans to invest in public transportation will be traveling to Denver to hear about how that region built an economic development strategy around investing in new public transportation.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos

There’s an old proverb that says “A teacher is better than two books,” and the local leaders from Raleigh, Indianapolis and Nashville participating in the first yearlong Transportation Innovation Academy — organized by T4America and TransitCenter — will get the opportunity be taught firsthand about the returns that Denver is reaping from their incredibly ambitious FasTracks transit expansion plan.

Through workshops, site visits, and discussions with key leaders in the Denver region this week, academy participants will get an in-person look at one specific story of how scores of local communities across the country are casting a vision and often putting their own skin in the game first with local funding while hoping for a strong federal partner to make those plans a reality. While the three regions all have different transportation needs and plans for the future, Denver’s story broadly represents the kind of success that these leaders would certainly love to replicate.

We covered Denver’s story at length in one of our can-do regional profiles:

Denver: Betting on the future and seeing early returns

Faced with potential employers suggesting that the lack of transit connections were preventing Denver from realizing their economic development goals, the region’s leaders banded together and made a bold bet on an ambitious and comprehensive plan to expand their transportation network a decade ago.

Read the full Denver story here.

Key business leaders are part of each regional contingent, along with mayors and city/county council members, real estate pros, housing industry experts and local advocates. The Academy is intended to share knowledge and best practices, visit cities (like Denver) that have inspiring success stories, and help develop and catalyze the local leadership necessary to turn these ambitious visions into reality.

We’re looking forward to hearing the Denver story in great depth this week and know that these 21 leaders will find inspiration and practical lessons to take back home to help them take the next step on their journeys toward improving and expanding transit service.

Follow along and hear some of the great insights that participants are picking up in this week’s workshop, surely with some great photos of what’s happening in Denver. Follow @t4america, @TransitCenter and the hashtag #TranspoAcademy on Wednesday and Thursday this week (September 16-17).

The Transportation Innovation Academy continues this week in Denver

Twenty-one local leaders representing three regions with ambitious plans to invest in public transportation will be reuniting in Denver this week to continue the first year-long Transportation Innovation Academy, sponsored by T4America and the TransitCenter.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos

Through workshops, site visits, and discussions with key leaders in the Denver region, academy participants will learn how that region built an economic strategy around investing in new transit and will get to see first hand the returns the region has already realized.

Similarly sized regions of 1 million-plus, Indianapolis, Nashville, and Raleigh all have notable plans to expand their transportation systems with additional bus rapid transit or rail service. In partnership with the TransitCenter, T4America has created a yearlong academy program for a select group of key leaders from each region that was selected to participate. The academy is intended to share knowledge and best practices, share inspiring success stories, and help develop and catalyze the local leadership necessary to turn these ambitious visions into reality.

All 21 participants (seven from each region) will be in Denver this week for the third of four, two-day workshops with experts in the field and leaders from cities with similar experiences. Each of the three cities is hosting a classroom workshop session. The participants are taking this trip to Denver to see a region that already has tasted the kind of success that these leaders would love to replicate.

Key business leaders from each region are part of each group, along with mayors and city/county council members, real estate pros, housing industry experts and local advocates.

The diverse group of members, assembled by each region’s team lead, recognizes the fact that making any big plan to invest in a new transit line or system requires buy-in from more than just a mayor and/or a few citizen groups. There has to be a shared vision with support from a wide range of civic players. In some regions, there might be a huge university presence. In others, it might be a big medical institution that anchors the local economy.

In all cases, getting everyone to the table and building a vision that everyone can share in are keys to success.

In Indianapolis, action by the Indiana legislature and Governor Mike Pence cleared the way for metro Indianapolis counties to vote on funding a much-expanded public transportation network, with a major emphasis on bus rapid transit. Civic, elected and business leaders had been hard at work since 2009 producing an ambitious and inspiring IndyConnect plan, “the most comprehensive transportation plan — created with the most public input — our region has ever seen,” according to Mayor Greg Ballard in the foreword to our Innovative MPO report. Now the hard part comes as they build public and political will and decide what to include on a November 2016 ballot measure.

While transit expansion has more support in the region’s core, local leaders acknowledge they have an uphill battle in some suburban counties more skeptical of the merits of transit. Mayor Ballard and the diverse group of Indy businesses (including higher education, healthcare and IT industries) supporting IndyConnect understand how important this measure is for helping Indy be economically competitive in the future. Local leaders hope to position their city to attract young families and to lure recent college grads back home to Indy. And a strong regional public transit system is lies at the core of their economic strategy.

