Reconnecting America today released an eight-page policy brief that makes the economic case for locating affordable housing near transit.

Reconnecting America and its partners in Mile High Connects recently released the Denver Regional Equity Atlas, which maps how current and future transit service can connect people to opportunities throughout the region.

On Nov. 15, the Center for Transit-Oriented Development held a webinar “Employment, Transit and Transit-Oriented Development.” The webinar focused on the importance of concentrating jobs near transit to fostering economically sustainable regions and healthy transit systems. Speakers discussed new research on spatial employment patterns in our metropolitan areas, and the types of economic activity that are most likely to benefit from being near transit. Participants also discussed the ways in which national research has been applied to inform regional economic development, transportation, and land use planning in the San Francisco Bay Area and Phoenix regions. Last, the webinar discussed the best practices across the nation in economic development incentives that support job growth and concentration in sustainable locations.

Over in Books and Reports you will find a pair of reports released today by the Center for Transit-Oriented Development that discuss the importance of connecting jobs to transit and which jobs, in particular, will be most responsive to locating near transit. And in Half-Mile Circles, Jeff Wood, who participated in the research for the reports, blogs about the need to make employment centers central factors in transit development decisions.

Reconnecting America President and CEO John Robert Smith applauded today's award of nearly $600 million in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) II construction and planning grants.

Changing federal transportation funding to emphasize repair of existing infrastructure and expansion of public transportation would generate many more jobs than the current law, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute.