Preserving Affordable Housing Near Transit

In a recent report, my day job with the National Housing Trust looked at the number of expiring section 8 and 202 units near fixed guideway transit stations in 8 cities. In these cities, 63% (65,000) of the units that are located within a half mile of the station will have their section 8 and section 202 housing contracts expire in 2012.

This is only eight cities with rail transit but when you think about the mobility that transit allows for people who already have a hard time, it's an even bigger deal when it disappears. A recent Center for Housing Policy report found that low and moderate income families spend as much or more on transportation than they spend on housing. So you can see why it would be important to preserve housing such as this near transit stations in order to give folks more opportunities than they would have if they lived on the periphery. There should be a concerted effort to preserve these affordable units near transit.

So imagine my hope rising when the MacAurthur Foundation along with Enterprise Community Partners pledged $3.5 million dollars to fund new and preserve affordable housing units in the Denver region near transit corridors.

ULC — a nonprofit group affiliated with the Denver Foundation that buys, preserves and develops urban real estate — is expected to be the sole borrower of the fund, and will be responsible for buying property for the TOD housing and partnering with local companies for site redevelopment.

For the TOD housing project, the ULC will target three types of properties — existing, federally assisted rental housing; unsubsidized rental properties; and properties that currently are vacant or used for commercial purposes that have desirable locations for new affordable housing.

This is a way to get out in front of the market. If used intelligently, much of the money could be used for landbanking along future transit corridors then provided to affordable housing developers who could never get in on the market later on. I hope this is replicated in other cities soon.

Any Type of Rubber Tire Can Go on Concrete

I know I give BRT a hard time here. I've been trying really hard to see how BRT works and know that if done right, BRT can be a very effective tool. Cleveland seems to be proving that an investment in true BRT with its own lanes can be very powerful. $4.3 Billion dollars has been invested on the Euclid corridor in Cleveland. Plain Dealer:

One big reason for the energy is the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority's $200 million Euclid Corridor project, which is reshaping Euclid Avenue around a bus rapid transit line. Pundits have long derided the project, funded primarily by federal money, as a boondoggle. Media coverage has focused primarily on businesses that failed during construction, along with the hassle of negotiating a sea of orange traffic cones.

The mortgage-foreclosure crisis, which has left as many as 12,000 homes vacant in Cleveland neighborhoods, has also obscured the impending rebirth of Euclid Avenue. But the developers say they see what's coming. With the RTA project due for a ribbon-cutting in October, they're rushing to renovate empty buildings and buy vacant lots.

But in the back of my mind I'm always worried about the folks who are pushing the technology as an alternative to rail on corridors that need a higher capacity mode. A lot of these folks just want to stall the process or just don't like transit at all. They even complain that higher density development will result. Oh the horror! From the Washington Post:

Cuccinelli, Marshall and other state leaders, including Virginia House of Delegates Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford), acknowledge that they are in the minority. But they have long criticized the rail line to Dulles. Its costly, four-station diversion through Tysons Corner, they say, is more about helping developers reap the profits of high-density development than about moving people to the airport. Its dependence on revenue from the Dulles Toll Road to cover a huge chunk of construction costs would put the burden of any future cost escalations on commuters.
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Howell and other critics of the project believe the solution for the Dulles corridor is in a type of service known as bus rapid transit, an express bus service with dedicated lanes and stations, allowing commuters to move as quickly as they would on a rail line without getting stuck in traffic.

This type of bus service was ruled out by local officials and business leaders because of the difficulty of building dedicated lanes through Tysons Corner and because of the increased number of riders that a true rail line would draw. But it is so much cheaper that it should be revisited, boosters say.

But here is where the wheels on the bus come off for me. Officials in Miami Dade County are discussing the possibility of expanding the South Busway to four lanes to allow for carpoolers and HOT lanes. This is the dream of every road warrior that wants to build a busway instead of a rail line. The idea that they can co-opt the line for cars is always in the back of their minds. While this is not the thought of well intentioned Mayors like Jaime Lerner of Curitiba and Enrique Penalosa of Bogota, it is the thought of many in the United States including Florida County Commissioners. From the Miami Herald:

Imagine widening the Busway from two lanes to four and giving buses and carpoolers with at least three passengers a free ride. Then sell the excess capacity to solo drivers willing to ''buy'' their way out of congestion with a variably priced toll that would rise when lanes are crowded and drop when they aren't.

Instead of encountering dozens of incredibly looooooong lights at the busy cross streets on today's Busway, imagine flying over all the major intersections as the government guarantees a reliable 50-mph journey from Dadeland to Florida City or the turnpike interchange near Southwest 112th Avenue. It may sound pie-in-the-sky today, but that pie could be baking in the near future.

