Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Last fall, Streetsblog reported on the complex relationship between economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and the transit-oriented development projects intended to revitalize them. Often, the same people who stand to gain the most quality-of-life benefits from new transit also face the greatest risk of being displaced by the rising property values associated with TOD.

Protesters opposing the Central Corridor's TOD zoning in April 2011. Photo: Metro Lutheran

Such is the quandary facing some communities along the Central Corridor light rail project in Minnesota. The 11-mile line between the downtowns of Minneapolis and St. Paul originally called for 16 stations, spaced half a mile apart at either end, but spaced up to a mile apart in some places – including in the high-poverty, predominantly minority neighborhoods of Frogtown and Midway in St. Paul. Initially, planners claimed that adding stops in those areas would jeopardize the project by tipping the Federal Transit Administration’s cost effectiveness rating into unfavorable territory. However, a grassroots campaign called “Stops for Us” took their case directly to FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff, and in January 2010 the agency altered its priorities so that cost effectiveness alone could no longer disqualify an otherwise sound transit project from funding under the New Starts and Small Starts programs.

But now that these neighborhoods, among St. Paul’s poorest, were getting their transit stations, what could be done to prevent them from being gentrified out of existence by jumps in property value? This was the question that the Healthy Corridor for All Health Impact Assessment [PDF], published in December, intended to answer.

The health impact assessment (HIA), which was completed by PolicyLink with the cooperation of local community groups ISAIAH and Take Action MN, “judges the potential, and sometimes unintended, effects of a policy, plan, program or project on the health of a population.” It’s roughly analogous to an Environmental Impact Statement, but with an emphasis on human factors such as “community health, health inequities, and underlying conditions that determine health” rather than an EIS’s impersonal approach to quantifying the effects of a given project.

The report authors lay out a plan to ensure that the new transit line pays dividends for current residents. “Having largely been the victims of disinvestment,” the foreword reads, “they are still hungry to take advantage of this new investment as long as they can be sure that their communities will benefit.”

A map from the HIA showing the level of ethnic diversity along the Central Corridor rail line. Image: PolicyLink/ISAIAH/TakeActionMN

The report confirmed much of what Streetsblog surmised last October: The communities along the Central Corridor are at risk of displacement.

Read more…

For decades, Dallas mega-suburb Plano planned and prepared for this moment.

The historic downtown — a poorly-scaled anachronism from when this city of 260,000 housed a mere 3,500 people — was revitalized and reimagined as a “transit village.” Tax increment financing helped support urban-style, walkable development.

All because DART was building a rail line and forward-thinking town leaders wanted to be ready. Now decades of careful planning and preparation are paying off; Plano is poised to secure $60 million in transit oriented development near its two rail stations.

Downtown Plano before. Photo: DART Department of Economic Development

After an earlier deal was thwarted by the economic downturn in 2008, Tennessee-based developer Southern Land Co. announced intentions recently to break ground on a $30 million, 280-unit mixed-use apartment complex in downtown Plano this spring. Meanwhile, the city is negotiating with local developer Prescott Realty Group for a project of a similar scale one stop down the Red Line at the Parker Road station, the Dallas Morning News reports.

Last week the paper lamented that the recession has hampered the (perhaps overly optimistic?) fortunes that were anticipated when DART began building what is today the country’s largest light rail system. But as the real estate shock thaws (at least in Texas), Plano is one of several Dallas area communities that are cashing in on DART’s expansion.

The new rail stations have raised property values along Plano’s rail corridor about 200 percent, said Deputy City Director Frank Turner. That has generated about $40 million from Tax Increment Financing, a method for taxing projected increases in property values. That money will be used to help advance its vision for a vibrant, walkable downtown, a pattern the city hopes to repeat at the further flung Parker Road station as well.

Read more…

How much extra would you be willing to pay to live near rail transit?

For Minneapolis residents along the Hiawatha rail line, that convenience is worth tacking on an additional 10 percent to housing prices. Chicagoans near the Midway transit line are willing to pay about 19 percent extra. And in Portland, folks are willing to fork over an additional 31 percent for an abode within one-quarter mile of a rail transit station along the Westside extension line.

Selling prices for homes within 1/2 mile rose 31 percent after the addition of light rail in Portland, according to one study. Photo: Wired Autopia

The Center for Housing Policy recently completed a comprehensive review of the existing research on housing prices and proximity to rail. According to dozens of studies over decades, a rail station within a short walk can add 6 to 50 percent to home values.

