Transit and Sustainable Surface Transportation Policy
Sustainability and Surface Transportation
The essence of sustainability is the integration of economic development and environmental improvement. As the Task Force for the President's Council on Sustainable Development (1997) described it, sustainable communities are those that "flourish because they build a mutually supportive, dynamic balance between social well-being, economic opportunity, and environmental quality."
Of the many aspects of sustainability, transportation is central to the dynamic balance between economies and environments, since varying transportation policies have profoundly different impacts on urban landscapes. In particular, the linkage of sustainability with public transportation now informs a range of policies intended to make more efficient use of urbanized land, reduce traffic congestion, cut back vehicle emissions, and improve pedestrian mobility.
The examples highlighted in Travel Matters each illustrate how the use of transit or other non-motorized transportation options are enhanced when travel demand factors are taken into consideration in the planning, marketing, design, and operation of transit. Aside from the potential economic benefits of reducing the consumption of resources associated with urban sprawl, these examples of transit-supported sustainability provide a solid basis for a range of geographically specific actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in America's large urban centers. Global issues like climate change can be addressed by very local, very concrete actions taken to influence the way people build, and move through, their lived environment.
Transit Renaissance
Interest in transit and urban sustainability has grown together with public transit use: the 1990's were a record decade for transit, with ridership figures growing by 21 percent nationwide from 1995 to 2000, approaching levels not reached since the early 1960's.
With more people using transit, a strong rationale exists for capitalizing on this trend as a key strategy in the effort to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. Looking beyond the success of already-existing transit systems, however, many municipal planners, transportation scholars, and sustainability advocates have come to realize that new systems are not guaranteed the high level of ridership enjoyed by their forerunners early in the 20th century.
In an environment in which transit competes with automobiles, new transit systems will be effective only when assisted by policy and planning measures designed to make transit use a feasible and desirable mobility option for urban residents. Planning for transit-supportive land use, reducing the provision of parking spaces near transit stations, providing workplace transit incentives for public and private sector employees, and designing transit stops and transit area neighborhoods to be as accessible by foot or bicycle as by car, are a few of the tools available to stitch transit together with the modern urban fabric. Taken together, these tools amount to models of urban design that differ fundamentally from the auto-oriented development predominant since WWII.
Transit and Transportation Policy
The importance of transit in building sustainable communities has been acknowledged in the substance of a number of federal and state policies formulated over the last decade. Most prominent at the federal level, and symbolic of a new orientation, was the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), carried forward in 1998 as the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). Broadly understood, the purpose of TEA-21 is to change the way transportation planning gets done, shifting the emphasis from building more highways to making existing systems more efficient. Under TEA-21 legislation, community involvement in transportation planning is a priority, and greater authority is given to states and municipalities to decide how transportation spending will affect their constituencies.
Several examples of state-level initiatives combining land use, air quality, and transit reform are found in Maryland, Georgia, and New York. At the state level, Maryland in 1997 passed an ambitious "Smart Growth" legislative package. As with TEA-21, the Maryland legislation sets out to accomplish many things at once, by focusing on something that links many things together: surface transportation. Maryland hopes to save its remaining open spaces and make its urban areas more livable by making existing surface transportation infrastructure more efficient. The state more recently established an "Office of Smart Growth" to help coordinate efforts mandated under the new law.
The State of Georgia recently established an administrative body, the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA), to coordinate municipal transportation planning in areas that fail to meet the standards of the Clean Air Act. A large part of the federal funding included in the transportation plan approved by GRTA for 2003-2005 is earmarked for new transit infrastructure, promotion of reformed land-use, and pedestrian friendly urban design.
In 2002, New York became one of the first states in the union to formulate a greenhouse gas reduction policy in its 2002 "Energy Plan." The plan sets itself the goals of a 10 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by the year 2020, a 50 percent increase in the use of renewable energy in the state by 2020, and the reduction by 25 percent of primary energy use per unit of gross state product by 2010.
While many of these and other initiatives intended to reform the urban environment of the United States are not also meant to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, it should be emphasized that any measure that reduces vehicle miles traveled will simultaneously reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Increasing awareness of climate change issues can only lend weight to the many local policies, programs, and community initiatives already focused on the role of curbing regulated pollutants by changing travel habits, and using transit to build sustainable communities.
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for links to organizations working to enhance transit use and curb
auto-dependent urban development.