Streetsblog Capitol Hill

This 75-acre golf course in San Jose, California, is considered a small course. Even so, it's a colossal public expense. Photo: Dave Polaschek/Flickr

The 15,753 golf courses in the United States take up more space than half the state of New Jersey. And though they devour so much land, much of it in suburbia, the sport is foundering — in part because of the enormous amount of time and distance it requires. Some real estate professionals and experts on aging have come together to suggest a solution both for the decline of the game and the land use problems posed by these massive courses: Build mixed-use development inside them.

“The simultaneous collapse in the value of homes and golf courses may make such suburban redevelopment, retrofitting, and regreening possible on an unprecedented scale,” wrote Jane Hickie of the Stanford Center on Longevity and James F. Dausch and Edward Bennett Vinson of Resolutions Real Estate Advisors in an article last month for the American Artchitectural Foundation. “Redevelopment could provide solutions for the financial problems that many homeowners associations and golf course operators are struggling to address through infill housing and retail more suitable for an older population.”

Hickie has written a book on independent living for seniors, and she knows that most seniors live in suburbia and want to stay in their own communities as they age. So here’s the challenge she laid out: “How do you transform suburbia quickly enough to deal with the coming tsunami of population change?” Repurposing golf courses, she says, could play an important role.

Many residential developments, often targeted at retirees, have grown up around golf courses, charging a premium to be near the course. But with the collapse of housing prices, especially in the drivable suburbs, and the decline in the game, homeowners’ associations are often left holding the bag for astronomical maintenance costs. By bringing retail, dining, office space, and other recreational opportunities to golf courses, Hickie suggests, developers could buoy home values and help pay for the costs of the land. These amenities could also attract a different demographic, whether or not they’re interested in golf, and the new residents could be accommodated in denser housing in the town center.

Separately, Hall of Fame golfer Tom Kite has also entertained the idea of shrinking golf courses. He’s speculated that the size of the courses may have become the sport’s Achilles heel. It can take upwards of five hours to finish 18 holes, and fewer and fewer people have that much time on their hands.

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Oahu, Hawaii should be the ideal place to walk for transportation, but it has the nation’s highest pedestrian fatality rate for senior citizens – more than twice the next-highest state. So the state enacted a Complete Streets policy in 2009, seeking to “reasonably accommodate” everyone — “pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, motorists, and persons of all ages and abilities” — on public roadways.

Simple street design improvements can encourage seniors to walk more, enhancing their mobility and their physical health. Photo courtesy of Dan Burden, Walkable & Livable Communities Institute, via AARP

California, meanwhile, seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, passed a law in 2008 integrating transportation and land use planning at all levels, leading to “more transit and fewer auto-dependent communities” and less “suburban development that is far from retail and employment centers.”

AARP collected these and many, many more case studies of livability initiatives in a report it published last year on state policies and practices that enable seniors to “age in place.” The organization says nearly 90 percent of people over age 65 say they want to stay in their home as long as possible. If the graying baby boomers reject the institutionalized old age that has been the fate of so many, communities will have to do a better job accommodating the needs of older residents.

In the year since AARP published its catalogue of best practices, they’ve taken their program across the country. In conjunction with Governing Magazine, the group has held roundtables in Des Moines, Lansing, Philadelphia and Salt Lake City to talk about the challenges those cities face as they await the so-called “silver tsunami.”

Amy Levner, manager of AARP’s Home and Community program, says the common thread among rural and urban communities alike is the “pressure on local budgets.”

Luckily, very few of the best practices in AARP’s handbook have a high price tag. In fact, many of them have the potential to save money (finding multiple uses for public facilities like schools, for example) or make money (like transit-oriented development). The organization suggests everything from integrated planning and complete streets to electric cars that “chirp” to alert pedestrians that a moving car is nearby.

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This is the old Tysons Corner. Photo: Restonian

“That strip mall just got rezoned for high rise buildings.” “These auto dealerships are going to disappear.”

