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Senate Passes Cloture; 5 Things We’re Watching

***Please note, at 10:00am T4A received McConnell’s substitute amendment, which means that a number of these items may have changed. We’ll keep you updated as it proceeds.**

Last night, the US Senate passed a procedural vote called cloture. Like a starting pistol in a race, this means that they can now start debating, amending and eventually pass a federal surface transportation bill out of the Senate. While many things can, and will, happen over the next few days, there are a number of topics that Transportation for America is watching.

Want to know how your Senator voted on cloture? Click HERE.

1.Payfors – DC parlance for real and imaginary ways to pay for this bill.

At this time, there appears to be a wide-ranging list of payfors that run as small as $172 million up to $16 billion. Some of these include items like such as rescinding unused TARP funds or extending fees for TSA. There do not seem to be many that keep the traditional tie between users of the system and payments into the system.

The mass transit account appears to be running out of funding well before the highway trust fund. Initial T4A analysis seems to indicate that the legislation pulls in all 10 years of the proposed funding to pay for 3 years of the highway trust fund and 1.5 years of the mass transit account.

APTA transit funding table in current Senate transportation legislation

The legislation also appears to sell 101 million barrels out of the 693.7 million barrels of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) between 2018 and 2025 to bring in $9B over 10 years. Critics of this funding scheme assert that we are selling the oil when prices are at record lows, making it a foolish idea. Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) is reportedly one of those critics.

Originally, this legislation withheld Social Security payments from recipients that are subjects of a felony arrest warrant and for whom the state has given notice that they intend to pursue the warrant, raising $2.3 billion over 10 years. T4A has heard that Senate negotiators have removed this provision due to the advocacy of a number of social equity and civil rights groups.

2. Transit
T4A and the larger transportation community have several concerns about this title, the main ones are:

US Banking Democrats chart on modal share under currently proposed Senate legislation

First, the DRIVE Act fails to provide public transportation with 20% of the new revenue dedicated to growth, which is a historical guarantee dating back to President Reagan’s agreement in 1982. Public transportation receives only 6% of the revenue derived from the future funding growth (see Senate Banking Democrats chart). U.S. DOT estimates that the Mass Transit Account ends the third year of the bill (FY 2018) with a negative balance of $180 million. Senator Boxer is reportedly negotiating a fix with Senate Republicans that will increase that percentage.

Second, projects with private funds get to “skip the line” for federal money, providing a major incentive for privatized service. The existence of a new expedited process could entice cities to pursue transit privatization on a large scale by using P3s to operate transit service. The labor community has expressed strong opposition and may oppose the entire bill if this provision isn’t removed.

Third, this legislation forces the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to wait 6 months before increasing oversight of at-risk projects. Sec. 21015 requires the FTA to wait for a project to fail 2 consecutive quarterly reviews before providing more oversight to a project that is going over budget or falling behind schedule.

3. The Freight program

This legislation includes all modes of freight, including pipelines for the first time. It also requires the establishment of a new multi-modal freight network within 1 year of enactment, the establishment of which appears to be similar to the creation of the existing freight network (as well as a re designation of the existing highway freight network). It does, however, define economic competitiveness by the amount of traffic moved and not economic outcomes and will fund projects that reduce congestion, improve reliability, boost productivity, improve safety or state of good repair, use advanced technology or protect the environment on the national highway freight network.

You’ll recall that T4A sent out an action alert to keep the TIGER program multimodal and not let the US Senate Commerce Committee use it for freight-exclusive purposes. We’re happy to report that effort was successful, though the TIGER program is still not authorized or funded in the transportation bill.

4. Passenger Rail
This legislation authorizes passenger rail funding for the first time ever in a federal surface transportation reauthorization. The legislation calls for $1.44B in 2016 and growing to $1.9B in 2019. It maintains a national system and provides for clear cost accounting among the 4 business lines of Amtrak of the corridor, state-supported and long-distance trains. Provides for up to 6 new passenger rail routes on a competitive basis and for the first time makes operational costs eligible for grants.

5. AMP – Assistance for Major Projects
This is a new project for highway or transit projects that cost at least $350M or 25% percent of state highway apportionment (10% in a rural state). Applications should be reviewed based on consistency with federal goals, improvement to the performance of the system, is consistent with the statewide plan, can’t be completed without federal help and will achieve one or more of the following:

generate national economic benefits outweigh cost,
reduce congestion,
improve the reliability of movement of people and freight, or
improve safety

Grants under AMP must be at least $50M, with a rural guarantee of 20%. Eligible applicants for AMP include states, local governments (or group of locals), tribal governments, transit agencies, port authorities, public authorities with transportation function and federal land management agencies. It is not yet clear if this language is specific enough to include MPOs.

Amendments to be offered: T4A staff is monitoring a number of potential amendments. One of which (offered by Senators Wicker (R-MS) and Booker (D-NJ)) would increase the ability of communities to fund projects through the Surface Transportation Program. We strongly urge you to call your Senator and tell them to co-sponsor that amendment.

Boston’s Olympic bid aims to be the first where you don’t need a car

Three Massachusetts-based organizations recently published Putting Legacy First, a report that makes a series of recommendations intended to support the official 2024 Boston Olympics bid. Their smart recommendations focus on ensuring that the transportation investments made to support a walkable, transit-oriented Olympics and Paralympics will also be primed to serve the Bay Staters well for years to come.

The authors recognize the potential of transportation as a catalyst for short and long-term change. Improvements that the city and state officials can start on now will improve Boston immediately, like addressing the backlog of MBTA’s maintenance needs or focusing future development on creating more walkable, bikeable and livable neighborhoods in affected areas, will also go a long way to making a more widely supported bid. Additionally, by rallying around the challenge of being the first Olympic and Paralympic games that visitors can attend car-free, the authors pose a challenge to federal, state and local officials to think about transportation for the disabled and enabled populations equally.

“We’ve known for a long time that our transportation system – especially the MBTA – needed lots of maintenance and investment just like many transit systems throughout our country. This winter certainly proved it. The Games could provide the deadline that the Boston area may need to create a system Bostonians can be proud of, but it requires that the state, cities and towns, and the Olympic host committee work together to overcome the political and financial barriers that stand in the way of a world-class transportation system,” said Kristina Egan, director of Transportation for Massachusetts.

How do they propose to achieve this goal? Putting Legacy First has eight transportation recommendations, Putting Legacy First Cover a few of which are summarized below:

The Olympics and Paralympics should serve as a catalyst to accelerate efforts to make the MBTA fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Infrastructure improvements that are solely related to the Games should be financed entirely by private sources. Projects that generate shared benefits to the Games as well as long-term public benefits should be financed by a mix of public and private funds.
Since all the main venues are along the coast or Charles River, the report strongly suggests Olympic planners use the Games as an opportunity to build resilience to climate change, sea level rise and storm surges.

One concern expressed by the critics of the Boston 2024 bid is the fear that citizens will wind up paying for a large amount of new infrastructure while receiving few of the benefits. What they view as a current lack of public information and participation adds to this concern. In response, the report offers ways to mitigate those concerns by clearly defining public and private sector roles, as well as recommending that the Commission, “maximize public input and participation with a special focus on under-represented groups”.

“We have to put legacy first,” said Marc Draisen, executive director of MAPC, whose staff are the prime authors of the report. “It’s not just about writing a winning bid and making the Games a success; it’s about making sure our region ends up with more affordable homes, better jobs, beautiful parks, and a 21st century transportation system. These things won’t just happen by themselves. We have to leverage the Olympic bid to make them happen, and the sooner the better.”

While the International Olympic Committee will not announce the 2024 host city until 2017, many civic-minded groups are ready to fight for a blueprint that ensures their investments into such an opportunity benefit the greater Boston region and have lasting positive effects for decades to come.

Putting Legacy First was written and published jointly by the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance, Transportation for Massachusetts and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (a T4A member).

Compromise in Washington State clears the way for a transportation funding package

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee and state legislative leaders indicated yesterday that they have reached agreement on a $15 billion transportation package that also provides $15 billion in local funding authority for Sound Transit, the regional transit agency for the Puget Sound (Seattle) region.

The deal looked almost dead last week, but a last-ditch compromise could give Seattle-area residents a little more control over their transportation future.

From the Seattle Times piece:

The major obstacle to reaching agreement on a statewide transportation package disappeared Sunday morning, as Gov. Jay Inslee announced he would accept “poison pill” language in the measure intended to hinder one of his environmental priorities. And Sunday afternoon, Rep. Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, chair of the House Transportation Committee, announced that Democrats and Republicans had reached a deal on the package itself. In addition to the approximately $15 billion in funding, the package includes the authorization sought for the full $15 billion in Sound Transit’s rail-extension ballot measure, according to Clibborn. “The deal is done,” said Clibborn. “It’s just now, do we have the votes and are people happy with the deal we struck?”

