Photo: TransForm/Flickr

Members of a broad coalition hailing from throughout California are headed to Sacramento next week to push policymakers to save transit funding and enact sustainable transportation planning reforms.

The Oakland-based transit advocacy group TransForm has amassed about 150 advocates to descend on the capitol for its two-day Transportation Choices Summit, the first known event of its kind, where they will meet with state representatives and urge them to prioritize walking, bicycling, and transit.

TransForm State Policy Director Graham Brownstein said the action came out of the organization’s Invest in Transit campaign, launched last year to address the “very, very serious crisis” facing transit systems in California. The state has made dramatic funding cuts totaling more than $4 billion over the last decade, and TransForm recognized the immediate need for “creative policy reforms that will stabilize, and then grow transit funding in California,” said Brownstein.

The cornerstone of the campaign is a push to ensure that a major portion of the revenue from California’s nascent cap-and-trade program will be dedicated to transit operations and affordable housing projects located near transit.

The cap-and-trade revenue could go a long way toward restoring the damage done to transit funding under the Schwarzenegger administration. By selling emissions permits, Governor Jerry Brown’s administration anticipates the cap-and-trade program will generate $1 billion in the 2012-2013 budget and $10 billion annually by 2020, according to TransForm [PDF].

Brownstein said transit agencies need all the help they can get to avert a much deeper statewide crisis.

“Piecemeal, at this point, isn’t going to cut it,” he said. “We’re looking at just billions of dollars that are needed really pretty rapidly, or else you run into a situation where some of these systems that have not had proper maintenance and rehab for years start to really not function, and it becomes much more expensive, and it’s not just a repair, but a replacement kind of an issue.”

TransForm’s proposal is targeted to help the state meet its air quality goals, particularly for disadvantaged communities, as mandated by AB 32, passed by the state legislature in 2006. The goal, said Brownstein, is to combine “the investments in transit infrastructure and operations with transit-oriented development in the right places so that you’re maximizing the drop in people driving their cars, maximizing the increase in the ability of people to take transit, walk, and bike, and therefore you’re maximizing the greenhouse gas reductions, which cap-and-trade is all about, ultimately.”

He also pointed out that investing in transit options benefits low-income communities the most. “You’re maximizing the benefits that accrue to people in this state who are suffering the most because of our over-reliance on cars. They’re suffering because of the hit to their pocketbook, they’re suffering because if they’re low-income they’re much more likely to live next to a freeway or near a port or other facility where lots of polluting motor vehicles are located.”

The coalition will also push for reforms in how the state plans and funds transportation projects, “all of which aim to either increase funding for transit, bike, and pedestrian facilities, consider health and equity impacts as they’re making transportation planning decisions, create some new tools for local governments to have financing to support needed infrastructure and housing investments,” said Brownstein.

The coalition amassed by TransForm has grown to represent “not just the usual do-gooders,” he said, but also local governments and transit agencies, business and labor, affordable housing proponents, and disability advocates. The campaign coalesced to ”stitch these interests together.”

“This has become much bigger than about transit and housing,” said Brownstein. “It’s now really about integration of the various modes of transportation — transit, bike, ped, and cars — and the ways in which we coordinate, or fail to coordinate, transportation and land-use planning to maximize the benefits of these investments.”

The Transportation Choices Summit will take place in Sacramento next Tuesday and Wednesday, May 1 and 2. Registration for the event is still open, and you can also sign a petition to show your support.

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney had a mixed record on transit and smart growth. Photo: Daily Caller

According to the most recent polling data, Obama trounces Gov. Perry. He makes mincemeat of Bachmann and Gingrich. Only one poll shows a winning Republican candidate, and that’s Romney, with a two percent edge over the president in a recent USA Today poll.

We took a hard look at Rick Perry’s approach to transportation last fall, when he was running for re-election. As Texas governor, Perry championed a mega-highway plan that would make the Road Gang blush. He blocked metrorail extensions and vulnerable users legislation.

But what about Romney? His record as a red governor of the blue state of Massachusetts is a little more complex, and worth exploring.

In a recent Boston Globe story comparing current Democratic Governor Deval Patrick with his predecessor, Romney emerges as the more inspired candidate when it comes to smart growth. (It doesn’t help that Patrick was caught driving around in an SUV last week while telling his constituents to observe car-free week.)

According to the Globe, Patrick has done away with a program originated under Romney to encourage “mixed-use, walkable, downtown-centered, transit-oriented growth” and counter sprawl.

Under the Romney program, communities got credit for green building, saving energy, preserving open space, and zoning reform, among many other categories. Those that scored highest went to the front of the line to receive about $500 million per year in grants and revolving loan funds for infrastructure including water and sewer projects. The idea was to put state funding to municipalities through a filter, and reward innovation in sustainability at the local level; previously the money was just doled out.

Romney also pioneered an interagency partnership in Massachusetts not unlike the Obama administration initiative that brought together HUD, USDOT and EPA. Romney’s Office for Commonwealth Development brought together state agencies on transportation, environment, housing, and energy — a collaboration which has served as a model for other states. To head it, he hired Doug Foy, the head of the Conservation Law Foundation and “arguably New England’s most important environmentalist,” according to ModeShift.

Romney’s administration encouraged brownfield, instead of greenfield, development and created a bond program to encourage transit-oriented development. And ModeShift says he was “for RGGI (the Northeast regional greenhouse gas emissions compact) before he was against it.”

That highlights one fundamental truth about Mitt Romney, which is that it’s sometimes hard to know what is the fundamental truth about Mitt Romney. The man who brought health care reform to Massachusetts is not the same animal currently fighting for the right-wing-extremist vote in the Republican primary.

Romney is “neutral” on the idea that human pollution is a significant cause of global warming and opposes international climate treaties like the Kyoto Protocol. He’s pro-nuclear and pro-drilling (including in protected areas in Alaska). And as governor, Romney “used approximately $45,000 in the state’s parks and conservation money to stage a pre-Super Bowl send-off rally for the New England Patriots football team on January 30,” according to the Boston Globe.

Indeed, according to a story printed by the Massachusetts Audubon Society, Romney “viewed land protection as a barrier to his top campaign pledge to double housing production.” Romney shelved the Statewide Open Space Plan soon after entering office, according to the story.

Gov. Romney also gets a lot of blame for reneging on promises made by his predecessors to build transit to offset some of the environmental damage done by the Big Dig road project. According to an editorial in the Harvard Crimson:

As part of the 1990 legal agreement to begin the Big Dig highway project, Massachusetts promised to fund a number of desperately needed public transportation projects in order to ameliorate the increased pollution and traffic that the new highway would generate. But the Romney administration has consistently downsized, delayed, or outright terminated most of the projects that were included in the 1990 agreement, choosing instead to divert transportation funds to other expensive highway projects and mass transit extensions that would primarily benefit the Commonwealth’s more affluent residents.

Many of the transit projects, like a green line extension to Somerville and Medford, and orange line service in Jamaica Plain, are still in limbo.

But given that Boston has the oldest transit system in the country, with badly deteriorating infrastructure, the restraint when it comes to new construction may not be a bad thing.

“I think it’s admirable that these guys [Patrick and Romney] have taken safety and maintenance as their prime goals, and capital projects have to take a back seat,” said Ted Brown, a former city transportation official and writer of the Boston-based Radials blog. “I think that’s a pretty good judge of what people want.”

Romney did have a significant hand in improving the transportation bureaucracy in his state. There was no Massachusetts Department of Transportation until two years ago. Seven different entities had some hand in transportation planning and building, according to Brown, with the Turnpike Authority being the biggest and most powerful. The authority was independent until this year. Romney got the ball rolling on unification of the transportation work in the state and the creation of the department.

Meanwhile, the commuter rail system was privatized under Romney, but perhaps not of his own choosing: After a series of disagreements with the T, Amtrak declined to bid on the commuter rail service contract in 2003. The Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company (MBCR) now runs the rail system, and according to Brown, privatization was “not the worst thing in the world.”

Romney invested in the improvement of certain lines as part of the privatization process. Some saw the improvements, performed before handing over operations, as a donation of sorts to a private company, but Brown said it had the important effect of improving the stations and making commuter rail a more viable service. Besides, he said, for riders, “it’s the same deal.” He said the switch was seamless, and few noticed a change.

Soon after the 2008 election was sewn up, Romney came out opposing the auto bailout, saying it would encourage Detroit automakers to “stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses.”

His opposition certainly had nothing to do with a principled stand against car subsidies or promotion of clean-fuel vehicles. Indeed, during the 2008 campaign, he told a Michigan audience that he would help “build a brighter, prosperous future” by championing the auto industry, and he attacked opponent John McCain for backing fuel economy standards, calling them “anvils around the neck of the domestic auto manufacturers.”

We’ll take a look at other candidates’ transportation records as the primary season unfolds.

He just gave a TED talk about how to make cities more sustainable. And while he’s primarily looking at climate impacts, he pretty conclusively dismissed the notion that the problem can be solved with clean fuels.

“We tend to seek simple answers,” he said. And if we assume the problem is fossil fuels, he said, “the answer must be to replace fossil fuels with clean sources of energy. And while we do need clean energy, I would put to you that by looking at climate change as a clean energy generation problem, we’re setting ourselves up not to solve it.”

With a rapidly urbanizing planet and eight billion people projected to live in or near cities by midcentury, Steffen asserts that it may just not be possible to generate enough energy to power all those cities – if those cities continue to look like the ones in the developed world today, anyway. The solution, he said, is density.

