Streetsblog Capitol Hill

This is the third installment in Streetsblog’s series on transportation demand management at American colleges and universities. Part one gave an overview of TDM techniques that schools employ, and part two profiled Stanford’s TDM programs.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a long track record of trying to minimize traffic. The Institute has run a formal transportation demand management (TDM) program for more than 10 years. But even as far back as the 1950s, MIT was encouraging employees to carpool, says Larry Brutti, operations manager with MIT’s facilities department.

A bike lane on MIT's campus. Image: Studio-s on Flickr

There are solid financial reasons for that. At MIT, land is so valuable, adding a single parking space costs the university about $100,000, said Brutti. Over the last five years, as the university has expanded its facilities, MIT has actually cut the total number of parking spaces it owns from 5,000 to 4,200. And it looks like those spaces aren’t coming back.

“We’re trying to not replace it,” Brutti said. “The Institute doesn’t mind putting some money into TDM if they can defer parking.”

MIT isn’t just trying to conserve funds or act as a good environmental steward. The city of Cambridge requires its major institutions to develop TDM programs to limit traffic on city streets. Since 1999, Cambridge has maintained a nationally recognized transportation demand management policy. If non-residential property owners want to add parking, the law requires them to develop a plan around promoting transportation modes other than driving. The parking lot owner must monitor its users’ single-occupancy commuting rates and bike and car parking space occupancy rates and report that annually to the city.

MIT’s strategy, Brutti said, basically comes down to holding out carrots for good behavior, almost exclusively to faculty and staff. “We subsidize most any other way to get to work,” Brutti said.

In total, only about 20 percent of all the people who enter MIT’s campus every day do so alone in a car.

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Here’s a transportation funding idea that aligns incentives nicely: taxing parking lots to pay for transit.

That’s what one former high-ranking state official is proposing for Massachusetts, ahead of a big announcement by the state Department of Transportation. Earlier this week Governing Magazine looked at the parking lot tax plan, part of a series of policy recommendations laid out by former Massachusetts Department of Transportation Secretary James Aloisi.

A former high-ranking Massachusetts officials says parking lots should generate revenue for the state's transit systems. Photo: Kunc.org

Writing for Commonwealth last fall, Aloisi said the state’s transit system (specifically the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) is in a crisis that will only be solved by hard decision making, and he urged the state’s leaders to resolve it with a series of bold proposals.

Aloisi proposed both a vehicle-miles-traveled tax and a 20 cent per-gallon increase in the gas tax, to be split evenly between transit and roads. But what’s garnering the most attention is Aloisi’s proposal to tax non-residential parking lots and garages with more than 20 spaces and dedicate the revenue to transit. The idea isn’t exactly new. All of these proposals emerged as part of a 2004 study on transit finance, commissioned by the state to fix the MBTA’s still-unresolved budget woes.

Observers are anxious see whether the parking tax put forward by Aloisi makes it into the state’s formal plans. The state of Massachusetts was set to release a new Department of Transportation comprehensive plan this past Monday, but officials have delayed the announcement until early next week.

Shoring up the transit system in Massachusetts’ largest urban area is vital to the state’s economy, environment, and social equity, Aloisi says. And he argues that it’s a mistake to continue funding transit with sales tax revenue — which should be directed to priorities like healthcare and education — and with unsustainable levels of debt:

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Mitt Romney's well-reasoned views on energy and development morphed into a lovefest for fossil fuels as he set his sights on the White House. Photo courtesy of Romney for President

If Mitt Romney the President reverts back to the positions of Mitt Romney the Governor, transportation policy in America could see significant steps forward. Better-maintained roads. Smarter growth. Cleaner air.

But if Mitt Romney the President follows through on the rhetoric of Mitt Romney the Campaigner, it will be a different story.

Not that candidate Romney has talked much about transportation. But he’s made it clear he’s casting his lot with the fossil fuel industry. He’s brought billionaire oil man Harold Hamm into his inner circle as an energy advisor, pushing for more drilling. Romney has raised $11.4 million directly from the energy sector, and far more than that has been poured into anti-Obama, pro-drilling TV ads by oil companies.

What did the oil industry get for their generosity? For starters, Romney’s energy plan reads like a parody of desperate political pandering to Texas oil barons. Maximum drilling is paramount. Reducing oil consumption is a quaint little notion for liberals and sweater-wearers. To candidate Romney, the idea of reversing climate change and slowing the rise of the oceans is a laugh line – a joke that suddenly doesn’t seem so funny to people living by the New Jersey and New York coastline.

Romney is now the standard-bearer for a Republican Party whose platform accuses President Obama of engaging in “social engineering” in pursuit of “an exclusively urban vision of dense housing and government transit.” The GOP platform indulges in Agenda 21 paranoia and doesn’t talk much about renewable energy or fuel efficiency. It brags about the worst parts of the recently-passed transportation bill, revives old calls for the privatization of Amtrak services, and cheers on highway-builders.

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OK, everybody, pack your bags. We’re all moving to Massachusetts.

MassDOT Chief Richard Davey said yesterday he wouldn't be building any more "superhighways" and wanted to focus on transit, biking, and walking instead. Photo: The Republican/Mark M. Murray

The Bay State’s transportation secretary, Richard Davey, has launched a “mode shift” campaign, saying in no uncertain terms that it’s time for people to get out of their cars and onto trains, buses, bikes, and their own two feet. His goal is to triple the share of trips taken by those modes, as opposed to single-occupancy vehicles, by improving transit service and active transportation amenities like lighting, sidewalks, curb cuts and rail-trails.