This local funding authority for Sound Transit — which would still have to be approved by Puget Sound voters in November 2016 — would fund LINK light rail extensions to Everett, Issaquah and Tacoma, Ballard and West Seattle while enhancing the region’s bus service.

This isn’t a done deal just yet.

The legislature still must approve the leadership’s deal, which includes a “poison pill” preventing future adoption of a low carbon fuel standard, a compromise that several environmental groups oppose. The low carbon fuel provision has been an important priority for Gov. Inslee, but House Republicans had made it clear that they wouldn’t vote for a funding package unless the clean fuel provision was precluded:

Inslee had sought the [low carbon fuel] standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but Republicans have argued that it would raise gas prices. “I oppose that and have worked hard to find a better alternative,” Inslee said in a statement. “But legislators tell me it is essential to passing the $15 billion multimodal transportation package and authorizing an additional $15 billion for Sound Transit light rail expansion.”

While the package does raise new state revenues for transportation writ large, a majority of Puget Sound voters will have to support a Sound Transit III ballot measure in November 2016 to approve the additional revenues to support the substantial transit investment that includes the expansion of the LINK light rail system.

Exclusive Member Summary – 6/18/15 Senate Finance Highway Funding Hearing

June 18, 2015 — US Senate Finance Committee — “Dead End, No Turn Around, Danger Ahead: Challenges to the Future of Highway Funding”

Witnesses:

Dr. Joseph Kile – Assisant Director for Microeconomic Studies Division, Congressional Budget Office

The Honorable Ray LaHood – Senior Policy Advisor, DLA Piper

Mr. Stephen Moore – Distinguished Visiting Fellow, The Heritage Foundation

At this hearing, Chairman Hatch (R-UT) looked to explore every possible option to address the long-term fiscal challenges of the Highway Trust Fund. However, at the hearing he mentioned that he does not see any large-scale gas tax increase as politically possible. That said, Hatch pressed the need remove the “highway cliff” by finding funding to do a multi-year authorization.

Senator Carper (D-DE) called upon Senator Hatch to ensure no options like the gas tax are taken off the table, and referred to T4A analysis that showed state legislators who vote for a gas tax increase were not punished. Carper mentioned that at a minimum we should be able to index the gasoline and diesel tax and then come up with other creative sources to fund infrastructure.

Witness Stephen Moore with Heritage Foundation floated the idea of devolution, but the proposal was very unpopular for a majority of committee members and was shot down by former Secretary Ray LaHood as an irresponsible notion. Senators Thune (R-SD), Heller (R-NV) and Menendez (D-NJ) all voiced devolving the program. Transit came under attack for receiving gas tax dollars, but Senator Thune mentioned kicking transit out of the program is a political non-starter after it failed in the House during debate for MAP-21, and Senator Menendez and former Secretary Ray LaHood both stood up strongly for the need for more robust transit investment, not less.

Senator Thune (R-SD) mentioned that we should be treating general fund transfers as adding debt to an already debt-burdened country, since those funds ultimately do account for part of the deficit. He said it is time we stop the easy solution of general fund transfers and find a way pay for it. Senator Hatch agreed that long-term action is absolutely needed, and mentioned it will be difficult, but that the Committee will be working to look at all the different options to come up with a solution that stops the country from kicking the can down the road.

US House Passes Transportation-HUD Appropriations on Razor-Thin Margin; 216-210

Late last night, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass their FY2016 Transportation-HUD with just 6 votes separating the bill from defeat. Just 3 Democrats voted for the bill’s passage — Rep. Ashford (D-NE), Rep. Cuellar (D-TX), and Rep. Graham (D-FL) — and 31 Republicans voted in opposition. The list of Republicans voting in opposition included centrists such as Rep. Dold (R-IL), Rep. King (R-NY), and Rep. Meehan (R-PA) and more conservative representatives such as Rep. Amash (R-MI), Ken McClintock (R-CO), and Rep. Massie (R-KY). While the news is bad for TIGER, Amtrak and New Starts transit capital programs — which all received heavy cuts — we do not expect this bill in its current state to become law any time soon.

This final vote count is a sign of things to come.

The U.S. House and Senate Republicans are sticking to sequestration-level discretionary funding amounts for all of their FY2016 spending bills, established in the Budget Control Act of 2011. These spending caps limit funding for the regular appropriation bills in FY2016 to $1.016 trillion, a funding increase of just 0.29% over last year. We expect the House to continue to face uphill challenges in passing their bills and over in the Senate, with near, if not all-out opposition, from the Democrats expected for all 12 annual spending bills.

This issue will not likely resolve itself until the fall. Just yesterday, Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) rejected a call from Senate Democrats to hold a “budget summit” this month to resolve the differences between the two parties on top-line annual appropriations levels. Until this larger issue is resolved, we don’t expect the House Transportation-HUD bill that narrowly passed last night to become law any time soon.

Amendments that were considered last night prior to the bills passage include:

Rep. Denham (R-CA) – An amendment to prohibit funds from bill to be used for high-speed rail in California or for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. A similar amendment passed last year in the House by a vote of 227-186, but this amendment and others to restrict funding to the California high-speed rail project were not included in the final FY2015 transportation spending bill due to lack of support in the Senate

AMENDMENT ADOPTED BY VOICE VOTE

Rep. Bass (D-CA) – An amendment to make it easier for state and local transportation agencies to use local hire criteria for FTA procurement selection processes. A similar amendment was included in the final FY2015 transportation spending bill and USDOT is currently implementing this through a one-year pilot. Read our take on that original provision from earlier this year.

AMENDMENT ADOPTED BY VOICE VOTE

Rep Emmer (R-MN) – An amendment to prohibit the use of funds from being used to carry out projects to improve bicycle and pedestrian access on any FTA New Start (transit) projects.

AMENDMENT REJECTED BY VOTE 212-214 (Zero Democrats voted for the amendment — see roll call vote here)

Rep Meehan (R-PA) – An amendment to prohibit Amtrak from spending capital funds on projects other than the Northeast Corridor until Amtrak spends an amount equal to this year’s Northeast Corridor profits on Northeast Corridor capital construction. Amtrak’s profits from that line in FY2015 were $290 million.

AMENDMENT REJECTED BY VOTE 199-227 (see roll call vote here)

Rep Posey #1 (R-FL) – An amendment to prohibit funds from being used to take any actions related to financing a new passenger rail project that runs from Orlando to Miami through Indian River County, Florida. This amendment and Rep. Posey’s other two below were targeted at stopping and/or stalling the development of the private Florida East Coast Railway high-speed rail project.

AMENDMENT REJECTED BY VOTE 163-260 (see roll call vote here)

Rep Posey #2 (R-FL) – An amendment to prohibit funds from being used to authorize exempt facility bonds to finance passenger rail projects that are not reasonably expected to attain a maximum speed in excess of 150 mph.

AMENDMENT REJECTED BY VOTE 148-275 (see roll call vote here)

Rep Posey #3 (R-FL) – An amendment to prohibit funds from being used to make a loan in an amount that exceeds $600 million under the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) program.

AMENDMENT REJECTED BY VOTE 134-287 (see roll call vote here)

Rep Sessions #1 (R-TX) – An amendment to prohibit funds from being used by Amtrak to support the route with the highest loss, measured by contributions/(loss) per rider (would eliminate the “Sunset Limited” line from New Orleans to Los Angeles). Rep. Sessions has in the past made amendments similar to this and the following amendment.

AMENDMENT REJECTED BY VOTE 205-218 (see roll call vote here)

Rep Sessions #2 (R-TX) – An amendment to prohibit funds being used by Amtrak to operate any route whose operating costs exceed two times its revenues based on the National Railroad Passenger Corporation FY2014-2018 Five Year Plan from April 2014, targeting nearly all long-distance routes.

AMENDMENT REJECTED BY VOTE 186-237 (see roll call vote here)

Rep Blackburn (R-TN) – An amendment to reduce the overall appropriations for the Transportation-HUD bill by 1%.

AMENDMENT REJECTED BY VOTE 163-259 (see roll call vote here)

Rep Gosar (R-AZ) – An amendment to prohibit funds from being used to implement or enforce the rule entitled “Hazardous Materials for High-Hazard Flammable Trains”.

AMENDMENT REJECTED BY VOTE 136-286 (see roll call vote here)

Rep Lee (D-CA) – An amendment to strike provisions included in the spending bill that would prohibit USDOT from allowing flights or cruise ships to travel to Cuba.

