The nexus between transportation and land use.

Category: Politics

The Third Rail of Planning Politics

Nothing fires up a local Village Board like eminent domain.

Eminent Domain Gate And Wall

Eminent Domain Gate And Wall (Photo credit: Steve Soblick)

One of my duties as a transportation planner for Metra is to participate in transit-oriented development studies in communities that apply for the grants to fund these studies through the RTA. Tonight we presented a TOD plan in front of the Village Board of a wealthy suburb for discussion. We hoped this discussion would lead to a recommendation for the Board to adopt the study. Alas, we were wrong.

It seems that the third rail of local politics was mentioned, not in the plan, but in discussions of possible tools that the Village could use to implement their plan, should it be adopted. It was noted and explored in the steering committee driving the plan that one possible tool was the use of eminent domain. Eminent domain refers to the action of the state in expropriating property or the rights thereof from a private citizen with monetary compensation but without consent of the owner. This property is taken for public use and in some cases, economic development, as granted by right in Kelo v. City of New London (2005). Because of the Kelo decision and general anti-government sentiment there has been a backlash against government taking private property in general and specifically for use in economic development across the country. This is no different in the Chicago region.

The problem with eminent domain in the planning context is that it politicizes the planning process with issues that have little to do with the actual plan. I have never seen a plan that has actually recommended using eminent domain as an implementation tool in a plan because the political, legal and procedural hurdles are usually so great that it is not worth pursuing. The vast, vast majority of plans are not trying to develop 3,1oo jobs and $1.2m in annual revenues like the New London, CT was. Because of this politicization (“take your government hands off my property!”), the Village Board was unable to weigh the merits of what was actually in the plan.

A good plan is a set of guidelines for decision makers to use in implementing a vision for their community. It is a tool.  It says, if we build a parking structure, how much would it cost the government? It identifies how a Village could update their zoning code to fit with today’s market realities. It identifies short range and long range opportunities for implementation. A good plan does NOT tell developers what to build. A good plan does NOT advocate eminent domain. A good plan does NOT ignore property owners which are impacted by the plan.

Time to Fight

Yonah Freemark over at The Transport Politic says it’s Time to Fight. House Republicans want to turn transportation into an all out ideological battle.

Looking south above Interstate 80, the Eastsho...

Without a balanced federal transportation policy, more of the same traffic congestion is in our future.

This, of course, is bad news for cities and metropolitan areas. As gas prices rise higher due to peak oil, supply and demand and geopolitical issues, it is even more urgent that the U.S. plan for a multi-modal approach to federal transportation policy. The automobile as the dominant form of mobility option is not sustainable or feasible. In the Chicago region, the Regional Transportation Authority estimates that the CTA, Metra and Pace could lose up to $450 million in capital each year. In a region with a system with a $10 billion backlog of capital projects, we simply cannot afford to lose this kind of money.

As Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said once, “Elections have consequences.”

One of the most important lessons in all of this is that elections have consequences. Many people now are beginning to catch on to that. It is no secret that our right-wing Republican colleagues did very well in November 2010. They captured the House of Representatives.

If you care about transportation and urban affairs, please remember this. And most importantly, fight now and call your Representative.

House Plan Would End Dedicated Transit Funding, Overturn 30 Years of Transportation Policy

Sorry to have to start this blog on a bad note, but our friends in the U.S. House of Representatives believe that transportation policy should go back to the 1970s.

You know, that era of gas shortages and rampant urban sprawl. Look, there is a reason why the Highway Trust Fund is used to fund transit. It has long been recognized that “if you build it they will come” when it comes to highway building. We’ll never build our way out of congestion and therefore, transit is a vital component of an urban area’s mobility. Forcing everyone to rely on the private automobile is unsustainable, not practical in most of our oldest cities and deeply un-conservative.

 

 

 

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