“There’s a direct relationship between how dense a city is and the amount of climate emissions its residents spew out into the air,” Steffen said. “Denser places tend to have lower emissions.”

Source: GRID-Arendal

You know the reason why: you don’t have to drive as much if everything you need is close by. Passenger travel accounts for more than 70 percent of U.S. transportation emissions. Steffen says that a city doesn’t need to increase density everywhere – just a few “hyperdense” hotspots will make a big difference, having a sort of “tentpole” effect that raises the density of the whole city.

“What we see when we get a lot of people together with the right conditions is a threshold effect, where people simply stop driving as much and increasingly, more and more, if people are surrounded by places that make them feel at home, people give up their cars altogether. And this is a huge, huge energy savings. Because what comes out of our tailpipe is really just the beginning of the story with climate emissions from cars. We have the manufacture of the car, the disposal of the car, all of the parking and freeways and so on. When you can get rid of all of them, because somebody doesn’t use any of them, really, you can cut transportation emissions as much as 90 percent. “

People are embracing a “walkshed life” where the idea of the “dream home” has given way to the “dream neighborhood,” Steffen said.

San Francisco's Mint Plaza won an EPA Smart Growth award last year. Photo: SF Weekly

Smart Growth America opposes the cut, calling it “shortsighted” and saying it would be “detrimental to economic growth.” According to SGA:

The EPA’s smart growth programs assist communities on a diversity of projects, like creating a range of housing and transportation choices for residents and workers, growing local economies, protecting the environment and public health, and improving local infrastructure. For example, the rural communities of Driggs and Victor in Idaho received a Smart Growth Implementation Assistance award to help identify steps to redevelop their downtown economies. Hundreds of other communities across the country have received similar assistance under the smart growth program, but these economically vital efforts would come to an end under the House legislation.

Four Democrats sent a letter to their House colleagues yesterday asking them to oppose the cuts.

“The program, with its voluntary, market-driven approach, has directly assisted communities across the country, helping them increase economic development, protect the environment and public health, improve their infrastructure, and ensure efficient use of government services,” the letter stated. “The Smart Growth programs face such high demand that they are only able to help 9 percent of current applicants.”

The House has been voting on amendments for the past few days, essentially approving further cuts and rejecting anything that would restore funding.

All budget appropriations are highly speculative as Congress remains in the midst of furious debt ceiling negotiations, which will undoubtedly lead to budget cuts of some kind. In addition, the House almost never passes appropriations bills in time for the new fiscal year, which begins October 1. Sometimes, the best they can do is pass constant extensions of the previous year’s budget.

This year’s budget, passed in April, was a mish-mash of compromises and deals, not a strict interpretation of the appropriations committee’s work. It’s not like Congress has gotten any less fractious and dysfunctional since then, so we’ll just sit back and watch the carnage this time around.

Despite growing demand, developers of mixed-used development face an additional hurdle thanks to outdated federal regulations. Photo: CNU

The real estate market is undergoing the most rapid period of change in a generation — and the shift is decidedly urban. A succession of recent studies have found there is an under-supply of urban-style housing — attached and small-lot, single-family homes — on the scale of about 13 million units. On the other hand, there is an estimated oversupply of detached housing in the car-based suburbs of about 28 million units.

Public policy hasn’t quite caught up with the market, say the experts at the Congress for the New Urbanism. The Federal Housing Administration and its subsidiaries, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are discouraging urban-style housing developments.

HUD lending standards dictate that mixed-use development projects can’t be more than 15 to 20 percent retail. Fannie caps retail share at 20; Freddie at 25 percent. And these standards set the tone for the private market — a tone that is consequently skewed toward single-family housing, and away from the pent-up demand for urban development with walkable amenities.

“It’s really disrupting the market,” said John Norquist, president of Congress for the New Urbanism. “It’s making it hard to developers to finance good projects.”

CNU is seeking reform. The organization has built a broad coalition including the National Association of Homebuilders, the National Association of Realtors, the National Town Builders Association, and the Center for Neighborhood Technology. Together, this reform group is planning to initiate discussions with Shaun Donovan, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), chair of the House Committee on Financial Services; and the U.S. Treasury.

“Our sweetest dream is that the Obama administration — the Treasury Department and HUD — would say, ‘Let’s change this before the end of the year,’” Norquist said. “The secretary of HUD, Shaun Donovan, has said very favorable things about this. He recognizes it.”

Norquist says the 20 percent limit on retail is the result of a 1944 regulation meant to reflect the “increased risk” in the development of projects with multiple uses. The regulation single-handedly set off a massive flight of capital from the country’s main streets, according to Norquist.

The policy was misguided from the start. Mixed-use development can actually help minimize risk for lenders. For example, in a traditional Main Street-type building, an apartment might sit atop a plumbing shop. In a bad year for the apartment, the plumbing shop might perform well, helping the building owner minimize losses. It’s the old concept of diversification, applied to real estate.

“What we’re attacking is the whole logic that urbanism is a risk factor,” said Norquist. “If you look at the risk factor right now, the urban and more-compact development is doing better than separate-use sprawl.”

CNU and its coalition groups are asking for the retail limit to be raised to 45 percent for mixed-use developments. They’re gearing up for a meeting with federal officials in September, at which they plan to make their case.

Meanwhile, they are working to build more partnerships, reach out to more federal leaders and help promote a market-based approach.

“FHA and HUD reinforced this whole movement for single-use zoning,” said Norquist. “It hurts the economy. It’s bad environmentally. It hurts the efficiency of America.”

Transit investment lagged in regions where MPO boards did not give equal representation to city populations, Detroit (SE Michigan) being an especially bad example. In more democratic metros, investment was much more balanced. Image: Nelson, 2003

Do you know the name of your local Metropolitan Planning Organization or Council of Government? Most Americans don’t. In fact, most people probably have no idea these agencies even exist, let alone what they do. Yet they are surprisingly powerful and play a substantial role in shaping the places where we live and work.

Led by unelected boards, MPOs and COGs, as they’re known, are a special breed among government agencies. They lack the authority to issue taxes or impose laws. As such, they go largely unmentioned in the media and are mostly unknown to local residents, outside of the most wonkish circles. But the low profile of MPOs and COGs belies their considerable power.

Despite their limitations, they represent the strongest form of regional governance we’ve got in the United States, crossing city and county lines. More importantly, they disperse hundreds of millions of federal transportation dollars annually. MPOs and COGs are powerful forces shaping metro regions. While these agencies often distribute transportation funds more fairly than state DOTs, many of them are structured in a way that favors sprawl and works against cities.

MPOs and COGs can be profoundly undemocratic. They are governed by boards of public officeholders, but there is no requirement that they be in any way representative of the region’s population. In fact, the general rule that governs the composition of MPO boards is “one place, one vote,” rather than the more traditional “one person, one vote.” This often produces decisions dramatically skewed toward suburban and rural interests.

For example, greater Milwaukee’s MPO, known by the unwieldy acronym SEWRPC, is governed by a board of 21 members, three from each of the counties that make up the planning region. That means that the city of Milwaukee — population nearly 600,000 — has zero representatives on the commission that distributes millions of dollars for transportation throughout the region. It is not guaranteed any votes. The city’s only voting power comes from the three seats given to Milwaukee County — and those must be spread between the central city and many suburbs. Meanwhile, rural Walworth County — population 100,000 — is guaranteed three votes.

Milwaukee is an especially egregious case. But unfortunately, this general pattern is more the norm than the exception. A 1999 Brookings Institution study [PDF] found that central cities were under-represented in as many as 92 percent of MPOs and COGs.

That bias can have a strong impact on policy, further research has shown. A 2003 study by researchers at Virginia Tech found that for each additional suburban member on an MPO board, there was a 1 to 9 percent decrease in funding for transit — with highways being the favored alternative.

Researchers examined three regions where boards were unrepresentative and three regions where it was proportional to population. They found significant differences: Transit investment varied from a low of 3.2 percent in Detroit (unrepresentative) to 50 percent in Seattle (proportional).

Across the country, the composition of MPO boards varies wildly. The only federal requirement is that at least 75 percent of the region be represented in some capacity, said Delania Hardy, director of the Association of Metropolitan Planning Agencies. And while there are plenty of examples of places where there is room for improvement, she said, there are also good examples.

While Milwaukee represents one extreme, Portland embodies another. This region is the only place in the country where the MPO board is not only representative of the region’s population, but also directly elected by the local population.

In late 2009, Myron Orfield, author of “American Metropolitics,” set out to determine which metro areas had the most effective regional planning agencies. He evaluated the country’s 25 largest metro regions [PDF] on indicators such as sprawl, segregation, growth and fiscal equity. Portland was the runaway standout.

“They have a very good urban growth boundary. They cluster jobs at defined job centers. They require that all communities build their fair share of affordable housing. They have low and decreasing segregation,” he said. “On every measure that we care about, it does well.”

Outside of having directly elected MPO representatives, Portland has some other advantages, a strong land use policy framework being the most notable. But allowing the public to directly elect the people who will shape their region is also important, Orfield said.

“If you don’t have it up for election, it’s really hard for people to participate,” he said. “It’s sort of a general principle of democracy.”

During the last round of negotiations over the federal transportation bill, in 2009, Orfield joined the National Association of City Transportation Officials in lobbying for MPO reform. His legislation would have required proportional representation for directly-elected MPO boards. The reforms were adopted into the transportation reauthorization bill put forward by Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) but never became law.

