job access Archives - Transportation For America

New reconciliation package includes funds for safety, access

In response to the proposed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Transportation for America Director Beth Osborne released this statement:

We are glad to see Congress is taking climate needs and inflation reduction seriously. We are particularly excited that they included $3 billion in Neighborhood Access and Equity grants to redesign arterial roadways, particularly those that impact communities of color. This is a valuable, needed investment to repair a longstanding barrier to accessing jobs and services especially for non-drivers, which will support local economic development and knit communities back together across overbuilt roadways.
Huge arterial roadways become a barrier and divide communities precisely because they are not safe. Their design prioritizes high-speed vehicle travel through the corridor over all other road users, including drivers trying to cross and anyone moving through the area outside of a car. The result is an ever-growing number of pedestrians, particularly pedestrians of color, being hit and killed on our roadways. Smart Growth America’s new Dangerous by Design report documents that 67 percent of pedestrian deaths occur on arterials, which make up 15 percent of roadways. By providing funds to redesign these roadways, these grants can help to connect the community, support local economic development, save people money on gas by allowing them to get out of their cars, close an obstacle to economic opportunity and, in the process, save lives.
The role street design plays in pedestrian deaths has been overlooked for far too long. These grants are an important step to boost local economies and improve the safety of our streets. We thank Congressional leaders for including the important program in the reconciliation.

Congress considering a smarter way to measure transportation investments

Having thousands of jobs within a region doesn’t do much good if residents can’t use their local or regional transportation network to reach those jobs. A bill being reintroduced in Congress this week will provide transportation agencies with robust data to support smarter transportation planning that can better connect residents to jobs and services by all modes of travel.

The Connecting Opportunities through Mobility Metrics and Unlocking Transportation Efficiencies (COMMUTE) Act was introduced in the Senate by Senators Baldwin (D-WI) and Ernst (R-IA) and in the House by Congressman DeSaulnier (D-CA) along with Reps. Curtis (R-UT) and McAdams (D-UT). The COMMUTE Act requires the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to create a competitive pilot program to provide five states, 10 metropolitan planning organizations, (MPOs), and five rural planning organizations with data sets to calculate how many jobs and services (such as schools, medical facilities, banks, and groceries) are accessible by all modes of travel. These data sets will also be made available to local governments and researchers.

This simple concept—measuring whether transportation investments improve access to jobs and services—can be transformative. Improving access to jobs and services, not merely aiming for a high speed of travel within a corridor or minimal delay, should be the goal of our transportation system.

In Virginia, they are using this approach to prioritize projects for funding. Some of the leading experts on this issue are our colleagues at the State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI) in Senator Baldwin’s hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. SSTI has worked closely with the Virginia Department of Transportation to develop a national model for selecting projects based on how they will improve access to jobs and services. In 2018, Utah took a similar step by passing legislation to overhaul its transportation planning system to prioritize improving access to jobs and services.

The key thing that makes these better approaches possible is more robust data—data which most communities do not have access to.

The incredibly blunt metrics that most planners or communities have used since the 1960s, like overall traffic congestion and on-time performance for transit, paint a grossly two-dimensional picture of the challenges people face while trying to reach jobs and services. They don’t provide sufficient information for agencies to make accurate decisions about what to build in order to best connect people to the places they need to go. These 1960s metrics lead to singular and expensive solutions (like highway expansions), while often failing to solve the problem or even creating new ones.

Today, precise new tools allow communities to accurately calculate accessibility to employment opportunities, daily errands, public services, and much more. These tools allow states and MPOs to better understand where people are traveling and to design transportation networks to maximize the ability of people to travel. It also allows states and MPOs to optimize their transportation networks to utilize all modes of transportation and even to understand how their investments interact with land use policies.

States such as Utah, Delaware, Virginia, California, Massachusetts, and Hawaii along with the cities of Sacramento and Los Angeles are already utilizing this type of data and seeing results.

Unfortunately, states and MPOs must currently pay for access to this data while the far less useful congestion data is made readily available to them by USDOT.

This bill will start to change that, creating a pilot program to give a small group of states, metro areas and rural areas access to better data, and allowing them to choose the best possible investments and make better use of limited taxpayer dollars.

The bipartisan introduction of this bill, in both the House and Senate, with support from members of the relevant committee’s is a huge step forward. We are grateful for the bipartisan leadership of Senators Baldwin and Ernst and Congressmen DeSaulnier, Curtis, and McAdams.

