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New report: Transit funding supports manufacturing jobs from coast to coast

Public dollars devoted to making capital improvements to public transportation systems support thousands of manufacturing jobs, in communities small and large, in nearly every state across the country.

This new short paper from T4America examines the supply chain for public transportation, and illustrates how proposed cuts to federal transit funding threaten thousands of manufacturing jobs at more than 2,700 suppliers from coast to coast.

The supply chain for public transportation is as deep as it is wide, touching every corner of the country and employing thousands of Americans who produce everything from tracks, to seats, windows, communications equipment, wheels and everything else in between. As just a snapshot, recent capital improvements made in just four transit systems — San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, and Portland — supported jobs in 21 states.

Heavy cuts to federal transit spending, as proposed by Congress, would have a devastating effect on these local businesses and the tens of thousands of jobs they support. Without continued federal support, transit projects underway could stall, new or planned projects would be postponed or canceled, and transit agencies would scale back or cancel orders of new railcars or buses. The factories and suppliers that produce or manufacture components for transit systems would have to downsize or shutter without a steady pipeline of projects.

To preserve these jobs and support main streets from coast to coast, Congress and the administration should support and fund the Transit Capital Investment Grants (CIG) Program at or above FAST Act levels of $2.3 billion.

View the full report here, which includes a handful of maps and graphics, and rankings of the top ten states and congressional districts by the number of transit manufacturers located within their borders.

Proposed cuts to federal transit funding threaten thousands of manufacturing jobs in the supply chain from coast to coast

press release

WASHINGTON, DC — A new Transportation for America paper illustrates how public dollars devoted to making capital improvements to public transportation systems support thousands of manufacturing jobs, in communities small and large, in nearly every state across the country.

These jobs are currently threatened by cuts to federal transit funding proposed by both the Trump Administration and Congress; cuts that would have a heavy impact on the more than 2,700 manufacturers of transit equipment located across 49 of 50 US states.

“Too many leaders in Congress seem to falsely believe that just because the majority of all transit rides take place in major metropolitan areas, that the benefits somehow stop at their borders,” said Kevin Thompson, Director of T4America. “Yet the benefits of these investments ripple out from coast to coast, supporting jobs in communities of nearly every size. As an example, recent capital upgrades made to just four major transit systems — San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, and Portland — are supporting manufacturing jobs in 21 different states.”

The supply chain for public transportation is as deep as it is wide, touching every corner of the country and employing thousands of Americans who produce everything from tracks, to seats, windows, communications equipment, wheels and everything else in between. Heavy cuts to federal transit spending would have a devastating effect on these local businesses and the tens of thousands of jobs they support.

As just one example, Automated Railroad Maintenance Systems (ARMS) in Missouri, produces power, train control, signaling, communications systems and electronics for public transit, passenger, and freight railroads across the country. ARMS’s transit customers depend on federal funding for major new construction project to place orders with the company. “From what we understand there is about $6 billion in federal funding that goes into various transit programs. That’s the main life-blood of this industry,” said Mike Monaco, VP of passenger sales at ARMS. “Obviously, any kind of reduction of federal funding would be a big factor.”

Without continued federal support, transit projects underway could stall, new or planned projects would be postponed or canceled, and transit agencies would scale back or cancel orders of new railcars or buses. But it’s not just federal transit dollars that support these jobs — they’re almost always paired with local or state funds. Many of the communities awaiting federal grants have already raised their own funds via tax increases or ballot measures and are ready to place orders that would be filled by factories and suppliers tailored to serve this industry — employers that may have to downsize or shutter without a steady, predictable pipeline of transit projects.

To preserve these jobs and support main streets from coast to coast, Congress and the administration should support and fund the Transit Capital investment Grants (CIG) Program at or above the $2.3 billion level already agreed upon in the bipartisan 2015 federal reauthorization (The FAST Act).

Read the short paper here: https://t4america.org/maps-tools/transit-supply-chain

Irrigate: Turning a huge Twin Cities construction project into an opportunity

Though the new Green Line light rail line would finally connect the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul with rail transit, business owners, local leaders, and advocates raised red flags about construction disrupting the corridor’s businesses as well as immigrant and communities of color. To mitigate these negative effects, Springboard for the Arts and other local organizations created a series of artistic interventions that did more than merely prevent painful disruptions; they helped the corridor thrive during a period of vulnerability.

Irrigate photos courtesy of Springboard for the Arts, shared by Jun-Li.

Relight the Victoria by artist Nick Clausen. Photos courtesy of Springboard for the Arts, shared by Jun-Li.

This feature is part of arts and culture month at T4America, where we’re sharing a handful of stories about how arts and culture are a vital part of building better transportation projects and stronger communities. This feature is adapted from a longer case study featured in T4America’s and ArtPlace America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation due to be released next Wednesday, September 27. Sign up for our new Arts & Culture email list to be notified first.

The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have long been culturally, economically, and geographically linked, but until 2014 they lacked a meaningful, modern rail connection. The Green Line, originally known as the Central Corridor, was a new light rail line planned to run primarily along University Avenue between Minneapolis and St. Pau The area is home to a large number of immigrants and communities of color, and already has a painful history of disconnection and displacement from the construction of I-94 right through the middle of many of the same neighborhood decades ago.

With a disruptive construction project planned, civic leaders feared that months of negative press, dust, and noise might bankrupt businesses and lead to a black eye for the project before it ever opened.

In response to this concern, Springboard for the Arts, a nationally recognized community and economic development organization based in St. Paul, the Twin Cities Local Initiatives Support Coalition, and the City of St. Paul created Irrigate, a “community development strategy that mobilizes the skills and creativity of local artists to create innovative, meaningful, authentic solutions to local challenges.”

Irrigate photos courtesy of Springboard for the Arts, shared by Jun-Li.

Irrigate photos courtesy of Springboard for the Arts, shared by Jun-Li.

Springboard trained 600 artists from the neighborhoods around the rail line to collaborate with businesses and organizations along University Avenue. A total of 220 artists completed 150 creative placemaking projects over 36 months that were designed bring attention, customers, joy and beauty to the spaces and businesses adjacent to the construction. Irrigate projects included musical and theatrical performances in businesses, artistic installations in construction fencing, dance workshops, interactive musical benches, murals, street theatre and performances, and much more.

Flamenco Christmas on the Green Line: A Processional of Song and Dance by Deborah Elias. Photo by Rudy Arnold.

These projects completely changed the narrative about the long construction project and transformed the coverage. They generated more than 51 million positive earned media impressions, which spread stories about the people, neighborhoods and businesses sharing University Avenue and helped to connect new and old customers to the businesses during construction. As Nancy Homans, Policy Director for the City of St. Paul explained,

While the City of Saint Paul tried feverishly to garner positive coverage for the benefits of transit that the Central Corridor would bring to the community, their positive message was consistently diluted in the media by negative stories about the impact of construction. As Irrigate projects began popping up along the Corridor…the magic of art started a different conversation. Irrigate’s public process engaging artists from the community to support local businesses provided a nimble and creative way to influence the narrative and change community perceptions of the value of community development.

Businesses reported that Irrigate projects helped them maintain visibility and reach new customers, and Springboard felt that the project helped to change the narrative of the corridor, build social capital among neighbors and businesses, and increase the prosperity of small businesses in the corridor. Ultimately, when opening day arrived, the mood was one of celebration, instead of just relief after enduring the collateral damage that would have come from a painful construction process.

Opening day on the Green Line. Flickr photo by Michael Hicks. https://www.flickr.com/photos/mulad/14238058898/

Opening day on the Green Line. Flickr photo by Michael Hicks. https://www.flickr.com/photos/mulad/14238058898/

As with many of their successful projects, Springboard published a toolkit for communities who want guidance on running a similar program during construction. Irrigate has also been featured on ArtPlace’s website, in a documentary video, and in T4A’s Scenic Route Guide.

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This project is one of the many case studies that will be featured in Transportation for America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation, commissioned by ArtPlace America, to be released next Wednesday, September 27. The field scan is intended to examine the ways in which transportation professionals are exploring new creative, collaborative and contextually-specific approaches to engage the community in more inclusive processes for planning and building new transportation projects.

