Streetsblog Capitol Hill

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.

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?

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Those looking for hope in this era of transit service cuts took heart from the words of William Millar, President of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), at Rail~volution yesterday. In his keynote speech, Millar reasons to hope for a better future — despite the fact that 84 percent of APTA members were cutting service, raising fares, laying off personnel, or delaying projects this year due to budget cuts.

Around the country, Millar said, voters have chosen again and again to raise their own taxes for increased service. And, he added, “it’s a breath of fresh air” to see a U.S. President get behind infrastructure investment the way Obama has.

After Millar, a panel of officials from HUD, DOT, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Portland Development Commission gave another reason for hope: the very “unnatural” action that federal agencies are beginning to take cooperating with each other.

DOT’s Beth Osborne said it’s easier for each agency to stay in its silo – and the challenges to collaboration are often surprising. “It’s not getting your high leadership agreeing to pool money or to relinquish some control over the decision-making process,” she said. “It becomes, your budget systems are different, or your computer systems don’t coordinate and communicate.” But as the TIGER II and HUD Sustainable Communities grant programs show, agencies are beginning to address those challenges and work together.

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When President Obama announced his push for a long-term transportation bill on Monday, he introduced a report by his Council of Economic Advisors and the Treasury Department analyzing the economic impact of infrastructure investment [PDF]. At face value, the numbers in the president’s plan might not look so impressive. It calls for rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, laying and maintaining 4,000 miles of railways, and the restoration of 150 miles of airport runways.

If you’re hoping for an all-out push for sustainable transportation and livable streets, you may be wondering whether this signifies much of a change to the highway-centric status quo. Look at the underlying message, and it does.

The headline numbers sit on top of a broad strategy that groups including Transportation for America, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Transportation Equity Network, and U.S. PIRG have all applauded. There are still few specifics in the administration’s plan, but here’s a quick cheat sheet to the elements of the report that transportation reformers find so encouraging.

It emphasizes the need to provide American families with a range of transportation options, not just driving.

The report calls attention to the heavy burden that high transportation costs place on the middle class. “The average American family spends more than $8,600 a year on transportation, one-third more than they spend on food,” it states, pointing out that the wealthiest 10 percent spend only 9 percent of their income on transportation, while everyone else shells out 16 percent of our income to move from point A to point B.

The report links high transportation costs to car dependence and makes the case for increasing access to transit and other transportation options, asserting that “[t]his burden is due in large part to the lack of alternatives to expensive and often congested automobile travel. Multi-modal transportation investments are critical to get American families moving again without wasting their time and their money sitting in traffic.”

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For every dollar awarded from the U.S. DOT’s TIGER II grant program, there are more than $30 that applicants are asking for but won’t be getting.

That’s the word from the DOT, which announced on Friday that it had received about $19 billion in applications for nearly 1,000 projects “from all 50 states, U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.” The volume of applications, which range from “highways and bridges to transit and ports,” far exceeds the $600 million available in TIGER II funds.

States competing for TIGER II money need to show that their transportation projects will have significant economic and environmental benefits at a city-wide, regional, or national level. Since the money is awarded at the discretion of DOT using set criteria, not disbursed through the rote formulas that govern most transportation funding, it’s been a catalyst for innovative transportation projects.

David Burwell, a co-founder of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, isn’t surprised at the overwhelming response to TIGER II. “It shows the enormous interest states have in discretionary money,” he says. “With formula money, states will tell you, ‘That’s our money; we don’t have to do anything for formula money.’ Offer discretionary money and they’ll do backflips.”

According to Burwell, who now heads up the Energy and Climate Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the volume of TIGER II applications indicates that state DOTs are willing to reform their focus on highways, but they want something in return for the reforms they make. “Otherwise they’ll spend all their money filling potholes and keeping bridges from falling down,” he says. In other words, if you want states to make real advances on transit and smart urban design, you have to give them some incentive.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood made a similar point in last week’s announcement. “The wave of applications for both TIGER II and TIGER I dollars shows the back-log of needed infrastructure improvements and the desire for more flexible funds,” he said in a statement. According to the DOT, the appetite for TIGER II funds is not quite as ravenous as it was for TIGER I, when the department got $60 billion in applications for $1.5 billion in available grants.

This time around, TIGER II includes a partnership between the DOT and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to disburse planning grants. $35 million in TIGER II funds will combine with $40 million from HUD to pay for transit-oriented development. In another sign of the closer collaboration among federal agencies, two other departments – Agriculture and the EPA – are getting in on the action too, helping to evaluate the planning grant applications.