Some communities are making progress toward important sustainability and equity goals on their own. Orfield pointed to Chicago, Washington D.C., Seattle, San Diego, and even Raleigh, North Carolina.

“Regions with more proportional representation tend to do a better job,” he said.

Detroit's MPO is dominated by rural and suburban interests. Its transit system is uniquely dysfunctional among large metro areas. Photo: Beaumont Enterprise

On the other hand you have Detoit’s SEMCOG, which is responsible for dispersing $1 billion in federal funds annually. In 2006, SEMCOG was the subject of a civil rights lawsuit over the composition of its executive committee. At the time, the agency had allocated three delegates to the city of Detroit, representing more than 900,000 people. Meanwhile, Livingston County — which has a population of less than 200,000 people — was given four delegates.

Discrepancies like this can be especially insidious for people of color. For example, at the time of the lawsuit, Detroit was more than 80 percent African-American. Meanwhile Livingston County, on the opposite extreme, is less than one percent African-American, according to a court deposition.

The suit was dismissed because the court determined the principle of “one person, one vote” does not apply to appointed positions. Five years later, not much has changed, says Ponscella Hardaway, director of MOSES, the low-income advocacy group that brought suit against SEMCOG.

In a symbol of regional failure, Detroit is unique among large metros for operating separate transit systems for its central city and the surrounding suburbs — a byproduct of the Motor City’s stark racial segregation. That creates a logistical nightmare for transit riders.

SEMCOG “could have taken some leadership” on this issue, said Hardaway. “Their vision for regional cooperation is not matched with their actions. It’s almost like they’re a nonentity.”

As you might expect, the Detroit region performs poorly on the measures Orfield used to measure effective regional planning.

“It is really probably the worst in the country,” said Orfield. “Detroit builds massive highways into cornfields and doesn’t reinvest in the existing infrastructure or build transit. Detroit is a catastrophe.”

And mortgage lenders have only gotten more skittish since then about overextended borrowers.

Once you've filled your three-car garage you won't be able to afford this house anymore. Photo: El Gato Painting

Transportation and housing are inextricably tied, but many people are slow to realize the full implications of this link. CNT President Scott Bernstein says that although lenders understand the link when it comes to rejecting applicants who are overextended on car payments, they don’t include transportation costs in their mortgage underwriting. (Changing this practice was a key recommendation of the Congressional Livable Communities Task Force’s “Freedom From Oil” report.)

“The mortgage crisis was more intense in less location-efficient areas,” Bernstein said at a panel discussion on regional transportation planning for equity at the National Building Museum Monday. “I’m not saying car ownership caused it. But a precipitating factor was a lack of flexibility to tinker with your household budget because you had fixed costs for transportation.”

Transportation options, he said, could be an antidote to future recessions. They helped cushion the blow in urban areas, which saw an overall lower rate of foreclosure, even in poor neighborhoods. A 2010 study by NRDC found that in Chicago, Jacksonville, and San Francisco, “the probability of mortgage foreclosure increases as neighborhood vehicle ownership levels rise, after controlling for income.” [PDF]

Housing affordability looks very different when seen holistically as the cost of living in a certain place. “If you measure affordability as just the cost of housing as a ratio to income, 70 percent of people are living in an affordable situation,” Bernstein said. “When you account for transportation costs, that drops to 40 percent.”

CNT has a Housing + Transportation Affordability Index for people to check the true affordability of where they live, but most people don’t access this kind of information when making decisions about where to live.

When agencies start considering housing and transportation costs at the regional level, major changes in infrastructure investment follow. Bernstein says that when Chicago and the Bay Area set out to reduce the joint costs of transportation and housing, their efforts resulted in the reprogramming of state money away from highway construction.

Of course, location efficiency isn’t what it used to be. Employment is less centered in cities now than in years past, as a recent Brookings report pointed out, so picking an efficient place to live is tricky. What if you live in a walkable, bikable neighborhood but you work on a suburban corporate campus? Robert Puentes of Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program, an author of the report, acknowledged, “It doesn’t make economic sense or spatially-efficient sense to start building transit lines way out into the suburbs.” But without those transit lines, the only way to get out to those inefficiently-located jobs is to drive.

“If being near transit stops can reduce your risk of foreclosure and increase your access to jobs, that‘s powerful,” said Bernstein. He advocates for a “jobs-to-people” policy, not a “people-to-jobs” policy. “We keep saying we can’t do anything about where businesses locate, when we pay them to locate there.” Incentives should work the other way, encouraging employers to locate in urban areas.

At the same time, Bernstein said, people need to make wiser decisions about where to live. “You think you’re moving to some lovely bucolic place called Whispering Acres or something, but you find yourself in a poverty trap, a foreclosure trap, a risk trap.”

Bernstein said transportation planners have their priorities wrong. “At the moment, transportation planners prioritize traffic throughput; then pay attention to intangibles like health, safety, and the environment; and, third, they look at economic factors,” he said. “That’s upside down. First, we need to invest in people so they have a fighting chance at participating in the economy. Then we need to look at how you can do that in a way that safeguards public health and the environment. And then we can look at how you can do it so you move people relatively quickly.”

Puentes agreed. “We have to look at issues through economic lens,” he said. “If we’re trying to increase manufacturing, double exports, or move to a lower carbon economy, all of these have transportation aspect but you can’t look at it through a transportation lens. You have to look at it through an economic lens. If you just look at throughput, you can’t get there.”

But the survey is also rife with contradictions. It reveals, for instance, that Americans retain their affinity for certain characteristics found mainly in suburbia: more than anything, they prize privacy, and they overwhelmingly prefer single-family detached housing.

Wading through the survey, it can be difficult to draw any hard and fast conclusions. Respondents said community characteristics are more important than the size of the home, with 88 percent saying location mattered more than size. And walkability was one of the traits people seek the most, with 66 percent saying the ability to walk to places in their community is important. High-quality public schools, the Achilles’ heel of many big cities and a primary driver of families to the suburbs, are also highly sought after. Meanwhile, “easy access to the highway” ranks just under good schools on the list of people’s preferences. And 53 percent want to be “away from it all” (as opposed to 34 percent that want to be at the “center of it all”). Slightly more people want a big house than a diverse set of neighbors.

Only 19 percent of respondents said they wanted to live in cities, with another 28 percent wanting “a suburban neighborhood with a mix of houses, shops, and businesses.” That means more than half prefer rural living, traditional suburbs and small towns. Those numbers might show that more people want mixed-use places than the market currently provides, but they also suggest more ambiguity than the claims coming from NAR and some urbanist circles — that the survey is proof that smart growth is the new standard.

Another way to read the survey is to compare this year’s results to past ones and see what’s changing. But the trends don’t all point in the same direction. The 2011 survey shows a modest increase in support for some smart growth principles over 2004 — for example, five percent more people this year said their community needed more public transportation (51 percent in 2011 versus 46 percent in 2004) and four percent more wanted more walkable amenities. On the other hand, two percent fewer said their community needed more low-income housing and one percent fewer wanted more places to bike. The most dramatic change, however, was that in 2004 only 19 percent wanted more big-box stores in their communities, and now, 28 percent do.

Buried in the report is some good news for transportation reformers: When asked what was the best long-term solution for reducing traffic, 50 percent said better public transportation, 30 percent said higher-density communities, and just 18 percent advised building new roads.

But the single most pronounced preference is the desire for privacy. And for most respondents, that means big lots and detached homes. Nearly nine in ten respondents said privacy from their neighbors was “very” or “somewhat” important. Eight in ten want to live in single-family detached housing and six in ten would accept the trade-off of a longer commute. Paradoxically, however, six in ten also said they would trade some square footage for a commute time of 20 minutes or less. (And what does “privacy” entail, anyway? Would protection from peeping Toms suffice? Freedom from things like shared laundry rooms and neighbors’ footsteps on your ceiling — experiences intrinsic to multi-family dwellings? Or do they want to able to get in and out of their houses without seeing their neighbors at all?)

Walkability to schools, stores, and restaurants was voted nice but expendable: six in 10 would rather drive to those things if walking would mean smaller lots. Seems like there’s still a lot of indecisiveness about how much people care about private space versus time on the road.

One lesson you can safely draw from the survey is that a lot of Americans just want it all: A house all to themselves and a nice walk to local amenities, a short commute and a neighborhood away from the bustle of the city.

How private is private enough? Photo: ilovebutter#

In the real world, you have to make choices. Much attention has been given to the survey question that asked participants which community they preferred: one with only single family houses on large lots, no sidewalks or walkable amenities, copious parking, and inadequate transit; the other with a mix of housing options, sidewalks, walkable amenities, limited parking, and nearby transit. Despite (in my opinion) a pretty heavy bias toward the smart growth option in the framing of the question, 43 percent chose the sprawl option and 56 percent chose the smart growth option. Taken in the context of other questions in the survey, many of those who chose the smart growth option must be okay with different types of housing in the area as long as they are living in a single-family detached house with a yard.

That question instructed participants to “assume that the quality of the schools, crime rates, and cost of house are exactly the same in the two communities.” What would have happened to those results if the suburban-style community had lower crime rates, higher-ranked schools, and cheaper houses per square foot, as communities like that usually do?

Ultimately, the survey results are an imperfect barometer of preferences for types of housing and neighborhood layouts. The best data about the demand for walkable, urban places comes from the housing market, and recent trends in residential construction show that development patterns are shifting to meet demand for urban neighborhoods.