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

El Paso’s Transnational Trolley: How art can help imagine creative transportation solutions

What begun as a sort of arts-driven guerilla marketing campaign for the fictional return of a historic streetcar in the border communities of El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is becoming a reality, a demonstration of the power of art to capture the imagination of a community and help them look at old problems in different ways and imagine creative solutions.

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

Unlike San Diego, CA and Tijuana, Mexico, which are separated by 20 miles, El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico sit immediately adjacent to one another, separated only by the width of the Rio Grande River and the international border between the United States and Mexico. Until 1846, El Paso was in fact part of Juárez and Mexico, and the two independent cities today form the world’s largest binational metroplex, with thousands of daily crossings by foot, car, and bus; billions of dollars of trade; and five border crossings connecting the two cities and region. For generations, residents on both sides of the border have crossed frequently for work, school, recreation, and to visit family; more than 80 percent of El Pasoans identify as Latinx.

Until it was closed down in 1974, these border crossings were facilitated in part by an international streetcar system that connected the downtowns of both cities. As in many American cities, the streetcar system ran President’s Conference Committee (PCC) streetcars, with a sleek Art Deco design that was introduced after the Great Depression to lure new car owners back onto public transportation.

The iconic streetcars and stories of their transnational past served as the inspiration for Peter Svarzbein’s Masters of Fine Arts thesis project at New York’s School for Visual Arts. In 2012 Mr. Svarzbein, a native of El Paso, created the El Paso Transnational Trolley, which could be described as part performance art, part guerrilla marketing, part visual art installation, and part fake advertising campaign. The project began with a series of wheatpaste posters advertising the return of the El Paso-Juárez streetcar, and continued with the deployment of Alex the Trolley Conductor, a new mascot and spokesperson for the alleged new service. Alex appeared at Comic Cons, public parks, conferences, and other public spaces to promote the return of the streetcar, while additional advertisements appeared across El Paso, sparking curiosity and excitement for the assumed real project.

Eventually, Svarzbein admitted that the project was a graduate thesis masquerading as a streetcar launch, but rather than graduating and moving on, he decided to move back home to El Paso.

When Svarzbein learned that the City of El Paso planned to sell the historic PCC streetcars, he lobbied the city to cancel the sale, and instead return the streetcars to the streets of El Paso. Thanks to the region’s dry climate, the streetcars have remained in relatively good shape for the past four decades even though they’ve been stored in the open desert at the edge of El Paso.

After gathering thousands of signatures in support of the project and with the strong backing of the City of El Paso and Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Commissioner Ted Haughton, the El Paso trolley won a $97 million grant from TxDOT. It is now slated to begin service in El Paso in 2018. The third phase of the project will include a connection to the Medical Center of the Americas, while the second will include the much anticipated transnational connection to Juárez.

In one of the most surprising twists in this long tale, shortly after this funding was awarded, Svarzbein rode the wave of public support for the once-fictional project to win a seat on El Paso’s City Council.

Svarzbein’s approach as an artist transformed the discussion. The project’s website quotes artist Guillermo Goméz-Peña: “An artist thinks differently, imagines a better world, and tries to render it in surprising ways. And this becomes a way for his/her audiences to experience the possibilities of freedom that they can’t find in reality.”

Clearly, Svarzbein credits his creative campaign with helping to get the project off the ground and building the community support needed to win funding, claiming that “there is a sort of responsibility that artists have to imagine and speak about a future that may not be able to be voiced by a large amount of people in the present. I felt that sort of responsibility. If I couldn’t change the debate, at least I could sort of write a love letter to the place that raised me.”

This story is another example of how transportation professionals are exploring new, creative, and contextually-specific approaches to planning and building transportation projects. They are collaborating with artists and the community in new ways to transform transportation systems into powerful tools to help people access opportunity, drive economic development, improve health and safety, and build the civic and social capital that binds communities together.

This project is just one of the many case studies that will be featured in our upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation, commissioned by ArtPlace America. The field scan is intended to examine the ways in which arts and culture are helping to solve transportation challenges while engaging the community in a more inclusive process.

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

Stories You May Have Missed – Week of September 1st

Stories You May Have Missed

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.

  • “President Trump’s infrastructure package will be broken up into three pieces, with the largest chunk of funding dedicated to projects that already have some private or local money secured.” (The Hill)
  • “Trump infrastructure package could be stretched too thin.” (The Hill)
  • “White House wants to help states, cities offload infrastructure.” (Reuters)
  • The House of Representatives will vote on automated vehicle legislation next week. (Reuters)
  • “Governing Examines How Better Bus Service Became ‘“The Hottest Trend In Transit.”’ (Governing, via Streetsblog)
  • A coalition has formed to support Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s proposed transit referendum in 2018. (Tennessean)

Elected officials and local organizations: Support TIGER & public transit funding

Facing the prospect of severe cuts from the Trump administration and Congress, T4America is looking for elected officials and organizations to show their support for investing in smart projects to move goods, move people and support the local economies that our nation’s prosperity is built on.

Updated 9/6/2017 9:00 a.m. — The letter is closed. We’ll publish the final letter and share the signatories soon. Thanks!

Calling all elected officials, local, civic and business leaders, and local, regional or state organizations! Sign a letter urging those currently assembling the federal transportation budget for the upcoming year (FY 2018) to prioritize funding for TIGER competitive grants, new transit construction, and passenger rail programs.

Read the full letter and sign it today — we’re aiming to deliver it before the end of August. Ed note: This letter is intended for organizations and is not open for individuals, other than elected officials at any level.

(letter is closed)

Where do we stand in the budget process?

For these three programs, this simple chart below shows four things: the current funding levels for this year, what the President proposed in his budget earlier this year, and what was recently approved by appropriations committees in the House and the Senate.

Enacted 2017 levelsPresident Trump's request for 2018House 2018 AppropriationsSenate 2018 Appropriations
TIGER Grants$500 million$0$0$550 million
Transit Capital Grants$2.4 billion$0$1.75 billion$2.133 billion
Amtrak & passenger rail$1.495 billion$795 million

(All cuts come from eliminating federal funding for all long-distance routes)		$1.4 billion$1.6 billion
TOTAL THUD FUNDING$57.65 billion$47.4 billion$56.5 billion$60.058 billion

As you can see, while committees in the Senate ignored the president’s call to eliminate TIGER and funding for new transit construction outright, those final decisions will be made by Congress as they debate the budget on the floor and then try to reconcile their different versions. (Worth noting: The House proposed eliminating TIGER funding and a barebones budget for keeping in-progress transit projects moving, which means that’s their starting point on negotiations.)

What we’re asking for is for Congress to approve a budget that fully funds the FAST Act, the current transportation authorization, already agreed to by Congress and approved by a bipartisan vote back in 2015.

More background is below:

TIGER

The majority of all federal transportation dollars are awarded to states and metro areas in a way to ensure everyone gets a share, regardless of how they’re going to spend those dollars or how well-conceived their projects are. TIGER operates differently.

The TIGER program has illustrated a productive way to use a small amount of money (about $500 million annually since 2009) to incentivize smarter projects based on their merits. This fiercely competitive program is one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects. Projects vying for funding compete against each other on their merits to spend the dollars more effectively. They also bring more private, local, or state dollars to the table. Through the first seven rounds, each TIGER dollar brought in 3.5 non-federal dollars, in contrast to federal money for building new roads, for example, which only bring in about 20 state/local cents for each 80 federal cents.

Transit Capital Investment Grants

The Transit Capital Investment Grants program (often broadly referred to as New Starts) supports metro areas of all sizes that are investing their own money in building or expanding transit service.

While making the case for eliminating the program, the Trump Administration recently stated that “localities should fund these localized projects,” but local voters and leaders are doing that already, putting their own skin in the game to meet the growing demand for well-connected locations served by transit. At the ballot box last November alone, voters approved more than $200 billion dollars in tax increases to invest in these projects. But cities of all sizes are counting on the federal government to continue supporting these bottom-up efforts, as they’ve done for decades. Eliminating this program or even just reducing its funding will threaten their economic prospects and their ability to satisfy the booming demand from residents and employers alike for well-connected locations served by transit.