“Supported by a strong business community, an ambitious heartland city wins the ability to let citizens decide their own transportation future.” Read our detailed “can-do” profile of Indianapolis.

After watching the region’s two other counties approve ballot measure to raise funds for a regional transit system originally envisioned by all three counties, the hosts of the first workshop in March in Raleigh (Wake County) hope to join the other two core metro counties in beginning a new regional rail transit system.

Adjoining Durham and Orange counties approved half-cent sales taxes in 2011 and 2012 to fund transit operations, improved bus service and a regional light rail line. Wake County Commissioners, meanwhile, had not allowed a question to raise funds for a regional transit system to go to the ballot. In fact, a handful of commissioners actively prevented the issue going forward, often stifling debate at times.

That could all change in 2015, as more than half of the county board was replaced last November. Four new supportive members replaced four who had consistently been on the other side of the issue, clearing the way for a potential ballot measure in Wake County. Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane, who helped kick things off in Raleigh ‘s workshop, has long supported a regional plan for transit.

Wake County is one of the fastest growing counties in the U.S. and the county’s population is due to double by 2035. Yet this rapidly growing community with a notable high-tech, research, government and major university employers is one of the few major metro regions lacking a significant transit system. Just like Indianapolis, they will be crafting their plan and building consensus in 2015 as they shoot for a vote in 2016.

In Nashville, local advocates and elected leaders are still smarting from the setback on last year’s effort to kick-start a bus rapid-transit network with a line that would have connected neighborhoods and major employment centers along an east-west route through the city.

Inspired by watching and learning from some of their neighbors’ mistakes, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, one of our members, chose transit as a top priority six years ago, second only to improving public education. Local leaders there, including the recently departed Mayor Karl Dean, wanted to get out in front of the issue, rather than waiting 10 years after gridlock has overtaken the booming region. The business community and T4A member, the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization have both been a key part of crafting the plan to make bus rapid transit a reality in Nashville.

Along with the TransitCenter and a few of our T4A members we are pleased to share this experience. We are excited to see what the year will bring for these 21 participants and the up-and-coming regions that they represent. We’re going to have much more on these three cities this year, so stay tuned for our next workshop visit in Nashville in December 2015.

Surgeon General: building walkable communities is essential to our health

Yesterday the Surgeon General issued a powerful call-to-action that focuses on improving public health by encouraging walking and the creation of more walkable places.

It was an inspiring moment to see the nation’s top doctor get in front of a crowd in Washington, DC (with thousands of others watching online) and urge Americans not just to get more exercise, but also to rethink how we build and grow our communities in ways that can encourage more walking by making it an attractive and convenient option.

Americans do not get enough physical exercise, he said. Chronic diseases — including diabetes, heart disease, cancer and obesity — are responsible for seven in 10 deaths per year, and cost us trillions of dollars. We can reduce the risk of those diseases to our health, however, with one simple action: walking. An average of 22 minutes of walking per day — about two and a half hours per week — can significantly reduce risk.

But for too many Americans, walking is not safe, convenient or easy.Communities (especially lower-income neighborhoods) may suffer from a lack of sidewalks, crosswalks, and the basic building blocks of what makes a walk possible. As many as 30 percent of Americans report that their communities have no sidewalks.

For decades, we built scores of communities without walking in mind, designing out the most common form of transportation from our daily lives and assuming that we’d be better off having to make the bulk of our daily trips with a car, which our federal transportation policy supported (through the creation of the interstate system and numerous other policies.)

But enough ink has been spilled looking backward at the numerous decisions that got us here. Instead, how can we move forward? How can we make it easier for more people to walk each day and stay healthier?

“We can change that,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy says. “We can change it by city planners, transportation professionals and local government leaders working together to improve the safety and walkability of neighborhoods for people with all abilities.”

The solution can be found in part by recapturing the wisdom of how we once designed neighborhoods and towns of all sizes with walking as a central feature. The Surgeon General called on local governments and city planners to design their towns so that walkers have safe, easy places to walk to their destinations. As we covered yesterday in a preview of the call to action, we know that there is huge demand for, and economic returns to be had by, building places where walking is a central part of the design:

Since Indianapolis’s Cultural Trail, a high-quality biking and walking trail, opened in 2008 the value of properties within a block have increased an astonishing 148 percent. Last week, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution published a special packageabout the amazing demand for homes near the still-in-progress Beltline project that will eventually encircle the city with trails and transit. Nashville’s metropolitan planning organization recently began considering health criteria as they select transportation projects in the hopes of helping improve the health of residents over the next few decades as they grow. Washington State adopted a Vision Zero plan to reduce pedestrian deaths to zero. Making their vision a reality includes not just educating drivers about pedestrian and bike safety but also re-designing streets and roads to slow traffic and give folks walking and biking safe and attractive facilities to use.

