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Reducing emissions with better transit, part three: Examples from leading cities

Flickr/Creative Commons of a Metro Transit METRO C Line bus photo by Tony Webster. https://www.flickr.com/photos/diversey/49040491042.

Greater transit use is key for lowering emissions, and cities across America are reconsidering how they serve their residents with public transit—and the land uses that encourage better service and ridership. Several cities are laying the groundwork to make this happen—even outside of the “transit hotspots” one may expect.

This post was written by T4America policy intern Jackson Pierce. This post is the third in a series of posts on this topic—find the full set here.

In our first and second installments of this series, we showed how proper funding for transit operations and for increasing transit access are a one-two punch that makes transit more useful, lessening the need to drive and in turn lowering emissions. The historic influx of transit funding coming from the infrastructure bill provides an opportunity to better connect people to the jobs and services they need while reducing climate impacts. These improvements will also help address equity concerns by providing better quality service to more people who urgently need it. In our third installment, we highlight how Houston, Columbus, Austin, and Minnesota’s Twin Cities have made strides toward better service and smarter planning by focusing on providing better transit access to adapt today’s limited funding to existing infrastructure.

Houston and Columbus rescued their bus systems from low ridership by starting fresh

Houston—with a population ranked 4th in the nation by city proper, 5th by immediate metro area and 9th by expanded metro area—is infamous for its wide highways, sprawling cityscape, poor walking infrastructure in many areas, and nearly ubiquitous accommodation of the motor vehicle. Yet Houston has also become a public transit leader by significantly redesigning its bus service from the ground up in 2015 to focus on giving as many people as possible access to frequent, high quality transit, with help from transit consultants Jarrett Walker & Associates.

Houston is recognized as a leader for good reason. The city redrew its former bus network from scratch, allowing METRO (the city’s transit agency) to consolidate redundant routes into more frequent, centralized patterns that served population centers more often.

Houston’s frequent bus routes before and after the redesign.

On August 15th, 2015, a network of mostly infrequent bus routes converged downtown, which was not where most bus riders needed to go in the very decentralized metro area. On August 16th, these same buses ran on a brand-new network, a grid of 22 frequent routes that allowed access to multiple spread-out dense activity centers and neighborhoods. It was a transformation that required no new resources (outside of signage and wayfinding changes), just a smarter approach that recognized the city’s changing development patterns. (Read Smart Growth America’s longer 2015 profile of this story, just before the changes went into effect, which details the planning and work that went into it.)

There are a few things worth recognizing when discussing the replicability of Houston’s plan in other cities. Houston’s old network had clear redundancy in its routes. In other cities these routes may not exist, or have been cut in the past, so a comparable result to Houston’s “cost-neutral” solution may require greater investment overall or adding more resources elsewhere. Houston is also anchored by the Red Line, one of the most successful modern light rail projects in the country, and having that service as a network cornerstone bolstered METRO’s ridership on both modes. 

While Houston is a popular example of a completely redesigned network, the idea has been successfully replicated at smaller scales.

By Ɱ – CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89607531

Columbus: Before Columbus redesigned its routes in 2017, for example, their bus map had been largely unchanged since 1974—even though the region had become one of the fastest-growing in the country. COTA (the Central Ohio Transit Authority) didn’t have the fleet size or duplicative routes that Houston’s METRO did, but managed to add seven frequent routes to their previous total of three, including two new crosstown routes that matched the city’s multi-centered development patterns. 

Equity was a major concern during Columbus’ route redesign, leading Columbus to emphasize improving the frequency of their routes on weekends. Columbus also introduced their CMAX rapid bus line in 2018. While not “true” bus rapid transit—lacking dedicated lanes, off-board fare payment, and frequent headways on weekends—it still provides a solid anchor service for COTA’s other routes to feed into.

Frequent routes on COTA before and after the update.

Despite a nationwide decrease in transit ridership in the 2010s, Houston and Columbus both grew their ridership with their redesigns. Within a year of opening Houston saw a six percent growth in system ridership, and before the pandemic, Columbus’ ridership was up four percent overall since the 2017 redesign. This occurred because both cities updated their transit network to match changes in development patterns, improving transit access in the process.

In Austin, a strong baseline is paying off

CC photo of an Austin bus by I-ride capital metro on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/i-ride/5179709865/

Austin’s population has nearly doubled from 2000-2020 and its transportation systems are struggling to keep up, but the region’s major transit agency, Capital Metro, is working its way toward an accessible and intuitive system.

In 2010 Austin launched Capital Metrorail, a 32-mile commuter rail line that failed to draw significant riders, because it runs infrequently and misses much of the city’s density. To address that gap, in 2014, Capital Metro launched MetroRapid, a rapid bus system (similar to Columbus’ CMAX) featuring two lines making limited stops along some of the city’s main north-south corridors, hitting the neighborhoods that Metrorail missed, including the downtown core, south Austin, and the University of Texas. And in 2018, Capital Metro also embarked upon a full bus network redesign, which they dubbed “CapRemap.”

Austin’s current high frequency transit network.

CapRemap followed the principles of Houston and Columbus’ work, achieving similar results. A year after CapRemap’s release, the total bus system’s ridership had increased by about 4 percent and MetroRapid’s increase was about 6 percent—indicating that improving the grid of routes that increase accessibility across the city also strengthens the core of the system. Capital Metro also introduced new standards of mapping and signage that make Austin’s buses easier to use and navigate. 

These improvements contributed to the success of a ballot initiative in November 2020 for the agency’s much more ambitious $7 billion ProjectConnect plan (click to see a map.) At the center of that plan are two light rail lines, which largely follow the current MetroRapid routes, paired with the introduction of new MetroRapid upgrades for some of the busiest existing bus routes. ProjectConnect is evidence that a well-planned baseline system will grow public support for more substantial infrastructure through incremental upgrades.

The Twin Cities are focused on serving corridors with the highest driving demand 

Compared to the prior examples, Minnesota’s Twin Cities are taking a more incremental and perhaps unconventional approach to transit improvement and network strengthening. Like in Houston, many of the region’s main activity centers—like downtown Minneapolis, downtown St. Paul and suburban Bloomington—are connected by well-used local light rail services, which are reinforced by a grid of crosstown bus routes. Sixteen of these bus routes run every 15 minutes or better on corridors that are highly traveled but do not need the level of capacity that rail provides, and the region’s transit agency, Metro Transit, sees this network as a key to improving access throughout the region. 

A METRO C Line bus by Tony Webster.

Kick-started in 2010 by the region’s Transit Master Study, Metro Transit has begun upgrading several of its busiest bus lines to what they call rapid arterial routes by “stopping less frequently and allowing passengers to pay before boarding.”

The A Line and C Line are currently operating as “backbone” routes of the bus network, with three more (F, G, and H) prioritized for near-term service frequency upgrades in the agency’s 2021 Network Next plan. This plan, set to be updated every five years, is centered around making data-driven, equitable decisions that improve speed and reliability. 

Metro Transit is also working to better integrate local buses into its larger regional bus network, branded with colors, which operates partially on major freeways. The Orange Line, which just opened in December 2021, travels in dedicated high-occupancy toll lanes southward from downtown along Interstate 35W, one of the region’ busiest freeways. Unlike some freeway express routes in other cities, the Orange Line runs in both directions at 15-minute intervals (during weekdays) and serves substantial, accessible modern stations that bridge the gap between the speed of freeway travel and the pedestrian accessibility that serves successful transit. This approach also acknowledges the reality of the region’s multiple centers and serves the places that people are already going by car.

