Transportation Innovation Academy Archives - Transportation For America

Local leaders build momentum for transit investments in Wake County, NC

Leaders in Wake County, NC – including participants of T4America’s Transportation Innovation Academy co-hosted last year with TransitCenter – are building support for transit ahead of a November ballot referendum.

Earlier this month the Wake County Commission approved a long-term transit plan and put a measure on the November ballot to raise a half-cent sales tax to build out the regional transit network. Planned service, including 20 miles of new bus rapid transit routes and new commuter rail, is expected to quadruple transit ridership in the county in the next ten years.

In his address to a WakeUp Wake County forum earlier this week in Raleigh, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx pointed out how transit can be a magnet for economic development. Foxx, former mayor of Charlotte, noted how Raleigh’s recent transit expansion helped attract new employers. Playing into the cross-state competition for jobs, he joked, “If I were mayor of Charlotte, I probably would be giving you a different speech. I would probably tell you not to do this so that we could compete with you better.”

Sec. Foxx also warned that the region would be “at the epicenter of a national crisis in mobility” if it does not invest in new transit. Commute times are “gonna get worse if you don’t do something different.”

County Commissioner Matt Calabria, one of the elected leaders who attended the Transportation Innovation Academy, recognized that “traffic is increasing [in Wake County] and we’re going to face challenges associated with growth.” He went on to add that the proposed transit plan “is the best thing we can do to stave off that congestion.”

Sec. Foxx was introduced by U.S. Rep. David Price (D-N.C.-4). Local leaders, including County Commission Chair James West and Vice-Chair Sig Hutchison, Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane, and Cary Town Councilor Jennifer Robinson, all spoke at the event about the new transit vision for the county.

Grassroots support for transit is also rolling in. The new Riders of Wake campaign is collecting first-person accounts from transit riders.

City leaders from Indy, Raleigh and Nashville get inspired by the secrets to Denver’s transit success

Delegations of city leaders from Nashville, Raleigh and Indianapolis wrapped up the latest two-day Transportation Innovation Academy workshop in Denver last week, where they learned firsthand about the years of hard work that went into Denver’s economic development plan to vastly expand the city’s transportation options, including new buses, light rail and commuter rail.

The three delegations underneath the new train shed on the platform at Denver Union Station last week.

The Transportation Innovation Academy is a joint project of Transportation for America and TransitCenter.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos 2 The three delegations saw the tangible fruit of Denver’s successful transit investments first laid out by their FasTracks plan in the early 2000s, and they learned how Denver went about the monumental task of building support and raising the funding required to make it all happen.

Analyzing Denver’s success so closely provided participants an opportunity to evaluate their own ongoing city and/or regional campaign efforts, and all were clearly struck by just how much work is plowed into the earth before you taste the fruits of success. It’s do-able and the benefits are sizable, but the task is not easy or quick. The participants know they have a challenge on their hands, but they were encouraged to see how Denver made it all happen and are taking imminently practical lessons back home to help build their coalitions and engage supporters back home.

From the very first discussion, the academy participants learned about the unique factors in Denver’s success. One factor was education — Denver succeeded in their ballot campaign by throwing out assumptions about who would and would not support transit. Polling and focus groups revealed who support Denver’s efforts and why. Women over 60 and suburban drivers — groups often assumed to be neutral to or against transit — became key supporters. On the other hand, it could not be assumed that transit riders would support the plan.

In the end, leaders from these three cities saw the possibilities of reaching out to key constituencies who haven’t been engaged in their efforts so far.

Denver Union Station transportation innovation academy

With years of actual construction behind them at this point, participants also experienced Denver’s story in a tangible way. They ooh’ed and aah’ed inside the jewel of the new system — the redeveloped Union Station in downtown — took a ride along a new light rail line, and toured a mixed income housing development constructed by MetroWest Housing Solutions — the former city public housing authority which the City of Lakewood has reimagined and reconstituted as an opportunistic community developer. That project and the surrounding 40W Arts District are using arts and creative design to engage the community and build support for new projects. The delegates learned that one of the most vocal opponents to the arts district and development quickly changed his tune when the city sponsored a mural on his industrial building.

