 Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Carol Werner. I'm the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. We're very, very glad that you are here. This is Infrastructure Week on Capitol Hill. There are lots of people all over the hill from across the country talking about all parts of our infrastructure for this great nation because it is the infrastructure that holds the country together that runs our economy and that we depend upon every single day in terms of all of our functions. And so today we are very excited about taking yet another look with regard to the whole role of transit as a very high value entity in our knowledge economy in its whole contribution to economic competitiveness. EESI has been working and listening to transportation policy discussions for probably over 20 years now. And over these last couple decades, it has also become very, very clear that there are all sorts of changes, new trends, that we are all seeing with regard to transportation, how people are using it, the services that it provides, that it needs to provide, how we all depend upon it, how it is affecting our economy. And of course, as we know, so much of our economy is driven by our cities, by our local jurisdictions, our counties, our regional areas, our cities, our local towns and communities. And therefore, as we have looked at how transportation trends have been unfolding, it is really interesting to see how the role of transit has also continued to evolve in these changing times. And therefore, we are really excited to listen today to the voices of people who are really coming from those local perspectives, because they indeed are the ones who are looking at those trends, who are having to be accountable to their local constituencies, whether they are running transit agencies, or whether they are elected officials, and having to be responsible to their constituencies and to ensuring that their local economy continues to really operate as productively as possible now and also in terms of thinking about and planning for the future. So to kick off our discussion this afternoon, I want to first turn to Alderman Robert Bowman from the wonderful city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And while he was first elected in April 2004 as Alderman in Milwaukee after a long career as an attorney and businessman, and of course, one of the things I think is so interesting in terms of what he'd done was that he had set up a company in Milwaukee to rebuild and remanufacture railroad passenger cars and transit equipment. And he has been involved in the transportation industry for many years since. And so he brings, obviously, a great love and understanding of the whole role of transportation to his role as an elected official. And he is also here, very importantly today, as the chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for the National League of Cities. And obviously, this is an extremely important voice that policymakers across the hill are listening to and need to listen to in terms of hearing from local officials from our cities across the country about what is happening in transportation, how to best address it, what that future looks like, what it needs to be, how we best meet those needs. Alderman Bowman? Well, thank you very much, Carol, for that very nice introduction. And good afternoon, everybody. I'm Alderman in the city of Milwaukee. That's a member of the Common Council or city council. There's 15 of us in Milwaukee. Each district is about 40,000 people. We represent geographical areas of the city. We have a strong council. We may or form a government, although our mayor is pretty potent, former member of Congress, Tom Barrett. I mentioned that because this is his project as well, which I'll get into. Milwaukee is a population of about 600,000 people. The metropolitan area is about 1.5 million, so that gives you a little sense of context. We're 85 miles north of Chicago, so we're very close to Chicago. Great Amtrak service between Chicago and Milwaukee. So there's a lot of synergies there. And Milwaukee once had a very robust streetcar and interurban system, which was abandoned in 1958, like many Midwestern cities of similar size. I thought I would give a presentation on the city's streetcar as sort of a jumping off place to discuss some of the broader policy questions that inform the whole debate of infrastructure week, because we had quite a political fight of it actually. Just by way of brief background, city Milwaukee and the region has been studying adding some form of fixed guideway transit, whether it be light rail or ultimately streetcars, for 25 years. The process began in earnest in 1991 when some very old interstate cost estimate money that was originally earmarked from Milwaukee back in 1956 was reauthorized in the Intermotile Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, and again was placed, was made available to the Milwaukee metro area for some form of transit investment. That was back then $289 million of 1991 money, and that'll be relevant as I go into this, because after 25 years, we have 54 million of that money left in 2015 dollars. So you can see the cost of political bickering in terms of just the buying power of the federal money that is made available in one year, and then 25 years later you decide to use it, and of course inflation has dug into that money significantly, but basically the city council did approve in February a local funding for a downtown streetcar system. This is, here we go, that's the approximate map. It's in the central business district only. It's 2.4 miles in length. It serves most of the residential, commercial, hotel, and entertainment districts of downtown. That is a better map. The line that we approved in February is in blue. The red lines are potential future extensions. And again, these are some of the issues. This is basically the presentation that the mayor used to sell the project to the public. Public was extremely skeptical of this project. There were campaigns to recall people. There were efforts to