Where the Jobs Are: Employer Access to Labor by Transit
July 11, 2012|Brookings
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Findings
An analysis of data from 371 transit providers in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas reveals that:
Over three-quarters of all jobs in the 100 largest metropolitan areas are in neighborhoods with transit service. Western metro areas like Los Angeles and Seattle exhibit the highest coverage rates, while rates are lowest in Southern metro areas like Atlanta and Greenville. Regardless of region, city jobs across every metro area and industry category have better access to transit than their suburban counterparts.
The typical job is accessible to only about 27 percent of its metropolitan workforce by transit in 90 minutes or less. Labor access varies considerably from a high of 64 percent in metropolitan Salt Lake City to a low of 6 percent in metropolitan Palm Bay, reflecting differences in both transit provision, job concentration, and land use patterns. City jobs are consistently accessible to larger shares of metropolitan labor pools than suburban jobs, reinforcing…
Bicycling And Walking In The United States: 2012 Benchmarking Report
January 23, 2012
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Executive Summary
What isn't counted,doesn't count.
Government officials working to promote bicycling and walking need data to evaluate their efforts. In order to improve something, there must be a means to measure it. The Alliance for Biking & Walking's Benchmarking Project is an ongoing effort to collect and analyze data on bicycling and walkingin all 50 states and the 51 largest cities. This is the third biennial Benchmarking Report. The first report was published in 2007, the second in 2010, and the nextreport is scheduled for January 2014.
Objectives
(1) Promote Data Collection and Availability
The Benchmarking Project aims to collect data from secondary sources (existing databases) and to conduct surveysof city and state officials to obtaindata not collected by another nationalsource. A number of government and national data sources are collected and illustrated in this report. Through state and city biennial surveys, this project makes new data available in a…
Tax-Increment Financing: The Need for Increased Transparency and Accountability in Local Economic Development Subsidies
October 13, 2011|U.S. PIRG Education Fund
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Executive Summary
Local and state governments use various tools to encourage development in economically challenged areas. Tax-increment financing (TIF) has been a leading tool used for this purpose. TIF allows cities and towns to borrow against an area’s future tax revenues in order to invest in immediate projects or encourage present development. When used properly and sparingly, TIF can promote enduring growth and stronger communities. When used improperly, however, TIF can waste taxpayer resources or channel money to politically favored special interests.
To protect the public interst, governments should impose strong safeguards that ensure that TIF projectsare implemented through a transparent, accountable process with clear and compelling goals.
Governments must use care in choosing when to use tax-increment financing. The public can benefit from subsidies that bring lasting economic development to declining or stagnant areas. However, tax-increment financing can be wasted on…
Creating and Maintaining Sustainable Communities
September 27, 2011
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Reconnecting America today released four training modules created for and funded by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) that illustrate various principles of creating and maintaining sustainable communities. The modules created by Reconnecting America’s LINK (Leadership¸ Innovation, Networks, Knowledge) Team were presented at three APTA conferences with the goal of educating practitioners, public transit agencies, elected officials and other decision-makers.
Public Transit’s Impact on Housing Costs: A Review of the Literature
August 31, 2011|Center for Housing Policy
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Building and expanding a fixed rail public transit system is a considerable undertaking for any metropolitan region. Investments on this scale, which can run in the billions of dollars, certainly reshape how people move throughout a region, but their impacts do not end at the turnstile. For residents and businesses that place importance on accessibility, such investments can also essentially redistribute the value of location within a region, making a place more or less desirable than before simply because of its proximity to the transit system. And as we know, a residential location’s value is best reflected in how much people are willing to pay to live there.
Transit-Oriented And Joint Development: Case Studies And Legal Issues
August 1, 2011
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Introduction
The purpose of this digest is provide an update to The Zoning and Real Estate Implications of Transit-Oriented Development (TCRP LRD 12). When TCRP LRD 12 was published in early 1999, only a handful of transit-oriented development (TOD) and transit-based joint development statutory and regulatory programs existed in the United States; those that did exist were, at that juncture, new and relatively untested. Since then, the field has filled with a number of new TOD and joint development programs, policies, and built projects, along with a robust academic and professional literature. Cumulatively, these sources demonstrate a wide range of legal devices geared, directly and indirectly, toward promoting and building TOD and joint development projects.
This digest attempts to trace these developments, beginning with an overview of the significant literature since the late 1990s. The literature summary is followed by a comprehensive…
TOD 204: Planning for TOD at the Regional Scale
July 29, 2011
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Why This Book?
The importance of Planning for TOD at the regional Scale
Transit-Oriented Development, or TOD, is typically understood to be a mix of housing, retail and/or commercial development and amenities — referred to as “mixed-use development” — in a walkable neighborhood with high-quality public transportation. To learn the basics of TOD, see the first book in this series, TOD 101: Why TOD and Why Now?
Building successful TOD requires thinking beyond the individual station and understanding the role each neighborhood and station area plays in the regional network of transit-oriented places. It also requires an understanding of the real estate market, major employment centers, and travel patterns in the region. Regional planning for successful TOD projects is really about the coordination of existing plans for growth, transit, housing and jobs, as well as programs and policies at all levels of government.
Coordinating all these TOD…
The Impact of Carsharing on Household Vehicle Ownership
July 8, 2011
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Carsharing in North America is changing the transportation landscape of metropolitan regions across the continent. Carsharing systems give members access to an automobile for short-term use. The shared cars are distributed across a network of locations within a metropolitan area. Members can access the vehicles at any time with a reservation and are charged by time or by mile. Carsharing thus provides some of the benefits of personal automobility without the costs of owning a private vehicle.
Station Area Planning for High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail
June 1, 2011
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Overview
This station area planning document is a reference tool for State transportation departments and local and regional jurisdictions working in partnership with transportation agencies implementing high-speed and intercity passenger rail (HSIPR) projects. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) encourages dialogue with Federal, State, regional, and local partners on ways to better integrate passenger transport and land use. FRA has included topics, concepts, and ideas to assist local jurisdictions and others accomplish successful station area planning and achieve an optimal integration of the station in its context — to ensure ridership growth and capture livability, sustainability, and economic benefits. Rail stations will differ depending on their location — downtown, airport transfer, suburban, and small town. While every station area is unique and should reflect local context, culture and climate, some common principles apply to the creation of forms and public…
Revisiting Factors Associated with the Success of Ballot Initiatives with a Substantial Rail Transit Component
June 1, 2011|Mineta Transportation Institute
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Executive Summary
This report presents the replication of an MTI study conducted in 2001 by Peter Haas and Richard Werbel.1 That research, itself a continuation of an earlier project completed in 2000,2 included an analysis of transportation tax elections in 11 urban areas across the nation and culminated in the identification of 17 community-level factors with potential impact on the success of ballot measures for sales tax increases to fund transportation packages with substantial rail components. Many of the 17 factors identified in the research were moderately to strongly associated with electoral success and failure of transit tax initiatives. Among the key findings from the original (2001) report were:
Passing transit initiatives in communities featuring transit agencies of questionable reputations, in those fielding credible opposition, or those lacking a traffic congestion “crisis” is extremely difficult;
Achieving consensus support from business community leaders, elected…