“Today we have the opportunity to reclaim the culture of physical activity that we once had,” the Surgeon General said. “Today we are here to make that commitment that in America everyone deserves a safe place to walk and to wheelchair roll.”

Designing cities and towns to encourage walking involves smart planning of public transit and cycling infrastructure because both amenities extend the range that the average citizen can walk. Smarter transportation planning puts the majority of a person’s needs within walking distance, from errands to school, work and everything else. And the more we walk, the better our mood, the safer our streets and the healthier we become.

Tyler Norris, vice president of Total Health Partnerships at Kaiser Permanente, one of the many guests on hand to extol the benefits of the Surgeon General’s call-to-action, closed the day with some inspiring words about the numerous benefits of walking. Walking, he said, is good not only for individuals, but for communities:

“We were born to walk. Our bodies are designed to walk. There is nothing we can do that is simpler or more cost effective for our health and well-being than walking. Nothing is a better contributor to creating a healthy community than to make the public and private investments that are essential for the infrastructure for walking and rolling [in wheelchairs] throughout our communities. Every mayor and economic development leader will tell you that a walkable community is also a more economically vibrant and prosperous community.”

With Congress back in session now, it begs the question: Will policymakers in the Capitol heed the call from the nation’s top doctor and begin to align more of our country’s transportation policies with the need to get active? Will the House’s draft multi-year transportation bill — expected to be released this month — help or hurt state and local efforts to meet this demand for more walkable places?

This call to action could be the start of a transformation of how Americans think about the impact that the design of their towns and cities have on their health, but Congress will have to play a part.

Stories worth reading – September 10, 2015

Good afternoon. Here are a few curated stories we’re reading and talking about this week.

Members-only stories

Using performance measurement to chase the right goal: Performance measures for members, part III
If states and metro areas merely take up conventional measures without question, they may move in the wrong direction toward the wrong outcomes in the end. Instead, start from your ideal goal and work backwards to choose the appropriate measure to get you there.

From the T4A blog

What if we labeled unwalkable neighborhoods like we do cigarettes?
What if we labeled unwalkable neighborhoods like we do cigarettes? A similar call from the Surgeon General in 1964 was the watershed event that kicked off a decades-long decline in cigarette use. Could today’s Call to Action do the same for communities without safe places to walk?

Headlines

Don’t Railroad Amtrak
The American Conservative
These trains represent one of the good things from the past conservatives should work to conserve and expand: at present, passenger rail service in most of the country is a fraction of what it was 50 years ago. All of which makes it passing strange that congressional Republicans are doing their utmost to kill Amtrak.

BRT Hits 400 Corridors and Systems Worldwide
The City Fix
BRTData’s most recent update shows that there are now 402 mapped BRT corridors and bus lanes, stretching over 5229 kilometers worldwide. The significance of this figure is twofold: first, it shows that many cities worldwide are becoming increasingly interested in sustainable modes of transport; secondly, the figure is a reflection of the vast amount of free and accessible data that exists online to support the case for BRT.

If Congestion Is Getting Worse, Why Are We Spending Less Time Traveling?
Planetizen
“The main implications of the present results are that the total travel time per person decreased substantially from 2004 to 2014,” [researcher Michael] Sivak concludes. However, he adds, “that this decrease is due to a decrease in the proportion of persons engaged in the trips, and not an overall reduction of the duration of the trips.”

Your Cheap Uber Rides May Be Going Away. And That’s a Good Thing.
Mother Jones
Last Tuesday, a federal judge in San Francisco awarded class-action status to a lawsuit in which three Uber drivers contend they are employees, not independent contractors. If they win the lawsuit, the drivers must be reimbursed by the company for gas, workers compensation, and other benefits. Uber has said losing the suit, which could involve 15,000 of its former drivers, might force it to fundamentally rethink its business model. And maybe that’s exactly what needs to happen.

