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Connecting people to jobs and services week: Hey Congress, we need your help to measure access

The Des Moines Area MPO wants to make a shift to award funding the transportation projects that do the most to improve the region’s resident’s access to jobs and services. But—like most MPOs and local governments across the country—its budget for the technology that makes this possible is small. It’s time for Congress to help local communities invest in the right projects. 

Ariels of Des Moines, Iowa from 10,000 feet May 6, 2017. USDA photo by Preston Keres

It’s “Connecting people to jobs and services” week here at Transportation for America. All week we’ll be exploring why improving access should be the goal of the federal transportation program—not vehicle speed. This guest post comes from Todd Ashby, CEO/Executive Director at the Des Moines Area MPO, which is trying hard to upend the broken status quo.

No matter how much funding a region has, there will never be enough money for every possible project. In Greater Des Moines, we want to guarantee that we spend our limited resources on projects that will do the most to connect our residents to their daily needs with affordable, efficient transportation.

Last year, Transportation for America came to Iowa to help the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (DMAMPO) do exactly that: create a scoring system to evaluate how proposed transportation projects work to achieve our goals, like improving people’s access to jobs and services (and not just for people driving cars). T4America inspired us to become a national leader in using performance measures to better align our project funding with regional priorities. 

To us, improving access to jobs and services is the gold standard for transportation investment, and one of the very best ways to use this relatively new idea of performance measurement. With improving access as our goal—not increasing vehicle speed or throughput— we would prioritize the projects that would do the most to improve our residents’ connections to jobs and services.  

But while very possible thanks to cloud computing and GPS, measuring access is expensive. We need data on where trips begin and end, where jobs are located, where people live, and where daily needs are located. This data is incredibly expensive. We also need additional resources and funding for models that help us process this data; the DMAMPO—like most other MPOs—has neither. 

Congress could help usher in a new era of picking projects based on how they improve access rather than on outdated 1950s measures like level of service or vehicle delay, but the federal program today is not oriented around this goal, nor around equipping states and metros to do so.

This is why the DMAMPO asked Iowa Senator Joni Ernst to cosponsor S. 654, the COMMUTE Act in Congress. This bill—an acronym for “Connecting Opportunities through Mobility Metrics and Unlocking Transportation Efficiencies”—would create a competitive pilot program at the U.S. Department of Transportation to provide states, local governments, and MPOs with data sets to calculate how many jobs and services are accessible by all modes of travel. 

Access to this data would transform how we are able to choose projects, empowering us with far better information to determine which proposed transportation projects would connect the most people to the highest quantity of jobs and services.

For a long time, ensuring high speed of travel within a corridor or minimal delay was a good enough rubric for spending billions of transportation dollars. It’s our goal to do something far better in Greater Des Moines. The COMMUTE Act would be a good start, but Congress can do so much more.

Watch the recap discussion of “Building Healthy and Prosperous Communities”

Building Healthy and Prosperous Communities: How Metro Areas are Building More and Better Bicycling and Walking Projects identifies ways that metro planning agencies are planning, funding and building more and better walking and bicycling projects in their communities. To learn more, download the guidebook, view the recording of the webinar below, or read some of the questions answered by the presenters.

On December 11, Transportation for America hosted a webinar discussion highlighting the eight strategies covered in the guidebook:

  1. Design guidance for bicycling and walking projects
  2. Complete Streets policies and programs
  3. Bicycle and walking data collection
  4. Performance measures
  5. Dedicated funding for bicycling and walking projects
  6. Improving walking and bicycling connections to public transportation and essential destinations
  7. Grassroots community engagement
  8. Understanding the public health impacts of transportation behaviors.

In the guidebook each of these eight strategy areas are explained through in-depth, technical case studies of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) across the country who have done this work, navigated barriers, and succeeded.

