Transportation Policy

Editor’s note: This year’s reauthorization of the federal transportation funding bill will be one of the most important opportunities in history for the nation’s advocates of livable streets, sustainable transportation and smart growth. But it’s going to be a complicated process. We’d like to demystify it for you, and to that end we’ll be featuring regular posts from Yonah Freemark, an independent researcher currently working in France on comparative urban development as part of a Gordon Grand Fellowship from Yale University. He is also the author of Streetsblog Network member blog The Transport Politic.

While President Barack Obama promoted wind power and cap-and-trade legislation, VP Joe Biden spent Earth Day talking up transit. Public radio's "The Takeaway" reports that Biden held a presser at a bus maintenance facility in Landover, Maryland, to tout a $300 million investment in hybrid buses and other municipal vehicles as part of the federal stimulus package. Said Biden:

As livable streets advocates work to make headway in breaking the cycle of American auto dependence, the folks at Planetizen have put together a video narrative that explains how we got here. "The Story of Sprawl," a double DVD set produced by Managing Editor Tim Halbur, is a compilation of historical films dating from 1939 to 1965, documenting the confluence of factors that fostered the quintessential land use motif of the 20th century: far-flung, low-density, driving-intensive residential and commercial development. The discs include commentary from planning notables including Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, John Norquist, Neal Peirce, James Howard Kunstler and Robert Cervero, featured in the clip above.

At the end of March, representatives Henry Waxman and Ed Markey introduced an ambitious federal climate bill. This is the real deal -- the legislative centerpiece of President Obama's effort to combat global warming. Transportation contributes about a third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., so any climate bill will have to green the way we get around to be effective. On that score, however, the draft legislation has some glaring omissions.

The New York Times today endorsed a bill from Senator Chuck Schumer, and its companion in the House, co-sponsored by Long Island Democrat Steve Israel, which would offer up to $4,000 in vouchers to drivers who give up their gas guzzlers (averaging 18 miles-per-gallon or worse) in exchange for "a new or used car that exceeds the corporate average fuel economy for vehicles in its class by 25 percent."

As mayor of Milwaukee from 1988 to 2004, CNU President John Norquist made urbanism and livability top priorities. Some of his most notable achievements centered on the redevelopment of highway corridors with street grids and infill, culminating with the demolition of the Park East Freeway in 2002 -- one of the largest voluntary highway removal projects undertaken in America. Other projects, like the introduction of a light rail system, never reached fruition.

The news coming out of Washington last week jacked up expectations for national transportation policy to new heights. Cabinet members Ray LaHood and Shaun Donovan announced a partnership to connect transportation and housing policy, branded as the "Sustainable Communities Initiative." The second-in-command at DOT, Vice Admiral Thomas Barrett, told a New York audience that "building communities" is a top priority at his agency.

In his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama last night emphasized his administration's commitment to keeping the domestic auto industry afloat, while offering only a passing mention to the nation's mass transit systems. Said Obama:

In case you missed the broadcast on Friday, watch this episode of NOW. Told mostly from the perspective of Charlotte's Pat McCrory, the Republican mayor who brought light rail to North Carolina's biggest city, the show hits just about every major transportation issue to surface during the stimulus bill debate. Federal policies that discriminate against transit, state DOTs that throw money at politically-driven highway projects, transit agencies in dire need of federal support as local tax revenues shrivel up -- it's all here.