Intelligent technology will change how we use mass transit
Miami Herald
Mobile apps and wayside signage now provide real-time data on the location and progress of buses, trains, trolleys and street cars. Passengers have access to real-time information on usage and delays and up-to-the-minute details on the best routes on their smart phones and tablets. They make public transportation more user friendly, predictable and efficient.

Looking into the crystal ball on shared-use mobility at a three-day conference

The Shared-Use Mobility Center and the North American Bike Share Association are hosting a three-day conference September 28th-30th in Chicago focusing on the crossroads of technology and the emerging use of shared mobility services like bikeshare systems, car share networks and ride-hailing apps, and we’ve got a special promotional rate for T4America supporters interested in attending.

The Move Together: Shared-Use Mobility Summit will host talks and workshops by transportation professionals who work at city and state DOTs, non-profits and mobility companies like Lyft and Ridescout, among others. On tap to be discussed is a wide range of topics on shared-use mobility with practical applications, including how to integrate these new mobility options with transit, how shared mobility can help the disadvantaged, local and federal policy issues that affect shared-use mobility and autonomous vehicles, and how these new forms of transportation will affect cities and suburbs.

Also, don’t miss T4America director James Corless speaking on the “Federal Policy and Funding for Shared Mobility” panel. There’s still time to register for the conference and receive a 10 percent discount using the SUMCT4AMERICA promo code.

As giant companies like Google ramp up research on and investment in autonomous vehicles, ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft redefine what it means to be a part-time or contracted worker, and bikeshare networks proliferate across the country in cities big and small, cities and states are scrambling to figure out how to accommodate these untraditional modes of transportation. Shared-use mobility can provide access to transportation for areas often underserved by transit, as well as enable greater mobility in and around cities.

The public is embracing these modes of transport, often quicker than cities and towns can adapt. The National Shared-Use Mobility Summit is primed to offer some insight for both public officials and industry professionals on how to work together and what’s coming next.

Register today to with promo code SUMCT4AMERICA to save 10 percent on the ticket fee and get the inside scoop on the future of transportation.

What if we labeled unwalkable neighborhoods like we do cigarettes?

The Surgeon General of the United States will unveil a bold new initiative today, aiming to help Americans lead healthier lives — by making walking and physical activity built-in features of more of our neighborhoods.

Cross-posted with Smart Growth America. -Ed.

At a press conference at 10 a.m. this morning the U.S. Surgeon General will kick off a new national Call to Action, urging cities and towns to consider how the design of our roads and public spaces can encourage more walking by making it easier, safer and more convenient. (Tune into the live webcast of the event at 10 a.m. EDT.) To show how significant an issue this is to the Surgeon General, today’s announcement is only the sixth such Call to Action in the last 10 years.

According to the Surgeon General’s office, only half of American adults get enough physical activity to reduce the risk of chronic disease, and 10 percent of the preventable deaths in the United States are related to lack of physical activity. Communities that lack safe places to walk are a part of this problem.

What if we labeled unwalkable neighborhoods like we do cigarettes? A similar call from the Surgeon General in 1964 was the watershed event that kicked off a decades-long decline in cigarette use. Could today’s Call to Action do the same for communities without safe places to walk?

What if we put states, cities and towns on notice that streets and roads that are dangerous by design for people on foot or bike are a prime contributor to the obesity epidemic (as well as a contributing factor in an alarming number of fatalities)? What if we prioritized sidewalks and crosswalks the same way we do sunscreen, “no smoking” signs, and preventing underage drinking?

Help us celebrate this important step forward: share today’s announcement with friends and colleagues:

Share on Twitter — Share on Facebook

The Surgeon General’s position makes it clear that America needs more than a simple call to “get out and exercise.” We need to build communities where walking is a safe and convenient option — so getting where you need to go can help you stay physically active and healthy.

The good news is that the tide is turning in communities of all types and sizes all over the country. Small towns, rural, suburban and urban areas are reinvesting in their downtown cores and creating vibrant walkable neighborhoods like never before and reaping the benefits of better walking and biking infrastructure. We still need to do more to encourage walking, but there’s clearly huge pent-up demand for walkable neighborhoods and high-quality facilities that anyone can use.

People want to walk, and they increasingly want to live and work in places where it’s a convenient option.

