A Bird’s Eye View of the Draft Plan:
The terms that come to mind after reading the entire draft plan are livability, multi-modal, transportation choices and environmental friendliness – or the actual term used, sustainability. Pedestrians, bicyclists as well as the National Complete Streets coalition should be pleased as these three interests are woven into the fabric of DOT’s vision for livable communities with good transportation options beyond the automobile.
Public transportation is featured prominently. It is seen as a safe travel choice and as one that promotes our national goals of reducing reliance on foreign fuel, reducing congestion and improving our environment. Human services transportation is recognized as a big contributor to livability for people who are transportation challenged and wish to remain in their homes.
Not at all mentioned are the privately-run and publicly available modes of taxis (the original guaranteed ride home) and intercity bus service, which complement public transportation and the zero-emission modes of biking and walking. High-speed rail, perhaps because of the crucial role of federal funding, is mentioned, though not given too much space.
SAFETY:
Big endorsement of complete streets. According to DOT, this is a safety issue to protect pedestrians, bicyclists and "walking school buses." Included in the safety recommendations:
Work with State and local governments to provide more technical assistance such as the application of pedestrian and bicycle safety audits to ensure that transportation systems are designed for optimum safety for all users.
The corresponding performance measure? Increase in number of localities that adopt complete streets policies and have safe routes to school programs. No recommendations of specific measures, except a cited Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) study that found that "sidewalks, raised medians, turning access controls, better bus stop placement, better lighting, traffic calming measures, and treatments for disabled travelers" protect all users - pedestrians, bicyclists as well as drivers and their passengers. Does this mean less right on red, more traffic signals, and more scramble intersections?
No mention is made of some type of “Safe Routes for Seniors” program or initiative for people with disabilities. People who are physically challenged tend to walk across intersections more slowly and their bodies are fragile when they are hit, making them more prone to serious physical injuries and death.
LIVABILITY:
Recalling Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood’s blog entry from several months ago, describing a weekend getaway to friends in Hoboken N.J., including a night out in the city, this is a man who was happy to walk, take the train, and leave the car at home for the whole weekend. His department wants to assist communities in affording multi-modal and healthy, environmentally friendly transportation choices to Americans wherever possible.
Livable communities gets its own section of the draft plan. DOT calls for "place-based policies and investments that increase transportation choices and access to transportation services." DOT expressly wants improved public transit, human services transportation (mentioning the special needs populations and people with disabilities), and better bike/pedestrian networks. The plan envisions transportation coordination with land use and economic development.
The plan directly links the auto-dependent lifestyle to national insecurity and ill health.
A study is cited showing that people who live in compact, walkable communities are more fit and healthy than those who reside in counties with more sprawl. The connection between health and the transportation network is explicitly made and discussed in detail. The plan practically comes out and says that the 40 percent of trips that are two miles or less in length should be able to be made by walking or bicycle, but that our current street network does not allow this - despite studies showing that young adults and baby boomers want to live in walkable neighborhoods and towns.
In case you think DOT is talking about New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle, or a few others, the plan specifically includes rural areas and their desperate need for alternatives to the car.
Creating livable communities is just as important to residents of rural areas as it is to residents of urban and suburban areas. Rural town centers have experienced disinvestment in much the same way as urban core areas and many rural towns are fighting to attract local commercial development through the revitalization of town centers. Rural residents generally must travel greater distances to jobs and services than their urban counterparts and can suffer from greater isolation, especially if they cannot drive.
The DOT-HUD-EPA partnership is already identifying barriers to coordinating transportation, housing, and environmental policies and investments. The three agencies are coordinating and bringing resources together for each others' programs, such as EPA's Smart Growth Technical Assistance Program, HUD’s Sustainable Communities Planning Grants, designed to fund regional, coordinated planning, and "evaluation of DOT’s TIGER Discretionary Grant applications, for which livability and sustainability are two key criteria."
DOT sees livability as a way to reduce household transportation costs through the availability of alternative mobility choices, such as transit, biking and walking.
And what is DOT envisioning to help states, regions and communities become more livable? Providing technical assistance, advocating for "robust State and local planning efforts," spending transportation dollars where they will capitalize on public and private infrastructure investment, and developing livability performance measures.
