Transportation / America’s Smartest Regions For Transportation

No Cars But Plenty of Life on Broadway. Credit: Paul McRandle

The Natural Resources Defense Council's Smarter Cities project has named fifteen U.S. metropolitan regions leaders in transportation innovation and smart transit.

Empty coffers and rising gas prices may be the talk of the town, but cities across the country are finding innovative solutions to costly commutes by providing cheaper, healthier alternatives. In Lincoln, Nebraska, a 2011 Smarter City for transportation, low-income riders pay a mere $7.50 for unlimited bus rides all month long. Getting from place to place is more affordable in New York—at an average annual household cost of $5,289—than in any other large city. And at an average of 9,920 miles a year per household, New Yorkers travel fewer miles in the car than residents in any other region in the country besides Jersey City, New Jersey.

"By and large, ‘location efficient’ places – with essential services that are nearby or accessible by many transportation modes – lower transportation costs for residents,” says Scott Bernstein, president of the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT). “Cities and regions that foster compact, walkable, transit-rich communities can reduce reliance on automobiles and help lower at least one expense for households struggling to get by in the current economy.”

Lincoln, New York and Jersey City are three of 15 metropolitan regions selected by NRDC’s Smarter Cities team for their impressive and effective transportation programs. The study, created in collaboration with CNT, compares and profiles U.S. cities based on public transit availability and use; household automobile ownership and use; and innovative, sustainable and affordable transportation programs.

“Transportation policies that deliver a variety mobility options including integrated bike paths, bus, rail, and even vanpools not only benefit the environment, but they also enrich urban life by making city attractions and neighborhoods more accessible,” says Deron Lovaas, director of Federal Transportation Policy at NRDC. “By improving regional transportation programs we boost local economies, reduce air pollution, enhance quality of life, and even benefit public health by making walking and biking safer and more enjoyable for commuters.”

The Smarter Cities team sought advice from experts both in and outside of NRDC to develop its research plan. And to ensure that the study encompassed the wider impacts of suburban and exurban commuters, Smarter Cities used U.S. census defined metropolitan regions as the basic unit of study. The term “city” (or city/metro region) here is used in this broader sense and city profiles report on innovations in both municipal and regional transportation programs.

“It was crucial to first figure out the scope and focus of the transportation study, which raises the perennial, fundamental issue of whether to compare cities or regions,” explains Kaid Benfield, director of NRDC’s Sustainable Communities & Smart Growth and a Smarter Cities project advisor. “Regional data often gives a truer indication of the environment of a place than jurisdictional boundaries as it encompasses commuters traveling both in dense urban city centers and in surrounding suburbs. Yet municipalities and cities mostly act separately as instruments of policy, innovate more and are inherently more sustainable and ‘smarter’.”

This transportation study is the second in the Smarter Cities series, which aim to inspire regions nationwide by recognizing what leading metro regions, cities and municipalities across the country are doing to make themselves more efficient and livable. To identify these leaders, the Smarter Cities team focus on one sustainability factor at a time -- energy, air quality or smart growth, for example -- and using quantitative and qualitative analysis, compare regions on their efforts to make themselves more sustainable.

The Smarter Cities team established a transportation sustainability factor independent from the energy and smart growth factors because of the sheer size and influence of the transportation sector. “While it's no secret that carbon pollution has risen steadily in recent decades, increasing 27 percent between 1990 and 2007, it isn't as well known that nearly half of that net increase has been due to increasing emissions from the transportation sector,” notes Colin Peppard, deputy director of Federal Transportation Policy at NRDC. “As a result, transportation currently accounts for 32 percent of the total carbon emissions in the United States.”

The team deliberately left out smart growth from this analysis, despite the fact that transportation and smart growth are so strongly interconnected that new domains like ‘transit-oriented development’ have emerged. “As smart growth is so significant, we thought we should treat it as its own sustainability factor,” says Paul McRandle, senior editor of Smarter Cities, “We plan to look at it next with the hopes of having our evaluation complete some time in the fall of 2011."

2011 Smarter Cities for Transportation

The 2011 Smarter Cities for Transportation listed in the sidebar above include large-sized metro regions, which met or exceeded five out of six criteria, and medium and small metro regions that met three out of three criteria. The primary transit authorities in these top regions then must also have a minimum of three current sustainable transportation programs to be identified as top performers. The selected transportation leaders exhibit some the nation’s best and most innovative practices in transportation and make a strong case for the importance of a nationwide transit-focused, sustainable society. By sharing the lessons they can offer through this analysis, Smarter Cities hopes to be able to encourage comparable efforts among their peers.

Learn more about the study methodology as well as our selection criteria and the metro regions that meet them as listed in the High Performance Data Table.