Brewing up TEA3

Every six years, transportation and land-use advocates have a chance to influence one of the biggest, most powerful pots of money in the world — the US government’s transportation funding act. In 1991 and 1997, the last two federal funding acts gradually increased funding for alternatives to the interstates and federal highways. In 2003, we at CNU hope the new federal act will recognize the most powerful demand-side solution to transportation problems: Better land use. Our goal is to break the vicious cycle of sprawl. Today, auto-dependent development spurs vehicle use. When the roads fill up, transportation departments build more roads. The new roads provide opportunities for more car-dependent sprawl, and the cycle begins anew. Federal funding rules encourage this cycle to continue: Regional transportation planners are required to provide the roads to satisfy local land-use plans, and local land-use plans are based on the 20-year road-building plans of the regional funder. Even in regions where the public has stated that it wants compact development around transit, no one has the power to act on this public demand. To change this situation, we have three legislative goals. Require alternative land-use scenarios in every regional transportation plan and corridor plan. Today, the federal certification process for these multi-billion-dollar plans requires that they consider only the status quo land use. In other words, they are required to assume that the region will continue to sprawl, and then they are required to fund the roads to serve that sprawl. In a few regions that have gotten special exceptions, such as Portland, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Chicago, the transportation plans based on a more new urbanist land-use scenario were able to justify far more spending on transit, bicycle, and pedestrian facilities. Provide new tools for community visioning. The highway lobby is fond of saying it is just providing what the public wants. But in most regions, nobody asks the public what they want. In a few regions, such as the San Francisco Bay Area and the Salt Lake City region, the public has been given the opportunity to take the future by the horns and state positive goals, rather than reacting with fear to every new project. Regional planning requires better computer visualization tools, as well as next-generation of travel demand models that are sensitive to changing land-use scenarios. Recognize value of transit-oriented development (TOD). On the demand side, there is a huge untapped demand for transit-oriented development. On the supply side, the municipalities that provide these developments realize great cost efficiencies. The federal funding act should treat TOD as an economic development strategy, giving transit systems that provide it an edge in funding battles. Spreading the word Surprisingly, even longtime transportation choice advocates don’t have our depth of knowledge in land use. Too often, they reduce the discussion to platitudes about “better land-use planning,” without understanding what better land use would look like. It’s up to CNU members to educate the advocates in their communities and professional associations. To help our members, CNU is taking part in advocacy coalitions and demonstrating what better land use looks like. This includes local streets organized in a pattern that is porous for people without providing vehicle speedways; land uses concentrated into centers, with or without mass transit access; and urban design elements that create real places. CNU invites member participation as we develop our platform for TEA3. Interested CNU members can join CNU’s Transportation Task Force mailing list by sending a message to cnu_trans-subscribe@topica.com. Participants in CNU’s policy development include Transportation Task Force cochair Don Chen, Executive Director Shelley Poticha; and board members Hank Dittmar, Jacky Grimshaw, and John Norquist.