David Goldberg of the national nonprofit Transportation for America: PRESIDENT CITES STRUCTURALLY DEFICIENT BRIDGES IN CALLING FOR "FIX IT FIRST" PROGRAM

It did our hearts good to hear the President talk about creating a Fix-it-First program (where have we heard that before?) that will focus on the health of our infrastructure, such as the 70,000 structurally deficient bridges. As we’ve noted, there are more such bridges scattered around the country than there are McDonald’s, nearly one in ten bridges.

Transit systems, too, are suffering from decay after a long recession that saw budgets cut to the bone and beyond. Our ports and freight networks need help, too. So, again, we were very pleased to hear the announcement of a focus on the upkeep of our key transportation networks – helping to ensure repair of existing infrastructure remains a priority.

The President’s pledge to put people to working to “fix it first” was a great applause line and brought members of both parties to their feet. We look forward to learning more about the President’s proposal, and hope the applause can be translated into votes.

As the President said a well-maintained, multimodal transportation system will help improve America’s economic competitiveness. Business and Americans alike are demanding more travel options like high speed rail, better maintained bridges and transit systems, and more accountability. We hope that the politics in Congress have shifted enough to make increasing investment in balanced, 21st century transportation system more palatable.

The President also had visionary language about reducing and shifting our use of energy, both for our economic development and for the sake of our climate:

“I propose we use some of our oil and gas revenues to fund an Energy Security Trust that will drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good … and free our families and businesses from the painful spikes in gas prices we’ve put up with for far too long.”

This is certainly a more forward-looking policy than using those same revenues – from drilling on public lands – to promote still more driving of gas-burning vehicles. We understand that the President had a lot of ground to cover and could not get into the weeds on every topic. But we do hope that his willingness to mention these initiatives foreshadows an effort to put some flesh on these fundamentally sound bones.

LA Metro's The Source posts: EXCERPTS FROM THE PRESIDENT'S SOTU SPEECH, WHICH IS POSTED IN ITS ENTIRETY ON WhiteHouse.gov:

A few excerpts from President Obama’s speech last night that may be of interest to readers of this blog:

But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change.  (Applause.)  Now, it’s true that no single event makes a trend.  But the fact is the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15.  Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods — all are now more frequent and more intense.  We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence.  Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science — and act before it’s too late.  (Applause.)

[snip]

In fact, much of our new-found energy is drawn from lands and waters that we, the public, own together.  So tonight, I propose we use some of our oil and gas revenues to fund an Energy Security Trust that will drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good.  If a nonpartisan coalition of CEOs and retired generals and admirals can get behind this idea, then so can we.  Let’s take their advice and free our families and businesses from the painful spikes in gas prices we’ve put up with for far too long.

[snip]

America’s energy sector is just one part of an aging infrastructure badly in need of repair.  Ask any CEO where they’d rather locate and hire — a country with deteriorating roads and bridges, or one with high-speed rail and Internet; high-tech schools, self-healing power grids.  The CEO of Siemens America — a company that brought hundreds of new jobs to North Carolina — said that if we upgrade our infrastructure, they’ll bring even more jobs.  And that’s the attitude of a lot of companies all around the world.  And I know you want these job-creating projects in your district.  I’ve seen all those ribbon-cuttings. (Laughter.)

So tonight, I propose a “Fix-It-First” program to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country. (Applause.)  And to make sure taxpayers don’t shoulder the whole burden, I’m also proposing a Partnership to Rebuild America that attracts private capital to upgrade what our businesses need most:  modern ports to move our goods, modern pipelines to withstand a storm, modern schools worthy of our children.  (Applause.)  Let’s prove that there’s no better place to do business than here in the United States of America, and let’s start right away.  We can get this done.

My three cents: Not much overall on transportation or mass transit but certainly encouraging (in my view) to hear the President say “But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.” It’s interesting to hear the President talk about more natural gas drilling on public lands to help the U.S. become more energy independent while also talking about reducing greenhouse gas emissions to stave off climate change. On the surface, those goals do not seem compatible, but the President argues that natural gas burns cleaner than other fossil fuels we would use otherwise.

American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials: OBAMA TOUTS INFRASTRUCTURE IN STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH

In his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, President Obama pitched a “Fix-It First” program to address the nation’s most immediate infrastructure needs and called for more use of natural gas as a transportation fuel.

The president said more infrastructure investment could address the “nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country” and proposed a “Partnership to Rebuild America” to attract private capital “to upgrade what our businesses need most, [including] modern ports to move our goods.”

