This July America 2050 sponsored a two-day planning charrette in Portland, Oregon with stakeholders along the Pacific Northwest Rail Corridor - stretching from Vancouver, British Columbia to Eugene, Oregon to develop a vision for an integrated Cascadia megaregion enabled by high-speed rail.

Building on America 2050's research on Where High-Speed Rail Works Best the workshop sought to explore the economic, land use, urban design, and transportation strategies and investments necessary to fully leverage federal, state, provincial, and local investments in high-speed rail in this binational corridor. The workshop was an opportunity to broaden the focus of regional leaders on how high-speed rail can help advance larger goals for Cascadia as a more interconnected, sustainable, and prosperous megaregion.

To learn more, you can download the detailed briefing book of background information prepared for workshop participants. You can also access America 2050's original map of the Cascadia megaregion prepared for the workshop, which synthesizes transportation, land use, and the regional planning strategies of the entire megaregion on the America 2050 Maps Page (scroll to the bottom of the page.) A summary of workshop proceedings and next steps will be posted to the America 2050 site in the coming weeks.

Business Alliance Requests Congressional Hearing on Northeast Corridor

A coalition of Northeastern business and planning organizations staffed by Regional Plan Association have sent a letter to Chairman Oberstar (D-MN) and Ranking Member Mica (R-FL) of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure last week requesting a Congressional hearing be held this fall on the Northeast Corridor.

As the Northeast Corridor was largely passed over in the first round of ARRA grants, business leaders in the Northeast are anxious to see it qualify for future federal grants through the federal High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program. In May, eleven northeastern states and Amtrak submitted a planning proposal to the Federal Railroad Administration seeking $18.8 million for a four-phased planning study to study major improvements to the corridor, including a programmatic environmental impact statement (EIS) -- the first EIS for the entire corridor since 1979.

A hearing on rail service in the Northeast Corridor would produce a constructive dialogue between federal lawmakers, the business community, and other stakeholders along the corridor, about ways to overcome barriers to funding and implementing true high speed rail in the Northeast.

Building an Atlas of Landscape Initiatives in the Northeast Megaregion

Efforts to protect water, habitat and other natural resources are often divorced from regional and local land use decision making and infrastructure investment. Planners and conservation advocates are meeting this challenge by working across political jurisdictions to establish landscape conservation initiatives that protect watersheds, ecosystems and other landscape-scale processes by identifying and responding to the broader threats of regional land use and infrastructure investment decisions.

This is especially true across the eleven megaregions that are the locus of much of the nation's growth and development, where there are hundreds of locally driven initiatives that are bringing together local, state, and federal partners. With support from The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, America 2050 and Regional Plan Association are helping landscape conservation initiatives succeed in implementing their goals in one of these: the 13-state Northeast Megaregion. Read more about the inventory on the America 2050 website.

Save the Dates Nov 14-16: HSR New York-Northeast Corridor Conference

America 2050 is pleased to co-sponsor the U.S. High Speed Rail Association's conference in New York City on November 14-16, 2010 at the New Yorker Hotel. General registration is now open.

The conference will include two days of speakers and workshops focusing on the policy, planning, engineering, governance and financing of true high-speed rail in the Northeast Corridor and on the Empire Corridor in New York State. Speakers will include members of the Obama Administration, Amtrak, Northeast State DOTs, private engineering firms, members of Congress, Mayors, and economic development officials from throughout the Northeast. The conference will also include tours of major rail projects underway in the New York Metropolitan region and showcase successful examples of transit-oriented development. 
Register Here.

I had a chance to attend and speak at the U.S. High Speed Rail Association's conference in Los Angeles in June on High-Speed Rail and Regional Economies. You can view a video of my speech here.

FREIGHT Act provides framework for national goods movement plan

The United States could soon have, for the first time, an official federal policy on freight if a bill introduced last month in the Senate becomes law. Three Senators, lead by Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, introduced a bill that would make it the policy of the United States "to improve the efficiency, operation, and security of the national transportation system to move freight." The bill, titled Focusing Resources, Economic Investment and Guidance to Help Transportation (FREIGHT) Act of 2010, enumerates five primary objectives to achieve this policy goal:

• Reduce delays at international points of entry
• Increase travel time reliability on major freight corridors
• Reduce by 10 percent the number of freight related fatalities by 2015
• Reduce national freight related CO2 levels by 40 percent by 2030
• Reduce freight related air, water, and noise pollution

The bill establishes within the Department of Transportation an Office of Freight Planning and Development, and gives the DOT two years to develop a National Freight Transportation Strategic Plan that would guide federal investment to achieve these goals.

The bill also establishes a competitive grant program to provide funding for capital investments for freight projects. These grants could go towards projects such as port or intermodal facility improvement, freight rail improvement or capacity expansion, and Intelligent Transportation Systems to reduce congestion. It also mandates that the DOT develop new tools "to support an outcome-oriented, performance-based approach to evaluate proposed freight-related" projects.

Click here read the complete text of the bill.

America 2050 in the News

Is the U.S. turning a corner on high-speed rail?
Aug. 18, 2010, CNN
The United States Conference of Mayors, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and America 2050 -- a coalition of regional ...
 
U.S. High-speed Railway a matter of cost and demand Aug. 18, 2010 International Business Times: [America 2050 co-chair] Robert Yaro ... strongly supports the high-speed rail project. "The rest of world is building these rail networks and we lag far behind," he said. "If you're going to have a competitive economy in the 21st century, I think we really need to move ahead with this project."...