Can the NAR survey help inform policies to shape future development? Urban theorist Richard Florida saw in the results a new dichotomy: “The choice isn’t between urban and suburban,” he wrote, “but between neighborhood and subdivision.” Indeed, the city still loses against the suburbs, but if we differentiate between different ways of building suburban neighborhoods, we begin to tease out the subtleties. “Retrofitted” suburbs with somewhat greater density, more transportation choices and a mix of uses could be a path to satisfy Americans’ contradictory preferences.

Image: OneBayArea

Local governments in the Bay Area have begun a coordinated regional effort to shift toward more sustainable urban planning mandated by the state’s landmark anti-sprawl bill, SB 375, which set ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and called for better integration of land use and transportation planning.

Last week, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) released its Initial Vision Scenario, which lays out preliminary strategies to accommodate population growth in the region over the next 25 years while achieving a 15 percent GHG reduction.

“The Initial Vision Scenario is a tool to advance dialogue among the Bay Area’s regional agencies,” said Ezra Rapport, executive director of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). “Through this collaborative planning effort to strengthen the character and qualities of our neighborhoods and communities, we can tackle the region’s population growth with a mix of housing, while preserving open spaces, protecting our economy, and getting residents where they need to go.”

The overview marks the first stepping stone in developing a Sustainable Communities Strategy, also known as Plan Bay Area, aimed at mitigating the impacts of a potential regional increase of 2 million residents. By directing new housing and job development into walkable, transit-accessible areas, the Initial Vision Scenario projects 97 percent of development could be absorbed within the current urban footprint but would still fall 3 percent short of the mandated 15 percent target.

“This initial scenario is a good start, but we also need to do more to reach our goals,” said Stuart Cohen, executive director of TransForm, the transit and smart-growth advocacy group. The plan is expected to advance into a more detailed strategic scenario before an MTC vote in July, and advocates are pressing officials to produce the most effective plan possible.

“We want to see the most successful strategies replicated at a regional scale. Critically, we need to do much more with innovate demand management and pricing incentives to help reach the targets,” said Cohen. “The lowest-hanging fruit is going to be what we’ve been neglecting – which is how we actually reduce demand on our transportation system and make it much easier to avoid trips or make shorter trips.”

A number of promising programs have already been developed at a local level that could “provide a bigger bang for the buck than just adding supply,” he said.

For one, the SFMTA’s Transit Effectiveness Project is “a perfect example of something that can reduce operating costs per mile while expanding ridership,” noted Cohen. He also praised city initiatives taken in downtown Berkeley to expand access to transit passes and implement demand-based parking pricing by working with employers.

“Without having to invest in lots of infrastructure, we can make much better use of what we already have, bringing more people onto transit and reducing costs for Bay Area residents,” he said.

Stephanie Reyes, policy director at the Greenbelt Alliance, says that ”cities have really stepped up to the plate” despite the current economic realities. “We’re trying to accomplish a lot as a region,” she said. ”It will be absolutely essential that we invest our limited regional transportation dollars in ways that will help us achieve our goals.”

As the plan develops, it will aim to take into account economic and market factors that the Initial Vision Scenario does not. “We do need to be realistic with our limited resources and think about what constraints we have,” said Reyes. “We need to redirect our resources to places that are growing sustainably.”

The benefits of expanding the regional bicycle network should not be underestimated, noted Cohen. Although the MTC previously estimated it would only yield a 20 percent increase in ridership, “What we’re seeing in places like Portland is that as soon as you get to a point of having a network that people are comfortable on, you start to get exponential increases,” he said.

Cohen said the Initial Vision Scenario falls short of accurately evaluating the benefits of smaller-scale pedestrian and bicycle improvements. “By getting the modeling [of those improvements] right, not only are we more likely to predict that we will achieve the targets, but it will shift investments in a way that do reach those targets.”

In particular, he said improved services that benefit low-income communities, such as Safe Routes to School, should be a top priority. “There is a host of programs that can achieve health, equity and environmental outcomes, and we’re going to be pressing for those.”

Flickr photo: David Lytle

In its annual Smart Growth awards ceremony, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded San Francisco’s Mint Plaza with its “Civic Spaces” prize, honoring the City and County of San Francisco, as well as developers and architects that transformed the former Jesse Street alley into a busy public realm. The award was announced yesterday in Washington DC, in coordination with the EPAs 40th anniversary festivities, where San Francisco joined New York City and Portland among others receiving commendations.

Mint Plaza was the result of a public-private partnership that used private funding to build a public plaza owned by the city, with relatively little city investment. According to the EPA’s announcement, the project cost $3.2 million to build, of which only $150,000 came from public funds. The balance was raised by Martin Building Company, which created a Community Facilities District (much like a Community Benefit District), levying a 30-year special property tax on certain buildings around the plaza to leverage tax exempt bonds. Martin also established Friends of Mint Plaza, a non-profit organization that raises funds to manage ongoing maintenance and programming at the plaza.

Jason Elliott, policy adviser to Mayor Gavin Newsom, said the EPA award was an honor and said Mint Plaza “represents people taking affirmative ownership in their micro neighborhoods.”

“This is a community coming together to invest in their own public realm,” said Elliott, who highlighted the trial traffic diversions on Market Street and said they can complement destinations in the neighborhood. Without creating destinations like Mint Plaza, he said, the public would have nowhere to bike and walk to, neighborhoods would not be revitalized. “We can do a lot of the things we think we’re good at, but when we have the private sector step up and take the proactive responsibility for reinvigorating their own communities,” it expands on what the city can accomplish.

Mint Plaza makes use of movable furniture, set up and maintained by the non-profit Friends of Mint Plaza. Flickr photo: Darwin Bell

“As a resident, Mint Plaza functions as our urban ‘front yard’ and provides a safe and nurturing environment for my son and his friends. As such, the plaza has already created a unique sense of public space ownership in a sometimes impersonal downtown,” William Duncanson, a Mint Plaza neighborhood resident, said in the EPA’s release. “Residents view the plaza as a place for living rather than merely a public park or a conduit to get from here to there.”

In honoring the city and the private representatives, the EPA characterized the space as a “public living room,” noting the transformation of the alley into an 18,000 square foot plaza had attracted new private investment into the surrounding neighborhoods, including four restaurants and cafes.

Joining officials from San Francisco at the awards ceremony in Washington D.C. was Scott Catafa, a principal at CMG Architects, who designed the plaza. “I think it’s a great example for the city for how these things can work for a public-private partnership to maintain public spaces and improve them,” he said.

Catafa said there were great limitations on the design of the plaza because of the intricate public utilities underneath the former alley, which prevented them from adding as many trees as they wanted. Catafa said Bryant Park in New York City was an inspiration for the movable furniture and some of the design elements, and described the arbor in the plaza as a way to provide greenery in place of additional trees.

Noting that the space had previously been used for parking tour buses, Catafa said that the openness of the plaza contributed to the feeling of increased safety. Referring to the “eyes on the street” effect that Jane Jacobs wrote about in her iconic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Catafa said the space worked to change people’s impressions of an area of the city with a previously bad reputation for drug dealing.

Saying that maintenance of the space was equally or more important than the design, Catafa said Mint Plaza would be a model for other projects in San Francisco and beyond. “It’s about a perception too because people take care of spaces that seem to be maintained.”

Photo: Mark Stozier

In a historic and unanimous vote yesterday, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 2035, a move that will compel the state’s metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to better integrate land use and transportation planning.

“These targets are ambitious, achievable and very good news for California communities. Improved planning means cleaner air in our cities, less time stuck in your car, and healthier, more sustainable communities,” said Mary Nichols, the CARB Chair. “Cities that choose to develop sustainable communities plans that meet these targets have an advantage when it comes to attracting the kinds of vibrant, healthy development that people want.”

Although a number of representatives from powerful construction, development and oil industry interests lined up to oppose the targets, arguing passage would lead to fewer jobs and hurt the economy, sustainable transportation advocates said CARB was able to see through the rhetoric. They felt the vote was a watershed moment, a signal that business-as-usual transportation and land use models will no longer work.

“A growing body of research and our own data shows that smart growth is not just an aesthetic issue, it’s a real public health concern,” said Jane Warner, the president and CEO of the American Lung Association in California. “By moving to more sustainable growth patterns that offer healthier transportation options, CARB’s vote can help California avoid $1.66 billion in public health costs, more than 100,000 asthma attacks and other respiratory symptoms and 140 premature deaths each year.”

Under California’s landmark anti-sprawl bill, SB375, the state’s 18 MPOs were required to set emissions reductions targets and Sustainable Communities Strategies (SCS) within regional transportation plans. In the Bay Area, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, our MPO, will be required to complete its SCS by April 2013.

SB375 also offers financial incentives to cities that meet the targets and build dense, walkable and bikeable communities close to transit.  It will also streamline the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process to advance certain types of residential and mixed-use development projects.

“I think what we’re seeing is kind of a realignment in the development industry,” said Stuart Cohen, the executive director of TransForm, a non-profit advocating for transit and smart growth. “We saw a lot of infill builders out at the hearing yesterday saying how this was going to make smart development easier. What’s really happening is that even a lot of the folks that have done the very larger sprawl development in the past have large infill arms now.”

Meea Kang, a principal at Domus Development and president of the California Infill Builders Association, believes SB375 will translate into a boom for the construction industry, not the opposite, as some have claimed.

“It should make it easier to do infill development. I won’t have to wait four years to get my entitlements on a project. It could be expedited and done quicker,” said Kang, who testified at the hearing. “Once we can start encouraging and providing the right set of incentives, I think the private sector and the rest of the developers will just retool and find ways to make these types of developments available to the Californians who are clamoring for this.”

