Day 1: Transportation
David Goldberg, Frank Wilson, Petra Todorovich, and Ashby Johnson discussed transportation priorities in the Texas Triangle, as well as how transportation policies are changing nationally. They said that popular opinion is shifting in favor of transit and high-speed rail, and that local and federal policies are slowly adapting as well.
Video will be posted soon.
David Goldberg on the Changing Priorities of American Transportation (.ppt, 5.9 MB)
David Goldberg, the communications director for Smart Growth America and Transportation for America, talked about federal transportation policies. He noted that Congress is currently debating how best to renew the federal transportation bill, but that there has been little agreement between the two houses. He also said that popular opinion is shifting after 50 years of suburbanization. Now, he says, most Americans believe the era of cheap energy is behind us, and few people believe that building more roads will solve our transportation problems. Dramatic changes in the housing market, especially the absence of families with children, have led more people to relocate to urban areas. He also noted that walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods have done better in this recession than outlying suburbs. He said that Transportation for America is working to encourage transit alternatives and clean transportation in the new bill.
Petra Todorovich on Where High-Speed Rail Works Best (.ppt, 5.4 MB)
Petra Todorovich, director of America 2050, said that the nation’s initial high-speed rail investment must be successful in order to encourage further investments. She said that America 2050 recently released a report analyzing the best high-speed rail connections in the US. America 2050 analyzed approximately 27,000 city pairs between 100 and 500 miles apart, creating a ranking for each pair based on population size, transit connections, congestion, and whether or not the cities are in a megaregion. She noted that a fictional Dallas-to-Houston line would rank 10th nationally, behind only cities in the Northeast and California. However, she also said that Texas high-speed rail was hurt in the rankings by a lack of transit connections in the major cities. America 2050 recommends that a Dallas-to-Houston be included in the second phase of high-speed rail investments, after the Northeast, California, and the Chicago-Great Lakes area.
Frank J Wilson on Using Intermodal Terminals to Connect Light Rail, Commuter Rail, and High-Speed Rail in the Houston Area (.ppt, 11.1 MB)
Frank Wilson, president and CEO of Houston’s METRO, briefly described the agency’s plan’s for 30 more miles of light rail, which should be completed in the next four to five years. He noted that Houston has many downtowns, such as Greenway Plaza, the Galleria, and the Medical Center, and that the light rail system will connect all of them. He also showed depictions of the Intermodal Terminal at Hardy Yard, just north of UH-Downtown, where the light rail currently stops. The terminal would connect the light rail system to commuter and high-speed rail systems. “If you connect the outlying areas to the core,” he said, “both areas become more successful.”
He said that METRO already owns most of the land near Hardy Yard, and that it hopes to enable developers to build an entertainment-based destination that will become one of Houston’s icons. The building will be futuristic-looking and energy-efficient, he said.
Ashby Johnson of the Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) said that H-GAC is one of the largest regional planning entities in the country, covering about 8,500 square miles. “In some respects, [the Houston region is] a little behind the curve” compared to areas such as Chicago, he said, adding that the current institutional frameworks do not lend themselves to regional initiatives. He said that the statewide transportation plan should explicitly address megaregions, as well as freight traffic between cities. Noting that Houston is also in the Gulf Coast megaregion, he said that Texas will ultimately have to work with Louisiana as well.
During the discussion period, Johnson also mentioned the federal New Starts program, which gives federal funding to transit projects. However, he said that New Starts is intended to be very difficult, and that it only provides 50% of the project funding, as compared to the 80% federal funding that highways receive. These requirements must be changed, he said.