transitcenter Archives - Transportation For America

Ongoing 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 will be reuniting in Indianapolis this week to continue the first yearlong Transportation Innovation Academy, sponsored by T4America and TransitCenter.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos

(This is a slightly updated version of the post we published in conjunction with the first workshop in Raleigh in early March that kicked off the Academy. – Ed.)

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.

All 21 participants (seven from each region) will be in Indianapolis on Thursday and Friday this week for the second of three two-day workshops with experts in the field and leaders from other cities with similar experiences. Each of the three cities are hosting 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.

Would you like to follow along and hear some of the great insights participants are picking up in this week’s Indianapolis workshop? Follow @t4america, @TransitCtr and the hashtag #TranspoAcademy on Thursday May 14 and Friday May 15.

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, the host of this week’s workshop, 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.

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 higher education, healthcare and IT industries) 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 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.

“Supported by a strong business community, an ambitious heartland city wins the ability to let citizens decide their own transportation future.” Read our detailed “can-do” profile of Indianapolis.

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 the first workshop in March 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.

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

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.

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.

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.]

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.