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Traffic calming and its parent-Smart
Growth are not being pushed on America solely by well meaning "green
enviromentalists and "car haters." What is the real Federal
goal of the Smart Growth/Traffic Calming cheerleaders and who is
funding the ra ra ra pro-Smart Growth websites on the Internet for the
New Urbanists and their anti-sprawl hoopla?
Follow the money. Ever wonder why your city hall pushes for traffic
calming and "walkable" New Urbanists neighborhoods by
installing traffic calming devices and light rail lines that always
seem to go with them? Was traffic calming installed in your area even
though there was no real problems with cars...nobody getting hit while
walking, no one run down on their bicycles?
Did you get
traffic calming devices even though they were asked for by a very
small portion of the residents in your neighborhood? Did city hall
allow your local neighborhood association control of the project? And
did city hall respond to your complaints about the traffic calming
devices installed by saying that it was "your neighbors"
that wanted the project? When in fact those neighbors are a small
vocal minority in the overall population of your neighborhood.
Are
the local transit authorities in your area pushing massive
expenditures of transit taxes for light rail lines that cannot
possibly reduce congestion or pollution due to light rail's
historically low ridership turn out? And do the proposed rail lines
all run to the central business community.
Is the business
community and chamber of commerce in your city along with the local
media pushing hard for this kind of Smart Growth developement and a
traffic calmed "walkable" neighborhood with a light rail
line in your area?
Well here is the most likely reason city hall and the business
community in your area is falling all over themselves... it is to line
up for Federal funding money for traffic calming and Smart Growth
projects in your area.
Using Smart Growth many of the "movers
and shakers" in American cities are planning a campaign of "gentrification"
by jump starting property taxes and essentially "evicting"
lower class Americans disabled or not from their inner city core
residences. And the Federal government is ready to supply the funding
to do just that. The gentrification process is started by creating a
quickly rising property tax and real estate market place that
economically challanged Americans can not afford. Gentrification
begins with that suddenly raising property tax rate increase on land,
and this what most lower paid Americans cannot cope with.
Check
out what Smart Growth and it's little sister traffic calming have done
to the land values in San Fransico and Portland. The city of Portland
and San Fransico now have the most expensive housing costs in the
nation.
Follow this Internet trail of Federal
websites and funding.
The Smart Growth website is
funded by the U.S. EPA...
http://www.smartgrowth.org
$mart Growth Network website and the EPA - Smart
Growth website which were orginally funded by the EPA....is
run by one of the $mart Growth Network's website member
.orgs..... the International City/County Management Association
(ICMA).... the ICMAwas originally contracted by the EPA
to construct and run the Smart Growth Website and the $mart
Growth Network website.
To be a "partner" of the
$GN the EPA has to approve your .org....to join the
$GN website....
http://www.smartgrowth.org/index_frameset.html
This is an e-mail I recieved from a member of the ICMA
about the $GN website....
"Hi. I'll give you a
little background on the Smart Growth Network (SGN). The SGN was
created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Urban and
Economic Development Division (UEDD) to encourage "smart growth"
throughout the country. The Network is made up of 21 partner
organizations, each playing a role in the network, and its the
collective work that forms the Network. I work for the International
City/County Management Association (ICMA), the professional
organization for city and county managers. ICMA is the "organizational
home" of the Network, and we are responsible for the newsletter,
membership, and a number of the SGN's publications. The partner
organizations are a very diverse group from around the country who are
all interested in smart growth, and have their own smart
growth/sustainable development programs and projects. Some of the
groups can and do lobby, some are advocacy groups, while others
represent government officials or are professional organizations. The
Network itself does not lobby. "
US EPA's Transportation Partners
Program......has a spam for Light Rail on the bottom of the first
page of that website....
http://www.epa.gov/tp/
"EPA's Transportation Partners program is made up of a team of
nongovernmental organizations, called Principal Partners, who serve as
resources to citizen groups, local governments and businesses, called
Project Partners, to develop transportation solutions in local
communities. By providing technical and strategic guidance, Principal
Partners help Project Partners create transportation choices for
economically vibrant and environmentally healthy places to live."
The EPA's Transportation Partners
Program has principle partners listed at this site....
http://www.epa.gov/tp/wtpprp.htm
TransAct website....
http://www.transact.org/
and TransAct is a "system" sponsored in
part by US EPA's Transportation Partners Program......
One of those EPA-TPP "partners"
is the STPP website...
http://www.epa.gov/tp/wtpstpp.htm
The Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP)
"is a coalition of over 250 national and local organizations
whose goal is to develop a transportation policy that better serves
the environmental, social, and economic interests of the nation."
Which leads e to the LEM homepage
Accessibility
vs. Mobility: LEM The Location Efficient Mortage....
http://www.transact.org/feb98/lem.htm....
Hey what do you know this url is not working
now....hmmmm....interesting!
But when it did it did work it then
led to this url...
Center for Neighborhood Technology website
http://links.cnt.org/lem/
which basically says....get rid of your car and buy some light
rail passes every month and we will give you a loan for a home in a
Smart Growth light rail developement corridor.
