Transit that works for everyone

- There's a whole generation of urban planners who got their start in the late '80s and '90s playing SimCity. It's a game that allows you to build a community from the ground up. And Chad Valentine, he is a proud member of that generation.

- I built, I don't know how many cities in that, back in the old days when it was a really, really basic game.

I spent hours doing that, and so I've always been very interested

in land use and roads and all that other stuff. - Today Chad lives in Austin, Texas. It's a city that's doubling its population every two decades. And sometimes that constant change can feel like a game of SimCity unfolding in real time.

- It's mind boggling to really think through, as I look out to my window and our downtown offices, I see barely any buildings that were here when I first moved here, and it's a new city, it's a new landscape at all times,

and it's constantly growing and evolving. - Chad heads up demand response and innovative mobility at the capital metropolitan transportation authority. Also known as Cap Metro, and he is constantly thinking about all the ways that Austin can better use technology

to power shared rides and improve bike services for the city's two million residents. He moved to Austin 16 years ago, and the near doubling of the population since then has brought some stark socioeconomic changes.

- You know, my $92,000 house several years ago is no longer here, that's just not a thing and in Austin anymore. - Hold up, did I hear that right? - $92,000 house.

- I know, it made me do a double take, too. And for context, today in Austin, the median home price is $624,000. And that is a trend we are seeing all across cities in America, both housing prices and rents are soaring,

and as a result, lots of people are getting pushed further and further from good transit options. - There's a lot of difficulties, because when transit is really robust in a great high quality, highly frequent service,

you generally are located near more expensive housing.

“And so, you know, the better access you have to transit them,”

usually the more expensive the housing is.

And you can always find affordable, more affordable housing,

the further you go out of the city, the further away you are from grocery stores, the further you are away from doctors and offices and everything else. And so, it's a special relationship

that is really hard to quantify a lot, and it's really a problem that's hard to fix. (soft music) - It's like a really bad game of simsity. - Exactly, and Austin had a clear choice.

And needed to expand the transit system drastically to keep up with population growth, while also closing the economic divide, not worsening it. (soft music) - And so, finally, in 2019, we were like,

let's do something big, let's stop doing these little things, stop asking for, you know, some small, you know, this rail line or this one bus line, let's go for an entire network, a whole program. That's gonna really work for everybody.

- I'm Tiffany Chu. - And I'm Andre Greenwald. This is Mochift. - A show about the past, present, and future of how we move. (soft music)

- It's if Nam curious, did you play simsity growing up? - Yes, of course, like any budding architect was a prerequisite for you to do that as a kid. Did you? - I didn't, I'm almost like embarrassed to say that.

And when Chad brought it up, I was like trying to follow along but I hadn't actually ever played simsity. I was only into sports games. Can you, I don't know, do you have a sense of sort of like,

why it's so popular with folks in this space and kind of why it came up in the interview with Chad?

- Well, yeah, any urban planner basically does this for a job

“where you have to figure out where the roads go”

and then you have to figure out what areas you want to zone for what functions and you build power stations and a town hall and you gotta connect them all and all your citizens, everyone doesn't have to be happy. And it's obviously not realistic in many ways

but there is actually a highly relevant piece of that game which is it really taught about the importance of land use and housing. - Oh, land use and housing. I feel like these two issues keep coming up again

and again in these conversations that we're having about transportation and how all three of them are linked. And it was definitely a key theme in our conversation with transit expert Jerome Horn.

- Every great transportation plan is also a land use plan where every great land use plan is a transportation plan. And we need to marry those two together because they're so important. If we want people to ride the bus or use the train,

they need to be able to get to it easily. - You've heard Jerome in a prior episodes and the point he's making here, it may sound simple and obvious

“but I think it's actually one that's too often overlooked.”

If you want people to ride transit, they need to be able to get to it. And I think that means at least two things. First, for the last 100 years or so, your access to transit has depended

on whether you're lucky enough to live near a subway or bus stop with reliable service.

without much thought about how they impact housing or land use

“over time that directly affects who can access”

the new transit option.

