News for February, 2011
Thursday, February 24th, 2011
As the national debate on smart grid technologies rages, Illinois’ real-time pricing programs can serve as a valuable lesson to the nation. These programs have reduced participant’s electric usage and bills and are shifting usage to non-peak times of day, when electricity is cheaper to produce and our infrastructure is less congested. However, to lower electricity prices and improve reliability for everyone, the programs must have enough participants to significantly impact electricity markets. So far, Illinois’ programs have not garnered as much participation as anticipated. Consequently, they are not living up to their potential to benefit customers. Read more »
Posted in Energy, Featured Portfolio News, Policy, Power Smart Pricing | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
NRDC’s Smarter Cities Project Reveals How Cities Across the U.S. are Raising the Bar for Affordable and Accessible Public Transit
New York (February 23, 2011) – Today NRDC’s Smarter Cities project released a transportation study identifying 15 metropolitan regions with the nation’s leading transportation policies and practices. The study, created in collaboration with the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), compares and profiles U.S. regions based on public transit availability, use and cost; household automobile ownership and use; and innovative, sustainable transportation programs.
“Innovative transit policies not only benefit the environment, but they also add richness to urban life by making city attractions and neighborhoods more accessible,” said Paul McRandle, Senior Editor of NRDC’s Smarter Cities Project. “By enhancing regional transportation programs we can improve our quality of life, boost our local economies, reduce air pollution and even benefit public health by making biking and walking safer and more enjoyable for commuters.”
The 15 metro regions identified as ‘Smarter Cities’ for transportation include:
- Seven large regions (> 1 million people): Boston; Chicago; Philadelphia; Portland, Oregon; New York, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.
- Four medium regions (250,000-1 million people): Boulder-Longmont, Colorado; Honolulu, Hawaii; Jersey City, New Jersey; and New Haven, Connecticut.
- Four small regions (< 250,000 people): Champaign-Urbana, Illinois; Bremerton, Washington; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Yolo, California.
The transportation study is the second to be released by NRDC’s Smarter Cities project, which aims to inspire cities, municipalities and regions nationwide by recognizing and profiling what leading metropolitan regions are doing to make themselves more efficient, sustainable, and livable. The data underlying the 15 cities’ transportation profiles was drawn from the U.S. Census and CNT’s H+T® Affordability Index (http://htaindex.org/) that quantifies household transportation costs by location.
“By and large, ‘location efficient’ places – with essential services that are nearby or accessible by many transportation modes – lower transportation costs for residents,” said Scott Bernstein, president of CNT. “Cities and regions that foster compact, walkable, transit-rich communities can reduce reliance on automobiles and help lower at least one expense for households struggling to get by in the current economy.”
Highlights from the study include:
- About 98 percent of Jersey City, New Jersey residents live within a half mile of public transit access; only 60 percent own or have access to a car.
- In downtown Boston, around 65 percent of trips during peak hours are non-motorized due in large part to the city’s Complete Streets initiative, launched in 2009, to create streets that integrate pedestrians, cyclists and public transit with motorists.
- Philadelphia has selectively expanded the city’s public transit system in certain neighborhoods to increase residents’ access to fresh food.
- Boulder, Colorado, has built paved pathways along Boulder Creek that allow walkers and bikers to travel up to 52 miles without ever having to cross traffic.
- Washington, D.C.’s Capital Bikeshare program has made more than 1,100 bikes available for pick up at solar-powered docking stations throughout the city and Arlington County.
The full study, with individual city profiles, can be found at: http://smartercities.nrdc.org/topic/transportation/americas-smartest-regions-transportation
###
ABOUT
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 1.3 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world’s natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Livingston, Montana, and Beijing. Visit us at www.nrdc.org
Smarter Cities, an NRDC project, aims to be an online resource for and about cities striving to make themselves “smarter” – more efficient, sustainable, equitable and livable. We provide for all those with a stake in their city’s future—from students to policy makers and city planners, from business leaders to community groups and urban dwellers—in depth analyses of what leader cities are doing, as well as extensive toolkits to the best practices, model policies and programs, incentives and innovations that they are piloting.
Founded in 1978, CNT is a Chicago-based think-and-do tank that works nationally to advance urban sustainability by researching, inventing and testing strategies that use resources more efficiently and equitably. Its programs focus on climate, energy, natural resources, transportation, and community development. Visit www.cnt.org for more information.