These loan
programs are built around and help to increase an automatic jump in
housing cost via city propety taxes in transit development corridors.
This process insures the land values in every light rail development
corridor will jump higher. The LEM Loan Program then becomes a
"gentrification" tool for city hall and the banking
community in those neighborhoods.
You will then discover that
the LEM is funded by.....gee....an EPA "Partner"
the STPP
The three organizations -- the Center
for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) in Chicago, the Natural
Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in San Francisco, and the Surface
Transportation Policy Project (STPP) in Washington, DC –
these three groups created the LEM Partnership to conduct the
research, formulate the mortgage product, and make it available in the
primary and secondary mortgage marketplaces. The project is also
backed by the U.S. Department of Energy-(DOE), the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency-(EPA), the Federal Transit
Administration-(FTA), and several private foundations.
Which leads us back to FHWA
HUMAN AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT: "Enhancing Communities
Through Highway Transportation: located at this url...
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/fhplan.html
"Enhancing
Communities Through Highway Transportation: FHWA will foster community
and regional level transportation solutions through enhancements in
urban and rural community planning. We will develop and share tools
for State, local, Federal land management agencies, and tribal
government planners to effectively incorporate environmental justice
and the preservation of scenic, historic, natural, and community
resources, as well as traffic safety into transportation plans.
FHWA
will help ensure transportation plans address the community concerns
and social impacts of transportation facilities and recognize the
role of transportation in supporting Welfare-to-Work, mobility for
people with low incomes, and accessibility for people with
disabilities. FHWA will promote programs and initiatives to
enhance communities through effective public involvement, a thorough
assessment of impacts, and creative approaches to mitigation and
enhancement. To accelerate and improve decision making, FHWA will
promote processes which effectively integrate Federal, State, and
local transportation, land use, and environmental decision making in a
streamlined and timely manner."
What you see happening
at the FHWA is a program which says a lot, but may be written in
double-speak code for some. You see the FHWA is indorsing the "Welfare
to Work Program" Which basically means the FHWA supports thru
TEA-21/DOT the funding to promote Light Rail and its construction.
Read this text carefully from the link above this paragraph...
"The
U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) recently announced the
availability of $75 million under the "Access to Jobs"
program. The program provides competitive grants to states, local
governments, and non-profit organizations to develop transportation
services to connect welfare families and low-income persons to
employment and support services. (i) subsidize the costs
associated with adding reverse commute bus, train,
carpool, van routes, or service from urban areas, urbanized areas,
and areas other than urbanized areas, to suburban workplaces; (ii)
subsidize the purchase or lease by a nonprofit organization or public
agency of a van or bus dedicated to shuttling employees from their
residences to a suburban workplace; or (iii) otherwise facilitate the
provision of mass transportation services to suburban employment
opportunities. (3) Existing transportation service providers.--The
term ``existing transportation service providers'' means mass
transportation operators and governmental agencies and nonprofit
organizations that receive assistance from Federal, State, or local
sources for nonemergency transportation services."
Now
notice and read carefully these words just after same long blue
highlighted link above...
"FHWA will promote programs and
initiatives to enhance communities through effective public
involvement, a thorough assessment of impacts, and creative approaches
to mitigation and enhancement."
Now get this, where it
says "mitigaiton and enhancement," that same term is used in
Bolder Colorado to describe that city's Traffic Calming projects!
Don't you love it. They write in code, "mitigaition and
enhancement" is double-speak for traffic calming. And this same
FHWA was directed to investigate an ADA complaint on the Bouldin Creek
Traffic Calming Pilot Project in Austin Texas! The FWHA was directed
by the DOT from the DOJ via an ADA 504 complaint to investigate a
traffic calming project- "mitigation and enhancement"which
it in fact "promotes!"
And Smart Growth,
Traffc Calming, and Light Rail Projects in the form of
"Welfare to Work" is all a part of this grand
Federal movement...all backed and funded by the EPA, UEDD, TPP,
STPP, LEM, DOE, FTA, DOT and the FHWA.
And all these
Federal "icons" are are using every American's tax dollars
to promote these Smart Growth websites and programs. These are not
just programs thought up by home town "green"
enviromentalists... although addmitedly much of the private backing
comes from white collar folks and city planners and developers, upper
salary economic groups all out to make a change, or should I say a
buck.
And who bares the brunt of this Smart Growth planing?
Well
it's the lower class Americans who will find themselves paying for
Smart Growth websites and policies which then have a nasty habit of
removing the the lower classess from the central cities. Smart Growth
is a Federally funded program that is telling the blue collar folks to
put down Traffic Calming Devices on city streets and stop using your
car and try for a better job to afford a loan for a home or a row
house next to a light rail train line.
Of course if the
lower classes are not able to pay the higher costs of living that
these Smart Growth policies bring on, thats too bad. But then the
message never spoken directly to the lower classes is to either pay
the suddenly higher property taxes or leave your property and get out
of town. Of course the poor don't have much access to this information
on the Internet, hopefully this message will find its way to them. |