Protected: SGA Coalition Update – 6/20/11
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2011 Commonwealth Awards: paying tribute to Pennsylvania’s smart growth visionaries
Exceptional things are taking place all over the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. To honor excellent projects as well as outstanding individuals, 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania is currently accepting entries for its 2011 Commonwealth Awards. The awards recognize policies, initiatives and projects in Pennsylvania that have revitalized existing communities, invested in smart growth, preserved historic and natural resources, implemented land use planning, and/or conserved financial resources.
Individual awards (PDF) are given to citizens or public officials who provide leadership or contributions to their community, take initiative in promoting smart growth principles, advance the objectives of 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania, and dedicate service to the public or their community. In 2010, awards were given to Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Secretary Allen Biehler for his leadership at the agency; Jonathon Schmidt of the Southeastern Pennsylvania First Suburbs Project; and John Milius, who recently rotated off the Cranberry Township Board of Supervisors.
The Commonwealth’s Design Awards (PDF) are given to mixed-use developments, adaptive reuse commercial buildings, affordable housing, town center development, historic preservation projects, regional land use, site/master plans and more.
The problem with potholes: neglected road repair poses huge liabilities for many states
Crossposted from the Huffington Post
For decades, states have invested disproportionately in road expansion and left regular repair and preservation underfunded. As a result of these spending decisions, road conditions in many states are getting worse and threaten taxpayers with billions of dollars in preventable expenses.
Between 2004 and 2008, states collectively spent $37.9 billion on road repair and expansion projects. The majority of these funds — 57% — went to just 1.3% of roads during this time. The remaining 99% of states’ road networks received only 43% of funding. Not surprisingly, without adequate funding for repair many roads across the country fell out of good condition during this time.
Investing in expansion at the cost of repair doesn’t just mean a rougher ride on some roads: it’s a transportation investment strategy that poses huge financial liabilities for states. Putting off repairs today means spending much more on those repairs in the future, as repair costs rise exponentially as road conditions decline. According to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, repairing a road that has fallen into poor condition can cost up to 14 times as much as preserving a road in good condition to begin with. Compounding these costs is the fact that with every dollar spent on road expansion, states add to a system they are already failing to adequately maintain.
According to a new report by Smart Growth America and Taxpayers for Common Sense, states would collectively need to spend $43 billion every year for 20 years to bring the country’s roads currently in poor condition up to good condition and then keep them that way. To put this figure in perspective, $43 billion is more than what states are currently spending on all repair, preservation, and new capacity combined. The fact that states’ outstanding repair need is so great makes clear that spending priorities have drifted too far from regular repair and, in so doing, have created a deficit that will take decades to reverse.
Preserving a road in good condition through periodic repair is significantly cheaper than allowing it to degrade and then rebuilding it. By prioritizing maintaining roads in good condition, states can avoid the substantially higher cost of bringing crumbling roads back to a state of good repair down the line.
More information about these issues, and recommendations for how state and federal leaders can take action, is available in Repair Priorities: Transportation spending strategies to save taxpayer dollars and improve roads.
WalkBoston: Good Walking is Good Business
The following is a guest post from Smart Growth America’s ally WalkBoston.
WalkBoston, Massachusetts’ main pedestrian advocacy organization, is working to reach beyond active transportation and smart growth partners to recruit allies in the retail, employer and real estate worlds to promote walkable communities. WalkBoston’s latest publication, Good Walking is Good Business (PDF), presents a wide array of research that shows how walking benefits many elements of the economy.
According to the Urban Land Institute, vibrant, walkable retail areas attract people to stay longer, spend more money, and visit more often. According to Marlon Boarnet, director the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California-Irvine and author of Retrofitting Suburbia, the most walkable, densely-built shopping districts in Los Angeles have four times the retail activity of “strip mall” shopping centers in less dense areas. For businesses, supporting improved walking conditions is a sound but sometimes overlooked investment. Here are some of the ways walkable neighborhoods support businesses.
EPA announces plan to abandon Kansas City – at the cost of the city and taxpayers
Crossposted from the Huffington Post.
To avoid small costs, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be creating big costs for everyone, including the federal government.
The EPA announced on Monday that it plans to move the Agency’s Region 7 headquarters, currently located in downtown Kansas City, Kansas, to Lenexa, a site nearly 20 miles outside of downtown. The EPA’s decision violates Executive Order 13514, which requires federal agencies to locate their offices in downtown areas and town centers whenever possible. Not following the Executive Order will cost a lot of money for everyone — including Kansas City and its businesses, EPA employees and U.S. taxpayers too.