He also said the U.S. “natural-gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence” and proposed using some oil and gas revenue to fund an Energy Security Trust to “drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good.”

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wrote in his DOT blog following the speech that “fixing the country’s roads, rails, bridges, ports, transit systems and other transportation assets most in need of attention will create jobs and help our businesses compete more effectively.”

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials said in a statement released Wednesday morning that it, too, backed the president’s call for more infrastructure spending.

“AASHTO salutes President Obama for again calling for greater investment in America’s infrastructure. Now we need to work together to tackle the most pressing issue facing our transportation system — how are we going to pay for it,” said Bud Wright, AASHTO’s executive director.

Greater use of natural gas in transportation “would be a welcomed step,” said Richard Kolodziej, president of Natural Gas Vehicles of America.

“The use of natural-gas vehicles in light-duty, medium-duty and heavy-duty applications is rapidly growing, [and] we have been encouraged by the president’s past statements in support of natural gas vehicles,” he said in a statement, adding that “with supportive government policies, natural-gas vehicle use could grow even faster.”

 

Thank you all so very much for being a part of our 5^th Annual Transportation Conversation at Union Station — the cathedral of public transportation! To have so many coalition leaders and partners in the room together with such a large audience of people who care about these issues was an exhilarating experience, a reminder of the power of a coalition that shares an agenda to address the challenges and opportunities of 2013. Again, thank you all for making time in your busy schedule to help make the day a success.

Our annual event always serves to remind us that together — with our business partners, the transportation industry, labor leaders, and environmental, public health and community-based organizations — we can work successfully with every level of government to ensure the continued prosperity of our region and our country.

We have already achieved so much together — including the transit build-out that is being funded by Measure R and the low-interest TIFIA loan program, with two new transit lines in operation last year, two more under construction now, and utilities relocation underway on three more. Our ambitions have caused the rest of the country to take notice: The New York Post said it all in a headline last summer, “LA Is the Future . . .”

We believe that the answer to the resource constraints that governments are facing is not just funding but also smart financing, and that the federal government should provide incentives that encourage local voters to step up and tax themselves to fund local projects that are under local control — because the local level is where the serious money is.

We hope you are with us this year on key initiatives including lowering the local voter threshold to 55%; winning the support of Congress for the America Fast Forward bond program; re-deploying tax-increment financing around high quality transit; using state Cap and Trade funds to help fund transit operations as well as first-mile last-mile connections and housing that is affordable.

Together we have helped hoist Los Angeles once again into the ranks of national innovators, and we have reclaimed our reputation as a region that can solve problems. We are on the verge of a transit breakthrough and we shouldn’t slow down now. Thank you for being an important part of the transportation conversation and for moving LA forward.

 

 

Move LA honored LA City Councilmember and local transportation champion Bill Rosendahl at our 5th Annual Transportation Conversation. Below is a sum-up of the reasons we think he is such a great guy, as well as Move LA Executive Director Denny Zane's reminiscences about Councilman Rosendahl's pre-council career in public affairs TV:

DENNY ZANE REMINISCES ABOUT BILL ROSENDAHL’S CAREER
Bill Rosendahl was a pioneering figure in public affairs television long before he was a Los Angeles city councilmember. He was vice president and general manager for the cable TV company that has served Santa Monica and West Los Angeles since the early 1980s, which was owned by Group W, Century Cable, Adelphia and Time Warner, in what order I now forget. Bill had long had a special interest in public affairs. He had been active in the George McGovern presidential campaign in the ‘60s, and his cable TV work provided him with an opportunity to pursue his lifelong interest in public affairs. He would broadcast individual and group interview programs on the issues of the day long before other TV networks. I remember suggesting a number of topics and programs that he readily would pursue — on alternative fueled vehicles, electric vehicles, regional aviation, affordable housing, and economic development on the Third Street Promenade. We became good friends over the course of putting together those programs. Bill had a folksy way of making these issues accessible to the broader public, and was always even-handed. Later, when he became a councilmember, the depth of his commitment to issues including neighborhood empowerment, affordable housing and clean transportation became clear.

ROSENDAHL, LOCAL TRANSPORTATION HERO
As chair of the LA City Council’s Transportation Committee Bill Rosendahl has championed Measure R, Expo, the Westside Subway, extending the Green Line to LAX, and new bus routes. Given the extent of traffic congestion in Westside CD 11 how could he not? But realizing that LA Mayor Villaraigosa — with his four appointees to the Metro board — would be doing the heavy lifting on transit, Rosendahl chose a different tack. He became a high-profile champion of active transportation as a low-cost way to support the Measure R investment in transit with high ridership, while also making neighborhoods more neighborly, and reducing air pollution, GHG emissions and traffic congestion.

