By Ethan Fawley, transportation connections coordinator, Fresh Energy

On June 11, the Minnesota Environmental Partnership hosted the first forum for the 2010 gubernatorial race, and transportation and land use were key issues in the discussion. Two gubernatorial candidates explicitly mentioned (and others echoed the sentiments) the need to finalize the Building Sensible Communities bill as an important part of simultaneously addressing global warming pollution and other quality of life issues such as air pollution, congestion, personal transportation costs, and dwindling open space.

Of course to finish what was started, we need to understand what happened this session and what work is still left. The vast majority of the bill passed 10 committees before it was broken into parts–three of which passed and were signed by Governor Pawlenty. There were many positive discussions and while much work remains, the steps forward offer a good groundwork for future work. For the ease of understanding this multi-faceted bill, I have broken it into six parts for this summary: 1) Metro area planning, 2) school siting, 3) Mn/DOT planning, 4) Greater Minnesota planning, 5) environmental review and global warming, and 6) wetlands and carbon sequestration.

1. Metro Area Planning
A key part of the Building Sensible Communities was to begin to reevaluate how we do land-use planning based on the increasing understanding that how our cities are built has a big impact on how we get around and our quality of life. For the last 60 years, our city planning largely centered on maximizing automobile access, which has lead to many places where there are very limited transportation alternatives to the car. In fact, city zoning codes often prohibit the kinds of development that support walking, biking, and transit. The result is that school, shopping, work, and recreational trips are typically far away from home and far away from each other–meaning that we are forced to spend ever more time in traffic. This means more pollution, less time with family, higher family transportation costs, greater need for costly infrastructure such as roads and sewer lines, and snarling congestion. Business as usual cannot meet the evolving needs of Minnesotans and cannot help us protect Minnesota’s future!

Quite simply, we need cities to adjust their zoning codes to allow more innovative development that can provide more options for where people live and how they get around. A number of cities have already made some of these changes, but many cities have limited planning staff and lack the capacity to tackle this task. A key goal of Building Sensible Communities was to provide assistance for cities as they determine the best ways to better support transportation options.

In the bill:

• performance-based targets to support planning that reduces the need to drive; the targets would be incorporated into the existing Metro area planning process overseen by the Metropolitan Council
• a comprehensive planning assistance program from the University of Minnesota would create a toolkit for communities to rethink their land-use planning and offer training and technical assistance to communities as they implement some changes
• adjust the timeline for 10-year updates to city comprehensive plans to better coincide with the best available demographic information from the U.S. Census (the changed timeline would also help speed up implementation of adjustments to planning)

Became law:

• The Metropolitan Council will work with communities and stakeholders to create a planning resources report for communities to evaluate the best ways that planning can help reduce air pollution, congestion, and the cost of infrastructure.

2. School Siting
It is common knowledge that schools have a big impact on our lives and our communities. What isn’t as well know is that for decades the Minnesota Department of Education has had de facto requirements that often force school districts to replace historic neighborhood schools with new schools on the edge of town. These moves have forever changed the character of many small towns and neighborhoods across the states because of arcane limitations on local control. They also have made it unsafe for many kids to walk and bike to school because the new schools are often on busy roads or in areas without good sidewalks.

My hometown of Moorhead provides a good example of the problem. The elementary school that my sister attended was in a neighborhood that was largely built in the 1920s-1950s. It was on a relatively quiet street and many kids were able to safely walk or bike to school. As the school was in need of renovation, the school district looked to rehab the school, but was told by the state that it should strongly consider rebuilding the school instead because the cost of rehab was getting close to the cost of building new. Then the state strongly urged the school district to find a bigger site than the two-square blocks that the school was on because of relatively arbitrary minimum school acreage requirements.

The result of all this back and forth was that the school district felt compelled to build a new school on the edge of town. Many people were very upset, but the district said that they had little choice (because of these outdated state standards). The old school building is now vacant and while there is a gleaming new school, it is right adjacent to the main north-south highway heading out of town, which separates the school from most of the nearby housing. It is a scary proposition to think of six-year-olds crossing that street and I doubt that many parents do anything but drive their kids the few blocks to school. Plus, throw in the cost of new infrastructure to support the school and you have a far more expensive school than it would have been if they could have just renovated the old school.

In the bill:

• eliminate de facto minimum school acreage requirements
• eliminate de facto requirements that discourage school renovation
• include in a school building proposal ways to maximize the potential for shared facilities
• include in a school building proposal steps to support safe walking and biking

Became law:

• all pieces

3. Mn/DOT Planning
The Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) makes numerous critical decisions about how to invest in our highway system, intercity rail system, and transit system across the state. For decades, Mn/DOT focused almost exclusively on highway planning and building with only cursory consideration of how walking, biking, transit, and rail connect with driving to support an overall multi-modal transportation system. Mn/DOT has been making notable strides to consider transportation more broadly. But evolving transportation and demographic trends (people are driving less and our population is aging) and environmental and quality of life realizations mean that Mn/DOT needs to accelerate its shift to support transportation options.

In the bill:

• toward the end of the process, a goal for Mn/DOT to support a transportation system that reduces the need to drive evolved into a Mn/DOT-led analysis of the impact of demographic, socioeconomic, and travel trends on transportation system needs, air pollution, and future transportation revenues

Became law:

• Nothing. Governor Pawlenty vetoed the Omnibus Transportation Policy bill, which included the Mn/DOT analysis; the veto was due to other considerations and came after overwhelming support in both the House (123-11) and Senate (59-2).

4. Greater Minnesota Planning
Minnesota used to have a small Department of Planning that served as a resource for communities across the state as they developed plans and zoning. Since the department’s elimination five years ago, there has been a notable gap that has left many small cities, townships, and counties scrambling to keep up. Many communities have openly asked for more planning assistance to address these needs.

In the bill:

• a grant program to support innovative planning in Greater Minnesota

Became law:

• nothing

5. Environmental Review and Global Warming
The environmental review process helps ensure that we take a hard look at the potential environmental impacts of large projects. While greenhouse gas emissions are beginning to be incorporated into the process, the full impacts are still not adequately considered as a part of the process.

In the bill:

• update to the environmental review process to ensure that the global warming impact of transportation and development projects is fully considered

Became law:

• nothing

5. Wetlands and Carbon Sequestration
Wetlands have intrinsic value as sinks that help store carbon.

In the bill:

• the recognition of the carbon sequestration value of wetlands

Became law:

• the recognition of the carbon sequestration value of wetlands

Next Steps
Much work remains to ensure that land-use and transportation planning recognizes the broad impact of these decisions on the quality of life for Minnesotans. The Metropolitan Council planning resources report will certainly help communities better understand ways that they can rethink land-use planning, but additional support will be necessary to ensure that communities across the state are able to understand and adjust their zoning codes to match.

Additional steps are also necessary to ensure that Mn/DOT and the Metropolitan Council fully consider the impact of transportation investments and to ensure that the agencies better coordinate transportation with local land-use planning.

We also need to make more strides to remove planning barriers between other agencies, including the Department of Education, Pollution Control Agency, Housing Finance Agency, and Department of Employment and Economic Development. We must integrate our planning across agency and level of government if we are to fully address the complex issues of land use and transportation.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 1:44 pm by Fresh Energy and is filed under Energy, Legislature, Transit and Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.