Penn Students Create Ambitous Plan for Rail Service Aug. 11, 2010 The Philadelphia Inquirer It envisions reducing travel time between New York and Philadelphia by four minutes. "Amtrak's new plan leaves you with a really good early-20th-century rail system," said [America 2050 co-chair] Robert Yaro, one of two Penn professors who taught the students in the School of Design's department of city and regional planning. ...

Cost the Highest Hurdle for High-Speed Rail in U.S. Aug. 9, 2010 The Philadelphia Inquirer:"These are big, expensive projects that take years to complete," said Petra Todorovich, director of America 2050, an urban-planning organization in New York City. "They're not for the impatient." She said... "

Texas Aims to Get State-Wide Rail Back on Track Aug. 4, 2010 Houston Public Radio News: Out of 27,000 possible city pairs, a connection between Dallas and Houston ranked tenth in having the greatest potential demand, according to a study released last year by America 2050.

A Vision of Fast Rail for Cascadia Jul. 19, 2010 Enzyme PDX:
America 2050 envisions a future where high-speed rail connects constellations of interlocking metropolitan areas called megaregions. "Often these corridors are of less than six hundred miles in length," said Ed Burgess a project manager at America 2050. "They share a common landscape, history, culture and strong economic interconnection."

Our comments were also informed by the Forging a National Rail Plan panel discussion we hosted in Washington, D.C. on May 11. You can download the audio recording and powerpoints from that discussion here. America 2050 staff also participated in the FRA's public outreach sessions seeking input on the National Rail Plan in five locations across the country May 19 - June 4, presenting our research on investment criteria for high-sped rail. Visit the federal docket website to review other comments on the rail plan.

Northeast Rail Planning Speeds Ahead: Despite hosting the highest intercity and regional rail ridership in the nation and connecting directly to the majority of the nation's urban transit systems, the Northeast Corridor was largely passed over by the FRA when it announced the first round of ARRA high-speed rail grants in January 2010. One reason was that the Northeast Corridor was actually behind states like Florida and California in developing plans for what the FRA calls HSR Express (dedicated tracks for trains reaching over 150 miles per hour); another reason was that the Northeast Corridor lacked an updated environmental impact statement (the last one was completed in the late 1970s.) A third reason, which we surmise, is that the Administration may have decided a high-speed rail program would garner stronger political support if grants were spread out around the country. While we can't do anything about the politics, the Northeast Corridor states are now moving ahead to address the first two reasons for missing out on substantial federal funding.

Last month, eleven northeastern states and Amtrak submitted a planning proposal to the FRA seeking federal funding for an $18.8 million four-phased planning study. The study will explore investments needed to meet travel demand in the Northeast Corridor, including both incremental improvements and investments in dedicated tracks for true high-speed service. This proposal represents an historic collaboration of states and a necessary step to bring the Northeast's rail infrastructure into the 21st century. Meanwhile, as the states and Amtrak take this critical step, planners at the megaregion's universities have been thinking about a plan for HSR in the Northeast Corridor to rival California's ambitious high-speed plan. A U. Penn graduate planning studio has developed a vision for high-speed rail in the Corridor which would cut travel times in half, achieving 90-minute service from New York to Washington, D.C. and 105 minute service from New York to Boston. The executive summary is now available for download on the America 2050 website and describes the type of plan that could be included in the scope of the official Northeast Corridor planning study.

Imagining Greater Tucson in the Sun Corridor: Tucson, Arizona recently joined the ranks of regions like Salt Lake City, Portland, and Sacramento that have engaged their residents in scenario-based visioning efforts to shape future metropolitan growth. I had the opportunity to give the keynote address at a kick-off event for Imagine Greater Tucson hosted by ULI-Arizona and other partners this May. Read coverage of the forum in the Arizona Daily Star. The forum also focused on the role of Tucson in the larger Arizona Sun Corridor megaregion. A new report by the Sonoran Institute makes the case that the economic health of Tucson is closely tied to the much larger Sun Corridor economy that is focused in Phoenix, 100 miles to the north. It suggests that Tucson's best strategy is not to compete with Phoenix, but to advance its own economy while viewing Phoenix's proximity as an asset -- all the while capitalizing on Tucson's unique advantages of a spectacular natural environment and relaxed desert lifestyle.

Large Landscape Conservation: A Strategic Framework for Policy and Action
A new policy focus report issued by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy -- an America 2050 partner -- focuses on strategies for regional collaboration to protect large landscapes in the United States.  Like megaregions, large landscapes span political boundaries and require ad-hoc and formal partnerships for their conservation. Regional Plan Association and America 2050 are now engaged in a large landscapes and wildlife conservation program focused on the Northeastern United States, in partnership with the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Lincoln Institute. 

In Cascadia, Livability comes to the Land of Livability: In a commentary piece for America 2050.org, Ethan Seltzer of Portland State University discusses how the Obama Administration can learn from the Cascadia megaregion, a.k.a. the "land of livability," as they implement the federal livability initiative. Ethan's students at PSU recently completed the fourth edition of their Cascadia megaregion study, Ecolopolis 4.0: Livability in Cascadia.

America 2050 will also be in Cascadia this July for a workshop to develop a vision for high-speed rail in Cascadia in partnership with PSU, the Discovery Institute, and the Oregon governors office, which will be a prototype for a series of megaregion-scale rail planning workshops that we would like to sponsor around the country.