Big Transportation Dollars: Who Decides, And How?
Neal Peirce
Sunday, July 30, 2000 - Washington Post
 

    Do you have any idea what the "metropolitan planning organization" for your urban region does? If the answer's no, take heart. It's a safe bet that only a minuscule share of Americans do.

    Yet MPOs, most often the local officials who sit on regional councils of governments, are the decision-makers on the lion's share of the $217 billion in federal highway, bridge and public transit monies flowing under the federal government's latest and biggest transportation bill ever--TEA-21 (Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century).

    With few exceptions, every major new roadway, freeway expansion, new interchange, new commuter rail or busway line you see has a big chunk of federal dollars--and MPO control--behind it. State highway departments often conceive and design projects, but MPOs decide on what gets funded and what doesn't.

    Result: MPO-assigned dollars have huge impact on where homes, stores and jobs go. On whether people who don't have cars can get to work at all. Look behind MPO decisions, suggests David Beckwith of the Center for Community Change, and you find big consequences for civil rights, welfare reform, environmental quality, urban sprawl, the viability of whole communities.

    So how well do MPOs inform and involve the public in their decision-making? Beckwith's center with its partner, the Transportation Equity Network, recently commissioned the University of Toledo's Urban Affairs Center to check out dozens of MPOs by visiting their offices, phoning in and examining their Web sites. The resulting "report card" gives MPOs a thoroughly mediocre grade of "D."

    Most MPOs, it's acknowledged, respond to specific project queries in a professional, helpful way. A number were specifically praised for well-designed, informative Internet sites--among them the Puget Sound Regional Council (Seattle--"perhaps the best of all home pages"), the Atlanta Regional Commission, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (Philadelphia), Metro (Portland, Ore.), and the MPOs for New York City, Los Angeles and Northern New Jersey.

    But when it comes to the Transportation Improvement Program and Long Range Plans that all MPOs must by law produce, the researchers often found information lacking about the specific highway, bridge or transit programs. Questions too infrequently answered: Precisely where is a project--on a map? What's its budget? How far has construction gone? How was it originally justified? Who has backed it? What negative impacts is it expected to generate? What alternatives were considered?

    Some MPOs are making advances generating some of those answers. But the research team found the information systems so spotty, so resistant to region-to-region or state-to-state comparisons, "that all the courtesy and professionalism" of MPO staffs ends up being "little more than window dressing." That judgment may sound rough, but the principle of the times it reflects--a push for full, detailed, accessible information--is critical. It leads to what the experts call "transparency"--open and informed decision-making.

    The groups supporting the University of Toledo study want transparency to show how transportation projects are helping or harming minorities, low-income neighborhoods, welfare mothers and other "left-outs."

    But the information can be just as vital for environmental and "smart growth" groups anxious to protect natural areas and stop sprawl. Or for businesses--suburban firms, for example, who have difficulty drawing lower-wage workers and want transit or road improvements so employees can reach their work sites.

    In a growing number of regions, notes William Dodge, executive director of the National Association of Regional Councils, major business interests are either taking council seats on regional bodies with MPO powers, or heavily influencing the process. Prime examples are Atlanta, Chicago, the Southwestern Pennsylvania region (Pittsburgh) and the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana counties focused on Cincinnati.

    Businesses today, more often than not, are increasingly on the "smart growth" side--opposing highway growth for its own sake, favoring repair of existing roads and increased investment in public transit. The process is uneven, but more MPOs are wiggling loose of the grip of the highway-building and development interests whose collective decisions helped to hollow out cities and create sprawl America. Where they don't, in regions such as Northwestern Indiana and Baltimore, the Center for Community Change and other low-income and church-based groups are challenging their required periodic recertification, charging they ignore the equity requirements written into TEA-21.

    That kind of threat has an impact in real-world politics. But for fundamental system change, consider Internet-accessible maps with key demographic data linked to Geographic Information System (GIS) data. One could, for example, combine information layers--single heads of household, new job creation location, and existing and proposed bus lines. Potential outcome, say the University of Toledo researchers: "to help businesses find workers, add money to tax rolls, and open channels out of poverty."

    No system's quite so advanced, though San Diego's remarkable GIS system, already operative and online, is close. But just consider the potential: Technology which enables transparency, which then leads to equity and efficiency.