Graham Brownstein, the statewide policy director for TransForm, said CARB also committed to work with the Strategic Growth Council (SGC), now headed by former Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo, to develop metrics for equity and conservation “to make sure that these plans are not leading to inequitable results or disparities.”

Although Brownstein called the targets a victory, he said the real battles will play out drafting local strategies at the smaller MPOs, which represent rural areas where some elected officials remain skeptical or don’t even believe in global warming. Having the SGC involved, he said, will be very important to mitigate those fights.

Another challenge will be investments in public transit. At yesterday’s hearing, CARB member Ron Roberts, a San Diego County supervisor, expressed concerns about reliable funding for transit. The Legislature and the Governor over the years have raided the State Transit Assistance Fund, which has increased the budget crises at transit agencies and resulted in service cuts and fare hikes across the state.

“It seems terribly unfair for a state that on the one hand wants you to do these things, and on the other hand is not willing to be the financial partner that they should be if you’re going to achieve them,” he said. “A lot of what you’re asking us to accomplish is going to be dependent on state funding and to some extent federal funding.”

Roberts had a brief and testy exchange with CARB member Daniel Sperling, the head of the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, who sought to minimize the issue.

“Public transportation investment, while it’s hugely important for the viability and livability and all kinds of things for these cities, in terms of the greenhouse gas plans, it really plays a relatively minor role, a very small role,” said Sperling. “In fact, if you look at the MTC slide that [MTC Executive Director] Steve Heminger put up earlier, he had land use as 12 percent, pricing was 8 percent, [travel demand management] was three percent and this was a little part of the three percent. So, while we really need to help out the cities I don’t think it really plays a crucial role in the attainment of these targets.”

“You couldn’t be wronger,”replied Roberts. “Operational dollars to run these transit agencies were basically completely removed. It’s not a matter of not being able to add service. You’re pulling service out. You’re talking about the existing situation and exacerbating it.”

He added that if people didn’t have reliable transit options they would be forced to use their cars and it would affect the targets. Staff pointed out CARB was committed to advocating for state and federal transit funding sources, but Roberts, who sits on the San Diego County Metropolitan Transit System Board, said that wasn’t good enough.

Sabrina Means, the legislative and regulatory assistant for the California Transit Association, agreed with the assessment that funding will be key for transit as the state looks to reduce its GHG emissions.

“We are supportive of the state’s goals to reduce emissions and provide transportation alternatives but we know that without funding we just can’t do more than what we’re doing right now, although we would like to,” she said.

Here are the targets for reductions of per capita emissions below 2005 levels adopted yesterday for 2020 and 2035:

• The San Diego Area: 7 percent and 13 percent
• Sacramento Region: 7 percent and 16 percent
• Bay Area Region: 7 percent and 15 percent
• Southern California: 8 percent and 13 percent, with the 2035 target conditioned on discussions with the MPO
• San Joaquin Valley (includes eight planning organizations): placeholder of 5 percent and 10 percent, to be revisited in 2012
• Targets for the remaining six Metropolitan Planning Organizations—the Monterey Bay, Butte, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Shasta and Tahoe Basin regions—generally match or improve upon their current plans for 2020 and 2035.

Photo: Keenahn

"Bay Area residents should be really excited about the 15 percent target. That's because it's high enough to trigger the transportation and land use changes we need to make the region more livable and affordable, especially as our population grows significantly by 2035," said Marta Lindsey, the communications and development director at TransForm.

Lindsey sent out an alert last week urging people to write emails to the MTC, fearing the commission would adopt a lower target of 10 percent, which its planning committee recommended at a meeting earlier this month.

"It's a realistic target given MTC's modeling and the kinds of investments and policies we already know really move the needle in terms of how much people drive their cars," said Lindsey.

Under the groundbreaking anti-sprawl bill, SB 375, most of the state's 18 MPOs are required to set a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for passenger vehicles and light trucks by 2020 and 2035. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) recently adopted a set of draft targets (PDF) for the four largest MPOs (the Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego), which represent 80 percent of the state's population. Each MPO will then be required to development a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) to show how it will meet its target. CARB is expected to adopt final targets in September.

The recommended target for the MTC was between 3-12 percent of 2005 levels by 2035. The commission's 8-4 vote for 15 percent followed a presentation (PDF) by Executive Director Steve Heminger and testimony from a diverse group of advocates who urged the MTC to adopt the stronger target. The dissenting commissioners -- James Spering, Bill Dodd, Bill Glover and Amy Worth -- represent Contra Costa, Napa and Solano counties.

Draft targets recommended by the California Air Resources Board. Sacramento's target is among the highest because the region is forecast to have the most growth. While most MPOs are required to recommend targets by June 30, Sacramento's MPO, SACOG, will not consider them until August.

In his presentation, Heminger told commissioners that combining an aggressive focused growth strategy (which would amount to a 12 percent reduction) with traffic diversion management programs such as telecommuting (a 3 percent reduction) and road pricing (8 percent) could probably bring the Bay Area toward an 18 percent target reduction by 2035. But he acknowledged that the region is less advanced in pursuing "road pricing, employer trip reduction, or 'smart driving' programs," which in many cities and counties are politically unpopular.

"It took us 20 years to get a congestion price on the Bay Bridge, so at that rate, god knows how long it will take to get the rest of the roads priced up," said Heminger. "That's tough politics. It's tough duty. It requires, in many cases, action by the Legislature, the Congress, whereas a lot of these land use strategies can be pursued on your own authority."

Using what the Natural Resources Defense Council has called a flawed model, Heminger calculated that a 25-cent fee per mile driven would be necessary to meet the MTC's 18 percent target. He estimated the fee would generate $14 billion annually, costing the average household about $4,500. The money could be used to fund more transit services and subsidize affordable housing, low-income tax credits and commuter costs.

Amanda Eaken of NRDC, who served on CARB's Regional Targets Advisory Committee along with Heminger, said the estimate was "significantly conservative" and that the agency wasn't properly calculating the impact of the costs of driving. She said such a fee, when considering that trip lengths have been repeatedly demonstrated to change with higher costs, would have a much more significant impact on reducing GHG emissions if the model allowed trip lengths to change. In an email, she explained it further:

Even a layperson can understand that if the model doesn't allow trip length to change as a result of higher cost, something is wrong. The estimate is further conservative because none of the modeled scenarios actually re-invested the $14 billion generated through the fee to estimate the GHG reduction potential of providing higher quality transit and other transportation options.

Eaken cited a figure from Elizabeth Deakin, a planning professor at UC Berkeley, who she said estimated that a 2. 5-cent VMT fee "would get you a four percent reduction. So, extrapolating that out, your 25-cent fee would get a 37 percent reduction. Now that's illustrative and there are certainly issues with that...but there are serious issues with this model."

Still, Eaken, in her blog post on The Switchboard, praised the MTC for its action. "This vote represents a significant improvement over MTC's starting place just a couple of months ago, when their adopted RTP (Regional Transportation Plan) would have increased GHG emissions by 2 percent per capita over 2005 levels."

Her testimony was followed by Cary Knecht of Climate Plan who said that a much more modest fee of four cents would be all that is necessary to achieve the reduction.

MTC graphic

One of the most compelling figures was a chart showing the difference in health care cost savings for each of the proposed targets, a point that was hammered home in public testimony by Julie West, the executive director of the Bay Area chapter of the American Lung Association.

"The difference between a 10 percent target and a 15 percent target is 40 million dollars in health care savings, lost productivity, school absences and premature mortality. So, a strong implementation of SB375 is a top priority for the public health community, as you can imagine."

She noted that the Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the Northern California Council of Hospitals, the American Academy of Pediatrics, local health departments and every local medical association had signed a letter of support in favor of the stronger target. "We support a strong implementation of SB375 to combat the negative outcomes associated with communities designed for cars from asthma, to obesity, to traffic injuries and deaths."

Several speakers testified that the higher target will also benefit and impact low-income communities and communities of color, particularly those who have been moving away from urban centers.

"We think that low-income communities are gravely impacted moving farther and farther away from the cities and it costs more money for them to use the public transportation system and we'd like to see subsidies and some type of protected measures implemented to reduce the economic impact on the low-income communities as they're trying to get to work," said Azibuike Akaba, a policy associate overseeing the public health and equity impacts of SB375 for the Regional Asthma Management and Prevention program, or RAMP.

Parisa Fatehi of Public Advocates pointed out that her organization, along with 49 signatory organizations, including TransForm, sent a letter (PDF) to CARB's Chair, Mary Nichols, calling for the agency to consider six steps for a social equity approach to its target setting recommendations that "account for all races and social economic backgrounds."

"What does that mean? For example, increasing housing and transit affordability, improving what we call the jobs-housing fit, will mean that all workers can live closer to their jobs, vital services and grocery stores and health care, and thereby reduce their vehicle miles traveled," she told the commissioners.

Henry Hilken, the research and planning director for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, said much of the hard work implementing SB 375 will involve reaching out to communities to build support for the kind of ambitious land use and pricing changes that will be required to set the Bay Area on a path toward more sustainable communities.

"We think it's going to be critical, in moving forward in the coming years, to really engage local governments, the public, businesses in a really frank discussion as to what those local land use decisions mean, what pricing decisions mean. Quite honestly, that's probably more important than the specific number that's set for the region."

The ongoing struggle to contain growth within urban boundaries will likely move to San Ramon this November. Photo: cjaureque

Brentwood voters rejected Measure F on Tuesday, June 8th, an initiative which would have increased the city's growth boundary by 740 acres to allow 1300 new homes to be built on open land, some of which is used for farming.