hold local referenda to approve this project. There were, the mayor is still under political assault, and our election cycle is coming up next April, so we are all, the mayor and the council are elected on the same cycle. We are all up for election 10 months from now, and this will undoubtedly play a role. But this is basically the presentation that the mayor made. These are pictures of Portland, of course. And of course, the job creation, economic development, and improved mobility for downtown where the principal justifications. These are just some of the, and we did definitely, the whole millennial issue and the whole, shall we say, the different paradigm that young people are bringing to nation cities and to public policy, especially in the land use and transportation arena, whether it's motivated by high student loans or whatever the motivation is, there clearly are different attitudes. And I was skeptical of that at first, being a somewhat older guy and not a millennial. Well, how different can people's attitudes really be? I mean, American culture is the American culture. Cars, cars, drive as fast as you want, when you want for free. I mean, that's part of the constitution, right? Oh, it's not, what do you know? I thought that was part of the constitution. The right to drive your car for free whenever you want for nothing, as fast as you want. But any event, lo and behold, there are different attitudes, as I increasingly learn anecdotally as well as reading in the literature. And it turns out that Milwaukee registers relatively well on that scale. This is a report of some think tank, I'm sure, and it's very hard to read, of course, but it puts Milwaukee relatively high up the list with some robust, quote, modern progressive cities. I know we have so many from Austin here. We're not far behind you, although you would think, on first impression, you think we'd be a lot further behind, but we're actually doing relatively better than some other places, which you would think is classic millennial-type cities. So clearly, this played a role. This is some recent development and redevelopment projects in Milwaukee. The upper left corner is some redevelopment at the former Papst Brewery site, which is one of the more iconic locations in Milwaukee. Most people have heard of Papst Beer, and this is where it was brewed for better part of 125 years. Some new developments, some redevelopment of older buildings in the central business district and near central business district, all of which on the streetcar route or within a quarter mile of the route. Some of the other issues that were made basically a map showing the various cities adopting streetcars, thinking about streetcars, thinking about light rail, operating light rail. It's becoming an increasingly large number of cities in that category. These were just some of the all Portland streetcar pictures, as you can see. Job training was a big part of it. Bike share is also programs that we've instituted. That's in the Third Ward. The Third Ward is a former 1890s-era industrial vertical factory neighborhood, which has now pretty much been converted to residential and commercial, very dynamic area, fast-growing, lot of upper-scale residential, and these are some of the methods that were used to employ it here. And then a big argument, and this was some of the arguments that we had locally was, well, this just goes in a loop downtown. It doesn't benefit my neighborhood. Doesn't benefit the central city. It doesn't benefit people who don't have cars. It primarily benefits people who live downtown, near downtown, work downtown, visit downtown. That's sort of the elite. So you had a real elitist argument being made by some of the opponents that it wasn't really benefiting the folks who need transit to get to jobs in the suburbs, which we readily conceded was true. And that gets to the $289 million that was available in 1991. Back then, we had the resources to actually develop Minneapolis-type light rail, or St. Louis-type light rail, or Salt Lake City-type light rail, or Dallas-type light rail that would actually connect neighborhoods with high unemployment, with areas and outlying parts of the city and metro area where there was substantial job growth. We did, at one time, have plans for a 15-mile light rail system from downtown to the western suburbs. That was in 1996. That was $444 million. And people would say, well, why don't you do what they did in Minneapolis? This isn't big enough with one major argument. It's not serving enough areas where people want to go. And we said, you're right. We had a bigger plan 15 years ago, 15 miles, $444 million in today's dollars, about 900 million. And what did they say back then? It's too big. Why don't you start with something smaller? Try something smaller and see if it works first. Okay, we tried something smaller, and well, it's too small now. You should have tried something bigger. So you find you're going a lot of circles with a lot of these political arguments. In any event, why downtown? We had to actually make the case for why you would begin a fixed guideway transit system in the central business district. We made the case. Obviously, one of the issues is that downtown has about 3% of the land mass of the city, but 18% of the tax base. So downtown is an area, if you grow the tax base in downtown Milwaukee, you grow the property tax revenue that is being generated, which of course funds public services throughout the city. So our argument was, to the extent investment in a streetcar will generate economic development, will serve as a catalyst for real estate development that will expand the tax base, that expand the tax base is then in turn used to fund public services throughout the city. So yes, indeed, you do benefit. Even if you live in the far northwest or southwest corner of the city and would not have direct use of this system, you do benefit from that investment in economic development. And there you go, 3.2% of the land area and 18.6% of the tax base. And again, that's some of the basic statistics on the central