TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

July/August 1999: TLC

MTC Cultivates Community Improvements

TLC

Illustrated Project Descriptions

Think of your favorite street or neighborhood and what makes it attractive and inviting. Perhaps it's tree-lined sidewalks, designated bicycle lanes, crosswalks or slower moving traffic; maybe it's a landscaped walkway or a well-lighted plaza adjacent to a public transit station, surrounded by shops and cafes.

Then, think about what it would take to transform some neglected or less attractive areas into popular, vibrant centers, and you have the basics of MTC's Transportation for Livable Communities (TLC) program. TLC provides seed money to nurture transportation-related projects designed to help revitalize urban neighborhoods and make them more pedestrian-friendly.

Now in its second year, TLC awards matching grants to local jurisdictions, transportation agencies and nonprofit organizations throughout the Bay Area to propel community development projects in their early stages of planning, technical assessment or capital fundraising. MTC has set aside more than $50 million in federal and regional transportation funds through 2003 for TLC projects, with annual awards of approximately $9.5 million. The grants range in size from maximums of $10,000 for technical assistance and $50,000 for planning projects to $2 million for capital projects.

TLC

The North Bay city of Cotati, for example, has received $35,000 to help redesign its downtown "hub" in an effort to reduce traffic congestion, revive a currently unused park and create a more pedestrian-friendly area. In the East Bay, the city of Richmond won a $50,000 TLC grant to help plan a bicycle/pedestrian path on an abandoned railroad corridor that runs through seven neighborhoods. And in the South Bay, Gilroy has received over $500,000 in a TLC capital grant to install new sidewalks, street lights and landscaping on its main street, adjacent to a rehabilitated Caltrain depot.

Thus far, a total of 33 projects have received TLC capital and planning awards. Another $18 million in capital funds and $95,000 in planning funds will be awarded by June 30, 2000.

One of the first projects to receive a TLC planning grant was the proposed Ed Roberts Campus for disabled persons in Berkeley (see project description). According to Joan Leon, capital campaign director for the nascent campus, "Early on, MTC recognized the potential benefit of this project to the community, and the TLC grant was critical to completing our design guidelines and beginning community-based planning."

With the aid of a $500,000 TLC capital grant, the city of Santa Rosa now will be able to achieve its longtime goal of reconnecting its downtown--bisected by Highway 101--with a landscaped, lighted walkway between the downtown plaza on the east side and historic Railroad Square on the west side. According to Nancy Adams, Santa Rosa transportation planner, "TLC has been a shot in the arm for us. There is a lot of community excitement that our plans will actually become reality, and we envision much more happening as a result of this grant."

In San Francisco's Mission District, MTC is contributing to plans to improve the 16th Street BART station plaza (see project description). Douglas Shoemaker, project director of the nonprofit Mission Housing Development Corporation, one of the project participants, said, "For years, urban communities, such as ours, have had ideas about transit-related improvements. TLC has enabled us to take on projects we previously could only dream about."

Until this decade, U.S. transportation investments went mainly for construction of interstate highways, while today's federal policies allow local officials to direct funds to county roads, city streets and public transportation needs, ranging from multimodal transit centers to ferries and bicycle/pedestrian paths. The TLC program takes full advantage of this change by investing in community projects to help re-energize the Bay Area's urban centers and, in the long run, help reduce sprawl-generated congestion.

"In the overall context of transportation funding, the dollar amount set aside for TLC is fairly modest," says MTC Executive Director Lawrence D. Dahms, "but our goal and hope is that these small-scale TLC investments will encourage communities to develop transportation projects that not only move people from point A to point B, but enhance the surrounding area along the way."

--Marjorie Blackwell
(Illustrations: Whitney Sherman)

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