Infrastructure funding and policy priorities have a critical impact on how we grow. Decisions as to where we put water and sewer lines, roads, and schools, and how we pay for these needs play a big role in shaping our communities and the use of our natural resources.
10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania Provides Testimony to Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission
On January 28, 2008, 10,000 Friends presented testimony to the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission regarding proposed amendments to the 2035 Transportation and Development Plan. We reiterated our three principles, and then asked the commission to consider three questions prior to voting on the amendments. For the full testimony, please click here.
Pennsylvania Newsmakers: Subprime Crisis and Road Construction
During the last week of January 2008,
Pennsylvania Newsmakers featured a discussion of various aspects of the funding of roads, bridges and mass transit in the state. Joining host Terry Madonna were Bob Latham, Exec. VP of the Associated Pennsylvania Constructors, and Judy Schwank, President and CEO of 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania. You may video-stream the entire program now at:
http://www.newsmakerstv.com/archive.php?id=308. (Please note that the transportation episode is in the second half of the program.)
Govenor's 2008 Budget Address
With the enactment of Act 44, Governor Rendell presented his 2008-09 budget, reflecting the provisions of the Act to provide funding for highways, bridges and public transportation.
However, more than 5,900 state-owned bridges are structurally deficient, so the Governor's budget proposed $200 million per year for the next 10 years to repair bridges. With an infusion of $15.5 billion, 1,000 bridges will be repaired in the next three years and, over the next 10 years, the number of structurally deficient bridges will be cut by 40%. For more information about the Governor's "Rebuilding Pennsylvania" proposal, click
here.
Governor’s 2007 Budget Address
Governor Ed Rendell delivered his budget address to a joint session of the General Assembly at noon, February 6. 2007. We believe that the best transportation funding solution must be comprehensive and long-range.
10,000 Friends will support reforms that:
- Fix it first, by investing in maintenance and reconstruction before building new;
- Adequately and sustainably fund our public transportation systems; and
- Strongly link land use and transportation funding.
Click
here for the link to the Governor’s website, which includes the text of his address and a variety of supporting materials.
Click
here for our brief statement in reaction to the Governor’s budget address.
Grant Ervin, policy director for 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania's Pittsburgh office, gave testimony to the House Appropriations Committee's Sub-committee on Economic Impact and Infrastructure on March 26, 2007. Please
click here to read his testimony.
Transportation Funding and Reform Commission Final Report Released; Legislative Process Begins Now
The bipartisan Transportation Funding and Reform Commission issued its final report on November 13, offering a funding solution to pay for critical improvements to Pennsylvania's highways and bridges. The commission recommended $900 million in additional funding for highways and bridges and $760 million in targeted public transit funding.
“No new revenue without reforms,” Transportation Secretary Allen Biehler said in releasing the report. “Our highway and bridges and public transit systems are critical to the economic well-being and success of our businesses and communities."
Click here for the press release.
Click here for the full report.
Click here to go directly to Chapter 4, Growth and Development. The commission adopted as a guiding principle: “Transportation must be integrated with land use, economic development and environmental policies, programs, and goals.” It recommends linking land use and transportation through incentive-based funding, “smart transportation” design practices, and preconditioning major capacity improvements on a community land use/transportation vision that provides for sustainable investments.
In an interview with the media, Janet Milkman, president and CEO of 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania, said, "You can't pave your way out of congestion by building new roads. You need to give people alternative ways of getting around whether it's a sidewalk, bus or train."
Click here for Janet’s statement on the Commission report.
Click here for her comments in the Sunbury Daily Item.
REPORT CALLS FOR MULTI-PRONGED APPROACH TO STATE’S TRANSPORTATION AND TRANSIT WOES: Non-partisan study says this is an opportunity to fix the way transportation investments are made in Pennsylvania
A non-partisan study commissioned by a diverse group of Pennsylvania business, industry, environmental, cultural and community groups has concluded that the Commonwealth has a rare opportunity in the coming weeks and months to fix the way transportation investments are made in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Economy League (PEL), commissioned by the Associated Pennsylvania Constructors; 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania; the CEO Council for Growth, an affiliate of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce; and the William Penn Foundation, benchmarked Pennsylvania transportation conditions and programs against similar industrialized states. The Pennsylvania Environmental Council and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development served on the advisory group for the study.
The study, “Investing in Transportation: A Benchmarking Study of Transportation Funding and Policy”, comes at a time when an IssuesPA/Pew poll shows transportation-related infrastructure to be the biggest infrastructure problem, according to Pennsylvanians. A clear majority of residents – 69 percent – believe efforts should be focused on repairing and upgrading roads, bridges and transit systems, rather than building new.
