Smart Growth and Transportation: Issues and Lessons Learned (2005)

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Keynote Presentation 63805_047_078 4/7/05 3:03 AM Page 61

63805_047_078 4/7/05 3:03 AM Page 62

6 3 Introduction John Porcari, Maryland Department of Transportation Good afternoon. I’m Maryland TransportationSecretary John Porcari. It is my pleasure towelcome you here to Baltimore for this land- mark conference on smart growth in transportation. We have a wide range of notable speakers and pan- elists from the transportation planning and environ- mental areas. We are very lucky to have such an excellent collection of talent. This kind of brain power and expertise is one of the keys to fostering healthy debate and discussion on smart growth and the opportunities that smart growth creates in transportation. Among the distinguished smart growth leaders is our keynote speaker this after- noon. A college professor by trade, he brings to the job of governor the unique combination of teacher and leader. This combination has served him well as he has worked with the legislature and our citizens in Maryland on the critical need to change the way we think about development, transportation, the environ- ment, and in fact our future. It is that same combina- tion that allows him to explain and promote the merits of smart growth across America and around the globe. After working with our speaker for many years, the last four as Transportation Secretary, I can tell you that Governor Glendening deeply believes in smart growth. He sees the future and the positive impact we can have on our children and our grandchildren. Since the early days of the administration in 1995, Governor Glendening has worked tirelessly to build the founda- tion for one of the most progressive smart growth agen- das in the nation. In 1997, that vision became law in Maryland, and today smart growth is part of the way that we do business here in Maryland. It has not always been easy, and there has been a lot of work and inno- vation along the way. But through the governor’s lead- ership and his rock solid belief in the principles of smart growth, we’re overcoming obstacles. We are literally changing the face of the state of Maryland. Governor Glendening’s efforts have been recognized by varied interests around the country. His smart growth–enabled conservation initiative, for example, was judged to be one of the most innovative govern- ment programs in the country by Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. This year, the Sustainable Energy Institute presented Governor Glendening with the Sustainable Energy Top Ten award for his commitment and leadership in protecting the environment, preserving natural resources, and promoting mass transit. Among the other lists of honors related to smart growth are the Truitt Environmental Award from the University of Maryland, Center for Environmental Sciences, for the commitment to restore and protect the Chesapeake Bay—Maryland’s treasure. Maryland also received a charter award from the Congress for New Urbanism for the smart growth–enabled conservation initiative. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege and honor to introduce to you a real champion of smart growth and transportation, the Governor of the State of Maryland, Parris Glendening. 63805_047_078 4/7/05 3:03 AM Page 63

6 4 Presentation Parris N. Glendening, Governor, State of Maryland Thank you very much. John Porcari, our state’stransportation secretary, lives within walkingdistance of the Metro system, uses it all the time, and says, “Why don’t we extend it even fur- ther?” He says that to me every time I have his budget before us. He has done a great job and I appreciate it. By the way, John said I was a professor by trade who has gone into politics. I’m reminded of the story about the first grader who is asked to write an essay on Socrates. The essay is very brief. He says, “Socrates was a great teacher who went around giving advice to peo- ple—and they poisoned him.” With that in mind, I’m always a little bit cautious about linking all of these things. But I am very pleased to be here this afternoon and to welcome you to Maryland and to Baltimore. I’m also pleased to say “Welcome to Maryland” because this is a state that takes smart growth very seri- ously. I don’t know whether some of you have seen it— Marylanders obviously have, but in most transportation projects statewide, you’ll actually see a sign that now says, “Smart Growth Starts Here.” In fact, that was one of John’s contributions to our effort. In Maryland, we see smart growth as a fundamental model of how to run our various agencies, not just transportation or housing or planning. We also see it as a long-term commitment, not just a trend. It is, in our mind, the way a state does busi- ness, the way a state should do business. Every new pro- ject that we have, in any area whatsoever, must be able to live up to the principles of smart growth. In fact, we have made the entire state budget, a $22 billion budget, a tool for smart growth. Literally every project must pass through a screening test in which there is a fundamental, basic question asked: does this expenditure, capital or operating, contribute to sprawl, or does it help with the viability of existing communities? We have