Photo credit: Red9898, flickr

Who doesn’t want to live in a Great Neighborhood? On June 23, join some of your neighbors — whether you share a block, town, state or region — along with CLF and the MA Smart Growth Alliance at the Great Neighborhoods Summit 2011: Placemaking in Action. This event, to be held in the Campus Center Ballroom at UMass Boston, brings non-profit organizations, political leaders, academic and policy experts, grassroots activists, and community leaders together to discuss the importance of placemaking and to share ideas about how to inspire collective action that transforms communities and drives local and regional change. Notable events include:

• Opening Remarks by the Honorable Thomas M. Menino, Mayor of Boston
• Metropolitan Issues and Collaboration Across Sectors
• Great Neighborhoods: Regional Change through Local Action
• Panel Discussion: Five Examples of Placemaking and Transformation in Greater Boston
• Keynote Address by Fred Kent, President, Project for Public Spaces: Creating “Place Capital”

Click here for a full schedule of events and speakers.

Great Neighborhoods are active, environmentally friendly and welcoming places where community and business leaders, residents, and public officials work together to create affordable homes, job-generating offices and stores, and recreational spaces close to public transportation. Residents are able to spend more time interacting with neighbors, biking or walking and less time commuting. Massachusetts is leading the way with this groundbreaking initiative that serves as a model for smart community and regional planning, and we need your help.

Great Neighborhoods Summit 2011: Placemaking in Action
Thursday, June 23, 2011
8 a.m. – 12 p.m.
UMass-Boston Campus Center, 3rd Floor Ballroom
100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston (map and directions)

All are welcome. Register today!

Visit www.ma-smartgrowth.org for more info and the latest news and updates.

Photo credit: christiannealmcneil, flickr

The City of Portland just launched a new website to make it easier for developers to comply with new planning requirements that incentivize alternative commuting strategies through transportation demand management plans, or “TDMs.”  The TDM requirement evolved out of a recognition that a city full of parking garages was not the best use of prime real estate – it isn’t attractive and it only encourages continued reliance on single occupancy vehicle use.  In Maine, 80 percent of employees still drive to work alone every day.  In an effort to shift commuters over to alternatives, such as METRO bus, GoMaine car and van-pooling service, biking and walking, the City of Portland passed a mandatory TDM plan for site plan approval for new developments over 50,000 square feet and for institutions serving more than 100 employees or students. There is also a voluntary TDM plan that companies may want to utilize to help their employees save money at the pump or reduce their overall carbon footprint.

In an effort to navigate the TDM requirements, the City launched a new website, found here at: http://www.tdm2go.info/.  The site is an easy, practical guide that provides a glossary of terms and high-lights case studies.  Four businesses featured on the site include Oak Street Lofts, the Portland International Jetport, St Lawrence Arts Center and Maine Medical Center (MMC).  In the case of MMC, the busy and ever-expanding hospital saw a 15 percent reduction in single occupancy vehicle use in the one year that its “Get On Board” program was implemented.  That impressive result was reached by installing numerous bike racks throughout the MMC campus, offering 50 percent off METRO tickets and providing free parking in the Gilbert St. garage to car-poolers that also had the extra amenity of enjoying the perks of first floor parking, so no stairs, no waiting for elevators, and instant access to the first floor cafe.  Plus, bike lockers and a group tool shed were installed.  These may seem like small perks, but the results speak for themselves – employees like perks!  The efforts by MMC successfully changed the culture of commuting at this major employer and in the process of doing so, they enrolled 734 employees in the program, 221 of those don’t use any carbon emitting vehicle at all – they are biking or walking to work.

What can other employers throughout the state learn from these successes?  First, brainstorming with employees on how to maximize the best alternative transportation mode is critical.  Second, a full educational campaign that informs employees on what their options are is instrumental in making the switch to alternative modes stick.  Resources on both of these are available on the City’s new site and the GoMaine website: http://gomaine.org/.  The benefits to employee’s pocketbooks and overall morale is worth the investment of some bike racks and educational information on our region’s transit services.

