This post was written by Victor Rubin, PolicyLink Vice President for Research and author of the new report, “All Aboard! Making Equity and Inclusion Central to Federal Transportation Policy”

Of all the ways federal spending affects our lives, federal transportation policy has perhaps the most permanent and tangible impact – it shapes how our communities are laid out, how our economy is structured, and how we live our lives day to day.

Making sure all communities are best-served by our federal transportation policy, however, is a tricky business. Lots of powerful interests are aligned to continue the status quo – more new highways and relatively little investment in public transit, biking and walking.

That’s why the national movement for transportation equity is so important – we need to have our voices strong and united to stand up against the entrenched interests.

In this new report by the PolicyLink Center for Infrastructure Equity, we highlight three groups that have been particularly effective at bringing the voice of local residents to the policy table.

• The Transportation for America (T4A) campaign is an alliance of more than 200 housing, business, environmental, public health, transportation, equitable development, and other organizations, as well as a growing number of government officials, which seeks to shape the 2009 federal authorization to build a fundamentally better national transportation system. The T4A campaign advocates for much greater financial support for transit and for support of transit oriented development, and proposes these priorities in the context of an overhaul of the federal transportation system.
• The Transportation Equity Network (TEN) has become a powerful voice of organized residents in cities and regions demanding a more equitable transportation system. Many of the TEN member groups have advocated in their home regions for greater access to jobs, training, and business opportunities in transportation construction for low-income communities and communities of color. Recently, TEN has developed a comprehensive platform for the 2009 federal authorization, including strong support for public transit.
• Transit Riders for Public Transportation (TRPT) is a new coalition of grassroots advocates for transit, coordinated by the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, home to that city’s Bus Riders Union. TRPT brings environmental justice and civil rights priorities to the federal authorization and takes a strong position in support of significantly greater federal funding for transit operating costs, as well as capital improvements, with a preference for the bus systems that serve more working-class riders.

Do you have other stars of the transportation equity movement we should know about? Share them in the comments!

A very cool video from Kansas City Public Television (with an assist from Streetsblog) uses CGI graphics to show what life would be like in KC with a real light rail system. As my newspaper editors always told me, “show, don’t tell.” This is a great job of showing:

Want to hear about something really boring? How about I drone on and on about the safety benefits of a proposed Idaho law to allow bicyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs? I’m asleep already.

But the folks at BikePortland.org (a terrific and prolific transportation blog) have managed to use an animated online video to make a wonky and distant policy proposal come alive. And they didn’t even use the short cuts of humor or oversimplification. Instead, they explained the bill in a easy-to-understand and visually compelling way. Everyone who works to get public support behind policy proposals could learn a thing or two from this very cool and persuasive video:

If folks didn’t see this article in the Washington Post this morning, it is well worth a read.

It’s a good snapshot of how recovery dollars are flowing, capturing the tension that many equity advocates are trying to navigate as they work to shape the implementation of recovery dollars in their communities — operating in the timeline required for spending the money but also pushing to invest wisely and equitably.

In most cases, though, the money is working its way into the system far more gradually as officials strive to meet not only existing guidelines for programs receiving aid but also reporting requirements that have been added to make sure that stimulus funding is spent as intended and to account for the jobs it creates.

As a result, White House officials say the bulk of the money will start hitting the streets later this year and early next, with the goal of spending 70 percent of it by the summer of 2010. As of Tuesday, $54 billion from the package had been “obligated,” meaning that states, cities or other recipients could begin drawing from it, and $11.7 billion of that had been disbursed.

While some are saying “recovery dollars are spent, we really can’t impact the process,” this article highlights the fact that many, many decisions remain to be made. Those of us working to expand opportunity for low-income people and communities of color, must continue to engage

The flood of participants to last week’s Transportation, Equity and the Recovery conference call produced more questions than we had time to answer. We’re going to do our best to make up for that on the blog. Below is the first in a series of answers to unanswered questions. If you have more questions on how you can affect transportation funding in your community, please leave them in the comments section.

How can local public transit systems take advantage of the green jobs or energy efficiency dollars in the recovery package, particularly smaller public transit systems located in poorer, less urban areas that may have less capacity to compete for the competitive grants?

(Answer prepared by Solana Rice, PolicyLinkprogram associate)

Several funding streams in the Recovery Act invest in small public transit systems.  Administered by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), $765 million of Public Transit Capital Assistance has been allocated to states using the Non-Urbanized Area Formula, which covers areas with a population of less than 50,000 people.  This investment in public transit also includes an additional $570 million for state governors to allocate to federally-identified small Urbanized Areas that have a population of less than 200,000.

The Federal Transit Administration issued important guidance about these funds and tables listing allocations to states and areas in the March 5, 2009 Federal Register.  In the case of the Non-Urbanized Area Formula, states will receive funding and identify local governments and agencies to be sub-recipients of the funds.  According to federal law, states must use at least 15 percent of Non-Urbanized Formula funds for intercity bus services.  Governors can waive this requirement if they have consulted with bus service providers and have deemed that needs are adequately met.