Joining the discussion were representatives from three of the MPOs featured in the guidebook. Cortney Geary from the Chattanooga-Hamilton County/North Georgia Transportation Planning Organization shared about their “Community to Region” performance measures framework which has helped prioritize multimodal projects for federal funding. Daniel Kaempff from Metro in Portland, Oregon shared how Metro has improved the design of walking and bicycling projects to encourage active transportation and keep people safe. And Jeff Pollack from the Corpus Christi MPO discussed the development of the region’s customized Bicycle Mobility Network plan and extensive community engagement process.

Want to learn more?

Check out the following resources to learn how to make more progress in building more and better projects to encourage walking and biking:

Stay tuned

In 2018 we’ll take a deep dive into a handful of the case studies featured in this guidebook. Stay tuned for more information about how you can get more technical questions answered by your MPO peers and experts.

Questions and answers

For those of you who really want to dive in deep, we went back and obtained detailed answers from our presenters to some of the questions that we weren’t able to answer during the webinar. You can view them here.

How are metro areas prioritizing health and building more biking and walking projects?

Though there’s booming demand all across the country to build more projects that can help residents get out and bike or walk — whether for exercise or just for getting around safely from A to B — it can be an uphill battle to do so. How are metro areas upending the conventional wisdom and building more projects that help improve their residents’ health?

How we get around each day shapes our quality of life, especially our health. People who walk or bicycle more for transportation are shown to have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes and other conditions that can complicate or shorten lives. And the demand for more opportunities to safely walk and bicycle is at an all-time high in cities and towns of all sizes across the country.

Communities are responding by planning, funding, and fast-tracking projects to make bicycling, walking, and riding transit safer, more convenient, and more realistic as travel options.

But getting these projects planned, designed and built can be a challenge. How can regions bring more of these projects to fruition?

This new paper, produced with the American Public Health Association, outlines four policy levers MPOs have at their disposal to help increase and improve active transportation projects to meet the demand, decrease health disparities, increase access to opportunities, and strengthen local economies — with specific short real-life stories to go with each.

For the launch of the paper, we had an online discussion with a number of the metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) featured in this paper to hear how they’re successfully prioritizing bicycling and walking projects.

We spent some time exploring the specific policies these MPOs have adopted, and how they’ve implemented them. Catch up with the recording below.

Webinar wrap: How MPOs are prioritizing public health to build prosperous regions

Last week, we had a terrific online discussion detailing how public health professionals are working with regional transportation planners to plan, fund, and support building more state of the art active transportation projects — accompanying the release of Measuring What We Value: Prioritizing Public Health to Build Prosperous Regions.

For this webinar, we were joined by staff from the American Public Health Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and metropolitan planning organizations from the regions of Broward County, Sacramento, Greensboro, and Nashville.

Did you miss last week’s webinar or want to see it all again?

Stay tuned for more information targeted at MPO staff, public health professionals and local advocates on how to work with regional transportation planners to plan, fund, and support building more state of the art active transportation projects.

CDC APHA health case studies

 

Measuring what we value: Prioritizing public health to build prosperous regions

A new package of case studies released today by T4America, in partnership with the American Public Health Association, showcases a range of strategies that metro area planning agencies can use to strengthen the local economy, improve public health outcomes for all of their residents, promote social equity and better protect the environment.

CDC APHA health case studies

Today, we’re launching Measuring what we value: Prioritizing public health to build prosperous regions, four short case studies that extend our previous work on data-driven decision-making for choosing transportation projects.

Download the four case studies below.

A growing number of the metro leaders, elected officials and citizens we talk to are asking questions like: can the people in neighborhoods more likely to be unhealthy easily get out for a walk or bike ride without having to traverse dangerous streets? Do our regional planners effectively consider the impacts on regional air quality as we choose which projects to build? Is the area putting forward the most competitive possible projects to win limited state or federal funding for walking and biking?

