Walking the walk; New transit action puts livability criteria squarely into the mix

Folks, here's some big news on the transit and livability front.

With support from President Obama, we’re taking a major step forward to free our New Starts and Small Starts programs from their current narrow requirements.

 
As Michael Cooper reports, since 2005, these requirements have excluded many good projects--popular projects like light-rail and streetcars. Measuring only cost and how fast a project can move the most people the greatest distance simply misses the boat, and, as reported in Streetsblog, has slowed down transit expansion. In 2010, a policy that has that effect is ridiculous.

Look, everywhere I go, people tell me they want better transportation in their communities. They want the opportunity to leave their cars behind. To live near work and schools and good hospitals. And to enjoy clean, green neighborhoods. The old way of doing things just doesn't value what people want.

Now, the Recovery Act discretionary TIGER grants we announce soon will help some communities achieve these broader goals.

But if we’re serious--really serious--about creating livable communities built around good transportation, then our Federal Transit Administration needs to consider key livability factors when evaluating non-Recovery Act transit proposals.

Factors like enivronmental benefits and economic development opportunities. 

Unfortunately, FTA's flagship programs use cost and performance requirements that are too narrow to allow for weighing these livability factors.

So we are opening them up to a broader set of six performance criteria:

• Economic development
• Mobility improvements
• Environmental benefits
• Operating efficiencies
• Cost effectiveness
• Land use

These criteria--that our old way of doing business simply didn't account for--add up to a much fuller picture of how proposed projects will serve their communities. And these are the kinds of criteria we pledged last spring to support alongside our Sustainable Communities partners HUD and EPA. 

Obviously, we still must evaluate a project's ability to move people from one place to another. But, as Publicola notes, now we can add to the mix how new transit ideas can help communities reduce their carbon footprints, spur economic activity, and relieve congestion.

It's what people want, and it just makes sense.

Comments

[Gordon Burns, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP]

Way to go, Mr. Secretary. You've got it right. This is where it all starts..the critera for evaluating any project must start with using the right criteria. What could be more logical. The answer is your livibility criteria. Keep up the great work. I follow you daily.

[Walt Brewer]

There is one potentially encouraging phrase in this announcement: "--------community and economic benefits"

If that means the broad regional and national community and for it there will be economic benefits through productivity, these could be welcome additions to the usual narrow criteria for New Urbanist quality of life and pleasurable livability in the usual small community sense.

But the answer will lie in the nature of criteria added to the usual cost effective and performance ones and their inclusion in an equal priority climate.

It would be interesting to hear the USDOT evidence that LRT, streetcars and such are what the people want considering the enormous subsidies and significantly less than predicted ridership encountered for recent expenditures.

Discouraging however, considering the "hi-tech" audience, is the lack of emphasis on new system concepts with potential to reduce energy, land use and emissions while retaining vital personal transport on demand features that currently makes the automobile the overwhelming preference for economic productivity and preferred lifestyles.

[Michael E. Bailey]

The changes will allow for a more objective evaluation of new transit projects and will be a great thing. Southern California used to have liveable and sustainable communities along with a world class transit system--the Pacific Electric Red Car--and its companion system in the City of Los Angeles--The Yellow Car. We still have parts of the old Red Car right of way in place but the tracks have been taken up. There is a new transportation program underway here called the GO-LOCAL Transportation Program to connect cities closer to the several Metrolink train stations in the county. The Santa Ana-Garden Grove project that has been approved would operate a streetcar system from the Santa Ana Metrolink station to Little Saigon in Garden Grove. Anaheim has got approval for a fixed guideway system in its city. San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente and Dana Point are going together for a streetcar project to link their cities and Metrolink stations in San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente. The Metrolink is planned to be the backbone public transportation system for Orange County with the bus system and streetcars serving the train stations and connecting them to where people live and work. Work is underway now with the Toll Road Agency to allow OCTA ACCESS paratransit to use the toll roads for cross county trips which will greatly reduce time passengers spend on the vehicles, reduce fuel cost, reduce air pollution and green house gas emissions. The problem was that for so long the OCTA that operates ACCESS and the Toll Road agency that operates the toll roads never talked to each other and never discussed issues of common interest even though looking at the OCTA Board of Directors and looking at the Toll Road Agency Board of Directors shows a number of people serving on both boards. Best wishes, Michael E. Bailey.

[Kurt Thompson Francis]

Good news!

[MoveSD]

While we applaud these new criteria, transit performance must still be a critical factor in such large public infrastructure investments. In San Diego, many people don't take transit because it takes 2-3x as long. For us, speed is an important criteria for attracting new riders to transit.

[Jarrett at HumanTransit.org]

For a roundup of anxieties about this announcement from serious transit advocates, see here.

http://www.humantransit.org/2010/01/more-on-the-new-us-federal-transit-new-starts-guidelines.html

Many of my commenters want to be hopeful, but FTA really needs to be as clear as possible, as soon as possible, about how it's going to measure some of these more intangible and hard-to-predict outcomes.

[Palm Beach Real Estate]

I agree with Gordon The answer will lie in the nature of criteria added to the usual cost effective and performance ones and their inclusion in an equal priority climate.

[Bassoon Houston]

Environmental benefits will be one of the more important factors out of the 6 since sustainability starts to get lots of attention and people start to learn this topic

[Dallas Listing Agent]

While I applaud the efforts for more viable public transportation I think for the most part it is a moot point in many areas, Here in the greater Dallas area public transportation has such limited viability unless you live and work right next door one still has to drive to the stations,

[create a free blog]

Anaheim has got approval for a fixed guideway system in its city. San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente and Dana Point are going together for a streetcar project to link their cities and Metrolink stations in San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente. The Metrolink is planned to be the backbone public transportation system for Orange County with the bus system and streetcars serving the train stations and connecting them to where people live and work.

[McKinney Texas]

"The problem was that for so long the OCTA that operates ACCESS and the Toll Road agency that operates the toll roads never talked to each other"
Is this not a common problem in all gov bureaucracy? So often it seems that our governing bodies never communicate and/or cooperate effectively. When a communication breakdown is found it seems that the only solution that is offered up is another level of bureacuacy. There has to be a better way.