Transportation and Community Development News
Friday, August 3rd, 2012
IGO CarSharing, CNT’s affiliate, has received a grant of over $700,000 from the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration as part of its Value Pricing Pilot Grant Program. IGO will use the funds to pilot a peer-to-peer carsharing program in connection with its existing carsharing service. The pilot will be conducted in partnership with the Illinois Department of Transportation and the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Urban Transportation Center.
Under a peer-to-peer carsharing model, individual car owners make their private cars available for a fee to others when they are not otherwise being used. Members who utilize the shared vehicles pay a fee by the hour or the day. Read more »
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Monday, July 16th, 2012
CNT continues to engage municipal decision makers in discussing the benefits of using the Housing and Transportation (H+T) Affordability Index to provide residents with greater overall affordability by improving connections between housing and transportation planning and policy. On June 14th the National League of Cities (NLC) invited CNT’s Stefanie Shull to speak about, “Using the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index: Nuts and Bolts for Cities.” Shull’s presentation showed how the H+T Index can be used in a variety of applications, from public outreach to performance evaluation to resource allocation. CNT looks forward to strengthening the partnership formed at this event, and to continuing to help communities create strategies for affordable and livable neighborhoods.
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Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012
I-GO, Chicago’s own car sharing organization, celebrates its 10th anniversary this year! Initially just a small pilot program funded by the City of Chicago and the US Department of Transportation, I-GO now serves more than 15,000 members. Vehicles are available in over 40 diverse neighborhoods throughout the city, as well as five suburbs, making it easy for residents throughout the region to enjoy the benefits of car-sharing.
In conjunction with this momentous anniversary, I-GO will host a panel discussion, “I-GO at 10: Where Do We Go From Here? The Future of Multimodal Transportation,” on Wednesday, July 11 at the Union League Club of Chicago. The panel will feature Gabe Klein, Commissioner at the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT); Timothy Papandreou, Deputy Director of Transportation Planning in the Sustainable Streets Division of the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA); and Sharon Feigon, CEO of I-GO CarSharing. I-GO Board Chair and sustainability expert Julia Parzen will moderate the event. Each panelist will give a short presentation outlining their vision for the evolution of urban transportation both within the Chicago region and throughout the country. Read more »
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Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012
CNT is excited to attend the Local Technical Assistance (LTA) program Ideas Exchange hosted by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) this Thursday, May 24, at the UBS Tower in Chicago’s downtown Loop. The LTA program was launched in 2011 by CMAP to help municipalities further the goals of GO TO 2040; during its first year more than 70 local government, nonprofits, and intergovernmental organizations received technical assistance that has enabled them to successfully implement transportation, land use, and housing planning projects.
The Ideas Exchange, a new feature of the LTA program, will give local communities the opportunity to review the progress of current projects and to explore the variety of technical assistance options available this year as they begin their LTA applications.
Read more »
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Monday, April 2nd, 2012
Housing counselors know that their clients need to be prepared for the full cost of owning a home, which includes taxes, utilities, maintenance costs, and other expenses in addition to the mortgage payment. However, some may not have considered the impact that transportation costs have on a family budget, or how these costs are related to where that family lives. Transportation costs represent the second-largest and fastest-growing expense for the typical American family, and they can vary widely based on the location of a home, the size of the household, household income, and other factors. Read more »
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Tuesday, February 28th, 2012
CNT’s H+T Index reveals the high cost of transportation in nearly 900 regions across the country
CNT has just released the latest version of the Housing + Transportation (H+T®) Affordability Index, using the most up-to-date Census data. While this is exciting news for those who have used the Index in the past, the news on affordability isn’t so bright.
Most places are unaffordable when it comes to combined housing and transportation costs. 72% of American communities are unaffordable for typical regional households when transportation costs—the second largest expense in a family budget—are considered along with housing costs. Under the traditional definition of housing affordability, where a rent or mortgage payment consumes no more than 30 percent of household income, three out of four (76 percent) US communities are considered “affordable” to the regional typical household making their area’s median income. However, under an expanded definition of affordability, where housing and transportation costs consume no more than 45 percent of income, the number of affordable communities decreases to 28 percent, resulting in a loss of 86,000 neighborhoods that are within reach for a typical family. Read more »
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Thursday, February 16th, 2012
With gas prices already setting records, Congress threatening to cut mass transit funding, and the Chicago region arguably losing its competitive edge, CNT has released a call to action that presents a new vision for building economic prosperity in the Chicago region with an analysis that identifies place-based transportation and community development investments that would reinvigorate economic growth.
Prospering in Place builds on the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning’s visionary GO TO 2040 plan, translating that blueprint into a detailed framework that prioritizes specific places and projects that connect people to jobs. Read more »
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Thursday, February 9th, 2012
The US House of Representatives will vote next week on a transportation bill that would fundamentally alter transportation policy as we know it, rolling back the clock to 1983.
In an unprecedented move, the bill, HR7, would remove dedicated mass transportation funding from the Highway Trust Fund and use it solely to fund highways. It would also eliminate the already miniscule amount of federal funding that makes our roads safer for bikers and pedestrians. Read more about the failings of the bill here. Read more »
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Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
Photo by Steven Vance - http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesbondsv/
If the House Ways and Means Committee’s proposed transportation bill passes as currently drafted, it stands to fundamentally alter transportation policy as we know it and roll back mass transit funding by 30 years.
This unprecedented move kicks transit funding out of the Highway Trust Fund and into the annual appropriations process, which means that every year transit will have to compete against all federal domestic spending. Meanwhile, funding for highways would go back to having all the user fee funding— as it was until the Reagan Administration, despite clear evidence over decades of transit’s contribution to congestion relief, clean air, among other benefits. Read more »
Posted in Featured Portfolio News, Policy, Transportation and Community Development | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
An analysis by CNT of the Chicago region’s affordable housing developments has found that some are not very affordable when transportation costs are considered. Typical transportation costs, the second largest expense in a household budget, ranged from $750 per month in many Chicago neighborhoods with affordable housing units to more than $1,000 in more distant suburbs. The report also found that suburban Cook County, which has comparatively low transportation costs, has fewer affordable housing units compared with the city of Chicago and the region’s collar counties. Read more »
Posted in Featured Portfolio News, H+T, Transportation and Community Development | 1 Comment »
