Streetsblog Capitol Hill

With multiple versions of two years’ worth of federal budgets flying around, some details are still emerging about what’s in and what’s out. At the end of last week we heard that the FY2011 budget, which has been sent to the president for his signature, includes $100 million for the Partnership for Sustainable Communities. According to HUD Sustainable Communities Director Shelley Poticha, the partnership was allocated $70 million for regional planning grants ($17.5 million is slated for regions with populations of less than 500,000) and $30 million for Community Challenge planning grants.

That’s still a significant reduction from the $150 million the partnership had last year, but in this time of shrinking budgets, it’s a lot more than some livability advocates feared. If the Sustainable Communities program had been killed in this budget, it would have been all the more difficult to revive it for inclusion in the upcoming reauthorization of the transportation bill.

The president wants to keep the partnership going, and indeed, within the administration and among reformers, the funding for the partnership is seen as a money-saver, consolidating duplicative agency programs, cutting through red tape, and using outcome-based metrics to identify and fund effective projects. Still, it’s an administration program labeled “livability” and was, therefore, extremely vulnerable to the GOP ax.

The Partnership for Sustainable Communities is the name for the coordination among DOT, EPA, and HUD to promote planning and infrastructure investment according to their six tenets of livability: transportation choices, affordable housing, economic competitiveness, support for existing communities, coordination of federal policies and investing in healthy communities. The two planning grant programs, which are funded and managed out of HUD, are a centerpiece of the entire partnership. The other main part of it, TIGER, is run through the DOT and also saw the bulk of its funding — the lion’s share of TIGER, if you will – preserved (perhaps somewhat surprisingly, in the current budget bill), suffering only a 12 percent cut.

Meanwhile, transit capital funding (the FTA’s New Starts program) was reduced by about a quarter, high-speed rail was zeroed out completely, Amtrak took about a 10 percent hit, and TIGGER (a greenhouse gas reduction program for transit) got cut from $75 million to $50 million.

Read more…

Congressional committees charged with drafting the new transportation bill have been holding hearings to seek input from stakeholders around the country. In today’s installment, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee heard from five state DOT chiefs, one city official, and the chair of FedEx. Those witnesses’ pleas to the committee ranged from bike trails and transit to highways and deregulation.

Though the conversation didn’t get stuck on the funding issue, as many other congressional hearings have, Sen. Max Baucus, who chairs the EPW Subcommittee on Transportation, suggested that maybe it’s time to look at a two-year bill if funding for a six-year bill seems unattainable. At least one witness made it clear that even a smaller long-term bill is preferable to a short bill because it allows transportation agencies to plan. Still, Baucus made clear that he found the funding question “frustrating.”

I’ve been involved in many highway bills. I can’t remember a time as challenging as today with all the different forces converging – one is the trust fund deteriorating – that’s a big one. And the politics in our country today, it’s very, very difficult to get additional revenue. And obviously the costs are going up because fuel’s going up, equipment’s more expensive, asphalt’s more expensive. You have to keep up. Also we have to compete internationally. Other countries have very up-to-date infrastructure systems.

This was a full committee hearing that normally would have been chaired by Sen. Barbara Boxer, but she was unavailable so Baucus stepped in. He told witnesses that Congress responds to pressure from outside; it doesn’t lead.

One leader that livability advocates will want to take notice of is Sharon Thomas, the mayor pro tempore and councilwoman of Las Cruces, New Mexico, who testified at today’s hearing. “How a community is laid out — roads, transit, pedestrian and bicycling facilities, open space, public areas, commercial areas, housing choices, economic development, health issues — are all related,” she told the committee.

Las Cruces was chosen in 2009 to participate in an EPA planning program to better connect the downtown with the university. “In that vision, El Paseo Road would be transformed from a vehicle clogged, dying, strip-mall-lined street into a mixed use, pedestrian and bicycle friendly, tree-lined boulevard, with multiple transportation options, a range of housing choices, and plenty of public gathering places,” she said. “That is what the community told us they wanted.”

Read more…

You could say Oskaloosa, Iowa, population 11,000, is a model of small-town livability. Families rent apartments over renovated historic storefronts. Local college students take the bike lane down Market Street to grab a bite in the local restaurants. Visitors travel from distant towns to browse the city’s local bookstore in its revitalized, walkable town square.

Oskaloosa’s vibrancy is owed in large part to Iowa’s Main Street program — a public-private partnership aimed at returning economic competitiveness to historic town centers. Over its 25 year history in the state, this program has encouraged walkability, mixed use development and historic preservation in 47 Iowa communities.

