Growth & Justice Blog

Managing transit: A conversation with the Civic Caucus

In June I met with members of the Civic Caucus to discuss ongoing, major transportation issues in Minnesota. The non-partisan Civic Caucus, described as “a Minnesota e-group of senior policy wonks,” convenes once a week to engage in dialog on public issues and surface creative proposals for change.

This post is based on their report of our discussion. A second post will address congestion, suburbs vs.cities and other issues they raised.

The divided metro transit structure is a practical accommodation to reality.

Commenting on divided transit authority between the Metropolitan Council and county governments in the metro area, Kane said the arrangement is a practical accommodation to reality. A new quarter-cent sales tax for transit is, by law, being imposed by county governments, not the Metropolitan Council.  It is somewhat unrealistic to put the county commissioners on the hook for raising the funds and expect them to hand off decision-making authority to another government entity. 

Thus, the counties are empowered to decide how the new tax money will be distributed, consistent with the Metropolitan Council's policy plan. In the best of all worlds, you'd probably place more authority in the Council, but we have to be practical, he said. Moreover, many legislators consider the Council to be too closely tied to the Governor, because all Council members are appointed by the Governor to terms that are co-terminus with the Governor.

Growth & Justice is not a fan of the sales tax, Kane said, because it hits lower income persons disproportionately.   

Minnesota transportation funds have been distributed as “entitlements,” rather than according to need. Fairness and accountability are likely to improve.

It was noted that several weeks ago, Ken Orski, a national transportation consultant, was critical of the way transportation funds are distributed in Minnesota. Orski's concern was that the funds are largely distributed to different levels of government according to statutory or constitutional formulas that bear little relationship to need.  In effect, Orski said, the funds are "entitlements" for various levels of government.

Kane noted that the 2008 Legislature changed a formula for distribution of funds among counties to give greater account to transportation needs, not just an automatic distribution among counties, irrespective of needs. He also said that the Legislature has an interest in assuring that all parts of the state are treated equitably in distribution of revenue.

There are good reasons to place authority for transportation at the metro level as well as the state level.

A Civic Caucus member inquired whether more leadership and planning responsibility ought to exist at the state level, because of the critical role that transportation plays in the overall economy of the state.

Kane agreed that a statewide transportation system allows the safe and easy movement of people and goods.  It makes places accessible to people. And it lays the base for business activity that fosters economic prosperity. Commerce needs roads, and businesses incur costs from congestion delays and poor road conditions.  Wise investments in transportation infrastructure help put Minnesota’s households in a better position to benefit from economic growth. And a high-quality transportation system makes for faster commutes, reduced delays, fewer accidents, less fuel consumption and better air quality.

He noted, however, that it is useful to place some authority at the metro level, instead of with the state, because experience nationally has shown that metro-level decision makers are more likely to explore a variety of options for dealing with the much more complex transportation problem in the metro area, and more likely, too, to consider transit as a viable option. Because of the much larger number of trips and the accompanying congestion in the metro, investments in transit are important.

— Matt Kane

Will suburbs pay for urban development?

Debate over the transportation bill — and the funding of transit as well as roads and bridges — typically  fell along party lines. But it might also be characterized as a disagreement between the short-termers and the long-termers.

One side tends to look at today and go year-by-year and pothole-by-pothole. The other side looks farther into the future and recognizes that the world we face tomorrow might not simply be an extended version of today.

An article in The Atlantic [via Twin City Sidewalks] looks at market forces underlying signs of housing decline in certain suburban communities. The march to exurbia is unlikely to continue:

A structural change is under way in the housing market — a major shift in the way many Americans want to live and work. It has shaped the current downturn, steering some of the worst problems away from the cities and toward the suburban fringes. And its effects will be felt more strongly, and more broadly, as the years pass. Its ultimate impact on the suburbs, and the cities, will be profound.

The article chronicles research that forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes by 2025 and discusses implications for that housing stock as more Americans choose to live in places that are less segregated from work, shopping and entertainment. At the suburban fringes, for example, developers have forsaken regional malls to build "lifestyle centers" similar to Maple Grove's Arbor Lakes and infill developments like St. Louis Park's Excelsior and Grand.

In their most advanced incarnation, these places combine walkable streets with access to diverse retail, more dense housing and  transit.

[R]ecent consumer research by Jonathan Levine of the University of Michigan and Lawrence Frank of the University of British Columbia suggests that roughly one in three homeowners would prefer to live in these types of places. In one study, for instance, Levine and his colleagues asked more than 1,600 mostly suburban residents of the Atlanta and Boston metro areas to hypothetically trade off typical suburban amenities (such as large living spaces) against typical urban ones (like living within walking distance of retail districts). All in all, they found that only about a third of the people surveyed solidly preferred traditional suburban lifestyles, featuring large houses and lots of driving. Another third, roughly, had mixed feelings. The final third wanted to live in mixed-use, walkable urban areas—but most had no way to do so at an affordable price.