Despite proponents outspending opponents 35-1 and flooding voters' mailboxes with brochures extolling the economic benefits of development, the vote wasn't very close (57 percent - 43 percent ).

"It's very exciting that in Brentwood, a place where the battle over sprawl has been fought recently, the voters stood up and said we need to respect growth boundaries," said Greenbelt Alliance Executive Director Jeremy Madsen, a Measure F opponent.

"I'm very hopeful that the results we got out of Brentwood will send a very clear message to the [sprawl] proponents," he added.

Madsen described the proponents' campaign, led by Contra Costa County political mover-and-shaker Tom Koch on behalf of developers in the area, as a high-spending, glossy affair, "an ad campaign," whereas opponents "stood out in front of grocery markets, went door to door and put up a Facebook page."

Even Koch gave credit in part to the organizing strategy of the opponents. On Tuesday night, Koch told the San Jose Mercury News the opponents had successfully used Facebook to reach voters through their networks and that the anti-development sentiment resonated with them.

"We're processing a very difficult loss," he told the Merc.

Advocates like Madsen, however, don't expect the Measure F defeat to slow down the push by developers to build beyond urban growth limits. Madsen said Koch and his team are already gathering signatures to put another ballot initiative forward in the Tassajara Velley near San Ramon that would extend urban growth boundaries there. The initiative hasn't qualified for the November ballot, but Madsen expects it will shortly.

Measures like these will increasingly be the benchmark for how serious policy makers are about containing growth within city limits and developing strategically around transit, the purported smart growth goals soon-to-be mandated by SB 375.

At a recent panel discussion hosted by Greenbelt Alliance, Al Courchesne, a farmer and owner of Frog Hollow Farm in Brentwood, said "local communities and regional and state governments need to support agriculture." Courshesne argued cities like Brentwood should put up money for agricultural land trusts that would support local agriculture by buying the land and preserving it from development.

"What we need to do going forward is manage [farm land] properly," said Courshesne. "It's going to require an education effort, stronger local support by residents and policy makers."

The link between preservation of open space and agricultural lands and the promotion of transit-oriented development in urban areas is a specific tenet of Greenbelt Alliance's Grow Smart Bay Area initiative and a dynamic that is likely to intensify as the regional population expands.

"If you are a smart growth advocate, you need to be an ardent supporter of protecting agriculture and farmland," said Madsen. "Increasingly, those who believe in smart growth are not just thinking about what to do with our cities, but how to build truly sustainable regions."

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris
Dodd (D-CT) (Photo: The
Washington Note)

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 effort. 

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.

After acknowledging that sprawl is a problem, lamenting that in
Montana housing has replaced some of the best farmland, Tester pressed
the witness panel to explain how the Livable Communities Act would work
for a town like his, with only 700 people. The two representatives of
rural areas on the panel each suggested some sort of funding set-aside
for rural communities, an idea which seemed to intrigue Tester.

Two other senators spoke who are not already sponsors of the bill.
Sherrod Brown (D-OH) primarily discussed his own legislation
specifically tailored to shrinking industrial cities, of which there are
many in Ohio, but seemed supportive of Dodd’s legislation. Mark Warner
(D-VA) told the committee that he supports the goals of the Livable
Communities Act, but would like to make sure that the bill is rigorously
defined. "Is it just squishy livability?" he asked. "Is there a way
that we can define this with metrics?" Witnesses assured him that
results like the volume of reduced greenhouse gases, acres of preserved
open space, and rises in property values can be measured.

No Republican Senators attended the meeting.

Click the map to enlarge. Image: Greenbelt Alliance.

That's the message the Greenbelt Alliance has delivered with its series of public workshops to promote "Grow Smart Bay Area," a regional plan for infill development near transit coupled with the protection of open space and agricultural land. As a blueprint for walkable, dense development, Grow Smart Bay Area is an optimistic projection of how planners can accommodate growth within existing towns and cities without giving into the temptation to sprawl further from job centers.

Greenbelt Alliance gathered a panel of experts last week at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek to discuss the challenges of promoting these development patterns and to debate how to make the Bay Area, to borrow Greenbelt Executive Director Jeremy Madsen's phrase, "a sustainable global metropolis."

"Grow Smart is not merely about accommodating the Bay Area's next generation of growth. It's about using growth as a catalyst," said Madsen. "We can use growth as a tool to make our neighborhoods more sustainable, more equitable."

To identify priority development locations, Greenbelt used the California Infill Parcel Locator database and the Smart Growth Strategy/Regional Livability Footprint Project, both developed at UC Berkeley. Those were then cross-referenced with growth projections from the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's (MTC) Transportation 2035: Change in Motion report.

In the analysis, Greenbelt skipped single-family neighborhoods and focused on sites that would be mixed-use low density, downtown medium density, and mixed-use medium high density. They identified 40,000 infill development lots in seven smart spots for growth (see map above), including northeast Santa Clara County, El Camino Real in San Mateo County, portions of San Francisco along BART and Muni lines and other transit-oriented development locations like BART transit villages.

Several of the panelists at the event in Walnut Creek made strong arguments for developing in accord with Grow Smart principles. Dr. Wendell Brunner, Director of Contra Costa Health Services, said the built environment was ever more significant to health professionals who recognize the negative consequences of sprawl and long commutes.

"There has been an enormous increase in vehicle miles traveled," said Brunner, which "leads to pollution, considerable stress and long commute times."

Brunner said the over-reliance on "car culture and the associated built environment that grows up around it contributes" to the obesity and diabetes epidemics, as well as asthma and attendant problems in urban areas.

"What we need to promote health are dense walkable communities," he said. "These are what's essential to build healthy, sustainable communities."

San Pablo Avenue in Oakland. Photo: Greenbelt Alliance.

San Pablo imagined as a multi-modal, mixed use street. Image: Urban Advantage.

Good plans alone won't be sufficient, however, without political will and persistence to be sure growth is targeted in the right areas, warned James Kennedy, Redevelopment Director at the Contra Costa County Department Conservation and Development and current president of the California Redevelopment Agency. Kennedy said county planners and redevelopment agencies needed to develop good plans, vetted by the public, so developers could have assurances that if they met conditions for smart growth, they could have reliable and dependable timetables for building.

"Specific plans are good resources," he said. "The fundamental premise of specific plans is that it provides dependability for communities and developers."

Jeff White, Senior Developer at AvalonBay Communites, held up his company's new Contra Costa Centre Transit Village as an example of good growth by building close to transit in counties further from the urban core. The 125-acre Centre, which is located around the Pleasant Hill BART station with 2300 multi-unit residential properties and two million square feet of office space, moved its first residential tenants in on May 1st and expects to keep selling through the end of the year.

White said the plan for the Centre facilitated the development, though he lamented how long it took to build. "What would we do differently? Build faster and at less cost," he said.

Rather than play on the historic divide between environmental stewardship and job creation, Scott Littlehale, Senior Research Analyst for the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, said that the distance between work and affordable housing degraded workers' living standards. 

"For many of our members now, the sprawling, decentralized development isn't working well for us," said Littlehale. "Our members have miserable commutes."

He estimated that construction workers who commute out of Contra Costa County will spend an average of one hour longer in a car each day, or the equivalent of "six extra work weeks behind the wheel."

Al Courchesne, the owner of Frog Hollow Farm near Brentwood and the only panelist that clearly didn't work behind a desk under fluorescent lights, said farmers were often left out of the discussion around development. "I think awareness of food and agriculture should be an intrinsic part of this discussion of smart growth," said Courchesne, who argued planners and towns needed to do more to protect agricultural lands and prevent sprawl.

"If we want our food to come from local agricultural areas, we need to be proactive about protecting them," said Courshesne

To underscore this point, Courshesne, Madsen and other panelists all warned of Measure F, the Brentwood Urban Limit Expansion proposition that goes before voters on June 8th, which they argued would allow sprawl to encroach on farmland and valuable open space.

Measure F, they argued, would be a good test whether there was political commitment to smart growth or if there was only lip service paid to the current buzzword.

"We have to see farmland not as something that is pretty to drive by and look at," said Madsen. It's essential to our ongoing environmental security."

Photo: Matthew Roth

Democracy in action, I suppose. Long-time bicycle advocates from the East Bay and San Francisco converged on this meeting, hoping to convince the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) to support using some of the new tolls ($5 on all bridges as of July 1, with $6 congestion pricing on the Bay Bridge during rush hour, and for the first time, a half-price toll for carpoolers) to fund a new west-span bicycle/pedestrian/maintenance/safety lane to make the bridge safer, and to finish the transbay route for bicyclists and pedestrians too, not just motorized vehicles. But that effort was bureaucratically sidetracked before this meeting even started.

Surrounding the MTC hearing room were bicycle advocates from around the region. Photo: Chris Carlsson.

The BATA's legal advice from a prior meeting was that they have no authority to allocate toll monies toward this new path, in spite of language in the law that allows for maintenance and safety improvements, which the new path unambiguously represents.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates has asked for a second legal opinion from the State Legislative Counsel, which he said will take 2-3 months to get. Moreover, he followed the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) chair's admonition to the assembled cycling advocates to save their comments for another time (since the question of funding and building a new west-span side path would not be addressed in this meeting), by stressing that the fight was no longer at BATA or the MTC but had moved to the state Legislature in Sacramento.