Specific strategies that DOT plans to use are increasing access to transit and inter-city services, developing pedestrian and bike-friendly street networks, "where practical" providing better rural transit for access to jobs, services and transportation centers that are currently only automobile accessible, and encouraging mixed-income development, for which DOT has already funded a technical assistance MITOD guide through Reconnecting America.
DOT's plan seems almost ashamed that although walking and biking account for account for "almost 12 percent of trips and about 13 percent of roadway fatalities, these modes receive less than 2 percent of annual Federal Aid Highway funds."
COORDINATING COUNCIL ON ACCESS AND MOBILITY (CCAM):
DOT embraces CCAM, which seeks to coordinate the many transportation programs dispersed throughout the federal bureaucracy. Explicitly mentioned for continued federal support are:
* Local coordinating councils,
* One-call services - "single point of access that links human services with transportation providers to address the special mobility needs of persons with disabilities, older adults, low-income persons and others without ready access to automobiles,"
* ITS to assist human service transportation via transportation management centers (such as the Mobility Services for All Americans - MSAA - program), and
* "[T]echnical assistance and training activities to improve the operations of local public and non-profit community transportation providers."
With no discussion, the plan directly ties CCAM's work and the technical assistance and local efforts mentioned above to DOT's livability initiative. Mobility for vulnerable transportation-challenged populations is considered a livable communities issue that is part of DOT's overarching mission. Connecting CCAM’s work to the major goal at three federal agencies (DOT, HUD and EPA) will lend gravitas to the Council’s efforts and allows it to fit in with the Administration’s emphasis on federal cooperation and coordination.
The plan delves into the performance measures for CCAM's assistance to states, regions and communities. These include:
* Increase in "transit seat-miles by urbanized area transit systems,"
* Increase in non-urbanized area transit trips,
* Increase in "intermodal transportation options for travelers,"
* Improved transit reliability,
* Improved walking and biking networks - a Federal Highway Administration task,
* Improved ADA access on rail and buses for people with disabilities.
DOT acknowledges that there will be resistance to the livability agenda and its vision of a multi-modal future. Housing, land use design, roads and other infrastructure are investments that last a generation, the plan recognizes, and many communities and states are not accustomed to thinking in terms of sidewalks, bike paths, distances between residential and commercial areas, or connectivity among transportation modes.
ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY:
DOT sets ambitious goals to reduce emissions and “air, water and noise pollution and impacts on ecosystems;” establish environmentally sustainable practices that address global climate change; and promote energy independence. These challenges require new transportation solutions, DOT declares in the proposed plan.
The agency does not hesitate to lay out the environmentally awful statistics and the transportation sector’s role in contributing to them.
Of course the draft strategic plan offers proposals for air and automobile travel, but in terms of public transportation, the plan imagines coordinated federal environmental policies and programs through the interagency DOT-HUD-EPA partnership, high-speed rail (though no one is talking about something akin the China’s mega investments), multi-modal strategies, reducing the energy consumption of transit, and encouraging state and metropolitan planning organizations (MPO), such as councils of governments (COG), to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
To accomplish the goals for reducing energy consumption, reducing greenhouse emissions, and reducing our national dependence on foreign oil, the draft strategic plan is proposing that public transportation systems continue to take advantage of the Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction (TIGGER) Discretionary Grant (TDG) program, which is already at work replacing older fuel-eating facilities and vehicles with more environmentally-friendly models, buildings, and innovative technologies.
EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS:
Acknowledging that I am not an expert in this area, the proposals seem logical, but most could have been written in 1940. In non-specific language, the plan discusses preparing for continuity of operations, developing security policies, coordination with the Department of Homeland Security (yes that would have been a different agency in 1940), and dealing with the youngest potential danger on the block, cyber threats.
The plan recommends grants and technical assistance to plan and train for “effective emergency response to transportation incidents involving hazardous materials” and to provide for the improvement of state and local response to emergencies.
Virtually no specifics are given and no performance measures are proposed. Admittedly, with potential and actual emergencies covering a wildly broad spectrum of dangers, preventive procedures and responses, there is little this a strategic plan could say without launching into a 50-page manual on this topic alone. But then fewer people would read the proposed plan than are reading the current 74-page document.
Remember that DOT comment invites the public to comment on its proposals. Read the draft plan sections that interest you and express your thoughts about the draft strategic plan.
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