You know, one of the things that sort of always happens

if you build a new transit line, people want to live near it. And that term gentrification, neighborhood redevelopment, that could happen. And so we need to look at ways of how do we mitigate,

you know, displacing existing residents because yes, housing and the housing crisis is very real and we need to be able to marry those two things together with access to good transit and good housing without, you know, disrupting residents living in their neighborhoods.

And we've seen a lot of disadvantage in physically black and brown neighborhoods. And prior episodes, we've talked about the total dominance of the car in the United States and the negative impacts that's had, you know,

for example, the transportation to the number one cause of greenhouse gas emissions

or that it is the second highest expense

for American families. And that dynamic, it disproportionately impacts those who are low income and people of color, those with disabilities. And there's, of course, a long history in this nation of transportation decisions made that harmed low income

and black and brown communities in our cities. Perhaps the most obvious of which are the literal tearing apart and dividing of certain neighborhoods to build highways. - Exactly. But I think there's maybe even less widespread focus

on how we've actually designed and planned our transit systems and the ways that that has led to inequities as well.

“And that's what Jerome is talking about here”

and the focus of our episode today. For example, we can look at, you know, the light rail systems in Denver and Dallas. They, you know, were built more recently in the last, you know, three decades or so over time.

And a lot of the, if you look at the systems and how they're laid out, they are designed to be really commuter rail from the suburbs into center city. But they don't serve a lot of the inner city neighborhoods or cross town neighborhoods that really need access to transit.

And you sort of see this mids match between the rail and how it was planned and the existing bus system that feeds into or doesn't feed into the rail. And often communities of color, black and brown, low income neighborhoods might just have a bus

or if they have access to rail, it's not the same access that wider wealthier communities are or people from the suburbs may have to have that nice rail infrastructure and investment. And as we're moving forward with these large capital investments

whether it's bus rapid transit, light rail, or extensions of metro lines, it's really think about who we're making that investment for and why. - Tiffany in an earlier episode, we heard from your boss, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, talk about her plan to mix equity

and economic mobility and transit. You know, when you guys are sitting down and talking through these issues, how are you thinking about connecting transit access, housing affordability and land use policy?

I imagine that's got to be not that easy to do. - Yeah, it's really hard. And one way that the Mayor tackles it is she's constantly asking with her line of questioning, you know, who is this policy benefiting,

which communities in Boston need the most help and should they be at the table? And how can we better center our residents and their experience? I think one thing we found functionally

is that just by putting people who have historically been in silos in the same room for a regular recurring meeting, for example, our housing chief, our transportation chief, and our planning chief.

“And I think that was not something that was done before.”

That in itself, just breaking down those barriers have been really helpful. And I could see that also happening in Austin, you know, I bet there's probably a lot of really media discussions at Cap Metro

and the city of Austin need to be having and their regional agency on a regular basis. And I wonder how they're doing that over there, too. - Yeah, you know, I think when we were starting to put this series together,

we were not planning on featuring Austin, but it just kept coming up in interview after interview when we asked people, you know, what are the most interesting places in America that are doing cool things to advance mobility and transit?

And we learned that these themes were front and center in the lead-ups in November 2020. That is when voters had a chance to approve more

than $7 billion in transit expansion.

- Two transit ballot measures are moving forward in Austin after being approved by voters. The money from these two ballot measures will go to things like bike lanes, sidewalks, light rail, and more rapid bus service.

- Proposition A funded project connect. An ambitious network that includes 19 miles of light rail lines, a subway, expanded bus service, and on-demand transit. And Proposition B set aside $460 million in bonds

for new bike lanes, sidewalks, and urban trails.

that city leaders have pushed and supported all along.

Knowing that Austin is one of the country's fastest-growing cities. Last night, the CEO for Capitol Metro told me he knows. There's a lot of work that lies ahead, but he's ready to get started and committed to the delivering project connect on time and on budget.

