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Jacob Graham
NEW ON THE RAIL~VOLUTION PODCAST
We’re joined by Jacob Graham, Program Manager with MoGo bike share in Detroit, to talk about the Connect D project to better understand the bike share to bus connection.
MoGo bike share in Detroit has been working over the last few years to investigate the bike to bus connection. A 2018 analysis of bike share users showed that comparatively few also were transit riders. Working with local transit providers, MoGo launched a pilot program to offer free bike share access to people purchasing transit passes. The results were fascinating: those who activated their free pass (most of them new to bike share) used the MoGo system more than most existing bike share members. But only a small percentage of transit riders activated the pass.
The results of that pilot program led MoGo, with support from the Better Bike Share Partnership, to work with Wayne State University to survey both bike share users and transit riders, to better understand the barriers to connecting bike share and transit trips. On episode 60 of the Rail~Volution podcast, Jacob Graham, a program manager with MoGo, takes us through the findings of the Connect D bike to bus project and provides an introduction to the mobility landscape in Detroit.
At a time when bike share and scooter programs are in flux, and at a time of exploration of Mobility as a Service, MoGo offers a case study of connecting station-based bike share with a primarily cash-based transit system. The survey results provide insights into rider behavior and preferences for both bike share and transit riders, about their willingness to try other modes, their awareness of the bus and bike share systems and their reasons for using or not using them. Listen to the podcast to hear about the key findings from the survey – related to payment, station location and wayfinding – and how MoGo is drawing on behavioral and demographic data to shape their program.
Tien-Tien Chan
Jessica Roberts
EPISODE 59
We’re talking with Tien-Tien Chan, a Principal at Nelson\Nygaard, and Jessica Roberts, a Principal at Alta Planning and Design, about transportation demand management (TDM) – what it is and how it has changed in recent years to embrace far more than the daily commute.
Transportation demand management – usually referred to by its initials, TDM – is a really wonky term for efforts to encourage people to get around by modes other than driving alone. As Jessica Roberts explains on this podcast, it started during the oil crisis of the 1970s as a way to reduce use of gasoline and continued, via federal funding, as a way to reduce emissions at peak commuting hours. For a very long time, TDM focused primarily on commute trips. But that’s not solely the focus anymore.
The realm for TDM really expanded in the last several years, embracing different kinds of trips, such as discretionary trips made from home, and different contexts. Tien-Tien Chan describes efforts in Austin, Texas, to bring TDM-approaches to the problem of construction workers filling up downtown parking spots or to the challenge of making big events, such as SXSW, more sustainable. TDM also has shifted to focus on a variety of target audiences, from construction workers (as mentioned) to hospital workers to veterans.
Tien-Tien Chan brings to the conversation a wealth of experience working on policy changes to advance TDM goals. Parking policy, curb management policy and land development codes all are opportunities to inject a TDM approach. Jessica Roberts brings experience with a variety of behavior change campaigns and research. From both perspectives, TDM becomes the “softer side of infrastructure,” with huge opportunity for near-term impacts, via education, outreach and engagement with policy solutions
Chan and Roberts also talk about some of the flaws in the way TDM is usually set up and funded, focusing too much on vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) and shifting trips from driving, rather than the benefits to individuals and communities. They share new models for TDM, such as universal basic mobility programs.
Greg Stuart, Executive Director of the Broward County, Florida, Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO)
EPISODE 58
We’re talking with Greg Stuart, Executive Director of the Broward County, Florida, Metropolitan Planning Organization, about the evolution of the county and how a pattern of suburban growth is shifting toward more walkable, bikeable and transit-ready neighborhoods.
When Henry Flagler’s railroad first reached south Florida in the early 20th century, the area we know today as Broward County was primarily agricultural. Major development came with highways and growth took off in the 1980s, in the county’s three large cities –Fort Lauderdale, Pompano and Hollywood – and in smaller cities.
In recent years, as Greg Stuart describes on the podcast, many of these communities have been transformed, with more sidewalks and bicycle lanes, lighting and trees. Though it may not be immediately visible from the highway, South Florida is changing, with more neighborhoods where it’s possible (and safer) to walk or bike to the grocery, restaurants and other destinations. During the stay-at-home mandates of the pandemic, this bike/ped infrastructure found new users and new fans.
Now, thanks to a successful ballot measure to secure a 1% sales tax for transportation, Broward is poised to build out more robust transit options. Some of this already is visible , for example in the coordination of the streetscape with access to Broward County transit and Brightline passenger rail in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Plans also are moving forward for intercity rail on north-south and east-west corridors, as well as for intermodal stations and bus priority corridors.
Listen to the podcast to find out more about the history of land use planning in South Florida, from 1970s era models for suburban and urban growth to the vision for 2100. And hear details about the ways that Broward County is building more resilient infrastructure in response to sea level rise.
Before (left) and after (right ) photos of downtown Fort Lauderdale Mobility Hub,
with Broward County Transit (BCT) Terminal on the left side of the images and Brightline platform at the rear.
Credit: Broward MPO
MAP Broward – Broward Mobility Advancement Program
Jim Murley, Chief Resilience Officer for Miami-Dade County, joins us, describing how South Florida takes a comprehensive approach to resilience. We spoke to him in spring 2020, as the county was beginning to respond to COVID-19. We’re replaying this episode in anticipation of Rail~Volution 2022, October 30 to November 2 in downtown Miami.
Sea level rise, Murley says, or the model of projected sea level rise, is a stress, that amplifies the impact of events, such as the storm surge from hurricanes. Resilient 305 is the comprehensive plan for managing stresses and events. It’s a wide ranging plan, with more than 60 action items, including preserving housing, improving mobility and addressing inequities. Miami-Dade County, the City of Miami and City of Miami Beach created the plan as part of the Rockefeller 100 Cities program. He credits the Rockefeller program with creating a network of CROs (chief resiliency officers) across the United States, changing and elevating the conversation about dealing with everything from storms to pandemics to climate change.
Murley brings long experience to the job – and to the podcast. He refers to foundational US law – the Coastal Lands Management Act – and more recent advances in science and policy in response to large events such as Hurricane Sandy. He describes how the South Florida Climate Change Compact laid the foundation for collaboration around resiliency. He describes the geology and settlement history of Florida – with the state’s first railroad on high ground – and how transportation, development, tourism and storms continue to define the region.
Resilient 305 Full Strategy (PDF) – see also Resilient 305 website
We talk with Kim Cella, Executive Director of Citizens for Modern Transit, and Sheila Holm, Community Outreach Director with AARP St. Louis, about placemaking and activation of transit stops in the St. Louis region.
Recent transformations of transit stops demonstrate the potential to make transit part of the fabric of the community and provide riders with enhanced safety and a pleasant, rewarding experience.
In each case, Citizens for Modern Transit and AARP started by finding out what community members and riders wanted to see. They then enlisted partners, including transit agencies, local jurisdictions, design and planning firms and local businesses, from realtors and banks.
Through these efforts, a bus stop in the City of Maplewood now includes a shelter with a porch swing, a hopscotch game, and improved lighting, as well as artwork to welcome visitors. The Emerson Transit Center in East Saint Louis now boasts a colorful jazz theme, with shaded seating, places to gather and a mural inspired by the work of local high school students. The third transformation, at the Belleville Transit Center, converted the concrete area between bus bays and a MetroLink entrance into an interactive, playful space with musical custom bike racks, benches, and artwork inspired by the city’s annual art fair.
Listen to the podcast to find out the details involved, from budgets to MOUs, and the payoff. For Citizens for Modern Transit, rider enthusiasm and a feeling of ownership have been beyond expectations. For AARP, the projects are making transit spaces safer for users of all ages. “Once we expose people to these stops,” Holm says, they are more open to trying transit. In the case of the Emerson Transit Center, the transformation also played a role in getting a major grant from the state to bring infrastructure and jobs via a 911 call center.
Each transformation was led by Citizens for Modern Transit and AARP St. Louis. Here are the additional partners for each.
The next transformation will be at the North Hanley Transit Center in collaboration with Bi-State Development/Metro Transit and Team Better Block.
AARP St Louis – Missouri Livable Communities Initiative
Citizens for Modern Transit – Transit Stop Transformation
Belleville Transit Center June 2022
Emerson Park Transit Center August 2021
Maplewood MetroBus Stop June 2020
On this episode, Elias Valencia, a planner with the City of Phoenix, and Victor Vidales, a local resident and business owner, talk about the creation of the South Central TOD Community Plan, which was passed by the City of Phoenix city council in March of 2022.
A 5.5 mile light rail extension currently under construction in South Central Phoenix is set to open in 2024. The TOD plan, Victor Vidales says, builds on community interest and involvement with the light rail project. Residents knew the LRT project was pitched as a tool of economic development, with $1 in investment yielding $8 in return. The community wanted to secure that benefit for existing residents, he says, especially given the area’s history of disinvestment and redlining.
Half of the residents of the corridor, Valencia shares, are renters for whom housing and transportation eat up more than 60 percent of their income. They are vulnerable, Vidales says, and already struggling on the fringes given the high cost of living.
Vidales, who grew up in South Central amidst gang violence, has been involved with efforts to improve his community since he returned after military service. Now raising a family and running a business on the corridor, he says the TOD plan is unlike any previous plan he’s known because it shows the “fingerprints of the community.”
Along with capturing the vision of residents for what they want their community to become (in terms of land use, health, housing, mobility, economic development and green systems), it has a strong emphasis on strategies to minimize displacement and includes guidelines for developers that Vidales helped create. While non-regulatory, the plan is a clear guide to community priorities.
Already, Vidales says, a strong community voice pushed a developer of workforce housing to add more units affordable to existing residents. But, Vidales says, his hope is that community members can become the developers themselves. He wants to see skills and wealth grow in the community as a result of the investment. “There’s a human development side to this corridor that has to happen along with the physical and built environment,” he says.
Creation of the TOD community plan was funded by a grant from the Federal Transit Administration and builds on previous community plans funded through HUD Sustainable Communities grants.
South Central Transit-Oriented Development Community Plan
Phoenix City Council Meeting, March 2, 2022 – discussion of the TOD plan starts at the 33 minute mark
We’re joined by Lea Hargett, chief strategy consultant with JOG Associates, a Minnesota-based boutique consulting firm, and Johnny Opara, President and CEO of JO Companies, an affordable housing real estate developer in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Johnny Opara remembers growing up in a townhouse in the suburbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul, a home he only realized later was “affordable.” On this podcast he talks with Lea Hargett about his path to becoming developer of The Hollows, a 62-unit workforce housing development in St Paul, set to open January 2023.
