Transit News

Registration rates for the 2013 Transit Initiatives and Communities Conference go up this Thursday, May 23. Be sure to register and book your hotel room now for the lowest rates!

Registration and Hotel Information

Fascinating speakers have been confirmed from...

Campaign firms like R&R Partners, FM3, and HDR | InfraConsult

Local advocacy organizations like Move LA and Center for Planning Excellence

National organizations like Transportation for America and the American Public Transportation Association

After months of speculation as to whether Ray LaHood would stay on for a second term as Secretary of Transportation, we were told in January that he would be leaving as soon as a replacement is confirmed. This led to several months of additional speculation on who the choice would be. Well now we know:

President Obama has nominated Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx as the next Secretary of Transportation. As of right now, it looks like this should be a relatively smooth confirmation. The unknown question is will Mayor Foxx be able to have the impact that Secretary LaHood has had in the position?

The fifth and latest round of TIGER discretionary grant funding has been made available by DOT. A total of $474 million is available in FY 2013 for projects of regional and national significance. This highly-competitive program has  provided funding for more than 200 projects in all 50 states and received bipartisan support in Congress.

Courtesy of U.S. DOT
Sequestration cut the total amount of funds available in 2013 and the late date of enactment for final FY13 appropriations has DOT on a very short timeframe for obligating funding to selected projects.  Projects that are ready to proceed quickly will be given priority in the application process. The deadline for project applications is June 3, 2013.

DOT has developed an application resources page to help project sponsors get their applications for this very popular program in quickly and accurately.

The 2013 Transit Initiatives and Communities Conference is just around the corner. We are excited to head to Atlanta this June to learn from the experience of last year's biggest campaign, hear from communities with recently successful transit initiatives, and strategize for future endeavors to invest in and improve transit around the country.

This year's program includes some of the best events and most requested topics from prior years, as well as new sessions and workshops to help tackle the latest challenges facing communities.

View the draft program the 2013 Transit Initiatives and Communities Conference.

This year's conference kicks off with a dynamic, interactive workshop on Sunday, June 23. Specifically geared towards grassroots, this workshop will help advocates strengthen their coalitions, organize key constituencies in their communities, and build a regional network of support.

For more information and to register, please visit: http://www.cfte.org/initiatives-conferences

The start of the year (and new terms and legislative sessions) has brought a renewed interest in our nation's infrastructure. Governors and legislators in several states kicked off the year with proposals to increase transportation investment. 
Proposals range from sales and gas tax increases to new vehicle registration fees and local taxing authority.Unique among this year's proposals are suggestions of eliminating state gas taxes or decreasing the federal gas tax in an effort to devolve infrastructure financing authority to the states.
Highlights:
Idaho- Governor Butch Otter said in his State of the State message that hesupports a broad local option tax, which had previously only been allowed in resort cities.
Indiana- Legislation is making it's with through the Indiana House that would allow Marion and Hamilton Counties (Indianapolis) to go to voters for an income tax increase to support expansion of public transit.  Efforts to get enabling authority to improve transit in this region are many years in the making.
Maryland- Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller has proposed allowing counties to impose their on 5 cents a gallon gas tax to support local roads and transit. His proposal also includes a 3 percent statewide sales tax on gasoline purchases. Governor Martin O'Malley has been meeting with lawmakers specifically to achieve consensus on a transportation funding plan.
Massachusetts- Governor Deval Patrick released a comprehensive transportation fundingplan designed to generate over $1 billion annually for the states roads and transit systems. Options included increases to sales, gas or income taxes, a fee on vehicle miles traveled, and increased fees on heavily-polluting vehicles.
Pennsylvania- Governor Tom Corbett has proposed a 25-cent per gallon increase to the state gas tax over the next five years. This would generate $1.8 billion annually for transportation projects. Most of the funding would go to repair structurally deficient roadways and bridges, but state's largest transit system would also receive extra funding.
Utah- The Utah Senate is moving forward a bill asking Congress to lower the federal gas tax so that the states can increase theirs and have more direct control over transportation funding. A similar bill may be introduced in Congress, but is unlikely to get much traction.
Virginia- Governor Robert F. McDonnell proposed a sweeping plan to raise $3.1 billion over five-years for its cash-strapped transportation system. The proposal included an increase in vehicle registration fees, an increase in the state's sales tax and revenue from the implementation of an internet sales tax. Most intriguing about this proposal was not the $100 charge on drivers of alternative-fuel cars, but the elimination of the state gas tax to reduce the overall tax burden.
A committee in the Virginia Senate approved a compromise bill last week that increases the state gas tax, transfers more general funds to transportation and gives certain local jurisdictions authority to go to voters for a 1 cent sales tax.
Wisconsin- A state transportation commission has proposed a 5-cent per gallon increase in the state's gas tax, an increase in heavy truck registration fees, and an increase in vehicle registration fees based on miles traveled. Combined, the measures would provide an additional $480 million annually over 10 years for the state's transportation system.

One of the most disappointing losses for transit in 2012 was the defeat of Measure J in Los Angeles County.  Despite garnering the support of over 65% of voters, this extension was brought down by California's supermajority requirement for tax measures.T

Measure J was a 30-year, half-cent sales tax extension that would have secured approximately $90 billion for transportation investment through 2069. More importantly, it was designed to allow the region to borrow against future tax receipts to complete major projects (laid out during the campaign for the initial half-cent sales tax in 2008) in 10 years instead of 30.