A handful of metro areas have found smart, data-driven ways to better conceive, select and build the transportation projects that can help address these looming questions. We’re happy to share with you four of those stories from metro areas big and small: Sacramento, CA; Broward County, FL; Nashville, TN and Greensboro, NC.

Download each one below.

SACRAMENTO, CA
Promoting health and economic prosperity through data-driven decision-making

Citrus Heights community center groundbreakingUsing a lens of improved economic performance by improving public health, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) adopted several health- and social equity-related performance measures into a rigorous, data-driven process for choosing transportation projects, resulting in more projects that make it safer and more convenient to walk or bicycle.

Download the Sacramento case study. (pdf)

BROWARD COUNTY, FL
Healthy, safe & prosperous by design: Building complete streets

Prompted by a need for safer streets, the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) spearheaded an effort to build regional consensus and political support for planning, designing and building more complete streets projects. As a result, 16 of the MPO’s 31 jurisdictions have adopted Complete Streets resolutions or guidelines, and the MPO increased funding for active transportation projects, with 90 individual bicycle and pedestrian projects totaling $120 million awarded funding since 2012.

Download the Broward case study. (pdf)

NASHVILLE, TN
Prioritizing public health benefits through better project evaluation

Nashville missing sidewalksBacked by data from comprehensive health studies and growing public demand to make biking and walking safer and more convenient throughout the region, the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) designed a new scoring and selection process to prioritize transportation projects that can bring health benefits. The MPO’s new approach substantially increased the amount of funding in the their long-term transportation budget dedicated to making it safer and more attractive to walk or ride a bicycle, making strides toward improving the health of the region’s residents.

Download the Nashville case study. (pdf)

GREENSBORO, NC
Healthy competition: Using data and modeling tools to win funding for active transportation projects

Greensboro sidewalks Guilford CollegeTo make walking and biking safer, more equitable and more convenient in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Greensboro Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) developed a rigorous evaluation and data-driven selection process to analyze and select the best possible bicycle and pedestrian projects for the metro area’s available funds, and to help the region better compete for the limited, competitive funding controlled by the state.

Download the Greensboro case study. (pdf)

The development of these case studies was made possible through a contract between the American Public Health Association and Transportation for America funded through cooperative agreement 5U38OT000131-03 between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Public Health Association.  The contents of this document are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the American Public Health Association or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Metropolitan planning for healthier, safer, more prosperous regions

How can metro area planning agencies strengthen the local economy, improve public health outcomes for all of their residents, promote social equity and better protect the environment? Join us to hear the stories of how a handful of metro areas have found smart, data-driven ways to better conceive, select and build the transportation projects that will help meet those regional goals.

Flickr photo by the Broward MPO. /photos/speakupbroward/24986492294

Flickr photo of an event by the Broward MPO. /photos/speakupbroward/24986492294

Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) not only have responsibility to create regional plans that govern federal spending within their borders, but those in larger regions also control a limited amount of transportation funds directly. How they manage these responsibilities has a huge impact on the health of their residents and their access to jobs and other opportunities.

Can the people in neighborhoods more likely to be unhealthy easily get out for a walk or bike ride without having to traverse dangerous streets? Does an MPO effectively consider the impacts on regional air quality as they choose which projects to build? Is the area putting forward the most competitive possible walking and biking projects to win limited state or federal funding?

We’re excited to bring you the stories of a handful of MPOs that have good answers to all of these questions next week via a new series of short case studies and an accompanying webinar on Thursday, September 22 at 1 p.m. EDT. Register for the webinar with the link below.

REGISTER NOW

 

Register for the webinar and you’ll be the first to receive a copy of these new case studies. If you work for an MPO, advocacy group or health organization and want to learn about ways to increase or improve the quantity and quality of active transportation projects in your region, this one is for you.

The MPOs we’re featuring have found ways to better use data and modeling tools to win funding for active transportation projects, standardize the process for building safer, more complete streets, or promote health and economic prosperity through transparent, data-driven decision-making. And we’re excited to share their stories with you.

