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| Greg Stuart making presentation to Lee MPO Board |
Overview
At the Sept. 20th Lee MPO Board meeting, Board members,
staff, and citizens had the opportunity to hear a presentation by Greg Stuart,
Executive Director of the Broward MPO, about its innovative transportation plan. The plan includes a shift from road capacity
expansion to transit investments, transit funding innovations, better
integration of land use and transportation planning, and implementation of its
newly adopted Complete Streets program.
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| Greg Stuart, Broward MPO |
When the economic crisis hit Broward
in 2008-9, the Broward MPO Board realized that the way they were doing business
would have to change since the funding to implement their plan was simply not
there. The Broward MPO decided it
couldn't afford to build any more roads
and instead embarked on a strategy to grow transit. Greg Stuart described how they worked with
their FDOT district to shift funds that had previously been used for roadways
to transit funding. They experimented
with shifting funds, with an initial investment in transit. The result of their efforts demonstrated that
the investment increased ridership. In
turn, they then tripled their investment in transit (from $15.5 million to
$58.2 million) and added $100.3 million investment for more sidewalks and bike
lanes to connect to their transit system.
One of the key concepts that Mr.
Stuart talked about was how Broward measures success. They employ both performance and return-on-investment
(ROI) measures to evaluate the success of their investments. This allows them a broader set of tools to
address how people access the places they want to go.
Mr. Stuart also talked about Broward's
complete streets initiative, that started with a large CDC grant focused on the
health benefits of complete streets. Broward
is taking a corridor approach and currently has two complete streets/road diet
demonstration projects underway. These
projects have spurred economic development, resulting in clear high returns on
investment. Mr. Stuart described how Broward
started paying attention to traveler behaviors instead of LOS models that
simply measure how many cars are anticipated on a road. As a result, they reduced one of their roads
from a 6 lane road to a 4 lane road based on the finding that people who lived
there walked or wanted to walk more. They
found that people adjusted to their environment and automobile congestion didn't
get worse.
Finally, Mr. Stuart also talked
about how they had integrated land use and transportation planning through the
MPO process even though the MPO didn't have jurisdiction over land use
planning. Greg emphasized the importance
of jurisdictions working together as a "council of governments" to
move forward together as partners.
Discussion
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| Lee MPO Chair, Kevin Ruane |
There was an extensive discussion
between the MPO Board members and Mr. Stuart on a wide range of topics. Several members commented about how timely
and valuable this exchange of ideas had been.
As Commissioner Mann said, we can't continue to do "business as
usual", and agreed that we needed to focus on return on investment. There was also discussion about the new rail
system coming to the East Coast, called All Aboard, a privately funded
project. The rail project to the
University and Miami airport is costing $500 million; however, it is spurring
development at exponential rates. For example, Ft. Lauderdale has already
approved $3 billion of development along the rail line.
Fort Myers Councilman Flanders discussed
research from Jeff Speck's Walkable
Cities book which demonstrated that cities get the most economic
development results/ROI on a multi-modal street. Cape Coral Mayor Sullivan and Bonita Springs
Councilman Simmons delved into the freight component of Broward's rail project. Mr. Stuart indicated that the Broward
rail/freight project was going to substantially reduce maintenance costs on
roadways.
Mr. Stuart also emphasized that
there's lots of federal money out there but you have to look for the new
sources. Federal investments today are
about leveraging the resources you have.
Broward has received two TIGER grants since the program began in 2009
and plans to go after another TIGER grant next year. Sanibel Mayor Ruane noted he planned to follow-up
with Mr. Stuart for ideas about how Lee County can best leverage our TIGER
grant. This Broward discussion on transit and rail projects serves as helpful
background for the November Lee MPO Board meeting, which will focus on the rail
feasibility study, the land use study, and the transit task force.
BikeWalkLee comments
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| Dr. Margaret Banyan |
Dr. Margaret Banyan pointed out that
in looking at all these issues, policymakers need to first ask, "what's
the ultimate goal?" We're trying to
achieve three things--economic development; livability; and fiscal responsibility. We have to connect our policy choices to
those goals. For example, more efficient
transportation means getting more people out of cars. We need to figure out how to measure the
impact of policy decisions. We need ways
to measure ROI of complete streets, of transit.
We know they have high returns for economic development and
livability. How do we get staff of all jurisdictions
to look at the real impacts and costs of decisions. How do we find ways to make consistent
transportation decisions? Businesses are
looking for consistent policy choices.
If we want businesses to relocate here, they have to have certainty
about things like transit investments.
We know from research that the firmest commitment to business is a rail
line (or subway).
There was discussion by several Board
members as well as BikeWalkLee of the need for Lee County to move towards a
regional transit authority. Councilman
Flanders requested that the Board be updated about the regional transit
authority issue at the November meeting, which the board agreed to.
Darla Letourneau highlighted the
collaboration between the Broward and Lee County staffs over the past two years
on complete streets, which has been beneficial to both communities. She urged Lee County to consider using the Broward
Model Complete Streets Manual as the tool for making planned changes in our
policies and design standards, including the recommendations in the BPSAP
adopted on Friday by the MPO Board. She
also highlighted the innovative public engagement approaches that Broward is
using in their 2040 LRTP plan and urged the Lee MPO to consider some of these
innovative approaches as a way to better engage our community in the
transportation discussion.
Next
in the series of Peer to Peer Exchanges
Upcoming exchanges will focus on a
presentation of the Center for Urban
Transportation Research (CUTR) FDOT-sponsored report, which reviewed the MPO
2035 LRTP's done by Florida communities five years ago and addresses the
funding shortfalls ahead. This
presentation is tentatively scheduled for the joint Lee/Charlotte MPO meeting
in December. The Hillsborough County MPO
will be invited in early 2014.
Links from Previous BWL blog Peer
Exchange stories:
Report by Darla Letourneau
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