Passenger rail

President Trump proposed cutting Amtrak’s budget nearly in half, with nearly all cuts coming from eliminating long-distance passenger rail service. Funding for the Northeast Corridor would survive, as would the funding for state-supported routes.

But neither chamber heeded this call from the administration: the House approved slightly less funding compared to last year, while the Senate provided the full amount outlined in the FAST Act, allocating competitive funds for safety, state of good repair for the Northeast Corridor, and operating and capital support for restored or new passenger service throughout the rest of the country.

A Colorado city in the Smart Cities Collaborative partners with Uber for a “quicker way to deploy transit to our residents”

Lone Tree, Colorado, one of the 16 members of our Smart Cities Collaborative, successfully launched a new pilot project last week. The small Denver suburb is evolving their existing fixed-route circulator served by four small buses by adding an on-demand component through a partnership with Uber.

Screenshot from the Lone Tree Link’s “How to Ride” video. http://www.lonetreelink.com/link-on-demand

For nearly three years, the city of Lone Tree southeast of Denver has been operating a fixed-route shuttle line every ten minutes on a loop that connects a Denver RTD light rail station with most of the city’s major employers. The Lone Tree Link has been funded through a unique public-private partnership that includes some of those employers. This helps cover the cost and provide the rides for free to customers, but running four buses on a predictable loop and maintaining ten-minute headways also limits the reach of the service.

In an evolution for the service, last week the city launched Lone Tree Link On Demand, which pairs Uber’s technology with the city’s vehicles and drivers to expand that service to more residents and increase accessibility. Now through the end of December anyone can use the Uber app to hail a Lone Tree Link shuttle for a free ride between any two points within the City of Lone Tree.

Screenshot from the Lone Tree Link’s “How to Ride” video. http://www.lonetreelink.com/link-on-demand

“We wanted to extend the reach of the successful circulator,” Seth Hoffman, the city manager of Lone Tree, told T4America last week. For the fixed-route service, “to get the headways we wanted to achieve, we had to keep the initial route narrow in scope. But that meant that it served employers but didn’t really serve retailers or residents. Putting it on demand makes it available to every address in the city.”

The genesis of Lone Tree’s partnership with Uber came about through the Smart Cities Collaborative.

“Our inclusion in the Smart Cities Collaborative got us in the door with Uber,” said Jeff Holwell, the economic development director of Lone Tree, referring to the ‘Industry Day’ portion of the Collaborative. “That connected us with Uber’s Denver office, which is what made this happen.”

“We were really floundering before that meeting,” Hoffman told us, but the connection with Uber at the Collaborative meeting helped them clear the final hurdle.

“Early on, we thought we’d find someone to help us develop our own app and start from scratch. But what we realized based on others’ experiences in the Collaborative, and through our contacts with T4A, was that smartphone real estate is really hard to compete with. If we could find someone that’s doing it and doing it well, that’s a quick path to our pilot.”

This partnership with Uber — which is as much a pilot for the private company as it is for the city — has simplified some of those tech issues. For example, as Holwell noted, adding one of the city’s extra shuttles to the service is “so easy with Uber’s technology — [the service] is as scalable as Uber is and they have incredible technology that we don’t have to create or update.”

The Denver Post covered the launch last week, and included a story that illustrates how the expanded service allows the city to connect residents and visitors to even more destinations in the city of about 10,000 people:

Divya Sheshathri and her friend Mugdha Maneesh used the service on Tuesday to get from Sheshathri’s home on Park Meadows Drive to her husband’s office on the Charles Schwab campus. They used it again to get from Schwab to Park Meadows mall for afternoon shopping. “It’s a very good service,” said Sheshathri, who does not own a car. “Without this it would be very hard to get around. We’re comfortable walking, but not in this hot sun.”

For the pilot, Holwell said that they removed one of the four buses from the fixed route and reassigned it to the on-demand service, allowing the city to better calibrate their service with the need. And the returns have been positive thus far.

“There was an immediate effect on day one,” Holwell said. “We’re already getting more ridership on that one vehicle than it was providing on the fixed route.”

While operating the fixed-route service is still their “bread and butter,” according to Holwell, with an additional RTD light rail station slated to open in 2019 just to the south that will replicate a portion of the fixed route service, shifting all of their resources to an on-demand service could be the roadmap for the future.

“We only operate during weekdays during office hours because it doesn’t make sense to run on weekends through empty office parks,” Holwell said. And even then, the fixed-route Link shuttles are obviously more heavily used at certain times like the start and end of the workday, leaving excess capacity during the day while they carry fewer passengers. With an entirely on-demand service, the city could better utilize their capacity and reduce empty miles traveled, which is one of their broader goals for the new on-demand service.

Lone Tree’s leaders are proactively using technology to become the kind of place they want to be long-term. And finding ways to better utilize their existing resources to serve residents, visitors and employers — whether transit vehicles or roadway space — is what this project is all about.

“Our big picture goal is to leverage the assets that we already have,” Hoffman said. “We can’t build additional lanes to fit more cars, so we’re going to try to use the lanes we have more efficiently. People are taking it to restaurants and taking it shopping, which helps out the local economy. As a medium dense suburban community, the density isn’t there in a way that would make a [larger] fixed route system work efficiently. This is a quicker way to deploy transit to our residents.”

Catch up with the recording of our online discussion of a Colorado city’s partnership with Lyft

Last week we held a webinar with the city of Centennial, CO, one of the 16 members of our Smart Cities Collaborative, about their six-month partnership with Lyft to connect more residents to their existing transit service. Catch up with the full recording of the session right here.

Centennial is a mid-sized suburb southeast of Denver that has connecting light rail service, but it’s difficult for many of the residents of Centennial to reach the stations from their homes. This pilot project provided free Lyft rides between between the Dry Creek light rail station and nearby homes within a 3.75 square-mile service area with the aim of incentivizing transit use and reducing congestion for trips into downtown Denver.

Did you miss the webinar? Catch up with the full recorded presentation below, and download the accompanying slide presentation here. (pdf)

The pilot project was of the first of its kind in the nation and ran from August through February of this year. The city recently finalized its final report with detailed project results, lessons learned, and next steps. Melanie Morgan, a Data Analyst for Centennial’s Innovation team and the pilot project manager, presented on the report and fielded participant questions on funding, payment, data reporting, scalability, paratransit, and more.

For more on the pilot project and to download the full report, visit http://go.centennialco.gov/.

Equipping the next generation of Ohio leaders on transportation & transit

Local elected, business, and community leaders from cities across Ohio gathered last week for the first workshop of our Ohio Transportation Leadership Academy. Over the next six months, teams from across the state will learn from peer regions and transportation experts and develop their own plans to use transportation as an economic development tool in their cities.

This Ohio-only edition in our series of leadership academies is focused on training and equipping civic leaders from multiple Ohio cities to spearhead a fresh approach to transportation that will foster sustainable economic growth and boost the economy in metro areas and the state. In a state where many cities struggle with either slow or negative population growth, the last generation’s economic development strategies are no longer delivering results. Smart investments in transit, main streets, and walkable communities are part of a new recipe for future success. The academy, co-hosted with the Greater Ohio Policy Center, includes teams from the Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Delaware, and Toledo regions.

In this first session, participants heard from Indianapolis leaders about their recent progress using transportation as an economic development tool. Former Mayor Greg Ballard shared how he led the city to add miles of new biking and walking trails and kickstarted the development of an all-electric bus rapid transit network. Mark Fisher, Chief Policy Officer for the Indy Chamber, explained why the Indy business community was front and center in the campaign to improve public transit in order to connect workers to jobs. And Nicole Barnes, of the Indianapolis Congregational Action Network (IndyCAN) shared lessons from the grassroots, faith-based campaign to help turn out voters to successfully pass a transit funding referendum on the ballot last November that will dramatically improve bus service in the region.

Through workshop activities, participants identified specifically what success should look like for their regions and how transportation projects would help get them there. To distill that vision and think about the long-term outcomes they want, participants went through an exercise to imagine the future newspaper headlines they’d want to see written one day. “Region’s Economy Grows; Small, Minority-Owned Businesses Open at Record Pace”, “Downtown population doubles,” and “Region has a growing population, rising incomes, and less disparity” were among some of those brainstormed.