business district, 80,000 workers, 25,000 residents, and growing, and growing quite dramatically actually. And that's basically the starter system statistics in terms of a quarter mile either side of the route. And this is also a very interesting number. And this is one, to my mind, the effectiveness of transit has always been more a function of density than total population. There's some cities in the West which have big populations. They also have massive land areas. So their actual densities are fairly low. As you see on this lineup here, I mean, you have cities with very high populations and tremendous growth like Austin. But if you look at density, they're actually very far down the list in terms of total population there within the top 10. Milwaukee is actually still maintains a very high level of density, especially in the central business district and in the areas where this streetcar line is actually planned to be built. In fact, our density is almost double Austin's, although their population is growing so fast they may be up there eventually, but they have so much undeveloped land as do many of these other cities on the right hand column. So density being key, a lot of people probably don't realize that Milwaukee is within the top 20 even though we're only 33rd in total population. We have 96 square miles basically and 600,000 people. Oddly enough, in 1920, the 1920 census, Milwaukee was the third most dense city in the United States behind New York City and Philadelphia. They actually had a higher density per square mile than Chicago did, 18,000 per square mile. Same, it was a smaller geographic area at that time. Why now? Well, here we get to some of the issues that were being made as far as potential for catalytic developments. There's a lakefront location, which is gonna be one of the streetcar terminals. That's basically the project budget, the $54 million in interstate cost estimate federal money. Again, money that has been sitting around since 1991 and back in 91, it was $289 million. Today, the purchasing power of that would be close to a billion dollars. Instead, we're fooling around with $54 million that have been whittled down, whittled down because of the lack of political consensus. We're looking, and because interestingly enough, we actually approved this project three years ago, but our state legislature, which as you know, we have a Republican governor who's running for president. We also have a very conservative legislature. They hate rail of all shapes, kinds, and forms. They hate inner city rail, sent back $810 million of federal RR money back in 2010. That was sent back. They didn't want that. They shut down an RTA, which was gonna fund a commuter rail service in the metro area. That was killed. They couldn't kill the streetcar directly, though, because there was no state money involved. They tried, but they couldn't figure out a way that was only state and local. So they figured out a new way of killing a project. That has changed the law on who has to bear the cost of utility relocation. Like any public works project, you have a certain amount of utility relocation that will be involved. You dig up the streets, you gotta move manholes, you gotta move conduit, you gotta move pipe, and this project will of course involve some of that. For 100 years in Wisconsin, the law has been utilities, as is true in most states, utilities, you get free use of the right-of-way, pay no rent, Milwaukee, you wanna put sidewalk dining on this public sidewalk, you gotta pay rent. You wanna put a steam line down the middle of the street? No problem, that's free. Kind of an equity issue there. Well, that's the reality. However, the deal always was, but utilities, you have to move your facilities if a public works project comes along and requires you to go out of the way. So while Wisconsin legislature said, hmm, well, I don't think that's right in the case of the streetcar project. We're gonna change the law. We're gonna make you city bearer the entire cost of utility relocation. And that only applies to the streetcar. For highways, utilities still pay to relocate. For the streetcar, now the city has to pay to relocate. Well, that added about $25 million more or less to the project estimate. So the project we approved with a $64 million budget in 2011, we had to come back in 2015. And again, just in February, and approve a basically a $98 million budget, the extra funds all coming locally. Now you see $124 million total budget, that's because we also added a branch line to the lakefront, which accounts for an additional $25 million investment. So the total product of the 2.5 mile system bi-directional track is $124 million. So it's become a 50-50 city federal finance project, when originally it was gonna be 85-15 federal city financing. Really, I mean, when you get in these political debates, everybody, it's nice to have those debates, but if they really understood how the money works and how the money flows, they would realize how much insanity is involved in that process, especially if you end up approving it anyway, as we ultimately did. And this is just some of the timelines involved. As you see, we're looking at commencing operations in 2018. And there's a thank you. And just one final note on the whole millennial question and the knowledge generation, there was this huge generational split. We actually had a lot of public feedback because we have a place called the website called Urban Milwaukee, which is a blog, website, news site. And they're very pro streetcar, very pro city. And they put out a feedback service that basically was a portal where people could actually register, are they for or against the project, and then they could state a reason. Had to give their name and address, which in politics, you get a lot of anonymous stuff, a lot of crazy stuff, when people don't have to put their name on it. Well, they had to put their name on this, or it wouldn't even go through. So we got some actually insightful, so we had the city council receive probably 3,500 communications this way. That's