created not only an Office of Smart Growth to oversee this, but a spe- cial Secretary for Smart Growth. We also have a Smart Growth Subcabinet, in which the key departments come together on a regular basis, not only to review the overall direction for the state but also to review budgets to see how the agencies are doing, consistent with these goals. I know we are all interested in transportation here, but when you get to the courts, for example, the loca- tion of that courthouse has a huge impact. Same for the university system. I remember the mayor of Hagerstown called me one time and said, “If you are so much for smart growth, why are you building a new campus out on the Interstate?” I said, “I don’t know. That’s a good question, let me check.” So, I met with the university personnel and they took me up to show me this site. It was beautiful. It was rolling hills and there were still some cattle and it was just wonderful. I said to the representative from the university who was there with me, “So tell me, how will the students and faculty get here?” He said, “That is the great part—the new interchange is going right over here.” I said, “Where is the transit or anything like this?” He said, “Everyone will need to drive not only to the university, but to go off-campus to get a meal or anything.” We relocated the proposed campus. The new campus is now under construction in downtown Hagerstown. I say it this way because part of our mission is to review the entire budget and ask whether it contributes to sprawl or to the viability of existing communities. 63805_047_078 4/7/05 3:03 AM Page 64

In another example, young families make decisions about housing location largely on the basis of the schools. Almost always, a young family will ask where the schools are and what they are like. We know what has been hap- pening in recent years all across this country. The newer schools are always built out there somewhere in the sprawl to accommodate the growth. So a young family looks around in a long-established community and they see that the long-established school does not have the technology or the new science wing and simply does not meet the same standards as this school out there. When I became governor, about 43 percent of our school construction funding went to older schools in older areas of Maryland. We pay between 50 and 90 percent of school construction, depending on the income of the local jurisdiction. But 43 percent went into the older communities and the rest went to accom- modate sprawl. I am pleased that as of last year, 80 per- cent of the school construction budget went to existing communities. Just as an example: if you know the Montgomery County/Takoma Park/Silver Spring area [in suburban Washington, D.C.], we opened five new schools from total renovations or replacements in one school year’s time. Instead of people saying, “To get to my new school I have to drive all the way out I-270,” they know that it is right there along with the mass transit and everything else. Another example of how smart growth actions can affect everyone is in the area of land preservation. We have made an aggressive effort in land preservation. Like most states, we were being devoured by sprawl. The statistic that has always amazed me is that if we continued the existing pattern in the central part of the state, it would consume more land in the next 25 years than we did in the first 360 years. We are in the process of losing not only our farms and forests and open space but our central cities and smaller central communities, as well as our deteriorating older suburban areas. We were wasting literally hundreds of millions of dollars to accommodate sprawl. Today, together with some inno- vative programs that the legislature approved, including our Green Print and Rural Legacy programs, we are now permanently preserving, over the past 2 years, more land for future use than is being lost to develop- ment. To the best of my knowledge, we are the only state in the country doing this: we are permanently pre- serving. That is, permanent easements have outright purchased more land than is being lost to development. In fact, I think what you’ll see increasingly across the country is a movement to permanently preserve at least one acre for each acre of land lost to development. There would be agricultural easements and so on. If we are going to be successful, I think this is essential. Part of our whole effort is that by making better land use decisions and targeting our resources to existing communities, we are, in fact, doing something that is very fiscally conservative: saving our taxpayers the high cost of subsidizing sprawl. Just as we have changed the way we do business with our capital and operating bud- get, so too are we changing the way we do business with our transportation budget. Maryland’s $9.1 billion, 6- year transportation budget has, in effect, become an incentive fund, a policy guideline for smart growth. Throughout the process, we have recognized that government policies often inadvertently encourage sprawl. I don’t know how many of you saw the recent History Channel presentation on growth that talked about opening up the suburbs and how these policies were so well designed and what their economic basis was. These policies created not only sprawl