T4A Technical Assistance Archives - Transportation For America

Helping communities at every stage

Transportation for America and Smart Growth America’s technical assistance services help communities at all different stages of their efforts to improve transportation in their communities. In a suite of projects funded by AARP this year in communities across the country, we helped partners work on policy, planning, advocacy education and relationship building.

Smart Growth America technical assistance in Rhode Island, provided in partnership with AARP Rhode Island

Transportation for America does its work through technical assistance, thought leadership and advocacy. As part of our technical assistance work, for the past seven years, we’ve been supported by AARP to do small technical assistance projects helping partners improve transportation in their communities, whatever stage they may be in. This year was no exception. Projects in six different communities: Vermont; Albuquerque, NM; Fort Wayne, IN; San Diego, CA; Georgia; and Hawai’i; showcased the many different ways we can help.

Policy and funding in Vermont

The green mountain state is rural, and has snowy winters, as well as state highways running through hundreds of special, walkable small towns with unique character. AARP Vermont, in partnership with the Vermont Agency on Transportation and the Vermont League of Cities and Towns is exploring options to address state highways that pass through cities and towns throughout the state. These highways may have originally been built for higher speed car and truck traffic which is incompatible with more walkable environments that many communities wish to foster in their downtowns.

Vermont’s “Class 1 Town Highway” (C1TH) program has been in place for years to help cities take over management of state highways within town limits in order to implement more walkable designs, but challenges around maintenance costs, particularly for snow removal, have held the program up. To help address this T4America conducted research on policy and funding solutions that other northern states and Canadian provinces have used to address this challenge. Recommendations include state legislative action to address funding challenges, greater flexibility for localities to raise funding, VTRans support for design changes as part of the highway reclassification process, and quick-build demonstration projects to help communities envision the possibilities. AARP Vermont plans to use our research to inform conversations in Vermont’s next legislative session on how to address this challenge.

Policy and planning for an age-friendly Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico is motivated to become a more age-friendly city. They have dedicated staff working on an Age-Friendly Action Plan (AFAP) with domains in public engagement, housing and transportation, and annual progress reports. For two years, T4America has provided analysis of this plan in relation to other city plans, and helped Albuquerque to focus its efforts on near-term wins that can build a foundation for longer term change and a paradigm shift.

T4America’s recommendations included updating the cities Complete Streets policy, integrating housing and public transit plannings, and looking for opportunities to encourage public transit ridership and awareness.

Getting folks on the same page in San Diego

In T4A’s work with the San Diego region, AARP asked us to help with more general education on Complete Streets. With many engaged advocates ready to work on this issue, AARP planned an educational series of workshops to activate local partners and agencies to advance strong Complete Streets and Vision Zero policies in more jurisdictions in the region. Staff from our Thriving Communities team were able to provide level-setting information on what makes for a strong Complete Streets policy, while encouraging local jurisdictions to develop policies or improve the ones they already have.

Full blown advocacy in Fort Wayne

Last year, we worked with Fort Wayne, Indiana, doing something very similar to what we did this year with San Diego. Having provided an analysis of Fort Wayne’s Complete Streets resolution, which doesn’t carry the force of law, advocates in Fort Wayne were ready this year to work with their council and a new mayor to get a strong Complete Streets policy adopted. They already had the technical tools to develop a strong policy, but needed help with how to win the political support of the mayor and council, and how best to work with city staff with mixed views about a policy change.

In this case T4America developed an advocacy framework to help local advocates identify the steps toward building power and support for the policy change they sought. This included plans for building relationships with decision-makers, powermapping to identify channels of influence, and recommendations for developing effective messages and communications to undergird the advocacy effort.

Relationships, commitment and power in Georgia

Our project in Georgia this year was a little different than the rest. Our Associate VP for Transportation Steve Davis moderated a panel of leaders convened by AARP Georgia. Getting major leaders talking publicly about the improvements they plan to make in their communities can build their commitment to follow through with their plans and build closer relationships with the advocates who convened them. AARP Georgia has been using this approach to grow the number of cities in the peach state committed to age-friendly policies like Complete Streets, better public transit and housing options.

Beyond transportation

Our parent organization, Smart Growth America, uses transportation and land use strategies to support thriving, healthy communities. As part of our technical assistance projects supported by AARP, our Land Use and Development Director of Research Michael Rodriguez analyzed the affordable housing supply in Hawai’i. The work culminated in direct testimony to the Hawai’i Senate Committee on Housing. Learn more here.

Transportation for America and Smart Growth America’s technical assistance offerings include work similar to that described above and much more. If you think we can be of assistance in your community in a way that fits with our mission and yours, and you have a source of funding to support the work, get in touch!

Leveling the playing field: How T4America uses benefit-cost analyses to support multi-modal transportation projects.