So a lot of changes on track after these votes. Ivonne. - You're right, nice pun by the way, Bryce. - So this is a big deal. - Yeah, it's a really big deal.

- I know that Austin voters rejected a transit expansion twice in the last decade and a half, and I even remember going on a work trip several years ago and seeing a bunch of anti-light rail signs. What made this time different?

- Yeah, I think we learned a few things talking to people. One is that Austin is much younger than it was in the past, and these younger voters they care a lot about climate change, which is a selling point of the package.

Also, the 2020 election, it brought historic turnout, and so sending these younger diverse voters to support the measures to the ballot box. Two, Austin funded a really broad set of initiatives, which appealed to a wide set of voters,

and three, they took community feedback on draft proposals, and they made changes as a result.

“And that's how some of the forward-thinking equity considerations”

made their way into the plan. Here's Kath Metro's Chad Valentine again. You know, we did a lot of outreach. We really tried to make sure that we brought people into the room disadvantaged communities

that aren't typically in the room where decisions are being made, and brought them in, had them really give their input and their feedback. And we listened and changed the plan. We were very open about changing and adjusting things

if what they were coming to us was, we're valid concerns, things like that. There's a huge equity component that grew out of that. When you say equity wasn't corporate ed, can you just talk more about, like, what does that mean, exactly?

- We devoted $300 million of looking at equity initiatives,

so, and it wasn't specifically defined as, oh, this will be a million for here, two million for this, and that kind of thing. We set it aside and said we know we're gonna need money to address the equity concerns

that we're gonna be creating by putting in infrastructure and rail stations and those kinds of things.

“I don't think it's a secret, or it's, I think it's really”

well known that when you put in that kind of transit infrastructure, people wanna live near there and when people wanna live near somewhere, housing prices do increase. And so, the $300 million set aside was put there along with an advisory group who is made up of people who are

in, you know, economically disadvantaged areas. I think it's like 90% minority membership in the group. So that folks who are experiencing a lot of the pressures of gentrification are gonna be at the table telling us how to spend the money or even directing how that money

is gonna be spent. So, and it can be spent in many ways. So, like, you know, loans for affordable housing or for other types of alternative housing types of projects. I mean, it's really up to that group,

which I thought was really good too, because you don't wanna bunch of people in a transit authority saying, this is what we think is gonna fight, you know, gentrification or keep equitable housing or, you know, increase opportunities

for smaller businesses, local businesses, that kind of thing. So, we wanna make sure that we, you know, we don't just not displace people, but we actually make their lives better, not just mitigate the damages that we're doing,

but actually make things better for folks. So, there are a couple things that Chad mentioned, which stood out to me. One of them is representation, making sure it's not just

transit authorities who don't always look like

the majority of riders decide what equity means. There's a really big movement right now trying to get the boards of various trans agencies across the country to have riders on the board, or make sure that their board members do ride transit

regularly, 'cause that was not always the case. And the second thing that stood out to me is this expression of anti-displacement, actively making investments that bring equity into all decisions, and trying to understand

that not every community needs the same solution. - Yeah, if you go to the Austin City Government website, they actually call that $300 million investment anti-displacement. That's exactly how it was framed in the ballot initiative.

And that carve out, it'll be used to support

“affordable housing along key new transit routes.”

And they're gonna try to use it to make sure that our populations have access to multiple modes of transportation. - They were very forward-thinking and saying, well, let's build a multi-modal level of service approach.

Let's take a look at all these corridors. And we're gonna ask about affordable housing where to ask about equity. We're gonna ask about health. We're gonna ask about freight.

We're gonna ask about pedestrian movements. We're gonna ask about safety. We're gonna ask about transcapacity. And toss all these different factors into the hopper and find out where along these corridors,

so that we can achieve the goal of moving more people with less cost and less time. - That's Sham Kenan. We heard from him in our prior episode on transit tech. And he's the transit lead for the engineering services

company HDR. They worked closely with Austin on crafting the project connect plan. And that anti-displacement theme was central to making the plan work.

