 |
Transportation and Community and System Preservation Pilot Program Third-Year Report
Summary
The Transportation and Community and System Preservation (TCSP) Pilot Program provides funding over five years to States, local and tribal governments, and metropolitan planning organizations (MPO) to develop innovative strategies that use transportation to build livable communities. Created by Section 1221 of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), $120 million of funding is authorized to respond to the concerns of communities from across America that transportation investments should be used to achieve strong, sustainable economic growth while simultaneously protecting the environment and ensuring a high quality of life.
This report reviews the accomplishments of the TCSP program following its first three years of implementation. Between Fiscal Year (FY) 1999 and 2001, a total of 199 grants valued at $91.1 million have been awarded to government agencies throughout the United States. These grants are supporting a wide range of transportation planning and implementation projects with the following objectives:
- Improve the efficiency of the transportation system;
- Reduce the environmental impacts of transportation;
- Reduce the need for costly future public infrastructure investments;
- Ensure efficient access to jobs, services, and centers of trade; and
- Examine development patterns and identify strategies to encourage private-sector development patterns that achieve these goals.
TCSP projects are helping communities
link transportation and land use strategies.
(Salt Lake City, Utah metropolitan area.
Courtesy of Envision Utah)
A review of project status and accomplishments to date, as well as interviews with grantees, Federal program partners, and stakeholder groups, suggests that TCSP projects are indeed accomplishing these objectives. TCSP projects funded in the first three years of the program have helped to bring innovation to transportation practice in the following ways:
- By expanding the range of partners involved in planning, including "non-traditional" partners such as economic development organizations, community groups, and private developers;
- By expanding and introducing new techniques for public involvement and community participation;
- By developing new analytical tools to assess the impacts of transportation and land use alternatives on mobility, economic development, community character, and the environment;
- By demonstrating design practices such as traffic calming, pedestrian linkages, intermodal transit facilities, and bicycle paths that increase travel options and improve the character of local communities; and
- By helping communities as well as the private sector re-examine their land development practices, in order to reduce transportation impacts and better complement public-sector investments.
Furthermore, the TCSP program is disseminating the effective practices developed through individual TCSP projects by sponsoring a web site, workshops, case studies, and project evaluations to share knowledge about accomplishments and lessons learned. The impacts of the TCSP program, as a result, reach well beyond the scope of its individual projects.
TCSP projects are demonstrating transportation design practices
that increase travel options and enhance community character.
(Design for Main Street in Houston.
Courtesy of Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut & Kuhn Architects)
While enthusiasm for the objectives and accomplishments of the TCSP program is widespread, the program’s mix of projects has changed in significant ways between FY 1999 and 2001. These changes have accompanied a shift in the way grants are awarded from a competitive application process to Congressional earmarking. Over this three-year period, there has been a strong shift away from projects focused on regional transportation planning and on grants awarded to MPOs. The share of projects developing planning tools, methods, and handbooks also has declined. There has been a corresponding increase in location-specific planning and implementation grants to cities and counties, with an emphasis on public-sector transportation and capital investments such as bicycle paths, streetscapes, transit facilities, and roadway improvements. While interviewees did not fault the Congressionally selected projects, they felt that the TCSP program’s intended focus on planning innovations, non-traditional partnerships, project evaluation, and knowledge transfer is decreasing, and that the program may be losing many of its unique and most beneficial aspects as a result.
TCSP projects are introducing new public involvement techniques.
(Public charrette in Saginaw, Michigan.
Courtesy of Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin Lopez Rinehart)
Looking ahead to the last two years of the TCSP Pilot Program in FY 2002 and 2003, and to the re-authorization of TEA-21 in advance of FY 2004, interviewees made a number of suggestions for maximizing the effectiveness of the program in the future:
- Award future grants through a competitive process. Projects have shifted from being awarded almost entirely through a competitive process in FY 1999 to being awarded entirely through Congressional earmarks in FY 2001.
- Continue to emphasize learning and knowledge transfer. The innovative work undertaken in the first three years of the TCSP program is now bearing fruit; documenting and disseminating the results of this work will multiply the benefits of TCSP.
- Maintain a focus on both planning and implementation. TCSP projects should continue to emphasize planning innovations, while at the same time supporting specific community and system preservation implementation practices. Widespread implementation, however,will require either an increase in TCSP funding or the funding of projects through other sources.
- Move TCSP into the mainstream of transportation planning practice. TCSP has been a successful pilot program. The approaches demonstrated by TCSP projects should, in the future, be fully integrated into transportation planning practice.
TCSP projects are developing new analytical tools.
(The CorPlan model in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Courtesy of Renaissance Planning Group)
[Top of Section,Next Section] |
