A panel of Complete Streets leaders launched our 2011 Strategy Meeting and quickly set a high bar for the day. Panelists spoke on their experience at the local, regional, and state levels, sharing their methods and challenges with the 55 attendees.
For leading the way with smart growth policy making that will make North Carolina neighborhoods even greater places to live, Smart Growth America is pleased to recognize North Carolina State Senator Floyd B. McKissick and Representative Jennifer Weiss with Smart Growth America’s 2011 Leadership Award.
In 2010, Senator McKissick and Representative Weiss sponsored legislation to establish an innovative Sustainable Communities Task Force in North Carolina. Excitingly, the legislation passed – making North Carolina one of the latest states to recognize the connections between cross-agency governance at the state level, coordination with stakeholders at the local level, and sustainable communities on the ground.
As co-chairs of the Legislative Study Commission on Urban Growth and Infrastructure, McKissick and Weiss helped develop and refine the Sustainable Communities Task Force legislation from the earliest stages. The legislation lays out six guiding smart growth principles, similar to the Livability Principles of the federal HUD, DOT, and EPA Sustainable Communities Partnership.
Mark off an hour in your calendar next Wednesday, February 16 from 3:00p -4:00p ET. I’m joining Mark Cole, PE, Design Section Manager for the City of Charlotte, North Carolina for a webinar that will give an in-depth look at the latest Complete Streets best practices. I plan to cover some of the opportunities to build … Continued
In his State of the Union address, President Obama called on Americans to “out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world” to win the future. To rebuild America, he said, we will aim to put “more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges.”
A new report from 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 and Recovery Act (ARRA). Those results should guide governors and other leaders in revitalizing America’s transportation system, maximizing job creation from transportation dollars and rebuilding the economy.
According to data sent by the states to Congress, the states that created the most jobs were the ones that invested in public transportation projects and projects that maintained and repaired existing roads and bridges. The states that spent their funds predominantly building new roads and bridges created fewer jobs.
As Newsweek’s David A. Graham explains, investments in transportation create jobs in the short term and longer term economic prosperity too:
Injecting money into transportation projects, the thinking goes, is an especially potent jobs-creation tool because it not only puts construction workers and contractors to work quickly, it also lays the groundwork for future economic growth and development. Obama predicted the transportation money alone would put hundreds of thousands of workers on the job.
As “Recent Lessons from the Stimulus” explains, not all transportation projects reap these benefits equally:
[S]tates spent more than a third of the money on building new roads—rather than working on public transportation and fixing up existing roads and bridges. The result of the indiscriminate spending? States missed out on potentially thousands of new jobs—and bridges, roads, and overpasses around the country are still crumbling. Meanwhile, the states that did put dollars toward public transportation were richly rewarded: Each dollar used on transit was 75 percent more effective at putting people to work than a dollar used for highway work.
A new report released today by Smart Growth America and the Natural Resources Defense Council found that transportation policies in every state could save money and reduce carbon emissions by making smarter decisions with state funds.
In “Getting Back on Track: Climate Change and State Transportation Policy,” SGA and NRDC found that current transportation policies in almost all 50 states either fail to curb carbon emission rates or, in some cases, actually increase emissions. This contradiction between state policies and broader efforts to reduce carbon emissions means not only that many states are missing opportunities to protect clean air; it means they are missing economic opportunities as well.
In a press conference this morning, former Maryland Governor Parris Glendening remarked:
Transportation makes up an enormous proportion of our national economy and our environmental impact: it must be front and center as we think about how to get the most out of our public investments. The states that rose to the top in this report, California, Maryland and New Jersey, are there because they are meeting the challenge to innovate.
The North Carolina General Assembly recently passed legislation establishing a Sustainable Communities Task Force within the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. North Carolina is now the latest state to recognize the connections between cross-agency governance at the state level, coordination with stakeholders at the local level, and sustainable communities on the ground.
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded Charlotte, NC’s Urban Street Design Guidelines – a model in complete streets planning and design – with the coveted National Award for Smart Growth Achievement in Policies and Regulations.
News on complete streets comes in daily now, so we’re going to start a new feature in our blog to keep everyone – including us! – up to speed.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) stepped up its commitment to complete streets yesterday with its adoption of a formal Complete Streets Policy. The new document fleshes out many details and sets a clear exceptions process.
The Enabling Source Water Protection Project for North Carolina was initiated with a workshop in August 2009. Robin Smith, Assistant Secretary, NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources, addressed more than 40 national and state leaders in water protection, land conservation and local planning, pointing out that “North Carolina is expected to grow in population by as much as 30 percent by the year 2030.” She then presented a challenge to the group by stating that both water quantity and quality are “vitally important to the future of the state.”