Transportation, the economic engine of the modern city

Downloads, Links

A void paved over with concrete, by Richard L. Birch. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 7, 2009 - high property taxes rooted in our inefficient car culture.

Dangerous By Design, Solving the Epidemic of Preventable Pedestrian Deaths (and Making Great Neighborhoods), from Transportation for America

Judge Rules Against DOT’s Plans for Waukesha and Washington Counties, Shepherd Express. Sept 23 2009. Lack of environmental analysis; failure to make a public hearing “public” …

Public transit rides saved 260M gallons of gas in ‘08, by Environment Illinois. Sept 23, 2009.

Amtrak President before Congress, April 13, 2009 (pdf)

Reconnecting Minnesota: The Case for an Intercity Passenger Rail System, by Conrad deFiebre, Transportation Fellow & Mick Conlan, Graduate Research Fellow. October 2008

Newsweek’s “High-Speed Boondoggle” by Robert J. Samuelson: the Urban Workshop Re-mix, if the 50′s used the same ‘free market’ logic (about trains today) but rather about those freeways Ike built.

United States GAO Report High Speed Rail, GAO-09–317, March 19, 2009

2009 Urban Mobility Report and Appendices, An exhaustively reasoned statistical study of congestion and tools to reduce congestion

Tearing down highways; saving cities, Yonah Freemark and Jebediah Reed

Post Industrial Smart Growth, Kate Rube (ppt)

Building Wealth through Transit, Scott Bernstein (ppt)

Financing Transit Systems Through Value Capture, Jeffery J. Smith and Thomas A. Gihring (pdf)

Value Capture as a Policy Tool in Transportation Economics, H. William Batt

Land Value to be Studied by Commission in Minnesota, NEW: July 7, 2009, press release

Value Capture for Transportation Finance, Univ. of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies

Research Team Presents Value Capture Strategies, Univ. of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies

Evaluation of Impact Fees and Value Capture Techniques, AECOM Consult (pdf)

Using Value Capture to Finance Infrastructure & Encourage Compact Development, Rick Rybeck (pdf)

Michael Powell explains why he’s become “evangelical” about streetcars

Streetcar Economics
In this 17-minute video, Michael Powell of Powell’s Books talks about why he led the effort to convince property owners in Portland’s Pearl District to tax themselves….

Portland Streetcar pays its own way

Regional Effort, Milwaukee and Wisconsin.

Tom Rave represented the Coalition for Advancing Transit at the critical public hearing on the State budget. We are asking for authority to establish a Regional Transit Authority in our County, and maybe with other counties. His statement first, other documentation, and our endorsers.

CAT Statement