Posted in Press Releases | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
A new study released today by CNT and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reveals how small, medium and large metro regions across the country have become leaders in providing affordable and accessible transportation options for their residents.
Fifteen U.S. cities are profiled for their leadership in innovative transportation policies and practices, based on metrics drawn from the U.S. Census and CNT’s H+T® Affordability Index, which quantifies transportation costs by location. Read more »
Posted in Featured Portfolio News, Transportation and Community Development | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011
President Obama’s reform-minded federal transportation budget released earlier this week gave us a lot to respond to (Read it here). Of course the federal budget deals with much more than transportation, including issues that CNT staff research and advocate for on a daily basis. Read on for our initial thoughts on the Obama Administration’s proposals for energy efficiency, electric vehicles, green infrastructure and climate change. Read more »
Posted in General News, Policy | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
On Monday, President Obama proposed a budget to guide the nation’s public investments over the coming six years. CNT welcomes and supports the president’s transportation investment proposal. By investing in America’s infrastructure, the president’s proposed budget will bring home the benefits of sustainable transportation and build our local economies.
CNT’s analysis of the president’s proposed transportation budget finds that it does indeed combine common sense reforms with the transformative investments necessary to keep America globally competitive and economically secure.
The President’s announcement coincided with the release of a new poll from the Rockefeller Foundation examining American sentiment toward transportation infrastructure investment. The data show that Americans recognize a vibrant transportation system as essential to household, community and national economic security. But the polling also indicates that investment must come with meaningful reform of how the decisions are made. Read more »
Posted in Featured Portfolio News, Transportation and Community Development | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
Statement by CNT President Scott Bernstein
CHICAGO (February 17, 2011)—This week President Barack Obama proposed a transportation budget to guide the nation’s public investments for the next six years. The budget announcement coincided with the release of a new poll from the Rockefeller Foundation examining American sentiment toward transportation infrastructure investment. The Administration budget closely aligns with public opinion, proposing meaningful reform and sound investment. As our public discourse focuses on reining in the deficit, it is also important that we get serious about finding ways to improve the transportation infrastructure that is essential to household, community and national economic security.
The Rockefeller Foundation poll found that 66 percent of voters said that ‘improving the country’s transportation infrastructure is either extremely or very important.’ Eighty percent of those polled agreed that federal funding to improve and modernize transportation ‘will boost local economies and create millions of jobs from construction to manufacturing to engineering.’ Meanwhile, 64 percent said that ‘how the government currently spends money on building and maintaining our transportation infrastructure is inefficient and unwise.’
The lessons in the polling are straightforward: people believe in good investment, and they are willing to back up that belief with their tax dollars, so long as they feel transportation investments are made based on facts rather than politics. Pres. Obama’s federal transportation budget hews to the sentiment revealed in the poll; it combines common sense reforms with the transformative investments necessary to keep America globally competitive and economically secure.
It’s about time. For more than 30 years the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) has championed improved economic and environmental viability for communities by tapping into their existing assets, from showing Rust Belt cities how their freight and passenger rail can revitalize their economies to quantifying the best urban infill development opportunities around existing transit stations to connect people with jobs and amenities at lower cost. As transportation advocates—and taxpayers—we’re particularly encouraged by the themes laid out in the president’s ambitious $556 billion plan, which include:
Making performance count—The budget calls for tightening the screening criteria for choosing worthy state, regional and local government projects so outcomes result in transportation networks that are effective, reliable and affordable. By dedicating funds to a new competitive leadership fund and a National Infrastructure Bank, the budget proposal would marry the best of sound policy and rigorous marketplace underwriting.
Making place matter—The Obama Administration budget proposal strengthens support for the interagency sustainability partnership between the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, the Dept. of Transportation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that is committed to innovative place-based strategies. The partnership essentially tears down silos and provides a vision at the federal level and then gives local and regional entities leeway in proposing projects that compete nationally for federal funding. The federal transportation budget aligns with this thinking by strengthening local and regional planning functions since those on the ground know their needs best and have always been the true implementers of federal policy.