At the urging of County Commissioner Dennis Moss, the Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority are jointly studying ways to bring ''managed lanes'' to the Busway. ''It's the most exciting thing I've worked on in quite a while,'' MPO planner Larry Foutz said.

BRT is built on roads. Cars go on roads. So therefore...

Reading the New Starts Report

I cracked open the 2009 New Starts Report today and started reading through the ratings and commentary, there were a few themes that jumped out at me.

Bus Bias: We know that the FTA has been anti-rail recently from the uproar over the Dulles decision, but the new starts report is laden with pro-bus undertones. It's not just that they are for buses, but that they don't think transit is important and are looking for short term cheap solutions that don't address the problems. I suggest a look at the promotion of BRT in the Small Starts category. Take a look and see how many of them have dedicated guideways, very few, most with a small percentage of the running way. To me, just as Aaron said over at Metro Rider LA today, this is a waste of money. And as much as I like streetcars, they need their own lane if they are going to be doing line haul operations.

The FTA has introduced a new metric to judge projects called Making the Case, which is highly subjective and seems to push against the choice of locally preferred alternative (LPA) by local jurisdictions. While the government might want to be watchful over money, I don't understand where they would know better than the locals about what type of transportation is wanted or needed.

A few examples from Sacramento ,Charlotte, and Orlando.

Sacramento - However, the “case” does not explain why an extension of LRT is better than anything else that can be done to meet mobility needs in the corridor. Downtown express buses are dismissed as adding congestion to downtown streets without quantifying their effect, and of not serving intermediate stations in the existing South LRT line without providing evidence of travel demand to such areas. Joint development opportunities presented in the Making the Case document are reflected in the project’s ratings for transit-supportive land use.

Charlotte - The “case” for the project acknowledges that the Northeast Corridor is low density with auto-oriented development patterns. Given the description of the existing corridor, it is unclear from the “case” for the project why the LRT line is preferred over more economical bus improvements.

Orlando - The CFRCT project would result in a new rail transit line running north-south parallel to I-4 and through downtown Orlando. The “case” for the project provides no discussion of travel patterns within this corridor. While travel time comparisons between rail, bus, and private vehicle were presented for three origin-destination pairs, there was no explanation of why these pairs are highlighted. I-4 is described as congested and getting worse, but the “case” for the project provides no justification that it will effectively serve I-4 travel markets, or why a significant investment in rail operating at 15-minute peak frequencies is necessary in a corridor in which existing bus transit service is described as “limited.”

I'll tell you why Mr. New Starts writer guy, because people don't get excited about riding a bus on a freeway. Developers don't spend money on dense development around freeway bus service. When we think of why cities build rail, which is to attract new riders, new development, and increase operating efficiency, we know now that these things don't matter any more to the folks in the Bush FTA and pushing economical bus improvements gets minimal or no ridership and land use increases. You get what you pay for.

Operations efficiency importance reduced: The operating efficiency measure that was once measured has been rolled into our favorite overarching measure, cost effectiveness. Again people will say that this is rolled into the cost effectiveness measure but not separating it out from the annualized project costs of the C/E limits visibility of the benefits. It also ignores the fact that generating greater ridership numbers by rail with lower per rider costs can grow ridership for transit agencies at a lower operations cost. Remember that the LACMTA spent over a billion dollars on buses because of the consent decree but ridership stayed flat.

As adopted in the June 2007 Guidance on New Starts and Small Starts Policies and Procedures, FTA will no longer evaluate operating efficiencies as stand-alone criteria. Instead, this document clarifies that the operating efficiencies of proposed New Starts projects are adequately captured under FTA’s measure for cost effectiveness.

Ignoring transit's ability to change land use: It seems that there is an attempt to undermine transit lines that do not go through the densest areas. We already know that when you ask them about measuring economic development, they kind of shrug their shoulders and say "we can't do it". In the most recent NPRM the FTA stated, "Although many studies have shown, ex poste, that transit projects have had an impact on economic development, few predictive tools are available in standard practice and development of new tools seems infeasible in the short run." In other words, we don't want to do it.

There is another new measure in the land use category called "Performance and Impacts of Policies". This is supposed to assess how policies to promote transit oriented development are working. Well in the North Corridor in Charlotte, its reported that the market is not there yet. Well duh, the development market follows the line, yet its penalized for not being there yet (gets a medium instead of a high). This is contrary to what we've seen along the South Corridor, which is documented in the North Corridor report.

The Charlotte CBD has seen a considerable amount of residential as well as commercial development in recent years. In the South Corridor, the pace of development has been slow but is accelerating with $300 million in projects completed and over $1.5 million proposed in station areas outside of Uptown.