but the eco- nomic segregation that has occurred in many of our communities. We are very much aware that good, well-intended policies often have the inadvertent result of encouraging sprawl. Therefore, it became clear that we need new government policies to encourage investment in existing communities and in smart growth areas (or whatever they may be called) in a particular state. We have taken a carrot-and-stick approach in which each county iden- tifies what we call “priority funding areas,” the more technical, less sexy name for smart growth communi- ties. These priority funding areas are the state-approved areas where new growth will occur. They automatically include all incorporated towns and cities. If local decision makers approve development proj- ects outside of the designated areas, we simply say, “Sorry, the state is not going to help pay for this. We are not going to help subsidize the cost of the decision you have made in terms of zoning. If you, in fact, destroy one more farm or one more field, then you pay for all of the infrastructure. You pay for the schools, you pay for the parks, you pay for the water and sewer, and you pay for the roads.” We don’t really care who the “you” is. It can be the local government if it thinks its devel- opment decision is best. It could be the builders them- selves. The point is, the state will no longer use its tax dollars to subsidize those sprawl decisions. On the carrot side, however, we say, “If you invest in our existing communities or in the locally designated state-approved growth areas, then you can avoid these costs because the state pays most or a good portion of all those different needs—the water, sewer, roads, schools, and so forth. In addition, you will have access to state tax credits, grants, low interest loans, and other incentives.” Also as part of smart growth, if a project is coming along and it is not in a smart growth area, they are not eligible for those different tax credits and other incentives. In fact, we are trying to change the bottom line so that an equal project makes more sense from a financial perspective in a smart growth community. 6 5KEYNOTE PRESENTATION 63805_047_078 4/7/05 3:03 AM Page 65

I do know that there is always a great concern, espe- cially in times like this when the economy is very tight and you are talking about smart growth, about the eco- nomic impact. One very important framework to keep in mind is that smart growth does not mean no growth. It does not even mean slow growth. As proof, Maryland’s economy continues to surge ahead of the national average. We are outperforming almost all other states, and we are certainly outperforming almost all the states in the mid-Atlantic area. Our unemploy- ment rate remains well below the national average, and the most recent Census Bureau figures show that Maryland now has the highest household family income in the nation, the lowest overall poverty rate, and the lowest child poverty rate. We are doing this at the same time that we are a national leader in the smart growth, antisprawl environmental movement. Clearly, you can have a strong, growing economy without sacri- ficing the environment and without producing sprawl if you are willing to rethink the way you do business. When I say that, I’m very much aware that people will often tell you (because they always tell me) there are just two types of growth that they absolutely hate, sprawl and density, and they are equally vigorously opposed to both. Obviously, those are the only two options. I know that some of you may still be skeptical about smart growth and even hostile to the program. But it is important to note that I agree with you on one major point, and that is, if you are for open space, if you are for the environment, if you are for smart growth, then you must also be for building, for devel- opment, for growth where it is appropriate, and you must be willing to aggressively support the density that is needed to go with that. I also say to my friends in the green movement and the environmental movement that key environmental groups also must recognize this fact and be willing to step up in support of development where appropriate. Just to give you one quick example: In Takoma Park, just outside Washington, D.C., I started getting all these letters and calls from citizens complaining about a pro- posal on the District of Columbia side. They asked me to intervene with my friend, Mayor Anthony Williams. There were several acres of land where a developer had proposed building fairly high-end town houses because they were literally a block from the Metro subway sta- tion. They said the kids played ball on these lots and they didn’t want these town houses. I talked to the mayor down there and the town houses were going to run about $300,000. He said this was exactly the type of development they needed in this area. Part of it was the high density because it was right next to the Metro stop. Takoma Park, by the way, has a large number of small community parks. We met with some of the lead- ers on this, and we asked to help. We told them we sup- ported that development and it ought to go ahead. In fact, my understanding is that it is under construction now. It ought to go ahead. It doesn’t make any sense to have an $8 billion mass transit system and not build