One of the I-35W rapid bus median stations on Metro Transit’s new Orange Line. Photo by Metro Transit.
Final construction of an I-35W rapid bus median station on Metro Transit’s new Orange Line. Photo by Metro Transit.
An early rendering of an I-35W rapid bus median station on Metro Transit’s new Orange Line. Photo by Metro Transit.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Metro Transit became one of a number of agencies to adjust its service to respond to shifting transit needs and provide better access: by lowering fares, providing near-term service to get students to school in the wake of bus driver shortages, and expanding a program to provide targeted transit passes to specific apartment buildings to better meet the needs of residents and actively reduce car-dependence. 

The agency’s strategies stem from three principles, according to Metro Transit arterial bus rapid transit manager Katie Roth, who collaborated with T4A in this case study: 1) to meet the market for transit as it stands today, 2) improve the market for transit for the future, and 3) improve access to transit in communities that have historically suffered disinvestment. “This is how we’re going to emerge from the pandemic as a transit system,” she says. 

Following traveler demand and creating a reliable all-day network will boost the resilience of neighborhoods around the region, providing a solid foundation to expand upon with their Network Next plan.

What other communities can learn about improving transit access 

Making a real impact on our climate will require providing transit that offers a true alternative to driving. While there is no “one-size-fits-all” answer that works for every city and no US city that has fully solved this puzzle, the agencies profiled here have several things in common: they used data to understand service needs and were willing to rethink their route structure—sometimes dramatically—to provide better access for people most reliant on transit and keep up with changing development patterns, often seeing significant increases in ridership as a result. 

Unfortunately, no amount of clever service redesign will make up for resources that simply aren’t there, so increasing transit funding must be part of the picture. And even a significant boost in funding won’t be enough to meaningfully improve transit access for all the people who need it in the more sprawling areas of our metro regions, so putting more people in the path of high quality transit by changing local development practices is a critical step on the path to a lower-emissions transportation system.

The Twin Cities region isn’t the only one that has updated its transit service to respond to evolving needs during the pandemic and beyond. In our final post in this series, we will be profiling agencies that have changed their approach during COVID to shift some focus away from traditional 9-to-5 commuters, make transit more affordable, and rethink what the future of transit should look like to reduce emissions and provide access for those who need it most.

Indianapolis rolls out the red carpet for transit

A Red Line bus stopped at a new station prior to launch.

More than a decade ago, local business and civic leaders in Indianapolis realized that for the city to remain competitive it needed to be better at moving people. Today, after an exhaustive planning process, changes to state law, and a successful local referendum where local voters raised their income taxes to invest in transit, the first major piece of Indianapolis’s transit upgrade is set to open.

This Labor Day weekend, the Red Line bus rapid transit (BRT) will start carrying riders across the city. It’s the first of three planned BRT lines in this midwestern city that, according to transit provider IndyGo, will usher in a “bold, new era of efficient, rider-focused” transit.

The Red Line is the culmination of years of work by current and former elected officials, countless residents and advocates, and business groups representing higher education, healthcare, and IT sectors, to name a few.

“The expansion of transit service in Indianapolis is the collective result from a tireless coalition advocating under one theme: connecting people to places,” Mark Fisher, chief policy officer at the Indy Chamber, told T4America. “It means making sure that our most underserved neighborhoods are as connected as our most established ones. The result is building toward a system for all, one that will boost economic benefits for both residents and businesses.”

Better transit is “key to luring employers, attracting young families and urban-oriented millennials looking for more affordable alternatives to pricey coastal cities, and drawing Indy-born college grads back home,” as we wrote a few years ago in an in-depth story about Indy’s ambitions.1

Backbone of better transit

The Red Line runs north to south for 13 miles, connecting intown neighborhoods with downtown Indianapolis, forming the spine of the improved transit system. One in every four people who work in the county are within walking distance (a half-mile) of the new route and it serves all of the major colleges in the area—that’s 133,000 college students. But this line won’t just serve well-to-do business commuters; about 20 percent of households along the Red Line earn below the poverty rate.

The new Red Line service will bring higher-quality service for residents compared to a traditional bus. Dedicated bus lanes that cover more than half of the route will keep buses moving as will new traffic signals that ban left turns at many intersections and prioritize bus travel. Riders will also pre-buy tickets at the station and can then board through any bus door to speed the boarding process. And new stations in the road median provide protection from the elements, real-time bus arrival information, and flush access with the floor of the bus allowing easier access for people in wheelchairs and with strollers or carts. The Red Line also features electric buses, making it the first all-electric BRT line in the United States.

The corridor was a logical route for the city’s first BRT line: buses along the Red Line route already accounted for about 15 percent of IndyGo’s boardings even though it only covers about one percent of its service area. The Red Line will greatly enhance service with buses running every 10-20 minutes every day; and this is only the first phase. Future phases will extend the line further north and south to reach even more people with high-quality transit.

Part of a system

While the Red Line will be the backbone of an improved transit network, it is not the first improvement that IndyGo has made nor will it be the last. Along with the launch of the Red Line—and funded in part by the same successful ballot referendum in 2016—a number of bus routes will be updated, and every bus route will now run seven days a week, with longer hours and more frequent buses. Many of these improvements began more than a year ago. After proceeds from the 2016 referendum started flowing, IndyGo identified which routes would not be changed with the Red Line rollout and they improved service on those routes as soon as possible. Those simple changes have already increased ridership.

IndyGo is also preparing to roll out a new payment system, MyKey, that will allow riders to use prepaid cards or their phones to pay the bus fare. MyKey will also cap fares to a maximum of $4.00 a day and $15.75 a week. Once riders hit that amount in the course of a day or week, subsequent rides will be free.

https://twitter.com/Indy_Austin/status/1164863518677639169?s=19

And of course there are also the two other BRT lines in the works. The Blue Line will connect some communities east of downtown with the airport to the west. The Purple Line will replace and improve one of the most popular routes in the IndyGo system that runs north from downtown and then east. While neither line has started construction yet, when complete, they will bring many of the same benefits of the Red Line—more service, greater accessibility, and ease of use—to even more communities.

The Red Line and other improvements have been a long time coming, but they’re just the first taste of better transit that will be coming to Indy over the next few years.

“IndyGo is ready to move the city forward and make transit practical for all Indianapolis residents,” said Bryan Luellen, IndyGo’s vice president of public affairs. “The Red Line is a mobility enhancement to the city, and by implementing a reliable transit network, we will contribute to the long-term development of surrounding communities.”

In Indy, better bus service is driving a better transportation system for everyone. With the Red Line’s bus lanes, Indy is quite literally rolling out the red carpet for transit.

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

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

This feature is part of arts and culture month at T4America and Smart Growth America, where we’re sharing a handful of stories about how arts and culture are a vital part of building better transportation projects and stronger communities. This feature is adapted from a longer case study that will be featured in Transportation for America’s and ArtPlace America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation due to be released later this month.

When we consider the role of art in transportation, most people probably first think about artistic contributions to the physical environment like creative streetscaping, transit stations, or other parts of the built environment. But art can be just as vital to the process of planning & building transportation projects.