AMENDMENT REJECTED BY VOTE 176-247 (see roll call vote here)

UPDATE: The House is voting to slash transportation programs local communities are counting on

This evening, the House of Representatives is expected to begin debate and vote on their annual transportation funding bill. As it stands, the bill will make painful cuts to several important transportation programs that local communities depend on. With debate beginning Wednesday at 7 p.m. and continuing through the night, it’s crucial that we weigh in as soon as possible.

Updated 2:15 p.m 6/4/15: The House delayed the final vote on the bill until Tuesday, June 9th. So keep those messages coming! Share the news with your friends and if you have already sent a letter, click through to the form again and you can find your rep’s phone number for making a quick call.

Updated 10:52 a.m 6/4/15: Debate on the bill continued well into the wee hours of Wednesday night into Thursday morning, and the House is expected to vote on the bill by noon (eastern time) on Thursday.

Can you send a message to your representative today in advance of this crucial vote?

The programs targeted by the House for cuts are precisely the ones that cities, towns and metro regions of all sizes throughout the country are depending on to help them stay economically competitive and bring their ambitious transportation plans to fruition.

Specifically, this bill would:

Cut $200 million for all new transit construction. This comes at a time when public transportation ridership is booming and cities of all sizes are looking to invest in new bus, rail transit, and bikeshare projects to help them stay economically competitive. This program is what Indianapolis is currently using to kick-start their ambitious bus rapid transit network, and scores of other communities are hoping to do the same.
Slash the TIGER competitive grant program by 80 percent from last year’s level down to just $100 million. We’re now six rounds into the popular TIGER program, and it’s clearly inadequate to fulfill the huge demand throughout the country. The program has funded innovative projects in communities of all sizes in all 50 states — and in districts both red and blue.
Cut Amtrak’s budget by $250 million just a few weeks after the tragic Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia, and at a time when ridership has never been higher.

This bill moves to the House floor this evening and will be debated well into the night. The final vote is most likely to come sometime tomorrow, so don’t stop calling and sending messages before the end of the day Thursday. (See updates on timing above.)

So send a message to your representative as soon as you can today. And after you do, if you want to make an even bigger impact, pick up the phone, give them a call and urge them not to cut funding for New and Small Starts, TIGER grants and passenger rail.

Will Congress reward the ambitious places that are seizing their future with both hands?

The three mid-sized regions participating in this week’s Transportation Innovation Academy in Indianapolis are a refreshing reminder that local communities – particularly a growing wave of mid-size cities — are seizing their future with both hands and planning to tax themselves to help make ambitious transportation plans a reality. Yet even the most ambitious cities can’t do it alone, and if Congress fails to find a way to put the nation’s transportation fund on stable footing, it will jeopardize even the most homegrown, can-do plans to stay economically competitive.

Following up on the first session of this yearlong academy, sponsored by both T4America and TransitCenter, that began back in March, 21 representatives from these three similar-sized cities — Indianapolis, Raleigh, and Nashville — are reuniting in Indianapolis today and tomorrow to learn from experts and from each other about how to make their ambitious transit expansion plans a reality.

Follow along today and tomorrow (May 14-15 on twitter by following @T4America, @TransitCtr, and the hashtag #TranspoAcademy. The participants will be sharing some of the helpful nuggets of info they’re hearing throughout the two-day workshop.

With Infrastructure Week events happening here in DC all week (#RebuildRenew), it’s a good reality check to hear about these forward-looking plans bubbling up from the grassroots in cities far away from Capitol Hill.

So what’s on tap in Indy that’s worth sharing with the other business and civic leaders from Raleigh and Nashville this week?

Indianapolis

Action by the Indiana legislature in early 2014 cleared the way for metro Indianapolis counties to have a long-awaited vote on funding a much-expanded public transportation network, with a major emphasis on bus rapid transit. With that legislative battle behind them, the broad Indy coalition is working toward a November 2016 ballot measure to fund the first phase of their ambitious Indy Connect transportation plan.

Read the full profile.

While the particulars vary from place to place, Indy isn’t all that different than Nashville and Raleigh. All three cities have various groups of leaders who have coalesced around the notion that big investments in transit are crucial to their long-term economic prosperity and competitiveness.

As the task force concluded in Indianapolis in the story above, a well-rounded investment in a multimodal transportation network in Indy is the long-term plan with the highest return-on-investment. Though all are in different stages of the process, all three are making plans to tax themselves and/or raise local revenue that they are hoping to pair with additional investment from a reliable federal partner.

But will the feds continue to be a reliable partner?

We’ve spent a lot of time here focusing on the trend of states raising new transportation funds over the last few years, and some have mistaken that to mean that states are ready to go it alone. The truth is far from it. While all of these states are moving to address growing needs and declining revenues, they’re absolutely counting on the feds to continue their historic role as a partner. And shouldn’t those efforts be rewarded, rather than using it as an excuse to pass the buck down to states or localities?

In a story detailed in our longer “can-do” Indy profile, Indy is counting on the feds to support their efforts to get started with their bus rapid transit network.

The Red Line won’t get off the ground without a grant from the Federal Transit Administration, and if Congress fails to keep the nation’s trust fund solvent this summer and pass an annual appropriations bill with robust funding for infrastructure, neither will happen. Not only is Indy hopefully raising their own local funds, they’re also leveraging other investments to support the corridor and help it be as successful as possible — like prioritizing their federal block grants for community development into the soon-to-be Red Line corridor.

Red Line Indy slide

Indy, Raleigh, Nashville, and dozens of other cities and regions have been putting their own skin in the game as they make their bets on smart transportation investments. Yet Congress has shown no sign of either settling on a long-term funding source or coming up with an authorization proposal that lasts more than a couple of years. (Or a couple of months!)

Infrastructure Week, happening now, is a great time to hear from leaders of all stripes about the importance of investing in our nation’s infrastructure, but it can feel a little vague or hard to wrap your head around. Which infrastructure? What kind of infrastructure? To what end?

Hearing more about these very specific plans in Raleigh, Nashville and Indianapolis is a great way to bring the point of Infrastructure Week to a specific, understandable, local focus. For these three cities, transit = continued economic prosperity.

Mark Fisher, vice president of government relations and policy development at the Indy Chamber, made this connection clear in the Chamber’s press release for today’s event. “Other regions are using transit to attract talent and investment, connect workers to jobs and spark new development. We must move forward or we will continue to fall behind,” he said.

Hopefully the leaders on Capitol Hill will take note of the things happening in Indianapolis this week — and in Nashville and Raleigh and countless others — and finally come up with the fortitude required help our local economies prosper.

The Baltimore Sun agrees: Baltimore needs the Red Line

Yesterday, The Baltimore Sun editorial board heartily affirmed the necessity of the Red Line for Baltimore’s future, calling it “the economic shot in the arm” that the city needs and urging Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan to approve both it and the Purple Line project in the DC suburbs.

The editorial talks about the benefits of building the light rail line through west Baltimore — cleaner air, less cars on the road, access to jobs for the city’s low-income residents — and asks Gov. Hogan the question: “Why worsen the outlook for Baltimore area business growth by canceling the Red Line?”

Baltimore residents have already made considerable sacrifice to pave the way for the Red Line, the 14.1-mile-long east-west line that would connect Woodlawn with Johns Hopkins Bayview by way of downtown Baltimore. City lawmakers agreed to a higher gas tax, local governments have committed to $280 million in combined contributions, and soon, Maryland Transit Administration systems will be charging higher fares as required by the state legislature.

This city needs the economic shot in the arm that would come from the addition of the Red Line. West Baltimore, ground zero for the recent protests and unrest that arose after Freddie Gray’s death, would stand to benefit from the multi-billion-dollar investment in transportation infrastructure. Thousands of jobs would be created. What a vast improvement over the yawning “road to nowhere” canyon that continues to haunt that side of the city, the result of a failed freeway project.

The editorial mentions the success of the MARC commuter rail service as an example of the potential benefits that can come from expanded transit service. The MARC trains used to operate only on weekdays between DC and Baltimore, but the rail line recently started running trains on weekends, taking cars off the busy Baltimore-Washington Parkway and Interstate 95 during the weekends and providing another travel option.

The editorial closes with some figures from T4America’s Maryland transit report released last week, as well as an overall reason why the Red Line is so important to Baltimore:

But don’t take our word for it, ask the business community. The Greater Baltimore Committee and others have been leading the charge for the Red Line for years. They don’t want a handout, they want a level playing field. …What would the Red Line do for Baltimore? A recent Transportation for America report estimates 15,000 jobs and $2.1 billion in increased economic activity. The Purple Line exceeds that with 20,000 jobs and $7 billion in economic activity, according to the non-profit organization of business, elected and civic leaders. The timing could hardly be better. For a city at risk of drowning in despair, Mr. Hogan’s approval of the Red Line looks like a real life preserver.