Those aren’t words you hear very often in suburbia, but if you’re hanging out in Tysons Corner, Virginia, you’d better get used to it. This office enclave, which sits dead center between Washington, DC and Dulles International Airport, is experiencing a rare and dramatic transformation – from traffic-choked “edge city” to walkable urban center.

Fifty years ago this area was dairy farms. But fueled by employment at the headquarters of several major defense contractors, Tysons is now the 12th biggest business district in the country, and the single biggest outside a major city. Even during the recession, office vacancy has stayed comparatively low at 14 percent.

The new Tysons Corner. Image: Fairfax County

Tysons is also a retail heavyweight, with the fifth biggest shopping mall in the U.S. And no wonder – it sits in Fairfax County, consistently ranked one of the wealthiest in the country.

But even with all these jobs and shopping opportunities, it lacks people. There are 105,000 jobs in Tysons but only 17,000 residents. Nobody lives there.

Almost four years ago, Time gave Tysons this back-handed compliment: “That it is also a strip-malled, traffic-clogged mess does not take away from the fact that it is one of the great economic success stories of our time.”

All of this presents a unique opportunity for planners. How do you take an existing business district — dysfunctional but also thriving in its own way — and re-fashion it into a real urban center? And how do you get community support for a project that’s going to mean decades of disruptive construction and the uprooting of much existing infrastructure?

Fairfax County planner Tracy Strunk admits that re-planning something this big is incredibly ambitious. While they looked to development along the much-lauded Rosslyn-Ballston metro corridor for inspiration, “You get a few blocks from Rosslyn station and you’re in single-family detached. This isn’t going to be single-family detached.”

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New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has taken up where former Senator Chris Dodd left off. Last week, Menendez offered a fresh version of Dodd’s Livable Communities Act. The bill would formally authorize the HUD Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities and its Regional Planning and Community Challenge grant programs, restoring funding for those programs to 2010 levels.

Sen. Bob Menendez is hoping to bring funding for livable communities back to 2010 levels. Photo courtesy of Sen. Menendez's office.

The office works to “coordinate federal housing and transportation investments with local land use decisions in order to reduce transportation costs for families, improve housing affordability, save energy, and increase access to housing and employment opportunities.”

The bill would also create a loan program for transit oriented development projects.

In comparison with the 2009 version, the total dollar amount of the five-year bill is smaller — $880 million compared to almost $2 billion. Last time around, the country was already in the throes of economic crisis, but Congress hadn’t changed hands yet and ushered in a new generation of deficit hawks. So Menendez kept this bill a little more modest, holding spending at 2010 levels (before the livability programs got hammered with cuts earlier this year.)

In hopes of winning over some of those deficit hawks, the bill starts off with the assertion that strategic community planning could save nearly $122 billion in infrastructure costs over the net 25 years.

The $880 million is mostly for Regional Planning Grants ($600 million) with $180 million for Challenge Grants and $100 million for TOD loans, which haven’t existed up until now. Fifteen percent of funds are destined for rural areas.

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In about an hour, Congressional appropriators will vote on how much money to allocate for transportation in the next fiscal year. It won’t be pretty.

This smiling man (THUD Chair Tom Latham) is getting ready to take the axe to prized livability programs. Photo: Iowa Independent

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) is planning deep cuts to many programs, some reminiscent of House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s notorious budget proposal, which wanted to slash transportation spending by about a third.

The subcommittee is led by Iowa Republican Tom Latham, whom we profiled when he took the gavel. At the time, we were worried he would end up cutting important livability programs, and here he is, doing exactly that.

At least transit and highway spending share the pain, both getting cut the same 34 percent. Highway funding goes from about $41 billion to $27 billion; transit funding (excluding New Starts) goes from $8.3 billion to $5.3 billion.

