report Archives - Transportation For America

Sparking Progress: A new report on our electric future

The federal government provided billions of dollars to make transportation cleaner and greener. But to reduce emissions, we need to do more than spend money on the same tired solutions. A new report from the Coalition Helping America Rebuild and Go Electric (CHARGE) explains how federal investments can advance equity and clean energy goals.

*A King County Metro bus charges at the Transit South Base charging facility. Flickr/Seattle Department of Transportation*

To avoid the most harmful impacts of climate change, the time to reduce emissions is now. And when it comes to transportation (the largest contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions), policymakers have an opportunity to make significant progress. After all, two massive infusions of federal cash have provided states with a wealth of resources to advance their emissions goals.

President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative pledges at least 40 percent of the overall benefits of federal clean energy investments to underserved communities. The $1.2 trillion infrastructure law and $500 billion Inflation Reduction Act can both support a more equitable, cleaner, healthier, and more affordable transportation future. However, conventional methods of reducing transportation emissions—namely, incentivizing the production and purchase of private electric vehicles—are insufficient to meet our nation’s goals and would likely leave Justice40 communities behind. Find out why investing in electric vehicles alone won’t advance equity.

As a new report from the CHARGE Coalition explains, there’s a better approach—one that will not only reduce emissions but ensure that the benefits of pollution-free transportation will improve the health and economic well-being of a large number of people. Federal policy and investment can help move the needle by prioritizing three key areas.

1. Public transit

Transit is a longstanding, low-emissions travel option that has suffered across the country due to a lack of investment. Increasing public transit investments into operations, e-fleets, reliability, maintenance facilities, and workforce development will also boost the number of trips people take outside of a private vehicle—lowering emissions.

See how investing in transit operations can reduce private vehicle trips and lower emissions.

2. Electric vehicle charging infrastructure

Garage access shouldn’t be a prerequisite to electric vehicle access. Decision makers can ensure our emerging charging network is developed to be seamless and efficient, supports all types of mobility, is located strategically, and effectively serves people in multi-unit dwellings as well as stand-alone houses, as well as car-share, rental and business fleets.

Learn more about what smart EV infrastructure could look like.

3. Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles

The report also looks at opportunities to spur the conversion of our most polluting vehicles to zero emissions, reducing carbon while sparing the health of all Americans, especially for low-income and communities of color that are disproportionately harmed by air pollution from diesel-powered vehicles.

Click here to read the report.

Case studies throughout the report offer examples of initiatives deserving of federal support and that can serve as national models to meet the needs in the above three areas. The report also includes additional topics to consider in electrifying our transportation system, including the rise of micromobility—e-bikes, scooters, and myriad other battery-powered devices—and the need to make significant investments in our electric grid.

The report recommendations are defined through the Coalition Helping America Rebuild and Go Electric (CHARGE) coalition’s principles, which were developed in partnership with 50 of the most influential clean transportation stakeholder groups in the country. Learn more about CHARGE here.

How cities can reduce traffic instead of just ensuring more of it

A developer paying the cost to install a new bike share station could be a way to gain credits toward a building permit under the plan outlined in Modern Mitigation. (Image: Euan Fisk, Flickr)

A new approach to addressing the potential transportation impacts of new development in urban areas, outlined in a new report by the State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI), another program of Smart Growth America, could be a powerful recipe for reducing the demand for driving, while helping create more prosperous transit- and pedestrian-friendly cities.

For decades, most local, regional, and state governments have had a myopic approach to handling the transportation needs related to infill development: they require developers to add more street/road capacity. And this single-minded approach has produced exactly what one might expect: Lots of new, expensive roads that actually increase driving, and with it pollution, emissions, roadway deaths, and impediments for people trying to get around without cars.

A more productive approach seeks to minimize traffic from development before resorting to just building expensive, bigger and wider roads. This new report from SSTI outlines a modern method for cities and the private sector to partner together in reducing the demand for driving as cities build, grow, and thrive.

On October 29 at 2:00 p.m. ET, join Eric Sundquist, SSTI Director; Ramses Madou, Transportation Planner with San Jose Department of Transportation; and moderator Beth Osborne, Senior Policy Advisor at Smart Growth America for a lively discussion of the opportunities and challenges of moving from LOS to VMT and what steps are needed to make this shift work.

Cities conventionally manage the impacts of development by adding capacity for automobiles, often providing no support for anyone outside of a vehicle. But this strategy only encourages more driving, and the roads and city in general become much less pedestrian-, bicyclist-, and transit-friendly. It also creates more emissions at a time when many cities are trying to reach ambitious climate goals.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: If we think of accommodating more driving as the only solution, it will inevitably get harder for people to walk or take transit, and more trips will be taken in cars.

Cities thrive with a concentrated mix of people and uses—the more jobs, people, and activities within reach of each other, the greater the economic benefit from being able to easily access all of this opportunity. Asking developers to provide services and amenities that allow people to move around with fewer car trips will reduce the traffic impacts of new development, benefit all, and will help cities avoid super-sizing our roads and intersections.

This report offers a way to do this within the city development process.

What would a better approach look like?

This new report—Modernizing Mitigation—suggests a system that rewards developers for a range of transportation improvements they can provide, making them partners in an effort to produce people-friendly neighborhoods. Actions developers can take include improving the infrastructure for walking, biking, or transit; providing complementary land uses that minimize the need for new trips; subsidizing other forms of mobility like bike sharing or car sharing; or providing first- and last-mile connections to high-capacity transit (like a regular shuttle).