Opara is a member of the first cohort to participate in the Developers of Color Initiative created by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Twin Cities. The goal of the Initiative is to go beyond training to provide implementation capacity and supports to get cohort members’ projects over the finish line. Key elements include access to capital, strengthening their professional networks, and providing a learning platform to deepen their knowledge and expertise. The program sets out to address racial equity and reverse a legacy of exclusion, Hargett says.
Listen to the podcast to hear Opara’s journey to closing on The Hollows. Located on transit and near both education and employment options, it offers four different types of units, Alcoves, Studios, one and two bedrooms, with rents at Fair Market Value (FMR) and for households earning 60% and 30% of Area Median Income (AMI). His goal, Opara says, is to build housing that’s affordable with a market rate feel, where residents can have a sense of pride about where they live and “create memories at the kitchen table” just as he did growing up.
We’re joined by Yonah Freemark and Harriet Tregoning for a discussion of the ways federal policy and funding could do more to support better outcomes for people.
Yonah Freemark is a senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Harriet Tregoning is director of NUMO, the New Urban Mobility alliance. They are co-authors of a new report, Charting out a Next-Generation Place-Based Federal Transportation Policy: Recommendations for more Equitable, Sustainable Mobility.
Transportation is the biggest contributor to climate-changing emissions and generational wealth is tied to access to opportunities. Yet, Tregoning says, affordable access is not what our transportation systems are built to provide. Spending “caters to vehicles, speed and congestion and is indifferent to people, especially if they are not in those vehicles.”
We need, Freemark says, “a mode shift in thinking” at multiple levels of government, about everything from who’s involved in selection of projects, to decisions about use of right of way, to what we require from new developments.
More funding for capacity building would foster a community-wide view of transportation impacts. That, in turn, would lead to involvement of more partners from the start, closer coordination with land use and affordable housing decisions, and better access to jobs, health care, parks, social services and schools. “We should think about money in terms of all these aspects of life together,” Freemark says.
Listen to the podcast – and read the report – for specific recommendations and examples of ways to change processes to achieve better outcomes.
“It’s a planner’s inclination to have something special. . . . There are big shiny projects that make people excited, but people are also excited about being able to get home from work on time. And they’re excited about having 15-minute service and a reliable transit system.” – Mary Kate Morookian
“Start with those who have been hurt the most by past plans, by past development in a community, by economic disparities. . . . There is no community that is not rich in that asset. Do you value those people and center them in your process and invite them into a conversation that’s honest?” – Aidil Ortiz
Listen in on a conversation between Mary Kate Morookian and Aidil Ortiz about how “hard to reach” community members are helping shape an update to the Durham Transit Plan. Morookian is a transit planner in Kimley-Horn’s Raleigh office and Ortiz is founder and owner of Aidilisms, a consultancy that focuses on connection, culture and equity, based in Durham, North Carolina.
When the proposed Durham-Orange Line Light Rail project was discontinued in 2019, a new public engagement process was launched to determine how to reallocate the funds and update the Durham Transit Plan, which was originally approved in 2012. The update became an opportunity to revisit basic assumptions about transit, who rides it, what they say they most need and who might ride under different scenarios.
New expectations about equitable community engagement also shaped the approach. This podcast tells the story of using Engagement Ambassadors to reach everyday transit riders, people who are low income or housing insecure, people with disabilities, seniors, and youth. Aidil and Mary Kate describe the collaboration and communication involved in creating training materials and surveys. The use of Engagement Ambassadors alongside traditional workshops and surveys resulted in community feedback that matches the community: a demographically representative sample.
One big take-away from community engagement: people are less focused on the “big project” than on making sure transit works better for them. People are “agnostic about how we deliver as long as we deliver,” Aidil said. They want to be able to get to jobs, get home from jobs, and pick up kids from daycare. They want more frequency, later service and direct connections so that they don’t spend so long in transit. Community feedback also focused on bus stops, sidewalks and safety.
Feedback from the community is being used to plot the preferred scenarios of projects, to make sure that projects could be paid for by 2040, which is the life of the plan. Then the revised plan will go to a vote.
On this episode, we talk with Adie Tomer, Senior Fellow at Brookings Metro, about why transit-oriented development (TOD) is a key strategy for tackling climate change.
Transit-friendly neighborhoods – places where destinations are reachable by walking, bicycling or transit – generate much lower emissions. The average trip length for people in these neighborhoods is 4.4 miles versus 9.1 miles in non-walkable, auto-oriented communities. Denser, more climate-friendly neighborhoods also create huge infrastructure efficiencies. It’s four times cheaper to connect broadband networks, while stormwater runoff (a critical climate challenge) is 74% lower in walkable neighborhoods.
In the race to bring down emissions to meet climate targets, we need to figure out how to build TOD neighborhoods at scale. Right now, Tomer says, “it’s too cheap to build the thing we shouldn’t have,” places that require long, emissions-heavy trips. But there are signals that the costs of climate-unfriendly practices are beginning to hit the market. “Actuarial folks would like a change,” Tomer says. Insurance companies are paying more attention to risks associated with major weather events, from fires to floods. Tomer calls for renewed efforts to provide “climate rich data,” including not only walkscores but also the average flood risk of a neighborhood or the average trip distance. We need zoning changes and more investment in affordable housing near jobs and other destinations. “We are not lacking technical solutions,” he says, but we have to crack the code for getting it done at scale.
TOD and the Climate Opportunity by Adie Tomer (Presentation at Rail~Volution 2021 Virtual Conference, October 2021)
A new climate finance framework for investing in urban resilience by Joseph W. Kane and Adie Tomer (Brookings December 2021)
Wildfire Risk in California Drives Insurers to Pull Policies for Pricey Homes by Leslie Scism (Wall Street Journal, January 19, 2022)
The Best EV Charging Solution that No One is Talking About by Kea Wilson (Streetsblog USA, January 26, 2022)
“To the best of my knowledge, this is the first of its kind collaboration: a public sector [agency] and a transit advocacy group working together to completely transform the way our community moves. . . . And it all started with the Transit Alliance. You have probably heard me before, but I’m proud to say again, the Transit Alliance Miami gave our community a voice.” – Carlos Cruz-Casas
“We cannot ask the public to stay engaged over years and years of planning. Part of the success of the Better Bus Network is that . . . we compressed the period in a very creative way for community input. And that’s really what drove the success of the project.” – Grace Perdomo
Join us for a 1-1 Conversation with Grace Perdomo, Executive Director of Transit Alliance Miami, and Carlos Cruz-Casas, Deputy Director of the Miami-Dade County Department of Transportation and Public Works, about how a nonprofit organization led a major bus network redesign in cooperation with county transit officials.
In October 2021, the Better Bus Network was approved by the Miami-Dade County Board of Commissioners, culminating a planning and community engagement process led by Transit Alliance Miami in collaboration with the Miami-Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works. This big win represents the first time a nonprofit organization has led a major bus redesign project. It’s also a measure of a huge culture shift from 2015, when Transit Alliance Miami took action to try to reverse budget cuts. Through creative, often provocative advocacy and painstaking work to listen to the community and build a coalition, Transit Alliance Miami changed the conversation. At the same time, the transit agency took the hard steps of giving up some control in service of the shared goal of better transit in the region.
Listen to the podcast to find out how this collaboration came together as well as details about community priorities for bus service and how they shaped the final plan.
Miami-Dade County Better Bus Network Project Page
Better Bus Network Final Plan (PDF) – from a September 2021 Public Hearing
“Agencies know how to pour concrete. agencies know how to schedule bus service. Agencies don’t know how to do affordable housing policy, but we’ve got no choice. We have to think about those issues. We have to think about issues that go beyond sort of the organizational footprint of the agency, which means we got to work with other agencies.” — Christof Spieler
“I think that [the] transit housing link is not discussed enough and it is not planned for, because if you’re not thinking about these things, you can’t talk about transit-oriented development. You can’t take on the zoning issues that keep a lot of these transit-oriented developments from happening. It avoids all of the really hard stuff while saying the equity matters.” — Monica Tibbits-Nutt
How do transit board members lead change and bring community voice? Find out in this conversation with Monica Tibbits-Nutt, former Vice-Chair of the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board, and Christof Spieler, a former board member for Houston METRO, moderated by Grace Crunican, former General Manager of Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) in San Francisco, and a current member of the Rail~Volution Board of Directors. This was a session at the 2021 Rail~Volution virtual conference.
Transit agency board members have a core role in approving finances and overseeing policy decisions. As we hear on the podcast, a lot depends on how board members approach these core board roles. By asking questions, influencing board agendas and interfacing with both the community and agency staff, board members can reframe the discussion about the role of transit and linkages between transit and housing, homelessness and equity.
Both Tibbits-Nutt and Spieler are regular daily transit riders with a professional background in transportation and planning and a deep commitment to listening to the community. Tibbits-Nutt made a point of visiting every garage and every break room, seeing her role as representing agency workers as well as the public. Spieler frequently joined community meetings. talking to with residents about how to make transit better. Often, both Spieler and Tibbits-Nutt say, concerns from the community were already on the radar of staff. The role of a board member, then, could be to bring issues forward, to push the board to discuss policy changes and, once enacted, to back them up.
Too often, both say, transit boards have not grappled openly with the way transit intersects with housing, homelessness and other social issues. Budget discussions are too often about line items and not the community outcome involved. Discussions of fare policy or safety too often are focused more on white comfort than the data and facts involved. A courageous transit board member has power to shift the discussion, push for collaboration with other agencies or municipalities, and help to pass policies that specifically define the agency role in housing and other social issues that intersect with transit.
This episode presents a conversation between transit agency CEOs: Debra Johnson, CEO and General Manager of the Regional Transportation District (RTD) in Denver and Peter Rogoff, CEO of Sound Transit in Seattle, moderated by Adelee Le Grand, CEO of the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART) in Tampa. This was the Wednesday plenary at the 2021 Rail~Volution virtual conference.
Hear from these leaders about the status of capital projects in Seattle, Denver and Tampa. Peter Rogoff describes the transit expansion underway in Seattle, with expectations to triple light rail service in the next three years. In the Denver region, Debra Johnson shares, they’ve built many of the projects authorized in 2004 (in a program called Fastracks), but have limited financial capacity for the remaining projects. They are working with partners on a “common set of facts” and finding local sources of financing. In Tampa, a series of capital projects are on hold after the state supreme court declared unconstitutional a voter approved funding referendum.
