Hazel Borys is the principal of  Placemakers, a group of “planners, urban designers, form-based code wranglers, storytellers, marketers, advisors and advocates.” And she has done the world a great service by compiling in one place links to some 40 studies that seek to quantify the value of great, compact, walkable places. These studies report the latest research on:

• the real estate value of walkable places


• how compact development can save money for local governments


• the economic benefits of cycling


• health benefits and disease reduction for walkers, bikers


• social capital and walkable neighborhoods


• etc.

Check it out.

Click on the Action Alert at the top left of our website to endorse Measure J --  the ballot measure to extend Measure R to allow an acceleration of projects over 10 years! To find out more about Measure J visit LA Metro's website, where they've just posted an overview, all the facts, maps, and a visual presentation of project timelines, revenue projections, operations funding and local return -- it's all posted on Metro's website now.

 

 

Tampa Bay Times writer Michael Van Sickler writes that while Republicans had to rely on private charter buses to shuttle delegates around Tampa — buses that often got stuck in traffic and showed up late for events — the Democrats have been able to rely on Charlotte’s light rail system.

Read more.

Greg Le Roy of the national nonprofit Good Jobs First says he’s “seen the future of robust job creation in America and it’s transit and transit-oriented development." There’s a raft of evidence, he says, that transit and TOD create the most new jobs, including two new Recovery Act reports that compare highways and transit in terms of construction jobs created: Both found that building transit systems created 31 to 84 percent more jobs per $1 billion than building highways. And “fix it first” highway projects provide more work hours than does building new roads — because money is not spent buying rights of way.

About TOD, says LeRoy, when buildings are taller and more complex private construction industry data clearly shows higher job creation per $1 million spent — for both commercial structures and condos and town homes versus single-family detached homes.

Read more on the Huffington Post.

Damien Newton writes on Streetsblog that Long Beach stakes its claim as the most bike-friendly city in the U.S. with four national conferences this week that are focused on bicycling, walking and other livable streets issues. There’s Pro Walk/Pro Bike as well as a placemaking conference staged by Project for Public Spaces, the Congress for the New Urbanism’s annual transportation summit, and the National Women’s Bicycling Summit.

 Read more on Streetsblog.

 

As Streetsblog points out, the Democratic Party’s platform lacks enthusiasm for providing alternatives to highways and cars, though the Obama administration has a solid record of policy innovation, including TIGER and the Sustainable Communities Initiative. But LA Mayor Villaraigosa, who chairs the Democratic National Convention, did get enthusiastic about TIFIA and Measure J, the extension of LA's transportation sales tax Measure R, at a Politico breakfast, and you can hear him about 35 minutes into this 45 minute video.

Watch the Politico Playbook breakfast with Mayor Villaraigosa on c-spanvideo.org.

Today on The Source Steve Hymon posts the results of a ridership study showing that it is higher on rail lines than it was on the buses that previously served the same corridors. But even more interesting to us is a recent comment by Metro CEO Art Leahy that ridership at LA Metro is catching up with and will soon surpass BART ridership in the Bay Area.

BART, considered by many as the gold standard for a successful rail system, is really a commuter rail line that travels out into the suburbs but that also operates at the frequency of urban rail, and provides service at all hours. The BART system is 103 miles with 44 stations compared to Metrorail’s 88 miles and 86 stations. In June BART had 375,689 average weekday boardings while Metrorail had 362,904.

Read more about Metro’s ridership study on the Source.

Two good stories in The Atlantic about why the younger generation has lost interest in cars: One cites a Bloomberg news story about how the auto industry is “concerned that financially pressed young people who connect online instead of in person could hold down peak demand by 2 million units a year.” Industry analysts at R.L. Polk & Co. were quoted as saying that “the rate of U.S. auto sales to 18-to-34-year-olds declined to 11 percent in April 2012, down from 17 percent of the same age group in April 2007, before the recession."

Jordan Weissman speculates on why in the August Atlantic: Gen Y is strapped for cash, he writes, they're mostly unemployed, and saddled with unprecedented school debt. But he adds that they’re not only turning their back on buying cars, they’re also less interested in driving, and prefer transit, biking and car-sharing. And he says it may be a global trend: The younger generation seems to be choosing access via the Internet: A University of Michigan Transportation Research study found that the number of teen drivers in countries around the world tends to fall as a country’s level of internet access increases.

In the September Atlantic Weissman and Derek Thompson write about why the Millennials aren’t buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy. They note that half of a typical family’s spending goes to transportation and housing: “Just as car sales have plummeted, the share of young people getting their first mortgage between 2009 and 2011 is half what it was just 10 years ago . . . Needless to say the Great Recession is responsible . . . But it’s highly possible a perfect storm of economic and demographic factors -- from high gas prices, to re-urbanization, to stagnating wages to new technologies enabling a different kind of consumption – has fundamentally changed the game for Millennials."

Read the August Atlantic. Read the September Atlantic.

EPA will require the U.S. auto fleet to average 54.5 mpg by 2025, a compromise the White House forged with the auto industry, environmentalists, labor unions and the state of California. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, however, has vowed to overturn them the new regulations if elected.”
Read more in the Washington Post.

With no redevelopment agency the City of LA finds itself without all the tools needed to revitalize communities and generate revenue. So the city is in the process of creating a new agency to fill the same role. The LA City Council has given conceptual approval to start work on a new entity that is kind of like an economic development department crossed with a nonprofit – like Chicago’s Department of Housing and Economic Development, or San Diego’s Economic Development Division and Mayor’s Office of Economic Growth.
Read more on the Architects Newspaper.