On the webinar, we’ll have a short conversation with staff from four MPOs featured in the case studies. They’ll share details on their policies and programs, the transportation projects that resulted and the partnerships they had to forge to taste that success.

Join our team and experts on September 22nd at 1pm EDT. Register today!

Development of the case studies featured in this webinar was made possible through a contract between the American Public Health Association and Transportation for America funded through cooperative agreement 5U38OT000131-03 between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Public Health Association.  The contents of this document are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the American Public Health Association or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Support the new plan from a bipartisan duo of senators to send more transportation dollars to local communities

Two Senators championing the cause of giving local communities more control over their transportation dollars have introduced a modified plan to steer more federal transportation dollars directly to local communities of all sizes — reaching a compromise that they hope to incorporate into the Senate’s transportation bill as it heads to the floor. 

The Innovation in Surface Transportation Act has been one of our biggest priorities for more than a year now. That bill would put a small share of each state’s federal transportation dollars into a competitive grant program so that towns and cities of all sizes could compete directly on the merits for transportation funds. Local communities get a seat at the table and get more access to federal dollars that can be spent on a wide variety of locally determined transportation projects and programs.

ISTA is a great proposal and it remains active in the House of Representatives, but the two Senators who introduced it have come together on a new plan to accomplish the same goal, one with even more widespread support.

A new proposal from Senators Wicker (R-MS) and Booker (D-NJ) would put a larger share of transportation dollars directly in the hands of local governments by increasing the amount of flexible federal Surface Transportation Program (STP) dollars directly given to metropolitan areas of all sizes.

This new proposal will hopefully be offered as an amendment to the long-term transportation bill currently before the Senate.

We need to drive up support for this plan now as the Senate considers their bill. Send a message to your Senators and urge them to support this provision from Senators Booker and Wicker.

SEND A MESSAGE

It’s a proposal that works for red states and blue states, heavily urbanized areas and smaller rural towns — evident from the support of a Democratic Senator from the most urbanized state in the country, and a Republican Senator from the deep south where a large percentage of his state’s population lives in smaller urbanized areas.

How the current system works for local communities, and how it falls short

Today, small metro areas (under 200,000 people) are at the mercy of their state’s decision-making process for transportation spending in their area.

Large metro areas (over 200,000 people) directly receive a share of flexible federal dollars through a process known as suballocation. But in the smaller metro areas under 200,000 in population, those “suballocated” funds go directly to the state instead, which has total control over spending that money. The only basic requirement is that the state must spend a predetermined share of those funds within the state’s smaller metro areas, but the local community gets little say on how those dollars are spent.

Those decisions are left entirely up to the state, even though the funds are expressly intended by federal law for those smaller cities and metro areas.

While there’s some variety from state to state in how this plays out — a few select states are certainly more respectful of local communities’ wishes — it means that a local community could see their priorities passed over completely by the wishes of their state department of transportation. A state could have a pressing local priority like improving an important downtown street, and the state could instead decide to add a lane on the state highway on the edge of town instead. As long as the state spends the appropriate amount of money within that small metro area, that’s considered a proper use of the money intended for use in that community.

What would this proposal change?

The overall funding intended for metro areas and cities of all sizes would increase in two ways: First, the size of the flexible program known as the Surface Transportation Program (STP), which can be spent on almost anything from roads to bridges to transit to bike lanes, would be increased. Secondly, the share of STP that gets suballocated to metro areas increases from 50 percent of STP funding to 67 percent. That means more money will be given directly to metro areas and metropolitan planning organizations.

Last but not least, an important change is made to ensure that smaller metro areas aren’t left behind. Instead of being put solely at the state’s discretion, the share of STP dollars intended for communities under 200,000 people will be put into a competitive grant program for these areas, so these smaller communities will be able to apply for their share of the funding in a competitive grant program for their local priorities.

