In August 2023, over 2,700 Brownfields practitioners met in downtown Detroit to share the latest trends and best practices for revitalizing and redeveloping contaminated brownfield sites across the country. The National Brownfields Coalition (NBC), a nonpartisan advocacy coalition convened by Smart Growth America and the Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR), actively participated at the … Continued
The Transportation & Infrastructure Committee (T&I) in the U.S. House released a draft proposal for long-term surface transportation policy today that would replace the existing FAST Act, which expires this year. The INVEST (Investing in a New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation) in America Act takes a markedly different approach to transportation policy that would begin to put outcomes—instead of price tags—at the center of our decision making.
This November, we continued our webinar series, Complete Streets 301: Putting people first, with a Complete Streets federal policy update. A recording of the webinar is now available. You can also download a PDF of the presentation or read the brief recap below.
As the number of Americans walking and biking struck and killed by drivers each year reaches highs not seen in decades, Rep. Stephen Cohen (TN-9) brought local stakeholders together in his Memphis district to address this crisis. His legislation—the Complete Streets Act of 2019—is a needed first step, but as local advocates noted, alone it won’t be enough to save lives and create the safe and modern transportation system that America needs.
What should we accomplish with the billions in transportation funding the federal government spends each year? That’s an open question that Congress has so far seemed unwilling to answer. New principles from our Transportation for America, program seek to paint a picture of what we can—and should—get done. Congress should take note; it’s long past time for a reset of broken federal transportation policy.
It’s Infrastructure Week again and politicians are back at it, bemoaning our “crumbling roads and bridges” and insisting we must spend more to fix the problem. But we’ve got some cold water to throw on this pity party: Despite more transportation spending over the last decade, the percentage of the roads nationwide in “poor condition” increased from 14 to 20 percent.
Less than two months in to the Trump administration and a new Congress, lawmakers are already talking about a $1 trillion infrastructure package, major cuts in federal spending, and tax reform—legislation that could have huge implications for community development.
What will this mean for transit-oriented development? And how might these changes impact programs that support community revitalization, housing affordability and walkable development?
LOCUS members are invited to join us for a town hall conference call on Friday, March 17, 2017 at 2:30 pm EST to hear from our policy experts with an inside track in Washington.
This election season was tumultuous and divisive. For me, as president of an organization working to improve Americans’ lives by building better communities, it has brought a mixture of uncertainty, alarm, and hope. First, the uncertainty. With regard to economic development, tax policy, housing, infrastructure, and other federal programs that affect communities, the policies of … Continued
Download Federal Involvement in Real Estate: A Call for Action, including the report’s full recommendations with all figures and appendices.
 |
| Kittery-Portsmouth Memorial Bridge, originally uploaded by cmh2315fl. |
If The Onion were covering last week’s TIGER 2 announcements, the headline would be: “DOT to replace the deteriorating Kittery-Portsmouth Memorial Bridge; other 70,997 bridges out of luck.”
Serious policy analysts don’t talk like that, but in fact the US Department of Transportation rates 12 percent (71,000) of the nations’ bridges as “structurally deficient,” which means that a bridge has a major defect in its support structure or its deck is cracking and deteriorating.
TIGER 2 will repair of three (3) of them.