around it. Those are the types of decisions we are going to be serious about. We have to be willing to stand up and not only say “no” to some things, but to say “yes” to other projects. Just as smart growth does not mean no growth, so too smart growth does not mean no roads or highways. The smart growth approach simply calls for a different bal- ance when directing highway and road construction. In fact, transportation investment is one of the most pow- erful tools that we have to implement smart growth. At the Maryland Department of Transportation (DOT), I am very pleased with the leadership that John Porcari has given on this. The Maryland DOT has focused on developing a balanced transportation system by incor- porating land use and economic development goals into its overall projects. The department recognizes it can help produce vibrant communities. That sounds like an inno- cent statement, to say that economic development and land use policies should be part of this. But you do run into, as everyone here knows, a group of people who believe that if you are not talking about just traditional concrete road construction, that somehow or other you are misusing the state transportation trust fund. Our approach is that we use it for a variety of reasons, but all of them end up doing the same thing, which ought to be our goal: helping create vibrant communities and helping to move people and goods. Maryland boasts a large number of examples of livable communities using the smart growth princi- ples. From Maryland’s Eastern Shore to southern Maryland and from the D.C. suburbs to right here in Baltimore, we are seeing older, distressed communi- ties come back to life with modernized schools, busi- nesses, and young families. In many of these success stories, it is, in fact, the innovative, community-based transportation construction projects that have helped lead the transformation. For example, a traffic circle in the Baltimore suburb of Towson was designed both to reduce congestion and to produce a more walkable business district. Towson is divided by two major highways in each direction. Some redevelopment and private-sector money was coming in, but a major issue was that it wasn’t pedestrian-friendly. The town was separated from the business section, and one of the things it ended up doing was putting in a roundabout and making the entire area much more business- friendly. If you go to that area now, you see significant additional private-sector dollars coming in. Likewise, a new partnership in the D.C. suburb of Mount Rainier extended sidewalks and built transporta- tion infrastructure to create a better-connected, more 6 6 SMART GROWTH AND TRANSPORTATION: ISSUES AND LESSONS LEARNED 63805_047_078 4/7/05 3:03 AM Page 66

accessible community. Once again, you see private-sector dollar investments following that. By investing in these communities, we are trying to preserve their places as vibrant centers of commerce and culture and residential living, and to produce a renaissance in a community that had been struggling before. Maryland demonstrates, I believe, that trans- portation dollars can be effectively leveraged to achieve other goals—community redevelopment goals, trans- portation goals, and business development goals. To some extent, it becomes a question of which is the horse and which is the cart, and which do you focus on first. With public and private investments, we can help redevelop existing communities. One major portion of that, of course, is to expand dramatically the mass tran- sit options. Our transit goal is to double daily transit ridership from more than a half-million riders per day in 2000 to a million riders per day in 2020. Reaching those goals, however, means making transit more con- venient and more accessible. We are creating outstand- ing public spaces and corridors near where people of diverse incomes live and work and invest, and we are connecting those public spaces with efficient, balanced transit. We are also in the process of providing people with the goods and services that they need near the transit stations. Taken together, these are having a tremendous impact in a large number of communities as we go about the process of revitalization. We have changed the face of transportation in Maryland, and I’m pleased that so many other states are working with us and following this vision. However, to realize its full potential, smart growth must have the national government engaged as an active partner. We worked with members of the last adminis- tration and this administration as well as members of Congress on this issue. We are talking about a variety of areas. For example, all small business loans are largely treated equally. With the exception of an empowerment zone or something like it, it doesn’t make any difference if a small business loan will tear down a forest to start a new small business or invest in a long- established community. We believe there ought to be changes, so the priorities are given to those areas that have long been established. You can go through area after area. Talk with the federal government about location of facilities. I’m not talking about the competition among states, which is part of the normal political process. But once the deci- sion is made within a state (for example, where we