If some McMansion developments lose favor in the coming years, their fate may first resemble what happened to urban housing as populations began to shift to suburbia in the 1960s — declining values, influxes of low-income families and even conversion to apartments.

But the article notes that "the infrastructure supporting large-lot suburban residential areas — roads, sewer and water lines — cannot support the dense development that urbanization would require, and is not easy to upgrade. Once large-lot, suburban residential landscapes are built, they are hard to unbuild."

Further, most suburban houses were not built to last — with materials and construction methods that easily withstand conversion.

If a significant population does swing back to a less car-oriented lifestyle, the suburbs will pay — and it won't be just for transit lines.

— Charlie Quimby

The liberal plot to fix our roads

Blogger Drew Emmer is not happy with the transportation bill (he calls it the "transit bill"), media coverage of the legislation or the coalition that supported its passage.

In support of his contention that "special interests" put one over on the taxpayers, he cites a long list of organizations and local government entities that supported the bill. Growth & Justice is one of the baddies.

One clear takeaway from his list: His readers are supposed to think a cabal of labor, environmentalists and the construction industry slipped this one past the guardians of the public purse.

Of course, one might expect the highway industry to support road construction legislation. Nor is it surprising that organizations concerned about employment would look on favorably. Farmers who must get their products to market over rural roads? Another special interest at work.

But calling this bill the work of "special interests" and attributing its passage to an orchestrated effort by groups as diverse as the League of Women Voters, the City of Hutchinson, the Isaak Walton League, the Teamsters and Potato Growers is a bit silly.

The compilation becomes even less credible because it also omits two of the most influential groups who favored passage — the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce and the Itasca Project, which convenes the CEOs of the state's largest companies.

These broad-based business groups are rightly concerned about the region's economic health and competitiveness. They, and many of the other businesses represented on Demmer's special interests list, are widely considered the most important allies of Republicans on economic and tax-and-budget issues.

Any claim of liberal "special" interests starts to lose meaning when the interests represent such a broad expanse of the state's businesses, counties and municipalities, labor groups and nonprofits.

Isn't it just possible we all agreed — beyond our parochial concerns and differing political perspectives — that it was time to invest in the state's transportation infrastructure?

— Charlie Quimby

Federal transportation rules favor roads over light rail

Public officials and transportation planners are trimming the proposed Central Corridor light rail project in order to bring the price down and meet federal requirements for cost-effectiveness. 

Might be a short-sighted approach that limits the potential of the rail line in the future. Might be a good exercise in fiscal discipline. One way or the other, the federal requirements and budget constraints facing the Central Corridor project stand out as issues for transit, not for roads. 

The federal government tips the table in favor of roads over transit. The U.S. Department of Transportation gives states relatively free rein to make decisions about road construction projects even while it puts tight parameters and requirements on the construction of major transit projects. 

While the feds cover 80 percent or more of the costs for new roads, both Congress and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) have taken steps to effectively limit the federal share for capital funding of new rail lines and busways to less than 60 percent. State and local governments come up with the rest — 40 or 50 percent for a light rail line, 20 percent for a new freeway. 

What’s more, major transit projects are subject to strict project criteria, including an assessment of estimated costs versus benefits. When considering plans for new rail or busway routes, the FTA assesses the mobility improvements, environmental benefits, operating efficiencies, cost effectiveness and land-use impacts. And proposals for rail lines and busways from one community must compete against proposals from elsewhere in the fight for tight transit funding. 

All good ideas? Perhaps.  But those federal requirements don’t extend to roads.

Consider the recently completed sections of Highway 212 through Chaska and over to Eden Prairie. The Minnesota Department of Transportation certainly engaged in careful studies of that 11-mile stretch of road before it became a freeway-style, four-lane thoroughfare. 

But no one worried the state would lose federal funding for the project if the benefits were too low. No one nixed a freeway interchange because of cost considerations. And no one worried that the Federal Highway Administration would yank Minnesota’s funding for the project in order to finance a more cost-effective stretch of road in, say, Atlanta. 

For the 11-mile Central Corridor, federal requirements and funding restrictions have limited the options for additional stops along University Avenue in St. Paul, altered plans for the route through the University of Minnesota campus, and led the Ramsey County Commissioners to drop calls for an intermodal transit platform at St. Paul’s old Union Depot — at least for now. 

Necessary? Yes. Wise? Maybe. Fair? No.

— Matt Kane