This independent examination of the challenges facing Pennsylvania and the experiences of other states avoided duplicating work of other recent studies conducted by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Brookings Institution. The PEL report took a careful look at Pennsylvania’s particular transportation characteristics, compared our situation with that of similar states, and made an effort to uncover promising practices used in other states. The study was designed to complement the work of Pennsylvania’s Transportation Funding and Reform Commission.
For the press release on the study,
click here. For links to a summary and the full report,
click here.
Transportation Funding and Reform Commission Interim Report
The Transportation Funding and Reform Commission has been hosting listening sessions to accept citizen reaction to the commission’s just-released initial findings. The report and other details about the commission and the listening sessions can be found at the
Commission webpage.
10,000 Friends has representatives and/or partners scheduled to speak at each of the six sessions. Our remarks are based on these points:
- The crisis in funding is real.
- Transit is essential to the solution, and needs a stable, dedicated source of funding.
- We cannot continue to make decisions based on “business, as usual.”
- We must tie infrastructure decisions to land use, and give local governments the tools they need to help raise revenues locally.
For testimonies presented at the listenting session, please click on the links below:
10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania TFRC listening session fact sheet
History
In the beginning of 2005, the General Assembly and the Administration began to consider answers to the state’s transit funding crisis. We saw this as an opportunity to address a major problem in Pennsylvania’s transportation funding system in a way that leads to greater economic opportunity across the Commonwealth.
There is a funding shortage in highways, bridges and transit capital and maintenance or operating funds. This shortage is likely to grow worse as federal funding begins to shrink. Because of a constitutional provision limiting the use of the state liquid fuels tax to highway and bridge work, funding for transit agencies (both operating and capital) is much more difficult to raise. This limitation at the state level means that federal transit funds may go unused because the state match requirement cannot be met.
Fundamentally, we believe that the General Assembly and the Administration should use the opportunity to consider all modes of transportation as an integrated system in need of strategic management and sustainable funding in the long run. We believe that new revenues may be needed, but that the expenditure of these revenues must be prioritized for maintenance and rehabilitation and tied to a strategy to integrate economic development, land use planning and transportation investments.
In his first
Executive Order 1 of 2005, Governor Rendell created a
Transportation Funding and Reform Commission to investigate and make recommendations regarding appropriate levels of funding and source of funding for transportation in the Commonwealth for the coming years, for transit and for roads and bridges, and for operating costs and capital investments.
Transit Oriented Development
Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is compact, mixed use development within an easy walk of a transit station. The design is meant to be pedestrian-friendly, and its goal is to create more choice that can include less need for trips by car and more opportunity for use of mass transit.
The Pennsylvania Generral Assembly approved legislation during the 2004 legislative session to create Transit Revitalization Investment Districts. For more information, view this powerpoint by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission on Transit Revitalization Investment Districts.
How To Measure TOD Outcomes
A report issued May 2005 offers indicators to measure the outcomes of transit-oriented development. This research report by John L. Renne and Jan S. Wells offers a strategy to systematically evaluate the potential success of transit-oriented development. The digest identifies and evaluates various indicators of the impacts of transit-oriented development, provides the results of a survey of transit-oriented development indicators, and identifies ten indicators that can be used to systematically monitor and measure impacts.
Based on this research, the most useful indicators are transit ridership, density, quality of streetscape, quantity of mixed-use structures, pedestrian activity and safety, increase in property value and tax revenue, public perception, number of mode connections at the transit station, and parking. For the full story, click on
TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT: DEVELOPING A STRATEGY TO MEASURE SUCCESS
For More Information
Visit these websites for more information about Transit-Oriented Development:
Transit Revitalization Investment Districts
One important means to promote local economic development and revitalization in conjunction with public transportation improvements is through the creation of Transit Revitalization Investment Districts (TRIDs), Last December, Governor Rendell signed into law the program, sponsored by Rep. Carole Rubley (R-Chester/Montgomery), Rick Geist (R-Blair) and Steve Stetler (D-York). The Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) will administer a grant program to help fund the development of vacant, underutilized or potentially redevelopable land within a one-eighth mile to one-half mile radius from a railroad, transit, light rail, busway or similar transit stop or station. Rep. Rubley now seeks a budget earmark of $500,000 to help initiate the planning process.
Our Aging Infrastructure: Voices for Change Mount Quickly - A Neil Peirce Column
"The infrastructure issue -- the long shadow thrown across America’s future by deteriorating roadways, bridges, railroads, water systems, schools --
finally seems to be getting hot." For the full article, please
click here.