Bizarrely, the bill regresses to a pre-cooperation era and returns to the age of agency silos. One great accomplishment of the Obama administration has been the Sustainable Communities Partnership which joined USDOT, HUD and the EPA to work together on common development programs, planning inexorably linked programs of housing and transportation in conjunction with each other, and in consultation with the environmental regulator. But the appropriations bill prohibits HUD from using any funding for anything related to the Partnership.

In his excellent analysis of the dismal news, Transportation for America’s Stephen Lee Davis also delivers this blow: the innovative TIGER grants, TIGGER grants and high-speed rail programs are cut entirely. And more, Davis writes:
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The results of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission's performance monitoring program. Source: EPA

In the vein of several other recent reports that have highlighted significant transportation reforms that can be made now, with or without a reauthorization bill, the EPA has published guidelines for states and MPOs to make livability plans a reality [PDF]. They illustrate how using performance metrics can lead to better-designed transportation networks, especially when it comes to livability.

The EPA focuses on 12 important indicators that transportation agencies should be measuring:

• Transit accessibility
• Bicycle and pedestrian mode share
• Vehicle miles traveled per capita
• Carbon intensity
• Mixed land uses
• Transportation affordability
• Distribution of benefits by income group
• Land consumption
• Bicycle and pedestrian activity and safety
• Bicycle and pedestrian level of service
• Average vehicle occupancy
• Transit productivity

The EPA recommends a range of tools familiar to urban planners and reformers, like scenario planning and performance monitoring.

It acknowledges in the fine print that in some places, lack of data is still an obstacle to adequate performance measurement – especially on issues that DOTs are less likely to invest in, like bicycle mode share. Meanwhile, everyone collects data on VMT, for example. And when San Francisco established their performance measures through a planning process like the ones recommended by the EPA, they discovered just how far they were from their objective — even if they put ideal conditions in place:

San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Commission measures VMT per Capita under Investment and Policy Scenarios. Source: EPA

You don’t decide to start measuring transit access through long-range planning and corridor studies without having a goal in mind, though, and the EPA has several. It seeks to “protect natural  resources, improve public health, strengthen energy security, expand the economy, and provide  mobility to disadvantaged people”  by improving states’ accountability for making sure these livability measures are implemented.

Speaking of transit access: the guidelines get specific about how to measure access, explaining that access is determined by establishing how many jobs, residents, trip  origins, or trip destinations are within a ¼- to ½-mile radius of a transit  stop. And getting even more detailed, the EPA spells out exactly what those measurements should be:

• Share of population with good transit-­job accessibility (100,000+ jobs within 45 minutes).
• Number of households within a 30-minute transit ride of major employment centers.
• Percentage of work and education trips accessible in less than 30 minutes transit travel time.
• Percentage of workforce that can reach their workplace by transit within one hour with no more than one transfer.

Determining success in mixing land uses is a little more complex. It goes a little something like this:

Source: EPA

Follow all that? Yeah, me neither.

Performance measures, as a tool for getting the most value out of what we spend, are working their way into the mainstream discourse on transportation, embraced (at least rhetorically) by both sides. Planning, on the other hand, is still seen by many conservatives as the occupation of coneheaded urbanists, always trying to rein in man’s wild nature (which, I suppose, is to drive SUVs in exurbia).

Getting specific about how planning can be used to hold government accountable for its spending – and how those tools can help improve out health, economy, and environment, as well as our traffic throughput – could be a big step forward for transportation reform, even if Congress never passes a reauthorization bill. And by the looks of it, “never” sounds about as reasonable a timeline as anything else.

When asking people what transportation options are important in their communities, why do poll-takers never ask them to choose between different options? Here comes another survey in which people say they want everything and are never asked to make the tradeoffs that come in the real world.

USDOT’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics asked 1,000 households how important different transportation facilities were to them. (Note: the survey was conducted in 2009 but the results are just being released now.)