As with its predecessor (TIGER), the BUILD competitive grant program requires applicants to include a benefit-cost analysis (BCA) for their project to be considered for an award from the now $1.5 billion program. This post explores what BCAs are, how can they help multi-modal transportation projects compete more effectively on their merits, and how Transportation for America’s (T4America) Technical Assistance program is helping applicants prepare a BCA that accounts for their smart growth principles.

T4America often supports great, locally driven transportation solutions through our Technical Assistance program, launched in 2015. We put our policy, program, and project development expertise to work at the federal, state, and local levels. To help show how T4America can help you make a merit-based case for your multimodal transportation project, we’re going to walk through a BCA we conducted on behalf of Oklahoma City’s transit agency last year.

Developing BCAs is just one of the services that our Technical Assistance team can provide. If you want to know how T4A can help you prepare a BCA for your BUILD project email us for more information.

What is a benefit-cost analysis?

A benefit-cost analysis is a formalized way of comparing a project’s costs against its benefits over a long period of time, typically 30 years for transportation projects.

USDOT requires applicants to include a BCA in all BUILD applications, the specifics of which have not generally changed over the nine rounds of competitively awarded funds, beyond small adjustments to factors like the value of time or the current administration’s removal of greenhouse gas emissions as a benefit.

Costs

BCA costs typically include any capital, operating, or major rehabilitation costs.

When T4Amercia worked with the Central Oklahoma Public Transportation Authority (COPTA) to compare the costs of their proposed nine-mile BRT system to the benefits for a TIGER application, T4Amercia started by looking at three types of costs: up-front capital costs of $20.9 million; the stream of operations & maintenance costs of $35.8 million, which included bus repairs, street repairs to the BRT lanes, and routine maintenance; and major rehabilitation and bus purchases of $4.8 million.

One important part of a BCA to highlight is the concept of residual value, especially for capital projects that have long life cycles exceeding the typical 30-year analysis period. Residual value is the monetary value of your project after the 30-year period has been exceeded and can be counted as a benefit. In the case of the Oklahoma City BRT project, we estimated its residual value to be $935,000.

After combining the costs and crediting back the residual value, we estimated the total cost of the Oklahoma City BRT project to be $60.6 million.

Benefits

One advancement in our understanding of how to level the playing field between traditional and multi-modal transportation projects has come through the BCA’s benefits section. For example, a transit project like Oklahoma City’s BRT can create benefits in several non-traditional yet measurable ways, both broadly and specific to this project.

Broadly, we can estimate that it reduces travel time for existing users of transit as well as for those who switch to transit from single-occupancy vehicles. There are also societal benefits from a reduction in pollutants (other than greenhouse gases) and improved roadway safety that can also be estimated and accounted for. In the case of Oklahoma City’s BRT project, much of the savings we identified are tied to people switching trips from single-occupancy vehicles to the BRT system. This includes factors like the estimated economic benefits of someone’s willingness to pay a fare, the perceived in-vehicle savings, reductions in fuel use and auto operating and maintenance costs. Additionally, we captured the benefit of avoided negative externalities like roadway wear and tear, emissions, and reductions in auto crashes, injuries, and fatalities associated with reduced auto usage.

Finally, each project will have highly specific benefits that reflect the unique nature of individual infrastructure projects. In the case of Oklahoma City’s BCA, substantial intersection safety improvements would be made as part of the construction of the BRT lanes, so we included them. By reducing fatalities and injuries from crashes at these intersections, the BRT project would add an additional $36 million in benefits.

Why your BCA matters

One reason that T4America continues to support the TIGER and now the BUILD program is that local communities are clamoring to build different kinds of transportation projects and the federal transportation programs aren’t set up to accommodate these new projects.

If we want to achieve today’s recipe for successful economic development, we need to think outside of the traditional federal funding siloes and build more places in which people want to live and work, and improve access to opportunity. That requires more investment in multimodal projects including transit, sidewalks, and other infrastructure that can improve safety for everyone.

Benefit-cost analyses are a valuable tool to quantify and evaluate the benefits that come from improved safety for people walking or biking, reduced emissions, and land development projects. BCAs help put transit and other multimodal projects on equal footing with auto-focused projects by demonstrating their value to public.

T4America can help you understand how a benefit-cost analysis would work for your project and can help you write one. If you’re interested in learning more about this and our other technical assistance offerings, you can contact us here.

Copy this strategy: CUMTD wins TIGER grant, assisted by T4A Technical Assistance program

Champaign-Urbana’s leaders are clear on what they want for their future: a progressive environment with urban amenities while maintaining small city affordability. To achieve that vision, the region is pinning its future on the transformation of a few key corridors that connect the cities of Champaign and Urbana with the University of Illinois’ flagship campus in Champaign, IL. While this effort will consist of many projects over a number of years, Transportation for America Technical Assistance partnered with the lead agency to secure a substantial and important federal TIGER grant, jumpstarting the project.