Mass transit use hits 50-year high on pump prices, Yahoo, March 10, 2008
"The number of Americans hopping buses and grabbing subway straps has climbed to the highest level in half a century as soaring gasoline costs push more commuters to take mass transit." For the original article, please
click here. For a pdf of the article, please
click here.
Clogged Arteries, The Atlantic, March, 2008
"Transportation spending is spread around the United States like peanut butter, and while it’s spread pretty thick—nearly $50 billion last year in federal dollars for surface transportation alone—the places that are most critical to the country’s economic competitiveness don’t get what they need." For the complete article,
click here. For a pdf of the article,
click here.
New Era Dawns for Rail Building, Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2008
"The upgrade is part of a railroad renaissance under way across much of the U.S. For the first time in nearly a century, railroads are making large investments in their networks -- adding sets of tracks, straightening curves that force engines to slow and expanding tunnels for bigger trains. Their campaign is altering the corridors of American commerce, more so than any other development since interstate highways spread to the interior." Please
click here for the complete article.
Cities: A Smart Alternative to Cars, Business Week ,February 11, 2008
"The best car-related innovation we have is not to improve the car but to eliminate the need to drive it everywhere we go. In the U.S,, we need to stop sprawl and build well-designed compact communities. The land-use patterns in our communities dictate not only how much we drive, but how sustainable we can be on all sorts of fronts. And sprawled-out land uses generate enormous amounts of automotive greenhouse gases." For the complete article,
click here. For a pdf of the article,
click here.
Governor Rendell on Infrastructure Investment - Governors, Mayor Form Coalition to Rebuild Ailing U.S. Infrastructure
"LOS ANGELES, California, January 22, 2008 (ENS) - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican; Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell, a Democrat; and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an Independent, stood beneath a Los Angeles highway interchange on Saturday to announce the formation of a non-partisan national coalition that will lobby for federal investment in America's decaying infrastructure."
Report Released - Transportation for Tomorrow: Report of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission
The US surface transportation system links Americans to each other and to the world. This enormous network of highways, ports, freight and passenger railroads and transit systems is vital to America’s economy, security and way of life. It is currently the best surface transportation system in the world – the challenge now is to ensure that it remains the best in the future.
Congress created The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission in 2005 under Section 1909 of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act—A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). The Commission was created because, as Congress declared, “it is in the national interest to preserve and enhance the surface transportation system to meet the needs of the United States for the 21st century.”
The Report includes detailed recommendations for creating and sustaining a pre-eminent surface transportation system in the United States. The Commission is grateful to all of the individuals and organizations who shared their views and experiences in writing and at hearings and public meetings across the nation. To read the report, please
click here.
National Commission Report Shows Federal Transportation Program is Broke – and Broken, Reform Advocates Say
A joint statement by the Smart Growth America, Reconnecting America and the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership was also released about this important report. Please
click here for the press release.
Testimony - 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania Testifies on Transportation, November 1, 2007
Testimony was given to the House Majority Policy Committee, in
Mt.
Lebanon, PA
. Please
click here for the testimony.
Smart-Growth Policy Spokesman Yearns for Straight Talk on Transit Needs
Fed up with wishful cliches about alleviating congestion through new roads, while population numbers and gas prices and environmental risks escalate, former Baltimore Sun reporter and Maryland smart-growth policy spokesman John W. Frece would like to finally hear "any of our mid-Atlantic governors" make it clear that "our congested roads do not reflect a failure of transportation," but "a failure of land use," and that easing traffic without mass transit is not possible. For the entire Smart Growth Online article, please
click here.
Pennsylvania Infrastructure Project (sponsored by the Heinz Endowments and the Urban Land Institute) - Report from Smart Transportation for Focused Growth: Best Practices
On June 11th, Southwestern Pennsylvania stakeholders came together to discuss the importance of sound land use policy in setting transportation priorities for Pennsylvania and the southwestern region. National and local experts addressed the importance of a comprehensive approach to infrastructure planning and land use.
Six strong, workable ideas for Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania emerged. Those Smart Strategies are detailed in the
Report from Smart Transportation for Focused Growth: Best Practices provided here. Please
click here for more information.
Our Crumbling Foundation, April 5, 2007
"Fifty-nine years ago this week — on April 3, 1948 — President Truman signed the legislation establishing the Marshall Plan, which contributed so much to the rebuilding of postwar Europe. Now, more than half a century later, the U.S. can’t even rebuild New Orleans." Please
click here for the complete New York Times article.
Editorial - Big oil a fat target, February 19, 2007
"Gov. Rendell wants to tax oil company profits to pay for mass transit. It's a new, magic-bullet kind of idea for dealing with a chronic problem - mass transit's money woes - that Harrisburg chronically lacks the political will to address." For the complete Philadelphia Inquirer editorial, please
click here.