a lot for a local government. I mean, that is a big amount of feedback. And believe it or not, it was 70, 30 in favor. And it was all concentrated in neighborhoods where you have basically a high high propensity of the 18 to 34 cohort. There was no question about that. There was a generational split. And of course, the opponents were all sort of the Korean war generation, if you want to call them that. I mean, folks in their 60s and 70s, we're against everything. Cave people, citizens against virtually everything. We have a lot of that. And I suspect you have a lot of that everywhere. And you guys here at the Hill see a lot of that probably marching down the halls, cave people, citizens against virtually everything. Well, a lot of that element, but it's very generational, very generational. And that was an interesting kind. And very forward thinking. The comments were, let's get into the 21st century. Let's get modern transit in Milwaukee. It was positive. It was upbeat. The negatives was, you're all a bunch of clowns. You're all crazy. You're idiots. You're wasting money. It was very negative, very hostile, very angry. But the pro comments were really optimistic, upbeat, uplifting, almost uplifted us. Cause we actually sat back, those of us in the council that supported us had passed out a nine to six vote. We thought, hey, people actually see what we're doing. They actually get what we're trying to do here. Every now and then that you would think an elected official shouldn't be surprised by that, but you hear so much negative as the negative seems to rise to the surface. The negative gets the exposure. And that's normally all you hear. People like what you're doing. They usually don't say so, but they sure tell you if they don't like it. So you tend to always hear the negative. To hear the positive was kind of reassuring. Will this thing come to fruition? Probably 90% certainly that it will. We haven't broken ground yet. I've learned in the transit field, especially until that train is actually rolling, somebody could still derail it. If the wrong politics came into play, say the mayor changes hands, you could get a Cincinnati situation where even though it's under construction, I'm gonna shut this down. And when they found out it cost more to shut it down than not, well, we're stuck going forward. That could happen here. It wouldn't not be inconceivable. Probably not, but it's certainly possible. So at this point, we're in final design. We're ready to start letting contracts in summer. Ground will be broken somewhere along the route in probably December, 2015. And there's already people running for mayor who claim they're gonna shut it down if groundbreaking does happen and they get elected in April of 2016. So that's my presentation. And again, thanks for this opportunity. It's been wonderful talking to you all, thank you. I think we should all go to Milwaukee and sit in on some council meetings. But I think that it also is very illustrative of the really robust discussions that do happen across the country as people seek to grapple with vision, with the needs, with money. And how are we going to do all of this? And so it's a very, very important story about what is really involved in terms of delivering for American people. So now we're going to head to another part of the country. And here from Linda Watson, who is the president and CEO for the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority for Austin, Texas. And she has been the president and CEO of the authority there in Austin for almost five years. She has more than 30 years of transportation experience coming from her previous roles in Orlando, Corpus Christi, and also Fort Worth. And I think that a couple of things that are very important. Capital Metro was the first transit system in Texas to earn the state comptroller's highest level recognition for online financial transparency so that you can truly see every dollar that is being spent online and that has been a strong commitment of hers. And another thing that is very important is that in Austin area commuters have really embraced the metro rail commuter line with ridership that has more than quadrupled. And as we've looked at national statistics ridership in terms of transit across the country is up, which is why I think that you see in terms of the story coming out of Milwaukee in terms of there is support. It's just that there's a lot of wrangling, but the thing is in Austin, this huge amount of ridership and creating much more demand and therefore trying to really lead the way in Austin with new solutions. And I must say, and Linda may talk more about this, but just in the last couple of days, I just became aware of the unbelievable growth that Austin is experiencing, which is creating enormous demand in terms of local services to deal with this growth of about 170 people a day coming in and locating there. Linda, welcome. Thank you. You have certainly done your homework. You know a lot about Austin and my background too, so thank you very much for that introduction. Austin is bursting at the seams. We're growing so fast. It's 150 people moving there every single day, bringing, as far as we can tell, 70 cars with them, and the growth is absolutely phenomenal. In fact, Forbes Magazine has named Austin America's number one fastest growing city for the fourth year in a row. And in addition to all of this growth, despite them bringing their automobiles, we are seeing a decline in car ownership and a rise in downtown living in our very youthful community. We have the University of Texas there, 52,000 students, 60,000 when you throw in faculty and staff. And so there's a lot of changes happening in Austin. We are becoming more densely developed because we have to. We've got to figure out places to put everybody. For the first time, they just announced recently micro apartments that have no parking spaces with them. So we're using every tool in the toolbox, I guess, to try to accommodate that. Bicycles, I know, is growing across the country. It's no different in our city. And of