Rosendahl could always be counted on as a solid vote on bicycle and pedestrian issues, but it was after an altercation in Mandeville Canyon in 2008 — when an apparent road rage incident resulted in serious injury to two cyclists, and the LAPD’s response outraged cyclists —that Rosendahl became an activist. He convened meetings to begin a dialog between cyclists and the police, eventually producing a ground-breaking bicycling anti-harrassment ordinance that has served as a model in other cities around the country, and allowing cyclists who are victims of road rage to pursue their complaints in civil courts rather than rely on city bureaucracy to settle disputes.

In the intervening years Rosendahl also created a Measure R set-aside ensuring that 10% of “local return” money awarded to cities goes to bike and pedestrian projects. He led the effort to update the city’s Bicycle Master Plan, including a 5-year implementation strategy that commits to delivering improvements. He developed bicycle parking standards for new development, and he funded a Safe Routes to School Strategic Plan that will result in data-driven applications for this popular state and federal funding program, which should translate into better project as well as more funding. Says Rosendahl’s transportation deputy, Paul Backstrom, “Bill has been inspired by the passion of bicycle and pedestrian advocates and by their commitment. He sees them as the future of our city.”

While chairing the Transportation Committee Rosendahl also led a taxi re-enfranchisement process that set higher fuel standards — that’s why there are so many Prius taxicabs on the road. He developed a car-sharing pilot that led to an RFP that was just issued for car-sharing services across the city. He provided new Commuter Express and DASH buses, and demanded reimbursement for city expenditures on traffic control at major events including Dodger Stadium and LA Live. He cut bureaucratic red tape slowing transportation project delivery, launched an update of the city’s outdated transportation element, and brought the city’s transportation expenditures under control to avoid looming deficits.

Councilmember Rosendahl’s many other accomplishments include scuttling unpopular plans to expand LAX, creating a groundbreaking program to find permanent housing for the homeless, and securing millions of dollars in park funds to improve public pools, create new playgrounds and construct new skate parks. And he also sought to address an issue that often set him in conflict with residents of his district: The Westside jobs-housing imbalance — there are many more jobs than places to live, especially for people with lower-paid jobs — which means that commuters have to travel from all over Greater Los Angeles, clogging the streets with traffic. This made him a fierce advocate for affordable housing, and he is extremely proud of an affordable housing development for seniors he championed that will soon open in Del Rey.

Moreover, he led the city’s effort to block the eviction of some 800 tenants in 46 buildings in the massive — and affordable — Lincoln Place Apartments in Venice, which were to be redeveloped. During the several-years-long battle, many tenants left or were bought out by the developer, but Rosendahl worked hard to ensure the renovated units would come under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, and that 50 of the renovated units would be made available to the previous residents — showing how important it is to have a councilmember who is an advocate for tenants.

Bill Rosendahl has been a champion of fairness, a nice guy, and an advocate for bicyclists and pedestrians. He will be sorely missed.

According to the Washington Post's Wonkblog Obama will make the economy a major focus of his speech tonight, and he will call for investment in new infrastructure including transportation and energy. Wonkblog writer Neil Irwin speculates this could mean that Congressional Republicans are ready to sign on to some large-scale investment — or it could mean that Obama is "tilting at windmills (literally, in this case)," notes the Post.

Irwin adds that tonight's State of the Union Address: " . . . comes as we may be approaching the end of a five year period in which investing in the nation’s physical infrastructure has been something close to a free lunch. With interest rates near all-time lows and millions of construction workers unemployed, the last few years have been a time that it would have been a historical bargain for the United States to do upgrades to roads, bridges, and airports that will eventually need to take place anyway. It has been a political breakdown—in particular conservatives’ view of almost any non-defense federal spending as wasteful—standing in the way."

READ MORE . . .

The Energy Department reports that the average American household spent $2,912 for gas in 2012 — just under 4% of pre-tax income — the highest estimated percentage in three decades, except for 2008, when households spent a similar amount. This is in spite of the fact that gasoline consumption has been declining.

Meanwhile the average price of gasoline rose 26% in 2011 and another 3.3% in 2012.

Gas expenditures as a share of household income remain lower than in the early 1980s, when they were above 5 percent.

">READ MORE . . . ">READ MORE . . .

