A basic principle of finance could yield big wins for U.S. cities, according to a new policy agenda.

Proportionally speaking, Americans living in poverty pay more for basic necessities. On energy bills, the poorest 20 percent of Americans spend more than seven times the share of their income than do the wealthiest. Dividing American incomes into three, households in the bottom third spend twice the portion of their incomes on transportation than the top third. High housing costs are hurting everyone—but they’re hurting poor Americans the most.

The CNT breaks their blueprint for Philly into a number of broad actions. Transportation costs are the third-biggest income-eater for low-income Americans, after housing and food. For Philadelphia, the biggest-ticket poverty-reduction item is expanding transportation access, with goals to reduce the need for workers at every income tier to drive alone, and to open up jobs previously too hard to get to. Relying on the CNT’s Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, the CNT estimates that if Philadelphia grew the number of jobs accessible by a 30-minute transit ride by 12 percent, that could translate into roughly 4,700 newly accessible jobs for people living in poverty.

For the full article, visit http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2016/08/poverty-reduction-cost-of-living-center-for-neighborhood-technology/494348/?utm_source=nl__link2_080516.

The post To Cut Down Poverty, Cut Down the Cost of Living appeared first on Indy Connect.

Houston’s overnight bus network transformation in August 2015 was a transportation planner’s dream. The old hub-and-spoke system that had for decades funneled commuters downtown was straightened into a grid that cross-cuts the sprawling city, with fewer redundancies, more frequent service, and all-day, all-week service on heavily used lines. As the original before-and-after maps show above, almost every route was changed, with increasing ridership rather than service area as the guiding priority.

But not everyone was thrilled. The new network hinges more heavily on transfers, which can move people more quickly but tend not to be as appealing as a one-line commute. Although most commuters saw their routes essentially unchanged, a few neighborhoods suffered from service cuts. In response, Metro made some tweaks and rethought a route or two after hearing community input.

Now, one year out, Houston’s big bus overhaul is on its way to success by the measure it hoped to achieve. Leah Binkovitz at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research reports that Metro saw ridership on its local bus and light-rail systems showed a gain of 4.5 million boardings between September 2015 and July 2016—an increase of 6.8 percent.

For the full article, visit http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/08/houston-bus-system-ridership/496313/?utm_source=nl__link1_081816.

The post A Year After a Radical Route Rethink, Houston’s Transit Ridership Is Up appeared first on Indy Connect.

Sad but true: Not all officials who make decisions about public transit actually use public transit.

That disconnect can sometimes lead cities to make transit investments in things like downtown streetcars or wifi-equipped bus fleets. Those aren’t bad investments in themselves, but they’re not always conducive to truly effective transit. “The reality is, good transit is the same as it’s always been,” Steven Higashide, a senior program analyst at the transportation research foundation TransitCenter, said in a conference call Monday. “It’s getting someone where they want to go, quickly and reliably.”

A new survey analysis by TransitCenter confirms this. Based on the responses of 3,000 transit riders from 17 regions around the U.S., the report finds that there are three big things that make for satisfying and effective transit service: frequency, speed, and walkability.

The post What Transit Riders Really Want appeared first on Indy Connect.

Not long ago, Houston’s bus service befit a version of the city out of the 1950s. Despite decades of decentralized urban growth, most bus lines still zig-zagged into one small section of the downtown core, where only 25 percent of the region’s jobs are located. Route redundancies were rampant. And despite the all-day transit needs of university students and low-income riders, frequent service (meaning buses arriving every 15 minutes or faster) was mostly limited to weekday rush hours.

But as a new short documentary from Streetfilms recounts, one Sunday morning in August 2015, Houstonians awoke to a completely re-envisioned system—the first that the Metropolitan Transit Agency had undertaken in four decades. A less redundant, more grid-like network of routes “vastly expanded the reach of frequent service” and offered all-day, all-week service on several key lines, according to Human Transit’s Jarrett Walker, who worked with the city as a consultant on the redesign. Houston Metro was able to transform the system largely by trimming and tightening unnecessary routes, with no significant additional costs. The original before-and-after network maps are fairly breath-taking.

For the full article, visit http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/04/how-houstons-bus-network-got-its-groove-back/476784/?utm_source=nl__link4_040516.

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Downtown Columbus, Ohio, is facing a parking crunch. But parking prices aren’t high enough in this city to make garage construction a viable private investment. Faced with this situation, a lot of cities would pour a bunch of money into a big subsidized garage or two. But in Columbus, several officials have hit on a smarter idea: providing free transit passes to downtown workers.

The city is currently running a pilot transit pass program for a few hundred downtown workers. If it’s successful, the program could be expanded to cover the entire downtown and relieve the pressure to build garages.

Elissa Schneider at Streetsblog Network member Transit Columbus writes that the transit pass program just makes more financial sense:

“Let’s ask how we can encourage people who are looking to shed the baggage of their personal car. It’s the smart and open solution. To encourage and support public transit riders is far cheaper than investing in a parking space, which cost $30,000 – $60,000 a piece to build. Moving a small percentage of downtown drivers to transit riders frees up space for those with a personal car.”

For the full article, visit http://www.ibj.com/articles/57624-transit-provides-link-to-equal-opportunities.

The post Buying Transit Passes Is Cheaper Than Building Garages appeared first on Indy Connect.