In Portland, Oregon, arts-based engagement is helping to build dialogue between local agencies and the community to ensure that a new planned bus rapid transit (BRT) line serves the residents of ethnically diverse, low-income districts in the eastern part of the city. The Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) and the Division-Midway Alliance (DMA), two nonprofits located respectively in the Jade and Midway Division districts along Division street in Portland, have been empowering residents, businesses, and students to actively shape the evolving BRT project through arts and culture.

Home to many immigrant and refugee families that give this area a distinct ethnic and cultural diversity, the Jade and Division Midway districts have historically lacked strong, safe, transportation infrastructure. However, in recent years citizens have also witnessed development that has led to displacement throughout many communities in Portland. So Jade and Division Midway community members met the BRT proposal with curiosity but also scrutiny.

As stated in the Jade Midway District Arts Plan:

The BRT project will impact local businesses, and a city-wide housing emergency is driving housing costs up. Housing complexes in the district have changed private owners and renters experienced rent increases. Our work remains to address these challenges to continue to root the community in place.

Creative tactics, spearheaded by APANO and DMA, have created a platform for the community to advocate, express, and communicate their desires related to this new transportation proposal to ensure that the final project best serves their needs, reflect what makes their community unique, and is embraced by the people it serves.

For example, neighborhood artist Solomon Starr and local youth used hip hop to document the experiences of southeast Portland community members taking mass transit, while artist Tamara Lynne engaged community members who live, work, and travel along the proposed transit route through interactive performance.

To further build local capacity to do more of this kind of creative engagement with the community, these organizations built a Placemaking Steering Committee comprised of eight civic, nonprofit, and government members to guide creative placemaking plans in the district, and ultimately strengthen coalitions. APANO also launched a creative placemaking project grant program that is funding projects in the district led by cultural workers. These cultural workers then participate in a cohort known as the Resident Artist Collaborative, in which they receive training to help engage the community in the production of new artworks.

By building public awareness and political pressure through arts and cultural projects, APANO and the Division Midway Alliance helped to pause construction of the BRT planning process until the Portland Bureau of Transportation, TriMet, Metro, and others made formal community benefits agreements and agreed to mitigation measures to ensure that this vital new transit service would serve the community’s needs.

This project is just one of the many case studies that will be featured in Transportation for America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation, commissioned by ArtPlace America. The field scan is intended to examine the ways in which transportation professionals are exploring new creative, collaborative and contextually-specific approaches to engage the community in more inclusive processes for planning and building new transportation projects.

Stay tuned for more about arts and culture during the rest of September.

An exciting time for bus rapid transit

A new study found that BRT in Eugene, OR had a positive impact on the livability of the surrounding communities. (Photo credit: Lane Transit District)

Investments in high-capacity public transit such as light rail and subways continue to demonstrate their ability to substantially increase property values along transit alignments. But can we say the same about buses?

Interest in bus rapid transit (BRT) is booming across the country as an effective and more affordable transit investment. Yet little research has been completed on their economic impacts in the U.S., partially because only a limited number of BRT projects have been completed here. Elected officials, real estate developers, and other key decision-makers are eager for more information on whether investments in BRT will pay off in their own communities.

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), in partnership with Transportation for America, released an early study last year that found that BRT can indeed generate economic development, attract jobs, retails, and affordable housing.

Building on that research, NITC recently published a new study that takes a closer look at the impact of one specific BRT system. Researchers examined the Emerald Express (EmX) — a BRT system that connects downtown Eugene to Springfield, Oregon — and found that the EmX line improved the livability of the surrounding communities:

“The EmX line had a statistically significant positive impact on property values, which stands to benefit the community as a whole: the related taxes can be used to pay for transportation and other infrastructure, further enhancing the economic development of the community.”

This is an exciting time for BRT in the U.S. — BRT projects are currently underway in dozens of cities, several of which are taking part in the FTA TOD Technical Assistance Initiative. Visit the TODresources.org hub to access a trove of research on how to maximize the development potential of BRT corridors.

Recent TOD news

Here are a few things that have been happening this week with TOD projects across the country.

(Cross-posted from TODresources.org)

Announcing the winners of our three creative placemaking grants

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

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

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

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

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

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

City of Dothan / Dothan, AL

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

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

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

LA Commons / Los Angeles, CA

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

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

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

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

Transit Drives Indy / Indianapolis, IN

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

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

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

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

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

Arts and culture are helping three cities transform neighborhoods in a positive way

From new light rail systems to bus rapid transit lines, cities are planning major new transportation investments to spur economic development and better connect people to opportunity. But how can they ensure that these investments — often in diverse and quickly evolving parts of their cities — transform neighborhoods in a positive way by building social capital, supporting local businesses, and celebrating the stories, cultural history and diversity of existing residents rather than displacing them?

Through a generous grant from the Kresge Foundation, over the last two years we’ve worked alongside local partners in three rapidly changing, diverse communities around the country to explore how arts and culture and more creative forms of engaging the public can provide positive answers to the questions asked above.

We’re seeking to award $50,000 (each) to creative placemaking projects in three new cities for 2017-2018. Find out more about the grant opportunity and apply today.

Learn More & Apply

In three specific cities outlined below (and elsewhere), an approach known as creative placemaking has helped engage community members in a deeper way than traditional transportation and public works agencies have managed to do, enabling and empowering true community-led visions for the projects at hand. This approach demonstrates tremendous promise for transportation agencies and local governments at a time when many have historically failed to win deep public support for important projects, often delaying or derailing implementation.

Over the last two years of our Cultural Corridor Consortium project, as it’s called, we’ve witnessed artistic and cultural practice sparking deep public engagement, facilitating the difficult — but necessary — conversations required to create better projects that more fully serve the needs of these communities and reflect what makes them unique in the first place. The consortium consists of trusted local partner organizations working in transit corridors in neighborhoods just outside urban cores: the Nolensville Pike Corridor in Nashville, the University Avenue corridor in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood, and Division Street in Portland’s Jade and Division-Midway Districts.

Here are brief versions of each of their stories:

Nashville

In south Nashville, the Nolensville Pike corridor is a thriving community of recent immigrants, primarily of Latin, Kurdish, Somali, and Sudanese origin. Today, Nashville welcomes more than 1,000 refugees a year, has the fastest growing immigrant community in the United States, and is home to one of the largest Kurdish populations outside the Middle East. Nolensville Pike, which has been dubbed the “International District,” serves as the focal point of these immigrant communities.

Nolensville Pike is also a congested, typical arterial highway that carries 60,000 automobile trips a day while also serving adjacent commercial uses and residential neighborhoods. Though it serves as the central commercial spine of immigrant life in south Nashville, it has eroded or non-existent sidewalks, few crosswalks, insufficient bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, and no bus shelters, making travel outside of a car a downright unpleasant and often dangerous experience.

In 2015, Conexión Américas began hosting community meetings — facilitated by artists — to solicit ideas for transforming the road and surrounding spaces. At these meetings, the public expressed their desire for unbroken, connected  sidewalks, artistic crosswalks, slower traffic, public art, and bus shelters. To bolster this work, we supported Conexión Américas and the Nashville Area MPO to facilitate community-based arts and culture public engagement to plan and implement improved bus service and, eventually, light rail.

Through a student-led bus shelter design/build project, an intergenerational oral history project, and dynamic “Creative Labs” community meetings, the community came together to dream about the future of Nolensville Pike. This work was documented in Envision Nolensville Pike and led to the creation of the city’s first-ever bilingual crosswalk, situated on Nolensville Pike.

