lready exempts certain types of projects from review, such as bike lanes. These exemptions should be expanded to include simple transit-priority projects — and should override environmental review at the state level too.
Transportation agencies should also have more leeway to spend federal funds on pedestrian infrastructure. Most transit trips involve walking, and agencies shouldn’t have to apply for sidewalk funds from an alphabet soup of tight-fisted federal programs. If the feds gave state DOTs a free and easy hand to build highways for the past 60 years, they can finally do the same for local transportation agencies and sidewalks.
Stop expanding highways
The federal surface transportation program supplies states with piles of money for roads — upwards of $40 billion in 2018 alone — and unchecked highway funding has sent America’s carbon emissions soaring.
Much of this funding should be redirected to cities and regional agencies, with an emphasis on transportation projects that explicitly reduce vehicle mileage, such as transit-priority lanes and bike and pedestrian infrastructure.
Of the funding that state DOTs retain, tight restrictions should be placed on highway expansion. Wringing more capacity out of the highway system should rely on efficiency measures like tolling existing lanes or converting them to bus- or HOV-only operations.
Build transit where people will ride it, not where it’s easiest
Tempted by easy right-of-way acquisition, American transit agencies often decide to add rail along freeway medians or old freight lines, extending far into unwalkable suburbs. These routes are not designed to succeed as high-volume travel options. Dallas’s light rail network is the classic example: Despite covering great distances, it hasn’t led to an increase in total transit commuting.
Federal cost-effectiveness formulas exacerbate the problem by encouraging agencies to select routes because they minimize expense, not because they maximize ridership.
Transit expansion projects are essential, but they must be built where large numbers of people can walk to stops. It’s worth the additional expense to build transit people will ride. In a climate crisis, we can’t afford to do otherwise.
To create the “state-of-the-art bus transit system” of his campaign platform, Mayor Adams will have to both expand the quantity and improve the quality of bus lanes. We recommend these strategies to get it done.Read More
Earlier this week, the American Public Transportation Association requested $39.3 billion in relief funding to help transit agencies maintain service and withstand the financial impacts caused by COVID-19. A plan moving through in Congress would reserve about $30 billion for transit. And the Biden administration had earlier proposed $20 billion for transit in the next relief package. What should we make of these different proposals?Read More