In each region, the pandemic, changing ridership patterns, and fluctuating funding or costs have led agencies to rethink and adjust plans. Johnson and Rogoff describe how Denver and Seattle have responded to the pandemic and their efforts to bring back or expand service. They dig into cost estimating and ridership projections, acknowledging that the era of high commuter peaks based on “bankers hours” likely are over.
The shift in patterns of ridership in turn means shifts in service planning and even maintenance. It especially highlights the importance of strong working relationships with partners, including unions, building trades and major employers.
It’s a lively conversation, with mention of fare policy, Uber & Lyft, micro transit, financing with TIFIA loans and new approaches to workforce recruitment. At a time of great change, these transit leaders stress the importance of moving ahead and staying nimble in order to provide reliable service for customers.
Johnson calls for a new narrative about transit, noting that “there has not been a case of transit as a mass spreader of Covid.” Rogoff points to young people, whose focus on “being stewards of the planet is changing the conversation at state and national capitals.” Transit, they affirm, provides critical access for essential workers and choice riders both. It is a route around or through congestion and an imperative in facing climate change.
“There hasn’t been one solid case where transit has been a mass spreader of COVID. And so, as we talk about what we can do going forward, it’s changing our narrative. It’s creating our own story as we go full steam ahead. We want to entice people to get back on board our vehicles and then ensure that we have a workforce geared toward being customer centric, because that’s paramount.” – Debra Johnson, CEO and General Manager, Regional Transportation District (RTD), Denver, Colorado
“This whole idea that telecommuting is going to cause the whole rationale behind our transit expansion to be called into question? I don’t see it. We’re in a region where people care a lot about the climate. There are all kinds of imperatives to get people out of cars and onto public transit.” – Peter Rogoff, CEO, Sound Transit, Seattle, Washington
A 1-1 Conversation between Collie Greenwood, Deputy General Manager of Operations at MARTA, and Jacob Vallo, Senior Director of TOD & Real Estate at MARTA.
On the podcast, Collie shares background about Atlanta’s bus system redesign, which is in process, while Jacob delves into the work of the agency’s transit-oriented development (TOD) program.
Collie describes the effort to make sure the bus system project started off with a full understanding of the area’s physical, historical, racial, fiscal and political landscape. Engagement with an array of stakeholders set the tone and established “the challenge of really facing a landscape built on a racist framework and committing to an anti-racist result.” The bus and BRT, he says, are core elements of the region’s transit expansion because they reach more households, especially households in poverty, and more jobs.
Looking to the future, he talks about the new Five Points station and the vehicles that will serve it. “It’s my hope that in the next five or ten years, you won’t recognize the old place,” and transit will be valued as “social force and a beacon of the community it serves.”
Jacob details the efforts of the TOD program to focus on housing affordability and attracting developers to MARTA’s south and west lines, which serve predominantly black communities. This idea of new investment, he says, brings with it a lot of fear on the part of local residents. “There is a trust gap.” He talks about efforts to listen to the communities and build their concerns and desires into RFPs, including requirements for more affordable units pegged to the Area Median Income of the zip code not the region. He describes partnerships with JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs dedicated to providing capital to support greater affordability and to preserve existing affordable housing.
The podcast captures the dynamic of an agency working hard to bring transit planning, operations and TOD into “lock-step.” Collie and Jacob talk about the potential for transit and TOD to be a source of joy and delight and freedom for the community. And they describe the commitment to details and basics on the part of MARTA staff, top to bottom, that makes that vision come to life.
“I think it’s just really important that we recognize that today’s inequity is not just evidence of yesterday’s problem, but it’s the source of tomorrow’s embarrassment if we don’t do anything about it. So these days you do have to strive for equity, but you also carefully have to convey to everyone that systemic inequity and its racist underpinnings are still real. And it’s not a condemnation of individuals. It’s more of a focus on the landscape that we happen to exist in.” — Collie Greenwood
“You can’t deliver transit without thinking about displacement and what it’s going to do to the people. Having the community development arm in lockstep with the transit planning design is really critical, so that you have the ingredients of an equitable transit development project.” — Jacob Vallo
Photo credit: APANO
“It’s really about being rooted in the place. And hence comes to all of these other things, you know, affordable housing, parks and nature, access, safety, safe routes to school, everything. You know, it’s all connected then.” — Gauri Rajbaidya
“The first thing we did was the visioning. And then we built the community garden. And then we ran these night markets and really activated an under-utilized space. We’ve worked on advocating for traffic and safety improvements . . . . What kind of smaller projects can you do to demonstrate yes, we’re following this vision and taking the community demands and asks to heart and moving those priorities. And then scaling up to developing things like affordable housing.” — Duncan Hwang
On our latest podcast, we hear from Duncan Hwang and Gauri Rajbaidya about the community vision behind the Orchards of 82nd, a TOD project in Portland, Oregon.
Transcript Episode 47 – The Community Knows What They Want
Duncan Hwang is interim co-executive director at APANO (Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon). APANO’s offices and an event space are on the ground floor of Orchards of 82nd. Gauri Rajbaidya, a senior associate with SERA Architects. SERA teamed with APANO and other partners (ROSE Community Development, Housing Development Center and O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders) to design and build this mixed-use affordable apartment building in outer Southeast Portland.
Recalling how they each became involved in the Orchards project, Duncan describes APANO’s evolution from community organizing to community development, while Gauri says his involvement started with music, playing with and for other immigrants.
As Duncan and Gauri explain, the Orchards of 82nd originated in community visioning for the Jade District, one of Portland’s Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative areas. The 2014 Jade District Visioning Plan involved a diverse community, including white residents and Latino, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Russian-speaking residents. The community identified the vacant furniture store at 82nd and Division as both an eyesore and an opportunity. They also raised concerns about transportation safety, a need for community gathering spaces and green space. Portland Metro, the region’s MPO, observed the visioning sessions, learning that the vacant furniture store was a key acquisition target for the community. With a long-term view of TOD along TriMet’s future Division Transit Project, Metro bought the building, leasing it short-term to APANO as an impromptu community site.
Gauri and Duncan talk about the long sequence from vision to building. Trying to “do urban renewal in a more community-driven way,” they started with a small amount of Tax Increment Financing and slowly built community trust before taking on the $20 million affordable housing project. They talk too, about long-time advocacy along the corridor and the tradeoffs involved in transportation projects. Also, don’t miss the brief discussion of one other outcome of long-standing community-based work: the transfer, almost completed, of 82nd Avenue from state to city control.
On our latest podcast, we get to know Rail~Volution’s new CEO, Tamar Shapiro.
Shapiro talks about her first weeks on the job – part whirlwind, part intense listening – and the kinds of issues and projects she’s worked on in the past, from affordable housing to new mobility. She shares her love of cities: the residential and commercial density of central Philadelphia; the shop owners and commercial main streets of Edinburgh; the bike, transit and pedestrian parade following a soccer game in Leipzig. Talking about the moment we’re in, she sees opportunities to rethink public investment, to create systems that work for everyone and deliver community wealth.
What are the biggest challenges to livability? Repairing a transportation system deeply shaped by racism and inequity. And addressing climate change. “The impact of carbon intensive transportation falls on the same communities that tend not to have access. It’s imperative to tackle both.”
Listen to the podcast to her Shapiro’s thoughts about busting silos and redefining success in transportation and land use.
On this episode of the Rail~Volution Podcast, Kevin Corbett, President and CEO of NJ TRANSIT, talks with WSP’s Dan Baer about the turn-around at NJ TRANSIT, a process Corbett compares to “getting out of the transit hunger games.”
When Kevin Corbett came on board in early 2018 he faced challenges familiar to many transit agencies: lack of funding, pressure to use capital funds for operating and an aging fleet. NJ TRANSIT also faced a backlog of capital projects, many arising from the extreme weather event Superstorm Sandy. Corbett describes the crucial support he received from New Jersey’s governor to tackle the problems and get NJ TRANSIT set for a strong future and the economy of New Jersey along with it.
Corbett came to NJ TRANSIT as an executive leader in the public and private sectors with a background in logistics, transportation and large-scale capital project management. He led the development of NJ TRANSIT’s first ever 10-year strategic plan and 5-year rolling capital plan covering bus, rail, light rail, paratransit services and more. The plan allows the agency to measure progress and prioritize initiatives and projects. It is flexible enough to adapt to evolving conditions, including the significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Corbett compares this moment for transit to aviation between 1910 and 1940: transit similarly needs dramatic investment to make infrastructure resilient, improve air quality and allow all people to reach their potential. Corbett and Baer discuss a range of projects, from river crossings to the Hoboken terminal restoration, from a state of the art bus garage to a bus system redesign beginning in Newark, from new templates for transit-oriented development to a workforce that reflects the state’s demographics. Even with the changes due to COVID, Corbett says, “We will be back because we’re so densely populated. Riders will be back. We are fully prepared to welcome them back.”
We’re joined by Christopher Puchalsky and Andrew Simpson from the Philadelphia Office of Technology, Infrastructure and Sustainability to talk about The Philadelphia Transit Plan, regional rail improvements, transit service levels and agency coordination.
The Philadelphia Transit Plan: A Vision for 2045, February 2021 – City of Philadelphia
We’re joined by Robert del Rosario, Director of Service Development and Planning at AC Transit in the Bay Area in California. Find out how regional operators are coordinating in unprecedented ways to try to “do this recovery correctly.”
AC Transit is the largest bus-only transit agency in California, serving the East Bay with local routes, school support and transbay service into San Francisco. AC Transit is a member of the Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force convened by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the region’s MPO. As part of that task force and on their own initiative, regional operators have been meeting frequently, collaborating on a Healthy Transit Plan during the pandemic and continuing to focus on schedule coordination, regional hubs and approaches to a regional priority network. AC Transit also coordinates closely with local cities, adjusting transit in response to changing uses of streets, such as for walking or dining or parklets, including a bus-stop parklet in Albany. Robert sees opportunities for quick-build tactical urbanism for transit, such as dedicated transit lanes, so that “we come out of recovery with transit operations being smoother or better.”