Denver light rail transportation innovation academy

A key to all of this success is the way Denver’s regional leaders stayed together as a region throughout the first failed ballot measure for transit, the successful FasTracks ballot measure and the subsequent drop in anticipated revenues brought on by the recession that made implementation a challenge.

Mayor Bob Murphy, mayor of the suburban city of Lakewood and past chair of the Metro Mayors Caucus, showed how that cooperative forum among mayors — from Denver, major suburbs, and even towns as small as 500 in population — builds cohesion. Cities in the region don’t try to poach jobs and industries from neighboring cities, but work collectively at economic development across the region. “Sometimes we are competitors,” Murphy said, “but we are [ultimately] colleagues.”

The leaders from Indy, Nashville and Raleigh will meet in Nashville for the last session of this year’s Academy in December, where they’ll build their own action plans for campaigns in their regions, while also learning more about Nashville’s growth and development, its challenges in building bus rapid transit and how they’re moving forward despite a few setbacks.

While only these three regions are participating this year, they’re emblematic of a burgeoning group of mid-sized U.S. cities that are either in the midst of or planning new transit service to meet the demand and help them stay competitive in the race for talent.

This post was written by Michael Russell with contributions from Dan Levine and Stephen Lee Davis.

Finding inspiration in another city’s successful expansion of public transportation

This week, 21 local leaders from three different regions with ambitious plans to invest in public transportation will be traveling to Denver to hear about how that region built an economic development strategy around investing in new public transportation.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos

There’s an old proverb that says “A teacher is better than two books,” and the local leaders from Raleigh, Indianapolis and Nashville participating in the first yearlong Transportation Innovation Academy — organized by T4America and TransitCenter — will get the opportunity be taught firsthand about the returns that Denver is reaping from their incredibly ambitious FasTracks transit expansion plan.

Through workshops, site visits, and discussions with key leaders in the Denver region this week, academy participants will get an in-person look at one specific story of how scores of local communities across the country are casting a vision and often putting their own skin in the game first with local funding while hoping for a strong federal partner to make those plans a reality. While the three regions all have different transportation needs and plans for the future, Denver’s story broadly represents the kind of success that these leaders would certainly love to replicate.

We covered Denver’s story at length in one of our can-do regional profiles:

Denver: Betting on the future and seeing early returns

Faced with potential employers suggesting that the lack of transit connections were preventing Denver from realizing their economic development goals, the region’s leaders banded together and made a bold bet on an ambitious and comprehensive plan to expand their transportation network a decade ago.

Read the full Denver story here.

Key business leaders are part of each regional contingent, along with mayors and city/county council members, real estate pros, housing industry experts and local advocates. The Academy is intended to share knowledge and best practices, visit cities (like Denver) that have inspiring success stories, and help develop and catalyze the local leadership necessary to turn these ambitious visions into reality.

We’re looking forward to hearing the Denver story in great depth this week and know that these 21 leaders will find inspiration and practical lessons to take back home to help them take the next step on their journeys toward improving and expanding transit service.

Follow along and hear some of the great insights that participants are picking up in this week’s workshop, surely with some great photos of what’s happening in Denver. Follow @t4america, @TransitCenter and the hashtag #TranspoAcademy on Wednesday and Thursday this week (September 16-17).

The Transportation Innovation Academy continues this week in Denver

Twenty-one local leaders representing three regions with ambitious plans to invest in public transportation will be reuniting in Denver this week to continue the first year-long Transportation Innovation Academy, sponsored by T4America and the TransitCenter.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos

Through workshops, site visits, and discussions with key leaders in the Denver region, academy participants will learn how that region built an economic strategy around investing in new transit and will get to see first hand the returns the region has already realized.

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 the TransitCenter, T4America has created a yearlong academy program 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, share 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 Denver this week for the third of four, two-day workshops with experts in the field and leaders from cities with similar experiences. Each of the three cities is hosting a classroom workshop session. The participants are taking this trip to Denver to see a 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.

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.

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 Raleigh ‘s workshop, 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, one of our members, 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 T4A member, 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.

Along with the TransitCenter and a few of our T4A members we are pleased to share this experience. We are 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 for our next workshop visit in Nashville in December 2015.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.