Read the rest of the Sun editorial here, and if you missed it, download the full Maryland report.

The Red & Purple transit lines in Maryland would position Maryland for long-term economic success

Drawing from experience across the nation, a new Transportation for America report attempts to assess the full range of potential economic benefits from the planned Red and Purple transit lines in Maryland. The key finding: With benefits that far outweigh the costs, these two lines would help position Maryland for economic success in ways that few other investments are likely to do.

Send a message to Governor Hogan urging him to approve the two projects.

Send A Message

At a time when competitor regions are moving forward with their own ambitious transit plans and companies and workers alike are being drawn in increasing numbers to walkable locations with high-quality transit, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan will soon be deciding the fate of two long-awaited transit projects in Baltimore and the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Much ink has been spilled on the costs of the projects, but what about the potential benefits?

There are the short-term benefits as construction starts, workers are hired, materials are produced and sourced, and these large multi-year investments get underway; and there are the long-term benefits like the tens of thousands of additional jobs newly accessible by transit, the tens of thousands of people that have access to high-quality rail transit that did not before, and the development made possible by the dozens of stations on these new lines.The benefits to both the Washington and Baltimore regions are significant:

Building the projects would give 174,000 additional Maryland residents access to frequent, high-quality transit.
These two lines will help dramatically expand the labor and customer base for Maryland businesses. 540,000 jobs will be accessible via high-quality rail transit following construction.
The two new transit lines would generate 35,440 direct & indirect jobs and make a total $9 billion economic impact.

Gov. Hogan has stated his commitment to making Maryland “open for business” and prioritizing economic development around the state. How better to do that than by taking strong steps to keep the two largest regions in the state competitive for decades to come?

In March, the CEO of Marriott International, currently headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland in Montgomery County, shared the news with the Washington Post that they would be looking to relocate when their current lease is up.What’s their primary prerequisite for their new location? “I think it’s essential we be accessible to Metro, and that limits the options,” said CEO Arne Sorenson. If the Purple line gets built as planned, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties would see their total number of Metro stations nearly double, from 26 to 47. Wouldn’t it be smart for Maryland to double the options to retain employers like Marriott?

This is a recurring theme we’ve heard in meetings with mayors, chamber officials, and other civic leaders across the country. Making smart investments in transportation, and especially in transit, is a crucial part of their strategy to stay competitive and attract the talented workforce that is increasingly seeking out jobs and homes in walkable, connected cities and neighborhoods.

In Baltimore, the east-west Red Line would help turn a disconnected pair of existing transit lines into a proper system, connecting the hub of jobs at Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland Baltimore County, the downtown office core, and the residential neighborhoods all along the line — including some of the West Baltimore neighborhoods that could use the investment and connection to opportunity that a new transit line provides.

There’s nothing else in the plans in Maryland’s future that could bring the kind of long-term economic benefits to the state as these two transit projects could. Yes, both are expensive, but the benefits of each will far outweigh the costs — to say nothing of the heavy costs of inaction.

Several years ago, with the Purple line delayed once again, the Washington Post ran these ads in D.C.

: Thanks to Richard Layman for the use of this photo. http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com

It would be a shame to see ads like these again in ten or 20 years as we regret these missed opportunities. Tell Governor Hogan that you support both of these projects by sending him a letter.

Economic analysis shows Red and Purple lines could be major boon for Maryland, the city of Baltimore and suburban Washington, DC

Report puts the two lines in national context as governor weighs whether to fund them

The two rail transit lines being considered by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and his advisers could help leverage billions of dollars in income, increased productivity and expanded tax base, according to a new analysis from Transportation for a America.

The report is the first attempt to assess the full range of potential economic benefits from construction of the Purple Line, connecting Maryland’s Washington, D.C. suburbs, and the Red line, providing east-west connections between Baltimore and its suburbs.

“Given the number of regions across the country contemplating similar investments, we wanted to offer this report as a template for how to make a comprehensive assessment of economic impacts,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. “We found that the Red and Purple lines would have a payoff many times their cost and would yield economic results like few other investments being contemplated in Maryland.”

Among the findings:

The two lines would generate more than 35,000 direct and indirect jobs, increasing household income by over $1 billion;
Associated productivity increases from more reliable commutes and better access would raise incomes by another estimated $2.2 billion;
Increased real estate development potential would raise the tax base of the affected jurisdictions by billions of dollars — $12.8 billion for the Purple Line alone.
Families can save more than $900 a month if they can get by with one or fewer cars thanks to high-quality transit service;
Nearly 250,000 jobs will be accessible via rail transit in the Baltimore region, and 290,000 in the D.C. suburbs.

Additional benefits explored in the report include time savings for future commuters versus driving in traffic; the potential to retain employers who would have access to a larger pool of workers with reasonable commute options; and the long-term payoff of training local workers for higher-skill jobs.

“The Purple Line connects our region and makes Maryland relevant in the competition for talent and employers,” said Ilaya Hopkins, vice president for public affairs at the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce. “It provides greater access to opportunity for students, residents and employers in our state’s two most populous counties and connects major centers such as the University of Maryland College Park with multiple employment hubs. This report, published by a national organization, highlights the positive impact of the Purple Line for the state and the region.”

“Baltimore’s Red Line will transform the city’s rail transit into a connected, comprehensive system,” said Donald C. Fry, president and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee. “In doing so, it will attract businesses, generate jobs and have a significant long-term beneficial impact on the economy of the city and region.”

The report’s conclusions may have special relevance for Baltimore as the city attempts to address the economic struggles that helped fuel the recent unrest, Corless noted.

“Older cities like Pittsburgh and Baltimore don’t turn around without bold — but smart — investment in the future,” said former Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy, who helped lead the city’s comeback in the 1990s and early 2000s. “Like Pittsburgh before it’s recent turn-around, Baltimore has the precursors for success in its medical and educational assets. Investing in an excellent transit system will help tip the scales toward economic development while helping residents of all income levels get to the jobs that will follow.”

The full report is available online at https://t4america.org/maps-tools/maryland-transit-report/

View the Report

As transit becomes ‘must-have economic development tool,’ will Congress help?

An excellent piece in the Washington Post this morning caught up to the topic we have been raising here for some time: Good transit service and walkable locations with nearby places to live, eat and shop are essential for economic development in today’s world. Which makes us wonder: Is Congress listening?

Recalling that Marriott’s chief executive recently expressed a desire to locate near Metro rail, reporters Katherine Shaver and Bill Turque wrote:

Marriott’s announcement is the latest sign that mass transit, once viewed as a prescription for traffic congestion, is now considered a must-have economic development tool to attract millennials — the country’s largest living generation — along with their employers, and the taxes that both contribute to local governments. Adding to the demand is the country’s second-largest demographic group: empty-nest baby boomers seeking to downsize in the suburbs and drive less as they grow older.

As regular readers are well aware, Congress must find money to renew the federal transportation program this year, ostensibly by May 31 (though an extension of the law itself is all but inevitable). In doing so, lawmakers can either help or hurt communities, like those discussed in the story, that are lining up for very limited dollars for transit, TIGER and the like — money that can help them prepare their communities for economic success.

They are doing so in large part because they are continually hearing messages like this one from Stephen P. Joyce, Choice Hotels’ chief executive, quoted in the Post:

If you’re a suburban employer and you want to be relevant to people who want to live in urban locations, you’ve got to think mass transit,” Joyce said. “I can’t compete unless they can get to us without driving.

Henry Bernstein, a longtime economic development official who is now an executive in a commercial real estate firm in Rockville, MD, explains why: “This generation wants more things at their fingertips, rather than having to jump in a car to get to the mall or go eat. I truly believe any community that doesn’t have these things will fail.”

The Post story comes the same month that State Farm officials announced they would consolidate employees in three cities at regional hubs on sites with rail transit. “We’re designing these workplaces to be the future of State Farm,” chief operating officer Michael Tipsord said. “We’re creating a live-work-play environment that will give employees easy access to their work from the neighboring communities.”

Among the possible solutions within the federal program is the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act, introduced in both the House and Senate this month by a bipartisan group of lawmakers. It would give a major boost by allowing local communities more access to federal dollars flowing to their state, but there is so much more that could be done with more robust transit funding and more flexible use of existing dollars.

Here’s hoping that Congress is paying attention, and that the next federal program will provide local communities more access to the funds they need to meet the needs of today’s economy.