It's hardly a surprise that the MTC wanted to duck this issue and pass the buck to Sacramento. The 15-member MTC is a lopsided status-quo minded entity. That was revealed again today when San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, responding to several public commenters who were casual carpoolers and feared the new toll would wipe out the phenomenon, proposed the $2.50 carpool toll be reduced to $2.00. A roll-call vote went 13-3 against the proposal, only Daly, Tom Bates, and Bay Conservation and Development Commissioner Ann Halstedt voting for it.

One comment from an employee of the Bay Area Air Quality Control District pointed out that casual carpooling reduces congestion, saves money for those who do it, AND builds community, but the majority of the commissioners were not inclined to tinker with their staff's proposed new toll schedule. Nor did any of them choose to question the formula by which truckers have new tolls phased in over 3 years, denying the bridge budget $60 million according to their own calculations (recreational vehicle owners also showed up to challenge their being classified as trucks for purposes of bridge tolls, which will raise their bridge-crossing costs by 150%).

There is a long and charming local history of bicycle advocates who have pushed BART, Caltrain, the Golden Gate Bridge, and local bus systems for greater accommodation for bicycles and cyclists. It's a thankless, Sisyphean task, and we can all be thankful for those folks who have stuck with it.

That said, I've always been astonished at the eager sincerity a lot of people bring to these governmental processes. As far as I can tell the system is deeply broken. The inordinate emphasis, even at this very late date, on automobiles, freeways, "level of service," etc., seems to always trump common sense efforts to promote the incredibly modest beginnings of a new infrastructure. After all, there are state laws mandating major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. How is that going to be achieved without an alternative as obvious as a Bay Bridge bike path?

It was Jason Meggs and some stalwart friends a decade ago who rode bikes across the Bay Bridge to dramatize the absurdity of denying access to a central transportation artery. But most of the energy these days goes into attending these hearings with homemade signs, with earnest behind-the-scenes message making so as not to offend the commissioners, or become unseemly or too aggressive.

The urgency of altering how we live day to day gets quite lost in these processes. The moods of commissioners, the technical language in obscure appropriations bills, the muscle-bound lobbying strength of corporate behemoths, together become the focus of political action, rather than the terrain of our daily lives. I like the slogan "Bridge the Gap" just fine, but I couldn't help but feel that the real gap needing bridging at today's hearing was between the building trades workers out front clamoring for "jobs" and the bicycling advocates inside who were firmly but cautiously seeking support for a maintenance lane to be added to the west span.

I wondered if anyone had spoken with the building trades folks about supporting the bike/ped/etc. lane? Or has thought to propose a much broader alliance on local projects? (And what is it with union workers and their leaders that they always abdicate control over deciding what work is worth doing to those with the purse strings? Shouldn't workers be central deciders in how their work is employed in our communities?) What about a massive overhaul of local roads and bridges, adding Copenhagen-style bike lanes on every street and span? Think how much work that would be! Oh but we can't pay for it is the immediate rejoinder.

And if you accept the narrow constraints of institutional political reality as it is, then the argument is lost. But what about repealing Prop 13, at least as it applies to major corporations in California? What about ending the U.S. empire's military bases in over 100 countries around the world? Why is the U.S. spending as much on guns and bombs and death and mayhem as the rest of the world combined? Why did the federal government give away $1.5 trillion to the wealthiest owners of businesses instead of embarking on the much-promoted "Green New Deal" that if done honestly, might have provided resources for just this kind of drastic and dramatic reorganization and rebuilding of our urban physical infrastructure?

Common sense is trivialized and marginalized in the public process.

The west-span bike lane is a pipe dream for now. But by making it contingent on a massively expensive new lane being added to the existing bridge (and done under the design and control of the brazenly anti-bicycle Department of Highways, oops, I mean Caltrans), aren't we shooting ourselves in the foot?

A bike/ped/safety/maintenance lane could be put on the top deck of the Bay Bridge in two weeks if we had the political vision to do it. Here's how: Admit that traffic on the inbound west span rarely exceeds 30 mph and make that the new speed limit during rush hour. It's a pretty drive anyway, who cares if you have to go slower? And most of the time you can't get near 30 mph anyway, given the congested traffic. Narrow the five lanes from 12 feet to 10 feet, take the new 10 feet of space and barricade it with a cement railing. Voila! You have a bike/ped/safety/maintenance lane. The other five lanes are open during rush hour, but only 4 lanes are open the rest of the time, leaving a buffer lane next to the bike/etc. lane for additional safety. When traffic is light and only four lanes are open, the existing 50 mph speed limit can prevail... If we wanted to do it, we don't have to wait 3 months for a new legal opinion, and then another 2-plus years for another toll increase, and then 5-7 years for design and building of this new lane.

We could do it by March 1. Why not?

Photo: Michael Patrick

"What we strive to do with GreenTRIP is create something that is very easily implementable so that it can be done early in the development process," said Jeffrey Tumlin, Principal of Nelson Nygaard Consulting Associates and a member of GreenTRIP's advisory board. "We want to focus on the key things that developers and municipalities can do to have a positive impact on greenhouse gases."

Tumlin added, "GreenTRIP tries to change the regulatory process."

Developed explicitly to complement areas where the LEED Neighorhood Development (LEED ND) green building certification falls short of being prescriptive, GreenTRIP rewards projects that reduce traffic and make a strong connection between sustainable development and pollution from the transportation sector, which accounts for more than 40 percent of California's GHG emissions. Funding for the new certification comes from grants from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

Using the URBEMIS emissions model developed by the California Air Resources Board, GreenTRIP gives developers credits for reducing overall driving relative to the average regional VMT. GreenTRIP attempts to impact developments at the beginning phases of design, encouraging developers to situate near transit and take steps to reduce driving [PDF].

Developments must have one or more of the following: unbundled parking, free car-share membership, and provide at least one 50-percent discounted transit pass per unit for the life of the project. These thresholds to reduce driving must result in no more than 35 VMT per unit per day in less dense areas, and no more than 25 VMT in dense areas. Bay Area average VMT is 50 miles per day. Likewise, parking ratios cannot be higher than 1.5 spaces per unit in less dense areas, or .75:1 in dense areas [PDF].

"By really focusing on this element--how much traffic [developments] generate--we think this tool is a huge complement to existing LEED and will serve an important function that LEED doesn't get to," said Stuart Cohen, TransForm's Executive Director. "The best thing is the reaction from cities and developers: they are hungry for this."

John Norquist, President of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), which helped develop LEED ND with the US Green Building Council and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said that the URBEMIS estimates might be too generalized to gain immediate support from the Building Council. "We welcome what they're doing. I think a 'green building' doesn't need to have a monopoly on these ideas. We are trying to figure out how to measure it properly."

The Ohlone

The first project to receive a conditional GreenTRIP certification is The Ohlone, an eight-acre mixed-mixed use development on land along West San Carlos and Sunol Streets near Downtown San Jose. Unlike the suburban character of adjacent residences, The Ohlone will be up to 150 feet in height, will have 800 units, and will develop up to 30,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space.

One of the bigger impediments to the project was San Jose zoning code, which prevented dense development outside of the downtown core. In early December, with TransForm explaining the project's conditional GreenTRIP certification, the San Jose City Council voted unanimously to grant an exemption in the General Plan for The Ohlone. The exemption allows the the developer to build up to 150 feet from the standard 90 feet and permits density of 125 units per acre, up from 100 per acre. The Ohlone will have 1200 parking spaces, or 1.5:1, the mandatory minimum in San Jose.

Green Republic's Michael VanEvery, Project Executive for The Ohlone, said the support from smart growth advocates was pivotal for passing the city council hurdle. "This was the first project of its type approved for this density outside of the downtown core. This was a bold step for the city," he said.

"I thought it was really intriguing, because oftentimes when developers propose high density, especially in San Jose, Oakland, West San Francisco, we get stymied by how do you park a project," added VanEvery. "With GreenTRIP, it's not how many cars you park, it's how many you can't park. It changes the landscape of the debate and allows local governments to practice what they preach."

San Jose Department of Transportation Acting Director Hans Larsen applauded the process as well. "We are pleased to have the GreenTrip program as an addition to the toolbox for building sustainable communities. Since transportation contributes 40 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, programs that help reduce vehicle travel are important for the environment. The Ohlone project is reflective of San Jose's continued evolution as the urban center of Silicon Valley and San Jose's leadership as a sustainable community."

Green Republic has committed to all the basic criteria of GreenTRIP, but will also provide protected bike lockers and two bulk-rate discounted VTA eco-passes per-unit for the life of the project, or at least 40 years. Using URBEMIS modeling, the Ohlone's travel demand management program is expected to result in residents driving no more than 20 VMT per day, 60 percent less than the regional average.

VanEvery said GreenTRIP was common sense and that it encouraged other cities to reduce parking minimums like San Francisco has done in certain districts. "San Francisco has broken the mold of one unit-one parking stall and guess what, it's one of the most vibrant areas in the country."

Because TransForm brought the possibility of GreenTRIP certification up so early in the process, said VanEvery, he could convince his design team to develop the project principles early on.

"We're trying to produce less cars through development," he said.

UPDATED: Wednesday, December 23rd, 1:30 pm

The energy-saving benefits of transit aren’t limited to the transportation sector. Image: Jonathan Rose Companies via Richard Layman.

At
a panel discussion yesterday at the Copenhagen climate summit, American
policymakers and transit experts delivered a clear message: Walkable
urban development must be part of any effective plan to reduce global
greenhouse gas emissions. Thanks to the magic of live webcasts, I can
relay a few highlights for Streetsblog readers.

