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.
Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
Yesterday, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Ray LaHood, announced the 51 projects—a mix of highways to boulevards projects, complete streets initiatives, streetcars and light-rail projects, and innovative highway funding—that will receive federal funding from the TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) program, which was funded by $1.5 billion included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). According to Sec. LaHood, awards went to “projects that create jobs, stimulate economic activity, and help develop livable communities.”
USDOT continues to affirm its commitment to fund innovative transportation projects that focus on multi-modal transport, reducing greenhouse gases and creating livable communities; simultaneously addressing economic, environmental and travel issues.
In particular, the Chicago region is poised to benefit greatly from a $100 million investment into the CREATE (Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency) program.
CREATE’s package of 78 projects, designed by the City of Chicago, IDOT, Metra, AMTRAK and the freight railroads serving Chicago, aim to unsnarl the bottlenecks in the region’s railroad system—a major U.S. hub that handles nearly 1300 freight and passenger trains every day. Rail moves people and freight through the region with the least negative environmental impact, and hundreds of thousands of Chicago area jobs depend directly or indirectly on rail transportation.
The south suburban communities—Blue Island, Harvey, Dixmoor, Dolton, Riverdale—that CNT has been working with to redevelop by building homes, retail and office businesses around their rail assets will see the benefits of additional capacity and improved connections of the region’s rail traffic. These include communities that are building homes, stores and offices around their train stations in transit oriented development (TOD), and communities revitalizing industrial parks with the added value of good access to freight rail in cargo oriented development (COD).
The types of projects through the TIGER program show that the USDOT has recognized the return from funding transit. CNT’s second analysis of the jobs created from the ARRA shows that investments in public transportation projects have created almost twice as many jobs per dollar as investments in highways–and the advantage is growing. Through these TIGER grants, we are witnessing a Department of Transportation that not only considers how to move people and goods around, but how to create jobs, stimulate economic development, reduce environmental impact—with its sights set on innovation. This gives added meaning to ‘multi-modal’!
CNT is also pleased that Tucson, Arizona is receiving TIGER funding for a modern streetcar line that will connect the city’s major activity centers, a step toward lowering residents’ household transportation costs. Our 2009 report on the “Housing + Transportation Affordability in the Tucson Metro Area” provided data the City of Tuscon and Pima County are utilizing to help plan future transit development and make the case for the economic benefits it would generate.
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Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Through the end of 2009, investments by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in public transportation have created almost twice as many jobs per dollar as investments in highways – and the advantage is growing.
The most recent data from states, made available by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, shows that every billion dollars spent on public transportation produced 19,299 job-months, compared to 10,493 job-months for every billion spent on highway infrastructure. Public transportation projects create more jobs than road projects because they spend less money on land and more on labor, and because projects are often more complex, whether laying track or manufacturing vehicles.
The new data confirms the findings announced in “What We Learned From the Stimulus,” a report CNT, U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), and Smart Growth America (SGA) co-released earlier this year. And the newest data, released by the US House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on February 9, 2010, shows public transportation’s job-production performance advantage widening.
“Shifting as much of our transportation spending to the most job-intensive activities as we can is essential,” said the CNT’s Scott Bernstein. “The Senate should pass companion legislation to the House’s Jobs for Main Street bill, and make it effective by giving transit spending parity with highways.”
Read more in the full press release.
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Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Congratulations to current and former CNT board members who were honored at the 16th Annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards. These awards recognize individuals, non-profits and for-profit organizations that have improved the quality of life in our region’s communities and neighborhoods.
Board member Patricia Saldaña Natke & her firm UrbanWorks won the First Place Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award for Architectural Excellence in Community Design for the UNO Veterans Memorial School Campus – which once was an abandoned industrial bakery in the Archer Heights community area. In accepting the award, Pat expressed the joy she had in designing a facility for children of all ages in the neighborhood where she grew up. Its unique design opens up to the community through an inviting glass facade. This sustainable project includes a green roof, energy efficiency measures, and solar panels and has applied for LEED gold certification.
The Whistler Crossing development in south suburban Riverdale won two awards for two of our former board members. Former board member Peter Holsten whose firm, Holsten Real Estate Development Corporation and its non-profit partner Turnstone Development, won the Outstanding For-Profit Neighborhood Real Estate Project Award. Our recently retired board member, Jonathan Boyer was a member of the architectural firm, Farr Associates, that designed the redevelopment of this neglected low-rise subsidized housing project. Through Farr’s design process, 90 historic townhouses were restored and rehabilitated and two new mixed-use buildings were built. The project used new sustainable features like rain gardens and cantilevered street lights. The project also received Illinois’ first LEED-ND award.
Finally, this year’s Friend of the Neighborhoods Award was posthumously awarded to our former board and founding member, Michael W. Scott, for his leadership and commitment that he brought to all the work that he did for children, parks, and neighborhoods. His wife, Diana Palomar, accepted the award.
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