Who supports this new proposal in the Senate?

A compelling case can be made that Americans are willing to contribute more to invest in transportation, but they absolutely want to know that the dollars a) will be spent wisely on the projects that do the most get to work, school and daily needs and b) they want more decisions in the hands of the levels of government closest to them so they can hold them accountable.

A number of groups that represent local elected officials in communities of all sizes sent a letter to Congress this week endorsing this proposal. The National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Association of Development Organizations, the National Association of Counties, the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations, and the National Association of Regional Councils all signed onto a letter to Congress supporting the Booker-Wicker proposal, urging it to be included as an amendment to the Senate’s full long-term transportation bill currently under consideration.

What does this mean for the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act

While numerous local mayors, county executives, chambers of commerce and other local leaders have backed the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act, it’s an even bigger sign of support to see these national associations which represent many of those leaders nationally endorse this new proposal, noting that it would be a win for mayors, cities, county executives, metro leaders and others.

But this new proposal wouldn’t have happened without the strong support that has been pouring in for months on the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act. Your emails, phone calls, letters and meetings have made it clear to these Senators that this idea has traction, and this new proposal is a direct result of your past support for the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act.

All of this means that in the Senate from here on out, we’ll be focusing our efforts on this amendment from Senators Booker and Wicker because it represents a far greater chance to accomplish many of the same goals as the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act.  This new proposal is a smart compromise that should be incorporated into the full Senate long-term transportation bill currently on the floor, and one that will ensure that smart, locally-driven, homegrown transportation investments get the funding they need.

We’ll continue to drive up support for ISTA in the House, however, and we encourage you to continue supporting it in messages and calls to your representatives.

Send a message to your Senators and urge them to support this provision from Senators Booker and Wicker. It only takes a moment, and vocal support for this plan will be crucial to getting it incorporated into the full bill.

Join us for the third online discussion of the Innovative MPO on July 8th

Building on the range of new ideas for metropolitan planning organizations outlined in our Innovative MPO report, join us for the third in a series of online discussions to help MPO staff, board members, and civic leaders find smart ways to use their funding and planning authority to get better outcomes for their regions.

First, if you’re asking, “What’s The Innovative MPO?”, it’s a great free resource we released in late 2014, so the first thing to do is to cruise over to this page and get your copy immediately.

With your guidebook now in hand, join us next Wednesday (July 8) for our third online discussion on the content of the guidebook. This time out, we’ll be focusing on a range of tools and techniques that MPOs can use to get to or stay on the leading edge of smart transportation planning in regions small and large.

Specifically, we’ll be looking a few provisions in the Senate’s recent proposal for a six-year transportation authorization that will create some new opportunities for innovative MPOs prepared to capitalize, how one region is taking advantage of an amazing wealth of data to better measure the performance of their transportation dollars, and an emerging placemaking and planning approach that leverages arts, culture and creativity to foster more inclusive economic development in communities of any size.

Register for this informative webinar on Wednesday, July 8th at 3 PM EDT and join the following experts:

  • Joe McAndrew, T4America policy director, will discuss a few key provisions in the Senate’s long-term transportation bill, and the opportunities it will create for the MPOs best prepared to take advantage.
  • Monique De Los Rios-Urban from the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) will touch on performance measures and data collection. MAG has an amazing online suite of data research tools that you can test drive right here.
  • Erin Evenhouse, T4America Midwest outreach manager, will discuss the emerging practice of “creative place-making,” and share stories of how some metro regions are using this inclusive approach to planning — as well as some details on a forthcoming T4America toolkit for MPOs and others on the practice.

Healthy economies need healthy people — Nashville leads the way for other regions

What’s the connection between healthy residents and a healthy bottom line? Why should a local business community care about improving the health of the residents that live there? Representatives from five regions gathered last week in Nashville to learn how providing better transportation infrastructure and building more walkable communities can help improve residents’ health — and boost local economic prosperity and competitiveness.