Vermont’s Governor Shumlin announced today a new direction for the Circ Highway.  This is good news.  CLF has long supported re-thinking the Circ Highway, and focusing instead on transportation solutions that work.  As planned, the Circ is getting in the way of progress and causing too many people to be snarled in traffic and pollution.  The EPA has noted the severe damage the Circ would cause to waterways and wetlands.

CLF welcomes and encourages the Governor’s efforts.  We look forward to working with local communities and businesses to find effective, safe and lower cost solutions.  We don’t need to bust the bank, add more sprawl and dirty our streams to get around.

Unfortunately, our state and federal highway agencies also announced the completion of the final environmental review for the outdated Circ project.  We are disappointed with all the wasted money and effort spent on this outdated project.  Officials should have stopped the review before it was completed.  CLF will evaluate the final review and consider whether an appeal should be taken to Federal Court.

Throughout human history one overarching story has been that as our society became wealthier we traveled more. The reality that our ancestors generally were born, lived and died in the same place with rare opportunities to “see the world” is hard to deny – so is the reality of our world where it is not unusual to find people walking the streets of our cities who woke up that morning on a different continent and rubbing elbows with masses of people who have lived, gone to school and worked in a wide and complex array of places.

But new academic research is suggesting that the upward surge in travel that has become such a feature of our world may have come to an end.

This could be very similar to well documented phenomena of air pollution rising as a society becomes more wealthy but then reaching a point where the relationship between economic activity (or income) flips -   air pollution increasingly declines as wealth/income rises.  This is know as an “inverted U-Shaped Kuznets curve” by economists (who are almost as poetic when they name things as lawyers).  This analysis suggests that as income rises people collectively take action to reduce pollution.  There is some controversy about applying this principle to pollution that is not as visible and obvious – like the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) that is a major cause of global warming, but some scholars believe that as income and wealth rises that emissions of CO2 drop very suddenly after a critical break point under some conditions.

But the possibility that we may have passed a critical “break point” where travel stops growing would be very good news in terms of slowing and reversing global warming given the critical role of the transportation sector in the emissions of these greenhouse gases – and the major role that travel growth plays in driving (pun intended) such emissions.

These trends are not handed down from above though – whenever we choose to build communities where people can walk, bike or even drive short distances to their offices, schools, stores, friends and families who move our world in a positive direction.  And when we build good transit systems that allow us to move around those communities quickly and cleanly everyone benefits.

Boston has been ranked one of the top 15 major cities for transportation by NRDC’s Smarter Cities project.  The study does not rank the cities, but Boston comes out on top alphabetically before Chicago, New York, Portland, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington–which, in our minds, means it’s number one!

While this is probably extremely hard to believe for Boston commuters who experienced too many delays as a result of the cold weather this winter, we will take a win over New York any way we can get it–particularly as the 2011 Red Sox are about to face the Yankee$ for the first time in the Grapefruit League tonight.

What helped put Boston on top? Among the factors on NRDC’s list were our our heavily-trafficked, far-reaching public transit system, including the planned Green Line extension, a project in which CLF is very involved.

See for yourself. Check out why else we made the list, and start thinking about how we can help the ruefully underfunded public transportation system in Massachusetts get better.

See what else CLF is doing to build better ways to get around in your community.

Let’s say you are a state agency tasked with making a tough choice on how to spend your money.  Your options are:

a.      Spend $150 million on widening 9 miles of highway despite the fact that volume has waned;

b.      Spend $56 million on building another toll booth;

c.       Spend $3.8 million on expanding an existing, highly successful bus service that will benefit thousands of commuters.

Did I mention that you have to do this all while complying with a state law that requires you to give preference to existing systems and other transportation modes (such as bus transit) prior to increasing highway capacity through road building activities?   The obvious answer here is (c), expanding bus service, specifically the ZOOM bus service that is operated by the Maine Turnpike Authority.

Currently, the ZOOM bus runs a limited service between Portland, Biddeford and Saco.  The primary hubs are Park & Ride lots, if you’ve driven by those lots, you will see they are chock full.  Those crammed lots are a glowing testament to the resounding success of the ZOOM.