House transportation spending bill takes unprecedented steps to increase access to opportunity for all Americans

Transportation for America, PolicyLink, and The Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights applaud the House Appropriations Committee for directing the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to measure how transportation investments will connect all Americans to opportunity and essential daily needs such as jobs, schools, healthcare, food and others.

For immediate release
May 26, 2016

Our organizations thank Representatives Waters, Carson, Ellison, Grijalva, and Quigley for their leadership in including this important provision in the 2017 House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations report that passed the House Appropriations Committee yesterday.

“Connecting people to opportunities is one of the primary reasons we build transportation infrastructure, plain and simple,” said Transportation for America Director James Corless. “It’s incredibly encouraging to see the House Appropriations Committee recognize the fact that transportation isn’t an end in itself. To determine if we’re building the right things in the right places, it’s critical that we measure — and improve — the access people have to opportunities. Jobs, healthcare, schools, grocery stores full of healthy food — it’s critical that the streets and transit systems we invest in give as many people as possible more affordable access to all of these things.”

“Each day, millions of Americans — particularly low-income communities and communities of color — struggle to access the resources they need to thrive, simply because they have no transportation to get them where they need to go,” said PolicyLink President and CEO, Angela Glover Blackwell. “By calling on USDOT to work with communities to measure how well we are connecting people to opportunity, Congressional leaders have taken a key step toward equipping local leaders with the equity-focused data they need to reimagine and build a more just transportation system.”

“We are encouraged that the House Appropriations Committee has acknowledged the importance of measuring how our transportation investments stack up in terms of connecting our communities to opportunity, and the Department of Transportation must take up the charge to establish an accessibility performance measure without delay,” said Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice President of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Without access to transportation, our communities lack the ability to connect to all of the things that they need to sustain their families, including jobs, child care, and affordable housing. With access to transportation, our communities have a world of opportunity opened up to them. The Department of Transportation should leave no stone unturned in ensuring that dollars spent on transportation are being used in the smartest way possible to connect our communities to opportunity.”

The report accompanying this bill encourages the Secretary of Transportation, in coordination with the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration, “to establish an accessibility performance measure to be available to states, metropolitan planning organizations, and transit agencies to assess the degree to which the transportation system, including public transportation, provides multimodal connections to economic opportunities, including job concentration areas, health care services, child care services, and education and workforce training services, particularly for disadvantaged populations.”

USDOT is in the middle of an ongoing process to establish a new series of performance measures for transportation spending — resulting in a new system that will require states and metro areas to measure the impact of their transportation dollars. But the measures developed so far have been limited to metrics like road and bridge conditions, safety and congestion, among others — failing to consider whether or not investments give all people better access to what they need each day.

Do the projects proposed by state and local transportation agencies divide communities or knit them back together? This new accessibility measure will direct USDOT to find ways to measure the answer to questions like that.

The House THUD Appropriations bill, in its current form, also provides robust funding for the Federal Transit Administration’s capital investment program and has strong funding for the important TIGER multimodal discretionary grant program. Both of these programs are essential to helping communities throughout the country build cost-effective multimodal transportation systems that can help connect all residents to opportunity.

Our organizations look forward to working with House leadership as the bill moves forward to ensure USDOT, states and local leaders have the resources needed to successfully build and measure our transportation investments to ensure that all Americans have access to basic needs and economic opportunities.

For more information, contact:
Steve Davis
Director of Communications
202-971-3902
steve.davis@t4america.org

Without a good transportation network, employees can’t work, employers can’t employ

A core function of our transportation network is to give everyone access to economic opportunity by making sure they’re easily connected to jobs. T4America director James Corless is participating in a policy roundtable later this week discussing the challenge for employers and employees alike, how some companies are responding, and how we can do better.

For those of you who live near Boston, register to join James and other experts for the related policy breakfast we’re cosponsoring this Thursday, November 19^th in Foxborough, Massachusetts, entitled “How Top Employers are Getting People to Work.” The roundtable will feature speakers discussing what top employers including Lyft and Google are doing and how we can all build a system that provides more opportunity to a greater range of people. T4America is cosponsoring the event with Transportation for Massachusetts, MassCommute, 495/MetroWest Partnership and the Neponset Valley TMA.

Role of transportation

Even though we may take ten or more other trips per day, our trip to and from work is the defining one — the trip that largely determines our economic prospects.

Many communities are struggling to attract and retain talented workers. Many American workers often face grueling or expensive commutes to get to jobs. And too many others lack reasonable, affordable access to jobs, cutting them off from economic opportunity.