During the pandemic AC Transit rolled out new BRT (bus rapid transit) service through east Oakland to downtown Oakland. It is now one of their most popular routes, reflecting transit’s role in providing transportation for essential workers. The podcast conversation gets into funding challenges, discussing the idea of federal support for regional coordination or to stabilize operating revenue. “We’ve shown that the number of people riding transit is contingent upon the amount of service that we can put out there. It sounds like an obvious thing, but if we kept the same amount of service out there and had a steady revenue stream, then we can retain ridership.”
On this episode, we’re joined by Sharon Roerty and Maki Kawaguchi, who describe the origins and uses of a framework for understanding, creating and measuring public spaces.
Transcript – Episode 42: A Framework for Inclusive Healthy Places
Sharon Roerty is an urban planner and senior program officer with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Maki Kawaguchi is an architect, urban designer and Director at Gehl. Their organizations have worked together to develop the Inclusive Healthy Places Framework. As Sharon says on the podcast, it arose from a desire to figure out why some places feel like everyone is welcomed. The Framework is a tool with a set of well-defined metrics that can be flexibly applied to fit almost any situation or location. It is a methodology for understanding, evaluating and engaging people with places; and a tool for systems change.
On the podcast, Sharon and Maki share stories about transforming places. They speak of the way the Framework came together around the idea of the potential and power of public spaces to provide dignity for all people. They talk about design and “citizen science” and the way that the metrics in the Framework can be used to help rethink how communities plan and sustain equity and inclusion in public spaces, not as an afterthought but as a through line. The Framework is currently being applied with four partners: American Planning Association, Local Initiatives Support Corporation, National Recreation and Park Association, and New Jersey Community Capital.
Listen to the podcast – and dive into the Framework.
EPISODE 35 – The Healthy Heart of a Community
EPISODE 31- Optimizing Transit – for the Pandemic and Community
EPISODE 30 – Build with Health in Mind
On this episode, Dan Nissenbaum describes how the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) is working to deliver capital to projects that advance racial equity.
Nissenbaum, CEO of LIIF, has worked in community development finance for 25 years, including at Goldman Sachs and Chase Manhattan banks. He says the experience of the last year – of the pandemic, economic downturn, and racial reckoning – shows that while the industry has done a lot of good, it has not been intentional enough about race – or gender. LIIF is trying to do that, with “hard internal work, top to bottom.” They are developing a new framework to hold themselves accountable, offering new loan products, recasting credit standards, identifying financing criteria that inhibit racial equity and advocating at the federal level for changes to the Community Reinvestment Act.
LIIF’s new strategic plan focuses on affordable housing, early care and education. They have pushed into equitable transit-oriented development (ETOD), including partnering with transit agencies on “upstream” investments that stabilize housing and small businesses in areas where new transit will be coming. Through involvement with initiatives such as SPARCC and Purpose Built Communities they are finding out what communities want from development – long term equity and to control the assets. To do this, he says, we’re going to need to change systems.
EPISODE 6 – Investing in People and Places, with Nancy Andrews
EPISODE 15 – High Impact Investing in Low Wealth Communities
EPISODE 20 – Transit & Housing – Joint Development in Seattle
On this episode, we’re talking with Erica Eggleton about estimating the energy demand of electric buses.
Photo credit: King County Metro
Eggleton, a graduate student at the University of Washington, is on a team developing an open source tool called Route Dynamics. The tool takes in data about proposed routes, from elevation to ridership levels to acceleration rates, and pumps out a prediction for battery usage. Once the data is in, the variables can be tweaked – less hilly? fewer passengers? slower acceleration? – to understand how they affect battery use and therefore the range of the vehicle. The tool is being tested in collaboration with King County Metro in Seattle, Washington.
As Eggleton says, any bicycle rider understands how hills and the weight you carry affect the ride. Similarly, Route Dynamics provides predictive data useful for understanding route and fleet options. The tool could be used to plot options for any electric vehicle or fleet.
A great podcast for those interested in electric vehicles and their potential to decarbonize transportation and make a healthier ride.
EPISODE 25 – Bus Yard Housing – The SFMTA, which manages all surface transportation in the city and county of San Francisco, recognized the need to upgrade Potrero Yard, a bus maintenance and operations facility, as part of a planned battery electric conversion of the bus fleet.
On this episode, Camron Gorguinpour, PhD, Director of Mobility Solutions at ENGIE Impact, describes the implementation of 16,000 electric buses in Shenzhen, China, and what we can learn.
Photo credit: World Resources Institute
At a time of increased attention to transportation’s impact on climate change and the reliability of our power grid, this podcast delves into opportunities and barriers for electric fleet conversion. Gorguinpour looks at operations, including types of routes, charging stations and procurement of infrastructure as well as the challenges of providing electricity for fleets. While electric buses cost more up front, total cost of ownership may be less over the life of the vehicle because of lower fuel and maintenance costs. He talks about the importance of scaling and finding better financing mechanisms, possibly in collaboration with utility companies. Two World Resources Institute reports address opportunities and common barriers, for policy makers and cities either just starting out or looking to scale up. “This is a new technology,” Gorguinpour says, “These are new vehicles that are being developed. As manufacturers learn, as cities learn, the quality of the product dramatically improves.”
Barriers to Adopting Electric Buses – World Resources Institute
How to Enable Electric Bus Adoption in Cities Worldwide – World Resources Institute
Of related interest:
SEPTA’s Path to a Low Emissions Bus Fleet
RTD Battery Electric Bus Fleet
TransLink Low Carbon Fleet Strategy
California Innovative Clean Transit (ICT) Regulation Fact Sheet
This episode is a 1-1 Conversation between Angie Rivera-Malpiede, Chair of the Board of Directors of Denver’s Regional Transportation District, and Cindy Chavez, a member of the boards of Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), Caltrain, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in California.
Angie Rivera-Malpiede
Photo Credit: Regional Transportation District
Cindy Chavez
Photo Credit: Santa Clara County, CA
On the podcast, each of these leaders describes how they came to be on transit agency boards. Rivera-Malpiede, the only Latinx on the RTD board or senior leadership, learned community issues first hand as a volunteer and bus rider. She sees herself as a voice for the disenfranchised, listening and conferring with her constituents about policy issues. Chavez, active in labor and elections, was motivated by safety issues to put herself forward as the one who tries to solve problems.
Both women speak eloquently and passionately about the role transit plays in making communities stronger. They see the issues from the perspective of regular riders – who “just want the bus to be there” – and in the context of regional innovation and vitality, particularly “how we share the opportunities that come with transit investment, from economic access and moving goods and services to climate change.” They discuss a host of issues that their agencies are facing – first-last mile, fleet electrification, affordable housing initiatives and workforce development. And they talk about getting younger women involved – “call us!”
RTD First Mile Last Mile Strategy
RTD Workforce Initiative Now (WIN)
RTD Battery Electric Bus Fleet
RTD Dec 2019 blog post about bus fleet electrification
RTD Transit-Oriented Development (TOD)
Globeville Elyria-Swansea Community Land Trust
Caltrain Transit-Oriented Development Policy – February 2020 presentation to Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board. Caltrain announcement of adopted policy.
Santa Clara County Measure A Housing Bond
This episode features four passionate speakers about how to navigate forward from the challenges of 2020. We’re joined by Calvin Gladney, CEO of Smart Growth America; Adonia Lugo, PhD, interim chair of the urban sustainability program at Antioch University Los Angeles and a core organizer for The Untokening; Roberto Requejo, Program Director at Elevated Chicago; and Dr. Joshua Schank, Chief Innovation Officer at the LA Metro Office of Extraordinary Innovation. This episode is a recording of the October 12 closing keynote from the Rail~Volution 2020 virtual conference.
The podcast focuses on the challenges of building equitable, transit-oriented communities, especially coming out of 2020. The speakers, each from different perspectives, urge listeners to rethink assumptions – about the cultural values black and brown communities attach to built forms (Adonia Lugo); about innovation and equity in mobility (Joshua Schank); and about metrics that are accountable to community (Roberto Requejo). The title of the podcast quotes Requejo and refers to Just Power, a Chicago coalition working to reimagine civic power.
Emerging from 2020 doesn’t mean returning to “normal.” It means making “equitable development the expectation rather than the exception” and showing how equitable transit-oriented development (ETOD) saves money when it’s well done (Roberto Requejo). It means moving forward with equity issues that are finally getting traction, such as authentic community engagement, bus priority and slow streets (Joshua Schank). It means seeing connections across different social movements – perhaps especially the climate movement – and recognizing that “relationships are the original infrastructure”(Adonia Lugo).
We’re joined by Peter Calthorpe, Senior Vice President, HDR | Calthorpe, one of our foremost thinkers about urban design and an innovator of transit-oriented development, along with Allison Brooks, Executive Director of the Bay Area Regional Collaborative (BARC). This podcast is a recording of a keynote discussion from the Rail~Volution 2020 transit and community development conference.
“There are different forms of transit. Whether it’s auto-free streets or electric motorcycles, different cultures, different economies, different parts of the world need to be thought of in creative ways.” – Peter Calthorpe
On the podcast, Calthorpe shares what he thinks will be the next generation of TOD, addressing our shortage of affordable housing and the declining commercial spaces along our arterials. To set the context, he ranges from China (where only 30% of households own cars) to Ho Chi Minh City (where a lane for electric motorcycles moves people as well or better than high-capacity transit) to Mexico City (where the average commute is three hours) to California (where housing is only 50% affordable). Worldwide, Calthorpe says, the virus called sprawl has been growing for fifty years, taking shape in many places as “low income, high-density sprawl” and in the US as “low-density sprawl.”
“We are encouraging all the wrong forms of mobility,” Calthorpe says, but “we know if we build the right kind of environments, we can get much better outcomes,” including lower greenhouse gas emissions, lower household costs – “a really important point for the struggling working families in this country” – lower infrastructure costs, lower land consumption, better health for residents.
Listen to hear more about his vision for repurposing arterial roadways into “grand boulevards” with infill housing and high capacity transit, possibly ART, “automated rapid transit.”
Emerald Cities: Planning for Smart and Green China
Chongquing 2035 – blog post by Peter Calthorpe
Revolutionizing Transit and Solving the Silicon Valley Housing Crisis – blog post by Joe Distefano and Peter Calthorpe
“We have helped create a generation of people who can send their kids to college. We are joyous in that.” – Nilda Ruiz
This episode is the third in a series focused on health and equitable transit-oriented communities. See also Episode 31: Optimizing Transit – for the Pandemic and Community and Episode 30: Build with Health in Mind.