- So the city, when we were working with them and as they're moving forward, came right out of the gate and said, no, we want to make sure that whatever investments we make, we've guarded against both physical,

social, and cultural displacement, because we're making these investments for families that live here today. They need to see a line of sight to their children and their children's children benefiting

from these investments. Because by God, they're the ones paying for them. (upbeat music) - What do you think other cities can learn from Austin's approach? If you were sort of summarizing at a high level,

“like here are the two or three things you need to do”

if you want to. If you also care about moving people and achieving more equitable outcomes, - The thing one is, Austin was not afraid to get wonky, right?

Maybe it shouldn't be keep Austin weird, it's keep Austin wonky. Leadership there knew that solving these transportation problems has complicated. And it was refreshing to see public leadership

engage with what in many cases might be seen as two academic or two complicated for policy. You know, they really engaged with this prioritization model. Like, because they wanted to know, well, for spending public dollars,

we're the ones setting priorities, tell us how we can set these priorities.

The second thing is putting equity first, right?

The two often, equity is an afterthought. It's a do not harm standard, and in the worst case, it's a check the box exercise. But there are courageous enough to come out of the box, say, nope, we want to think about affordable housing

and equity as we're contemplating the investments, because we want to go hard against the ill effects, the sins of our father. Put equity first and find ways for everyone to win.

“- At this point, I think it's helpful to ask,”

what does an equity look like? And for some, it can look pretty bleak, like a desert. Tiffany, we touched on this idea of transit deserts in our episode on rural transit. What are they?

- I would say a transit desert is places where if you don't own a car, you can't do a lot of things to other people who have cars can. You can't go to your job, you can't pick up your kids

from school or the grocery store, get to the doctor's appointment. And if you go a little bit deeper, even if you can say ride the bus to wherever you're trying to go, if the bus doesn't come or if you miss your bus by a minute,

if you're in a transit desert, you might just not have any other options. There might not be other bus routes that are slightly redundant near you or a train or light rail or bike share.

Basically, if you don't own a car, you feel a second class. And there's a quote from one of the inspirational mayors in the world, a former mayor of Bogotain, Maria Penaelosa, he said a developed country is not a place

where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.

“And I think this is particularly salient”

in our discussion here around transit deserts because these deserts exist all over the country. One analysis from the University of Texas, the Urban Information Lab, they took a look at 52 cities in the US

and found 4.5 million people

living in areas with no adequate alternative to cars. 4.5 million in transit deserts, just in those cities. - Wow, I think some of those areas, they're located really close to transit paradise. Or, I mean, I guess as close as we get to a transit paradise

in the United States. - I live in the part of Jersey City, that's pretty transportation. It's a transportation desert. Although it's at a very kind of like central part of Jersey City,

the bus lines are not close to my particular blog. - This is Irea Corley. She lives just across the water from New York City where I grew up and also the transit paradise I was referencing a second ago.

She grew up in the Bronx in Brooklyn and she's been riding the bus alone since she was 10 years old. - I loved that with public transportation, I didn't have to rely on anyone. I was really able to kind of just get around

when I wanted to. I didn't have to, you know, figure out parking or figure any of those other details out. - But now living in Jersey City,

which is New Jersey's second biggest city,

she doesn't have that same access to freedom of movement

- We had one bus that actually ran down my street.

“The bus was not a New Jersey transit bus.”

It was run by a private company that bus only runs every 30 minutes. I don't think it runs on Sunday. So, you know, people who live in a transportation desert and makes it hard for them to get to work

and makes them hard for them to get to school and makes it hard for you to go see your loved ones. You know, in the end, and let's say you're an elderly person or a hit or an actual handicapped person who has a hard time with mobility.

Living in a transportation desert really hinders you. (gentle music) - This is on a very important theme that we keep revisiting in this series. We've been sold this idea that a car

is the ultimate freedom.