The center’s analysis shows, however, that not all rail lines are created equal, at least when it comes to housing price appreciation.

Some important considerations for potential investors: Is the station walkable or is it located near highway infrastructure? Does the rail service operate frequently and offer service to desirable destinations? What is the strength of the regional housing market?

All of these factors are important. But ultimately they point to a central conclusion: the premium buyers are willing to pay to live near rail transit correlates roughly to how much accessibility the transit service offers relative to other modes. In a congested city with a strong housing market and robust transit system — New York City, for example — rail transit proximity results in the largest premiums. Meanwhile, weak market cities with poor transit and relatively traffic-free highways — like Buffalo, New York — may see little price appreciation around rail transit stops. In these cases, rail transit has little inherent advantage over highway travel.

Read more…

Members of the U.S. High-Speed Rail Association on Capitol Hill with Rep. John Mica (center) on Tuesday. Photo courtesy of USHSR.

At a meeting with members of the U.S. High-Speed Rail Association Tuesday, House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica softened his stance somewhat on his plan to privatize the Northeast Corridor.

He acknowledged that the proposal is “controversial” and said that was why he framed it in a separate bill, apart from the rest of the reauthorization. He said he’s “heard the concerns” about the plan. A member of his staff said that the original plan was being portrayed as transferring Amtrak’s assets away from it, while leaving Amtrak holding the bag on the debt. “Which, when you put it that way, does sound sort of unfair,” the staffer said, indicating that issues like those are being worked out.

Andy Kunz, president and CEO of the U.S. High-Speed Rail Association, said he was glad to see Mica striking a more cooperative tone. “His initial bill and his initial hearing was a little bit ‘This is it; take it or leave it’,” Kunz said. “Now he’s recognizing there needs to be a bit more cooperative action.”

The committee isn’t easing up on everything, though. The staffer also stated that the committee was giving inter-city and passenger rail “a temporary rest” while it focuses exclusively on high-speed rail. “It does not serve the two programs well to be ‘smooshed,’ or put together and consolidated the way they have been and then have most of the projects that receive funding not be high-speed rail in any way, shape, or form.”

In response to the Congressional Research Service’s conclusion that the rail privatization scheme could run into constitutional problems, Mica’s staffer was dismissive, saying CRS merely warned that some courts could find it to be a violation, and they should be careful. (Sounds like a finding of unconstitutionality to me.)

As he often does, Mica spoke of his high-speed rail plans as a way to rescue high-speed rail from the Obama administration’s mismanagement and bungling. He often jokes about the “gift that keeps on giving”: the original $8 billion allocated for high-speed rail, some of which has been returned by gun-shy states and re-allocated.

Mica asserted that the involvement of the private sector is “non-negotiable” – which Amtrak itself would agree with, as it’s already seeking private sector partners. Mica gave Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman credit for being on board. “Boardman sees that you cannot [upgrade the NEC to high speeds] – at least in his lifetime – under the current proposal,” Mica said. He also said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is “willing to negotiate.” But he cast blame on Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), who he said are willing to give “none of the pie” to private investors.

Read more…

Streetsblog San Francisco reported earlier this week that the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has made a $10 million funding commitment to a mixed-use affordable housing project in the Tenderloin neighborhood, a convenient two-block walk from the nearest Muni stop:

David Baker + Partners Architects

The development at 168 Eddy Street would provide 153 new apartments reserved for low-income families and space for a 12,000-foot street-level grocery store. It would help quell some of the high demand for affordable housing in the neighborhood, where valuable lots used to park cars diminish the urban fabric despite very low car ownership. Bringing the first full-sized grocery market to the neighborhood would also provide access to healthy food options within walkable distances.

But as Gen Fujioka wrote this week on Streetsblog Los Angeles, San Francisco hasn’t always had policies in place to preserve space for low-income people as property values near transit skyrocketed.

One test of San Francisco’s affordable housing policies came in the 1990s during the dot-com boom. Amidst a hot real estate market, development pressures grew particularly in transit-rich areas. Evictions reached record levels and entire neighborhoods were transformed in a few years. According to research by UC Berkeley’s Center on Community Innovation, during the period between 1995 and 2000, the out-migration of low-income households exceeded 9,800 each year while the numbers of upper income households grew. Proximity to transit was a significant factor in explaining the pattern of displacement. Neighborhoods within a half-mile of major transit were particularly at risk of gentrification and displacement, suffering marked declines in the number of households of color.

