Prior to working with Transportation for America, James Corless was a senior planner for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) in San Francisco, and the former California director and national campaign manager for the Surface Transportation Policy Project, bringing over 15 years of transportation and campaign experience to Transportation for America. His work with MTC includes promoting efforts to reduce transportation demand through smart growth strategies, working with local governments to finance and promote transit-oriented development, and overseeing the agency’s environmental justice and livable communities efforts that have included the expenditure of millions of transportation dollars in neighborhoods and low-income communities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. While at STPP, Corless wrote California’s groundbreaking Safe Routes to School law and the first bill authorizing regional growth “blueprints” by transportation planning agencies throughout the state.
Let's step back a second and think about other reasons that VMT might be increasing. In fast growing western and sunbelt states, we are failing to provide enough affordable homes to meet the needs for a growing workforce. People are forced (yes, they actually do not want to be there according to most polls) to live 100 miles or more from where they work, requiring them to get up before dawn and return home past dinner. If we could get people decent and affordable housing closer to their jobs they would gladly take it. This would make them more productive… Read more
While we need to be sensitive to individual liberties, there is a legitimate role for public policy when personal choices behind the wheel put others people’s safety on the line. The right combination of “carrots and sticks” can do a lot to lower these incidents. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller’s proposal to provide grants to states that develop stricter safety laws on cell phone use is a potential step forward. Senators Robert Menendez, Charles Schumer, Kay Hagan and Mary Landrieu have also contributed potential solutions, proposing states lose 25 percent of highway funding unless they ban text-message and e-mail… Read more
This, of course, is a fundamental question and one that deserves more discussion than it usually gets. As Steve Heminger notes, the public is likely to have little appetite for spending a half-billion dollars absent a clear picture of what they will get for it. Without trying to give a complete answer in a quick post, here are a few thoughts: Nearly everyone seems to agree that the existing federal program, begun under President Eisenhower in 1956, has run its course. The Eisenhower program’s urgent goal was to induce states to build a national highway network to connect our… Read more
Any discussion about livability as a goal must acknowledge the federal government’s role in getting us to where we are today. Federal intervention from the 1940s on in promoting highway construction, mortgage lending for suburban homes, funding for far-flung infrastructure and a host of other actions made dispersal of population and dependence on personal automobiles de facto national policy. Those policies were understandable in the 1950s, but as energy has gotten more expensive, congestion has skyrocketed, households have gotten smaller and Americans increasingly crave different lifestyle options than their parents did, those policies just do not meet our needs… Read more
In his thoughtful post below, Mort Downey notes that we are overdue for a serious policy discussion around freight. He suggests that the public sector should ensure that there is a robust and fair framework for competition among an array of private carriers, and should also work to “minimize impacts of various kinds on communities and the environment.” While T4America heartily agrees with both impulses, I especially want to focus to on the second point, because it too often has been missing from such discussions. We must ensure that port and freight investments reduce localized pollutants and increased concentrations… Read more
The jury is in on human-generated carbon emissions, and a powerful consensus has been reached on the need to act to avert climatic disaster. Both AASHTO and Transportation for America are aligned behind reducing emissions, as well as the fuel consumed for transportation by limiting the growth in vehicles miles traveled. Success will require maintaining the infrastructure we have while expanding non-automobile options, even as the population soars to 400 million and beyond. The paradox, of course, is that success in achieving our goals of climate protection and energy security means reducing the potential revenue from the gas tax,… Read more
It is entirely appropriate, even necessary, for our federal investment in transportation to create a future network that allows Americans to accomplish more—being able to get to work, school, shopping, family and friends—without having to driving more. This is the simple principle of efficiency and can be accomplished by providing the public more choices: more options in how to travel, more affordable housing options that are closer to jobs, schools, retail and services to allow for shorter trips, and more incentives in the workplace to encourage telecommuting, carpooling and public transit. Transportation for America supports the goals in HR2724… Read more
First to respond to Ken Orski’s question on the set of proposed transportation performance measures in HR2724, the National Transportation Objectives Act, introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in early June. These are indeed ambitious measures, but we believe we all have a window of opportunity to articulate to the American people what a smarter, safer, and cleaner transportation system will look like and what it will achieve. This is no time for small plans or meager expectations. Cutting traffic fatalities in half by the next two decades—as proposed by both AASHTO and T4America—will be a herculean task, but one… Read more
Related Link: http://www.t4america.org