In an effort to build on that success, last year the Maine Alliance for Sustainable Transportation approached the Authority to see if it would consider expanding the bus service up to Lewiston and Augusta.  Along the way, West Falmouth, Gray, Sabbatus and Auburn would finally get much needed access to public transit.  But the Authority remained convinced that answers (a) and (b) were right.   After all, highway widening remains a popular solution to just about any transportation problem, despite the fact that, time after time, massive multi-million dollar widening projects only result in more traffic and more congestion. [the fact is, these roads never pay for themselves via tolls or otherwise.]

Does Portland really need another highway widening?

No, and the numbers prove it:

But transit advocates, CLF among them, were not dissuaded.   We found a savvy supporter in Representative Bradley Moulton, a newly elected Republican, who decided to sponsor the ZOOM bus bill, known formally as “An Act to Expand Fiscally Responsible Transportation Through Increased ZOOM Bus Service.”

And fiscally responsible it is.  Not only for the average commuter struggling with rising gas prices, but in the broader context of how Maine decides to spend money on transportation.  The days of subsidized highway widening projects are over.  With the fiscal belt tightening, now is a good time to make some smart decisions on transit.  The ZOOM bus goes a long way towards accomplishing that goal.

In a boost for clean air and clean water, the mismanaged and ill-conceived Circ highway planned for Vermont’s Chittenden County faces a potentially fatal blow.  The head of EPA in New England described the project as environmentally devastating.

“Even if the mitigation were fully implemented, the proposed project would cause or contribute to significant degradation of waters of the U.S. in violation” of federal law and should not be permitted, according to the EPA.

The EPA concluded the highway “will have a substantial and unacceptable impact on aquatic resources of national importance,” in that December letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a more forceful follow-up to the original letter and assessment EPA sent on November 15.  EPA makes a strong argument against issuing the environmental permits needed for the largest single destruction of wetlands in Vermont’s history.

EPA’s objections are bolstered by the support of a diverse coalition of organizations in Vermont, including CLF.  If the Corps issues permits despite these objections the EPA could block those permits with a veto.

CLF continues to support cleaner, lower cost and more effective solutions in place of a new highway that damages or eliminates hundreds of acres of wetlands, increases sprawl development, contributes to global climate change, wastes limited public funds and fails to meet modern transportation needs.   At a cost of tens of millions of dollars, the Circ only saves four minutes of travel time and offers less relief from traffic congestion in the areas most troubled traffic spots compared to cleaner and lower cost solutions that modernize existing roadways.

Boston’s iconic Longfellow Bridge serves as a poster child for public transit. Every few minutes, the bridge transports Red Line commuters between Boston and Cambridge, affording its passengers a breathtaking view of the Charles River and Boston skyline– and the parallel lanes of bumper-to-bumper vehicle traffic that the speeding train leaves in its wake. While that’s a positive situation for MBTA riders, it’s a dangerous one for the rest of the city’s commuters who don’t cross the bridge by car– cyclists and pedestrians.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) Highway Division had released plans to rebuild the historic bridge as is. In May 2010, CLF advocated for an alternative plan that would make the bridge more bike and pedestrian-friendly. In response to CLF’s call to action, MassDOT created the Longfellow Bridge Rehabilitation Task Force, which recently released its recommendations on what alternatives should be included in the project’s Environmental Assessment to submit to the Federal Highway Administration.

Last week, CLF submitted written comments to the Administrator of the Highway Division at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) in response to those recommendations. In a letter to MasDOT Highway Division Administrator Luisa Paiewonsky, CLF explained that to comply with federal and state law, MassDOT should include at least one strong alternative plan for presentation and analysis that retains the current structure of the bridge throughout while altering its traffic pattern so that only one lane exists in both directions with a two-lane release into Charles Circle on the Boston side. Such an alternative would uphold the structural and architectural integrity of the bridge, help the state reach its health and greenhouse gas emission reduction goals and improve safety for bikers and pedestrians.

Learn more about what CLF is doing the improve transportation alternatives in communities throughout New England.