New training academy brings together key leaders from three ambitious regions

Twenty-one local leaders representing three regions with ambitious plans to invest in public transportation gathered today in Raleigh, NC, to kick off the first yearlong Transportation Innovation Academy, sponsored by T4America and TransitCenter.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos

Similarly sized regions of 1 million-plus, Indianapolis, Nashville, and Raleigh all have notable plans to expand their transportation systems with additional bus rapid transit or rail service. In partnership with TransitCenter, T4America has created a new yearlong academy for a select group of key leaders from each region that was selected to participate. The academy is intended to share knowledge and best practices, visit cities that have inspiring success stories, and help develop and catalyze the local leadership necessary to turn these ambitious visions into reality.

Sheila Ogle of Ogle Enterprises (Raleigh), left, Shane Douglas of Collier International (Nashville) and Juan Gonzalez of KeyBank Indiana (Indy) go through an exercise led by Jarrett Walker (@humantransit) where teams design a transit network for a fictional city with a set budget — one way to experience the real-life trade-offs that transit planners and cities have to make.

All 21 participants (seven from each region) are in Raleigh this week for a two-day workshop with experts in the field and leaders from other cities with similar experiences. Each of the three cities will host an academy workshop, focusing on the particular specifics of that city while also learning valuable lessons that are applicable back home. The participants will also take a trip together to a fourth region that already has tasted the kind of success that these leaders would love to replicate.

Key business leaders from each region are part of each group, along with mayors and city/county council members, real estate pros, housing industry experts and local advocates.

The diverse group of members, assembled by each region’s team lead, recognizes the fact that making any big plan to invest in a new transit line or system requires buy-in from more than just a mayor and/or a few citizen groups. There has to be a shared vision with support from a wide range of civic players. In some regions, there might be a huge university presence. In others, it might be a big medical institution that anchors the local economy.

In all cases, getting everyone to the table and building a vision that everyone can share in are keys to success.

Transportation Innovation Academy Raleigh 3

In Indianapolis, action by the Indiana legislature and Governor Mike Pence cleared the way for metro Indianapolis counties to vote on funding a much-expanded public transportation network, with a major emphasis on bus rapid transit. Civic, elected and business leaders had been hard at work since 2009 producing an ambitious and inspiring IndyConnect plan, “the most comprehensive transportation plan — created with the most public input — our region has ever seen,” according to Mayor Greg Ballard in the foreword to our Innovative MPO report. Now the hard part comes as they build public and political will and decide what to include on a November 2016 ballot measure that would raise revenue from changes to local income taxes — a challenging revenue mechanism to say the least.

While transit expansion has more support in the region’s core, local leaders acknowledge they have an uphill battle in some suburban counties more skeptical of the merits of transit. Mayor Ballard and the diverse group of Indy businesses (including a booming healthcare industry) supporting IndyConnect understand how important this measure is for helping Indy be economically competitive in the future. Local leaders hope to position their city to attract young families who think Chicago is too expensive and to lure recent college grads back home to Indy. And a strong regional public transit system is lies at the core of their economic strategy.

After watching the region’s two other counties approve ballot measure to raise funds for a regional transit system originally envisioned by all three counties, the hosts of this week’s workshop in Raleigh (Wake County) hope to join the other two core metro counties in beginning a new regional rail transit system.

Adjoining Durham and Orange counties approved half-cent sales taxes in 2011 and 2012 to fund transit operations, improved bus service and a regional light rail line. Wake County Commissioners, meanwhile, had not allowed a question to raise funds for a regional transit system to go to the ballot. In fact, a handful of commissioners actively prevented the issue going forward, often stifling debate at times.

That could all change in 2015, as more than half of the county board was replaced last November. Four new supportive members replaced four who had consistently been on the other side of the issue, clearing the way for a potential ballot measure in Wake County. Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane, who helped kick things off in the workshop this morning, has long supported a regional plan for transit.

Wake County is one of the fastest growing counties in the U.S. and the county’s population is due to double by 2035. Yet this rapidly growing community with a notable high-tech, research, government and major university employers is one of the few major metro regions lacking a significant transit system. Just like Indianapolis, they will be crafting their plan and building consensus in 2015 as they shoot for a vote in 2016.

In Nashville, local advocates and elected leaders are still smarting from the setback on last year’s effort to kick-start a bus rapid-transit network with a line that would have connected neighborhoods and major employment centers along an east-west route through the city.

Inspired by watching and learning from some of their neighbors’ mistakes, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce chose transit as a top priority six years ago, second only to improving public education. Local leaders there, including the recently departed Mayor Karl Dean, wanted to get out in front of the issue, rather than waiting 10 years after gridlock has overtaken the booming region. The business community and the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization have both been a key part of crafting the plan to make bus rapid transit a reality in Nashville, and members of the MPO, the Chamber, a and several businesses are all represented in their academy group.

Along with TransitCenter, we’re excited to see what the year will bring for these 21 participants and the up-and-coming regions that they represent. We’re going to have much more on these three cities this year, so stay tuned.

15 issues to watch in ’15, Part II: Places

It’s a challenge to craft a list of only five states, regions and cities that have important or notable things happening this year. Whether states attempting to raise transportation revenue this year, states changing key policies and continuing to innovate how they choose or build transportation projects, or local communities going to voters to raise money for new projects, there’s no shortage of places worth watching this year. Here are five that rose to the top, but tell us what you think we missed, in your area or elsewhere.

Ed: As the year began, we thought it would be fun to identify 15 people, places and trends worth keeping an eye on the next 12 months. We’re rolling out this list in three posts — read our first post on five policy issues worth watching on Capitol Hill in 2015.

Places

1. Minnesota

If we released a list this time last year, Minnesota might have appeared on that one as well. Though a broad coalition (Move MN) formed to rally support from the public and lawmakers for raising transportation revenues, the DFL majority in both chambers did not pass a transportation funding package in 2014. DFL Gov. Mark Dayton, running for reelection, seemed hesitant to support raising any taxes, though he routinely acknowledged that Minnesota needed to invest in their aging transportation network. Late in the election, he introduced his 2015 legislative plan to raise revenue: a new 6.5 percent wholesale tax on gasoline, in addition to a variety of other fee increases.

Gov. Dayton won re-election, but the Minnesota House flipped back to a GOP majority, providing a new challenge for his plan in the legislature. Though Move MN built an impressively broad coalition, they weren’t able to secure support from the statewide chamber and a few other key groups that represent Minnesota businesses. Gov. Dayton has already been lobbying those groups in 2015 to support his plan that would raise over $6 billion over the next decade.

Republicans in control of the House have issued their plan that would raise no new taxes but allocate $750 million over the next four years via various internal accounting maneuvers. (Great comparison of the two plans here.) With two legislative chambers split between the parties but a growing public call for something to be done to invest infrastructure, Minnesota will be a critical battleground to watch this year. If Congress fails to find a funding solution to keep the nation’s trust fund from going bankrupt this Spring, Minnesota — and states facing a shortfall — could be hit by a double whammy if they’re not prepared to act on their own.

2. Utah

While there had been some noise over the last year in Utah about the need to raise new transportation revenue, there was no concrete legislation introduced or seriously discussed in 2014. In late 2014, Governor Herbert suggested he was open to raising the gas tax in 2015, which was “a proposition [speaker-elect Greg] Hughes doesn’t see getting very far” in the upcoming legislative session, according to the Deseret News. At the time, Rep. Hughes did suggest that “House Republicans do want to look what he sees as an outdated formula for calculating the state’s 24.5-cent per gallon gas tax.” But just a few weeks ago, news broke that a deal could be closer than previously thought. An article in the Salt Lake Tribune last week broke the news that the state’s GOP caucus endorsed the idea of raising transportation taxes, but also overhauling the funding system — which could mean a revenue source that will rise with inflation.

“We have talked about concepts now for two years,” House Transportation Committee Chairman Johnny Anderson, R-Taylorsville, told a forum of the Utah Highway Users Association. “Know that the work is about to be done” to raise tax for transportation. …Anderson said the House GOP Caucus last month endorsed not only transportation-tax hikes, but also the idea to “dump our antiquated” tax system for one that automatically keeps up with inflation and makes those now escaping gas tax contribute.

The Utah legislature is somewhat unique — their trust of the Utah DOT runs so high that they often appropriate significant general funds to transportation projects. Utah could also prove to be a significant bellwether for other GOP-controlled state legislatures to follow. Utah’s session begins January 28, so we’ll soon find out if this proposition has legs.

3. Illinois

Incoming Illinois Republican Governor Bruce Rauner faces significant challenges, but some of his first moves have a lot of advocates hopeful about positive changes that could come in 2015. Just a few years removed from a governor going to jail and a patronage hiring scandal at state agencies, Illinois is also in one of the worst fiscal messes in the country, brought on by billions in unfunded pensions, decreased tax revenue, and repeated downgrades to the state’s credit rating.