Since Indianapolis’s Cultural Trail, a high-quality biking and walking trail, opened in 2008 the value of properties within a block have increased an astonishing 148 percent. Last week, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution published a special package about the amazing demand for homes near the still-in-progress Beltline project that will eventually encircle the city with trails and transit. Nashville’s metropolitan planning organization recently began considering health criteria as they select transportation projects in the hopes of helping improve the health of residents over the next few decades as they grow. Washington State adopted a Vision Zero plan to reduce pedestrian deaths to zero. Making their vision a reality includes not just educating drivers about pedestrian and bike safety but also re-designing streets and roads to slow traffic and give folks walking and biking safe and attractive facilities to use.

There’s far more to do, though. While these stories are encouraging, the lowest-income neighborhoods across the country are the ones more likely to lack sidewalks, crosswalks or other facilities to keep residents safe.

Help celebrate this important call to action. Share this post and image with your friends and family and colleagues.

Using performance measurement to chase the right goal: Performance measures for members, part III.

If states and metro areas merely take up conventional measures without question, they may move in the wrong direction toward the wrong outcomes in the end. Instead, start from your ideal goal and work backwards to choose the appropriate measure to get you there.

This is the third post in a series on performance measures by Beth Osborne, T4America Senior Policy Advisor. Read the rest of the series anddive into a high-level overview of the concept, find out how and why you should go beyond the federal requirements, and learn how to demonstrate to the public that their dollars are being used wisely. -Ed.

What do you mean “conventional” measures? What sort of commonly accepted measures can send us in the wrong direction?

Beth Osborne, T4America

A fantastic, timely example can be seen in the latest release of the oft-cited but flawed Texas Transportation Institute’s (TTI) Urban Mobility Report which purports to rank metro areas by congestion, but is a case study in how a conventional, yet flawed, measure can lead you in the wrong direction.

There are numerous issues with TTI’s measure of congestion and we don’t cover them all here. Read our detailed public critique of the TTI report on the blog. -Ed.

When actual drivers talk about congestion, they tend to mean one of two things: bumper-to-bumper traffic or unpredictability. The latter really makes commuting a hassle — the lack of certainty about just how long today’s commute may take, with no way to adequately plan for it. (“Do I know how much time I need to allow today so I’m not late for work?”) It turns out that commuters understand that traffic will slow during rush hour, just like they know they will wait for a table at a popular restaurant on Saturday night.

TTI’s travel time index identifies congestion as any delay compared to the speed of traffic when the road is essentially empty. In other words, if people travel at 65 miles-per-hour on a particular highway where there is no traffic, any time the speed drops is considered delay, even if a slowdown to 55 mph is simply down to the posted speed limit. Yet, if you knew that you could travel at a reliable 55 mph each day for a rush hour commute (or 45 mph or 35 mph, even), wouldn’t you appreciate that predictability?

Most delay measures also only consider the experience of those driving. When the TTI report speaks of the experience of commuters universally, they’re actually only talking about driving, leaving out millions of others who commute each day by other methods.

Why is that distinction important? Let’s say the roadways are equally congested in two cities. In one city only half of the commuters experience it because they commute by transit, bike, foot or opt out entirely by telecommuting. In the other city, almost every commuter is traveling by car and is stuck in traffic each day. Do these two cities have the same congestion problem? According to the way TTI measures it, yes they do.

This is precisely how the wrong measure can put you on a path to the wrong outcome.

By defining and measuring congestion as only the change in speed at rush hour compared to the middle of the night and ignoring all other commuters, the “solution” becomes as limited as it is expensive: build enough roads and lanes so commuters in cars can drive as fast as they want — even above the speed limit — at all times of day no matter how many vehicles are on the road.

That narrow focus also means the community will be missing ways to encourage shorter trips, commuting by other less costly modes, and opting out of commuting entirely. If the community has economic development goals of attracting the young talent that is increasingly looking to locate in places with a wide range of transportation options, using a measure that focuses solely on driver delay will run at cross-purposes to those (and other) goals.

So how can we make sure we’re measuring congestion in a more beneficial way; in a way that reflects our residents’ concerns?

First, listen to your residents and stakeholders explain what it is about congestion that frustrates them. Understanding the source of their frustration will ensure your community is tracking the real problem.

Second, think about the point of view of all of your residents — roadway congestion may not be a frustration for all commuters. This means getting a more accurate picture of who is actually experiencing congestion day-to-day. After all, one way to address congestion is to remove drivers from the road, through carpooling, telecommuting, alternative work hours, helping people live closer to work or supplying affordable and convenient transportation options. Many of these solutions are cheaper than building more road capacity.