SEPTA says fares will rise, service could drop, February 16, 2007
"Gloomy transit forecasts are a rite of spring, but the agency's chief said this one's for real. Said a board member: Don't panic." For the complete Philadelphia Inquirer article, please
click here.
Seeing Gold at the End of the Privatized Road, January 28, 2007
Push to privatize turnpike reflects shift in thinking about financing, and financial benefits of, highway ownership. Please
click here for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.
Homes for the Transit-Oriented, December 17, 2006
"A New Jersey developer wants to convert an old industrial property near the train station in Warminster into a development featuring residential and retail space aimed at attracting commuters to the area.
"In this day and age, with the cost of fuel being so high, rather than trying to drive from residential (areas) to commuter lines, people can literally walk to the train and commute to Philadelphia and elsewhere," said Greg Rogerson, a principal with Asbury, N.J.-based J.G. Petrucci Co."
For the entire Bucks County Courier Times article, please
click here.
Pondering Ways to Fix Roadways Across PA, December 18, 2006
"Other states, with similar weather and traffic loads, have better roads and lower gas taxes. What lessons can Pennsylvania draw from its neighbors?" Please
click here for the entire Philadelphia Inquirer article.
Editorial: Backsliding / Is This Shopping Plaza Really Necessary?, September 25, 2006
"County-based planning of large commercial centers may not prevent landslides on major throughways, but it would limit the unchecked and irrational placement of stores and plazas and malls. It's time that Pennsylvania counties had such rock-solid planning authority." Please
click here for the article.
Public Transit - We're All In It, May 21, 2006
"We love our cars, but the reality has changed. A new vision for transit is crucial to the Pittsburgh region's well-being,” says Caren Glotfelty.
Click here to read her essay in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Pennsylvania Transportation Secretary Allen Biehler notes that shifting federal money to public transit did not delay highway construction.
Click here to read his letter to the editor in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Bicycling Information
"Cycling Trends and Policies in Canadian Cities" (http://www.vtpi.org/pucher_canbike.pdf) This is the prepublication version of a paper by John Pucher and Ralph Buehler which describes cycling programs and trends in major Canadian cities. The study finds that cities which invested in cycling facilities and programs have experienced increased bicycle use. It provides recommendations for planning strategies to further increase bicycle transportation. (Thanks to John and Ralph for permission to post it on our website).
"Bicyclepedia" (http://www.bicyclinginfo.org/bikecost) is a bicycle facility benefit/cost analysis tool available free on the Internet, produced by the Active Communities Transportation Research Group at the University of Minnesota, for NCHRP project 07-14. This tool helps users calculate a bicycle facility's demand, costs and benefits, based on extensive original research and development of analysis methods. It is currently in the Beta testing stage. The authors welcome feedback.
Research by Professor Jennifer Dill at Portland State University (http://web.pdx.edu/~jdill/research.htm) analyzes the effects of urban form and roadway connectivity on nonmotorized travel (http://web.pdx.edu/~jdill/Dill_ACSP_paper_2003.pdf), and how the provision of cycling facilities affects bicycle commuting rates (http://web.pdx.edu/~jdill/Dill%20Carr%20TRR%201828.pdf). This can help identify ways to create more walkable and cyclable communities. This research is ongoing, so additional results will be posted in the future.
On a different issue, Transport for London recently released its third annual report on Central London's congestion charging program (
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/cclondon/pdfs/ThirdAnnualReportFinal.pdf). The report indicates that the program's benefits (congestion reductions, transit service improvements, reduced traffic accidents and improved air quality) continue, and provides more detailed analysis of the program's revenues, operating costs, and impacts on business activity. Based on this information we have updated our paper "London Congestion Pricing: Implications for Other Cities" (
http://www.vtpi.org/london.pdf), which summarizes London's experience.
General Information
Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) is a nationwide coalition working to ensure safer communities and smarter transportation choices that enhance the economy, improve public health, promote social equity and protect the environment.
Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) -- Federal highway and transit statutes require, as a condition for spending federal highway or transit funds in urbanized areas, the designation of MPOs which have responsibility for planning, programming and coordination of federal highway and transit investments. For more information about MPOs and a list of MPOs operating in Pennsylvania, visit the
American Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations.
Traffic congestion costs the three largest urban areas in Pennsylvania as much as $3 billion, according to the Texas Transportation Institute's annual Urban Mobility report. Congestion wastes 71 million gallons per year of fuel in the three Pennsylvania areas analyzed. For more information on the study, visit
http://tti.tamu.edu/ .