course they use bicycles and public transportation together for a complete trip. Our job at Capital Metro is to move people and we do that every single day. We have a very tech savvy community. Google just announced that they're taking up 200,000 square feet in one of our new office towers. Apple, I think, has 4,000 employees now. So our tech industry software development is really, really strong in this area. And so we have to be very technology savvy to attract riders to the transit system. So we've worked very hard and I'm pleased to say that we're number one in a new study of 70 cities across the country that say our transit tech options are making us one of the most car free or car light cities in the US. And like Austin, communities across the country, the economy is changing and it's because of technology. If you look ahead, it's starting today, but if you look into the future, a disproportionate number of American jobs are going to be in this new knowledge-based economy. And when you think about it, we now today, for the most part, have baby boomers planning services for the future for the millennials. So we really have to think about how the millennials are gonna live and the kinds of services they are going to use. And we can just look back several decades to see how things have changed. During the industrial economy, we had our transportation system, we had a transportation system in the post-industrial economy because it became more of a service economy. And now that it's a knowledge economy that we're looking at in the future, it's going to require a completely different transportation system that's going to need to serve these people in these high-tech areas and this very creative and talented workforce to make sure that we have a competitive edge. There's a lot of knowledge-intensive industries that are locating their key facilities close to firms, close to research labs, universities so they can share research practices and innovations. And because of physical limitations, highways are not always the answer and is it really the answer to help support and sustain our growth moving forward? Well, APTA, the American Public Transportation Association has analyzed these trends in 2013 and did a report that's titled The Role of Transit in Support of High Growth Business Clusters in the US. And in just a few months, a follow-up report is coming out. Austin is one of the communities featured in this report. And many of the results of this report is going to show that this is a really important issue in this new global marketplace and that transportation systems that support the sustainability of our knowledge-based economy is going to be crucial for us to maintain our international competitiveness. And many firms in the knowledge economy are choosing locations like Austin that appeal to the knowledge workers. These locations are offering housing options that provide walkable access to services, to entertainment, shopping, and even mobility choices. Industries relying on these creative, high-skilled workers are tending to be places where public transportation is a real option. And high-tech workers are finding special appeal in cities like Austin that are becoming more walkable and connected not only by transit, but by technology. Well, here's the pitch. Public transit and highway grants have been funded from the Highway Trust Fund and those can't be made unless we have our authorization bill. And our hope is, and the reason for us being here today is that Congress passes a new surface transportation authorization before, obviously, Map 21 expires on May 31st. Without it, there's huge consequences. Austin is now the fifth most congested city in North America and the 10th most congested in the world, surpassing New York City, Paris, and Rome. You want to keep cities like Austin healthy. You want to keep up with the infrastructure needs. Just in a one-year period from July 13th through July 14th, each Austin driver wasted an average of almost 43 hours stuck in traffic. There's 140,000 people commuting from the outline areas into the downtown Austin area and combined, there was a 6.2 million hours lost to congestion. And poll after poll shows that traffic is our number one problem, number one issue, and we run the risk of diminishing all the positive things that are happening there if we're not able to keep up with our infrastructure. And even as progressive as Austin is, you have to remember we're in the state of Texas, even though our former governor used to say we're the blueberry in the tomato soup. We are still Texans who love our cars. And so that's why we need an all of the above strategy to give people multiple options. There's no single solution. Study after study has said we need to do it all and we are working on it. We are widening and lengthening existing roads where we can, not a lot of right of way to do that. We're building new toll roads and adding toll lanes to existing highways. We're adopting new last mile options where more suburban cities are trying to figure out how to fund and provide transit service. And Capital Metro is investing in new transit services, new technologies, more rail and more frequency on many of our bus routes. But we can't do it alone. We've had a long history and tradition of partnerships with the federal government on our infrastructure investment and that needs to continue. The economic benefit that comes with infrastructure investment is absolutely indisputable. You've probably heard the number, but for every dollar invested, there's a $4 economic benefit. Most people believe that we need to maintain and improve the transportation systems that serve the nation in so many ways. And there's many costs associated with this. An $86 billion one time cost to bring the nation's existing transit infrastructure into a state of good repair. The annual cost of maintaining the existing system and doing normal replacement of aging buses, cars and rail cars and facilities. The cost of expanding public transportation facilities in growing communities and the cost of maintaining