Here’s what they found [PDF]. Eighty-five percent said sidewalks were “important” – but 94 percent said major roads were.

There are some problems with the way these questions were asked. First of all, we get a bee in our bonnet about the question about “adequate” parking. Who would vote for “inadequate” parking?

But more significantly, BTS acknowledges that they’re not really sure what people thought they were saying when they said something was “important.” After all, it seems strange that urbanites (33 percent of survey respondents) ranked livability characteristics like bike lanes, long-distance transportation, and pedestrian-friendly streets as less important compared to suburbanites (39 percent of those surveyed) and rural residents (29 percent).

Percent of respondents finding importance in the eight transportation-related livability characteristics, by community type. Source: USDOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics Omnibus Household Survey

Says USDOT:

The importance placed on the various transportation characteristics by community type seems to reflect what residents of those communities perceive are needed, but that may not be available. For example, rural and suburban residents were more concerned about having “sidewalks, paths, or other safe walking routes to shopping, work, or school” than those living in an urban setting. This may reflect the fact that urban areas are more likely to already have ample pedestrian walkways, but these are less available in suburban and rural areas.

All of which begs the question of just how much you learn by asking people what’s “important.” Just once, I’d like to see a survey ask people what they would give up. If, just for the sake of argument, lots of parking doesn’t really coexist with walkability in a central business district – or if there’s not enough money to build lots of roads and lots of transit – what’s more important? In the real world of trade-offs and scarcity, what would these 1,000 households prioritize?

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Members of Congress of all stripes are trying to show that they’re concerned and responsive to the financial strain caused by high gas prices. Some are recommending more oil drilling. Some want to end subsidies to oil companies. Today, members of the Congressional Livable Communities Task Force suggested that providing more diverse transportation options to more people might help.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer leads the Congressional Livable Communities Task Force. Photo: Bike Portland / Jonathan Maus

“Here in Washington, DC, when gas prices spike, people have choices,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), chair of the Task Force. “They can take a bus, Metro, bike, Capital Bike-share, walk, cab, drive. It’s a wide range of [choices] and it actually minimizes some of the sticker shock. But unfortunately, about half the American population doesn’t have an environment they live in that provides those choices. Too much of America is dependent on a pattern that imagines that we will always have an unlimited supply of inexpensive gasoline, and government policies in housing and road transportation reinforce that.”

Blumenauer and other members of the Task Force introduced a report this morning called “Freedom From Oil: Policy Solutions From the Livable Communities Task Force.” It’s an impressive product from a Congressional task force, many of which exist in name only. The more than two dozen members of the Livable Communities Task Force, all House Democrats, strive to make the federal government a better partner with communities to promote “cost-effective, environmentally friendly solutions to infrastructure problems” and “coordinate transportation, housing, and environmental policies and investments.”

The lawmakers of the Task Force said increasing oil drilling in the U.S. will never have an appreciable effect on world oil prices, because the price of oil is determined globally and the U.S. supply won’t be sufficient to make a significant difference.

“Here’s the harsh reality: The United States is never going to have control over world oil supplies or gas prices through drilling,” said Task Force member Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA). “We simply don’t have the oil supplies, no matter how much we drill. What we do have is the ability to control prices by lowering our consumption and giving American families new transportation choices.”

Rep. Jim Moran, a Democrat from Northern Virginia, boasted about Arlington’s livability program, including contiguous bike trails, bike racks, and transit-oriented development. “It’s the only way to effectively work against this monopolistic control that for too long the oil companies have had over America’s policies and priorities,” Moran said.

The Freedom From Oil policy recommendations are:

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Yesterday, anti-rail curmudgeon Ken Orski of Innovation Briefs quoted me in his latest diatribe against the administration’s transportation proposal, in which he explains why the Obama plan is unrealistic. Indeed, I think it’s safe to say the dollar amount of the administration’s bill is a non-starter in today’s political and economic climate, given that it’s about double what’s expected to come from the Highway Trust Fund over the next six years.