Supported by new analysis that T4America and Conexión Américas are releasing in the coming weeks, these partners are producing a plan to avoid commercial displacement and cultural gentrification along the corridor while building a better Pike for everyone. The next phase of this project will bring some of these visions to fruition to test ideas, push boundaries, and further build relationships along the diverse corridor.

The Nashville MPO formally launched its creative placemaking efforts with the adoption of its most recent regional transportation plan, and recently hosted a Creative Placemaking Symposium that convened area elected officials, transportation planners and engineers to think through applying creative placemaking to transportation projects.

San Diego

Since the mid-1990s, the neighborhood surrounding the intersection of 50th Street and University Avenue in the eastern City Heights neighborhood of San Diego has been a landing pad for newly arrived refugees from Somalia and other East African countries. Nearly three decades later, the bustling neighborhood, often referred to as as Little Mogadishu or Little Somalia, continues to serve the Somali and other East African communities. It’s a regional hub for other East Africans from throughout San Diego, a neighborhood hub for those that have been living there for years, and continues to be a welcoming home to new refugees. Many of those who arrived in the 1990s have become established business and community leaders, pillars of a strong local social fabric. In the neighborhood you’ll find Somali businesses, mosques that attract and support new arrivals, and affordable housing apartment complexes, all which contribute to the rich sense of culture and home.

Despite the sense of community that the the neighborhood has nurtured, it’s a dangerous area to walk, with high rates of pedestrian fatalities and other safety issues. The City Heights Community Development Corporation (CHCDC) has been engaging the community to envision how they can integrate their art, culture and history with a safer streetscape. Picking up on that work, Circulate San Diego, alongside CHCDC, initiated new programs to engage with largely East African and Somali residents to define community assets, and discuss how these assets can be reflected in art to improve the overall transit ridership experience with bus rapid transit on El Cajon Boulevard.

All of this public engagement has led to the development of parklets, gathering spaces, a pop-up coffee shop, local farmers market and traffic calming murals that have helped solidify sense of place, strengthened community ownership, and increased pedestrian safety.

The neighborhood’s “Take Back the Alley” mural project brought community members together to create a mural near a BRT station. This public art piece, and the positive effects it has on the surrounding area generated inertia, encouraging a small business owner nearby to clean up an adjacent parking lot and repurpose it as a café space, now leased by a local start-up coffee cart business.

Our partners also spearheaded the new San Diego Neighborhood Placemaking Collaborative, a collection of five neighborhood-based organizations who meet regularly to advocate for creative placemaking in the region. Last year, Circulate San Diego produced A Place for Placemaking in San Diego as a roadmap to overhaul the regulations and permitting policies that negatively impact creative placemaking projects in San Diego.  The white paper is already helping to shape new permitting procedures by defining creative placemaking in San Diego’s Municipal Code and subsequently providing for a new process for community organizations and other applicants interested in pursuing neighborhood placemaking projects. Circulate San Diego and CHCDC also recently participated as key stakeholders in a city-led “Complete Boulevard study” to bring a complete streets design concept and creative placemaking elements to El Cajon Boulevard and this neighborhood in particular.

Portland

In Portland, arts-based engagement has helped build a positive dialogue between local agencies and the community to ensure that a new planned bus rapid transit line serves the residents of ethnically diverse, working class districts in the eastern part of the city. The Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) and the Division-Midway Alliance, two nonprofits located respectively in the Jade and Division districts along Division street in Portland, have been empowering residents, businesses, and students through arts and culture to shape the evolving BRT project.

This area is home to many immigrant families that give the area a rich ethnic and cultural diversity that is increasingly rare in Portland. In a corridor with members from such diverse backgrounds, creative tactics allow the community to advocate, express, and communicate their needs and interests related to this new transportation proposal.

By building public awareness and pressure through placemaking work and community organizing, APANO and Division-Midway Alliance helped to pause construction of the BRT planning process until the Portland Bureau of Transportation, Trimet, Metro, and others made formal community benefit agreements by agreeing to mitigation measures to ensure that the new vital transit service would transform the community in a positive way.

Similar to Nashville and San Diego, our partners in Portland also developed a community-based vision — the Jade-Midway Districts Art Plan — to guide their arts and culture solutions to transportation challenges. To further build local capacity, our partners built a Placemaking Steering Committee comprised of eight civic, nonprofit, and government members to guide creative placemaking plans in the district. APANO also launched a creative placemaking project grant program, which funds the creation of cultural worker-led projects in the district. These cultural workers then participate in a cohort known as the Resident Artist Collaborative, in which they receive training to help prepare to produce community-engaged work.

One of the most exciting products of this work is the creation of a new community placemaking grant program at Metro, which will institutionalize this cultural work through the Portland area. Metro, the Portland region’s MPO, kicked off their inaugural Community Placemaking Grant last month, and we were on hand, and we were on hand.

Arts and culture contribute to the unique identity of a city and exert a powerful emotional pull. They’re intrinsic to preserving what’s great about the places people already love, and for creating new places worth caring about. We firmly believe that engaging the public through the arts and culture helps produce better projects, promote social equity, and is part of building better places that are loved and cared for by a more diverse community of people.

In all three of these cities we’ve seen a deep commitment to community-building between local organizations and municipal agencies lead to new institutional creative placemaking programs that will last long after these isolated projects are finished. The pilot projects have led directly to new funding programs and policy changes to build a sustained practice of creative placemaking in the three cities, while bringing new voices to the table.

Bring creative placemaking to your city through a new grant opportunity

After working closely with these cities over the last few years, we are eager to expand on this work — we’re seeking to award $50,000 (each) to creative placemaking projects in three new cities for 2017-2018.

Find out more about the grant opportunity and apply today.

Learn More & Apply

This post was produced by Mallory Nezam and Ben Stone on our arts and culture team.

After city council action, Indy voters will decide on expanding and improving regional transit this November

Indianapolis took another big step forward this week in their ongoing efforts to expand and improve transit service across the city and region. Monday night, the Indianapolis City-County Council voted to place a measure on this November’s ballot to allow voters to decide whether or not to raise new funding for transit service.

If approved, the measure would allow IndyGo, the city’s transit agency, to dramatically expand and improve public transportation service, tripling the number of residents and doubling the number of jobs within a five-minute walk from frequent transit service. It will also extend the hours of service for transit, making it a viable choice for more workers. This base of new funding will also support the start of building out the city’s visionary network of bus-rapid transit (BRT) lines.

Indy profile featuredRead more about Indy’s long-term plan and their journey to this point in our can-do profile: “Action by the Indiana legislature in early 2014 cleared the way for metro Indianapolis counties to have a long-awaited vote on funding a much-expanded public transportation network, with a major emphasis on bus rapid transit. With that legislative battle behind them, the broad Indy coalition is working toward a November 2016 ballot measure to fund the first phase of their ambitious Indy Connect transportation plan.”

With the council’s vote now completed, voters in Marion County will decide on supporting a 0.25% increase in income taxes — a tax of about $100 for a resident earning $42,000 a year — specifically for transit. This additional revenue source will provide an additional $56 million a year for IndyGo.

Improving transit service has been a top priority for Indianapolis’s business community and many of the city’s elected, civic and faith-based leaders, who recognize that investing in transportation options is vital both for connecting low-income workers to economic opportunity and for the competition for talented workers and new businesses.