Raphael Bostic from USC and Tony Salazar, a housing developer who heads up McCormack Baron Salazar's West Coast operations, summed up LA's housing crisis last week in the LA Times, pointing out that 1) 63% of LA residents are renters, and 2) rents have increased 30 percent in the city over the last 20 years, while 3) renter incomes have decreased by 6%, and 4) there's an inadequate supply of affordable rental units.

And all of that = there are only 37 units available and affordable for every 100 would-be renters at the average renter income level. Moreover, the foreclosure crisis has exacerbated the problem instead of relieving it as those who lost their homes through foreclosure are also competing for the short supply of units, causing an even tighter rental market and upward pressure on rents.

It's against this backdrop, Bostic and Salazar point out, that a new mayor will take office. And he or she must understand that adequate affordable housing = regional prosperity because unless there is a skilled labor force living in Los Angeles employers will go somewhere else.
READ MORE . . .

Atlantic Cities has been exploring the growing class divide in America's largest cities, and posting maps where today's three major classes live:
• the lower-paid service worker class: 46.3% of LA workers, slightly lower than the national average, who make an average of $32k a year
• the creative class: 34.1% of LA workers, slightly higher than the national average, who make an average of $81k a year
• the shrinking blue collar class: 19.5% of LA workers, just below the national average, who make about $37k a year.

See where they live in LA:

Thanks to all 528 of you who participated in our 5^thannual transportation conversation with labor leaders, CEOs of chambers and business federations, environmental and community leaders, and elected officials from cities, the county and the state.

Major take-aways:

• There is keen interest across the board in accelerating construction of our transit system, and all 4 mayoral candidates supported this.


• Everybody is on board to go back to Congress to secure financing tools to accelerate construction, including America Fast Forward bonds.


• There is keen interest in lowering the voter threshold – LA County voters have shown this twice with more than 66% voting for both Measure R and Measure J (71% voted for Measure J in the City of Los Angeles).


• There is keen interest in re-inventing redevelopment – utilizing tax increment financing within a half mile of high-frequency transit to pay for affordable housing, bike/ped projects and  improvements such as parks and plazas.


• Residents of the City of Los Angeles applaud LA Mayor Villaraigosa for creating a Transit Corridors Cabinet to focus resources, policy and improvements along transit corridors.

LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa created a Transit Corridors Cabinet by executive order last year to help ensure that after he's gone (hopefully to the U.S. DOT as transportation secretary) a new administration will continue to support the Measure R investment in the transit system.

The Transit Corridors Cabinet meets for the first time with the public at Move LA's 5th annual transportation conversation, and then takes the show on the road with meetings with the LA Thrives equity collaborative next month and then the Urban Land Institute in June. Here are 3 interesting interviews with some of the key cabinet players:

Global transit and development expert Robert Cervero from UC Berkeley talks about working in LA in the 1970s and thinking it was too late for LA to save itself by building a transit system. Now he is advising the Transit Corridors Cabinet and pretty impressed with the Measure R-funded investment. Read it here.

Bill Roschen is president of the Los Angeles Planning Commission and an architect who has co-chaired the cabinet from the beginning. He talks about the cabinet's goals here.

Mercedes Marquez is the general manager of the Los Angeles Housing Department and deputy mayor for housing. She makes a powerful pitch for focusing public investment along transit corridors here.

 

 

 

Mercedes Marquez will not be able to join Mayor Villaraigosa's Transit Corridors Cabinet at Move LA's 5th annual transportation conversation February. But in this interview with Gloria Ohland she talks about the importance of leveraging the Measure R investment.

Mercedes Márquez, general manager of the Los Angeles Housing Department and deputy mayor for Housing, returned to LA last summer from her job as assistant secretary for community planning and development at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) believing that transit is this city’s future. She is convinced that the smartest investments the city can make at this juncture are those that will leverage the local and federal investments we are already making in LA’s Measure R-funded transit system.

She also thinks that Mayor Villaraigosa’s decision to create a Transit Corridors Cabinet of eight city departments that are making “transit orientation” their policy and funding priority is exactly the right focus — a larger “urban policy scheme” that will result in neighborhoods that are truly fair and affordable. She says, “I believe this is the way to bring the promise, the power, and the resources of government to bear on supporting neighborhoods in a way that is equitable.”

Mayor Villaraigosa also got it right, she adds, when he decided early in his political career to make the transit system a priority, noting that he has worked diligently and successfully to secure the funding and financing required to realize that vision. “The mayor understood how the freeway system and wide streets with fast-moving traffic have cut neighborhoods apart and endangered the health and prosperity of the people who live in them,” Márquez says. “And he understands how the transit system together with bike and pedestrian infrastructure has the potential to knit neighborhoods and local economies back together in a way that will bring opportunity back to Los Angeles.”