Advocates must work with local governments and transit agencies to highlight the needs of low-income communities to help states prioritize distribution of this funding.  Advocates must also push to ensure that state decision makers are allocating the required 15 percent investment in bus services that link low-income communities to key employment centers and services.  With a growing number of transit agencies making cuts, advocates in smaller areas should also know that the Recovery Act allows the Non-Urbanized Area funds and the small Urbanized Area funds to cover transit operating expenses.

(More info after the jump)

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Last Friday, PolicyLink and the Transportation Equity Network co-hosted a call for about 200 local, state and national advocates looking at how to bring stimulus transportation money to communities that most need it. You can read a minute-by-minute live blog of the event here.

Or, if you’re more of an auditory learner, the full audio of the hour-long call is now available. Hit play on the player below to listen or downlaod at this link.

Some great news for anyone interested in equitable transportation or creating healthy, opportunity-rich communities!

Transportation for America — an exciting broad-based coalition of housing, environmental, public health, urban planning, transportation, real estate, and business organizations — today released its much-anticipated policy platform  and a fresh new poll showing “an overwhelming majority of Americans believe restoring existing roads and bridges and expanding transportation options should take precedence over building new roads.”

From the coalition’s press release:

 Today in Washington, D.C., Transportation for America (T4America) held an event on Capitol Hill to announce formally our new coalition of more than 225 organizations and 15,000 individual members and to release the platform drafted with input from dozens of practitioners and stakeholders. In opening remarks, Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) called the coalition perhaps the “most formidable” such coalition assembled on behalf of transportation reform.

In a keynote address, Mayor John Robert Smith of Meridian Mississippi noted that towns large and small, in every region of the country, would benefit from more transportation options, while the county as a whole would reap reduced oil dependency, lower carbon emissions and greater access to opportunity. Other panelists spoke on behalf of the public health benefits, implications for real estate development and the need for local areas to have greater latitude to address their mobility issues.

At the same, the National Association of Realtors released a poll done in conjunction with T4America that shows strong support for  investment in public transportation, walking and biking and a better-managed and maintained highway system.

T4America also announced that the coalition will launch a series of town hall meetings and provide materials for self-organized house parties where engaged citizens can talk about what a renewed national vision for transportation investment could mean for their communities. More to come on that in the next several days.

The Center for American Progress has a cool tool up letting you design your own stimulus package. The interactive tool allows you to choose precisely how many dollars you’ll dedicate to unemployment benefits, health care, infrastructure, tax cuts, etc.

The best part about it, though, is it also shows you how many jobs you’ll be saving/creating with your package.  My recovery package provides significant funding for unemployment benefits, food stamps, local government assistance, energy, education, health care and infrastructure and only includes refundable tax cuts for the lowest income-earners (no across-the-board income tax cuts, corporate tax cuts or capital gains cuts).

The results are pretty good — all at a cost basically equivalent to the current package being debated on the Hill:

The $500+ billion stimulus package making its way through Washington presents a once-in-a-generation chance to fight poverty and expand opportunity.

But we will never realize that potential if the package doles out money using the same, broken systems we always have. We cannot continue an infrastructure policy that feeds sprawling exurbs and cuts off low-income communities from economic and social opportunity.

In a newly released four-page analysis, “Stimulus for Whom?,” PolicyLink lays out ways the stimulus package can be used to promote equity in America.

In op-ed pieces in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Huffington Post, PolicyLink CEO Angela Glover Blackwell also presents a plan to ensure the recovery package does more than simply entrench the old way of doing business. From the Post-Dispatch piece, (co-authored by PolicyLink board member Richard Baron and the Brookings Institution’s Amy Liu):

“The recovery package is a once-in-a-generation chance to boost our economy and create more vibrant, more competitive, more opportunity-rich communities. If we invest strategically in the people, places, and projects that need help the most, we could lift up millions of working families and revive countless long-forgotten communities.”

What do you think the recovery package should focus on? What opportunities might it miss?

The good folks at the Transportation for America blog posted a two-page letter from President-elect Obama about the role of transit in rebuilding America (Obama was responding to a pro-transit petition circulated by T4A in the run-up to the final presidential debate — about 3,300 people signed it…maybe you?).

PolicyLink has been working with T4A for a while now to show how smart, targeted transit investments could play a vital role in spreading opportunity to communities throughout America.

You can visit the T4A blog to read the whole letter, but here’s a quick taste:

You’ve hit on one of the central challenges facing America now - how to convert this moment of crisis into a moment of opportunity. And I think you’ve identified an important part of the answer as well. Our economy is slowing down, we need to stimulate it. Jobs are disappearing; we need to create new ones. At the same time, our infrastructure is crumbling and we need to rebuild it.

Now is the time to invest in our future and strengthen our core infrastructure. You said we must build to compete in the global economy and fix what’s broken, and I agree. I’ll put two million more Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges and transit systems - because it is time to build an American infrastructure for the 21st century. Early in this campaign, I had already proposed creating a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, funded with $60 billion over 10 years, to expand and enhance, not replace, existing federal transportation investments. Now, with unemployment rising, these investments are even more important.

Visit Transportation for America for the full letter and more info on how to help rebuild America.