As the Governor and the legislature collaborate on a budget and craft a new capital plan for infrastructure investment, the fiscal crisis facing the state provides an interesting opportunity for Gov. Rauner, who ran as a reformer and a prudent fiscal manager on his business bona fides. With the state billions in debt and confidence in IDOT incredibly low, overhauling the system and moving towards a new system for measuring the performance of the state’s transportation spending could be the only way to restore public trust — essential for raising any new money for transportation.

Possibly hinting at a move in this direction, Gov. Rauner appointed Randy Blankenhorn from the Chicago MPO (CMAP) to head the state DOT, an appointment which could help bring the issue of performance measures into the debate. “There’s always hyperbole and optimism when you have a changing of the guard. But I sincerely believe that we have a chance to right Illinois’ ship with Gov. Rauner and Randy Blankenhorn,” said Peter Skosey with the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) and the T4 Advisory Board. As part of his transition team on transportation, Gov. Rauner also brought in MarySue Barrett from MPC, one of the leading advocates in the entire state for a performance-based transportation system.

With these pieces in place, it’s possible that discussing a way to restore credibility and create a new transparent mechanism for distributing any new transportation funds could be central in the debate in Illinois in 2015, which makes this an important state to watch.

4. Indianapolis, Indiana

It was a huge victory when the Indiana legislature and Governor Pence approved a long-sought bill in March 2014 that finally gives metro Indianapolis counties the right to vote on funding a much-expanded public transportation network, with a major emphasis on bus rapid transit. Civic, elected and business leaders had been hard at work since 2009 producing an ambitious and inspiring IndyConnect plan, “the most comprehensive transportation plan — created with the most public input — our region has ever seen,” according to Mayor Greg Ballard in the foreword to our Innovative MPO report. Now the hard part comes as they build public and political will and decide what to include on a November 2016 ballot measure that would raise revenue from changes to local income taxes — a challenging revenue mechanism to say the least.

While transit expansion has more support in the region’s core, local leaders acknowledge they have an uphill battle in some suburban counties more skeptical of the merits of transit. Mayor Ballard and the diverse group of Indy businesses (including a booming healthcare industry) supporting IndyConnect understand how important this measure is for helping Indy be economically competitive in the future. Indy likely won’t be supplanting Chicago as the big city of choice in the Midwest, but there’s a desire among local leaders for Indy to be the city that can attract young families who think Chicago is too expensive; or luring recent college grads back home to Indy. And a strong regional public transit system is lies at the very core of their economic strategy.

Though Indianapolis counties won’t vote on the transportation plan until 2016, some of the most important work will be done in 2015 as they continue their model efforts to build consensus in urban and suburban areas alike on a plan to take to the ballot.

5. Raleigh, North Carolina

After watching the Triangle region’s two other counties approve ballot measure to raise funds for a regional transit system originally envisioned by all three counties, Raleigh could finally be joining the party due to a big shakeup in their county’s Board of Commissioners in 2014.

Durham and Orange counties approved half-cent sales taxes in 2011 and 2012 respectively to fund transit operations, improved bus service and a regional light rail line. Although it contains the biggest city in the region (Raleigh), the Wake County Commissioners hadn’t allowed a question to raise funds for a regional transit system to go to the ballot. In fact, a handful of commissioners actively prevented the issue going forward, often stifling debate at times.

That could all change in 2015, as more than half of the county board was replaced last November. Four new supportive members were elected to the county board, replacing four who had consistently been on the other side of the issue, clearing the way for a potential ballot measure in Wake County. It’s worth noting that the mayor of Raleigh, Nancy McFarlane, has long been a supporter of a regional plan for transit, and she joined with other mayors and T4America a year ago to meet with USDOT Sec. Foxx on the importance of passenger rail.

Wake County is one of the fastest growing counties in the U.S. and the county’s population is due to double by 2035. Yet this rapidly growing community with a notable high-tech, research, government and major university employment base is one of the few major metro regions that lacks a significant transit system. Just like Indianapolis, they will be crafting their plan and building consensus in 2015 as they shoot for a vote in 2016. Though the issue has support on the county board now, there will be a public debate and votes worth watching in 2015.

House bill extends transit benefit through 2014, leaving permanent extension in doubt

Transit commuters would see their tax benefits restored under a House bill introduced yesterday — but only for two weeks.

The “Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2014” (H.R. 5571) would preserve a number of tax breaks set to expire at the end of the year, while restoring the amount of monthly pre-tax income transit riders can set aside to $245 from $130. This increase would put transit on a par with the tax benefit given to drivers for parking, but only from the bill’s adoption until the end of 2014.

A longer-term fix was included in a package developed last week by the House Ways and Means Committee, but President Obama’s threatened veto of a package he saw as too hard on low- and middle-income taxpayers left it dead in the water. While many had hoped Congress would establish permanent parity between drivers and transit commuters this fall, that possibility is dwindling fast.

Meanwhile, a recent report heavily criticized the parking benefit as “subsidizing congestion” by luring 820,000 additional cars to the road at a cost of $7.3 billion, with most of the benefit going to higher-income earners. [You can read the entire Transit Center report here.]

Leaders say St. Petersburg transit measure key to economic success

Voters in Pinellas County, Florida, which includes St. Petersburg and borders Tampa, have the chance to approve a one percent sales tax next week that will raise $130 million per year. The money will kickstart a 24-mile light rail system, improve and expand their bus system by 65 percent, build bus rapid transit lines, and increase important regional connections.

Passage would be a major step forward for St. Petersburg and the Tampa Bay region, coming four years after a similar measure in neighboring Hillsborough County narrowly failed.

The plan, known as Greenlight Pinellas, would make a key change to the county’s current funding mechanism for their bus system, erasing the transit millage on property taxes and replacing it with a one percent sales tax. That’s a key change, as it shifts the burden of paying for transit from property owners only, to one that’s shared by the large numbers of tourists and visitors visiting the region. As much as a third of the revenue would eventually come from tourists, according to Greenlight.

The Tampa Tribune endorsed the measure, especially the aspect to shift the funding burden away from solely Pinellas property owners. “Tourism is at record levels as the recession fades. It’s time the county adopted a comprehensive mass transit vision reflecting that dynamic growth.”

The plan would almost immediately improve bus service and increase frequency, and will eventually expand service by about 65 percent, adding new weekend and night service, as well as more frequent service to job centers like Tampa International Airport and downtown St. Pete and Tampa to better connect employees to jobs.

Rapid bus and BRT service will be added on six of the busiest, most productive corridors, and work will begin on a 24-mile light rail line that runs across the county, from Clearwater in the northwest, to downtown St. Pete in the southeast. (Pinellas will still have to assemble other local, state and federal funding to complete the $1.6 billion rail project, but importantly, this measure would also raise enough money to cover the operations of that line once it is up and running.)

The business community has been full-throated in its support of the measure. As of October 10^th, supporters had raised over $1 million to support the campaign. The Tampa Bay Partnership, the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce, Sykes Enterprises, Bright House Networks, TransAmerica Insurance and Derby Lane, the Tampa Bay Rays and Lightning, and numerous other local small businesses are supporting the measure.

Michael Kalt, a senior vice president with the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, told Greenlight that, “Transit is really the linchpin to economic success and improving the quality of life in any major metropolitan area.”

The Tampa Bay Times supported the measure in a strong op-ed. “Tampa Bay is the largest metropolitan area without a viable transportation system that includes bus service and some form of rail.” This project, if approved, will be the first step in “correcting a weakness” of the Tampa Bay region, the editorial continued. Their columnist Joe Henderson also argues for the passage asking his readers, ”How much longer does it take you to get from Point A to B now than it did five years ago? You think an extra penny in sales tax is expensive? Try measuring the loss when businesses take their new jobs elsewhere because of the congestion.”

The project has major political support in addition to the private support, with endorsements from the mayors of the four largest cities and Representative Kathy Castor (D-FL), who said, “This is an active community; this is a community on the go, but we need better transportation options.” Encouraging her constituents to vote yes, she said, “When you do that, you will be making an investment in yourself.”

The organized opposition, No Tax for Tracks, worries about the burden of increasing the sales tax one cent, bringing it to a total of eight percent. They are also concerned about low ridership, though Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority has reported record boardings the last few years on its buses.

Perhaps no one will be watching this measure more closely than their counterparts across Tampa Bay.