Participants see the shortcomings of their current transportation infrastructure and are focused on creative ways to make improvements including redesigning their existing transit networks, incorporating new transportation technology, building partnerships with employers to better serve trips to work, and finding new sources of local transportation funding.

We’re looking forward to the upcoming sessions of the academy where these local leaders will learn more about the best practices and emerging ideas successfully employed in peer cities across the country, become effective champions for change in their cities and be a part of expanding access to jobs and restoring walkable communities to lead to sustained economic success in Ohio’s cities.

Hear from a city that partnered with Lyft to increase access to their public transit network

Join us on July 13th to hear about how one Colorado city in our Smart Cities Collaborative has been experimenting with connecting more residents to their transit service by partnering with Lyft.

Updated 7/19: If you missed the webinar, you can watch the full recording here.

One of the major challenges faced by the members of our Smart Cities Collaborative is figuring out how to improve first- and last-mile connections to existing transit hubs in order to leverage existing transit service and connect more people to quality service that might not live within walking distance of it. Over the course of the Collaborative, cities have considered a number of pilot projects to solve this issue, from microtransit options, to on-demand transit shuttles, to partnerships with ridehailing companies like Uber, Lyft and others.

One of the cities in the Collaborative, Centennial, CO, recently completed their own first/last-mile pilot project. (The launch was covered here last August by Laura Bliss in CityLab.) Centennial is a mid-sized suburb southeast of Denver that has light rail access to downtown Denver, but it’s difficult for many of the residents of Centennial to reach the stations from their homes.

To help residents take advantage of this service, the city entered into a six-month partnership with Lyft to provide free rides between the Dry Creek light rail station and nearby homes within a 3.75 square-mile service area. The aim of the project was to incentivize transit use, enhance regional transportation, and reduce congestion for trips to and from downtown Denver by shifting some of those trips to transit.

One of the core principals of our Smart Cities Collaborative is encouraging cities to thoughtfully test new technologies and share those results with other cities to inform their pilots and help them learn from another city’s progress — or mistakes? So how did this pilot turn out? What was the response from their residents? Was the partnership with Lyft successful? Transportation for America and guests from the City of Centennial, CO will host a webinar on July 13th at 3 p.m. Eastern to discuss the results of the GoCentennial pilot.

REGISTER HERE

 

The team from Centennial will present on its final report, which includes metrics, lessons learned, and next steps. Full text of the report can be found here. (pdf) We’ll also provide participants with the opportunity to pose questions to Centennial on the results of their pilot, their evaluation tactics, and their plans for future projects. If you would like to submit a question ahead of time to ensure your question is answered, please share it with us via email (smartcities@t4america.org) at least 48 hours before the webinar.

Trump admin’s full budget proposal makes clear their intent to end federal support for transit construction

The Trump administration released their full budget proposal for 2018, ending any possible uncertainty about their belief that highway projects are always inherently in the national interest, transit of any type is explicitly a local concern, and leveraging greater local and state investment in transportation is not a trend to be encouraged.

Update (5/24/17): Comments from Seattle added. In the full budget proposal from the White House, released this morning, the administration fleshed out the specifics of their “skinny budget” proposal from back in March. In this longer document that now includes line-item amounts for individual programs, the administration calls to end the TIGER grant program, cut all funding for new transit construction (other than projects that already have federal funding agreements in hand), and terminate the funding for long-distance passenger rail.

[member_content]Logged-in T4America members can view and download our more detailed members-only summary here.[/member_content]

The administration reiterates their belief that transit is just a minor, local concern.

“Future investments in new transit projects would be funded by the localities that use and benefit from these localized projects,” they write, making it clear that they see no benefit in providing grants to cities of all sizes to build new bus rapid transit or rail lines, or expand existing, well-used lines so they can carry more passengers.

Unfortunately, they provide an extremely misguided justification for eliminating this funding.

Several major metropolitan regions have recently passed multi-billion dollar revenue measures to fund transit projects, and the Administration believes that is the most appropriate way to fund transit expansion and maintenance efforts. Localities are better equipped to scale and design infrastructure investments needed for their communities. Several major metropolitan areas, including Denver, Los Angeles, and Seattle, have already begun to move in this direction by asking residents to approve multi-billion dollar bond measures to speed the delivery of highway and transit investments. These regions realize waiting for Federal grant funding is not the most efficient way to meet their local transportation needs.

They’ve taken note of the positive trend of voters approving scores of ballot measures to raise taxes or fees to invest in transit, but have sorely mistaken that trend to mean that federal funding is no longer necessary and that these metro regions can make these ambitious projects happen all on their own.

We were wondering how the local leaders from Seattle, Los Angeles or Denver felt about being used as examples for why federal transit funding is no longer needed, so we reached out and asked a few for their thoughts.

Here’s Denny Zane with Move LA, the organization that led the grassroots effort to pass last year’s successful ballot measure in Los Angeles. (Mr. Zane is also a member of T4America’s Advisory Board.)

It is shocking that the Trump administration would play so fast and loose with such a longstanding and effective local-federal partnership to build transportation infrastructure — and to call out for abuse cities in western states simply because we took that partnership seriously. Yes, we have each gained the support of our local voters — Americans all — for investment in our transportation infrastructure. We were successful in part because we could assure them that our larger, more significant projects like the Wilshire subway, or the Sepulveda pass light rail, or the West Santa Ana light rail would all be good candidates for federal partnerships. Suddenly, without notice, the federal partner wants to pack it in.  This is no way to unite the nation.

In Seattle, voters approved over $27 billion for transit at the ballot box last November. Seattle Department of Transportation director Scott Kubly made it clear that those voters were counting on using those dollars to leverage federal transit grants:

We are incredibly disappointed that President Trump’s budget proposal cuts infrastructure funding and is totally out of step with his administration’s rhetoric promising to increase infrastructure investments. He needs to put his money where his mouth is. Seattle voters have done their part. They have stepped up to provide local dollars to leverage federal resources. Our local funds are meant to complement federal investments, not replace them. His proposal slashes important city initiatives. We will work closely with our coalition, community partners and congressional leadership to ensure continued support for the Seattle’s transportation priorities.

In their justification for eliminating all funding for the extremely popular TIGER program, the administration describes all of the benefits as local, and direct the towns, cities or states seeking TIGER grants to other ill-suited federal programs. As we wrote back in March:

The administration blithely suggested in their proposal that local communities instead turn to other programs that are explicitly designed not to meet same needs as TIGER. ‘DOT’s Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects grant program, authorized by the FAST Act of 2015, supports larger highway and multimodal freight projects with demonstrable national or regional benefits. This grant program is authorized at an annual average of $900 million through 2020’ Well, sure, but only $100 million of that $900 million in any year can be used on projects that aren’t on the national freight highway network, so if your project is multimodal or otherwise not on a key national highway, you’re probably out of luck.

What about that “big” infrastructure package?

People from across the political spectrum were energized by candidate Trump’s promises to invest in infrastructure; excitement that ramped up after inauguration as Trump continued talking about a $1 trillion infrastructure package. Aside from the dissonant and jarring promises to invest in infrastructure while proposing to take an axe to vital transportation programs that support smart investments today, these promises have been slowly downgraded.

After starting with the mind-bending $1 trillion number, it was soon revealed to be an anticipated $1 trillion in total economic benefit (or combined investment/financing, including private dollars, depending on who was being quoted) with a total direct investment of around $200 billion. That’s nothing to sneeze at though — $200 billion would be a little over four times current federal surface transportation spending in any given year.

Today, those promises are further laid bare by this budget, as the $200 billion is revealed to be the total amount invested over ten years, with just a paltry $5 billion extra included in 2018. (The amounts are reported to be higher in later years.)

$5 billion is just 0.5 percent of 1 trillion dollars. Though if you want to be as charitable as possible and go with $200 billion as the number for the total direct federal investment, then 2.5 percent of the administration’s promised infrastructure investment is included in their budget for this upcoming year.

“Our nation’s infrastructure serves as the backbone for economic growth and prosperity,” We said back in March when the preliminary budget outline was released. Few details have changed since, and just like the outline did, this full budget “falls short of prioritizing investment in the local communities that are the basic building block of the national economy.”

UPDATE: Geoff Anderson, President and CEO of Smart Growth America, issued a statement on the budget. (T4America is a program of Smart Growth America.) 