We’re joined by Nilda Ruiz, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Rose Gray, Senior Vice President, Community and Economic Development, both at APM (The Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha or Association of Puerto Ricans on the March).
APM has been working in the mostly Puerto Rican community of eastern North Philadelphia since the 1970s, on housing and a range of social programs meant to stabilize families and build wealth. APM says, “We believe in managing economic change.”
In 2003, they started working on what would become Paseo Verde, a mixed-income transit-oriented development (TOD) near a SEPTA train station and several bus lines. Paseo Verde, which opened in late 2013, was the first development in the US and the second in the world to achieve LEED for Neighborhood Development platinum certification. It includes a federally qualified health center and pharmacy, as well as a financial opportunity center and outdoor space. “Building green and healthy,” Ruiz says, did not add substantially to the $48 million project budget. But, the design features and ventilation make breathing and living healthier, she says. The building’s design also encourages walking.
On the podcast, Ruiz and Gray situate Paseo Verde in their ongoing work in and with community. They recap the innovative partnerships, financing and design involved in making Paseo Verde succeed and describe the impact it’s had in the seven years since it opened. Now, with COVID putting pressure on families, APM has mobilized to organize the community to resist offers of cash for homes and instead connect the value of the homes with the future of the community.
This episode showcases the potential of community-led collaboration and innovative design to create transit-oriented developments that foster healthier communities.
they talk – you listen in
Vedran Dzebic is head of R&D for Entro, a signage and wayfinding company with expertise in transportation. Ntianu Eastmond-Visani is a mom, with a background in retail and a passion for making the New York subway system easier to navigate for caregivers with kids and strollers.
Edited transcript of the podcast
On the podcast, Dzebic asks Eastmond-Visani how she came to develop an app to assist caregivers on the NYC subway. Recalling a trip to Asia with her family, Eastmond-Visani describes the intuitive, frequent wayfinding and iconography that guided their journey, as well as frequent elevators. She contrasts this with the experience of navigating the New York City subway system, not only stations without elevators but also the question of the depth and width of stairs. Can you carry a stroller there? How busy is it? For instance, “Spring Street is one flight and the staircase is wide and not crowded. So you can carry a stroller there.” She describes the (still underway) process of developing the app, WayfinderNYC, including becoming involved in Mother Coders, her belief in user-centric design and the way she’s incorporating information from the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) and individual caregivers.
Dzebic provides insights into wayfinding strategy, such as the concept of progressive disclosure, which is providing information when needed, at key decision points. He defines wayfinding as bridging between users and specific spaces, a process that begins at home. Eastmond-Visani defines wayfinding, from a retail perspective, as bridging between digital and physical spaces.
There are several lively issues at play in this podcast. How can apps integrate with static signage to assist users navigating spaces? How can wayfinding better serve a wide variety of users? Why are so many transportation solutions – from ride hailing to bike share to scooters – fixated on able-bodied individuals, rather than the variety of users really out there, from parents with kids to people carrying packages and more? What are ways that public transit does – and does not – meet these needs?
Entro – branding and environmental design
Accessible Station Lab – Metropolitan Transportation Authority (NYC)
This Rail~Volution podcast introduces a new format we will use from time to time – of two guests speaking with each other. Let’s listen as Francisco Heredia a city council member in Mesa, AZ, and Braxton Winston, a city councilmember in Charlotte, NC, talk about their work as advocates and elected officials as well as their vision for transit in their communities.
“The light rail has had a positive effect in downtown in Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa, in bringing development to those cores that, as across the country, have seen a downturn based on market factors and online. But we have to be conscious about the type of development going forward. We are going to have to figure out a good balance in centering small business and working families that have lived in these areas.” – Francisco Heredia
“Transportation investment is the place where cities and municipalities really can have the most direct influence. . . . The corridors where these rails will be laid down are those neighborhoods that were cut off during urban renewal. Not only is it an opportunity but a duty to acknowledge and correct the errors of our policies of the past.” – Braxton Winston
In this conversation, councilmembers Heredia and Winston speak of what motivated them to run for council and how being on council, involved in issues from sidewalks to water, has shown the interconnected nature of infrastructure. Both are motivated by the opportunity for systemic change.
They each describe their cities- Charlotte as a wedge of wealth surrounded by a crescent of disinvested communities; Mesa as distinct east from west, with west Mesa seeing new life downtown as a result of light rail. They each talk about plans for transit expansion and the need to make the case for transit and multimodal connectivity at the regional level.
Heredia considers the challenge of recognizing the unsustainable cost of sprawling infrastructure, as well as how to leverage light rail lines to connect with other parts of the city via multiple other modes, such as BRT, autonomous vehicles, and neighborhood connectors. Winston speaks of efforts to introduce restorative policies in land use plans for new transit corridors – and the possibility of using transit investments to also address the digital divide. They both speak about how the pandemic is reinforcing the need to rethink past policies and, in Winston’s words, “to use transportation and transit to create not just seamless neighborhoods but seamless regions.”
“Solutions are within us, in our respective communities, the places we love and live.
To the extent that we hold space for radical imagination, revolutionary thinking and putting forth bolder ideas we never saw as possible, our future will be bright.
No one’s coming to save us unless ourselves. It’s important that we get to work.”
— Stephanie Gidigbi
We’re joined by Stephanie Gidigbi, a community champion and systems strategist. Among her many professional roles, she is developing a racial resilience training program, including focus on transportation equity.
Stephanie Gidigbi is CEO of North Star Strategies and directs Policy & Partnerships for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Healthy People, Thriving Communities Program. She also elevates social system change strategies as Policy Advisor for the Strong, Prosperous, And Resilient Communities Challenge (SPARCC) and serves on the Board of Directors for the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority (WMATA). She has worked, she says, at every level of government, from the City of Orange, New Jersey, to the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT).
On the podcast, Gidigbi touches on the recent transportation bill passed in the House, the Invest in America Act, calling it “a bold downpayment on equity, climate change and systems built more resiliently,” especially given that transportation is now our dirtiest sector in terms of air pollution, which leads to higher rates of asthma. She talks about how many of the laws and practices that shape our nation revolve around transportation, from Plessy v. Ferguson (a case about rail transportation) to the Montgomery bus boycott, to highways that divided communities. She also points out the often untold stories of resilience arising from difficult times. The bus boycott sparked “the first ride-share” and highway disputes were the birth of NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, which she calls “the Magna Carta of environmental policies and the first to center public engagement.”
She describes the work going on in several cities via the SPARCC program and the transportation leadership academy at USDOT as examples of bringing communities into the forefront of the often wonky and difficult world of transportation. “Most people don’t see transportation as a means to an end in helping transform communities but it is so critical in shaping public life.”
How Planes, Trains and Automobiles Worsened America’s Racial Divide – Politico Op Ed by Stephanie Gidigbi
The Every Place Counts: Leadership Academy – USDOT
Beyond Traffic 2045 – USDOT
Strong, Prosperous And Resilient Communities Challenge (SPARCC)
“Nine months ago, if you’d have asked what we’re going be talking about [for the long range plan] it would be a train to the airport or some shiny new toy. We may still do something like that but we are seeing the need to serve everyone on a daily basis . . . We can pivot to providing some of that additional local connection that we maybe we were not thinking about as clearly as we should have six to eight months ago. Now the recognition is that some of those local connections are incredibly important.” – David Huffaker
This episode is the second in a series focused on health and equitable transit-oriented communities. Also see Episode 30, with Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association.
Photo credit: Port Authority of Allegheny County
Hear about the factors involved in one transit agency’s response to COVID-19 and their efforts to improve the quality of the transit experience for their riders, with David Huffaker, Chief Development Officer for the Port Authority of Allegheny County.
In this episode, part of a series focused on health and transit-oriented communities, David Huffaker describes service adjustments in response to the pandemic. Rather than simply going to a weekend schedule, Port Authority focused on routes serving major medical facilities and other essential employers, as well as on cleanliness and rider and employee safety. The agency already had a pandemic response plan, created for Ebola and revised for Covid-19.
Huffaker talks about an on-going project to make bus stops better by matching high traffic stops with more amenities. He describes the three Es – Equity, Efficiency, Effectiveness – that guide service planning and his sense of how transit will integrate with modes and streets in the future. One of his goals is to create a more nimble, flexible and responsive system, with higher frequency and integration with different modes and development, so that neighborhood residents have “a safe connection to service.”
Prior to the pandemic, the Port Authority launched outreach for a new long range plan. As perhaps with transit agencies across the country, COVID-19 has shifted priorities. The data from long range planning, Huffaker says, is an opportunity to shift thinking. “Before we were doing the same things as thirty years ago. Now, there’s an opportunity to take data and look at things in a slightly different way . . . We can rearrange our service to provide daily connections for communities we have underserved in the past.”
Port Authority of Allegheny County Bus Stop and Street Design Guidelines
NexTransit -the 25-year plan for Port Authority of Allegheny County
Port Authority of Allegheny County Annual Service Report 2018
Port Authority of Allegheny County Transit-Oriented Communities – TOD Guidelines
This episode kicks off a series focused on health and equitable transit-oriented communities. Future episodes in this series will delve into connections between transit and health, the way we plan and design cities to create healthy communities, and how choices about development near transit can support healthy outcomes.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association, joins us to explore the linkage between health, transportation and the built environment.
Dr. Benjamin is an internist and emergency physician who has led the American Public Health Association since 2010. On the podcast, he makes the connections between transportation, the built environment and healthy communities. Most of health outcomes are determined by how we build our communities not medical care per se. At this time of COVID-19, we are seeing how communities not built to be walkable, bike-able, with access to transit and green space are directly affecting health outcomes. Dr. Benjamin identifies the factors contributing to worse outcomes for communities of color. Recognizing that essential workers – those who are public-facing at this time – are at greatest risk, he points out how easy and appropriate it would be to locate COVID-19 testing locations near high-capacity transit.
Listen for Dr. Benjamin’s advice to reach out to others (in a safe way) at this time of social isolation and his recommendations for including public health professionals in planning more livable communities.
American Public Health Association – Transportation and Health
Jim Murley, Chief Resiliency Officer for Miami-Dade County, joins us, describing how South Florida takes a comprehensive approach to resiliency. We spoke to him earlier this spring, as the county was beginning to respond to COVID-19. Due to the pandemic, the Rail~Volution conference in Miami is rescheduled to October 2022.
