As communities across the country battle COVID-19, LOCUS is committed to providing our members and supporters with timely updates and transparent resources that help keep your communities, families, and businesses safe and resilient.
Our economy is at a virtual standstill because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs and healthcare. Businesses of all sizes are facing an existential threat. Local municipal budgets are being gutted. As we hope for light at the end of the tunnel we’ll need to craft a smart recovery. We leaned on our experience with the stimulus of 2009 and our long expertise in infrastructure and community development to produce a package of federal policy recommendations Congress should consider to build the foundation for a long-lasting recovery.
Early yesterday morning, congressional leaders and the White House agreed to a $2 trillion COVID-19 economic stabilization plan that includes $25 billion emergency direct assistance to transit agencies, at a time when agencies’ revenue is plummeting, as well as more than $1 billion for passenger rail. This is a huge victory, and it wouldn’t have been possible without your messages and calls to Congress. But there’s still more work to do.
Senate republicans have unveiled their $1 trillion economic stimulus plan and not a single dollar is dedicated to supporting transit or Amtrak. This is unacceptable. Without action now some of the hardest-hit transit agencies won’t be able to recover, even if transit is included in a fourth stimulus package.
New polling conducted by YouGov on behalf of Transportation for America and partners finds that Americans support expanding public transit by a wide margin—even as many transit agencies face a growing funding crisis brought on by COVID-19.
Fort Scott, Kansas has an incredible network of brick streets to rival any city in the country—an under recognized asset. At a recent workshop, Smart Growth America and local experts looked to build atop this and other assets to make Fort Scott more attractive to current and future residents.
Join us for a webinar on March 26 to hear how Minneapolis has worked to prioritize pedestrians and advance multimodal transportation through advocacy, policy, and safer street design. This is the latest installment in our monthly webinar series Complete Streets 301: Putting people first.
Representatives Earl Blumenauer (D-OR-3), Dan Kildee (D-MI-5), Darin LaHood (R-IL-18), and Mike Kelly (R-PA-16) have introduced the REHAB Act in the U.S. House. This legislation, if passed, will help spur private investment in affordable housing and public infrastructure in the places where it’s needed most: walkable, transit-connected places.
Every day, millions of people use app-based transportation systems to get where they’re going. In addition to transporting people safely to their destinations, the companies behind the apps are also responsible for safely handling travelers’ personal and financial data. We recently partnered with Lyft to learn how operators in this space are addressing these twin safety concerns.
Our Transportation for America program has released a comprehensive report on why our default “solution” to traffic congestion—widening highways—simply does not work. The Congestion Con proves with data that one more expensive freeway lane most certainly will not solve congestion, and perhaps congestion is the wrong thing to be trying to solve in the first place.