“It’s…a growth issue; employers and younger workers are moving to more walkable areas served by transit. Rapid transit also attracts people and investment,” Indy Chamber President Michael Huber said in a statement after the council approved the measure.

As it happened, on the day that the city council vote took place, T4America Director James Corless was an invited guest at the Indy Chamber’s quarterly policy breakfast, speaking about the challenges facing mid-sized cities like Indy and affirming the region’s plans to invest in transit to help stay competitive.

And that night, James got to watch the Indianapolis City-County Council debate the measure and ultimately vote to put it on this November’s ballot:

The Indy Business Journal took a look at what lies ahead for the campaign to win at the ballot this Fall:

Now comes a months-long campaign to convince voters to vote “yes.”

…“We feel very comfortable heading into November that if we’re able to get our message out and speak to the different reasons people would support transit, polling does show we have a path for success,” said Mark Fisher, Indy Chamber’s vice president of government relations and policy development, to a room full of business leaders and government officials.

Fisher and a handful of other local leaders were supported and encouraged over the last year by the Transportation Innovation Academy, a program convened by Transportation for America and TransitCenter last year to train local leaders from three mid-sized regions on the critical role transit can play in their cities. The Indy Chamber convened a diverse team of community leaders that participated in the yearlong program, and today, we’re so proud to see participants in the academy from Indy playing key roles in building community support for the ambitious vision for new transit service.

Though ballot measures are common in other parts of the country, it is a new tool for this region. A first step for regional transit champions was winning approval from legislators in 2014 to allow the local tax measure to go on the ballot. If successful, this will be the first time Indianapolis raises dedicated funding for public transportation through a ballot measure.

Along with a handful of other regions, we will be watching Indianapolis carefully this November.

Join us next week for an online discussion about “Buses Mean Business”

Last week, Transportation for America and Smart Growth America’s transit-oriented development initiative hosted the public launch of new research about bus rapid transit (BRT) lines and their potential for economic development, and next week, we’re inviting all of you to join us for an online presentation of the findings.

The National Study of BRT Development Outcomes, authored by Arthur C. (“Chris”) Nelson and published by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities at Portland State University, was publicly released on Tuesday, January 12 at a live event in Washington, DC.

This new peer-reviewed research provides compelling evidence that BRT systems in the U.S. can indeed generate economic development, attract jobs, retail and affordable housing — at a cost that’s well within reach for many mid-size American cities.

So many people have expressed interest in this research that we’re holding an online version of the kickoff event. Join us on Monday, January 25, 2016 at 3:30pm EST to learn all the details of this new research from the report’s author, as well as what this means for communities considering a BRT line.

brt-online-discussion

All across the U.S., interest in BRT is booming as a smart, more affordable transit option. As of today, more than 30 U.S. regions in at least 24 states are either building or actively considering building new bus rapid transit lines in 2016 and beyond. The new study looks at what these projects could mean for development patterns, housing affordability, and employment and wages in those areas.

Next week’s webinar is a chance to hear all the details of this new research, as well as ask your questions of the report’s author. We’ll be taking questions during the event, as well as on Twitter at the hashtag #BusesMeanBusiness. Register to join us next week — we look forward to talking with you.

New study finds positive economic development benefits associated with bus rapid transit projects

Today T4America unveiled the findings of a new peer-reviewed study that examined existing bus rapid transit (BRT) lines and found strong evidence that BRT systems in the U.S. can indeed generate economic development, attract jobs, retail and affordable housing — at a cost that’s well within reach for many mid-size American cities.

Bus rapid transit is a type of bus service that travels faster and more reliably by providing level boarding, triggering traffic signals, providing pre-board fare payment and running in dedicated lanes separated from traffic, among other typical characteristics. For the first time, a new peer-reviewed research study, unveiled this morning, provides compelling evidence that BRT — often with a price tag far lower than other transit investments — can provide ample economic benefits for cities large and small.

The study, authored by Arthur C. (Chris) Nelson and published by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) at Portland State University, was publicly released this morning in an event held by Transportation for America, Smart Growth America’s TOD Technical Assistance Initiative and NITC.

Interested in learning more? Couldn’t make our in-person event today in Washington, DC? We’ll be going over the findings in detail again in an online presentation on Monday, January 25, at 3:30 Eastern time. It’s free and open to all, so register today. 

All across the US, interest in bus rapid transit is booming as a smart, more affordable transit option. According to data gathered by Yonah Freemark and Steven Vance for Transit Explorer, more than 30 U.S. regions in at least 24 states are either building or actively considering building new bus rapid transit lines in 2016 and beyond.

Bus rapid transit coming soon graphic map

But there have been notable gaps in the research on the possible benefits — until now.

What does the study have to say about the economic benefits of BRT?

BRT encourages new office growth in locations connected to transit.

The areas within a half-mile of BRT corridors increased their share of new office space by one third from 2000-2007, and new multifamily apartment construction doubled in those half-mile areas since 2008. For most areas studied, there was a rent premium for office space within a BRT corridor.

BRT corridors fared better than other areas after the recession.

During the economic recovery following the 2008 recession, these corridors also increased their share of office space by one third, and more higher-wage job growth occurred near BRT stations than occurred in central counties. During the economic recovery, BRT station areas saw the largest positive shift in the share of upper-wage jobs, and employment in the manufacturing sector increased.

“Unlike the presumptions of some, bus rapid transit systems have important effects on metropolitan development patterns,” report author Dr. Arthur C. Nelson said in the study. “At substantially lower costs, BRT generates important and sometimes impressive development outcomes.”

To that end, Mayor Gregory Ballard, the recently departed Mayor of Indianapolis and a guest speaker at this morning’s event, noted that a new bus rapid transit network is one of his city’s primary economic competitiveness strategies.

“170,000 employees work within walking distance of our planned Red Line bus rapid transit service — one out of every five employees in the region,” Mayor Ballard said. “We have existing bus service, but it doesn’t go to where the existing jobs are. Providing a way to connect more people to more jobs in the region via a lower-cost, fast, flexible transportation option like bus rapid transit is a smart economic move to ensure that our growing region prospers for years to come.”

At the event, the Hon. Chris Zimmerman, Vice President for Economic Development at Smart Growth America, referenced work that Smart Growth America performed to quantify those potential economic benefits.

“A fiscal analysis we conducted for Indianapolis showed substantial benefits in terms of municipal revenues and costs if future development could be attracted to areas around their new bus rapid transit stations,” Zimmerman said. “It’s this kind of potential that is generating increasing interest in BRT, especially in mid-size cities.” Zimmerman directs the National Public Transportation/Transit-Oriented Development Technical Assistance initiative which Smart Growth America is leading in partnerships with the Federal Transit Administration.

The Hon. John Robert Smith, Transportation for America Advisory Board Chair, noted that Indianapolis is far from alone, supporting Dr. Nelson’s assertion that BRT could represent a large share of new high-quality transit investment for the next few decades.

“These findings are an affirmation for the scores of other can-do regions that bus rapid transit is a smart investment that can indeed bring tangible economic returns. The mayors and other elected officials I meet with on a regular basis are intensely concerned with connecting their residents to jobs, and evidence like this will bolster their efforts to use BRT as a tool to do so,” Smith added.

The full study can be downloaded here.