This budget ignores why communities need federal community development and transportation programs. It’s not just that they need money or innovative tools — which, for the record, they do. They also need a reliable partner who can support their work, not austerity measures that punish them for taking action.

If the federal government quits being that partner — which this budget absolutely implies — it’s going to cause lasting damage to American communities at a time when they need greater security and opportunity, not less. Trump promised these very things, but this budget is a reversal on that promise. We urge Congress to reject this austerity budget and create a budget that reinvest and rebuilds America for the future.

Read the full statement here.

Copy this tactic: Community Transit defends program by using unexpected voices

Last week, I visited with T4A’s members and partners in the Puget Sound region. In the time of “skinny budgets” and tenuous federal support for transit, it was encouraging to hear from local elected officials, advocates and transit agencies on how they’re progressing despite federal (and in their case state) uncertainty.

On the federal level, this region will be among the hardest hit if Congress declines to fund the capital improvement program, with more than $2 billion in federal New Starts investments at risk. These projects include:

  • $1.17 billion for the Lynnwood Link Extension
  • up to $720 million for the Federal Way Link Extension
  • $75 million for the Seattle Streetcar Center City Connector
  • $75 million for Tacoma Link Expansion
  • $43 million for Swift II BRT in Everett
  • $61 million for Madison Street Corridor Bus Rapid Transit in Seattle

These numbers don’t include the threats to passenger rail service or to TIGER.

Rather than throw their hands up in frustration, Community Transit, a T4America member, is using this as an opportunity to tell the story about the economic and job benefits of their Swift bus rapid transit line. We are seeing more and more transit agencies talk not just about the direct benefits they provide to their community, but also the upstream jobs that are created…whether the buses they buy are manufactured in Everett, Washington or St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Community Transit’s Swift Green Line Infographic

Copy this tactic: Including suppliers and engaging your entire supply chain gives you the ability to reach other decision-makers that you may not otherwise have access to. It builds your advocate tent and adds unexpected voices to your issue.

For example, when Community Transit gives this powerful piece of information to one of their members of Congress, Rick Larsen, a Democrat…he can advocate to Tom Emmer, the Republican Member of Congress from St. Cloud. Additionally, their bus manufacturer can advocate to Rep. Emmer directly. This is just one way to show leaders how transportation is truly a bipartisan issue.

T4America continues to find stories like these to use in our work and highlight what’s working. If you have similar stories that you’d like to share with us, please send them our way. We want to know!

President Trump’s federal infrastructure priorities likely to be revealed this week

There’s no need to wait months for President Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure package to discover the transportation priorities of this president — they’ll be clearly telegraphed with the release of his first annual budget later this week.

For months there’s been endless discussion of the President’s $1 trillion pledge to “build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation.” And while industry groups scramble to divvy up funding or financing from a package that may or may not materialize, President Trump’s first real infrastructure effort should be considered his annual budget request with top-line numbers for transportation spending, which will tell us much about his priorities.

When the first look at that budget comes later this week, we’ll likely face the dissonance of a President rallying support for a $1 trillion investment in infrastructure at the same time he’s proposing billions in cuts to transportation investment to accompany his plan to increase defense spending by $54 billion.

While trade groups, members of Congress and local advocates are discussing what projects they want to include in this dream of a huge infrastructure package that may or may not come up later this year, they could see devastating cuts proposed for crucial transportation programs that fund smart transportation projects all across the country in less than 48 hours.

Melanie Zanona wrote about this inconsistency in The Hill today, noting that “the optics of slashing federal transportation funds in his budget proposal while pushing for a separate financing package underscores Trump’s challenge of balancing his promises of massive infrastructure investment and dramatic cuts in government spending.”

While many people — even staffers or elected reps on Capitol Hill — tend to think transportation spending decisions are determined by the long-term transportation bill that gets passed every few years, the money for new transit and rail projects still has to be appropriated by Congress each year through the budget process. 

This is an important point.

To get a big infrastructure package passed by Congress, the president will need the full coalition of transportation stakeholders, from those seeking funds for roads, to transit, rail and ports. But if there are cuts in the budget made to discretionary spending (i.e., programs not paid out of the highway trust fund), those cuts would fall disproportionately on funding for new transit construction (New and Small Starts) and multimodal and local priority projects (TIGER) — amongst other programs. Targeting parts of the infrastructure coalition with this budget now is a good way to make sure you have no coalition when you need it later.

President Trump had a meeting at the White House last week with some key transportation, real estate and infrastructure advisors about his priorities. Real estate developer Richard LeFrak talked to CNBC about what he heard in the meeting:

US 'behind the curve' on infrastructure upgrading: Richard LeFrak “One thing [Trump] said while we were in the meeting, he said ‘don’t bring me any projects that you want federal funding for that you can’t start and had completed the state approval processes,'” LeFrak said.

That’s because “‘most of these projects come from the state, in 90 to 100 days. If they’re not ready in 120 days, tell them to go back, get finished, and bring it back,’ [Trump said]. In other words, he’s not going to … devote the resources to things that he can’t implement immediately,” he added.

Of course, we’ve seen plenty of evidence that “shovel-ready” isn’t always the best qualifier to identify the best projects. Following 2009’s stimulus effort, we learned that many shovel-ready projects weren’t under construction for a reason, and many were just mothballed projects that had been sitting on a shelf for the last 20 years because they simply never merited moving forward.

Ed Mortimer from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce echoed that point while testifying alongside our Beth Osborne before a Senate Committee last week. Any new infrastructure package, he said, “should not be a replication of the Recovery Act [which focused entirely on shovel-ready projects.] Projects need to be selected to deliver long-term economic growth, not the speed at which they can be constructed.”

But not all shovel-ready projects are created equal, either.

Scores of local communities with well-conceived ready-to-go multimodal projects are eager to apply to the incredibly competitive TIGER grant program, and on average, winning TIGER projects brought at least three state or local dollars to the table for each federal dollar sought. There are transit projects all across the country that have already raised local or state funding and are literally just waiting on a check for capital dollars from the federal government to proceed, including “projects like Indianapolis’ Red Line bus rapid transit project which has already been promised more than $70 million in federal dollars to pair with nearly $20 million in local funds from an income tax increase that Indianapolis voters approved back in November at the ballot box,” as we noted last week.

USDOT has already promised over $6 billion to these shovel-ready transit construction projects that have local funding in hand and are ready to go. If this week’s budget does indeed cut (or even eliminate funding outright) for the New & Small Starts transit program which exists explicitly to help metro areas of all sizes build new transit systems, the projects in that pipeline could be immediately threatened, as will their promises of supporting economic development & improved mobility.

When any president starts talking about a big new investment in transportation, it’s natural for people to get excited — Congress has been begging, borrowing and dealing to keep federal transportation program solvent for the last decade.

But whether or not President Trump finds a way to successfully advance and pay for a massive investment in infrastructure, come hell or high water, there will be a budget for these crucial transportation programs this year. And it will tell us all we need to know about his priorities.

We’ll be breaking down the budget when it’s released and arm you with the information you’ll need to take action and weigh in with your members of Congress. Do you want to get this sort of information directly to your inbox? Sign up for email today.

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Do our federal transportation priorities match the rhetoric we use to justify more spending?

Photo via WSDOT/Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/wsdot/8670279118

With the Trump administration readying both an annual budget and discussing a possible large infrastructure package, Transportation for America yesterday urged a key Senate subcommittee to protect the investments in programs that promote innovation, encourage collaboration and maximize benefits for local communities.

Photo via WSDOT/Flickr httpswww.flickr.com/photos/wsdot/8670279118

The President’s first budget will almost certainly propose big cuts to discretionary spending programs. While the bulk of annual federal transportation spending is sourced from the highway trust fund and should be more insulated from these cuts, discretionary cuts would fall disproportionately on funding for new transit construction (New and Small Starts) and multimodal and local priority projects (TIGER).

House and Senate appropriators will have two decisions to make: a) whether to appropriate the amounts prescribed by the current long-term transportation law (the FAST Act) for the core programs, which is uncertain as well, and, b) how much to allocate for these other discretionary transportation programs.