But that's only true for people who can afford it.

And it often comes at such a high cost to prevent families from pursuing other dreams. A system that relies on owning a personal car is not a system that provides freedom to everyone. And it's a system that disproportionately penalizes

people of color, people with limited income or people with disabilities. - It's a critical point. At your ability to access jobs, education, healthcare, it shouldn't depend on whether you are lucky

or rich enough to live next to a transit stop with great reliable service. And, you know, I ray a story, it doesn't end badly. She a couple of years ago was able to start taking advantage of the new transit service in her community

that was launched by the mayor of Jersey City

that provided on-demand shared rides

for an affordable fair.

“And, you know, I think we need to invest in all forms”

of transit, but one benefit of these newer on-demand systems is that every corner can be a bus stop. Your take Tiffany, it's also, it's really similar to how a planning expert named Charles Brown framed it in my discussion with him.

- Yeah, there are pros and cons to any approach or any system, in the auto-centric environment that we've created. It disenfranchises those of whom don't have access to a vehicle is not that the car is evil.

What is unfortunate is the fact that we have not designed our built environment where you don't need a car to get around. - Charles is the CEO of equitable cities. That's an organization that works with cities

on transportation plans, with a specific focus on fairness and inclusiveness. And, for him, freedom is a guiding principle for justice. We talked about what that means for transit planning. - We all should pay the cost, whatever that number

is, to ensure that every person in America has access to a mobility option that gets them to a place of employment, a place of health, and social services, schools, et cetera. Why, because that person can feel dignified,

and hopefully their neighbors and others will give them the respect they deserve by feeling the dignity too that they deserve. So, I would love to see that. When it comes to the ways in which transit isn't equitable,

it has a lot to do with some of the performance measures around transit. We often go for higher ridership. Higher ridership usually means focusing in places where there are higher populations,

because that means you target areas where there's a potential for higher riderships. However, and I'm sure you are aware, what we're noticing is that many of the Black Brown and low-income people in our society can no longer afford to live in downtown

or in places where you have this so-called high population. That means that they are far out into beyond the urban core and transit just simply isn't as accessible for them. What we need to do instead is design our systems

for those people, not the people who are most proximate to their jobs already. The reason I say that is because you take a place like Chicago, Washington, DC, and many other places where doing COVID-19 services work up.

Yes, you saw an overall reduction and transit ridership for all populations. But among those that were Black Brown and low-income, you didn't see as great of a reduction. What that shows you is that those are the people

that need transit the most. And when it comes to determining where we're gonna spend

“our resources, I think they're best been”

in the places that need the most. Transit should be no exception. And what's your sense of what that looks like sort of outside of city center of course, right? 'Cause it's not gonna do very many people good

if we set up a bus stop that where the bus comes once every hour and most people have to walk, you know, half a mile or a mile to get to it. So there are a couple of things that we're sort of not doing that if a lot of cities

- That's a great question.

“So it goes back when you ask the question”

about what makes it more equitable, comfort, frequency of service is part of that answer as well. So when you're looking at the places that are on the sort of outskirts of the urban core, the frequency in the timing of the bus matters just as much.

So instead of having 60 minute headways or even longer, ideally what you would do is provide headways every 15 to 30 minutes. Now there's very expensive. But those are the places that need it most.

And so I am about putting people over profit

because I think we can always figure out the profit

or the money to pay for these services. Another thing is about comfort and security. Many of these systems don't have bus stop amenities that allow for people of color, women and low income populations

and persons with disabilities to wait at these bus stops.

“You have to think about inclement weather”

depending on the part of the country. So a lot of dignity needs to be put into transit put into biking and walking so it becomes an option that everyone would truly enjoy. - I feel like the word equity and equitable

it's thrown around by a lot of people. And I'm not sure everybody means exactly the same thing when they use the term.