An efficient and complete transportation network means businesses can recruit from every corner of their region, and lure new talent to town. It ensures workers of all wage levels can reach their jobs with the lowest possible cost and stress, improving retention for employers. A smarter, 21st century approach to transportation can help expand the earning potential of individuals, boosting the bottom line for business, and strengthening the economic power of regions.

By making smart decisions to better connect employees and employers, we can make our businesses more productive and competitive in today’s global economy while reducing the stark income inequality and racial wealth disparity that exists today.

Locating near transit options is a smart, competitive bet

Businesses are increasingly moving away from the old model of locating in a suburban office park that is only accessible by driving alone. One reason they’re doing this is because their employees — or the employees they desperately want to attract — want to work in places that are accessible via multiple modes of transportation. Because millennials are now the largest generation in the workforce, employers have to pay attention to their preferences to remain competitive in the global economy. And they do indeed have different preferences than preceding generations.

Millennials overall express far more interest in living and working in communities with more transit choices in a recent survey we conducted in conjunction with the Rockefeller Foundation:

4 in 5 millennials want to live where they have a variety of options to get to jobs, school or daily needs
3 in 4 millennials say it is likely they will live in a place where they don’t need a car
66% of millennials say that access to high quality public transportation is one of the top three criteria for deciding where to live next.

Not surprisingly then, when corporations re-locate these days, many are choosing locations that are easily accessible through multiple forms of transit to attract a new generation of workers. State Farm is consolidating multiple offices into new, expanded hubs in three cities, and all three have one common denominator: they’re all incredibly close to quality rail transit service.

Smart Growth America chronicled this phenomenon in their Core Values report that looked at 500 companies that have relocated to downtown locations over the last few years, and how access to transit and other transportation options were a deciding factor.

The change in walk, transit and bike scores before and after the 500 companies relocated in the Smart Growth America Core Values report

Increase in inequality

One of the challenges facing public policymakers is the stark increase in inequality that has occurred over the past 40 years in American society. People and families at the top end of the income scale have seen an increase in their earnings while the middle class and people living in poverty have seen their incomes stagnate or even decline since 1979.

Unfortunately, this growing wealth gap also has stark racial dimensions as well. White families have ten times the household wealth as Hispanics and 13x the wealth of African Americans and this wealth gap has not diminished over the last 30 years and, since the Great Recession, the gap has actually increased.

Pew Research Center (2014, 12/12), From http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/

Declining numbers of reachable jobs for many residents

One of the main contributors to the widening income inequality gap has been a decline over the past decade in the ability for workers, especially poor workers, to reach jobs near where they live. Fewer jobs within a realistic commuting distance equals less chance at economic opportunity and less upward mobility for lower-income residents. That comes with unseen costs that we all have to pay indirectly, whether we realize it or not.

Brookings Institute, (2015, March 24th). From: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2015/03/24-job-proximity/srvy_jobsproximity.pdf

How can we change the status quo?

Transportation for America has been pushing for two policy solutions in the surface transportation reauthorization bill Congress is currently considering.

Allow local communities to apply for grants for targeted transportation services and connections to job centers, particularly those with a concentration of low-wage workers; and
Provide the technical assistance and tools to encourage local communities, companies and employees to work together to craft a compelling and helpful suite of commuter benefits, incentives, and options that not only gets employees to jobs, but also helps relieve over-burdened transportation networks and supports the economy.

In addition, communities and businesses should adopt and encourage new (and emerging) methods for employees to get to work, such as new public transit links, employer shuttles, safer bicycle and pedestrian pathways, or car-sharing options.

The good news is that many communities are already making progress on this front. We profiled eight places that are doing innovative things to give more people greater access to economic opportunity:

Improving health and access to opportunity

Whether voting to expand transit service to underserved communities or selecting transportation projects partially based on the health benefits they could bring, innovative leaders in the public and private sectors are finding new ways to utilize transportation dollars to improve the health of their residents and give them access to greater opportunities — bringing tangible economic benefits to their communities along the way.

Read the eight profiles

It’s critical that we continue making progress toward providing everyone who wants to work with ample transportation options to choose from that can get them to a good range of well-paying jobs. It’s foundational to prospering regional economies.

For those of you near Boston, please join James this Thursday on 11/19 by registering here.