As expected, with the heads of a few national trade groups also testifying yesterday alongside T4America before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, there was the usual rhetoric about America’s “crumbling” infrastructure amidst calls to invest more money overall in the federal transportation program.

And while T4America agrees on the need for greater levels of overall investment, T4A senior policy advisor Beth Osborne (pictured above) differentiated our overall position.

“As everyone testifying today will say,” she noted in her opening remarks, “we have great need to invest in our transportation system, including our roads, bridges, and transit systems. However, Transportation for America also believes that our problems run far deeper than just an overall lack of funding.”

When we have these discussions about the need to invest in infrastructure — especially in Washington — all sorts of ominous numbers are thrown around. Tens of thousands of deficient bridges. Pavement condition that’s worsening by the day. Backlogs of neglected maintenance and repair.

But where does the money go once we increase transportation spending and dole it all out to the states? Beth Osborne explained:

In fact, while we talk about the need for more funding to address our crumbling infrastructure, that is not necessarily where the funding goes. A 2014 report conducted by Smart Growth America called “Repair Priorities” found that between 2009 and 2011 states collectively spent $20.4 billion annually to build new roadways and add lanes. During that same time, states spent just $16.5 billion annually repairing and preserving the existing system, even while roads across the country were deteriorating. As we talk about large infrastructure packages, it’s only fair to ask that the priorities of our transportation program more closely match the rhetoric we use to justify more spending on it.

Why do we keep spending hefty sums on new roads and new lanes while repair backlogs get ignored? One reason is that transportation and development decisions are rarely well coordinated and we end up trying to address bad land use decisions with more transportation spending, and vice versa.

More from Beth:

I think about the two houses in Florida that are 70 feet apart but require a seven-mile drive to get from one to the other. Such a roadway and land use pattern seems almost designed with the express purpose of generating traffic snarls. But the problem is not categorized as a development or local road connectivity problem. It is put to the state and the federal government as a congestion problem that requires big spending to widen roads. Now no one is calling for the federal government to get involved in local land use decisions. However, there should be a way to reward cities and states consider these and take action improve outcomes and lower costs. Competitive programs can help to do that.

One of those competitive programs is the TIGER grant program, which could be one of the programs targeted for severe cuts — or elimination — in this looming budget proposal from the President.

TIGER has awarded more than $4 billion since 2010 to smart local projects, bringing 3.5 local dollars to the table for every federal dollar through just the first five rounds. Though only 5-6 percent of all applicants have successfully won funding, local leaders still love the programs, and the process encouraged applicants to try new strategies or approaches to be as competitive as possible to win funding — “like design-build project delivery or complete street designs or public-private partnerships,” Beth noted.

Rather than just sidling up to the table for their share of dollars allocated by some federal formula, communities have been trying to produce the best, most competitive applications that will bring the highest returns on both the federal investment and their local commitment.

This is the kind of innovation that Congress should be encouraging, not targeting for cuts.

In the New and Small Starts transit capital programs, there’s over $6 billion already promised to shovel-ready transit projects all across the country that have already raised local or state funding and are just waiting on capital dollars from the federal government to proceed. Projects like Indianapolis’ Red Line bus rapid transit project that has already been promised more than $70 million in federal dollars to pair with nearly $20 million in local funds from an income tax increase that Indianapolis voters approved back in November at the ballot box.

Indianapolis and a multitude of other communities small and large “are stretching themselves to raise their own funds and to innovate, but they cannot bring these important projects to fruition without a strong federal funding partner,” Beth said in closing this morning. “The programs that this committee funds are often the lynchpin for aiding states and localities in meeting these demands.”

We hope that this Senate subcommittee heard the message loud and clear and will stand up for these vital programs as the budget process moves forward. We’ll keep you updated.

Launching a new leadership training academy on transportation for civic leaders in the state of Ohio

We’re launching another leadership academy program, this time aimed at training and equipping civic leaders across the state of Ohio to spearhead a fresh approach to transportation that will foster sustainable economic growth and boost the economy in metro areas and the state.

The Healthline in Cleveland is one of the best bus rapid transit lines in the country, yet there’s little planning happening to replicate it elsewhere in the city or other cities in the state.

In cooperation with the Greater Ohio Policy Center, T4America is launching a new leadership academy program to help civic leaders across the state understand the importance of transportation and train these leaders to make change in their cities and regions, and we’re looking for applicants.

Ohio could benefit from a fresh approach to transportation. In a state where many of its cities struggle with either slow or negative population growth, the last generation’s economic development strategies are no longer delivering results.

Repair needs are mounting but municipal budgets struggle to keep up as the tax base decentralizes or population shrinks. While many in Ohio’s cities recognize the importance of public transportation, the state budget offers a pittance to transit service, pushing the full burden onto strained local budgets.

New job centers — especially for low-skill and high-opportunity jobs in logistics and manufacturing — are growing in suburban or exurban locations. Job growth is a boost to those locations, but these jobs are inaccessible to workers who don’t have a car or other reliable transportation. Employers lose out on part of the employer pool and even struggle to fill open positions at these sites.

A fresh approach to transportation can go a long way in addressing these challenges Ohio’s cities face, and it’ll be Ohioans who lead the way.

This Ohio academy program will show local leaders the best practices and emerging ideas that have been successfully employed in peer cities across the country. It will train participants to be effective champions for change in their cities and help a new generation of local leaders understand how transportation decisions and choices affect the quality of life and prosperity in their regions. We will show how expanding access to jobs and restoring walkable communities will be the keys to economic success in Ohio’s cities.

Each workshop will feature real-life lessons from other regions of the country and hands-on activities and exercises to understand critical concepts like low-cost, high impact changes such as rerouting and realigning transit service to better match travel patterns and provide better service to more riders, partnerships with employers to extend the reach of transit service and expand access to jobs, and how to make transit a central part of community and neighborhood development, to name just a few.

The academy will bring community leaders from across the state together for a yearlong series of six, one-day workshops. The program will strengthen connections between peers across the state, foster the leadership skills of a new cohort of transportation advocates, and reinforce the impactful work already under way in Ohio’s major metros.

The academy is aimed at local elected, business, and civic leaders. The program is best matched for individuals who do not work day-to-day in transportation, but have close ties to transportation or related fields, such as real estate, economic development, or workforce development. The program is open to individuals from across Ohio.

To request more information and an application, please complete this brief form.

While other cities try to replicate Houston’s successful bus network overhaul, Maryland’s plan for Baltimore falls short

At a time when other cities are redesigning their bus transit service and aggressively investing overall in public transportation to provide more consistent, predictable service to serve residents and employers, Baltimore — thanks to the state of Maryland — is attempting to get the most out of its bus system with only marginal new investment and changes in service that won’t do much to improve access to jobs, schools, or opportunity.

04.CathedralStreet.BaltimoreMD.30August2016

MTA Route 3 bus on Cathedral at West Franklin Street in Baltimore. Flickr photo by Elvert Barnes.

One of the most widely read transportation stories of the past few years is the dramatic transformation of Houston’s public transportation system, made possible by completely rebuilding their bus network and re-launching in 2015. As CityLab’s Laura Bliss wrote earlier this year:

The old hub-and-spoke system that had for decades funneled commuters downtown was straightened into a grid that cross-cuts the sprawling city, with fewer redundancies, more frequent service, and all-day, all-week service on heavily used lines.

For no substantial increases in operational costs, Houston was able to redesign their system to connect one million people and jobs with high-frequency all-day service. Paired with an expansion of light rail, it’s brought a significant increase in both ridership and the access that their residents have to jobs and opportunity.

The map of Houston’s frequent bus service, before (and after) their 2015 network redesign.

Meanwhile, halfway across the country in the summer of 2015, another story was unfolding.

That summer, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan canceled Baltimore’s long anticipated Red Line rail project that would have created a powerful new high-capacity transit line through the city. It would have connected jobs at Bayview (Johns Hopkins Bayview, National Institutes of Health), Woodlawn (Social Security Administration, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and the downtown office core with scores of residential neighborhoods all along the line — including some of the West Baltimore neighborhoods that would benefit the most from the investment and connection to opportunity that a new transit line provides.

A rendering of a station on the proposed Red Line in Baltimore, canceled in 2015 by Governor Hogan.