As one of Kansas City’s major employers, EPA’s decision hurts the city, which has made great strides in the last decade to revitalize its downtown. “The EPA regional headquarters has been instrumental in our urban revitalization efforts,” Mayor Joe Reardon said in a statement on Monday, and the value of such an employer’s presence in a city’s revitalization efforts goes beyond their immediate impact. The EPA headquarters helped anchor renewed economic development in an area that had seen decades of decline, and the Agency’s decision undermines efforts to build a stronger economy in Kansas City.
The relocation will also mean increased traffic on I-35 and the higher maintenance costs associated with additional cars on the road. The Town of Lenexa projects I-35 to capacity by 2020, just 7 years into GSA’s 20-year lease. The EPA’s move will only hasten the arrival of that saturation point, creating costly delays or requiring even more (federal) money to improve conditions.
Call Congress TODAY to protect the Partnership for Sustainable Communities
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As debate over 2011’s federal budget continues to rage in Congress, funding for two major programs in the Partnership for Sustainable Communities are at risk of being completely eliminated. If you support the smart growth work being done by the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, please take a minute TODAY to call your Members of Congress to express your opposition to these cuts.
Here’s how to be an on-the-phone advocate to your Members of Congress:
- Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for the office of your Senator or Representative. The switchboard will connect you directly. Not sure who you members of Congress are? Click here to find out.
- Once transferred, introduce yourself with your name, organization or business and location. Explain that you support the Partnership for Sustainable Communities in both the Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 Continuing Resolution and FY 2012 Appropriations, and that you oppose:
- Retraction of the Department of Transportation’s unspent TIGER grant funds;
- Policy riders that would prevent the Department of Housing and Urban Development from continuing its work with the Partnership for Sustainable Communities.
(Want to know more about these issues? You can find more information and talking points here.)
- Thank the staff member and end the call. Repeat steps one through three with your other Members of Congress.
- Share this alert with your friends and colleagues. Encourage them to tell their Congressional representatives about their support for the Partnership for Sustainable Communities.
This week is the time to act. Please call your Members of Congress today to express your support for these important federal programs.
Recent Lessons from the Stimulus: Transportation Funding and Job Creation
Smart Growth America analyzes states’ investments in infrastructure to determine whether they made the best use of their spending based on job creation numbers. “Recent Lessons from the Stimulus: Transportation Funding and Job Creation” evaluates how successful states have been in creating jobs with their flexible $26.6 billion of transportation funds from the American Reinvestment … Continued
A Sputnik Moment for Smart Growth
In his State of the Union address, President Obama laid out a strategy to rebuild America’s economy, calling on the country to “Out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” He laid out strategies for better education, better energy production, better transportation and better job creation. All of these strategies are key to a stronger American economy.
It is time we remember and take pride in the fact that “America is the nation that built the transcontinental railroad, brought electricity to rural communities, constructed the Interstate Highway System. The jobs created by these projects didn’t just come from laying down track or pavement. They came from businesses that opened near a town’s new train station or the new off-ramp.”
The President’s statement means we have to continue to expand our infrastructure and communities with an understanding of how the two connect and support one another, and that’s exactly what smart growth does. The big national decisions we make about budgets and investment can ultimately make life better in the towns and neighborhoods that knit this nation together.
Wasteful Development Subsidies Among Cuts Proposed by Debt Commission
This post was originally published on the Huffington Post.
In its report yesterday, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform encouraged Congress to cut from the federal budget “wasteful spending, including subsidies that are poorly targeted or create perverse incentives…” People who care about making great neighborhoods, take notice. Unbeknownst to most, the federal government plays a massive role in the real estate market by subsidizing and enabling all kinds of development in our communities. With ballooning deficits, now seems like a good time to revisit these subsidies and make sure they are achieving a legitimate public purpose -and not, in the commission’s words, “creating perverse incentives.”
Smart Growth America welcomes new staff
Smart Growth America is very excited to announce the addition of several new members to our staff. Chelsea Allinger, formerly a fellow at the Governor’s Institute on Community Design, has been brought on board full time as a new Program Associate for the Smart Growth Leadership Institute, SGA’s technical assistance center. Chelsea previously held an … Continued