US Senate Transportation Authorization – T4A Update

The US Senate continues to debate the federal surface transportation bill this week, with a series of votes taken last night by the full Senate. Individual senators filed over 200 amendments and T4America continues to track the latest developments on those amendments. We have compiled a brief update on where things stand and provide information on three amendments that we know would spur innovation, access and local control.

**It is rumored that another manager’s amendment package will be offered in the near future. T4A will update this information as needed.

Transportation Funding Timeline Update: Transportation funding expires this Friday and the House announced this morning that they intend to pass a 3-month extension to match the Senate’s; setting up a new October 29 transportation funding deadline.

Last week, Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) introduced what is expected to be the first of potentially two or more manager’s amendment packages. Manager’s packages serve as legislative vehicles to modify a piece of legislation in committee or on the floor, wholesale. This first manager’s package makes a number of changes, including maintaining the historic 80/20 highway and transit funding split; increases funding for the FTA High Intensity/Fixed Guideway State of Good Repair Formula program by $100 million (paid for by cutting TIFIA and the Assistance for Major Projects by $50 million each) and requires 50% of the off-system bridge set-aside funding in the STP program to be used on bridges that are not on the federal-aid highway system.

Last Sunday, the Senate dispatched a couple of non-germane amendments, but voted to allow Senators to vote on whether or not to tie the Ex-Im Bank authorization to the highway authorization. Late last night, the Senate voted and approved that plan (64-39).

Under this new modified manager’s package, T4A believes that it is unlikely that few if any of the 200+ plus amendments filed by Senators will be considered or voted on. However, we do anticipate the introduction of a third manager’s amendment which will reflect additional changes. T4A continues to work to increase local control, innovation and access to jobs and opportunity through three primary amendments. They include the following:

Wicker-Booker STP local control amendment (corresponding fact sheet by USCM on changes to metro level funding)
Murray TIGER authorization amendment
Donnelly Job Access planning amendment (search for S. Amdt 2434, 2435 and 2436; this one is messy, our apologies)

Update: 5 Issues to Watch (for more information, please refer to T4A’s Member post on 7/23/15):

Pay-fors – Since the last post on 7/23/15, a number of items have shifted. A few provisions, considered poison pills, were removed, including the $2.3 billion that came from denying those with felony warrants social security benefits and $1.7 billion that came from rescinding unused funds for TARP’s Hardest Hit Fund. These rescissions leave the authorization with $43.7 billion, all of which are generated outside of the traditional transportation-user fee system. The measure would provide enough additional HTF revenues to provide the first three years of highway and transit investment, but Congress would be required to raise additional resources before October 2018 to be able to fund the final three years of the DRIVE Act’s authorized spending.

Transit funding – Changes in the manager’s package increased the levels of transit funding to be 24% of the authorized levels overall and 24% of any new funding generated annually.

Freight –The DRIVE Act creates a robust freight planning process that directs states to examine efficient goods movement and identify projects needed to improve multimodal freight movement. However, despite instituting a multi-modal freight planning process, the new National Highway Freight Program would require 90% of the funding go to highway-only projects rather than to multimodal projects using a performance-based system. What impact will this have?

Take, for example, the non-highway freight needs in the State of California. Ten percent of California’s funding would be only $9.3 million in 2016, growing to $23 million in 2021. Comparitively, one multimodal project at the Port of Long Beach in California to remove a railroad bottleneck and build more on-dock rail capacity cost the Port $84 million. T4A views this policy as a missed opportunity and not consistent with T4A’s freight policy.

Overall, due to removal of the TARP Hardest Hit Fund, the bill’s overall investment levels needed to be reduced. Under the first manager’s package, the freight program was set to receive $1.5 billion in FY2016 growing to $2 billion in FY2018. The program would now receive $991.5 million in FY2016 and increase to 1.9 billion in Fy2018.

Passenger Rail – No changes to note from the last update on 7/23/15.

Assistance for Major Projects (AMP) – Funding decreased by $50 million per year to increase funds for FTA’s High Intensity/Fixed Guideway State of Good Repair Formula program. AMP would now be authorized at $250 million in FY16 and rise to $400 million in FY2021.

*NEW* TIFIA – The initial manager’s package introduced early last week would cut TIFIA funding from $1 billion to $500 million per year. Removing the TARP Hardest Hit Fund and other payfors required additional cuts, which senate authorizers took out of the TIFIA program. Those cuts, plus the increase to the FTA’s High Intensity/Fixed Guideway State of Good Repair program, result in an overall authorized funding level for TIFIA at just $300 million per year over the life of the bill.