our aging roads and bridges. While passenger fares combined with state and local funding pay for more than 80% of the $61 billion in public transit expenditures each year, federal spending is a critical part of paying for capital and operating expenses at public transportation systems nationally. In closing, we at the American Public Transit Association urge the US Congress to enact a new multi-year authorization bill that provides dedicated funding in the Highway Trust Fund and to pay for transit programs. We also support federal legislation for the creation of an integrated network of inner city passenger rail services with dedicated revenues other than those currently supporting the Highway Trust Fund for such a program. And finally, thank you so much for spending your time today with us and for your continued work in this area. We appreciate it very much. Thank you very much, Linda. And I think everybody is acutely aware that we are getting very close to May 31st and as the House and Senate committees and Finance and Ways and Means committees have to deal with this really, really important infrastructure issue with regard to what happens with regard to transportation, the clock is ticking and I think it's really important for us all to learn as much to have really, really fruitful discussions about what are the best ways to help resolve these issues. So we're now going to turn to another local government person, Joanna Turner, who is Executive Director for the National Association of Regional Councils. And of course, Joanna's been at NARC, the National Association for Regional Councils for about a year. And this is an association that represents both the elected leadership as well as the professional staff of regional councils, MPOs, metropolitan planning organizations and councils of governments of all sizes across the country. And Joanna brings a lot of experience to her role at NARC because prior to taking on this position she was at the US Department of Transportation where she was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs under Secretary LaHood and Secretary Fox. And previously to that she had also been at the National Governors Association working on transportation issues and policy. And prior to that she had also worked for the National League of Cities. So the area of experience of listening to local leaders across the country, seeing it from a city, from a state, and then trying to really work with that at the US Department of Transportation. She's now bringing that to NARC. Welcome, Joanna. Thanks, Carol. And thanks to aptitude for the invitation. I also do want to thank all of you for coming today. You know, you have that moment in your mind where you think, oh, there's so much going on. Am I gonna show up? And it's gonna be the five of us and Art eating 500 sandwiches. And so it's really nice that that's not what happened. So a big thanks to you. For those of you who are not familiar with NARC, Carol walked you through a little bit of it. We are a Washington DC-based organization. We represent regional councils and MPOs across the country. There are about 500 such regional planning bodies across the US. Each is governed by a board of directors and that board of directors is always made up of the elected officials from their member cities and member counties from their regional planning area. But all of them share one thing and that is that they were formed to try to solve a problem that is better solved on a regional basis than as an individual city or county. MPOs, which for our conversation are probably most useful for you to understand, are a specific type of regional council. Those are mandated by federal law for any area over 50,000 population and designated every 10 years after a new census comes out. I think it's important for our conversation too for you to understand kind of what the feds require of MPOs, my members. And that is two plans are required and we're transportation folks. So we love acronyms. I had to go through and strike out all the acronyms from my speech and remember not to use them. The first is the LRTP, the Long Range Transportation Plan. That examines the region's transportation needs over the next 20 or more years and provides a framework to address those needs through policies, programs and sometimes projects too. It's a comprehensive statement of the reasons future transportation needs as identified by again those local jurisdictions who make up the boards and the member area for the region. The LRTP importantly is often part of a larger vision for the region that incorporates other goals too. That's you name it, housing, workforce development, accommodating aging populations, et cetera. And then the Transportation Improvement Program or the tip for Washington nerds like us. List specific projects, all regionally significant and federally funded transportation projects and services in the MPO planning area. And it's multimodal. Every mode, every project that is important for the region is included on the tip. So you name it, highway streets, public transportation. If it's regionally supported, it's on that tip. And this is really important because federal law requires that any project that receives federal money, federal dollars, even a dollar has to be on that tip in order to be eligible for those funds. So this process is really important for the conversation that we're having today. And the regional councils and MPOs that develop both of these products, the LRTP and the tip, do so through a robust planning process that involves the public and involves decision makers and involves all the stakeholders that are relevant to think about all of these things moving forward. So in a lot of ways, regional councils, MPOs serve as conveners and they bring all of these stakeholders together to talk about how to improve transportation, how to promote smart growth in a lot of places, how to protect the environment, and importantly, how to enhance the economy of the region. And as we talked about today, that economy is changing. My members, and by extension, their