John Hennessy III,
P.E.
2017 was, by many accounts, a turbulent year. Infrastructure was no exception.
Whether due to new political paradigms, unprecedented natural disasters or new funding opportunities, American infrastructure faced a wide range of challenges throughout the year. Here, we recount some of the key infra topics that shaped discussion–and action–in 2017.
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NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES In order to examine factors at the nexus of equity, mobility and technology, we analyzed long range transportation plans from the 50 largest U.S. cities. In 19 of these cities, there were up-to-date (adopted after 2010) municipal transportation plans available. The remaining plans in the analysis are regional long-range transportation plans. Mobility […]
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It is widely understood that roadway infrastructure is expensive, both in acquiring land for rights-of-way and in construction of improvements, and thus, decisions regarding alignment, crossing, and access made over a period of decades may have long-lasting consequences that are observable in traffic data today. Consequently, urban areas exhibit different unintentional traffic characteristics, including delays under normal and random stress conditions. Investments motivated exclusively by expected efficiencies under normal operating conditions are unreliable safeguards against loss of efficiency under stress conditions. Therefore, new analytic tools are required that allow designers to assess the adaptive capacity of roadway infrastructure and assess the potential of new investments to provide enhanced resilience.
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Complete Streets is a fundamentally different approach to transportation planning, design, and engineering than the status quo of the last half century. It requires that all aspects of decision-making and implementation consider the needs of all people who use a road, regardless of age, ability, or mode of transportation. Streets are viewed as more than ways to move as many vehicles as possible. They are public spaces that connect and contribute to everything that surrounds them.
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Subway reliability is way down, and the bus system is shedding riders at an alarming rate. And because transit is so unreliable, today New York is accommodating growth in cars, in the form of the tens of thousands of Uber and Lyft vehicles we now find on our streets each day.
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We looked at 100 cities on a global basis and not one US city made it into the top 20. The highest ranking city was New York City, and they came in at number 23. Probably the biggest challenge that all of the US cities face is the continued dependency on passenger-car travel. We don’t have nearly as well developed metro systems or transit systems for sharing or using alternative means–whether it’s walking or bicycles or other methods of getting around. That’s the big challenge for the US cities, is to look at how they go about diversifying their transportation options.
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While many cities feel the immediate positive outcomes from wealth flooding into metropolitan regions, they also feel the negative impact on community members of varying income levels – particularly, those at the bottom that face increased housing prices, greater need for social services and growing concern for community safety. The income inequality and wealth gaps are at outsized levels, with the richest 0.1 percent holding the same amount of wealth as the bottom 90 percent. And when examined through a racial equity lens, the disparities become even starker; on average, white families have six times the wealth of African American and Hispanic families. This is where we are now. Unfortunately, the current policy environment at the national level isn’t focused on alleviating these inequities—cities are.
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REGIONAL PLAN ASSOCIATION (RPA) The following is an excerpt of The Fourth Regional Plan: Making the Region Work for All of Us Most of the public institutions that govern the region were established in a different era. Because of this legacy, the region’s 782 municipalities are responsible for critical decisions about land use, property taxes, […]
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Without new affordable homes and walkable neighborhoods, housing markets tighten and costs rise, leading to less disposable income, longer commutes, the need to work longer hours, more stress, and poorer health for the region’s households. This disparity falls most heavily on the region’s lower-income households who, as referenced in RPA’s report Pushed Out, have seen housing costs rise unabated and continue to get pushed further away from central, walkable areas with access to jobs2. But it affects others as well – young families, seniors and anyone who needs affordable housing and doesn’t want to or can’t spend hours a day behind the wheel.
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Jim Mathews is President and CEO of NARP. Before joining NARP, Mathews was Executive Editor of the Aviation Week Intelligence Network. During his 26-year tenure at Aviation Week, he cultivated the company’s digital strategy and led teams that twice won national awards for best news website. Mathews served on the Amtrak Customer Advisory Committee for six […]
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