The source for New Urbanism, smart growth, and walkable communities
Fed stimulus seen as
‘down payment’ on smart growth
The $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that President Obama signed on Feb. 17 left advocates of compact and transit-oriented development practically biting their tongues. Only a small portion of the spending explicitly fits the smart-growth agenda, but disappointment was muted — in part because of signs that the Obama team may soon take more direct action on development issues.
“If properly enacted by state and local authorities,” the recovery package “could be a down payment on a new direction for America’s infrastructure,” said Transportation for America, a coalition of groups co-chaired by Smart Growth America. That assessment — neither a ringing endorsement nor a dismissal — was typical of the reaction from organizations that have argued for federal support of smart-growth goals.
The hastily enacted legislation essentially ignored a call by the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Institute of Transportation Engineers to tie new transportation spending to densely connected street networks — a key element in new urbanist and pedestrian-oriented planning. However, many participants in the debate over how to revive the nation’s economy did not realistically expect dramatic new thinking to be at the heart of legislation that was rushed through Congress in just a few weeks.
“Given the need for haste in crafting the bill, congressional and Administration negotiators were handcuffed by backward-looking, existing programs,” said Transportation for America.
Proponents of smart growth and New Urbanism identified several favorable items in the Recovery and Reinvestment Act:
• $8.4 billion will be spent on public transportation. This is a bigger share of the transportation budget than has been provided in recent reauthorizations of federal transportation legislation.
• $9.3 billion will be invested in intercity rail transportation and development of high-speed passenger train lines. Some of the $8 billion reserved for high-speed rail may go to California, where voters approved a ballot proposition in November authorizing what is described as America’s first high-speed train system — one that could eventually link all of that state’s major cities. The California High-Speed Rail Authority foresees trains covering 800 miles at speeds exceeding 220 mph.
Stephen Filmanowicz, CNU’s communications director, said of the federal commitment to high-speed rail: “CNU will offer to help create [transit-oriented development] planning guidelines for the areas around stations to get the most economic development gain and energy-efficiency benefits from this major investment.”
• Of $27.5 billion allocated for road modernization, 3 percent ($825 million) must be used by the states to create “transportation enhancements.” These may include such things as walkways, bike paths, and bike lanes, the Active Living Research program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation pointed out.
Michelle Ernst of the New York-based Tri-State Transportation Campaign emphasized that compared to the 2005 federal transportation act known as SAFETEA-LU, the stimulus package nearly doubles the portion of “highway” funds going to bike and pedestrian projects. Bicycle advocates, especially, fought to make sure that the states were required to put a set portion of the stimulus funds into transportation enhancements.
The stimulus also sends a greater portion of such money to cities. The fact that metropolitan areas with more than 200,000 residents will receive 16 percent of the highway money was welcomed by urbanists. “This funding will go to agencies that, compared to state DOTs, are more likely to invest in progressive transportation projects,” Ben Fried wrote in a commentary at Streetsblog.org.
• Of $1.5 billion will be awarded in competitive grants to state and local governments for transportation investments. These, too, can include non-highway alternatives.
Disappointments
Smart-growth organizers expressed regret about some of the issues not addressed in the Recovery Act. In particular, they cited these:
• Although billions of dollars were directed to construction of new public transportation lines, no support was made available for existing transit operations, many of which are facing financial crises as revenue from sales taxes and other sources drops. Governments and transit agencies are running short of money to fully operate their rail and bus routes. Transportation for America reports that systems in more than 60 communities, responsible for more than 20 million trips a day, are contemplating job cuts, service reductions, and fare hikes.
• Although some local street and road networks, including traditional avenues and boulevards, are technically eligible for stimulus money, most states have overlooked these projects, despite appeals from mayors.
• The legislation did not set on a “fix-it-first” policy. Much of the highway money may go toward building new roads and expanding existing ones rather than repairing older streets and roads that have deteriorated.
“In terms of cutting-edge, breakthrough stuff — it was hard to find,” said Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association in New York and co-chair of America 2050, a national strategy group for economic development and infrastructure.
Encouraging signs
On the whole, urbanists remain upbeat about what to expect from the Obama administration. “They’ve assembled a superb team at HUD,” Yaro said, citing the appointment of New York City Housing Commissioner Shaun Donovan as secretary and King County (Washington) Executive Ron Sims as leader of a new Office of Sustainability within HUD. Sims pursued transit improvements in the Seattle region and shifted land-use planning toward less reliance on automobiles. As head of the Office of Sustainability, he will work with the US Departments of Energy and Transportation on making the nation more sustainable.
“There is a growing recognition that the way we build housing and our cities [is] in no way sustainable,” Donovan said recently. Improving the energy efficiency of housing is important, but in addition, “we must focus on location efficiency,” he asserted.
Bill Spikowski, a city planning consultant in Fort Myers, Florida, noted that the stimulus package’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Grants program, funded at $6.3 billion, includes a section premised on making cities more energy-efficient by promoting transit-oriented development, mixed uses, pedestrian-oriented design, and other strategies that reduce vehicle miles traveled.
More importantly, Obama himself has expressed a desire to alter the patterns of American development. “I think right now we don’t do a lot of effective planning at the regional level when it comes to transportation,” the president said Feb. 13 in an interview with five columnists. “That’s hugely inefficient. Not only does it probably consume more money in terms of getting projects done, but it also ends up creating traffic patterns, for example, that are really hugely wasteful when it comes to energy use.”
“If we can start building in more incentives for more effective planning at the local level, that’s not just good transportation policy, it’s good energy policy,” Obama said. “So we’ll be working with transportation committees to see if we can move in that direction.”
The Washington Post reported that the US Conference of Mayors, headed by Miami Mayor Manuel Diaz, has met half a dozen times with Obama’s top advisers since December. Said Diaz: “It’s pretty clear that there’s going to be a whole new day.”
Note: for more on the stimulus bill, see John Norquist’s article on page 22.
This article is available in the March 2009 issue of New Urban News, along with images and many more articles not available online. Subscribe or order the individual issue.
By Philip Langdon