Recent headlines over a strategically thinking Bald Eagle in Wiscasset brought a wry smile to my face because this bird somehow managed to undo what dozens of fiscally prudent Mainers have been unable to do for the last decade: stop the DOT.

It is only with a modicum of irony that it took the American Bald Eagle, our symbol of freedom, to loosen the shackles of an oppressive, fiscally irresponsible DOT plan to build the Wiscasset Bypass.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Wiscasset’s seasonal traffic congestion, let me paint the scene:  let’s say you are “from away” and traveling to Midcoast Maine.  You are heading north on I-295 and you see a sign that says “Coastal Route”, doesn’t that sound charming?  “Let’s take that route!” exclaim the passengers in your car, and so you dutifully exit.  You are cruising along, everything is fine, and you soon approach the town of Wiscasset that declares itself to be “The Prettiest Little Village in Maine.”  Lovely!  You make a few winding turns, catch a glimpse of the water through some Victorian homes, your expectations soar and then suddenly you find yourself in a bit of traffic.  Maybe there was a fender bender, no one is moving.  You inch forward after a few minutes. 17 minutes and 43 seconds go by.  Still stuck.  You move agonizingly slow through this “Pretty Little Village” that seems uglier by the minute because all you can see is a line of brake lights a mile long.  You make one last turn and then the full scope of the traffic is revealed, and it is a brutal scene.  Idling cars are backed up for miles, for no apparent reason other than a bunch of flip-flop clad pedestrians scrambling to cross the road back and forth a zillion times so they can taste for themselves if the lobster rolls at Red’s Eats really are the best in Maine.  It is well known that the summer tourists queuing up for a lobster roll at this well-known eatery, located practically on Route 1 itself, is a significant contributor of the infamous start-and-go pile-ups along Route 1.  By the time you make it through this, everyone in the car is fighting, you have no idea why you thought a vacation to Maine would in any way constitute an “escape”, you are cranky, hungry (because there was no way you were going to contribute to the problem by actually eating at Red’s Eats), and you openly wonder why they don’t just build a pedestrian bridge for crying out loud!?

The truth is, it is a valid question. A pedestrian bridge or tunnel to alleviate the bottleneck at Red’s Eats is such an obvious solution that you really do have to wonder why it doesn’t already exist.  Yes, there are some historical compatibility issues, but it is relatively inexpensive and logical solution.  Yet it was summarily dismissed by the DOT.  So what about the installation of traffic lights at both the intersection of Route 1 and 27?  How about the prohibition of left hand turns in the downtown area?  What about a reconfiguration of parking along Route 1?

Source: Maine DOT

Which of these solutions did the experts agree was a reasonable approach?  None of the above.  Rather, after a decades-long planning process, the alternatives flirted with three bypass options, N8C, N2F and N2A, noted in the diagram above.  All three are wildly expensive, in the $85-$100 million dollar range, (this in a state that lacks funds for even basic road maintenance), all have impacts on environmentally sensitive lands, and all, even the shortest option, double the route.  This will waste travel time, cost drivers more money and burn more dirty fossil fuels.  The negative impacts don’t stop there.  The existing Davey bridge will cease to become a priority and when limited state coffers must choose on repairs, it will be the sacrificial lamb, wasting millions of taxpayer dollars.  In addition, let’s think about what the by-pass is actually “by-passing.”  It’s the entire commercial center of Wiscasset.  The charming antique shops: by-passed.  The funky art galleries: by-passed.  The gift shops, well, you get the idea.   All seasonal traffic will be diverted away from the hard working Mainers that rely on tourists for their yearly revenue.

In the wake of the eagle nest discovery, the DOT has indicated that it is “evaluating whether to resubmit an application to support one of remaining alternatives as the preferred option for a bypass.”  But perhaps the evaluation should take a step even further and not start with the assumption that a bypass to alleviate seasonal summer traffic is the only option.  Let’s go back to the drawing board on this one and come up with a solution that reflects our fiscal reality and that can actually be built in under a decade.  The Wiscasset Task Force will meet on December 15 at 6:30 to drill down into these issues and hopefully come up with a sound solution.