Sea level rise, Murley says, or the model of projected sea level rise, is a stress, that amplifies the impact of events, such as the storm surge from hurricanes. Resilient 305 is the comprehensive plan for managing stresses and events. It’s a wide ranging plan, with more than 60 action items, including preserving housing, improving mobility and addressing inequities. Miami-Dade County, the City of Miami and City of Miami Beach created the plan as part of the Rockefeller 100 Cities program. He credits the Rockefeller program with creating a network of CROs (chief resiliency officers) across the United States, changing and elevating the conversation about dealing with everything from storms to pandemics to climate change.
Murley brings long experience to the job – and to the podcast. He refers to foundational US law – the Coastal Lands Management Act – and more recent advances in science and policy in response to large events such as Hurricane Sandy. He describes how the South Florida Climate Change Compact laid the foundation for collaboration around resiliency. He describes the geology and settlement history of Florida – with the state’s first railroad on high ground – and how transportation, development, tourism and storms continue to define the region.
Resilient 305 Full Strategy (PDF) – see also Resilient 305 website
April Bertelsen, transit modal planner with the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation, joins us to share all the details about the Rose Lanes initiative to create a bus priority network. This is the second in a series about bus priority. Please also see Episode 26, “Corridors Where Bus is King,” with Lindiwe Rennert, a transit planner with the City of Boston Transportation Department
This podcast comes at a time when congestion is not a big problem on city streets, due to stay-at-home orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But, as we’ve learned more about the importance of transit for essential workers and also how smoothly buses can run without heavy congestion, it might be the perfect time to hear about the formation of Portland’s approach to bus priority. As we make plans for emerging from the pandemic, we need to ensure that buses continue to move freely.
Portland is taking a network approach to bus priority, focusing on the ways that fixing bottlenecks reduces delay for the entire route of many different buses. For example, addressing three bottlenecks affected 75,000 riders on 14 transit lines. This better performance means riders can get more places in the same amount of time. As Bertelsen explains on the podcast, the idea of a Rose Lanes network got a big push because of the potential to make transportation better for lower income residents whose lives were most impacted by slow service. A robust network of buses that move faster and are more reliable and frequent also potentially attracts more riders away from single-occupancy vehicles, helping Portland meet its goals for addressing the causes of climate change.
Listen to the podcast to find out how using a pilot approach is helping move projects faster as well as some of the treatments Portland has tried so far, including advisory bus and bike lanes and “bus and business lanes.” Also learn how a strong commissioner pushed for action and involved local stakeholders in shaping the plans for Rose Lanes.
Rose Lane Project Report – see also the City of Portland Rose Lane Project webpage
City of Portland Enhanced Transit Corridor webpage
We’re joined by Lindiwe Rennert, Transit Planner with the City of Boston Transportation Department.
Rennert serves on the city’s first-ever transit team, formed as a result of the 2017 transportation master plan, Go Boston 2030. On the podcast, she describes projects currently underway, from upgrades to the Fairmount Line to bringing bus priority and improved bike infrastructure to the Warren Street corridor in the historically black Roxbury neighborhood of Boston.
Five different bus routes run along this segment of Warren Street, including the route with highest ridership in the MBTA system. But, they are stuck in congestion and delay. Rennert describes how the city has worked with the local community to devise solutions, including teaming up with local advocacy groups and sharing data about bus ridership and parking utilization. She also shares how the city is working directly with teams at MBTA to move projects faster.
Warren Street Bus Priority Corridor – see this presentation (PDF) for use of data in making the case to the community
Livable Streets Alliance – Better Buses: Getting Boston on Board
MBTA – Better Bus Project
Streetsblog MASS – Bus Lanes On Warren Street Could Save Riders Millions of Hours Every Year
Photo Credit: Andrew Hind, for Houston Complete Communities
Episode 15 – Maurice Jones: High Impact Investing in Low Wealth Communities
Episode 6 – Nancy Andrews: Investing in People and Places
We’re joined by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. He describes the city’s Complete Communities program and why he has made it a priority.
Houston is a dynamic, growing city (the fourth largest in US), but as in many cities, some neighborhoods are not advancing as strongly as others. Turner, who became Mayor in 2016 and was re-elected in 2019, set up the Complete Communities program to channel resources into areas that have been “under-resourced for decades.” The program began with five neighborhoods and has since added five more. The intent is to focus on a particular geographic area to have the greatest transformational effect in the shortest period. “If we try to do everyone at the same time,” Turner says, “we spread limited resources and have an incremental rather than transformational effect.”
As Turner notes on the podcast, the program first works with the community to set the priorities for action. Taking action involves aligning a range of city departments around the goals and working with outside partners, including financial institutions, developers, faith-based organizations, nonprofits, endowments, and federal programs. “No one group feels like they are going by themselves.”
Find out on the podcast the city departments involved, the kinds of issues neighborhoods identified, and action so far.
Houston Complete Communities Program
Read the March 2020 Complete Communities News for updates on specific neighborhoods and a glimpse of program operations.
These recent news articles touch on Complete Communities and projects underway:
Bisnow – May 2019 – aligning Complete Communities and Opportunity Zones;
The Leader News – November 2019 – new public art in Near Northside, adjacent to bike trail;
Click2Houston.com – January 2020 – a “chess park” adds much needed green space to Third Ward;
Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire – February 2020 – new community center near transit in Near Northside receives green grant for rooftop solar;
Houston Chronicle – February 2020 – city housing department takes new approach to awarding affordable housing tax credits.
This episode brings together two hot topics – bus expansion and affordable housing. We’re joined by Rafe Rabalais, Long-Range Asset Development Manager, and Adrienne Heim, Public Information Officer, both with San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA).
The SFMTA, which manages all surface transportation in the city and county of San Francisco, recognized the need to upgrade the Potrero Yard bus maintenance and operations building as part of improving bus operations and maintenance, resiliency to climate change and other natural disasters, a planned bus fleet expansion and battery electric conversion of the bus fleet.
If you did not know, the SFMTA boasts the cleanest, greenest bus fleet in the US. Six trolley bus routes are maintained and operate out of Potrero Yard, built in 1915. Together, these routes serve 102,000 Muni customers everyday. The SFMTA is planning a conversion to battery electric buses by the year 2035, hence the need to modernize and expand the Yard.
On this podcast, Rafe Rabalais and Adrienne Heim describe the planning processes for the new yard, the design issues involved in converting the bus fleet to battery electric propulsion and the introduction of housing in the form of joint development into the plan. A 2014 mayoral directive, Public Land for Housing Program, led to consideration of Potrero Yard as an opportunity to provide housing for San Franciscans.
An extensive and on-going public engagement process (including tours of the existing yard) has tackled such issues as housing affordability, integration with the neighborhood, design and massing issues (especially to ensure the adjacent park is not completely shadowed over), and parking. Listen to the podcast to find out how four acres in San Francisco’s Mission district are being recast for the future.
Our guests this episode are Alice Bravo and Carlos Cruz-Casas, Director and Deputy Director, respectively, of the Miami-Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works. This episode was recorded during the 2019 Rail~Volution transit and community development conference in Vancouver, BC.
Miami-Dade County is deep in planning for transit expansion on several different corridors at once, via the SMART Plan approved in 2016 by the Miami-Dade Transportation Planning Organization (TPO). They also are working on a redesign of their regular route bus network, in a unique collaboration with a nonprofit organization, Transit Alliance. While these projects move forward, the county is seizing a range of technology options, from signal-priority for buses to contactless payment, starting with buses and trains.
“Technology is a shorter term way to make changes,” says Alice Bravo, and part of creating a more car-optional Miami-Dade. On the podcast, Alice Bravo and Carlos Cruz-Casas discuss:
Miami-Dade County is one of the founding members of the Open Mobility Foundation, which is working to establish shared data standards between cities and providers of scooters, bike-share and other mobility options. Miami-Dade County and the South Florida region are working to expand mobility options, to better serve existing riders and lure more people out of their cars.
“You have to keep an open ear no matter which job you’re in – to criticism or good ideas and whatever people have to say. Without that you will lose touch with where people are, where they are trying to head, what they’re worried about and what issues you need to fight for them.” — Grace Crunican
Photos: Left: Grace Crunican. Right: credit Vinicius Depizzol Flickr Creative Commons.
We’re joined by Grace Crunican, who most recently led Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). Having worked on both coasts and with cities, states, the federal government and agencies, Grace has experience to share. Listen for her stories about coalition building, breaking down “stove pipes,” women in leadership, and how she has tried to give her staff “exposure to a bigger picture” so that they can be “pulled toward” the next opportunity.
Did you know? The withdrawal of the Mt. Hood freeway from the Oregon interstate plan freed up funds to build Portland’s first light rail line?
Sharing that story, Crunican says she learned early in her career how transportation decisions could be tools of transformation for cities. On the podcast, she talks about other tools for transformation, including policy changes to shift control and money to the local level – and the more “integrated” transportation thinking that took root as a result. “We all live in a community. We don’t live in a community where the air is separate from the roads, which are separate from the transit and the trees. When you live in a community, it’s a holistic approach.”
Don’t miss her stories of getting out and listening, including a trip to a remote maintenance facility. And, in these times of partisan divide, take note of coalition building at the state level and with the Surface Transportation Policy Project.
We’re joined by Steve Dotterrer and GB Arrington, both of whom were involved with Rail~Volution from the get-go (and before). They share the origins of the conference, how it has evolved and their hopes for the future of the revolution.
Live from Vancouver, the future of the livability revolution: a conversation moderated by GB Arrington and featuring Odetta MacLeish-White, Mac McCarthy and Lisa Bender.
At twenty-five years into the Rail~Volution, the future is in our hands. GB Arrington, one of the founders of the conference, shares the evolution of the movement and asks three of today’s thinkers and change-makers about the next revolution – the issues, what’s needed to address them, and the world they want to see in twenty-five years. The speakers are Odetta MacLeish-White, Managing Director, TransFormation Alliance, Atlanta, GA; George “Mac” McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, Cambridge, MA; and Lisa Bender, President of the City Council in Minneapolis, MN.
Lisa Bender, a planner by training, shares the approach to creating the Minneapolis 2040 Plan, which includes the elimination of single family zoning. She urges professionals to operate from within a system of values. “If you think of Rail~Volution as a movement made of professions profoundly shaping the future of our communities, I think we need to radically re-examine our roles and the questions we are asking in community.”
