Archive for the 'Transportation and Community Development' Category
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Today, the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing released Bay Area Burden, which found that after their combined housing and transportation expenditures, San Francisco Bay Area workers are left with insufficient resources to meet their basic needs. The research by CNT, Center for Housing Policy and ULI, shows that the average Bay Area household spends more than $41,000 a year—nearly 60 percent of their income—on transportation and housing costs alone.
Bay Area Burden provides a comprehensive analysis of the “cost of place” in nine counties located throughout the San Francisco region by examining the costs and impacts of housing and transportation on residents, their neighborhoods and the environment.
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Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
CNT promotes location efficient neighborhoods which have walkable streets, access to transit, mixed land uses, and concentration of retail and services. These neighborhoods require less time, money, and greenhouse gas emissions for residents to meet their everyday travel requirements. Walk Score was launched in 2007 to help people find walkable places to live. Walk Score is a web tool that calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, and now public transit.
CNT is working with the makers of Walk Score, Front Seat, on a project that was recently funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Foundation awarded a grant to Front Seat to add public transit, transportation cost, and greenhouse gas emission data to Walk Score. CNT will provide Front Seat with the estimated transportation costs of a location as well as the household greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.
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Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
A renewed consideration of the potentials of rail in the U.S., coupled with the Chicago metropolitan region’s position as an area of the nation most affected by rail emissions make an Illinois company poised to help the region once again become a center of rail manufacturing and innovation. The National Railway Equipment Company (NREC) is a 25-year old company with five locations in Illinois that manufactures the world’s leading low emissions/high fuel efficiency locomotive.
On August 5th, CNT, along with Respiratory Health Agency, Chicago Southland Economic Development Corporation, and National Railway Equipment Company (NREC) co-sponsored The “Future of Rail” tour which illustrated Illinois’ capacity to meet our nation’s rail, environmental and manufacturing needs. The tour spotlighted NREC’s exciting N-ViroMotive Genset Locomotive, an Ultra Low Emitting Locomotive, whose state-of-the-art technology allows for massive reductions in particulate emissions and noise, fuel consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions compared to conventional locomotives.
Look at photos from the “Future of Rail” tour on CNT’s Flickr page. Read about sites visited and learn more about the N-ViroMotive under each photo. (Photos are courtesy of James Street Associates).
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Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
Congressman Danny Davis kicked off a roundtable in Chicago’s Downtown Omni Hotel on Monday by providing a legislative context for the newly reinvigorated, federal commuter benefit program designed to save taxpayers millions of dollars, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The program is called “Commuter Tax Benefits”, and on Monday morning CNT and its partners hosted more than 100 business leaders and a panel of experts to discuss the “win-win-win” possibilities for employees, employers, and the environment.
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Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
In a press conference last Thursday, CNT hosted a panel of experts who each discussed effects of the downturn on public transit in Illinois and put forward ways to stop the crisis it is rapidly creating. The conference was called in the wake of a report released by Transportation for America, “Stranded at the Station”, which profiles the paradox of agencies having to raise transit fares and cut services while demand for transit increases.
The press conference focused on how Illinois, in particular, is faring in this climate. Co-chair of Gamaliel Metro Chicago David Bigsby, Access Living’s Program Director Rahnee Patrick, Vice President of the Metropolitan Planning Council Peter Skosey, and Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District Managing Director Bill Volk each adding to the portrait of public transit in Illinois, who the cuts hurt and how it can adjust to weather the storm.
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Thursday, August 20th, 2009
Chicago, IL— Away from the attention of front pages and news channels, conditions in America are quietly coming together for a paradox in public transit. From New York to San Francisco, Seattle to Miami, in every major city in America and many of the smaller ones, public transit funding is at odds with the economic realities of the Great Recession.
According to “Stranded at the Station”, a new report released Tuesday by Transportation for America (T4), transit funding is drying up, fares are rising and services are dwindling for close to 90 percent of American public transit systems. And just as these cuts and fare hikes are coming, more people need better access to affordable public transit. Read more »
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Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Last Thursday, July 23rd, CNT and the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) brought together thirty of Baltimore’s transportation professionals and community members for “Bridging the Gap,” a daylong workshop on public involvement for transportation projects.
“Bridging the Gap” is an ongoing project to identify points of miscommunication between transportation agencies and community-based organizations (CBOs) in transportation planning and development. When agencies and communities are not engaged in a productive public involvement process, conflicts may lead to costly delays and failure to meet the original goals of a project. The workshop delivered in Baltimore included a series of activities, developed from CNT’s research, that promote trust-building and understanding between participants, and demonstrate tools for future collaboration.
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Monday, July 13th, 2009
Today at noon, CNT’s Vice President of Policy, Jacky Grimshaw, will be at the Governor’s capital bill signing to outline how the bill provides a major opportunity to create good jobs and make our communities cleaner, greener, healthier and better positioned to profit in the energy economy of the future. Illinois Governor, Pat Quinn, will sign the long-delayed legislation, creating a huge public works program – at $29 billion – to help the Illinois economy.
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Thursday, June 25th, 2009
On Monday, June 22, U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, introduced a bill that would reauthorize federal surface transportation funding to the tune of $450 billion and reform how the federal government invests in transportation infrastructure. Illinois transportation advocates commend Rep. Oberstar for his leadership on renewing federal surface transportation funding, which expires within a matter of weeks. They are working actively in coalition with Transportation for America (T4America) to help shape the bill so that it goes even further to ensure federal transportation investments help the U.S. and Illinois meet broader economic, energy, climate and health goals.
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Monday, May 18th, 2009
In response to recent developments in local transportation politics, CNT is reviving the TransitFuture coalition. Created in March 2007 to rally local support to avert the ‘Doomsday’ de-funding of public transportation in Northeastern Illinois, the TransitFuture’s organizing efforts paid off, and the crisis was averted. With the current funding crunch, that victory has revealed itself to be temporary, and the TransitFuture coalition is back in action to organize against the latest batch of harmful budget threats. Stay tuned to our website and listserv to learn how you can help stop Illinois’ budget crisis from doing irreparable damage to the public transportation system.
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