It’s no coincidence that some of the strongest support has been coming from leaders there in Tampa and Hillsborough County: They have high hopes for a referendum of their own to expand existing transit service, build new light rail and some new regional connections, especially after seeing a measure fail four years ago. This new light rail line from Clearwater to downtown St. Petersburg could be the beginning of so much more.

“Perhaps, the rail line represents what could be the start of a regional system across the Howard Frankland Bridge that might one day link the airport, the University of South Florida, the commercial hubs in Gateway, West Shore and downtown Tampa,” said the Times editorial.

Stay tuned next week to hear the results of the voting.

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Pinellas County is one of a handful of state and local measures to raise revenue to invest transportation. For more information on the measures we’re keeping a close eye on next week, make sure to check out our full Transportation Vote 2014 page.

To better serve the states and localities that are currently campaigning (or hope to campaign) for smart transportation investments, we are hosting the Capital Ideas Conference in Denver on November 13-14^th. There’s still time to register, so learn more today.

If you want to know more about ballot measures related specifically to transit, turn to the Center for Transportation Excellence, who tracks all of those measures and aggregates numbers on results nationwide on an ongoing basis.

After spurning it for decades, suburban Atlanta county seems poised to join regional transit system

In many states local jurisdictions have to get permission from their state legislature to raise local funds for transportation. One of the most notable examples of this will be taking place in a county in the heart of metro Atlanta, Georgia.

Click for more stories and information about a few key issues that will be decided on November 4

From the day when Clayton County, one of metro Atlanta’s core five counties, had to cancel their bus transit service outright in 2010, local leaders have been trying to figure out how to bring back transit service back and better connect their residents with jobs and opportunities.

In a county with a large population of low-wage workers, residents and employers alike are hungry for an affordable and reliable way to get around and get to work. C-Tran, the former county-run bus service, provided more than 2 million rides each year, helping residents get to jobs — especially the thousands of jobs in or near bustling Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in the north end of the county.

Read a short story of how shutting down the system affected one Clayton resident. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Click to open

It was a huge blow to the residents of Clayton County when county commissioners shut the service down in 2010 in the face of a recession-fueled budget crisis. Federal start-up funds and support from the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority had kept the service going since the early 2000s, but with that funding drying up the county faced a deficit that was too much to overcome.

Clayton County voters will decide a one-percent sales tax on Nov. 4 that will bring them into the MARTA system and bring bus service into the county. Flickr photo by James Williamor.

On Nov. 4, Clayton County voters will decide on a measure to increase the local sales tax by a percent to join MARTA, the regional transit system. Doing so would restore bus service and jumpstart planning for bus rapid transit or a rail extension in the years to come. As county commissioners debated whether or not to put the question on the ballot, they heard hefty support from residents, who turned out to meetings to urge commissioners to make a vote happen. And most of the commissioners saw the need. From a piece by Next City, published just yesterday:

At a packed board of commissioners meeting on July 1st, former State Rep. Roberta Abdul Salaam described what this looked like for formerly bus-dependent residents.

“I have people, students, young men that can’t take jobs for the summer because we don’t have transportation for them,” she said. “And someone said earlier don’t make it emotional — well let me just apologize now. I get emotional when I see little old women walking down Tara Boulevard in the ditch in the rain, and there’s not even anywhere to pull over and pick her up.”

Yet voters in Clayton County, or anywhere else, can only have this opportunity if the state they live in has authorized local communities to raise revenues through ballot measures.

“Enabling” legislation

State enabling laws must be in place before local ballot measures can even be considered — they either have to be on the books already, or passed ahead of a specific measure (as happened in Clayton’s case). These laws can govern many aspects of local ballot measures, including the type and duration of the levy, the process for getting a measure on the ballot, the permissible uses for the revenue, and sometimes even the exact language that must be presented to the voters.

A handful of bills were passed recently enabling local governments to raise local revenues for transportation in MN, PA, IN, NV, and CA and bills were considered in AL, MD, MI, SC, SD, UT, VA and WA during the 2013-2014 sessions. We recently covered a notable example in Indiana, where a law was passed just this year allowing Indianapolis to finally raise local funding to invest in their ambitious regional IndyConnect plan.

To make this vote possible for Clayton County, the Georgia General Assembly had to pass a pair of laws to “enable” Clayton to take the measure to the ballot, and they did so in 2013, with some specific restrictions.

Interestingly, state law already provided for Clayton to be a part of MARTA, and as one of the five core counties included in the 1970’s charter actually had a vote on the MARTA board. But Clayton and two other counties declined to pass the sales tax, and only the City of Atlanta, Dekalb and Fulton counties ponied up. In the meantime, Clayton had used it’s available sales tax percentage — state law caps it — for other purposes. That meant that the state had to waive that cap specifically for Clayton so they could decide on the MARTA tax. (A second piece of legislation was required to restructure the MARTA board to give Clayton County two representatives on the board starting next year.)

The legislation specified that the vote be restricted to raising revenue to join MARTA, rather than contracting for service as in the past, and the county had to take action this year.

Read this short primer on enabling legislation from our “Measuring Up” package of resources geared around state transportation funding.

Measuring Up

All state enabling laws are not created equal. A great counter-example is the one provided by the same Georgia assembly just a few years earlier. After no fewer than three tries before the state legislature, the state finally gave all Georgia metropolitan regions the power to pass regional transportation sales taxes. But that also came with a mandated two-year political process to develop a project list that swelled to 157 highway and transit projects for Atlanta in the end.

That 2012 referendum to raise $7.2 billion to invest in regional transportation needs failed in metro Atlanta for a lot of reasons, but as we opined at the time, the way the enabling law was written by the legislature may have contributed to its demise.

“Many voters also complained of a sense that the project list was a goodie bag for various political interests and not a cohesive plan to address well-articulated needs. The Legislature-mandated process almost assured that outcome. It called for creating a 21-member “regional roundtable” made up of a mayor and county commissioner from each of the region’s ten counties, plus the mayor of Atlanta. While the “pro” campaign pitched the project list as a solution to congestion, the list struck many voters as a collection of pet local projects that did not necessarily add up to a thought-through plan.”

In the end, there was a lot of “include my project on the list and we’ll support yours” horse-trading amongst the representatives developing the project list that might have doomed the measure.

Clayton’s prospects on November 4

But Clayton voters face a simple question on November 4: raise local sales taxes by a percent to join MARTA, create new robust bus service into the county starting in March 2015, and save half of the revenues (locked away in escrow) for planning or building some higher capacity transit in the years to come. And one thing we know from experience with ballot measures is that the simpler the question and the more clear it is what the money is going to buy, the more likely voters are to support it.

It’s also worth looking back at how Clayton County voted on that aforementioned regional transportation tax from 2012 — one that did include restored local bus service for Clayton, but which wasn’t expected to begin service for at least two to four years after the vote. It also included a handful of road improvement projects and initial development of a long-awaited commuter rail line south toward Macon that would run through the county.

If you look at that graphic, where Clayton is highlighted near the bottom, the bulk of the county’s precincts supported it between a 42-66% clip, with a handful of precincts at numbers below that. On top of that, more than 7o percent of voters approved the concept of participation in a regional transit system in a nonbinding referendum on the ballot just a couple of years ago.

The local experts we talked to were all cautiously optimistic that it’s going to pass, and many local political analysts are suggesting that it could possibly win by a pretty significant margin. Of course, turnout will play a big role in what happens, as always. We’ll be watching closely on election night and reporting back here, so stay tuned.

Want to know more about enabling legislation? Need help doing what Clayton County had to do and getting your state to clear the way for a local revenue-raising measure? Join us in Denver in just a few weeks on Nov. 13-14 for Capital Ideas — the premier conference for state legislation related to new transportation revenue.

Denver’s ambitious transit expansion plan was almost left at the station

Denver’s amazing bet on an ambitious and comprehensive plan to expand their transportation network a decade ago very nearly crashed upon takeoff. Getting creative while staying committed to the vision helped them weather an economic storm and pull off “a public transit miracle.”

The story of exactly how they kept that vision chugging along was explored in-depth in this terrific piece from National Journal, filling in some of the backstory to our own in-depth profile on Denver’s “can-do” aspirations. As we chronicled earlier this year, Denver had heard from potential employers that the lack of transit connections were hampering the region’s economic development goals, so they came up with a huge regional plan to invest billions in new transit infrastructure. So what happened next? According to National Journal, “Voters agreed to tax themselves for a commuter rail network. Then a budget shortfall almost doomed the whole project. Now it’s on track to completion.”

How they pulled the second half of that is an amazing story.

Three years earlier, Colorado voters had approved a high-profile ballot measure to raise $4.7 billion through sales taxes to build the train system called FasTracks. Now the costs were projected to run well over $6 billion. The money from available tax revenues might allow the rail network to be finished by 2042, internal analysts told the Regional Transportation District (RTD).