While at HUD, Márquez was in charge of a $50 billion portfolio of federal dollars for affordable housing and other social services, and for redesigning HUD’s consolidated planning process to enable cities to make data-driven decisions about where affordable housing and community needs are greatest and investment makes the most sense. Los Angeles has just completed its draft Consolidated Plan under this new rubric, and Márquez says the data justifies an emphasis on transit corridors using federal funding including Community Development Block Grants, HOME (for increasing affordable housing opportunities), HOPWA (Housing for People with AIDS), and Emergency Solutions Grants for homeless services programs.

While together these programs total a $130 million investment in Los Angeles, Márquez notes that “every CDBG dollar leverages another $3 in other funding, and every HOME dollar leverages another $4.17, so the Consolidated Plan actually represents a half billion dollars in investment. If we are serious about our commitment to equity, it’s clear we have to invest those dollars along transit corridors.”

This targeted investment makes sense because neighborhoods along transit corridors are where many low- and moderate-income people already live. Older neighborhoods tend to have higher concentrations of apartment buildings and homes with lower rents because they are covered by the city’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance, or because they are government-subsidized and/or income-restricted and covered by Section 8 or other contracts between the government and property owners — and many of these contracts are set to expire in the next five years.

A recent study for the housing department by the national nonprofit Reconnecting America concluded that preservation of existing affordable housing near transit lines is critical because the threat to the affordability of this housing has never been greater. The construction of so much transit in so many neighborhoods could activate the real estate market around both new and existing stations — because the expanded rail system will connect to so many more destinations —making these neighborhoods especially desirable.

More demand could drive up rents and housing prices and push out the low-income residents who use transit the most. The study found, for example, that 75 percent of those who commute to jobs by transit make less than $25,000 a year. Marquez intends to bring LAHD’s resources to bear on this problem by aligning other resources around transit, including the city’s low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC) and the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (AHTF).

Most affordable housing in the U.S. is funded through the LIHTC program, which provides dollar-for-dollar reductions in investors’ federal income tax as an incentive to spur private sector investment in affordable housing. But as the program has gotten more and more competitive, cities that can put up more of their own money are awarded more tax credits. This puts LA at a disadvantage because the need here is so great: the average median income in Los Angeles is lower than in most cities and the cost of housing is higher.

However, the City of LA may have succeeded in addressing this problem by convincing Sacramento to provide the City with its own “bucket” of tax credits, which means the city doesn’t have to compete. New York City and Chicago are the only other cities who exercise this much control over where and how they invest tax credits.

Moreover, there has been a national movement to create transit-oriented affordable housing funds that are focused on transit-oriented development, and Márquez says she is working with investors on re-purposing the City’s New Generation Fund — a partnership with Enterprise Community Partners and others — so that it, too, is focused on investing near transit.

Add all of this — HUD’s funding programs, tax credits, the New Generation Fund — to the Measure R sales tax investment and federal transportation funding that has already come or will come from the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts program, and the U.S. DOT’s TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) and TIFIA (Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act) loan programs, and it’s clear why Márquez sees a transit-oriented future.

“We are taking control of our destiny,” she says, “investing according to the priorities voters agreed upon when they voted in Measure R in 2008.” She adds, “And I am not just talking about investing near rail stations and rail corridors but also along bus rapid transit.”

Márquez notes LAHD began prioritizing the production and preservation of affordable housing within a half-mile radius of transit back in 2007, which helped the city win $1 million from the MacArthur Foundation to enhance preservation efforts. During discussions about how to award Proposition 1C bond funds the city also worked with the state to expand the definition of “transit-oriented development” from a quarter to a half mile radius around stations. A subsequent analysis found that 44 percent of stations in the city either had preservation or affordable housing construction projects underway along all seven Metro rail lines.

Marquez says she went to Washington as a “housing developer” but came back home as a “neighborhood developer” who believes the interplay of policy and investment has the most power to leverage change: that economic development policy and investment has to be supported with programs that address homelessness, with the Neighborhood Stabilization Program to prevent the decline of neighborhoods because of foreclosed properties, and with investment in community services such as workforce training, parks, schools, and libraries.

She adds that in Los Angeles the development of affordable housing has always been about economic development, since so many of the city’s challenges — from the problem of homelessness to the severity of the real estate recession —are tied to the problem of housing affordability. “To the degree that we are able to put more income into the pockets of our residents —transit, walking and biking can help us do that by reducing transportation costs and providing connections to good jobs — the less money we will need to subsidize housing.”