This post was written by Rochelle Carpenter and Stephen Lee Davis with Transportation for America.

The Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, responsible for planning and allocating federal transportation dollars in the seven-county Nashville region, has become a nationally recognized leader in prioritizing health when selecting transportation projects.

Getting to that point wasn’t easy, but their hard work to make that shift was kick-started by two related developments: the widespread recognition of a looming health crisis in the least active state in the nation, and the realization that there was pent-up demand among Nashville residents for healthier options to get around —whether safer streets with new sidewalks, trails, transit, or bikeshare.

One economic connection is obvious: employers are often the ones paying a large share of healthcare costs for employees. If those employees are living in a place where it’s challenging to get or stay healthy because of factors inherent to the built environment, that’s a cost that those companies have to bear. If those costs become a known challenge within the business community, it presents a major roadblock when recruiting new employers or trying to retain them.

Whether by continuing to make ambitious plans to bring new bus rapid transit to the city, building new projects that make it easier to walk or bike, or through incorporating health considerations into their process for funding transportation projects, Nashville is trying to stay ahead of their growth challenges, remain competitive for new talent and ensure that their residents can be healthy — all helping to boost the bottom line for the region. It’s a region experiencing some of the fastest job growth in the country, but they know they can’t rest on their laurels.

We’ll be publishing an in-depth profile of how Nashville began to integrate health considerations into their planning efforts sometime in the next few weeks. Watch this space, and sign up for our emails to be notified if you haven’t already. –Ed.

To learn from Nashville’s experiences, T4America and the Nashville MPO — through an ongoing grant from the Kresge Foundation — brought civic leaders and agency staff from Seattle, San Diego, Detroit and Portland, OR, to the Music City last week; sharing best practices and hoping to build on what the others have done.

Kresge Nashville gathering 2

MPO staff and advocates from Nashville, San Diego, Detroit, Portland and Seattle along with Nolensville staff and leadership during last week’s gathering in Nashville.

Meeting in the Bridge Building overlooking downtown Nashville and the Cumberland River, the group of leaders from across the country saw the rapid changes made in the downtown core to improve streetscapes and public spaces to create vibrant, welcoming places for the many families, professionals and visitors.

While Nashville proper is making significant strides, other communities around the MPO’s seven-county region are also eager to expand their options for walking, bicycling and transit.

The delegation visited the rapidly growing town of Nolensville (pop. 8,000) on the south side of the region.

Kresge Nashville gathering 1

Nolensville Mayor Jimmy Alexander led Transportation Choices Coalition Executive Director Rob Johnson, Upstream Public Health Policy Manager Heidi Guenin and Transportation for America Field Organizer Chris Rall along Nolensville Road. The town was recently awarded half a million dollars to construct a greenway parallel to Nolensville Road, providing a new safe and convenient route between popular destinations.

Nolensville Mayor Jimmy Alexander described the town’s ambitious goal that local leaders see as critical for their local economy and competitive advantage. “We want to make it possible for every student in Nolensville to be able to walk to school,” he told us. The town has passionately sought and secured federal, state and local funding for multi-use paths, sidewalks and greenways that will eventually link the community’s most-visited destinations: residential neighborhoods, the historic district and commercial town center, schools, Nolensville Ball Park and the Williamson County Recreation Center.

Nolensville’s early leadership in clamoring for more of the infrastructure that makes it easier to safely get around on foot or bike — and the Nashville MPO’s response in providing technical assistance, policy and funding — will help them reach their goal in just a few years time.

The tour of new, energetic thinking on transportation and community development in the area would not be complete without a visit to Casa Azafrán, a community center and home to several nonprofits that serve the thousands of recent immigrants and refugees that are settling in Nashville and helping shape its future.