Congestion is not the only area where states and metro areas attempting to measure performance can mess up. One smart way to avoid these mistakes is to think deeply about the preferred, ideal outcome you’re seeking. Is it free flow conditions on every road at all times of day? Is it giving your commuters a predictable commute? Is it giving the highest possible number of people access to jobs within a 45-minute commute? Identify the end goal and find a measure that leads toward that goal.

We have more information about ways to do this in our report, Measuring What We Value. And let us know if we can help you explore these issues more deeply.

“How Do We Become the Department of Yes?”

A new T4America member is hoping to successfully leverage the exploding landscape of new mobility options to meet more of their goals for encouraging smart development, reduce the amount of required single-occupant car trips and create a better city for tomorrow along the way.

This is a post originally published last week on our member portal especially for T4America members. Would you like to find out more about joining as a member?

Tell Me More

Scott Kubly, Seattle DOT

At the Intelligent Transportation Society of America Symposium at University of Washington in Seattle back in July, I had the privilege of hearing Seattle DOT Director Scott Kubly speak to the challenges local governments are facing as they attempt to adapt to new forms of mobility exploding all over the country — ride-for-hire services like Lyft and Uber, carshare services like Zipcar and Car2Go, and bikeshare. (Seattle is a new T4America member.)

I was impressed by Scott’s ability to step back and look at the whole picture in the context of the City of Seattle’s goals.

Seattle is growing quickly. There simply isn’t enough physical space for business as usual, and the city is adjusting accordingly. In the last 4 years, downtown Seattle added 40,000 employees, made possible in part because they planned for, and achieved, a drop in single occupant vehicle mode-share from 35 percent to 31 percent.

New mobility options are often sprouting so fast that it’s difficult for local governments (and regulations) to keep up, but they present a great opportunity for Seattle given the geometric constraints on physical space. “As we keep growing, we need to keep setting that mode-share target lower and lower and get people to use different types of modes, and we need to look at new options,” he said.

Scott suggests re-imagining departments of transportation less as infrastructure providers, and more as systems integrators whose actions are driven by the idea of improving the user’s experience.

As some examples of where that sort of integration to improve overall mobility for users, Scott pointed out the big return on investment for bike-share, and the potential for Uber and Lyft to provide more affordable late-night service than transit can accomplish.

The advent of Uber and Lyft certainly raises questions about drivers’ wages, equitable access, and the risks of congestion caused by oversupply of rides-for-hire that must all be addressed, but in a call to move the ball forward, Scott asks this:

“How do we become the department of yes? How do the public and private sectors work together and say ‘this is what our shared goal is’, so when there is a new service with no regulatory framework, how do we say ‘yeah that’s a cool idea and let’s figure it out.’”

Seattle seems to be figuring out a lot, and we’re excited to have them on board as a new T4A member.

It’s also worth reading this Scott Kubly interview with startup incubator 1776 from earlier this year. -Ed.

Stories worth reading – September 3, 2015

Good afternoon. Here are a few curated stories we’re reading and talking about this week.

Members-only stories

“How Do We Become the Department of Yes?”
A new T4America member is hoping to successfully leverage the exploding landscape of new mobility options to meet more of their goals for encouraging smart development, reduce the amount of required single-occupant car trips and create a better city for tomorrow along the way. (This was posted

Diving into performance measures with T4’s resident expert
Feel a little lost when it comes to the concept of transportation performance measures? In the first post of a short series expressly for T4A members, Beth Osborne, T4A senior policy advisor, will help bring you up to speed with a high-level overview of the concept and a quick look at the current state of practice.

Don’t settle for the limited things Congress could agree on: Performance measures for members, part II
If states and metro areas don’t act now to establish their own priorities for their transportation system, they’ll end up only measuring what Congress deemed important in MAP-21. The time is now to start the conversation of what else also matters to the leaders and citizens in your area.

Stories from the T4A blog

New traffic congestion report raises more questions than it answers

Most people sitting behind the wheel each day won’t be surprised by the findings of the latest edition of the Texas Transportation Institute’s report on urban congestion that shows, once again, that (surprise!) the roads in most major American cities are very congested during rush hour each day. The report’s methodology is flawed, but what really matters most is what policymakers and citizens decide to do about congestion in their communities.

Indy’s “more is better” approach to transportation leads to new all-electric carsharing service
BlueIndy, a new all-electric carsharing service in Indianapolis launching today, is evidence of Mayor Greg Ballard’s open-minded approach to transportation innovations to improve options in the city for residents.