Without
directing future development toward walkable urbanism, the climate
impacts of sprawl will overwhelm other efforts to curb greenhouse gas
emissions, said Robert Cervero, a professor specializing in
transportation and land use policy at UC Berkeley. "Urban development
patterns have a significant role to play in carbon reduction," Cervero
told the audience. "Otherwise we’ll just get knocked back by land-use
patterns. Sustainable urbanism has to be part of the equation."

The
benefits of walkable development extend far beyond the efficiencies of
trains, buses, and bikes compared to cars. As journalist (and befuddling congestion pricing critic) David Owen has documented superbly, city dwellers use far less energy to, for instance, heat homes than suburbanites.

Cervero
attached some rough numbers to these "embedded energy savings." While
transit investment alone can achieve a 10 to 20 percent reduction in
America’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions, he said, factoring in
the embedded energy savings of walkable development boosts that figure
to 30 percent. That’s 30 percent compared to present-day emissions
levels. The reduction could reach as high as 60 percent, Cervero added,
compared to the level of per-capita emissions that would result from
continuing business-as-usual sprawl-inducing policies.

Since
most Americans aren’t all that familiar with walkable urbanism, the
question of how to generate public support for more sustainable
development patterns inevitably arises. John Inglish of the Utah
Transit Authority shared some of the successes on this front from his
home state. It’s a bit of an old story, but it’s a good one: In the
late 1990s, the public-private venture Envision Utah began a campaign to shape regional growth in the Salt Lake City region. Through a series of public workshops, they built support for smart growth strategies that became state law in 1999.

How
did they do it? Inglish focused on the sheer fiscal common sense of
walkable urbanism. When presented with the fact that transit investment
produces huge savings in overall infrastructure costs, Utahns got on
board. By 2020, a transit-oriented growth scenario would save some $15
billion, which would otherwise go to roads, sewers, and other utilities
under the sprawling business-as-usual scenario. "That’s more money for
schools and parks," Inglish said. "The community was not as
conservative when faced with the realities as had previously been
thought."

Unfortunately, the audio turned spotty during
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s turn at the podium. To substitute,
here’s an excerpt from his interview with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, in which the mayor marvels at Copenhagen’s bike culture, visible even deep inside city hall:

MAYOR
JOHN HICKENLOOPER: …here we are in Copenhagen. Thirty-seven percent
of the people in this city, when they go to work in the metropolitan
area, ride a bicycle to work. I mean, it’s remarkable. Their goal — I
met yesterday for an hour with the deputy mayor of the environment and
transportation, Klaus Bondam, and Klaus Bondam described how their next
goal is to hit 50 percent. I mean, to have half your population, when
they go to work on bicycles, they’re healthier, the air is cleaner,
there’s less carbon emissions, you save money. I mean, the benefits are
dramatic, and you can see the difference just when you walk down the
street.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, we were just in the city council
last night at like 10:30, 11:00. The whole bottom floor of this
century-old building is filled with not only bicycle racks, but
bicycles that fill them.

MAYOR JOHN HICKENLOOPER: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And city council members, the guards, everyone are riding in and out of the city council on their bicycles.

MAYOR
JOHN HICKENLOOPER: Yeah. When I flew in, the fellow next to me on the
plane is a hotshot young technology expert, makes a huge amount of
money — doesn’t own a car, rides his bike. You know, he says, “It’s
healthier. It’s more fashionable.” It’s — you know, it’s what his
friends do. And I think that’s the whole thing that — when you get to
public sentiment, I mean, what Lincoln was talking about. We need to
change our public sentiment so people want to do these things. And it’s
not government coming down and being punitive, but it’s creating a
change, a transformation in our attitudes.

Click to enlarge: Annual household transportation costs in the Bay Area.

In the Bay Area, where annual car ownership costs on average over $8,000 per person, individuals spend roughly $34 billion every year on personal transportation costs, compared to only $4.6 billion spent by public agencies on transit and roads combined. Households with poor access to public transit not only spend double the amount per year on transportation when compared to those with good access to transit, they produce more than double the amount of CO2, a greenhouse gas.

"The most astounding thing is that agencies pinch their pennies on transit and cut back and we feel like we can't afford not to save that service," said Stuart Cohen, Executive Director of TransForm. "We're already spending more than seven times as much as our agencies spend on public transit and roads just on buying and operating our vehicles."

What's more, the report points out that fuel costs represent a small minority of the cost of owning a car, so the craze for electric and other low-emission vehicles will not dramatically reduce the transportation costs for those living far from their jobs and far from transit. The best solution to combating climate change, the report notes, is to build walkable, vibrant communities where residences are situated close to job centers. 

Click to enlarge: household CO2 from transportation in the Bay Area.

"By reducing public and private transportation costs and increasing revenues to local governments, SB 375 can help put dollars back in the pockets of consumers and local governments," said Cohen.

Windfall for All counters the claim that SB 375 will be too costly to implement during the current economic crisis with several examples of how planning denser cities and offering alternatives to private car travel can save money.

First, in Sacramento, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) created a 2050 development blueprint that forecasts current development patterns and compared them to smart growth patterns. SACOG found that Sacramento would save $9.4 billion in public infrastructure costs (transportation, utilities, water, etc), $655 million in annual residents' fuel costs and $8.4 billion less for land purchases to offset environmental degradation from sprawl. The city would also see a 300 percent increase in public transit use if the city clustered development around transit within an urban growth boundary.

Benefits of public transportation for household costs and pollution. Image: TransForm.

In the Bay Area, parking regulations are a significant impediment to dense development. In San Leandro, parking minimums of more than two parking spaces for each new home made dense development a planning impossibility. When San Leandro re-wrote its downtown plan, it rezoned to allow 3,400 new homes, more than seven times the limit under the old zoning laws. The first development in the new Downtown Transit-Oriented Development Strategy, The Alameda, designed by San Francisco Architect David Baker, saves $3.9 million by eliminating a level of parking and produces 30 more affordable units, according to the report.

Based on these and other case studies, Cohen suggested California should consider levying a climate impact fee on gasoline to generate enough money to expand public transit options and expand walkable communities while improving the economy and meeting ambitious greenhouse gas targets.

"Building our communities with the expectation that every driver in a family is going to have to own their own car is part of what is part of what is bankrupting families," said Cohen. "The infrastructure for the... roads and those patterns of growth is part of what is bankrupting our public agencies."

Windfall for All Critical Recommendations

• Integrate full economic analysis into planning. The huge dividends from efficient land use become evident once personal costs, not just public budgets, are considered. Without such analysis, we will continue to promote plans and policies that cost too much for families, businesses, and local governments.
• Provide cities and counties with an infusion of funds to engage the community in planning. The state should make funds available for updating zoning codes and parking policies to make more efficient use of land and resources. Identifying strategies to maintain and expand the number of affordable homes is also critical.
• Fund cost-effective public transportation. The state needs to provide leadership and restore funds for public transit, as well as make it easier for regions to raise new revenues with climate-impact fees. Economic analysis could determine whether such fees, if spent in ways that promote more efficient communities, can reduce our overall costs.
• Innovate, evaluate and replicate. There are dozens of innovative strategies – whether an individual program such as car-sharing, or a comprehensive rewards approach such as UC San Diego’s. MTC, the Bay Area’s transportation agency, will soon launch the first “Transportation Climate Action Program.” This program will seed, evaluate and replicate innovative programs. Other regions should follow suit.
• New development should minimize pollution from new residents – or pay to mitigate it. The San Joaquin Valley is encouraging efficient development from the start. New developments that don’t provide walkable communities with convenient transportation choices must mitigate the costs of the air pollution that will be generated by future residents. The state and regional air districts should encourage this same system for mitigating the costs of greenhouse gases.
  

The details didn't go very deep, but now we know that DOT has $100 million to spend on planning grants next year to foster more sustainable development. They've received 1,400 applications for so-called TIGER grants, a $1.5 billion pool of stimulus money set aside for "innovative" transportation projects. (For a full recap that gives you a flavor for the Obama DOT's priorities, read this blog post by Gary Toth of Project for Public Spaces, which organized the event.)

So the language is encouraging and there are some new pots of money being put to good use. We have quite recent evidence from the stimulus saga, however, that once federal highway funding goes out the door to state DOTs, sprawl projects will follow. So I want to focus on one key moment yesterday, when a participant asked how the feds plan to get state DOTs on board with a livability agenda. Here's how Osborne answered:

The DOTs are wide-varied. Some states are well ahead of the federal government, and some states are not sure that these are the priorities they want to set for themselves. The program we have now is not self-funding anymore. In addressing it at the federal level, there is an expectation within the administration that money that is spent from the federal government is going to have to be spent in a way that allows us to be accountable to our taxpayers. That’s going to realign the program to some extent. The more people learn about livability and sustainability priorities, they see it aligns with their priorities more than they realized (economic growth, development, housing affordability). When you show people the choice between the priorities we have laid out and what they have laid out, it's amazing the headway you can make. We have some training to do, we have some challenges to meet, but we feel confident we can meet them.

Deciphering an answer this cryptic is a bit like reading tea leaves.

My take is that the people at USDOT get the transportation-land use connection, and they see the insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund as a sort of opening. They seem to anticipate that some portion of federal transportation spending will no longer come from the Highway Trust Fund (which is "not self-funding anymore"), and they appear to believe they can influence how that portion is spent ("to realign the program to some extent"). To me this sounds like an indirect reference to a national infrastructure bank, which would have the discretion to lend money to projects that foster compact development.