So I'm just curious, when we say equity,

equitable mobility, how do you define that as someone who's working in the space day in and day out? - In the most basic sense, equity involves trying to understand and give people what they need to enjoy full healthy lives. But you don't just stop there

because that doesn't get you to the innovative and progressive solutions that you need to address the historical injustices in our society. Equity requires an understanding of the underlying or root causes of inequalities in oppression

within our society. (gentle music) And so racial equity by definition, Dan, forces of transformation of the behaviors, the institutions and those systems

that disproportionately harm people of color. And it does this by increasing their access to power, redistributing and providing additional resources in most importantly eliminating barriers to opportunities in order for those people to survive.

Then it takes you to ability or disability equity, which is about recognizing the needs for persons with disabilities. It takes you to gender equity, which takes a look at how women in those identifying

as women or sexual minorities in this country are treated. It takes you to income equity so that you could better realize the needs opportunities as it relates to low-income populations. And it takes you then to a host of other forms of equity,

such as process equity or outcome equity.

But ultimately what we want to achieve

isn't just equity. We're looking for justice. (gentle music) Tiffany, I feel like this is the point in the episode where we have to check in on how we're feeling,

how optimistic we're pessimistic. We feel the future of mobility is. And no question, there is a huge amount of work to be done to provide affordable mobility to everyone in this nation and that includes overcoming obstacles

that have been put in place over many, many decades, if not centuries. I'm wondering the types of things we're seeing in Austin, do you think that's representative of a bigger and positive shift in transit planning?

“- Yes, and the reason why I say yes is because I think”

from a city and transit agency perspective we're realizing across the country that what we don't invest in before or now we're just gonna have to invest in later if we're trying to be supportive of growth and all the folks who are moving to cities

as a national and international trend. I think from an equity perspective, I am noticing more and more when I see what other cities and agencies are doing that, the language of equity is now becoming much more embedded in the planning process

and it's definitely a newer thing that I've, I've found where many agencies are leading with equity and making sure that their planners

are from those communities, speak their language,

their families have been there forever and ever

“and I think they're just a pretty big shift”

in the discipline of planning, especially in the kinds of transportation and all of the ways that we need to rebuild up or just be more fluent in what the community wants from an equity perspective.

- Yeah, I think what Austin is actually doing is really, really exciting, but of course,

to get to that point takes really effective conversations

and decision-making and that is something that Sean can answer that we should not underestimate. So to that shift and how decision-makers are now taking equity seriously. - A topic that for generations was so rife with conflict

and that was almost a conversation stopper is now a conversation that political leaders, business leaders, policy advocates, the non-profit community can have in a public meeting, in a board room, in an investment committee

and it's taken seriously.

“I think those three forces give me great optimism”

for the next generation of transportation

because we're finally able to rest a little bit

the right questions and a meaningful way. We have a demographic that's gonna be making the decisions for the next generation that's not afraid to make decisions that their parents didn't make. Those are good things.

- And that marks the end of another episode of Mocheft. - Coming up in our final episode of the season, what does building a car free city look like? We'll pull together many of the themes from our last five episodes

“and ask what it takes to create communities”

where car dependency is a thing of the past. - Mocheft is produced by VIA in partnership with our friends at PostScript Media. VIA's technology enables partners to create end-to-end transit systems from planning better networks

and streets to operating efficient equitable public transit. You can learn more at ridewithvia.com. This show is hosted by me, Andre Greenwald. - And me, Tiffany Chu. If you'd like what you hear,

please write in review us in the app of your choice and send a link to the transit nerd in your life. The show is produced by Simon Lacy and Bailey Seth Lee Maison Martinez and Dalvin Abwajay of PostScript Media.

It's also produced by Francis Cooperman, Andy Embrocious, and my co-host, Andre Greenwald from VIA. Sean Marquan, composer, theme song. Sean Marquan and Greg Bill Frank mix the show. - Thank you so much for sticking with us

over these last five episodes. We will catch you next week for the sixth and final episode of the season of Mocheft. [BLANK_AUDIO]