Odetta MacLeish-White, whose work in Atlanta is part of the SPARCC (Strong, Prosperous, And Resilient Communities Challenge) initiative, shared the power of being able to openly address race as a fundamental issue underlying disparities. She speaks of the art of collaboration and urges more focus on the experience of children and families on transit – and at their destinations. “If children are safe moving through community, that helps parents as well.”
Mac McCarthy, who sees land policy as a way of mediating between people and place, shares work happening in cities from Brisbane, Australia, to Washington, DC, to audit and leverage assets to address infrastructure needs. New tools and political will is needed because our metros are growing on old infrastructure. Investing in well-developed transit networks across “polycentric metros” would address growing congestion, make cities more resilient in facing the extreme weather of climate change – and directly address a huge source of climate emissions.
Three staff members from Seattle’s Sound Transit describe their evolving approach to planning transit-oriented communities.
Photo: Othello Plaza. Credit: Sound Transit.
We’re joined by Brooke Belman, Deputy Executive Director for Land Use Planning and Development at Sound Transit and her colleagues Sloan Dawson, Land Use Planning Manager, and Thatcher Imboden, TOD Manager.
Seattle’s Sound Transit is in the midst of a comprehensive expansion of transit service (Sound Transit 3 or ST3) that will double size of the system to approximately 120 miles and 80 stations. The legislation behind ST3 includes new direction to the agency to consider affordable housing on surplus property and provides new tools to make that happen. The “80-80-80” policy compels Sound Transit to first offer the majority of its surplus property that is suitable for housing to “qualified entities,” which are defined as non-profit developers, local jurisdictions and housing authorities, for affordable housing development. By statute, 80 percent of their surplus property must be offered to qualified entities willing to designate 80 percent of the units as affordable to families making 80 percent or less of the area median income (AMI).
As a result, they’re working in new ways – with internal teams and external partners. Where once TOD projects came after new transit service, there now are efforts to deliver transit and housing projects in a more coordinated way. In some cases, this means potentially opening new TOD projects with new transit service. Listen to the podcast to find out about the evolution of transit-oriented development (TOD) at the agency, how they manage timelines and expectations, as well as the changes in statute that underlie their work.
Sound Transit Equitable TOD Policy
Puget Sound Regional Council Growing Transit Communities Strategy
Sound Transit Transit-Oriented Development – and quarterly TOD reports
On this podcast we’re joined by Gordon Price for an insider’s view of Vancouver, how it developed and what might be next on the horizon.
Price is a former member of the Vancouver City Council (from 1986 to 2002) and former director of The City Program at Simon Fraser University. He also served on the board of the Greater Vancouver Regional District (Metro Vancouver) and was appointed to the first board of the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority (TransLink). He currently runs Pricetags online magazine and has his own podcast, Price Talks, for which he recently interviewed Kevin Desmond, CEO of TransLink.
Price calls Vancouver a “streetcar city with a modern vocabulary of architecture and design.” He describes the pivotal role of the “mega-projects,” industrial land redeveloped starting in the 1990s, in creating first “Development Cost Charges” and then “Community Amenity Contributions” – the funding source for Vancouver’s vibrant neighborhoods. He talks about why people love SkyTrain, the growth of “what use to be called the alternative modes” (transit, bicycling, and walking) and the potential for more equitable access to the next, ultra-connected era of transportation.
Listen to the end for the three things Price recommends for visitors interested in a closer look at Vancouver’s planning, development and cultural evolution.
How easy is it to get the places we want to go? Andrew Owen, director of the Accessibility Observatory at the University of Minnesota, gives us a new way to look at places – through the lens of accessibility.
Cities with the greatest increases in job accessibility by transit
Kansas City (+17.36%)
Charlotte (+10.81%)
Austin (+9.76%)
Columbus (+8.99%)
San Francisco (+8.72%)
Orlando (+7.88%)
Las Vegas (+7.68%)
Phoenix (+7.31%)
Minneapolis (+7.01%)
Cincinnati (+6.78%)
From Access Across America: Transit 2017
Access is a way to measure how easy it is to get places – often jobs – in how much time. Taking into account both transportation and land use, access as a metric can be a powerful tool. On the podcast, Andrew Owen describes the evolution of the metric and how it has been applied.
Listen for examples – such as how a new LRT line changed access to jobs (spoiler – the buses connecting to the LRT played a big role). Or how some cities are using accessibility to evaluate different proposed transit investments. Or for long range planning for employers, workers and transit.
Access to jobs is one of the most widely used accessibility metrics. How many jobs can you reach in 30 minutes – by driving, transit, walking and, coming soon, by bicycling? As Owen shares on the podcast, accessibility opens up new ways of looking at places, projects, land use policies and mode share. It’s a metric to take to neighborhood meetings or regional planning projects.
RESOURCES AND LINKS FOR THE PODCAST
Access Across America: Transit 2017
Access Across America: Walking 2014
Green Line and related bus network improvements increase access to jobs
Accessibility Evaluation of the Metro Transit A-Line
Modeling the commute mode share of transit using continuous accessibility to jobs
We’re joined by Bowinn Ma, a transportation engineer who represents North Vancouver-Lonsdale in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. She also is the parliamentary secretary for TransLink, the regional transportation authority.
Photo: Prayitno. Flickr Creative Commons.
On the North Shore, Ma convened a first-ever, cross-jurisdictional group to assess mobility needs and create a vision for transportation, now and in the future (see INSTPP below). She’s also been involved with regional policy making for Transportation Network Services (Uber & Lyft currently do not operate in B.C.) and with the regional climate plan.
Ma talks about transportation, congestion, and mobility on the North Shore, where some communities are very transit-oriented and others more car-dependent. Over the last two years, she says, “the conversation has shifted from ‘we need a third bridge for vehicles or cars’ to ‘we need more public transit.'” She speaks of the political courage required to prioritize active transportation and public transit – even in Metro Vancouver. And she shares why it’s important to make politics more engaging, including via social media (look for her on Twitter @BowinnMa).
“I’m a huge proponent of making politics accessible to everybody because even if you feel like you’re not into politics, believe me politics is into you. It impacts your daily life regardless of whether or not you’re paying attention.” – Bowinn Ma
RESOURCES AND LINKS FOR THE PODCAST
Integrated North Shore Transportation Planning Project (INSTPP)
Transportation Network Services: Boundaries, Supply, Fares, and Driver’s Licences
On this episode we’re talking transit ridership with Amy Silbermann, Director of Planning for Port Authority of Allegheny County, the transit agency in Pittsburgh, and Steven Higashide and Mary Buchanan, co-authors of Transit Center’s Who’s On Board 2019, a report based on surveys of transit riders.
Pittsburgh was one of seven US cities with increases in transit ridership in 2018. When it comes to transit, the focus lately tends to be on declining ridership and competition from Transportation Network Companies (TNC) – Uber and Lyft. But, as our guests detail,
Listen to the podcast for more about understanding riders, Pittsburgh’s work to improve routes (downtown and to suburban communities) and the need for political and public support for changes to improve transit systems.
“As cities think about ways to alleviate traffic or solutions such as roadway widening (which we’ve proven is not an effective means to reduce delay), make sure you’re prioritizing modes that are the most effective ways to move people. When we’re talking about moving masses, we’re talking about transit. If we’re talking about sustainability, we want to loop biking and walking and other smaller, less mass modes, along with that.” — Amy Silbermann, Director of Planning, Port Authority of Allegheny County
RESOURCES AND LINKS FOR THE PODCAST
Who’s On Board 2019 – from Transit Center. Also see their new data visualization tool.
Port Authority Surveys and Reports – see 2017 Annual Service Report for more about a change in fare policy that year as well as the goals for transit service.
Transit Ridership increased in Seven US Cities in 2018 – here’s Transit Center’s take on the increases in Pittsburgh, Seattle, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Detroit and Las Vegas.
Undercounting the Transit Constituency – a City Observatory analysis by Daniel Kay Hertz. Focusing on commuting mode share alone “dramatically understates Americans’ reliance on transit.”
“We have an imperfect system. Inherent in it is the risk of generating inequality. What you need is a coalition of people who want to do good, who want to transform the system so that more people can share in the prosperity.” — Maurice Jones
Maurice Jones, President and CEO of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), became involved in community development finance while working for the United States Department of the Treasury and then as trade secretary for the state of Virginia. In the latter job, he says, “I quickly discovered that there were 20% of places that were investment ready and 80% needed a lot more work at the community level to become investment ready. We were focusing on the 20%. I wanted the chance to work on that other 80%. This job at LISC was the perfect place to do that both in urban and rural America.”
In the podcast conversation, Jones (who also is a member of the Rail~Volution Board of Directors) talks about working in communities in different ways, from helping existing businesses to developing a stronger talent base in the workforce . He speaks of LISC’s efforts to break down barriers in certain professions, for example by managing a fund for minority entrepreneurs and helping launch minority property developers. Fundamental to this is acknowledging the history of policies and practices that intentionally excluded certain populations from opportunity. “The only way you’re going to truly address that is to be just as intentional in your approach to investment.”
Jones also delves into Opportunity Zones and discusses the new effort to tackle affordable housing in the Bay Area, launched by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Listen for his thoughts about the necessary ingredients for such funds and the importance of community buy-in. He also touches on the intersection of community development and health (“community development is the best medicine around”) and the importance of expanding transit and locating key destinations on existing transit.
RESOURCES AND LINKS FOR THE PODCAST
Partnership for the Bay’s Future, a collaborative regional effort focused on increasing affordable housing, for which LISC was selected to manage the investment fund.
Opportunity Zones: This is a huge topic, with a range of resources available from multiple perspectives. These links come to the top for background on this podcast:
How do healthcare providers approach the social determinants of health, including transportation? On the podcast, Brian Ebersole and Eileen Evert share the approach to “treating the whole person” that led Geisinger Health System to launch a pilot program with regional partners to address the transportation barriers of a specific group of patients. For regular listeners of the Rail~Volution podcast, this episode offers a view of the motivation of an anchor institution to be part of a transportation initiative – how it works on the ground, and how views of transportation change as a result.
Photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons, Fred Brundick
“I’m surprised at the need & outpouring of referrals. We are seeing a 50% increase each month in terms of utilization and requests (were expecting 10%), even with a detailed referral process. There’s a great need . . . and downstream impact related to transportation.” – Eileen Evert
Brian Ebersole and Eileen Evert both work for Geisinger Health System, a provider in northeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey that serves more than 600,000 health plan members. Brian is the senior director of Springboard Health and Eileen is director of health and wellness.