To those who question whether the concept of livability works in rural communities, the answer from Oskaloosa and the Iowa Main Street program is self-evident. The Main Street effort has been credited with attracting $1 billion dollars in private investment — about $79 private dollars for every public dollar — according to an economic analysis commissioned by the program. Hardly an exclusive domain of the Hawkeye State, Main Street is a national program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation — at work in 37 states.

However, some key Republicans have threatened to dismantle efforts to bring these kinds of common-sense investments to communities around the country.

Indeed, Iowa Congressman Tom Latham, whose district is just a few miles from Oskaloosa, is chair of the powerful Transportation and HUD Subcommittee on Appropriations. Latham has questioned whether the concept of “livability” applies in rural communities. And others in the Republican leadership have threatened to cut funding for President Obama’s Sustainable Communities Regional Planning program and TIGER grants, efforts that aim to bring important economic and quality-of-life improvements — as well as overall infrastructure cost savings — to both rural and urban areas.

Read more…

Slate has posted this map to illustrate the concentration of “food deserts,” where large numbers of people don’t have access to fresh food. The USDA considers households more than a mile from a supermarket and without access to a car to be in food deserts, often with only convenience-store junk food for nourishment. In 2009, the agency found 2.3 million of these households. Here, Slate shows the preponderance of those households in Appalachia and the Deep South, and on Indian reservations.

Access to healthy food is just one reason to build walkable places with a mix of uses and diverse transportation options. The places on this map are where people have been stranded — how walkable can your neighborhood be if you can’t walk to buy fresh produce? Many of the people identified here are poor and can’t afford cars. Some are elderly or disabled and can’t drive.

The most vulnerable members of our communities are the ones most hurt by transportation policies that keep a singular focus on automobile transportation and ignore those who need other ways to get around. What Slate is calling a food desert, you could also call an unlivable neighborhood, where even residents’ most basic needs — like access to healthy food — are denied.

The transfer of power in the House of Representatives gives transportation reformers plenty to wring their hands about. Oberstar’s ouster was a shock, and folks are still synthesizing what it means to have John Mica in charge of the next transportation bill.

But flying under the radar is another big shift with potentially enormous consequences. The Transportation and HUD subcommittee on Appropriations is getting a new master too. And livability advocates are alarmed.

Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) made it onto the League of American Bicyclists’ Trash Talk list this spring when he said every biker is “one less person paying into the transportation trust fund.”

The Final Say on Transpo Funding

If Latham is confirmed as the new chair of the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, he’ll have the power of the pursestrings. After all, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee can authorize any program they want, but if the appropriators don’t fund it, it doesn’t exist.

Latham is a close personal friend of presumptive Speaker John Boehner, who opposes Obama’s infrastructure push and believes he has a mandate to cut government spending. We’ve already heard that Mica wants to revisit discretionary grant programs like TIGER and the Sustainable Communities Regional Planning program, and advocates are bracing for a fight to preserve bike-ped funding.

But the fight won’t be won in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee alone – it’ll continue in Appropriations, where advocates will need to convince a fiscal conservative with little to no understanding of the need for walkability, smart growth, or urban transit. He’s made it clear that his priority in the subcommittee is “the efficient movement of agricultural products” on rural roads and “the importance of maintaining the vast road structures that we have today in rural America.”

Read more…

As the Obama administration's inter-agency sustainable communities project commands a growing share of attention and funding in Washington, the response from conservatives and business lobbies has been decidedly less than enthusiastic.

When Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood issued a non-binding statement of support for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, stopping short of setting any "complete streets" standards for federal projects, the National Association of Manufacturers declared the idea "nonsensical."

But that initial backlash may be giving way to an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude among road-building industries. In fact, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) -- state DOTs' voice in the capital -- marked the 40th anniversary of Earth Day today with a new report that depicts roads and highway funding as essential to building more livable neighborhoods.

"While State DOTs support what can be done through transit, walking and biking to enhance 'livability,' what has been missing from the national dialogue is what can be accomplished through road-related improvements," AASHTO executive director John Horsley wrote in his introduction to the report.

Among the 13 developments AASHTO describes as evidence that state DOTs are "investing in community livability," two are not directly related to environmentally friendly transportation: creating jobs and stimulating the economy.

Other items on the list of 13 substantively overlap. For instance, AASHTO separates "green projects" such as the Detroit area's Midtown Loop -- a walking and biking path that got $2.3 million in stimulus aid last year -- from Transportation Enhancements, a 20-year-old program that requires states to set aside 10 percent of federal road formula money for bike-ped facilities or other, related efforts.

Yet the Midtown Loop, like many U.S. greenways, got its federal funding largely from the Enhancements program, which was the U.S. DOT's primary route for promoting cleaner transportation until the Obama administration launched its sustainability push.

Read more...