Leveraging scarce resources—Of the $1.5 trillion that the Eno Transportation Foundation estimates is spent annually in the United States on all forms of transportation, a mere 12 percent comes from federal, state and local government in roughly equal thirds. That means the federal contribution to transportation is just 4 percent of the total. The federal Highway Trust Fund, the primary source of federal transit and surface transportation dollars, is a scarce resource. The Obama budget proposal would promote the idea of ‘fix it first,”’ improving and upgrading existing infrastructure before building new, which is a common sense approach. The budget would also offer incentives for accelerating investments that deliver economic progress on-time and under budget.
Getting real about transportation costs for people—The experience of the past three or four years—from the 2008 spike in gas prices to the economic implosion caused by the housing bubble—has uncovered how much of the population is hanging by a thread. While the gas price increases from 2000 to 2008 and the 2008 price spike didn’t cause the economic crisis, our research suggests that communities with more transportation options, whether in the form of mass transit systems or simply more accessibility between people and what they do, are less financially vulnerable.
Based on an analysis of numerous metro areas using the Housing + Transportation® Affordability Index (htaindex.cnt.org), households living in location-inefficient communities saw an increase of up to 10 percent in transportation costs from 2000 to 2008, while those living in efficient places with transportation choice experienced a 2 percent increase over the same period. Making investments that create a world class transportation system can increase transportation affordability and reduce expenses for households, create jobs, and help businesses improve the movement of goods while lowering costs.
Making smart choices—The proposed budget reforms are informed by transportation projects funded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA). An analysis by Smart Growth America, U.S. PIRG and CNT found that states and regions that used ARRA money for transit projects created or supported twice as many jobs per dollar as did major highway projects. Given those results, it makes sense that the budget would double funding for transit improvements over previous budgets.
President Obama’s budget is positioning the federal government as the visionary of the transportation infrastructure modernization for the nation while relying on local and regional governments to generate the location-specific transportation solutions that will help communities become more economically and environmentally resilient.
The president is following the path of other presidents—Republican and Democrat—who have pushed the public to support critical investments that make the nation stronger and a world leader in innovation. In introducing the Defense Highway Act, Pres. Dwight Eisenhower stated that ‘our very mission is in our name—we are a United States of America, and without that we’d be merely a collection of separate parts.’ Roughly 100 years prior, Pres. Abraham Lincoln found creative ways to partner with states, municipal governments and investors to build a transcontinental railway.
Ninety-one percent of those polled by the Rockefeller Foundation believe that ‘our generation has a responsibility to the future to invest in America’s infrastructure—just as our parents and grandparents did.’ CNT also agrees with that statement, and we support the president’s transportation investment proposal. Investing in America’s infrastructure will bring home the benefits of sustainable transportation and build our local economies. The ideas and the public support are there. Now our federal leaders need to work together to make it happen.
###
Founded in 1978, CNT is a Chicago-based think-and-do tank that works nationally to advance urban sustainability by researching, inventing and testing strategies that use resources more efficiently and equitably. Its programs focus on climate, energy, natural resources, transportation, and community development. Visit www.cnt.org for more information.
Posted in Press Releases | No Comments »
Friday, February 11th, 2011
Last summer, I-GO Car Sharing tested the i-Miev and added a charging station at our headquarters.
The Chicago Tribune’s Julie Wernau recently covered the city’s near-term plan to bring electric vehicles (EV) and infrastructure to Chicagoans. CNT’s I-GO Car Sharing has been working hand in glove with city government to bring the initiative to fruition. I-GO will have 36 electric charging stations dedicated to its car sharing vehicles, and this spring I-GO is taking the green EV project a step further by installing solar canopies at 15 stations so its electric fleet will run on clean solar power. Read more »
Posted in Featured Portfolio News, I-GO, Transportation and Community Development | No Comments »
Monday, February 7th, 2011
CNT staff presented our recommendations for the next Mayor of Chicago at the Field Museum.
CNT led a discussion about sustainability and the future of Chicago with Field Museum staff last week. The discussion was part of CNT’s outreach around Investing in a Better Chicago, our 22 policy recommendations for the city’s next mayor and City Council to strengthen the region’s economic and environmental sustainability. The event at the Field Museum is one of the numerous “house parties” CNT is organizing across the city to help make sustainability a key part of Chicago’s historic election. Read more »
Posted in Climate, Featured Portfolio News | No Comments »