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The study was published by the National Institute of Transportation and Communities at Portland State University and was funded partially through a grant from Transportation for America. Dr. Nelson, who began the study at the University of Utah’s Metropolitan Research Center, is currently Professor of Planning & Real Estate Development at the University of Arizona.

SGA’s TOD Technical Assistance Initiative is made possible through support from the Federal Transit Administration.

Buses Mean Business: New evidence supporting economic benefits of bus rapid transit

buses mean business

For those of you in the DC area next week (including those of you planning to attend the Transportation Research Board conference), join us on Tuesday for the national release of a new academic study on the economic benefits resulting from smart investments in bus rapid transit.

Join us next week on Tuesday, January 12th at 10:30 a.m. inside the Carnegie Library across from the DC convention center to hear from the report authors and other notable speakers.

Buses, you say? All across the US, interest in bus rapid transit (BRT) is booming as a smart, more affordable transit option. For the first time, a new peer-reviewed research study provides compelling evidence that BRT systems in the U.S. can generate economic development, attract jobs, retail and affordable housing — at a cost that’s well within reach for many mid-sized American cities. Join us as we help unveil the results of this new study outlining the potential economic returns of BRT investments, plus a firsthand explanation from the former Mayor of Indianapolis on why his city is banking on a brand new bus rapid transit network as one of the city’s primary economic competitiveness strategies.

Tuesday, January 12th, 2016
10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m.
The L’Enfant Map Room, Carnegie Library
801 K Street NW, Washington, DC
(Immediately south of DC convention center)

or contact Alicia Orosco: alicia.orosco@t4america.org

Join us on social media to talk about the findings, whether you’re attending in person next Tuesday or checking back here to read the full report on Tuesday. Is your city planning a new bus rapid transit line or system?

#BusesMeanBusiness

Hosted by:

  • The Hon. John Robert Smith, Advisory Board Chair, Transportation for America & Senior Policy Advisor, Smart Growth America
  • The Hon. Gregory Ballard, Former Mayor, Indianapolis, IN, and Advisory Board Member, Transportation for America
  • (Study author) Arthur C. Nelson, Ph.D, FAICP, Professor of Planning & Real Estate Development, University of Arizona
  • The Hon. Christopher Zimmerman, Vice President for Economic Development, Smart Growth America

Can’t make the meeting?

Help us spread the word about the event and the new study (which you’ll be able to read next week). Use the hashtag #BusesMeanBusiness and share the event on Twitter (link below), Facebook, and other social networks.

share on twitter

Sponsored by Transportation for America, Smart Growth America’s TOD Technical Assistance Initiative and the National Institute for Transportation and Communities.

SGA’s TOD Technical Assistance Initiative is made possible through support from the Federal Transit Administration.

Eugene EMX Bus rapid transit

Transportation for America takes a look at the options for funding transit in St. Louis

St. Louis’s economic prospects are directly related to the quality of access to transportation for their residents — making new investments in public transportation essential. A new T4America report analyzes the possible ways that the St. Louis region could fund an expansion of their public transportation network.

STL-top-of-arch

This report was commissioned and released by Citizens for Modern Transit, a St. Louis-area nonprofit that supports the creation of an integrated, affordable and convenient public transportation system in the area.

Though the St. Louis region is considering several proposals to dramatically expand or improve the region’s public transportation, the bottom line is that these projects are often expensive, funding is scarce, the state may not be interested in investing in transit at all, and the uncertainty stemming from congressional inaction has only made things worse.

St Louis report coverLike most metro areas these days, St. Louis does not possess a single regional organization or government that can singlehandedly fund any of their planned major transit projects; and just one or two funding sources are rarely enough to make these projects happen in any case. (The same can be said of most major transportation projects, whether roads or transit. But states more often decide to underwrite major local road projects.)

Many regions have successfully built new transit projects by creatively piecing together funding through a variety of sources from all levels of government, along with a variety of private sources. This new report analyzes various options for funding transit at the federal, state and local level, including ways to combine various sources of funding, to build projects from large rail projects to less expensive bus or bus rapid transit projects. It also provides examples from across the nation of actual projects built using each funding mechanism raised to illustrate how each can be applied.

To bring the issue home in St. Louis, the report also analyzes two projects currently under consideration in the St. Louis region: a new 17-mile light rail line from North St. Louis to downtown and a 23-mile highway-running BRT line along I-64 ending downtown. The report considers ways to mix and match funding from federal, state and local sources to bring projects like these to fruition in the near future.

Transportation for America undertook this analysis under our new consulting practice led by our Beth Osborne, formerly the Acting Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation. The goal of this kind of work is to take Transportation for America’s national research and make it practical and actionable for the local leaders clamoring to invest in their communities by making smart transportation investments.

If you’re interested in a similar analysis for your region or discussing other consulting opportunities, please get in touch with us.

Leaders say St. Petersburg transit measure key to economic success

Voters in Pinellas County, Florida, which includes St. Petersburg and borders Tampa, have the chance to approve a one percent sales tax next week that will raise $130 million per year. The money will kickstart a 24-mile light rail system, improve and expand their bus system by 65 percent, build bus rapid transit lines, and increase important regional connections.

Pinellas County Light Rail Sketch

Passage would be a major step forward for St. Petersburg and the Tampa Bay region, coming four years after a similar measure in neighboring Hillsborough County narrowly failed.

The plan, known as Greenlight Pinellas, would make a key change to the county’s current funding mechanism for their bus system, erasing the transit millage on property taxes and replacing it with a one percent sales tax. That’s a key change, as it shifts the burden of paying for transit from property owners only, to one that’s shared by the large numbers of tourists and visitors visiting the region. As much as a third of the revenue would eventually come from tourists, according to Greenlight.

The Tampa Tribune endorsed the measure, especially the aspect to shift the funding burden away from solely Pinellas property owners. “Tourism is at record levels as the recession fades. It’s time the county adopted a comprehensive mass transit vision reflecting that dynamic growth.”

The plan would almost immediately improve bus service and increase frequency, and will eventually expand service by about 65 percent, adding new weekend and night service, as well as more frequent service to job centers like Tampa International Airport and downtown St. Pete and Tampa to better connect employees to jobs.

Rapid bus and BRT service will be added on six of the busiest, most productive corridors, and work will begin on a 24-mile light rail line that runs across the county, from Clearwater in the northwest, to downtown St. Pete in the southeast. (Pinellas will still have to assemble other local, state and federal funding to complete the $1.6 billion rail project, but importantly, this measure would also raise enough money to cover the operations of that line once it is up and running.)

The business community has been full-throated in its support of the measure. As of October 10th, supporters had raised over $1 million to support the campaign. The Tampa Bay Partnership, the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce, Sykes Enterprises, Bright House Networks, TransAmerica Insurance and Derby Lane, the Tampa Bay Rays and Lightning, and numerous other local small businesses are supporting the measure.

Michael Kalt, a senior vice president with the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, told Greenlight that, “Transit is really the linchpin to economic success and improving the quality of life in any major metropolitan area.”

The Tampa Bay Times supported the measure in a strong op-ed. “Tampa Bay is the largest metropolitan area without a viable transportation system that includes bus service and some form of rail.” This project, if approved, will be the first step in “correcting a weakness” of the Tampa Bay region, the editorial continued. Their columnist Joe Henderson also argues for the passage asking his readers, ”How much longer does it take you to get from Point A to B now than it did five years ago? You think an extra penny in sales tax is expensive? Try measuring the loss when businesses take their new jobs elsewhere because of the congestion.”