relo- cate an FBI office), then the actual location ought to give priority to smart growth areas designated entirely by state and local decision makers, not by the national government. The emergence of smart growth as a federal issue is becoming increasingly clear. The major point is that much of this focus will be on federal transportation funding, which continues to overwhelmingly favor new roads while shortchanging transit. I believe this is not only shortsighted but unfair. In the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, for example, $171 bil- lion went toward highways, with only $40 billion going to transit. This again continues the long-established roughly 80/20 split. I talked to a number of people about this, and you always get the same response: if you are riding transit, people ought to pay part of the cost. But in fact, we subsidize roads and bridges and other types of transit and do not expect people to pay part of that cost. We believe there ought to be a much better balance instead of this 80/20 bias. We are doing this here in Maryland, and we offer models that we hope lend some credence over the long term to the national government. Last year, for example, for the first time in the state’s history, the amount of capital investment for transit was roughly equal to the amount of highway invest- ment. Think about that for a second. Capital invest- ment for the state for transit was roughly equal to highway investment. Again, I emphasize that smart growth does not mean stopping all highway construc- tion. Smart growth means finding an equitable balance to support transit and roads. Let me close this afternoon with what I think is a fundamental issue. What is our vision of the future? I believe there are two competing visions, both for Maryland and indeed for America’s future. We can have a worsening quality of life, one in which we spend 10 hours or more per week sitting in traffic, and one in which we have to endure unbearable smog and air pol- lution. As an aside, I hope everyone noticed that chil- dren’s asthma doubled in the past two decades, almost all a result of air quality. We can’t have a future in which we continue to lose businesses because people simply are unwilling to fight traffic congestion to get to them. Or we can have a better future—one in which traveling to work or anywhere is affordable and conve- nient with public transit, where walking on sidewalks and using bicycle-friendly facilities are real options instead of being forced into our cars simply to get a quart of milk, and in which breathing becomes easier because our air is less polluted. I believe that smart growth is a political culture that is profound in its rewards. As transportation planners, you can help make this vision a reality. I believe that by embracing smart growth we can achieve a better future for transportation in America and indeed in communi- ties that so desperately need it. I also believe that by helping these decisions and spreading the word about smart growth in transportation, we can, in fact, change the vision for our future. When I say that, by the way, people will say that sprawl and everything else are there 6 7KEYNOTE PRESENTATION 63805_047_078 4/7/05 3:03 AM Page 67

and these are our choices. Can you really change this? Is this realistic? I remind everyone that we didn’t get into the condition of sprawl and abandoning so many of our cities and long-established communities overnight. We have worked very, very hard for the past seven decades to get where we are, starting roughly in the 1950s with the Interstate highway program and with some of the post–World War II and post–Korean War mortgage programs and so on. We have worked very hard to do this. This is not just an accident. I rec- ognize it is going to take a lot of work as well, and it is going to take a long time. If every single state changed its policies today, which I assure you is unlikely, it would still take decades before we truly see the type of vision that we are outlining. Let me leave you with a story. If you keep the story in mind, it will help give you encouragement when you get discouraged about some of these things. The story is told about a coed over at the University of Maryland back in the 1970s, when we had these annual riots and what we called “the annual burning of the campus.” The coed wrote her parents a little letter that said, “Dear Mom and Dad, I’m sorry to be so long in writing, but the demonstrators destroyed all the stationery when they burned down the dorm. Please don’t worry about my eyesight—the doctors say it is only smoke damage and I should be able to see again in two or three weeks. And please don’t worry about where I’m living—that kind boy, Bill, has offered to share his apartment with me. Mom and Dad, I know you have always wanted to be grandparents, and you will be pleased to know that you will be 6 months from now. New paragraph: Please dis- regard the above exercise in English composition. There was no fire; I’m not hurt; I’m not pregnant—in fact, I don’t even have a boyfriend. But I did receive a B in Chemistry and an F in French and I wanted to be sure you received the news in the proper perspective.” Thank you very much. 6 8 SMART GROWTH AND TRANSPORTATION: ISSUES AND LESSONS LEARNED 63805_047_078 4/7/05 3:03 AM Page 68