Last week, the Livable Communities Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee, a milestone for legislation that would fund local efforts to plan for growth while curbing sprawl. But the 12-10 party line vote raised the prospect that the bill might also encounter unified Republican opposition in the full Senate, where the threat of a filibuster has become the norm.

One GOP senator's "no" vote seemed especially incongruous -- Utah's Bob Bennett. The vast majority of the people whom Bennett represents live in the region centered around Salt Lake City, which has made significant strides in recent years to coordinate housing development and transit investments -- exactly the sort of initiatives that the Livable Communities Act would reward.

“There are many, many things in this legislation that I strongly support," Bennett said during the subcommittee vote, before explaining why he would not support the bill. “There are things in this legislation that... would get in the way of what we are already doing in our state. So I will reluctantly vote against it.”

The remarks provoked some head scratching from advocates familiar with the regional planning efforts underway in Bennett's home state.

“I can’t imagine why he would say that,” said Kate Rube, policy director at Smart Growth America. "You would think a state like Utah would really stand to benefit from that bill."

“I’m not sure what he was referring to,” said Alan Matheson, executive director of Envision Utah, a non-profit that advises municipalities on smart growth strategies. The group’s planning work focuses on coordinating transportation and housing policies while preserving open space. In the past, Matheson said, Bennett “has been a great supporter of the collaborative approaches we have taken in Utah.”

The Livable Communities Act, which would disburse competitive grants to communities of all sizes to both plan and build projects that reduce car-dependence and provide better access to transit, would stand to benefit the planning work that Envision Utah has facilitated. "If there was a way to supplement local funding, it would enable us to go beyond regular planning efforts to go to important implementation work," Matheson said.

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The Senate Banking Committee voted 12-10 yesterday in favor of the Livable Communities Act, legislation that would bolster the Obama administration's initiatives to link together transportation, housing, economic development, and environmental policy.

The administration has been taking steps since last March to coordinate between the Department of Transportation, HUD, and the EPA. This bill, carried in the Senate by Connecticut's Chris Dodd, would formalize those partnerships and authorize substantially more funding to work with. 

Most of the action would flow through HUD. This year the agency is funding $150 million in grants supporting regional efforts to improve access to transit and promote walkable development. The Livable Communities Act promises to scale up that program significantly, creating a new office within HUD, called the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, that will distribute about $4 billion through competitive grants.

The initial round of grants would fund comprehensive plans -- local initiatives to shape growth by coordinating housing, transportation, and economic development policies. Most of the funding -- $3.75 billion -- would be distributed over three years to implement projects identified in such plans.

While some Senators from rural states had expressed skepticism about the benefits of the bill for their constituents, yesterday's vote split strictly along party lines, with Democrats Jon Tester of Montana and Tim Johnson of South Dakota both voting in favor.

To make the case for the bill to his rural and Republican counterparts, Dodd singled out Envision Utah, a campaign that has built public support for smart growth policies in one of the country's reddest states. Not a single GOP Senator voted for the bill, however, even Utah's Bob Bennett, who told UPI, "I think the overall philosophy is wise, but I will be voting against it."

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With financial reform nearly complete, the Senate Banking Committee turned its attention today to one of Senator Chris Dodd's (D-CT) next priorities, the Livable Communities Act. Local government came out strong for the initiative to promote sustainable and integrated regional planning, with representatives of the nation's cities, towns, counties, and regional planning organizations testifying in favor. Among committee members, concerns persisted about whether the bill would disadvantage rural areas. 

The Livable Communities Act would provide about $4 billion in competitive grants to coordinate housing, transportation, and economic development policy with an eye toward promoting sustainable development. About $400 million would be slated for planning with the remainder funding implementation. The bill would also create a new office within the Department of Housing and Urban Development to guide and administer the programs. If passed, it would strengthen the Obama administration's multi-agency Sustainable Communities Initiative. 

At today's committee hearing representatives of the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties, the National Association of Development Organizations, and the National Association of Regional Councils each strongly endorsed the goals of the bill. 

Witnesses drew on professional experience -- from trying to revitalize barren neighborhoods in Indianapolis to managing the growth of a rural Maryland county -- to explain how federal policy could spur better development where they live. The Hartford region, for example, is investing in a new bus rapid transit line, said Lyle Wray, the executive director for the region's Council of Governments, but they haven't been able to tie the transit project to broader goals. "Linking that opportunity to affordable housing, jobs, and sustainability is what the Livable Communities Act would allow us to do," he said.