When President Obama signed an executive order in October requiring federal agencies to craft strategies for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, he described the mandate as Washington "lead[ing] by example" on the pollution-reduction front.

And that's true -- but the order also includes language telling federal agencies to get involved in integrating local transportation planning, with a particular focus on selecting sites for government facilities

that are pedestrian-friendly, near existing employment centers, and accessible to public transit, and emphasize existing central cities and, in rural communities, existing or planned town centers;

The overall goal for government agencies, as Obama's order put it, should be to "strengthen the vitality and livability of the communities in which federal facilities are located." Given that more than 2,200 communities host federally owned or leased property, that edict could unleash a lot of local energy for transit and pedestrian improvements.

The order also gives federal agencies eight months to craft long-term sustainability plans focusing on how to implement "strategies and accommodations for transit, travel, training, and conferencing that actively support lower-carbon commuting and travel by agency staff." The White House budget office and Council on Environmental Quality are charged with vetting each agency's proposal.

And as each agency devises those emissions-cutting plans, the Obama administration's push to consider sustainability as a transportation, housing, and environmental issue is given a meaty role in the process.

Read more...

The White House's effort to promote sustainable communities has prompted serious (and inadvertently humorous) hand-wringing from conservative pundits who fear the concept of livability will translate into governmental edicts on lifestyle choices. What's the best way to counter such tactics?

The administration's approach, it seems, is to define its goals in clear, digestible fashion. When an AARP interviewer asked Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood what he means by "livable communities," LaHood had a twelve-word answer ready to go: If you don't want an automobile, you don't have to have one.

Not every advocate for cleaner transportation may agree with LaHood's response, but it certainly marks progress in crafting an effective message for the Obama team's nascent livability effort.

The U.S. DOT is also actively touting its contributions to bicycle and transit infrastructure, cheering last week's premiere of the Washington D.C. Bikestation -- 80 percent of which was federally funded -- and calling for an end to the long-standing turf wars between different modes of transportation.

Will the administration succeed in quieting critics of its livability work? If highway lobbyists' latest take on the issue is any guide, it may take some time.

In the meantime, LaHood's full interview in the October addition of the AARP Bulletin is available after the jump. He talks about the White House's Green Cabinet, the stimulus law's slim pickings for transit, and other hot transportation topics.

Read more...

Architect Leon Krier has been dubbed the godfather of new urbanism. His work on the U.K.'s Poundbury development project, spearheaded by Prince Charles, has made the Luxembourg-born Krier one of the world's most talked-about urban planners.

When Krier won the University of Notre Dame's inaugural Driehaus Prize for classical architecture, Congress for the New Urbanism co-founder Andres Duany's was quoted describing a Krier lecture that changed the course of his career.

"I realized I couldn’t go on designing these fashionable tall buildings, which were fascinating visually, but didn’t produce any healthy urban effect. They wouldn’t affect society in a positive way," Duany said.

“The prospect of instead creating traditional communities where our plans could actually make someone’s daily life better really excited me."

Krier will be delivering a lecture at Washington D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery of Art tonight on the themes of his work and his latest book, The Architecture of Community. He sat down to speak with Streetsblog Capitol Hill about America, its transportation infrastructure, and his call for cities to consider the "human scale" as they develop.

Read more...

There is probably no more beloved figure in urbanism than Jane Jacobs, who fought to preserve some of New York City's most treasured neighborhoods and who gave urbanists some of the field's fundamental texts. As Ed Glaeser notes in the New Republic this week, Jacobs died in 2006 "a cherished, almost saintly figure," while her principal antagonist, Robert Moses, remains popularly reviled as a villain.

But as American cities have outgrown their infrastructure in recent decades, and as political institutions have proven unable to muster the energy necessary to construct great projects, Moses' reputation has enjoyed something of a recovery. Increasingly, he is being actively rehabilitated in new histories and essays, of which Glaeser's review is an example.

These efforts are interesting because they manage to earn a degree of sympathy from urbanists themselves, who have grown increasingly tired of the decades required to navigate a transit line from planning stages to operation.

There is something very attractive about an individual who can drive the stakes and get the project built -- damn the politicians, and damn the NIMBYs.

But this is dangerous territory. In rehabilitating Moses and reconsidering Jacobs, it's important to be clear about where each was right, and where each went wrong.

There are many ways to interpret the clash between Moses and Jacobs: development versus preservation, city versus suburb, design for people versus design for automobiles, power versus powerlessness, and so on. To acknowledge that the balance has swung too far in one direction in one of these conflicts does not at all suggest that the balances are similarly out of whack on others.

Take, for example, one of Glaeser's principal intellectual standbys: that resistance to development slows the growth of housing supply, increasing housing costs. Glaeser says:

Read more...