Local social justice groups mobilized and got the city to adopt a moratorium on new development. Stagnant residential construction can also lead to rising rents, so more and more, planners are looking for ways to ensure that transit-oriented development goes hand in hand with housing affordability. Initiatives like the one now underway in the Tenderloin are a welcome sign that localities are waking up to the unintended consequences of TOD — that the rising tides of property values may not lift all boats.

Read more…

Proximity to downtown and employment centers, and the availability of developable land, are what lead to big real estate impacts from transit expansion. Source: CTOD

“Transit alone is insufficient to make a real estate market,” said Dena Belzer, the president of Strategic Economics, an urban design consulting firm. Her group is a partner in the Center for Transit-Oriented Development (CTOD), which this week released a new report on the effects of transit expansion on real estate markets.

Transit won’t, on its own, create a booming market for compact, mixed-use development, but if a city has a good, walkable grid and simply needs better access to jobs and centers of activity, it can do wonders. “There are sites where you can see that opening up access just really ‘popped’ things,” Belzer said. For the best chances of success, you need to use transit to connect underutilized land with walkable downtowns and employment opportunities.

The new CTOD report, “Rails to Real Estate: Development Patterns along Three New Transit Lines” [PDF], picked corridors in the Southeast (Charlotte, NC), the West (Denver, CO) and the Midwest (Minneapolis) to see how transit affected development patterns.

Residential units under construction near Charlotte's Blue Line. Photo: Willamor Media/Flickr

The big success story was Charlotte’s Blue Line – where transit “popped things,” as Belzer said. It’s the newest of the three lines, having just opened in 2007, at the height of an ongoing real estate boom. (It went bust along with the rest of the country, and all the big investors pulled out, but until that happened, everything was going great.)

Even in that short timeframe, this corridor saw the biggest spike in development after the opening of the transit line – nearly 10 million square feet of new development, compared with 6.7 million in Minneapolis and 7.8 million in Denver – and that’s along a rail line that’s only half as long as Denver’s (though tightly packed with 15 stations, compared to Denver’s 14).

Charlotte was destined for greatness because the city aligned its transit along all the right places, according to Belzer.

Read more…

The Twin Cities region is reassessing the role of highways in its transportation system.

Minneapolis-St. Paul is investing in a new system of transitways and priced traffic lanes instead of traditional highway expansion. Planners there say the region will never be able to build its way out of congestion with highways.

Like many communities throughout the country, Minneapolis-St. Paul is moving beyond the decades-old assumption that the only way to eliminate congestion is with more outward-stretching asphalt. This fall, officials in the Twin Cities voted to roll back highway expansions and increase access to transit options instead.

Local planners say it’s time to acknowledge that the region simply can’t afford to accommodate growth by building new highways.

“We couldn’t keep going on acting as if we were going to get money to build our way out of congestion,” said Arlene McCarthy, Director of Metropolitan Transportation Services for the Twin Cities Metro Council, which drafted and approved the new plan. “One county alone could easily consume all the money the region has. That’s the reality.”

With vehicle trips expected to increase 35 percent by 2030, regional planners estimate it would cost approximately $40 billion to even attempt to tackle congestion with traditional road projects. But only about $8 billion is expected to be available to the regional planning agency over the next ten years.

The goal of the Twin Cities 2030 Transportation Plan is to maximize the use of existing freeways by adding bus lanes or priced traffic lanes in shoulders wherever possible. The new framework will require increased emphasis on transit and other non-automotive modes.

Read more…

Perhaps the Obama administration’s greatest contribution to building more livable, less traffic-choked communities has been the new partnership between three agencies — DOT, EPA, and HUD — which are helping towns and cities grow more sustainably, using strategies from brownfield redevelopment to the provision of affordable housing along transit corridors. The agencies have collaborated to issue a series of grants to communities doing this work, but as the lower chamber of Congress shifts to Republican control, the funding for some of those programs is in question.

Mariia Zimmerman, Deputy Director for HUD's Office on Sustainable Communities.

Streetsblog met with Mariia Zimmerman, Deputy Director for Sustainable Communities at HUD, to talk about these questions. Brian Sullivan from the Office of Public Affairs also joined us for the conversation.

Streetsblog: When you look at the new Congress coming in – how is that going to affect your work, and how does it affect your message?

Zimmerman: We are hopeful that a lot of the success stories in communities across the country – it’s being locally driven and it’s not a partisan issue. We have Republican and Democratic mayors and governors – it’s nonpartisan, or bipartisan. The partisanship does tend to come in from Congress. If you look at the map of where we made grant selections, they’re Democratic and Republican, small towns and big towns. So we’re hopeful that the demand, interest, and excitement around these programs will be conveyed to Congress no matter where they sit – what party, what state, what zip code they’re in.