With many in Baltimore still reeling, just a few months later, Gov. Hogan’s administration released BaltimoreLink, “a transformative new vision for the future of transit in Baltimore City.” It was billed as a $135 million investment to rework Baltimore’s transit service, but those numbers are a little deceiving, as you’ll see.

The city and region’s transit is planned and operated by the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA), a state agency. No Baltimore agencies are in the driver’s seat of their own transit system, and have surprisingly few avenues for oversight and accountability of the MTA-run system.

Assessing the state’s proposal

Back in the fall, T4America helped the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance (Transportation Alliance), a coalition that supports improving and expanding transportation options in the Baltimore region, perform a quantitative analysis on the plan to see if the numbers would bear out on the benefits the state was claiming. Would the plan improve access to jobs, schools, and healthy food?

After all, in principle, a major reworking of the bus system map to improve service was a goal long-sought by the advocates in Baltimore. Once the MTA launched the BaltimoreLink effort it became the goal of advocates to challenge the MTA to produce measurable improvements on key indicators.

On behalf of the Transportation Alliance, we performed an analysis of the change in accessibility under the new plan. Using Citilabs’ Sugar Access tool, we measured the change in access at the individual block level, looking at access to all jobs, as well as access to high-opportunity jobs and access from low-opportunity neighborhoods. We also looked at access to public middle and high schools and grocery stores.

So would it be truly transformative? Would it increase the number of jobs that are accessible to everyday Baltimore residents? Would it provide increased connections to opportunity for a wider range of people?

The short answer is no.

01a.MTA.Bus3.NB.BaltimoreMD.19October2016

A man studying while on on MTA Route 3 bus on North Charles at Centre Street in Baltimore. Flickr photo by Elvert Barnes

The long answer is that the plan “represents a missed opportunity to address regional goals in connecting households to jobs, schools, and essential services through transit,” according to the Transportation Alliance’s terrific summary of the findings. The bottom line is that BaltimoreLink does not deliver the promised transformational improvements and in contrast to MTA’s claims, we found a sharp decrease in accessibility on weekends (Sunday morning peak) and a marginal increase on weekdays. Read more about the detailed findings in the Transportation Alliance’s executive summary. (pdf)

In response, the administration initially attacked the empirical study, the Transportation Alliance and other local transit supporters. MTA recently released a revised plan which the Transportation Alliance and other stakeholders are reviewing. The MTA will hold public hearings in January, finalize the plan in March and implement the changes in June 2017.

Redeploying routes more effectively would be only one part of any proper solution. The region also needs local oversight in transit planning and an ironclad pledge for coordination between the state and the city to get anywhere near the kinds of benefit that Houston was able to realize. As the Transportation Alliance’s summary goes on to note:

Unlike Houston, Baltimore is an older, dense city where right-of-way is much more limited. Much of BaltimoreLink’s success in terms of speed and reliability hinges on coordination of road space and traffic signals between MTA and the City of Baltimore’s Department of Transportation. [But] without dedicated bus lanes and traffic signal prioritization, the potential benefits of this project may not be realized. It is inaccurate to anticipate reliable, rapid, transit going through downtown without dedicated right-of-way.

Looking ahead

While Baltimore stands to benefit immensely from redesigning its network, the benefits will be limited if the MTA merely reallocates its current resources — the state of Maryland needs to increase their investment in transit to improve service and accessibility for residents.

Click tor read our 2015 report analyzing the proposed economic benefits of the Red Line in Baltimore (and the approved Purple Line in the Washington, DC suburbs.)

In 2015, the city was on the cusp of going ahead with the Red Line, a brand new high-capacity rail transit line, which would have resulted in 83,000 more people living near high quality, frequent transit. Now, without that sizable (state and federal) investment represented by the Red Line, they’re on the receiving end of an alternate plan that represents just a 1.5 percent increase in MTA’s annual operating budget — about $70 million over six years; a plan that does little to separate transit riders from traffic congestion or tangibly improve access to jobs and opportunity.

That’s small potatoes, and the state needs to do better.

Maryland’s economic future is tied directly to the performance of their major metropolitan areas. Making smart investments that can increase access to opportunity for more people can help those places prosper, boosting the state’s overall economy in the meantime.

Houston it’s definitely not, but this story isn’t over yet.

Can-do places: How Seattle is accommodating population growth and sustaining economic growth while maintaining quality of life

This story from Seattle, Washington is the seventh in our series of stories illustrating how local communities across the country are casting a vision and often putting their own skin in the game first with local funding while hoping for a strong federal partner to make those plans a reality.

In cities, towns and suburbs like Seattle all across the country, local leaders are responding to new economic challenges with innovative plans for their transportation networks, including taxing themselves to make their visions a reality. But they can’t do it alone and need strong federal and state partners to make it work.

Set aside some time to read this long profile of what’s been happening in Seattle — which includes their enormous measure on November’s ballot, where voters will decide whether or not to bring the next phase of their regional transit expansion to life.

 

Seattle, Washington

 The economy in Seattle and the greater Puget Sound region is soaring, and area population growth is supersonic. Unmanaged, that prosperity could drive the cost of living out of reach for many low- and middle-income Seattleites and choke the regional transportation network to deadlock congestion, pumping the brakes on the region’s historic prosperity. But forward-thinking transportation investments and smart city planning have the region poised to stay in control of the boom.

Read the full story here.

Mt. Rainier peaks over the Seattle skyline. Natural beauty, a bustling job market, and high quality life have this Pacific metro booming.

Mt. Rainier peaks over the Seattle skyline. Natural beauty, a bustling job market, and high quality life have this Pacific metro booming. Flickr photo by Daniel Schwen.

Fulfilling transit’s need for speed in King County

Improving bus travel times and overall reliability can not only lower the cost of providing service and potentially attract new riders, but every dollar saved is a dollar that can be spent on more transit service elsewhere. Attracting new riders and stretching every dollar as far as possible are critical for regions striving to meet the demand for housing, jobs and retail near effective transit. T4A member King County has a novel approach to improving transit speed and reliability.

2016_08_02_MemberBlog_S&R_Photo (1)

Transit agencies traditionally improve transit speed and reliability by investing in big light rail and bus rapid transit (BRT) projects that give transit vehicles dedicated right-of-way unimpeded by traffic. But how can transit agencies improve reliability and speed of their existing transit service when dedicated right-of-way isn’t possible or affordable?

King County Metro, the transit agency for a county that contains 39 cities including Seattle and Bellevue — while still investing in many RapidRide BRT corridors — has a department that develops lean, flexible solutions that can be applied more broadly over its bus network to make service more convenient and reliable.

True to its name, King County Metro’s Transit Speed and Reliability (S&R) group works to sustain and improve the speed and reliability of the system, which carries 120 million riders per year. To accomplish this, S&R employs a toolbox of engineering solutions that range from large corridor-wide projects to smaller spot improvements that can improve speed and reliability anywhere on the network, regardless of whether the line is a designated BRT corridor or just a typical bus line.

These spot improvements are small- to medium-scale solutions to maintain or improve bus performance, like bus lanes, on-street parking management, intersection channelization, traffic signal retiming, traffic signs, roadway channelization and transit signal queue jumps to eliminate delay and improve travel times and reliability.

Two recent examples of spot improvements help illustrate how cost effective this approach can be, and just how critical partnerships and collaboration are to the process, because streets are often owned by cities.

In the northern neighborhoods of Seattle, four separate bus routes carrying 1,950 total riders per day were experiencing significant delay at Wallingford Avenue N and 80th Street due to a traffic signal prioritizing east-west traffic in the evening hours when the dominant bus traffic pattern is actually north-south. Speed and Reliability worked with the Seattle Department of Transportation (another T4A member) to change the signal timing from 9 p.m.- 12 p.m. creating a 12 second reduction in bus delay. That may not sound like much but multiplied over the 27 buses that pass through the intersection over those 3 hours, it’s over 5 minutes of paid bus driver time and even more passenger time every day — all from a very simple fix.

In Bellevue, Route 249 carrying 1,210 passengers per day was getting hung up at a left turn due to a short green signal. S&R worked with the Bellevue DOT to extend the green phase allowing buses to complete the left turn, reducing delay by 77 seconds. Again, very big time savings with a small, inexpensive fix.