Geisinger is part of NEPA Moves, a regional initiative focused on transit equity. NEPA Moves started as the Equitable Transit Planning Council, a group convened by the Scranton Area Community Foundation and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in response to the growing population of northeastern Pennsylvania and increasing concerns about transportation barriers to housing, jobs, quality health care, and educational and cultural opportunities. Geisinger got involved with the initiative through a 2017 regional summit.
As Brian Ebersole explains on the podcast, Geisinger (like many health organizations) increasingly focuses on social determinants of health. Their approach to “treating the whole person,” is based on the reality that only about 20% of “being healthy” is determined by medical professionals and facilities. The other 80% of health outcomes are rooted in other things – where you live, work, your education and your genetic makeup. Health care providers like Geisinger are looking “beyond the walls of traditional hospitals and primary care doctors’ offices” to try focus on food access, transportation and specific subsets of the population. “If we start to meet that other 80%, we believe the 20% will continue to improve, exponentially,” as Ebersole says.
Geisinger found out through convenings of the Equitable Transit Council that different organizations in the area were spending money on transportation, building it into their budgets. Recognizing the shared issue of missed appointments led to a pilot program to address “no shows.” On the podcast, Eileen Evert describes the pilot’s focus on two subsets: an urban subset (where 60,000 appointments were missed in one year) and a rural area (with nearly 144,000 missed appointments). The pilot addresses a very targeted population and involves a community health assistant who refers approved patients to a mobility manager who matches patients with options ranging from public transit to transit-network companies such as Lyft and Uber.
Local stakeholders continue to meet regularly about the pilot and other transportation initiatives through NEPA Moves. Further data about results from the pilot program could be available this summer through Geisinger. Contact Brian Ebersole or Eileen Evert via Springboard Healthy Scranton.
RESOURCES AND LINKS FOR THE PODCAST
NEPA Moves: See this post from the Scranton Area Community Foundation about the formation of the Equitable Transit Planning Council and this post about the ongoing work of NEPA Moves. See this post from the Lackawanna Luzerne MPO about the Equitable Transit Planning Council and outcomes of the summit.
What’s the cost of “no shows?”
One 60 year old female scheduled for her first chemo appointment for lung cancer called with an urgent request for a same-day trip to connect her to appointment. The cost for a ride through the Geisinger program was around $50 round trip. If she had missed the appointment, the cost would have been over $40,000 for wasted chemo treatment.
On this episode we’re joined by Vanan Murugesan, Director of Design and Innovation at Pillsbury United Communities, a human services organization in Minneapolis that recently opened a nonprofit grocery store, North Market.
Photo credit: North Market, Knock, Inc.
A mechanical engineer originally from Malalysia, Vanan Murugesan helped develop the concept and led the process to open North Market, a nonprofit grocery store in North Minneapolis, a community designated as a food desert because of the lack of access to fresh foods.
Though people in the neighborhood would spend 45 minutes on a bus or $5-10 each way on cabs to get to a good grocery, the primary motivation to open a nonprofit grocery was community health and wellness. Once a market analysis confirmed that the community was spending enough on food to support a grocery, the concept for the store was developed with local residents. The result: North Market is a place to buy fresh food and a community center, offering Yoga, Zoomba, cardio kick-boxing and a wellness center. “The additional services came from community,” Murugesan says; “We weren’t planning yoga.”
Some of the lessons from opening North Market might be applicable to transit providers putting a new emphasis on the customer experience: the importance of human-centered design and of marketing. “The definition of better has to be in the eyes of the customer,” he says, and, “We fall in to a trap of falling in love with our solutions. We are in competition. . . . You can provide the best solution, but no one will know about it if you don’t market and advertise accordingly.”
Also on the podcast: pros and cons of the farm bill, technology and convenience, and new initiatives in workforce development.
RESOURCES AND LINKS FOR THE PODCAST
North Market: More than a Grocery Store
Winsight Grocery Business: Inside Minneapolis’ North Market
USDA definition of a Food Desert
Human-Centered Design – there are many sources, but here are two mentioned in the podcast: Design Thinking Boot Camp and Human-Centered Design Kit from IDEO.ORG
Workforce Development – for more about programs in Denver, watch this video from the 2017 Rail~Volution conference in Denver. At about 15 minutes into the video, Governor Hickenlooper describes the workforce development program then taking shape.
We’re excited to welcome Laura Loe to the Rail~Volution podcast. She currently is a community activist with Share the Cities in Seattle and a bus driver.
This podcast with Laura Loe was taped at the 2018 Rail~Volution conference in Pittsburgh, where Laura Loe was a speaker on a panel called “Meet the YIMBYs and YIOBYs.” On the podcast, Laura talks about her frustrations with terms like YIMBY and NIMBY and ways that she tries to get beyond slogans and Twitter-bickering in her work as a community organizer. She describes how she approaches organizing across different cultural groups and issues as well as her pleasure in unplugging from the internet during her regular shifts as a bus driver.
Share the Cities – follow them on Twitter @sharethecities
Follow Laura on Twitter @lauraloeseattle
How to Talk to Your YIMBY Parents (2016 – The Urbanist.org)
This month, the Rail~Volution podcast features the plenary conversation at Rail~Volution 2018 in Pittsburgh about new mobility, transit and cities.
On Part 1 (Episode 10), public transit consultant and author Jarrett Walker uses the metaphor of the elephant and the wine glass to talk about the things we know are true about space in cities.
In the discussion that follows on Part 2 (Episode 11), Robin Hutcheson, the Director of Public Works in Minneapolis, leads a discussion about new mobility options in cities, including Autonomous Vehicles and Climate Change, with Aniela Kuzon, Global Lead of the Cities of Tomorrow Challenge at Ford Motor Company, and Joseph Okpaku, Vice President of Public Policy at Lyft.
Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity, University of Southern California, and Director of USC’s Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) and the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII)
Manuel Pastor spoke at Rail~Volution 2018 in Pittsburgh in a session focused on the Los Angeles Equity Platform Network (see the Monday 2pm lineup). On the podcast, he describes the role of both research and community organizing in passing the law (SB35) that dedicates revenue from California’s carbon cap and trade program to disadvantaged communities. He sees this as one example of the ways that solutions now bubble up from the local to the state level and beyond. His new book, State of Resistance, delves deeper into the ways that California’s record of organizing in every community led to gains in diversity, inclusion and equity – and is being replicated around the country. Manuel describes the ways that both conservatives and progressives have worked to create a social base of support for their policies.
Also on the podcast:
When we are disconnected, we are not able to grow together. And when we’re not growing together, we’re not able to grow at all. – Manuel Pastor
State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for America’s Future, by Manuel Pastor. March 2018. New York City: The New Press.
The Los Angeles Equity Atlas: Opportunity Mapped. California Community Foundation; Reconnecting America. 2013
California Environmental Screen
Rent Matters: What are the Impacts of Rent Stabilization Measures? By Manuel Pastor, Vanessa Carter, and Maya Abood. October 10, 2018
Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech and co-founder and “Chief Motivator” of OneBusAway, an open source platform for real time transit info.
Kari Watkins talks about her research into the role of technology in the evolving transit experience, how Atlanta has changed in the 7 years she’s lived there and the difference between teaching undergrads and grad students about transportation. She considers “dangerous futures ahead” – such as zero-passenger vehicles – and the “best future” of high capacity transit on dedicated right of way, fed by robust bike and sidewalk networks and TNCs for low density areas, all supported by timely information and payment – mobility as a service.
What does it take to get there? Transit agencies working with cities and DOTs. Incentives. Focus on high capacity networks and innovation. “When we look to a future of AVs and other technologies, it’s all the more critical to think about how we can do this efficiently and sustainably. It’s important that we get it right and soon.”
We’re joined by Chloe Spano for a look at integrated mobility systems and the idea of mobility as a service. A native of France, Spano has been with Cityway since it was a startup 18 years ago, working with transit agencies to provide information for transit riders. Fast forward to current efforts in the greater Paris region to prepare for the 2024 Olympics by integrating transit and other modes (from roadway congestion to bike share and carpooling options) to provide real-time, predictive trip planning and payment for the general public.
What are the most important factors in making this happen? What about suburbs and rural locations? What about dockless bikes and scooters? Listen!
We’re joined by Nancy Andrews, longtime leader in community development finance. She recently retired as CEO of the Low Income Investment Fund, which has invested more than $2 billion in 30 states by acting as an intermediary between private capital markets and neighborhoods. Andrews captures the creativity of community development finance (“we go way out on the risk curve”) and speaks for the importance of economic diversity in busting poverty and making stable communities. Listen for an inside look at how funds are put together and all the players that need to be involved.
We’re joined by Patrick Siegman to unpack automobile parking – perhaps the most subsidized element of transportation! Find out about what parking really costs and how to approach this hot-button issue in community discussions. Find out how managing curb parking can unlock valuable assets for affordable housing, equity, and beautiful streets. Urban planner, traffic engineer, landscape architect, city official, advocate – don’t miss this one!
We’re joined by Odetta MacLeish-White, Managing Director of Atlanta’s TransFormation Alliance. She shares her memories of growing up riding transit, recalls teaching her son about crossing the street, and describes the vibrant work in Atlanta with several partner organizations to leverage new transit investments, including innovative approaches to community engagement and use of a new equity scorecard. Don’t miss this and more!
We’re joined by LA Metro CEO, Phil Washington, to talk about the evolving role of transit agencies in the life of cities. He discusses building affordable housing near transit, testing new ideas like microtransit, and the origins of Metro’s Office of Extraordinary Innovation.
Mariia Zimmerman recaps her experience with the evolving conversation about transit and livable communities, from the days of proving transit-oriented development as a concept (including some blind spots) to TOD as a mobility hub. The goal: “creating great places where people across all income levels can live.”
We’re talking with Jonathan Sage Martinson, former director of the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative, about the very deliberate steps taken to ensure community participation in defining the outcomes from a new light rail transit line the Twin Cities.
Rail~Volution is a network and an annual conference focused on ways that communities leverage major transportation investments (including rail, bus rapid transit, bus, as well as bicycling walking, sharing and emerging options) and related development to connect people with employers and neighborhoods.