CREATING Transit-oriented Communities

“Catastrophic climate change – far worse than anything we have experienced – will be unavoidable if we don’t prevent a massive “lock-in” of emissions from new coal-fired power plants, long-lived industrial infrastructure, inefficient buildings, car-centric cities, and irreversible deforestation. The First Rule of Holes: when you’re in one, stop digging.”

- Design to Win, A report commissioned by the Energy Foundation

Where We Need to Be• By 2035: about 40% below

1990 emissions (HB 2815)

• That’s about 60% below today’s level

• Today’s vehicles, at 20 mpg average, produce about a pound of CO2e per mile

• If 2035 vehicles average 50 mpg (equivalent), they will produce 0.4 lb of CO2e per mile, yielding a 60 percent reduction in emissions . . . if there is no growth in VMT between now and 2035, as the region adds 1.5 million people.

Creating Transit-Oriented Communities

Add climate change to transportation planning

Add climate change to land use planning

Require TOD at high-capacity transit station areas

Maximize infrastructure investments

Key components of conservation include:

Key components of housing affordability include:

Require a percentage of new housing in TOD areas be affordable to low-income people.

Development incentives like fast-track permitting, reduction of parking requirements

Creating long-term affordable housing opportunities

Capitalize on taxpayer investment

Global warming and VMT reductions

Affordable communities

Healthier families

Combats volatile gas prices

Protect working farms and forests.

Puget Sound restoration

Why Transit-Oriented Communities?

CREATING Transit-oriented Communities