Here’s the part that gives me the shivers: “I have news for you,” Davey said at a news conference yesterday. “We will build no more superhighways in this state. There is no room.”

Massachusetts has 76,200 lane-miles of roadway, in a state that’s just 190 miles long. That’s a lot more asphalt than any other state in New England.

Eric Sundquist works with innovative state DOTs for a living, as director of the State Smart Transportation Initiative. What Massachusetts is doing is “leading edge but not bleeding edge,” Sundquist told Streetsblog. “There are other states that, even if they haven’t packaged a campaign around mode shift explicitly, are doing a lot of things to encourage mode shift.”

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Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick got wild applause last night when he told the Democratic Convention audience:

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick slammed Romney's infrastructure record at the Democratic Convention last night. But should he be throwing stones? Photo: Tannen Maury / European Pressphoto Agency

In Massachusetts, we know Mitt Romney. By the time he left office, Massachusetts was 47th in the nation in job creation—during better economic times—and household income in our state was declining. He cut education deeper than anywhere else in America. Roads and bridges were crumbling… Mitt Romney talks a lot about all the things he’s fixed. I can tell you that Massachusetts wasn’t one of them.

Fact-checking has been a booming business in this election cycle, and the Washington Post was all over Patrick’s speech. It labeled the “crumbling” claim “debatable,” noting that it’s a subjective area. The Post referenced Matt Dellinger’s analysis of Romney’s time as governor of Massachusetts for Transportation Nation:

In 2005, mid-term, he unveiled a twenty-year, $31-billion state transportation plan that re-emphasized his “fix-it-first” convictions, directing “seventy-five percent of all new capital spending toward maintaining and improving the Commonwealth’s existing transportation network.” Hailing the “post-Big-Dig world,” Romney’s plan was modally balanced. Twelve billion went to “reconstructing, decongesting and expanding roadways across the Commonwealth, including all major choke points,” while nine billion went to “achieving a state of good repair on the MBTA’s aging assets.”

Those are funding priorities the federal government would do well to emulate.

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Last month Streetsblog asked whether President Obama would select transportation projects that reduce congestion, improve air quality, and create jobs when he picked several infrastructure investments, among those recommended by agency officials, to fast-track. The selection of these projects, intended to help spur short-term job creation, could avoid the mistakes of the 2009 stimulus program, which funneled billions to “shovel-ready” projects that will also promote sprawl. Leading up to the announcement, the president’s rhetoric seemed to indicate that the administration would opt for road maintenance and transit projects rather than newer, wider highways.

The Tappan Zee bridge overhaul is supposed to include transit facilities, but some fear that those may get dropped later on. Photo: SamuelWantman / Wikimedia

Today the administration announced its list of 14 projects, and at first glance, it seems like most of the transportation-related projects take transit, bicycling, and walking into consideration. Some of them will induce sprawl nonetheless, because they expand traffic capacity.

These projects won’t get more federal funds, but they will get federal help in expediting the process. The president promised that this fast-tracking won’t shortchange environmental reviews. The projects were highlighted by officials in several agencies and final selection was done by the White House.

Here’s the list of surface transportation-related projects, most of them recommended by the Department of Transportation:

Tappan Zee Bridge, New York: The bridge is rated structurally deficient as well as functionally obsolete, meaning that in addition to carrying more traffic than it was designed for, the structure is unsafe to carry vehicles. Constant repairs have made the bridge into a money pit, and a significant overhaul could produce long-term savings on maintenance. Notably, this project is not close to “shovel-ready” status, so its selection seems to indicate that the administration had long-term goals in mind, in addition to short-term job creation. There are plans to include a Bus Rapid Transit lane and a commuter rail line on the bridge, as well, but some advocates worry that all that widening could happen without the transit components coming through in the end.

Crenshaw/LAX, California: LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has become a champion for federal loan programs because of his zeal to expand transit in his city. The Crenshaw/LAX project is a cornerstone of his efforts and will provide a critical transit connection to the airport. The city has done a good job attracting federal interest and assistance, and the FTA is already helping them shorten the approval time for the project.

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All eyes are on Texas Gov. Rick Perry these days, the faraway frontrunner in the Republican race. But as the primary goes on (and on and on) more Republicans might take note of the fact that in a matchup with President Obama, only one candidate stands a chance of winning: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney had a mixed record on transit and smart growth. Photo: Daily Caller

According to the most recent polling data, Obama trounces Gov. Perry. He makes mincemeat of Bachmann and Gingrich. Only one poll shows a winning Republican candidate, and that’s Romney, with a two percent edge over the president in a recent USA Today poll.

We took a hard look at Rick Perry’s approach to transportation last fall, when he was running for re-election. As Texas governor, Perry championed a mega-highway plan that would make the Road Gang blush. He blocked metrorail extensions and vulnerable users legislation.

But what about Romney? His record as a red governor of the blue state of Massachusetts is a little more complex, and worth exploring.

In a recent Boston Globe story comparing current Democratic Governor Deval Patrick with his predecessor, Romney emerges as the more inspired candidate when it comes to smart growth. (It doesn’t help that Patrick was caught driving around in an SUV last week while telling his constituents to observe car-free week.)

According to the Globe, Patrick has done away with a program originated under Romney to encourage “mixed-use, walkable, downtown-centered, transit-oriented growth” and counter sprawl.

Under the Romney program, communities got credit for green building, saving energy, preserving open space, and zoning reform, among many other categories. Those that scored highest went to the front of the line to receive about $500 million per year in grants and revolving loan funds for infrastructure including water and sewer projects. The idea was to put state funding to municipalities through a filter, and reward innovation in sustainability at the local level; previously the money was just doled out.

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