Describing the bill today, Dodd stressed that integrated transportation and land use planning can help address a host of challenges: high foreclosure rates, climate change and oil dependency, deteriorating infrastructure, traffic congestion, and the loss of farmland. Those problems, Dodd argued, aren't urban or rural. "One community can use the grants to develop brownfields in a post-industrial area," he said, and "another might create a livable town center or main street." 

Even so, Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), expressed doubt about whether his rural state would benefit under Dodd's legislation.

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The process of expanding the federal government's definition of "affordable housing," a stated goal of the Obama administration's sustainable communities effort, began in earnest yesterday with the introduction of a new index that integrates transportation prices into the cost of living for hundreds of metro areas.

The Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, assembled by the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), offers details on housing and transport bills for prospective residents of more than 300 metro areas.

But the index also aims to give an updated look at the scarcity of affordable housing. Almost seven out of 10 American neighborhoods are considered affordable using the current federal metric -- that housing should cost no more than 30 percent of income. When the CNT added transportation to the mix, however, for a combined metric of 45 percent of income, the number of affordable neighborhoods dropped by 30 percent (see graphic at right).

"By only focusing on" the 30-percent metric, CNT President Scott Bernstein told reporters, the government "has created an incentive for people to seek out locations where they can meet that goal without taking into account the almost equal cost of transportation."

The index, he added, "show[s] that as people move further out seeking cheaper and cheaper housing, the costs of transportation increase."

The new data is also aimed at encouraging the Obama administration to update its measurement of affordability, a goal embraced by the heads of the three agencies participating in the inter-agency sustainability work.

Ron Sims, the deputy secretary of Housing and Urban Development who leads that sustainability office, has said that $10 million of his initial grant funding would go towards expanding the market for location-efficient mortgages that include transportation costs in their estimates of borrowers' income.

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The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are making significant progress on their joint effort, with the U.S. DOT, to connect cleaner transportation options with affordable  housing and denser urban development.

The latest moves came as Obama administration officials gathered in Seattle for the annual New Partners for Smart Growth conference, where HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan officially tapped Shelley Poticha and Ron Sims as leaders of his agency's sustainable communities office.

On the HUD website, Donovan's aides are seeking input and suggestions from local planners as they prepare to award an initial $100 million in grants to cities with plans for transportation and land use reform.

Not to be outdone, EPA took the opportunity to launch two pilot grant programs aimed at using clean water funds to boost community development and rebuilding brownfield communities around transit access.

The water-funding pilot will focus on New York, California, and Maryland, while the brownfields -- former industrial sites where hazardous materials may impede environmental cleanup -- selected for transit-oriented development aid are located in Indianapolis, Iowa City, Denver, Boston, and the San Diego area.

The three federal agencies involved in green development work are also beefing up their message, connecting a number of recent policy shifts on their respective fronts into a larger narrative of progress towards a more harmonious approach to transportation and housing. For a recap of the recent steps taken by the EPA, HUD, and U.S. DOT -- many of which were covered by Streetsblog Capitol Hill -- check out the agencies' January bulletin [PDF].

The White House officially unveiled its $3.8 trillion budget for the fiscal year 2011 this morning, seeking $1 billion to continue its high-speed rail investment and $530 million for the transportation leg of the Obama administration's inter-agency push to promote sustainable planning on the local level.

The budget also proposes a $4 billion National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund, a rechristened National Infrastructure Bank that would use federal money to leverage private capital for large-scale projects improving the nation's built environment.

The $530 million request for the three-agency sustainable communities partnership, which got $150 million from Congress for the current fiscal year, would go directly to the U.S. DOT for "comprehensive regional and community planning efforts that integrate transportation, housing, and other critical investments," according to the White House budget office.

The administration requested $160 million in total for the two other agencies involved in the partnership, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

As promised to Congress in December, the White House also set aside funding for the implementation of its plans for a new federal role overseeing rail transit safety. The U.S. DOT would receive $30 million in today's budget to train new inspectors and help cities such as Washington D.C. come into compliance with minimum safety standards.

On the controversial question of the cash-strapped highway trust fund -- which is expected to run out of money this spring, not long after the expiration of the latest short-term extension to the 2005 federal transportation law -- the presidential budget maintains its insistence on waiting until 2011 to fix the nation's transport funding crisis.

In the budget's U.S. DOT section, the White House writes:

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