The work of the four-member S&R group helps Puget Sound’s transit system collectively operate more efficiently with faster, more reliable service for riders — which is overall one of the most important qualities in transit service for most riders, according to TransitCenter’s new national survey out just a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many funding streams dedicated to improving system performance with strong but incremental returns on investment. For example, the major source of federal capital funds that agencies can receive, New Starts/Small Starts/Core Capacity, is used to build new lines entirely or make comprehensive improvements to entire corridors. The other capital funds that agencies receive are entirely for new equipment, so you can get money to buy a new bus, but it’s hard to get any money intended specifically to operate that bus more efficiently,

Although Metro has had success in securing federal capital funds for speed & reliability projects on RapidRide and other large corridor projects, the agency relies on locally-generated revenues as well as cooperation and support from local traffic agencies for spot improvements . Operations and maintenance of S&R treatments are even tougher to fund, which can result in degradation of the effectiveness of S&R treatments over time.

We’re glad to have King County on board as a new T4A member. As the T4A network grows, we can continue addressing the policy and funding gaps that inhibit these types of innovative, and cost-effective strategies exemplified by King County Metro’s Transit Speed and Reliability group.

Three separate ballot measures for transportation in the Atlanta region cleared to proceed

After the crushing defeat of a huge regional transportation ballot measure back in 2012, Atlanta is poised to rebound this fall. After recent action by city and county leaders to place measures on the ballot, voters in metro Atlanta will be making at least three critical decisions this fall about sizable new investments in transportation.

Atlanta beltline bike biker housing

People biking along the booming Atlanta Beltline’s east side trail, which would get a big boost through two separate ballot measures in November to help buy additional right-of-way and start to add transit to the mix.

Thanks to a law passed by the Georgia legislature (SB 369) in the dying hours of the 2016 session, the city got the go-ahead to put at least two questions on the ballot that will raise funds to finally add transit to the one-of-a-kind Beltline around the city, expand existing bus and rail service, fund other new transit projects, and make other general transportation investments in the city.

We wrote about the legislation back in March:

The legislation enables three new local funding sources, each dependent on approval through voter referenda. 1) The City of Atlanta can request voter approval for an additional half-cent sales tax through 2057 explicitly for transit, bringing in an estimated $2.5 billion for MARTA transit. 2) Through a separate ballot question the city could ask for another half-cent for road projects. 3) And in Fulton County outside the city, mayors will need to agree to a package of road and transit projects and ask voters to approve up to a ¾-cent sales tax to fund the projects.

The first of these three options got the go-ahead back in June when the Atlanta City Council approved a tentative list of transit projects to fund with a new half-penny tax for MARTA and placed the measure on the ballot — though this list of projects could still change as they move into planning and public meetings following a successful vote.

But for now, according to the presentation from MARTA (pdf), the $2.5 billion that would be generated by the new half-penny sales tax raised locally would help fund subway extensions, hefty improvements in bus service, new light rail on the Beltline project which will eventually encircle the city with transit, a walking/biking trail and linear parks, and improvements to bike and pedestrian connections near stations and bus stops. The half cent tax would run for 40 years.

marta tax transit projects`marta tax bike ped projects

The state legislation also allowed The City of Atlanta to additionally raise up to another half-cent sales tax for a shorter period of time (five years) for other local transportation projects within the city limits. The Atlanta City Council chose to use only part of that taxing authority, putting a second measure on the ballot asking voters for 0.4 cents in additional sales tax, which will raise $260 million over the five-year life of the extra 0.4¢, and go toward a range of projects, according to a release from Mayor Kasim Reed’s office:

  • $66 million for the Atlanta BeltLine, which will allow the BeltLine to purchase all the remaining right of way to close the 22-mile loop;
  • $75 million for 15 complete streets projects;
  • $3 million for Phase 2 of the Atlanta Bike Share program;
  • $69 million for pedestrian improvements in sidewalks; and
  • $40 million for traffic signal optimization.

Note: The traffic signal optimization was a core part of the city’s application to the USDOT Smart City Challenge.

Mayor Reed said in his press release:

Infrastructure investments are vital to Atlanta’s quality of life and continued economic competitiveness. Between the $250 million being spent through the Renew Atlanta bond program and these TSPLOST funds, Atlanta will reap the benefits of more than a half billion dollars invested in new and improved roads, sidewalks, neighborhood greenways, parks and congestion reduction efforts. Combined with a $3 billion expansion of our public transit system through MARTA, Atlanta residents will see unprecedented new investments in strengthening our transportation networks.

If both of these ballot measures for transportation are approved — half a penny for MARTA and 0.4 cents for transportation — Atlanta will have a local sales tax rate of 8.9 percent, certainly among the higher rates in the country but still lower than Seattle, New Orleans, Chicago, nearby Nashville and other cities.

There’s also a third measure on the ballot this fall, but it only applies for residents of Fulton County that live outside of the city’s borders. There, voters will be deciding on a 0.75 percent sales tax for transportation projects that would fund only projects outside of the city limits in unincorporated Fulton County and in other cities. Fulton is a large county that stretches far enough to the north and south to encompass suburbs on both sides of Atlanta proper.

This Fulton-only measure would be explicitly for road projects, with nothing going toward public transportation. Widening roads, safety projects, resurfacing roads, and some streetscape improvements including bike lanes and new sidewalks.

This roads-only measure for the county is the result of the legislature’s lack of agreement on a larger bill that would have enabled a bigger single transit measure in Atlanta and both adjoining counties, Fulton and DeKalb. The larger MARTA ballot measure would have raised somewhere around $8 billion for MARTA. Opposition to new transit measures — especially in parts of Fulton County — sunk that legislation.

So Fulton County gets this roads-only ballot measure, but no chance at MARTA expansion further into the county for the immediate future.

In 2012, Atlanta’s large regional transportation measure that would have split over $7 billion between road and transit projects across the ten-county region failed miserably at the ballot, for a number of reasons. Yet voters in the City of Atlanta and Dekalb county strongly voted in favor of it, and we suggested at the time that an Atlanta-only measure could be the next path forward for the city.

Four years on, Atlanta voters will soon be deciding whether or not to make one of the biggest investments in infrastructure of any city of its size over the next few years. Taken with the $250 million Renew Atlanta infrastructure bond measure that passed last year, these measures would raise over $3 billion to invest in transportation over the next 40 years, with about $500 million of that coming over just the next five years.

Keep up with all of the notable local ballot measures we’re tracking with Transportation Vote 2016

Transpo Vote 2016

Crucial transportation and transit-related ballot measures coming up in 2016

Throughout 2016, ballot measures and referenda that will raise new revenue for transportation at the local or state level will be decided during elections across the country. As in years past, we’ll be keeping a close eye on several of the most notable questions in the 2016 edition of Transportation Vote.

We’ll be profiling a few at length on the blog over the next few months and keeping all the relevant information organized in a table: https://t4america.org/maps-tools/state-policy-funding/2016-votes

Transpo Vote 2016

Two years ago in 2014, a handful of states moved to create “lockboxes” for transportation funds and several others raised new funding. At the local level, cities and counties from Atlanta to Seattle approved important ballot measures to raise new funding to either preserve or massively expand public transportation service.  The voters in a growing list of states and localities will be deciding similar questions this November, and we’ll be keeping a close eye. Stay tuned for more, and bookmark Transportation Vote 2016.

Transportation-related ballot measures tend to do well with voters — whether statewide or exclusively local measures — passing at around twice the rate of all other ballot measures. And transit or multimodal measures always do well, passing about 71 percent of the time since 2009.

As soon as election day is over, the focus will shift to 2017 and especially the state legislative sessions beginning around the beginning of the year. If you want to know more about state legislation related to transportation revenue, you need to join us in Sacramento for Capital Ideas II. There’s still time to register and make travel plans to meet us there. Don’t miss your opportunity to be a part of this terrific event that will help equip you to make things happen in 2017 and beyond.

Capital Ideas banner sacramento promo

Note: We don’t track 100 percent of all transit-related measures — for an overview of all transit-related ballot measures, turn to the Center for Transportation Excellence, the authority on tracking such data. Questions about measures or know of a significant one we should be following that doesn’t appear here? Reach out to Dan Levine on our staff.