Strong regional growth is forecast(75 percent by 2030) and a market analysis for the Northeast Corridor suggested that just over 5,000 acres (84 percent of station area land) had the potential for redevelopment. Current market conditions in most Northeast Corridor station areas are relatively weak, however, and barriers exist that appear to limit development potential in the near term.

I'm not quite sure how they came up with a medium rating with the information that they give above. How do they decide to rate these things anyway? I've read the land use guidance and it doesn't make it very clear either. Another thing that does not make sense to me is that even if the city has good transit supportive land use policies, the existing land use could kill it, pushing rail's value for building places instead of just transporting people down and marginalizing it. I'm sure that is their hope, and was pointed out quite well in a recent editorial in the Washington Post:

Shaping cities is both a goal and a consequence of investing in transportation infrastructure. Sadly, the Federal Transit Administration seems unaware of this.
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But this is more than just eleventh-hour federal shock therapy over money. The FTA's stance is emblematic of long-standing, misguided national policy concerning all forms of rail transportation. America has been persistently reluctant to think long-term and to make long-term investments in transit serving both regional and national interests.

Reauthorization is coming up soon, hopefully some of these things and misunderstandings of transit's power to change its environment can be changed.

And They're Back in the Game

Mr. Setty and Demery have put the PublicTransit.us site back up. Finally we can get our hands on all of those passenger density reports they've done. Check it out as its a good amount of material to take in.

Action Results: Dodd/Shelby Amendment Put In Bill

I've heard that Senators Dodd and Shelby passed an amendment that stipulates no funds go towards the implementation of the proposed new rules discussed in the posts below pertaining to HOT lanes and the dreaded cost-effectiveness index. If you get a chance, please send some E-Love to your Senate member on the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee to let them know this needs to stay in the bill. Looks good so far, but it's not over till Bush signs the thing.

The Transit Space Race

So i've been talking a lot in the last few days about bus versus train. And it will be a common theme on this blog but i think that it needs to be balanced as well. But lately I've had an exciting thought running through my head that should be mentioned and from now on will be on the sidebar of this blog...The Transit Space Race.

The Transit Space Race is an idea i came up with after seeing all these cities trying to one up each other in terms of funding larger fixed guideway expansions to attract new jobs and the young talented professionals and thinkers that make up the creative class. The idea of the space race fills me with excitement because so much technology and innovation came from that time period. It's hard not to get excited if you are an urban planner about the coming rail expansions around the country. And while the forces that be try to keep building roads and keep the American Taxpayer buying oil and automobiles, there is a silent majority rising up and leading the way to a more sustainable United States.

If compared to a volcano, this movement has been bubbling under the surface ever since ISTEA was passed in 1992. Every since then new rail lines have been popping up around the country. The success of these initial lines bred confidence that many cities could build these expansions to increase ridership and enhance livability in many cities around the country that were starting to become cool and hip. The eruption came however in November of 2004 when the Denver Region passed the Fastracks Ballot Measure authorizing 119 new miles of rail line and $4.7 Billion dollar investment in the regions infrastructure.

Since this watershed event, many cities around the country are starting to think about how to fund these expansions to essentially keep up with the Jonses. Salt Lake City just passed a ballot measure that raised money for 4 Trax expansions and a commuter rail line. Charlotte passed a half cent sales tax in 1998 and is looking to build 4 lines and a streetcar in addition to the South Corridor which is under construction now. Seattle has grand expansion plans for 40+ miles in addition to the construction underway now. Some cities are feeling a bit left out. Tampa's leaders are worried they will be left behind while cities like Minneapolis have newspaper editorials begging to let them into the race. Other cities are building new lines but have no grand plans for expansion...until they get their acts together, they will be falling behind.

So to say the least this is exciting. If congress can create a way to get under this exploding national expansion and make these dreams possible for more cities in this new century, then perhaps we will have a program as great as the Federal Highway program of the 50s. We'll call this our do-over and this time we'll get it right. Let's shoot for the moon.

So from now on there will be a sidebar on the blog listing cities in the race and cities who wish they were in the race (planning for lines or talking extensively about expansion of major systems) This list will not include the big 5 of NYC, Boston, Chicago, Philly and San Francisco (Pantograph's Home) but rather cities rapidly expanding their transit systems. Washington, Portland and Los Angeles have a head start, but so did the Russian's with Sputnik. So each time a city moves into another category you will know. Perhaps also in the future I'll do a detailed explanation into why i think each city is in the race. So without further ado...Let the Race Begin!

If there are any I'm missing let me know.