Success and its challenges

Since the 1990’s, regional leaders have charted future development to be denser, greener, and provide more transportation options. Over that time, transit ridership has increased and more people are biking and walking. But the confluence of pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers can mean a chaotic atmosphere, especially during events or when school is in session. “There are a lot of conflicts between bikes, pedestrians, buses and cars,” said Dave Clark, City Engineer for the City of Champaign.

Heavy pedestrian traffic at the intersection of Wright and Armory Streets.

These conflicts can be dangerous and city planners realized that their solutions would need to take into account not just the safety of their residents and visitors, but also the livability and affordability of the region. “The streets really needed repair,” said Jane Sullivan, sustainability planner for the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (CUMTD) “but we didn’t just want to pave over them and leave the same problems.”

The solution

In order to achieve these multiple goals, CUMTD approached the cities of Champaign and Urbana to work collaboratively and transform the two-lane roads along the downtown corridor to complete streets that prioritize pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users. Ultimately, this became known as the Multimodal Corridor Enhancement (MCORE) project. MCORE consists of five individual street projects and centers on Wright Street, the street dividing Champaign and Urbana. This is where the hub of the campus transportation system meets Green Street, the heart of Campustown for the University of Illinois and its entertainment, shopping, and cultural center. As Dave Clark noted, the campus is “directly sandwiched between Champaign and Urbana’s respective downtowns and over 80% of the region’s jobs are located within a mile of the thoroughfare.”

The rendering of what Green Street will look like when completed.

Using a complete streets approach to accommodate all modes of travel (bus, pedestrian, bike and vehicles), each street will undergo either full reconstruction or major rehabilitation, transforming each into a multimodal corridor that better serves everyone who uses the street. In addition to the road improvements, other project benefits will be improved bus capacity and frequency on these key bus routes; improved sidewalks, new street lighting and the addition of on-street bicycle lanes.

Third time’s the charm

In order to make this ambitious project happen, CUMTD applied for USDOT’s highly competitive TIGER program twice before but, had struck out in both attempts. The third time, CUMTD turned to Transportation for America Consulting to help develop a strong grant application and organize support from Illinois’ congressional delegation — the latter of which was crucial for a successful application.

“It was very important that both cities & the university were involved in the application and able to commit time and funding”, said Sullivan, who also manages CUMTD’s grants. “We knew this wouldn’t work unless all partners were supportive and able to make the investment.” In 2014, with T4America Consulting’s help, the group of local agencies finally won a $15.7 million TIGER grant to rehabilitate and redesign these busy, crucial streets to safely accommodate all roadway users.

Partnership pays off

“This project is a great example of the municipalities, the CUMTD and the University working together to maximize their leverage to accomplish infrastructure needs for all,” said Michael DeLorenzo, associate chancellor for the University. “It is a true local partnership, with the assistance of our Congressional delegation, which has enabled us to get the resources necessary to make this possible.”

The project is expected to spur additional development and increase accessibility in some areas where transit-oriented development is already occurring. It will be easier and safer for people to get around whether they are on foot, bike, transit or driving. “Pedestrians and bicyclists and transit users will get to see and feel the experience of feeling safer and more comfortable” said Sullivan, “and I think even more people will be willing to walk, bike, and take transit.”

TIGER supports neglected local needs

The MCORE project is a great example of how direct federal investment to communities can incentivize local partnerships and fund smart, homegrown transportation projects to solve locally identified issues. White reinforces this:

“So often, federal dollars are spent on the bare minimum for highways and bridges, and aren’t spent on the projects that are closest to the people, the communities. The state DOT focuses on its own bridges & roads, different jurisdictions operate in their own silos, and then the systems in our cities are not integrated. The TIGER program smashes those silos, providing an incentive to collaborate and look at the most sustainable and effective solutions.”

“The TIGER model just works better,” White says, “because it demands cooperation and allows communities to focus on the solutions that work for them.” In Champaign-Urbana, collaboration through the TIGER-funded MCORE project will help all members of the community get around more safely, quickly, and conveniently, helping to bring local partners even closer together.

Transportation for America has long supported the federal TIGER program and continues to do so in this year’s appropriations process. This year, T4A—in partnership with over 170 elected officials and local, civic, and business leaders from 45 states—sent a powerful message to congressional appropriators that the competitive TIGER and New Starts programs are crucial to local economic prosperity and competitiveness. Of note, the letter urged Congress to include at least $500 million for TIGER transportation grants. Congressional appropriators listened, with the US Senate providing $525 million for TIGER and the US House providing $450 million in their respective FY2017 T-HUD bills.

If you are interested in how Transportation for America Technical Assistance can support you and your community in creating better, more livable communities; please contact Erika Young, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Erika.young@t4america.org.