Renata Soto, Executive Director of Conexión Américas, led the delegation on a tour of Casa Azafrán, including a day care center, culinary incubator, health clinic and classrooms. But since moving to their new location on busy Nolensville Pike in south Nashville two years ago, Soto has witnessed first hand the challenges of poor transportation infrastructure. She took it upon herself to get the city to install the city’s first bilingual crosswalk to allow clients and visitors to safely cross busy Nolensville Pike while welcoming non-English speakers.

Kresge Nashville gathering 3

During a visit to Casa Azafrán, a community center and home to nonprofits serving New Americans, Renata Soto explains the new bilingual crosswalk installed to make it safer to get to work, the bus stop and several restaurants on both sides of busy Nolensville Pike.

Kresge Nashville gathering 4

The signs on the new bilingual crosswalk on busy Nolensville Pike.

The promise of a new rapid bus line coming later in the year will help, but challenges remain. “There are so many high school students who could use our facilities,” Soto explained. “But they can’t get here — they’re so close, but so far away.”

This gathering last week in Middle Tennessee offered inspiration, new information and a meeting of the minds to generate new ideas and discuss how to overcome political and technical challenges in our path. Stay tuned as we report more from each of these regions over the coming months.

Helping metros respond to the booming demand for more transportation options

Building on the range of new ideas for metropolitan planning organizations outlined in our Innovative MPO report, we’re hosting the second in a series of online discussions to help MPO staff, board members, and civic leaders respond to the booming demand for new transportation options, driven by demographics and technology.

First up, have you downloaded your copy of The Innovative MPO yet? It’s a great free resource we released a few months ago, so get your copy now. Second, join us on April 22nd at 3 p.m. EST for “Innovative Regional Mobility: A Review of Best Practice and Future Trends.”

Changes in market preferences, technology and travel patterns are driving a new consumer demand for a range of transportation options. Ensuring that your region is competitive in this new mobility context is crucial to its economic success and quality of life. T4America’s Innovative MPO guidebook offers many examples of the creative mobility solutions that communities can implement to become more responsive to these demand changes going forward.

Join experts from T4America, the Broward MPO, Wasatch Front Regional Council and the University of California at Berkeley to learn about best practices and trends in how transit and mobility solutions are changing our communities and attracting talent.

Register now for this webinar coming up on Wednesday, April 22 at 3 PM EDT and join the following experts:

  • Erika Young, Director of Strategic Partnerships, T4America
  • Ted Knowlton, Deputy Executive Director, Wasatch Front Regional Council (WFRC)
  • James Cromar, Director of Planning Livability Planning Studies, Implementation of Transportation & Land Use Improvements
  • Susan Shaheen, Ph.D. Adjunct Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Co-Director, TSRC

Register Now

Metro areas on the cutting edge of transportation planning: Introducing The Innovative MPO

On Dec. 10, Transportation for America will release a one-of-a-kind guidebook showcasing leading-edge approaches to regional transportation planning, called “The Innovative MPO.” We will launch it with a webinar the same day, open to all. To learn more and register, click here. In this post, we provide a preview of the kind of topics you’ll encounter in the guidebook.

Innovative MPO Cover - shadow

Click here to register for the Dec. 10 webinar and find out more.

Innovative metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) are working with business leaders and economic developers to make sure their regions are competitive and attractive to talented workers. They are stretching to maximize the impact of investments by setting priorities for selecting projects and measuring performance.

They are refusing to be bound by existing trends, but instead are planning in tandem with the aspirations of their citizens. They’re using creativity and flexible funds to fill gaps in transit service or break up bottlenecks that impede freight movement. They are reaching out across racial, language and income divides to make plans that can help everybody live prosperous and healthy lives.

This reporter first became aware of MPOs as a journalist covering growth and development issues in Atlanta in the 1990s. MPOs, you may know, are creatures of federal transportation law, which requires metro regions to program funding through a regional planning process. Their role is to ensure that federal investments are coordinated within metropolitan areas so that individual communities are considered along with the needs of the region as a whole.