But there’s still a lot to be said for the president coming out with guns blazing and setting a high bar for smart infrastructure investment. And while the overall scale of the president’s proposal doesn’t stand much of a chance, several aspects of its policy reforms are still alive and kicking around the Capitol.

President Obama, with other transportation leaders, called for a six-year infrastructure plan last October. Reuters

The Senate and House versions of a multi-year transportation bill are due to be released soon, so Orski’s post serves as a good opportunity to take a step back, consider where things stand, and go over how the president’s plan fits into the reauthorization process.

First, let me reiterate that the draft bill that’s been circulating has been disavowed by administration officials as an early draft that does not reflect what will be in the final White House proposal. So, at this point, we’re still working off a lot of assumptions as to what the president will ultimately support.

What we do know is what the White House laid out in February as its goals for a new transportation reauthorization – a bigger share for transit, an infrastructure bank, the consolidation and simplification of program structure within USDOT, a strengthening of TIFIA and TIGER, priority for livability and sustainability work, and an infusion of cash for high-speed rail – all rolled into one $556 billion, six-year bill.

Obama’s vigorous support for these programs is a huge shot in the arm to those pursuing transportation reform goals, but advocates’ excitement about the president’s outline was quickly tempered by the sobering realization that if the administration had a plan for funding such a far-reaching proposal, they weren’t letting anybody else in on it. The president himself rejected the idea of a gas tax, and yesterday’s brief flicker of hope that he might be considering a switch to a vehicle-miles-traveled fee was quickly extinguished.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s constant refrain that he is “looking forward to working with Congress” on a funding mechanism continues to ring hollow in the absence of any attempt to get down to specifics. We at Streetsblog have wondered if there’s a strategy behind all that — or if the president’s full agenda was doomed to failure.

Many factors are aligned against such an ambitious agenda. As I mentioned (and Orski repeated), “a still-struggling economy, high gas prices, and a deficit-obsessed Congress” all make it a harder reach. If the president wanted to defend the feasibility of his proposal, he would have addressed those issues. Orski seems to believe the only path forward is to cave to the demands of House GOP leadership to pass a bill half the size of what the president wanted. But Obama could have put his weight behind a new revenue stream that would fund the whole proposal. He could have found money elsewhere in the budget. Or he could have tried to justify a pretty hefty chunk of deficit spending.

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A draft of the president’s full transportation bill [PDF], obtained by the semi-underground Transportation Weekly, has started floating around Beltway policy circles. This draft is more informative than the partial bill that started making the rounds last week, but it’s still undated and it’s not necessarily the final proposal.

Downtown Denver's Cherry Creek Trail was funded with four different Transportation Enhancements grants. Photo: National Transportation Enhancements Clearinghouse

The draft bill closely follows the outline presented by the White House in February, apparently unaffected by the raging budget battles that have consumed Congress since then. Although high-speed rail was completely de-funded in the last budget battle, the president’s bill still provides $53 billion over six years to the program, with $37.6 billion of it for network development and the rest for system preservation and renewal. The proposal also sticks to the language of a “transportation trust fund” rather than a “highway trust fund.”

An accompanying section-by-section analysis [PDF] explains the new Livability Program (one of the five areas the entire transportation program would be folded into). It would consist of three program components, according to the analysis:

• The formula-based Livable Communities Program, which would absorb popular livability programs including Transportation Enhancements, Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Improvement Program, National Scenic Byways Program, Recreational Trails Program, Bicycle Transportation and Pedestrian Walkways, and Safe Routes to School. Some transit projects proven to improve air quality would be allowed. States would be required to use some of the money to employ a full-time Safe Routes to School coordinator and at least one bicycle and pedestrian coordinator. States would also be required to develop a livable communities strategy in support of national performance goals for livability, to be reported on annually. The budget allocates $23 billion over six years to this program.

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