Voting On How We Grow: Big Election Day Deal

Neal Peirce

Ballot-box zoning and big-ticket transportation decisions -- citizens bypassing elected officials to make critical decisions on how their communities develop -- had a field day on Nov. 2.

And the habit is spreading. Take California, where the state constitution opens the door wide to end runs around local elected officials.

Bill Fulton, publisher of California Planning & Development Report, notes that the rush to file ballot measures by environmentalists, disgruntled citizens and developers is no longer confined to the ``blue'' counties up and down the Pacific Coast where uppity liberalism frequently reigns and Democrats rack up huge margins.

Now ``red'' inland areas, where Republicans predominate, are turning just as rebellious, joining the club of proposed urban growth boundaries, or attempts to force public votes on virtually any new development.

In the Central Valley's San Joaquin County, strong GOP/Bush territory, seven growth measures made it onto the ballot this year (with environmentalists and developers splitting on the outcomes).

And the push to popular control isn't just a California phenomenon, notes Phyllis Myers of State Resource Strategies. In Florida, the phenomenon is spreading from the southern metropolitan part of the state (Miami-Dade up to Palm Beach) to the northern Atlantic coast and inland. Volusia County (Daytona Beach) voters decided, for example, to create Florida's first citizen-proposed urban growth boundary, an effort to discourage development in rural wetlands and forests.

But looking to the future and how we grow, some of the biggest shifts ordered at the ballot box seem to be occurring on the transportation front.

Counting measures on ballots earlier in the year, the Washington-based Center for Transportation Excellence calculates voters have approved 80 percent of 2004's proposed public transit measures, several dozen winning propositions with a cumulative price tag of close to $40 billion.

Especially on transportation votes, public officials are often strong supporters. And with their involvement, we may be witnessing a historic turn -- U.S. regionalism, fired by the need to assure mobility in traffic-clogged times, finally coming of age as a winning political agenda able to shoulder past historic city-suburban differences.

The most spectacular breakthrough came Election Day in Colorado, when Denver-region voters decided, 57 percent to 42 percent, to OK ``FasTracks,'' a $4.7 billion initiative to build about 119 miles of light rail and commuter rail with extensions reaching out through the suburbs to such targets as Boulder and the Denver International Airport.

Republican Gov. Bill Owens, conservative think tanks and auto dealers opposed FasTracks. But they were rolled over by a previously unthinkable alliance of the mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper, supported by 30 of his fellow mayors across the region -- plus environmentalists and the Greater Denver Chamber of Commerce.

As it gets built over the next two decades, FasTracks could make a significant difference in the look, feel and mobility of one of America's fastest growing, strategically located cities. Fifty-one of the 57 stations envisioned along FasTracks lines are expected to pose major opportunities for TOD -- transit-oriented development. The variant to subdivisions marching along the Front Range of the Rockies may be compact new, transit-served communities in which people can live, work, dine or shop in town-like settings with significantly reduced auto needs.

Backers suggest that population focused into the Denver-area TODs will take a significant bite into regional vehicle miles traveled, saving close to 50 square miles of open space through mixed uses and more intensive development.

One likely transit village, in Boulder, will transform a used-car lot along a railroad spur into a dense, affordable neighborhood. In Denver's Lower Downtown, the historic Union Station will be refurbished as a mixed-use project and become the primary local-regional-statewide transit hub for light rail, commuter trains, and local and intercity buses.

Another transportation breakthrough occurred in Austin, Texas, where transit backers rebounded from a heartbreaking narrow defeat in 2000 to win voters' approval of a smaller-scale system focused on regional commuter rail. Some rail advocates who had fought a 20-year battle for transit could finally celebrate. And while former Austin Mayor Kirk Watson led the campaign, it had a critical new friend and ally in state Rep. Mike Krusee of suburban Round Rock, a Republican and chair of the Texas House Transportation Committee.

In Phoenix, voters went for a $16 billion transportation measure focused on highways, but still including money to add 27 additional miles to the planned light rail system approved in 2000.

And so it was in a variety of smaller places, from Kalamazoo, Mich., to Lexington, Ky. In rural Colorado, voters in towns up and down a 70-mile corridor anchored by Aspen voted increased sales tax funding to expand the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority's bus lines.

In a nation ruled by superhighways, big-box retail outlets, isolated developments and Everyman/Everywoman on his/her own four wheels, all this goes strangely against the grain. But it is happening.

Neal Peirce's e-mail address is nrp(at symbol)citistates.com.