With a $40 billion voter-approved transit investment being deployed over the next 20 years, Los Angeles County residents are charting a path to a new future. The transit system expansion will add 102 miles of rail transit and almost 100 new stations, while creating 400,000 new jobs.[1] While the City of Los Angeles is ground zero for much of this change - at the core of the transit network and with 113 current and planned stations - 63 other jurisdictions across the County will also enjoy frequent transit, making the scale of change as record-breaking as the pace of change.

$code This webinar originally aired Oct. 16 and was the second of two sessions offered by Reconnecting America as part of Transportation for America's technical assistance program for the MAP-21 Implementation project. In this session, MAP-21 subgrantees learned about the benefits, best practices, and collaborative strategies for developing regional transportation performance measurements in their advocacy for better planning at the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) and state levels. The session focused on: How regions can develop performance measures that relate to state and federal goals, How regions can collaborate with states to set goals and measures for the region's livability and multi-modal transportation options, and, How regions are actively measuring transportation progress and demonstrating it to the public.

$code Communities across the country have used the Center for Neighborhood Technology's (CNT) Housing + Transportation (H+T)® Affordability Index to more fully grasp and act on the relationship between development patterns, transportation behavior and household transportation costs. This training and discussion explored how to effectively use the H+T Affordability Index for performance measures and in support of regional transportation planning under MAP-21. The training was held Sept. 30 in New Orleans, LA, by the Center for Planning Excellence and the Louisiana Public Health Institute and made available via webinar. The two main goals of this session: To demonstrate how H+T Affordability data and metrics may be used in the development of performance measures for regional transportation plans; and To explore how MPOs and state DOTs might make effective use of H+T data and metrics for walkability, transit access, employment…

A study from Sydney University in Australia on travel mode and physical activity has been added to the Research Center best practices database.

A new report by the Center for Transit-Oriented Development and the Jonathan Rose Companies entitled "Making It Happen: Opportunities and Strategies for Transit-Oriented Development in the Knowledge Corridor" has been added to the Resource Center best practices database.

The Institute for Transportation & Development Policy's new report, "More Development for Your Transit Dollar: An Analysis of 21 North American Transit Corridors" has been added to the Research Center's best practices database.

$code Jeff Wood, Reconnecting America's New Media Director and Chief Cartographer, participated in a radio program on Bay Area station KALW on Sept. 10. The Your Call program featured a conversation about how the expansion of mass transit system would affect economic productivity. The show discussed Reconnecting America's Moving to Work in the Bay Area report and new research by UC Berkeley showing that depending on the size of a city, the economic value of transit could be worth anywhere from $1.5 million to almost $2 billion dollars a year. In addition to Wood, program host Rose Aquilar's guests included Dan Chatman, assistant professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, and Debbie Hale, Executive Director Contract Performance Goals and Objectives The Transportation Agency for Monterey County (TAMC).