CFTE sought insight into this campaign from one of the key organizations involved.


Read our interview with Gloria Ohland, Director of Policy and Communications at Move LA.

Pittsburgh’s brand may be rusty, but like every city, it has its bright spots / Photo: Brendan Crain

“At the heart of my argument,” writes Jim Russell in his response to last Wednesday’s blog post, “is the fact that [Placemaking] initiatives are intrinsically place-centric. Instead of place-centrism, I’m looking at talent migration through a lens of people-centrism…I’m convinced that placemaking is useful, but not for talent attraction/retention. People move for purposes of personal economic development.”

Focusing on talent attraction and retention is what leads to gentrification, the phenomena that people who voice concerns about Placemaking are most often trying to avoid. There is an oft-voiced belief today that there is a finite amount of talent and creativity available in the world, and that cities must compete to draw creative people away from rival communities in order to thrive. But truly great places are not built from scratch to attract people from elsewhere; the best places have evolved into dynamic, multi-use destinations over time: years, decades, centuries. These places are reflective of the communities that surround them, not the other way around. Placemaking is, ultimately, more about the identification and development of local talent, not the attraction of talent from afar.

A key difference in definitions here is that what some would call ‘place’, I (and others) would call branding. There’s an oceans-wide gap between those two things. “Young, college-educated talent is moving from decaying Pittsburgh (brain drain) to cool, hip Austin (brain gain),” writes Russell, explaining the Creative Class concept. “It’s a place-centric understanding of talent relocation.” In fact, what he’s describing is a brand-centric understanding. Pittsburgh’s brand is rusty (heh); Austin’s brand gleams with the silvery-green gloss of techno-optimism. But to categorize entire cities as singular places gets you nowhere at all. Pittsburgh has its bright spots, and Austin has its warts.

Looking at cities from what Jan Gehl calls the “airplane scale” is what allows proponents of cut-and-paste urbanism to do what the Modernists did, using lifestyle instead of architecture. Rather than suggesting that the city be reorganized into tower blocks amidst grassy lawns, today’s one-size-fits-allers call for cafes and artisan markets. They are presuming that the city as a whole will benefit from the indiscriminate application of a specific set of amenities. It won’t. Neighborhoods need to define their priorities for themselves; in so doing, they often discover that there are untapped opportunities to grow their own local economies, without needing to import talent from elsewhere. Even if your city’s brand is busted, your community is still capable of re-building itself. As Jane Jacobs once argued, “the best cities are actually federations of great neighborhoods.”

“The best cities are actually federations of great neighborhoods.” — Jane Jacobs / Photo: Brendan Crain

When cities jump into the talent attraction death match arena, they often wind up losing to win: they spend millions of dollars on insane tax incentives to woo corporate headquarters and factories; they drop millions more on fancy amenities that haven’t really been asked for, in the hopes that (since it worked elsewhere) each bauble will magically cause a crowd of American Apparel-wearing, Mac-toting graphic designers to materialize out of thin air; they sell their souls in order to “create” jobs that are, in fact, merely shifted over from somewhere else.

If “people develop, not places” as Russell argues, economic development and gentrification are one and the same. If your strategy for improving local economic prospects is to drink some other city’s milkshake, you won’t get very far. It’s economic cannibalization. To really grow an economy, opportunity has to be developed organically within each community, and that requires that people dig in and improve their neighborhoods, together, for the sake of doing so–not convincing Google to open a new office down the road.

As Aaron Renn put it in a recent post on The Urbanophile, “We need to be asking the question of what exactly we are doing to benefit the people without college degrees beyond assuring them that if we attract more people with college degrees everything will be looking up for them. We need to sell ideas like transit in a way that isn’t totally dependent on items like ‘enabling us to attract the talent we need for the 21st century economy.’ If I read half as much about providing economic opportunity and facilitating upward social mobility for the poor and middle classes as I do about green this, that, or the other thing, we’d be getting somewhere.”

Places aren’t about the 21st century economy. They are about the people who inhabit and develop them. They are the physical manifestations of the social networks upon which our global economy is built. Likewise, Place-making is not about making existing places palatable to a certain class of people. It is a process by which each community can develop place capital by bringing people together to figure out what competitive edge their community might have, and then working to capitalize on that edge and improve local economic prospects in-place, rather than trying to import opportunity from elsewhere.

Decades ago we, as a society, detached people from place. We decided that places should be shaped based on theories and ideas, rather than the needs of people who already lived, worked, and played there. The development of people and places is the same process. If we keep trying to separate the two, our cities will remain divided.

The 2013 Transit Initiatives and Communities Conference will be held June 23 - 26 in Atlanta, GA, at the Loews Atlanta Hotel. Last year, we saw 79% of transit ballot measures approved by voters. This astounding success rate is leading a growing number of us to ask how we can replicate this method of supporting transportation investment and choice in our own communities. We invite all interested participants -- from transit advocates to campaign professionals, elected officials to public agency staff -- to attend this biennial event dedicated to understanding and evaluating the role of ballot initiatives in transportation policy and finance.  This year's event includes a pre-conference grassroots workshop, three days of interactive sessions, and plenty of networking opportunities to share your experiences and learn from peers in other communities.







Register Now!