U.S. Surgeon General issuing a rare call-to-action to make walking safer & more convenient
The Surgeon General will issue a new call-to-action next Wednesday that focuses on encouraging cities and towns to design and build their roads and public places to make walking easier, safer and more pleasant.

Urban bike trails in cities like Indianapolis, Dallas and Atlanta are proving to have rich economic benefits to city neighborhoods
Affirming a trend seen in other cities, Indianapolis’s eight-mile Cultural Trail has been a boon to the neighborhoods adjacent to it — as well as the city as a whole — increasing property values of homes and businesses and giving residents and tourists a convenient, attractive, unbroken path to walk, bike and move around the city.

Phoenix voters approve a plan to raise money for transportation; vastly expand the city’s light rail and bus networks
From the T4A blog
On Tuesday night, voters in Phoenix, AZ, approved a slight increase in the sales tax to help fund a 35-year, $31.5 billion package to greatly improve and expand Phoenix’s light rail and bus systems, as well as other transportation improvements. The vote is further evidence that voters are willing to tax themselves for transportation — especially when they know what they’re getting.

Join T4A’s Beth Osborne in Portland and Seattle next week for talks on transportation and economic development
The three sessions will focus on how we can plan and develop our roads, transit systems and freight networks to bring the best possible economic returns. You will learn how regions across the country have made investment decisions and the results they achieved with regard to economic development and competitiveness.

Headlines

Poll: Most Americans back 10-cent gas tax hike
The Hill
The survey, conducted by the San Jose, Calif.-based Mineta Transportation Institute, comes as lawmakers are facing an Oct. 29 deadline for renewing federal infrastructure spending that has been the subject of debate in Washington for most of the year. Support for increasing the gas tax to 28 cents-per-gallon drops to 31 percent if the money is used to “maintain and improve the transportation system” instead of “improve road maintenance,” according to the group.

Obama admin: If Congress can pass a long-term transportation bill, there’s more transit projects where this one came from
The Hill
The Obama administration is touting the expansion of a light rail line in Sacramento, CA, that was extended 4.3 miles this week with the help of $142 million from the federal government. Federal Transit Administration (FTA) acting chief Therese McMillan said the new service “will significantly improve transit options for residents traveling between downtown Sacramento and the growing South Sacramento corridor.”

Uber’s Plan for Self-Driving Cars Bigger Than Its Taxi Disruption
Mobility Lab
The ride-hailing company has invested in autonomous-vehicle research, and its CEO Travis Kalanick has indicated that consumers can expect a driverless Uber fleet by 2030. Uber expects its service to be so inexpensive and ubiquitous as to make car ownership obsolete. Such ambitious plans could make its disruption of the taxi industry look quaint in comparison.

A model for transit-oriented revitalization in North Philadelphia
Better! Cities and Towns
“Paseo Verde is one of the most impressive transit-oriented development projects that I have seen anywhere in the United States,” says Michael Rubinger, President & CEO of Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). “It’s a model for how urban revitalization should be done everywhere.”

America’s once magical – now mundane – love affair with cars
Washington Post
For nearly all of the first century of automobile travel, getting your license meant liberation from parental control, a passport to the open road. Today, only half of millennials bother to get their driver’s licenses by age 18. Car culture, the 20th-century engine of the American Dream, is an old guy’s game.

How Cities Can Shape Transportation Technology For The Greater Good
The Diane Rehm Show
That opportunity lies in two spheres. The first: Undo a half century of terrible planning decisions around one mode, the automobile, and remake our streets in favor of people, so they can safely walk, bike, play and live as close as possible to fundamental services and their work. The second: embracing technology as well as new business and operating models to more efficiently use the infrastructure and systems we already have and to better serve the public and its future.

U.S. Surgeon General issuing a rare call-to-action to make walking safer & more convenient

The Surgeon General will issue a new call-to-action next Wednesday that focuses on encouraging cities and towns to design and build their roads and public places to make walking easier, safer and more pleasant.

From an email this morning:

The Call to Action will highlight the significant health burden that exists in the U.S. today due to physical inactivity – contributing to more than 10 percent of the preventable mortality in America today. More specifically, it will make recommendations to a number of key sectors about critical actions they can take to improve community walkability and increase walking throughout the U.S..

It’s an incredibly noteworthy moment to see the Surgeon General identify this issue as a major public health problem. Issuing an official call is a significant event for the Surgeon General, and rare — only six others have been issued within the last ten years.

