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Archive for the ‘Policy’ Category

Funding the Transportation Needs of an Older Generation

Thursday, May 13th, 2010
olderpopfunding

AMERICAN PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION
Rapid growth in the number of older people in the United States during the coming decades will lead to greatly increased needs for expanded and enhanced public transportation services. This report: a) identifies the range of actions that will be needed to expand mobility options for older people, including accessible public transportation services; b) quantifies the demand for these public transportation services; and c) estimates the funding that will be needed to provide them.

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Pennywise, Pound Fuelish: New Measures of Housing + Transportation Affordability

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
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CENTER FOR NEIGHBORHOOD TECHNOLOGY
The number of affordable communities in the U.S. shrinks by 30%, eliminating 48,000 communities, when both housing and transportation costs are considered.

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Guest on The Infra Blog: Thomas Murphy, Senior Resident Fellow, ULI/Klingbeil Family Chair for Urban Development, Urban Land Institute, and former Mayor of Pittsburgh

Thursday, May 6th, 2010
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Thomas Murphy is a senior resident fellow, ULI/Klingbeil Family Chair for urban development, Urban Land Institute. Since January 2006, Murphy had served as ULI’s Gulf Coast liaison, helping to coordinate with the leadership of New Orleans and the public to advance the implementation of rebuilding recommendations made by ULI’s advisory services panel last fall. Prior to his service as the ULI Gulf Coast liaison, Murphy served three terms as the mayor of Pittsburgh, from January 1994 through December 2005. From 1979 through 1993, Murphy served eight terms in the Pennsylvania State General Assembly House of Representatives. He is an honorary member of the American Society of Landscape Architects; a board member of the Pennsylvania League of Cities and Municipalities; and a board member of the National Rails to Trails Conservancy.

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Transportation’s Role in Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Thursday, April 29th, 2010
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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Transportation GHG emissions account for 29 percent of total U.S. GHG emissions, and over 5 percent of global GHG emissions. Except otherwise noted, the estimates in this report account for “tailpipe” emissions from burning fossil fuels to power vehicles and do not account for greenhouse gases emitted
through other transportation lifecycle processes, such as the manufacture of vehicles, the extraction and refining of fuels, and the construction and maintenance of transportation infrastructure.

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The Road To Livability: How State Departments of Transportation are Using Road Investments to Improve Community Livability

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF STATE HIGHWAY AND TRANSPORTATION OFFICIALS
Soon, members of Congress will be asked to decide “What makes a ‘livable’ community?” Since the U.S. Department of Transportation is making livability a top priority for future transportation funding, this is an important concept to define. While some would suggest livability means a life without cars, this definition really doesn’t work for the millions of Americans who have chosen the lifestyle that an automobile affords…If enhancing livability is the objective of transportation legislation or regulation, then it must work for those who live in rural Montana just as much as it would for those in downtown Portland. Equating livability only to riding transit, walking and biking, limits its relevance and excludes a wide range of improvements and community needs.

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Guest on The Infra Blog: Adolfo Carrión, Jr., Director, White House Office of Urban Affairs & Deputy Assistant to the President

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
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“Anything that will stir up the conversation among the citizenry about the future of our country, both in its physical manifestation and in its social and economic manifestation, is a good thing, and I think what InfrastructureUSA.org is doing is laudable and should be applauded. We need more of this kind of civic engagement.”

Adolfo Carrión is the first Director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs and Deputy Assistant to the President. He was elected to the New York City Council in 1997, and served one term. He was then elected Borough President of the Bronx, where he served for 7 years. Under Carrión’s leadership, total investment in the borough increased from $361 million/year in 2002, to almost $1 billion/year in 2008. Unemployment dropped by five percent, due in large part to Carrion’s aggressive pursuit of employment assurances for members of the Bronx community as he implemented the largest infrastructure, residential and commercial redevelopment since the 1920’s.

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Innovative Financing Is No Substitute for New Funding

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Hoping to sustain interest in the Committee’s efforts to enact a new multi-year transportation bill during this session of Congress, Reps. James Oberstar (D-MN) and Peter DeFazio (D-OR), leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, convened a hearing on April 14 to explore innovative ways of financing highway and transit investments. But while the hearing provided a useful survey of available financing tools and programs, it produced no new answers to the key question that has bedeviled transportation advocates for many months and remains as the chief obstacle to moving the legislation forward— the question of how to pay for the proposed multi-year surface transportation program.

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Just Released: Infra report from Urban Land Institute

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
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Infrastructure 2010: Investment Imperative, the latest annual infrastructure report by Urban Land Institute and Ernst & Young, focuses on water infra and urges decision-makers to view infrastructure as a long-term investment.

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INFRASTRUCTURE 2010: INVESTMENT IMPERATIVE

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

URBAN LAND INSTITUTE
Falling behind global competitors, the United States struggles to gain traction in planning and building the critical infrastructure investments that are necessary to ensure future economic growth and support a rapidly expanding population.

Recent federal stimulus spending addresses some pressing repair needs for transport- and water-related systems and provides seed funding for high-speed rail in important travel corridors, as well as new energy infrastructure. But recession-busted government budgets, entitlement and defense expenditures, and ballooning health care costs push infrastructure down most political priority lists—leaders continue to procrastinate when it comes to new investments as stressed taxpayers balk at more spending.

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The Promise and Risks of Public-Private Partnerships

Monday, April 5th, 2010

A recent series of events, notably an invitational conference on Public-Private Partnerships convened by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), has focused attention on the role of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in transportation, and underscored once again the need to more clearly define the proper federal role in PPP oversight.

To share its findings with the transportation community and seek its input, the NCSL invited an influential group of state legislators and leading members of the transportation community to a meting on March 26 to consider the next steps.

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Dear Friends,

 

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917-940-7125

InfrastructureUSA: Citizen Dialogue About Civil Infrastructure