local governments and all of their stakeholders recognize that we're in the process of a major transformation in our economy. We know that American job growth, as Linda mentioned, will be in knowledge-based industries moving forward. And the citizens we work to serve will need new skills to be able to get those jobs that come with this changing economy. In this new workforce, the ones who are taking these knowledge-based, knowledge economy jobs are often looking for very different things from their transportation system than previously. And we've talked a little bit about millennials already. They're defined as 18 to 34. They're the ones who are taking these knowledge economy jobs. And as pure data was just released on Monday, these millennials, just this year, are the largest share of the U.S. workforce. They just surpass Generation X. That's my generation. Other research, thank you for that. Other research shows that millennials are driving less and actually significantly less than generations did at this stage of life. Even when you account for the state of the economy or for household income. And in fact, ZIPCAR's annual survey, I love this statistic, shows that cars are now, or cars are, the most prized possessions of, or most prized technology for every generation, except for millennials. Millennials, in fact, would rather part with their car than their computer or their cell phone, which is a remarkable shift in how the public thinks about driving. There's also been a real marked decline in the share of licensed drivers under age 35. When I graduated from high school, everybody wanted a car. I grew up in downtown Boston, so no one got one, but everybody wanted one. But that's changed. Right now, only, so in 1981, 46% of underage 35, they weren't called millennials then, I guess, I don't know what they were called then, had a driver's license. And now, it's dropped to 30%, and it's declining. It seems to be continuing to decline. Virginia's Secretary of Transportation, Aubrey Lane, in fact, just said that about 70% of millennials in Virginia use some form of transportation other than driving. And to regions, what these statistics mean is that transit-accessible locations are particularly important for knowledge-based businesses that are trying to recruit these millennials. And while still continuing to serve the entire spectrum of transit users, a Virginia tech analysis that just came out found that 59% of the jobs in Northern Virginia are located within a quarter mile of metro rail or a VRE station or a bus stop. Sorry, Sham, I knew I was going first. And in fact, more than 90% of new office space in this region is within a half a mile of a metro station. In smaller regions, we're also seeing some changes. FEMA Allen County Regional Planning Commission service area, transit plays a key role in connecting millennials to jobs, but also the elderly, disabled and underemployed folks in that community, which is about 100,000 people. Recent data in that area shows that the total number of trips have increased just in the last four years by more than 5%, while employment-related trips have increased about 60%. And that is about 83,000 trips in an area of about 100,000 in 2014 alone. So this service has made Lima's jobs in the areas regionally supported industrial and commercial parks much more accessible to the community, which has a poverty rate of almost 35%. So through the regional planning process, regional councils, MPOs develop new bus rapid transit services, streetcars, light rail, bike pass sidewalks, re-imagined complete streets, and indeed new highway capacity projects, which are still a key to our transportation system, all of which help support sustained job growth and provide the kind of mobility options that citizens in these regions want. And in this knowledge economy, technology is central to everything we do, and that's true in planning as well. Technological innovation allows MPOs to provide access to planning documents, and it also gives us a unique opportunity to get more people involved without asking them to attend a meeting. You know, if anybody who's read Bowling Alone, meeting attendance for these kinds of civic duties is declined, but what we've discovered is that through technology, we can still get a really robust participation, and millennials in particular are really engaged in these technological solutions. But it's also changed the way transportation looks, too. You know, you can now travel by car without owning or even driving one. You know, we've got Zipcar, our car to go, Lyft and Uber, bike sharing's possible because of technology, and all of the planners that I work for are convinced that the influence technology on transportation's only gonna continue to grow. It almost doesn't matter what happens next. These technological changes are gonna have a big impact on us. And it really does have an impact on us because a number of the assumptions that we make will probably change. You know, if ride sharing continues to spread, can we reduce parking requirements for downtown locations, for buildings, for apartments, for offices? You know, what happens to our traffic models if millennials never get licenses? You know, if that 30% stays constant over time and they do not continue to buy cars, how do we change our transportation models? What happens to transit in that situation? And there are other technologies coming down the pike as well that my members are concerned about kind of figuring out how to adapt to, like vehicle to vehicle and driverless cars. You know, how should we incorporate those new technologies into our future plans? The good news, though, is that technology's also providing some solutions to MPOs and a number of regional councils are already using smartphone data, which has been described as the greatest technological or transportation advancement in the last decade. And I think it's pretty easy to agree with that. But MPOs are using smartphone data to figure out how commuters travel within regions and are using that data to better model for the future. And