People just think this is the right thing to do, and it’s long past time for the federal government to be supporting them instead of being in the way.

It’s long past time for the federal government to be supporting [livable communities] instead of being in the way.

In terms of messaging, we have always felt there is a strong economic need for investing more smartly, leveraging our resources. Federal coordination is just cost effectiveness.

That message is one we can be stronger on. We’ve talked about some of the environmental and quality-of-life reasons for sustainability – we can do a better job of explaining what are the costs of not investing this way and what are the savings if we do. It’s really about trying to invest more wisely. As Rob Puentes at Brookings likes to say, ‘We’re out of money, now’s the time to think!’

Read more…

Reconnecting America has crunched the numbers on which projects won planning grants from the feds last month. Planning awards were announced through three programs: Sustainable Communities Regional Planning (SCRPG), Community Challenge, and TIGER II.

Reconnecting America has mapped and analyzed the winners of competitive grants from HUD and DOT. Click to enlarge (PDF)

It’s worth noting that these are the types of competitive grant programs that John Mica is planning to put under the microscope when he takes the chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“We had unelected officials sitting behind closed doors making decisions without any hearings or without any elected officials being consulted,” Mica said soon after the election. “I’m going to have a full review of that.”

He’s looking for “rational explanations” of why the grants went to the projects they went to. Criteria for the awards were announced well in advance, but it’s true that the departments could have been more transparent in their process. Reconnecting America’s report can help fill in some of the gaps in the agencies’ own explanations of what they were looking for when they made their decisions.

In addition to mapping the top winning regions, Reconnecting America pulled out some common themes, illustrating the awarding agencies’ priorities. They include:

• Equity: ensuring equitable benefits from development with regional affordable housing plans and inclusionary zoning
• Planning for transit corridors and stations: for instance, a project in Seattle will strategize for up to 25 transit corridors and 100 new stations planned for the year 2025
• Comprehensive planning: for regions without an existing plan  or for those filling in gaps on affordable housing, transportation, or sustainability
• Street connectivity and safety: complete streets, off-street trails, and making transit stations more accessible to pedestrians and cyclists
• Economic development, including workforce development
• Zoning and land use reform: fostering compact, mixed-use development
• Healthy eating: improving access to healthy food and integrating local food systems

Generally, the report reflects the growing cohesion between DOT, HUD, and the EPA and the increased desire to achieve goals systematically, instead of operating within separate silos.

We see it over and over again in our cities. Migration out of central cities hollows out neighborhoods and leaves the people who remain struggling with the consequences of disinvestment. But when development returns to urban areas, the arrival of new residents can impose burdens on people who never left. Often, as amenities come into an area and crime goes down, property values rise and poorer residents can no longer afford to live there.

The addition of light rail has been linked to higher rates of car ownership, as compared to the Metropolitan Statistical Area as a whole, but that doesn't mean we should stop building light rail. Image: Dukakis Center (PDF)

Even when the new development is built around transit, which can lower transportation costs for low-income residents, unintended consequences can ensue.

Researchers with the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy have recently reached some provocative conclusions from their study of gentrification and transit-oriented development. Without proper planning, they found, new development near transit can lead to stratified neighborhoods and higher rates of car ownership.

They also offered some solutions to ensure that transit-oriented development achieves its intended goals. The solutions include preserving affordable housing and restricting parking in new developments.

Historically, the authors notes, transit-rich neighborhoods tend to be diverse. The low-income people and people of color who live there often don’t have cars and they depend on public transportation. They also usually rent their homes — and since rental housing turns over faster than owner-occupied homes, this speeds along the process of gentrification when new transit options come to a neighborhood.

Rents go up as transit arrives (often along with new shops and restaurants) and more affluent people move in. And guess what? Those wealthier people tend to have more cars. That’s the fundamental paradox: the people who are attracted to transit-rich neighborhoods – and have the money to pay more to live there – don’t use transit as much as less affluent people who can get priced out.

The authors stop short of calling this pattern “displacement” – they point to “normal processes of housing turnover and succession.” But what’s clear is that the people moving in are from a different income demographic than those moving out (though the researchers say the racial makeup tends to stay the same).

Income-based housing stratification and more cars are not the outcomes planners want from transit or transit-oriented development. The challenge is to keep development around transit from becoming too exclusive and too car-oriented. How can communities do this?

Read more…