According to the Surgeon General’s office, only half of American adults get enough physical activity to reduce the risk of chronic disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States. To address this grim statistic, the Surgeon General and HHS will release a set of recommendations on how to encourage walking and better shape our communities to encourage people to get out and walk or bike more to get around each day.

Communities around the country are seeing the benefits of better walking and biking infrastructure. Nashville’s metropolitan organization recently began considering health criteria as they selects transportation projects. Washington State was the first state to adopt a Vision Zero plan to reduce pedestrian deaths to zero. Making their vision a reality includes not just educating drivers about pedestrian and bike safety but also re-designing streets and roads to slow traffic and give folks walking and biking safe and attractive facilities to use.

We can’t just ask folks to get out and walk more — we need to give them safe and convenient opportunities to do so.

The Surgeon General and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will be launching this report and call-to-action next Wednesday, September 9, at Kaiser Permanente’s offices in Washington, DC., and we’ll be there to cover it.

If you’d like to watch next week, the event will be webcast on the Surgeon General’s website. On September 9th, go to http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/calls/walking-and-walkable-communities/event-webcast.html

Indy’s “more is better” approach to transportation leads to new all-electric carsharing service

BlueIndy, a new all-electric carsharing service in Indianapolis launching today, is evidence of Mayor Greg Ballard’s open-minded approach to transportation innovations to improve options in the city for residents.

Blue Indy

This brand new system is a cross between a bikesharing service (cars can go one-way between numerous locations), a service like Zipcar (the parking spots are reserved) and Car2Go (smaller compact cars for one-way use) with one major exception: All of the cars are 100% electric and charge via small hubs installed next to each parking spot that are wired into the electric grid. In addition to keeping the fleet charged, anyone with an EV can also pay a small membership and hourly fee to charge their own cars at the hubs scattered around downtown.

Blue Indy Map The system is launching with 50 vehicles and 25 charging stations (doubling as the reservable parking spots) around the city, with a plan to soon expand up to 500 electric cars and 200 stations. The city is paying $6 million in dollars earmarked for infrastructure projects, with the French company that owns the service investing somewhere over $40 million.

The new system ties into two of Mayor Ballard’s key goals: to improve energy security by reducing dependence on foreign oil and to provide innovative new mobility options for Indianapolis residents. BlueIndy comes several years after the opening of the economically successful Cultural Trail through the city, closely on the heels of the launch of the Pacers bikesharing system, and in the midst of the city’s effort to dramatically expand and improve public transportation.

It was a long time coming, but now Indianapolis has a new option for getting around their city, and a range of travel options are one of the things most coveted by the younger, mobile workforce that Indy is desperate to retain (and attract) as part of their economic development goals.

As Time Money wrote today, “Without knowing any better, it would be reasonable to assume that a cutting-edge program like this would first appear in a city that already stands out for green initiatives and electric car adoption.” While some cities (Washington, D.C, Seattle and others) are known for a booming number of transportation startups disrupting entrenched systems due to favorable regulatory environments, BlueIndy is a testament to what can happen in other perhaps less likely cities that have civic leadership committed to improving transportation options for their residents (and often visitors) by any means necessary.

Whether by raising new money to expand and improve a transit system that hasn’t kept pace with the growth of the city, by building a downtown walking and biking path that’s the envy of other cities, or encouraging new mobility companies like BlueIndy or Car2Go to set up shop, Indy’s “more is better” approach is already reaping economic dividends.

Mobility is changing incredibly fast and cities that open themselves up to these exciting changes will be much better positioned to reap the rewards. It’s encouraging to see a place like Indianapolis on the list of places stepping forward into this future of new, different, exciting mobility options. Regardless of how well BlueIndy fares going forward, this step is one they’ll be glad they took for years to come.

Join T4A’s Beth Osborne in Portland and Seattle next week for talks on transportation and economic development

Beth Osborne, Transportation for America’s senior policy advisor, is making three stops in the Pacific Northwest soon to discuss how investing in transportation can help drive economic development.

The three sessions will focus on how we can plan and develop our roads, transit systems and freight networks to bring the best possible economic returns. You will learn how regions across the country have made investment decisions and the results they achieved with regard to economic development and competitiveness.

Beth Osborne brings five year’s experience from US DOT, including serving as Acting Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy, and a national perspective on prospects for improvements to transportation policy and funding. Sign up today. T4America members should have already received a promo code for discounted registration.

Find out more about each session and register with the links below.