D.C. City Government Considers “Cash for Close-in Urban Living”
The nation's capital is proposing to use money from the Obama administration's economic stimulus law for a pilot program that would give grants of up to $3,000 for suburban commuters to move closer to transit or their place of work.
The interior of a D.C. Metro station. (Photo: PlanetWare)The Live Near Your Work grants being weighed by D.C. would use $90,000 to offer incentives for 30 local workers to move within 1.5 miles of their office, a half-mile of a Metro rail station or a quarter-mile of a bus stop.
The program would be an "experiment" along the lines of "cash for clunkers," the city's Department of the Environment director told the Washington Examiner:
"The biggest driver of how much energy somebody uses is where theylive," said George Hawkins, DDOE director. "We're trying to get peopleto live closer to where they work. It's not a lot of money, but it'ssomething we want to pilot to see how it goes."
Incentive programs that aim to encourage work-accessible living patterns are already in place in Baltimore, Minneapolis, and Chattanooga, Tennessee.
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