Changes to the pedestrian network and the improvement of crosswalks to add connectivity (left) and accessibility improvements from these connections (right) can be quantified in order to provide mitigation credits.

The contributions would be scaled to the amount of parking provided. The more parking a developer provides, the more they’d have to do to reduce demand (or through in lieu fees for non-auto services and facilities.) Or a project with no parking could be exempt from the other measures.

This helps produce a city where development can be seen as a positive contributor to a more prosperous place, rich with opportunities for all, as opposed to just the culprit to blame for more traffic.

This new approach can help put cities and developers on the same team, rather than working against one another to produce all the wrong outcomes. The report includes an examination of different cities’ policies along these lines, as well as a detailed look at precisely how this system could work with a real scale of points and incentives.

Much of the report was the product of SSTI’s practical work with the City of Los Angeles to develop a system for LA, but the suggested point system and requirements could be easily adapted by any other city to their local environment, priorities, or goals.

Download the full report and join us for the webinar on October 29.

Join us as we unveil “The Innovative MPO”

Chances are, your commute this morning was shaped by the work of a metropolitan planning organization – and not only your commute, but also your entire metro region, at least to some degree.

Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) connect a region’s roads, bridges, transit systems, bike lanes, and sidewalks to economic, educational, and social opportunities. Their decisions can impact traffic congestion, development patterns, workforce development, public health, and how a region connects to larger national and global markets.

Join us for the launch of The Innovative MPO. The last several years have seen a surge in innovative thinking and practice among MPOs nationwide, and their work has inspired a new guidebook to help MPO staff, board members, and civic leaders find innovative ways to make communities prosper.

Transportation for America will hold an online discussion about the new resource on Wednesday, December 10 at 1 PM EST. Register today for this free online event:

This guidebook is designed to offer a range of new ideas in planning, programming, technical analysis and community partnership, from those that cost little in staff time or dollars to more complex and expensive undertakings.

MPOs can push the envelope and innovate — whether to stretch public resources, achieve multiple benefits with a transportation dollar or simultaneously advance regional and economic development priorities. This new guidebook provides ideas how.

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Transit still more popular with millennials, despite their upbringing

One of the deepest studies of attitudes about public transportation, published yesterday, finds that core fundamentals like speed, reliability and cost are far more important to millennials than wi-fi or smartphone apps. They’re open to riding it even more, but like everyone else, find that there just aren’t enough neighborhoods being built that have great transit options.

Flickr Creative Commons photo by wowwzers.

Our own recent poll explored the attitudes of millennials in relation to cities and their general positive attitudes about public transportation, but this terrific survey from TransitCenter goes even deeper with questions to people of all ages from all over the country on what they think of transit and where they live as a whole.

What type of neighborhood are they currently living in? What type of neighborhood would they like to live in? What is the ideal type of neighborhood to live and raise a family in? How does one make a decision to change how he or she gets around?

According to this 12,000-person survey by TransitCenter, a civic philanthropy, unsurprisingly, people under age 30 use public transportation the most, across the 46 metros surveyed. They looked at a variety of places that broke into two distinct categories; metros considered “transit progressive” akin to San Francisco or Washington, D.C., or “transit deficient,” like Little Rock, Arkansas and El Paso, Texas. Age was the greatest factor overall, non-dependent on region, education level, or income.

One of the more interesting findings in the report was that “there is no unique ‘cultural bias’ against transit in [the South, Midwest], and that if you build a quality transit system (and the land use is supportive), people will ride it no matter where they are from.”

While it’s been proven that younger generations are most likely to use public transportation, it’s largely happening in contrast to their upbringing. The report shows that millennials were less likely to: have been encouraged to walk or bike by their parents, to have grown up within walking or biking distance of a commercial district, and less likely to have traveled by themselves on public transit as children. In fact, 39 percent of them said their parents thought it was unsafe for them to ride transit.

This shows a huge generational shift (though maybe just an insight to human nature) from their Baby Boomer parents who grew up in denser urban neighborhoods and might have used transit as children. The over-60 group is now the least likely group to want to live in urban areas and rides public transit the least. As the report states, “Put simply, Baby Boomers don’t live in – and largely don’t want to live in – places well-served by transit.”

Some surprising findings upended the conventional wisdom that’s been reported about millennials. Better smartphone apps or wi-fi on their buses or trains are near the top of the list of things that would induce them to ride more often, right? Nope. Across every single age group, the fundamentals were the most important consideration of all: quicker trips (speed), more stations near them, cheaper, and more reliable than other options.

The findings on housing confirmed much of what’s been reported by Smart Growth America, the National Association of Realtors, and a handful of other recent polls: the market is not building enough of the kind of neighborhood that is in the highest demand these days.

TransitCenter found that 58 percent of all respondents wanted to live in neighborhoods that consisted of a mixed use between housing, retail, offices, and restaurants that provided a variety of options to get around including public transportation and safe walkable streets. However, only 39 percent currently live in such a neighborhood, creating a huge demand for this ‘ideal’ neighborhood.

Meeting the demand for that type of neighborhood — especially in places connected to today’s or tomorrow’s transit lines — will create a positive feedback loop of boosting ridership. Supply more neighborhoods connected to transit, and you’ll create more riders out of the people who say they’d ride it if they could, but don’t live somewhere it’s available.

While a majority of Americans may not necessarily want to live downtown in a big city, they do want their neighborhoods to transform into better towns or suburbs centered around a mix of uses with more options for getting around.

The findings in this smart survey should inform the elected officials, commissioners, and policy advocates planning for the needs of our growing and diversifying population in towns and cities of all sizes.