Pinellas County Projected Routes

The project has major political support in addition to the private support, with endorsements from the mayors of the four largest cities and Representative Kathy Castor (D-FL), who said, “This is an active community; this is a community on the go, but we need better transportation options.” Encouraging her constituents to vote yes, she said, “When you do that, you will be making an investment in yourself.”

The organized opposition, No Tax for Tracks, worries about the burden of increasing the sales tax one cent, bringing it to a total of eight percent. They are also concerned about low ridership, though Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority has reported record boardings the last few years on its buses.

Perhaps no one will be watching this measure more closely than their counterparts across Tampa Bay.

It’s no coincidence that some of the strongest support has been coming from leaders there in Tampa and Hillsborough County: They have high hopes for a referendum of their own to expand existing transit service, build new light rail and some new regional connections, especially after seeing a measure fail four years ago. This new light rail line from Clearwater to downtown St. Petersburg could be the beginning of so much more.

“Perhaps, the rail line represents what could be the start of a regional system across the Howard Frankland Bridge that might one day link the airport, the University of South Florida, the commercial hubs in Gateway, West Shore and downtown Tampa,” said the Times editorial.

Stay tuned next week to hear the results of the voting.

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Pinellas County is one of a handful of state and local measures to raise revenue to invest transportation. For more information on the measures we’re keeping a close eye on next week, make sure to check out our full Transportation Vote 2014 page.

Transpo Vote 2014 promo graphic

To better serve the states and localities that are currently campaigning (or hope to campaign) for smart transportation investments, we are hosting the Capital Ideas Conference in Denver on November 13-14th. There’s still time to register, so learn more today.

If you want to know more about ballot measures related specifically to transit, turn to the Center for Transportation Excellence, who tracks all of those measures and aggregates numbers on results nationwide on an ongoing basis.

Indiana Governor signs bill allowing Indianapolis to vote on transit ballot measures

In a huge victory for citizens and the local business community, Indiana  Gov. Mike Pence (R) Wednesday signed a long-sought bill giving metro Indianapolis counties the right to vote on funding a much-expanded public transportation network, including bus rapid transit.

(We wrote about this same bill passing the legislature earlier this week in a post looking at how states were helping or hurting local efforts to improve their transportation networks.) – Ed.

“Our capital city is a world class destination and needs a world class transit system,” said Governor Mike Pence in his statement shortly after signing the bill allowing the six metro Indy counties to hold referendums to let voters decide whether to build a transit system using mostly income-tax revenue. After at least three attempts by boosters over the last few years to get a bill approved, Governor Pence signed the bill late yesterday afternoon

For three years, Indy leaders asked the state legislature to give them the ability and control to ask their own voters if an improved regional transportation network was something worth a few dollars more each year in additional income taxes — something that Indiana counties cannot do without permission of the state. Local mayors, county executives, citizens and many in the local business community have been clamoring for an improved transit network — including rapid bus corridors — for years to help keep Indy competitive. They just wanted their chance to make the case to the voters and let the citizens of metro Indy make their decision.

Gov. Pence apparently heard the message:

“I am a firm believer in local control and the collective wisdom of the people of Indiana.  Decisions on economic development and quality of life are best made at the local level. Whether local business tax reform or mass transit, I trust local leaders and residents to make the right decisions for their communities.”

This was certainly a big victory for the business community, and an issue on which Indy Mayor Greg Ballard had lobbied hard, telling the Indy Star that he’d “been to the Statehouse more on this than any other issue.”

“This marks a significant step forward for the growth of Indy and the rest of Central Indiana,” said Mayor Ballard in his statement yesterday afternoon. In many ways, though, the hard work is really just beginning. While the state has indeed empowered the five metro Indianapolis counties to take the question to the ballot, that might not happen before 2015, and will require a huge effort to coordinate between the different counties and make the case to voters.

“Today is a day for Indy to celebrate but not the day to declare victory. There is still much work to be done,” Mayor Ballard said.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization was delighted by the news as well.

“Our region’s leaders have worked diligently on this bill for years, and it’s a major milestone for transit in Central Indiana,” said Sean Northrup of the Indy MPO. “It’s not the finish line but it takes us one major step closer. The bill requires specific proposals, so we’ll continue to refine the Indy Connect plan and we’re looking forward to our next round of public input meetings this spring.”

Learn more about the Indy Connect plan here, and watch their video below.

Locals encountering help or hindrance from states on their transportation plans

Flickr photo by John Greenfield http://www.flickr.com/photos/24858199@N00/10090187245/

Several places have been in the news lately as they find their ambitious efforts to solve transportation challenges hinging on legislative action this lawmaking season. In some, state legislators are helping out with enabling legislation, but in others they are challenging the concept of local control and threatening needed investment.

The prime case of the latter has been in Nashville, where a handful of Tennessee legislators decided to interfere in a regional Nashville plan to build a first-of-its-kind bus rapid transit system through the region’s core.

An initial measure from a non-Nashville lawmaker would have required a vote of the General Assembly to approve the BRT line, despite the state DOT’s role in planning the line as a member of the Nashville Metropolitan Planning Organization’s board. An amendment to an unrelated bill said flatly: ”No rapid bus project in a metropolitan form of government, such as Nashville, could be built without the permission of the … General Assembly.”

Mayors of Tennessee’s four large cities immediately saw the threat that legislative micromanaging posed to their ability to meet their economic challenges and fired off a letter (pdf) that helped persuade legislators to try a different tack. The House version now simply affirms the status quo that the DOT must approve use of state right-of-way for a transit line and that only the legislature can appropriate state funds.

But new language was added in the Senate’s version that would prohibit any transit system from picking up or dropping off passengers in the middle of state roads as a “safety” measure — exactly what’s planned for The Amp line — regardless of what the Federal Transit Administration or engineers at TDOT have to say about the safety track record of center-running BRT. (Center running BRT is already in use or on the way in Cleveland, OH; Eugene, OR; San Bernardino, CA; Chicago, IL; and a handful of other cities.)

Photo by CTAFlickr photo by John Greenfield /photos/24858199@N00/10090187245/
Current conditions on Ashland in Chicago, and rendering of the new planned center-running BRT for the corridor. Does one of these streets look safer for pedestrians than the other?

In Indiana, meanwhile, the legislature finally granted metro Indianapolis the right to vote on funding a much-expanded bus network, including bus rapid transit. What it won’t include is light rail, as dictated by the new law, which would allow six counties to hold referendums to let voters decide whether to build a transit system using mostly income-tax revenue, according to the Indianapolis Star.

Despite the mode-specific directive, it was a big victory for the business community, who pointed out that the state stands to benefit if growth engine Indianapolis continues to succeed economically. The region is a hotbed of healthcare jobs, and once again, providing a better bus system — something Mayor Greg Ballard and region’s other leaders are committed to doing — means that those employers get access to a bigger pool of workers, and workers of all incomes can reach a greater range of jobs.

Four years after their bus service was completely canceled, Clayton County just south of Atlanta proper is catching a helping hand from the Georgia general assembly. Lawmakers just passed a measure that would allow Clayton County voters to vote on approving a penny sales tax to restore local transit operations — something voters, local leaders and citizens alike strongly support.

