Transportation & Community Development
A diverse, walkable community depends on a transportation infrastructure that provides a variety of ways to get around, serving pedestrians and transit-riders as well as drivers. Quality of life is key to the success of any urban community. A good transportation network also relies on healthy communities. This can be affected by housing sites, affordable and convenient transportation, easy access to shopping and services, safety and equity.
CNT promotes research and action on understanding housing and transportation affordability, revitalizing and developing communities and public involvement in shaping policy. CNT has worked on a number of projects designed to encourage community development and promote transportation options.
Why is this important?
- Housing plus transportation costs give a more complete assessment of affordability than housing costs alone.
- Transportation costs are driven more by neighborhood characteristics than by the number of people in a household or their income.
- Places with access to services, walkable destinations, extensive and frequent transit, access to jobs, and density have lower household transportation costs.
- Creating neighborhoods with housing and transportation affordability requires multiple and targeted strategies and coordination within and across government agencies and the private sector.
- Underutilized transit station areas present an opportunity to create additional affordable and diverse neighborhoods.
To learn more about CNT’s work in Transportation and Community Development, take a look at our projects, tools and resources on this page.
Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Late last week Gov. Pat Quinn signed the Housing + Transportation Affordability Index Act, which will give state agencies the complete information they need to make wise investment decisions in housing.
The theory behind the bill is simple: Housing costs do not end when we sign our rent or mortgage checks. Where we live has other costs associated with getting around: to work, to school, to the grocery store. How much that costs depends on where we live and what options are available to move us from point A to point B.
Given that reality, a true measure of affordability must take into account housing and transportation costs. In 2006, CNT launched the H + T Affordability IndexSM, a web tool that gives a more accurate assessment of affordability by providing homeowners and policy makers the housing and transportation costs for a community.
Just as families need to have the best information before they choose where to live, our state policy makers should have the best information as they invest scarce public resources in housing. With the H + T Index tool signed into law, public officials in five key state agencies will now have the best available tool to guide their investment decisions toward those that will truly reduce the cost of living for working families.
This legislation also positions Illinois as a national leader, making it the first state to create legislation that links housing and transportation affordability to reduce the cost of living for our households. New national priorities that link transportation and housing affordability to the disbursement of federal funds will make Illinois well-positioned to compete for those dollars.
CNT views this as just the beginning. We will work with the five state agencies, including the Illinois Dept. of Transportation and the Illinois Housing Development Authority, to make certain the Housing + Transportation Affordability Index Act will help create better and more affordable housing and transportation well into the future.
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Thursday, July 15th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
CNT has developed a new tool for individuals to find what a typical household spends on transportation in their neighborhood. “Abogo” is a more consumer-oriented extension of the Housing + Transportation Affordability Index, which offers the true cost of housing based on its location, by measuring the transportation costs associated with place.
Abogo measures the money a typical household, living in a given neighborhood, would spend getting around– including car ownership, car use, and transit use. It also provides the carbon emissions associated with using a car. CNT developed Abogo so that individuals can now measure the true cost and impact of where they live in 337 metropolitan areas in the U.S., in the same way that planners and municipalities have been using the H + T Index to better understand the combined costs of housing and transportation at the regional level, for example.
CNT partnered with the Urban Land Institute and Center for Housing Policy in 2009 to develop the Terwilliger Housing + Transportation Calculators for Washington, D.C., Boston and San Francisco, where consumers can access up-to-date cost data to make informed housing decisions.
Over the next few months, CNT will be refining these tools to help individuals factor in transportation costs when considering how much it costs to live in a particular city. We’re working to calculate better estimates based on the way someone lives now—and to provide information that helps individuals and households make small changes in the way they get around—while saving money and helping to reduce climate impact at the same time.
TRY OUT THE NEW ABOGO TOOL!
As we further refine the calculator, we’re looking for impressions and ideas how to make it most useful. Feel free to send comments to abogo-info@cnt.org. We have also developed an API, so if you’re interested in getting transportation cost information on your website, see here.
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Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 10:51 am
This map shows that cities produces less GHG's, per capita, than areas that require more Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT).
CNT, through our partnership with the Center for Transit-Oriented Development (CTOD), has released, “Transit-Oriented Development and the Potential for VMT-related Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction.” This report provides a quantitative analysis of potential greenhouse gas reductions of transit-oriented development from the transport sector.
The research, led by CNT, finds that by living in a central city near transit, the average household can reduce its transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent. The number increases when living near the most location efficient transit zones, which can result in a 78 percent emission reduction.
“This research shows that, in a nutshell, location does indeed matter,” said Scott Bernstein, President of CNT. “Individuals and families that live near transit centers own fewer automobiles, drive fewer miles, and leave a much smaller carbon footprint than those who don’t.”
The report was funded through CTOD’s cooperative agreement with the Federal Transit Administration, and provides more evidence of transit’s role in building economically and environmentally sustainable communities across the country.
“We’ve long known that living near transit can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Sam Zimbabwe, Director of the Center for Transit-Oriented Development. “This is an important milestone in helping to quantify those reductions, and we hope something that can influence policy and implementation of sustainable communities served by high-quality transit options.”
As a follow-up to the report, CTOD will be working on a toolkit to help communities quantify their emissions reductions and proactively put in place strategies to reduce their carbon footprint, as well as more detailed regional analysis in several other regions around the country.
Download “Transit-Oriented Development and The Potential for VMT-related Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction.” (.pdf 5MB)
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