…The recession of 2008 hit not long after, which took the scapegoat spotlight off of RTD. But the transit authority was still stuck with a big rail plan and about half the money they needed to build it. They had two options. They could scrap their construction schedule and build one line at a time as tax revenues trickled in. Or they could get creative.

Getting creative is exactly what they did, finding savings and other money from a range of sources, all while staying committed to the full, previously agreed-upon system, rather than doing things slowly and piecemeal.

[Former Mayor and current Governor] Hickenlooper was one of many business and civic leaders in metro Denver who viewed mass transit as the key to making the city a major metropolitan force. They didn’t want Denver to be prominent just in the United States. They wanted to compete with cities throughout the world. You need people movers for that, or businesses won’t locate in your region.

That theme of keeping Denver competitive on a stage bigger than just the West or the United States is one we heard over and over again when writing our own take on Denver’s story earlier this year:

Tom Clark can cite the exact moment in 1997 when metro Denver’s economic leaders became convinced that a more comprehensive rail and bus network was critical to the region’s prosperity. They were talking to executives at Level 3 Communications about a potential relocation, but their prospects were balking. They were afraid that without transit, Denver’s potential workforce was effectively cut in half because of congestion on I-70, the main east-west interstate artery.

“They were the catalytic piece of us deciding that we really had to get serious and get transit back on the ballot again,” said Clark, CEO of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation. “It was one of those a-ha moments in your life where you just go ‘Wow, this has real economic implications.’”

Denver’s story — whether of “how” they dreamed it up or how they kept it from going off the rails — is one that a handful of metro areas are keen on replicating today. Don’t miss that full story from National Journal.

Transit still more popular with millennials, despite their upbringing

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

Flickr Creative Commons photo by wowwzers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four senators introduce bill to help finance transit-oriented development

Building structured parking, public amenities and pedestrian-safe streets are part of the public infrastructure needed for successful economic development around transit.

Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI), Ed Markey (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) have introduced an important bill to make it easier for communities to support economic development around transit stations.

For any community with a high-capacity transit line – subway, light rail, bus rapid transit – encouraging walkable development around the stations is a no-brainer. By attracting more potential riders, it makes the best use of the transit investment and helps to build the tax base.

Even more importantly, it helps to meet growing demand for homes and workplaces in neighborhoods with easy access to transit. And who is driving that demand? To a large degree it is the talented young workforce that every area is looking to recruit and retain. [See our poll with the Rockefeller Foundation] At the same time, a significant share of baby boomers is looking for similar things, as an American Planning Association poll showed this week.

Doing transit-oriented development right often means retrofitting streets so that they are safe and inviting for people on foot and provide good traffic flow, and building parking structures rather than surface lots, among other improvements. But it is the rare developer who has resources enough to finance the upfront costs of public infrastructure and utilities before the revenue from the finished development starts rolling in.

The Transit Oriented Development Infrastructure Financing Act would help provide low-cost financing in the form of loans or loan guarantees under the highly successful TIFIA program, which was expanded under MAP-21. Eligible borrowers, whether a state or local government or public-private partnership, would have to demonstrate a reliable, dedicated revenue source to repay the loan needed for public infrastructure.

This bill would help to support communities in creating public-private partnerships that help to spur economic development, build the local tax base, improve neighborhoods and infrastructure and make the most of transit investments. Senators Schatz, Markey, Merkley and Gillibrand are to be commended for their vision in introducing the TOD Infrastructure Financing Act.

From state to town, Michigan takes strong steps toward a better transportation future

One place illustrating the national positive voting trends for transportation is Michigan, where citizens voted to raise taxes for transportation investments in cities and counties across the state, at least one anti-transit elected official was ousted, a Republican governor led the charge for regional transit investment in the state’s biggest metro and when given a chance to bail in the name of “cost savings,” local voters doubled down on their existing transit system.

There were a lot of eyes on Michigan during Transportation Vote 2012, in part because of the sheer number of transportation measures being decided there: over 30 different ballot questions in 2012 alone, according to the Center for Transportation Excellence.

Though there were dozens of worthwhile transportation ballot measures passed this year, Eaton County, Kalamazoo County, Muskegon City, and Ogemaw County all either renewed or passed new substantial tax millages to support public transportation specifically.

That’s no fluke, as Tim Fischer of the Michigan Environmental Council told us. Fischer, the Deputy Policy Director for MEC and part of the Transportation for Michigan coalition echoed a familiar refrain about the success of transit related ballot measures.

“I think the real message is that voters will support transit almost every time when they know where their money is going and what it will be used for,” he said.

Along those lines, a handful of cities around the country were offered a choice to secede from existing transit systems and decide to send that money elsewhere — a phenomenon explained in more depth by Angie Schmitt at Streetsblog Capitol Hill a few weeks ago — including one vote in Walker ~~County~~, Michigan, a city in the western suburbs of Grand Rapids. In a show of support for their existing system, voters in Walker rejected that attempt by a huge margin (73 percent opposed), “because residents see real value in their local transit systems even though they might not ever use them,” Fischer added.

“Road millages, by comparison, don’t always fare so well and have been rejected more often than passed in recent years. People perceive that they already pay for roads through the gas tax and are less inclined to pay for roads through millages.”

(That wasn’t the only good news in Grand Rapids, which also recently received $20 million in federal funds to build a BRT line.)

In a more recent development, just last week, the Michigan legislature passed landmark legislation finally creating a regional transit authority in Detroit, something that transit advocates and Detroit leaders have been trying to do for decades.

They were no doubt urged along by USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood, who told Michigan leaders they wouldn’t receive federal money for the Detroit Woodward light rail line without a regional authority to receive and manage the money.

“The RTA passage will trigger USDOT to release $25 million in promised federal funds which will add to about $80 million in private money,” Fischer said. “In addition, a component of that legislation is the development of about 100 miles of rapid bus transit (‘BRT light’).”

The coalition that helped the RTA legislation along to victory was a broad one.

MOSES (Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enables Strength), which does faith-based organizing within over 40 congregations in southeast Michigan, was a key part of the successful coalition. MOSES did much of the legwork to push the bill through, holding scores of meetings with legislators to affirm to them the importance of investing in public transportation (pdf), and explaining how the lack of this regional authority was a significant roadblock to doing that.

Michael Tasse with MOSES said that their leaders and members had been having meetings with legislators for over two years on the regional transit bill.

“We pushed the governor to support it,” Tasse said. “We helped persuade legislators who were on the fence or who might not have initially supported it by helping them to understand the bill. A big part of what we spent a year doing is educating them on the bill and pushing them to read through it and understand it. We made scores of visits in district, and we went to Lansing more than ten times.”

MOSES is celebrating the passage of the bill as 2012 comes to a close. “This is important because it’s about transportation — not just rail lines to Chicago, but the bus lines that connect people across town and the factories across town and the suburbs,” he explained. “Connecting people to those jobs is how we’re going to build strong families and communities in Southeast Michigan. If people can’t get around, they’re stuck, and that creates a gap between the few and the many.”

But the wins go beyond just local or regional transit in Michigan. Passenger rail statewide has had a significant boost in the last year, certainly helped along by the leadership and straight-up boosterism of the Republican Governor Rick Snyder.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder talks to the media at an event sponsored by the Michigan Municipal League.

Michigan has received about $500 million for the Chicago-Detroit/Pontiac passenger rail route, including funds to purchase about 130 miles of track from NS, adding to the 100 miles already owned by Amtrak. 234 miles of the 300 mile Chicago-Detroit route are now under public ownership. Trains are already running at speeds of 110 mph on some of this stretch, and they’ll run that fast for longer stretches once more track is upgraded next construction season.

Incidentally, this line from Detroit to Pontiac runs right through the town of Troy, where a mayor who refused a federal grant to build a new train station there was ousted by recall in November and removed from office.

All of these stories of Michigan communities and the state seizing control of their futures and declaring the importance of transportation at the ballot box are encouraging, but they still can’t go it alone — they need the feds to step up and support these kinds of communities leading the way.

“The rail projects wouldn’t exist without it [federal support], nor would the Grand Rapids BRT line,” Tim Fischer told us. “The locals must do their part, but federal money is necessary to turn the projects into reality.”

Michigan boosters like Fischer see the positive trend continuing.

“I am optimistic for Michigan’s future. Our passenger rail programs and transit systems have come a long way in just a few short years. Also, communities across the state have great interest in complete streets — over 80 have adopted complete streets policies or resolutions since we established our complete streets law in 2010.”

“Things are coming together at long last,” Fischer said.