Transportation for America has published a comprehensive overview of financing options for transit projects. Thinking Beyond the Farebox: Creative Approaches to Financing Transit Projects includes funding programs, analyses for the various funding streams that can be used to finance projects, examples of the capitalization plans for transit, BRT, and TOD projects, and a primer on how to do-it-yourself through a transit ballot measure.

"The demand for public transportation service is at its highest point in 50 years. The causes are many: rising gas prices, an increasingly urbanized population, growing numbers of seniors, and the preferences of the “millennial” generation. These factors and more are contributing to soaring ridership on existing transit routes. And more communities of all sizes today are looking for funds to build and operate rail and bus lines than ever before."

"A combination of ideological gridlock in Congress, dwindling federal gas tax revenues, and the elimination of earmarks have made the traditional approaches to building transit much more challenging. Yet despite these obstacles, many communities are finding creative ways to move ahead.  This guidebook is designed to help community leaders get from Point A—the desire to meet the demand for transit—to Point B—raising the money needed to build and operate it."  Transportation for America.

Download the guidebook here...

Surdna grantee Reconnecting America released Are We There Yet? Creating Complete Communities for 21st Century America, an ambitious report that tracks progress in America's regions toward a vision of complete communities.

The report highlights the benefits that complete communities offer all Americans, tells stories about the work being done across the country to create complete communities, and measures progress in every region with a population above 55,000.

Click here for more information...

Excerpt from an article published in the Investor Circle's "In the Loop."

by Phillip Henderson, President, Surdna Foundation, and Michelle Knapik, Director of Sustainable Environements, Surdna Foundation
September 25, 2012

The Surdna Foundation is determined to go deeper in our mission to build just and sustainable communities and we are directing our environmental focus to bedrock systems:  the infrastructure that connects people to jobs and services and through which we manage water, energy, food and other critical resources.

The factors that drove this decision are abundantly clear throughout America’s metropolitan areas, most starkly in our older cities, and they are worth spelling out in shorthand: 1) much of the infrastructure on which this country depends for its economic growth and prosperity is decades old and nearing the end of its life; 2) the government funding available for renewing, replacing, or reinventing these systems is severely constrained and cannot (alone) meet the urgent needs in our nation’s urban areas; 3) extreme weather events and climate change are putting stress on fragile and aging systems; and 4) growing populations and shifting demographics place issues of equity, affordability and access to high quality infrastructure and services at the core of any new investments.

If we want infrastructure that improves transit systems, makes buildings more energy efficient, better manages our water systems and rebuilds regional food systems, and we believe in solutions that can connect these four systems and improve them in ways that maximize impact and minimize negative environmental consequences (all Surdna tenets), we will need to support the pathways from here to there.  Philanthropy cannot fill the gaps left by the sharp declines in public spending, but we can help with creative solutions to this deep financing hole we find ourselves in.

Read the full article...

The Brookings Institution has released a pair of groundbreaking reports on innovative finance in the transportation and energy sectors.

Banking on Infrastructure: Enhancing State Revolving Funds for Transportation - In this report Brookings elevates the discussion on infrastructure finance by looking at the full range of infrastructure revolving funds.  The report also presents implications for policy, practice, new roles, and partnerships that will be needed to leverage capital and prioritize projects with high economic, environmental, and social benefits.

State Clean Energy Finance Banks: New Investment Facilities for Clean Energy Deployment -  In this report Brookings examines bottom-up institutional invention, focusing on states that are experimenting with new models for financing clean energy and innovating with the design of state-level clean energy banks.