When Clayton County lost that bus service, they lost something that employers — especially those at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport — depended on to get employees to work every day. There are thousands of jobs at that enormous airport right at the edge of Clayton County, and a good transit connection was a boost for jobs and residents to benefit from that economic magnet.

Up in Minnesota, the state is moving a huge comprehensive funding package for transportation across the state — one of many states considering ways to raise their own new revenue for transportation. (See our tracker) A House committee voted 9-6 Friday to pass the comprehensive transportation funding bill (HF 2395). Similar legislation didn’t make it through the House committee in 2013.

Supporting and enabling these efforts is exactly what states should be doing as local cities and regions are trying desperately to make these sorts of investments a reality, usually with their own skin in the game; not obstructing them at every turn.

When a city or region wants to raise a tax via public ballot vote to improve their transportation network, shouldn’t the state leaders proudly support those efforts of a city bootstrapping their way up?

Editors note: We’re in the process of updating it with 2014 information, but you can find similar information to the Minnesota plan over on our State Funding Tracker, which focuses largely on state (i.e., not local) plans to fund transportation.

As feds OK funding, critical legislators move to block Nashville’s planned transit investment

Opponents in the Tennessee legislature have put forward an amendment designed to stop Nashville’s bus rapid transit line, eliciting howls of protest over legislative intervention in a local project previously approved by the state DOT.

Last updated: 4/12 1:24 p.m. at bottom. You may recall our profile of Nashville and it’s vision to get ahead of rapid growth by investing in bus rapid transit network.  Nashville struggles with some of the worst congestion in the Southeast along with some of the longest peak-hour travel times in the nation.

Nashville Amp Map crop

That’s in part because the region’s economy has led the nation in rate of job growth. As population surges, metro leaders have been working to grow in a way that will continue attracting and retaining top-flight talent while avoiding the challenges that have plagued larger peers like Atlanta.

Their first big step toward a more sophisticated transit network is The Amp, an east-west line through the heart of the city that would connect diverse neighborhoods, major employers (including two hospitals and a university), and heavily visited tourist destinations.

Just last week they received the encouraging news that the Federal Transit Administration recommended $27 million in federal funding, the first installment  of a potential $75 million match to state and local contributions.

That good news for supporters was overshadowed by an unexpected amendment explicitly crafted to require Nashville get the approval of the state legislature before being able to move ahead.

According to Nashville’s daily, The Tennessean, the amendment to a bill on crosswalk safety  “says no rapid bus project in a metropolitan form of government, such as Nashville, could be built without the permission of the … General Assembly.”

In the same article, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean’s office called the move an “overreach” into a project that enjoys public and federal support. A followup piece further explored the issue of legislative intervention with Michael Skipper, executive director of the Nashville Metropolitan Planning Organization:

The Tennessee Department of Transportation is part of the MPO, which approved $4 million in Amp funding in December, and the governor or his designee sits on the agency’s board, Skipper said Friday.

“My position is that the project’s already approved by the state, and the governor’s concurrence is there,” he said. “These are typically executive branch decisions. …

“Giving the state legislature veto authority over projects that are already approved sort of undermines the federal law that requires the state and the locals to make these decisions together.”

The business community seemed to be shocked that the state would attempt to overrule local control on a plan that represents a key pillar of the local economic development strategy for a place so important to the state.

“You’ve got the largest regional economic contributor to this state, and it’s the only target of this limiting legislation,” said [Ralph] Schulz, president and CEO of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

The amended crosswalk safety bill could move through the Tennessee legislature as early as Wednesday. The Amp coalition is urging supporters to make phone calls to their state representatives and the leadership to ensure that they hear all the voices from Nashville residents (see below.)

We’ll be keeping a close eye on what happens this week, but follow us on twitter @t4america for more regular updates.

Post by Nashville Amp.

UPDATED (4:57 p.m.) The Nashville Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Middle Tennessee Mayors Caucus sent a letter today to the chairs of the Tennessee House and Senate transportation committees letting them know that “mayors and county executives see the legislation as an overreach that reduces our ability to make local decisions,” urging them to reconsider “any legislation that would interfere with TDOT’s ability to work with local communities to plan and select projects, particularly those that advance infrastructure improvements aimed at managing congestion and fostering economic growth in metropolitan areas.”

Read the full letter here, also posted by The Tennessean. (pdf)

UPDATED 4/12 1:24 p.m. Another letter in opposition to the legislation was sent to the same state House and Senate committees from the mayors of the biggest four cities in Tennessee — Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville — cities that collectively account for 80 percent of the state’s GDP and 91 percent of the state’s job growth over the last year.

This concentration of economic activity, in turn, generates important tax revenue that funds services and infrastructure in all corners of our state. We plan to continue to grow, prosper, and serve as the economic drivers of our great state. And in order to do that, we need the ability to make decisions about infrastructure solutions in our communities, especially in the area of transportation, as mass transit is the only long- term solution to the increasing traffic congestion that accompanies our economic growth.

Read the full letter. (pdf)

T4 teams up with fiscally conservative groups to promote innovative transportation solutions

Transportation for America partnered with Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Reason Foundation — not a trio you’re accustomed to seeing — on a report detailing innovative and cost-effective transportation solutions with the potential to command broad support in a divided Congress.

The jointly written report, The Most for Our Money: Taxpayer Friendly Solutions for the Nation’s Transportation Challenges discusses seven approaches that would increase travel options, cut congestion and stretch every federal transportation dollar further so that our current system can be maintained. Representatives from the three groups outlined the findings in detail at a briefing on Capitol Hill this morning.

One key tenet of the report is transportation scenario planning. Under this approach, state and local officials would forecast a variety of “what-if” growth and planning scenarios to see how these potential futures would impact transportation. Then, constituents and interested parties would be able to see for themselves how to best leverage their transportation dollars under a number of different outcomes. Many communities — Salt Lake City, Utah; Sacramento, California; and Chicago; among others — have already saved money and developed a bold vision using these strategies.

Another innovative solution stressed in the report is the expanded use of High-Occupancy Toll, or HOT, lanes. These lanes are reserved for buses and high-occupancy vehicles. Single-occupancy vehicles wishing to use the lanes may pay a fluctuating rate that varies based on traffic conditions. Users of the HOT lanes enjoy the direct benefits of an ease in congestion and non-HOT lane users indirectly benefit from more space in their lanes.

Other recommendations include:

  • Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which utilizes a combination of technology, dedicated lanes and existing infrastructure to run faster buses on local streets and highways
  • Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), which uses a variety of technologies such as web-based alerts, traffic management and electronic tolling to make better use of existing capacity
  • Intercity Buses, which have quickly becomes a popular travel option between population centers
  • Teleworking, which encourages employers to make arrangements for remote work, improving productivity and reducing the need for long commutes
  • Local Connectivity, which emphasizes improved local traffic networks so that longer-distance routes are less congested and more efficiently used

“Needless to say, the obstacles facing our transportation system are large, especially given the current state of the economy and difficult funding climate,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. “But by making smart, selective choices about how our vital dollars are spent — fixing what we have first and looking for ways to better utilize the system — we can maintain our current network and better meet changing transportation needs.”

Shirley Ybarra, senior transportation policy analyst at the Reason Foundation and former Virginia secretary of transportation added, “We’re offering innovative ideas, free-market solutions, and simple fixes that will help us get the most for our money.”

Read the full report here.