Friday, January 16, 2009

Legislative Priority-Blog chatter starts Transit Oriented Communities Bill

Every year the environmental community of Washington chooses four legislative priorities to put forward in Olympia. For this year at Transportation Choices, we are happy to partner with Futurewise as the lead organizations on one of those priorities entitled ‘transit oriented communities’. Representative Sharon Nelson is our House bill sponsor and Senator Chris Marr is our sponsor in the Senate. This legislation will ensure that cities take into consideration climate change when updating their land-use plans. It will also encourage walkable, sustainable, and affordable transit oriented development around high capacity transit stations (light rail, commuter rail, and bus rapid transit). Last year the Puget Sound Region made a historical 18 billion dollar investment in transit infrastructure. We want to make sure that we capitalize on that investment and plan well around the backbone of the region's transit infrastructure.

There recently has been quite a bit of blog chatter on the proposal. I suggest you read:

http://seattletransitblog.com/2009/01/14/more-on-transit-oriented-communities/

http://noisetank.com/hugeasscity/2009/01/14/the-messiah-and-the-wide-eyed-naive-enviros/

http://seattletransitblog.com/2009/01/13/transit-oriented-communities-bill-proposed-in-the-legislature/

We are planning to have this bill dropped in the next couple of days. Stayed tuned as we keep you updated and what you can do to help.

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