And, as Atlanta discovered in the late 1990s, MPOs also must ensure that regional transportation plans do their part to keep harmful emissions in check. Just after the 1996 Olympics, the Atlanta Regional Commission — metro Atlanta’s MPO — received notice that the region faced a shut-off of federal funds because its projected emissions were exceeding the limits of a strengthened Clean Air Act. Stories I filed for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the crisis made national headlines, because Atlanta was the first to face such sanctions.

The problem was that the region’s long-range transportation plan was based on projections that the region’s out-of-control sprawl would continue as usual for the next 20 years. That would require more and more highway lanes to accommodate longer commutes in congestion that got worse despite the investment, producing untenable levels of vehicle emissions. The only way to make a plan that could meet Clean Air Act requirements was to assume the region would accommodate more of its growth in core areas and town centers. People living and working in those areas would take shorter and fewer car trips, and some could be replaced by other options.

Here’s where I first saw just how innovative an MPO can be.

The ARC had no control over land use — local governments had that authority — and thus little say over the sprawling development. But it turned out that the transportation funding controlled by the MPO offered plenty of opportunity to incentivize better-planned growth. Chief ARC planner Tom Weyandt and his staff came up with the Livable Centers Initiative. The MPO set aside money for competitive grants to support local governments planning for compact, walkable town centers and corridors. Those with smart plans would then be in line for a much larger pool of money for transportation projects to fulfill those plans.

The Livable Centers program not only helped restore the region to compliance with the Clean Air Act and avoid financial penalties, it also unleashed a wave of pent-up demand from communities that were bursting with ideas for reviving moribund downtowns or transforming tired commercial corridors. It helped change regional planning to ensure that transportation spending was in line with overarching goals and created a framework for prioritizing projects.

The LCI program in Atlanta is just the tip of the iceberg of what MPOs can do to help ensure the long-term economic health and quality of life in their regions.

Atlanta Livable Centers Initiative

The type of studies conducted in the Atlanta metro region from 2000-2012. Source: ARC

Innovations are not limited to the rich regions on the coasts, but are cropping up all across the country in MPOs of all sizes. It may be no surprise that the MPO in the San Francisco Bay Area has developed a sophisticated method for scoring potential projects that evaluates impacts on everything from climate to access to jobs for lower-income residents. Or that Metro in Portland, OR, puts dollars from the federal highways, transit and bike/ped pots into a combined fund that goes to the projects — whatever they may be — that best serve the region’s overall goals for development, equitable distribution of benefits and sustainability.

But did you know Nashville’s MPO is a leader in soliciting public engagement across race, income and age and is pioneering ways to evaluate impacts on health and safety, and prioritize projects accordingly? Or that the Tulsa, OK, MPO literally takes its planning to the people on a specially equipped bus, while the Flagstaff, AZ, MPO figured out a way to use the flexibility of federal funds to sustain a critical bus service?

The Denver MPO has partnered with the local AARP chapter to create “Boomer Bonds” that help local governments around the region create age-friendly environments, allowing older adults to remain in their homes and communities for as long as they desire. The Savannah, GA, MPO has put together a sophisticated program to ensure the performance of its port, rail and trucking networks in a way that also keeps residents safe, healthy and mobile.

This is just a quick sample of the initiatives large and small that you’ll find in The Innovative MPO, which will be released next Wednesday, December 10. The full guidebook features 30 useful tools from seven areas of focus, 20 detailed case studies (like Atlanta’s) and more than 50 real-world examples from MPOs in regions large and small. There’s also an MPO 101 appendix with a simple, clear explanation of what MPOs are and what they do.

There is a lot to be excited about, and there will be even more to celebrate as MPOs swap their good ideas and challenge each other to push even farther to put transportation dollars to work for the long-term health and prosperity of their people.

We will be hosting a webinar on the day of the release, December 10th at 1p.m. EST. Register here.