that's also enabling us to create some better transportation projects. Which brings us to reauthorization and Linda's talked a bit about this. We depend on our partnership with the federal government. You know, I'm sure some of you have seen the statistics about the kind of overall pie that is spent on the transportation system. The vast majority comes from state and local governments. It's not from the federal government, but the federal government is still a key partner. And we require and depend on that funding in order to be able to create these kinds of plans. Map 21 in fact provides planning dollars to all MPOs to develop these plans that are required by federal law. And without funding certainty, we can't develop these plans. We can't develop these plans and projects that are critical to our economic success in regions. And critically important too is these plans are fiscally constrained by law. Federal law requires that every project that is put on a tip has some way to be funded. And the LRTP is supposed to have some kind of reality-based assessment of the types of revenues that are coming down the pike. And without funding certainty from the federal government, these plans just can't make any sense. And the real problem is this extension situation that we're in now. We've already seen one extension. That ends the end of this month. But what frightens me is if history is any kind of guide, we're gonna see a lot more. ICE T, which was passed in 1991, saw one extension that lasted six months. Then we got T-21, which is actually pretty groundbreaking legislation. That was passed in 1998. It was extended 12 times for a total of 22 months, which brought us to safety loo, which was passed in 2005. 10 extensions, lasting 34 months. We can't plan for or build a robust transportation system that is multimodal that gets us into the next century with these kinds of extensions. We need long-term federal authorization. We need money to pay for it. NARC, my organization, supports long-term reauthorization of MAP-21, puts more money into the hands of local governments and regional entities, so that we can continue to build these kinds of transformational transportation projects. We also support and specifically support a gas tax increase, along with a variety of other options for getting this done. And all of us, my members, my staff, and I stand ready to work with all of you to ensure that we can get this bill accomplished and accomplished as quickly as possible and for as long authorization period as possible. So again, thanks for inviting me. Thanks for being here. And I'm looking forward to doing some Q&A if we have time. Okay, we are now going to turn to our last presenter and then following Cheyenne Cannon's presentation, we'll open it up for some discussion, but Cheyenne is the Managing Director for the Office of Planning for Metro for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. And at WMATA, he brings a background in planning and transit oriented development experience in both the public and private sectors. And of course, as part of WMATA, in terms of dealing with Metro, it means that dealing with the economics, with economic development and with the business community is simply enormous in terms of thinking about the long-term planning. And we've certainly seen a huge development and redevelopment in our whole metropolitan area and the extensive role the Metro plays in that. Cheyenne. Thanks for having us. Good afternoon. And for those of you who are customers, thank you very much for being our customers as well. I learned this morning that Kim Jong-un killed his defense minister for sleeping in a meeting. So we will all be grateful that we are here in the United States of America where that does not happen. But if I catch you, I've caught some of you already. That's exactly right. So we've talked a lot about the theory of the importance of transit and transit infrastructure to competitiveness. We're going to walk through some numbers here. And the reason why we're going to walk through some numbers is because we, at least in the DC region, have been able to identify that there is actually a return on investment in terms of jobs that accrue to these major infrastructure investments. It's not a planner's fancy. It's not some sort of infrastructure boondoggle. These things are the ground under which jobs are created. I'm going to show you exactly why. Before we get into the actual numbers, we were doing an event last week for officials in Northern Virginia. And there was a representative there from a company called CVENT. Now, CVENT is a meetings infrastructure deployments and app-based service, a web-based service to allow major companies to run their meetings. It has a market capitalization of $1 billion with a B. And they just moved their headquarters right on top of a brand new metro rail station. And one of the reasons they did that is because despite the fact that they were located in and around the nation's capital with access to all this talent, they had 300 coding vacancies that they could not fill because the talent that they were trying to accrue to go to their billion-dollar company didn't want to live in the environment where their company was located. It wasn't convenient enough. There wasn't transit access. It wasn't cool or hip enough. So when billion-dollar companies decide that they need to be on top of transit, I'm going to show you a couple more here. You realize that transit doesn't just mean business, but business needs transit in order to survive. So flipping through this, this is a map of the DC region as it was. You probably remember the Beltway. This defined the region for many years. And for many years, growth actually emanated out to the West. Most of the growth was emanating out to the western part of the region in a 90-degree arc emanating from the downtown. And we would imagine single-family homes as far west as Iowa City in terms of the growth patterns of this region. We were a sprawl capital USA. But what's happened over the past 15 years is the way this region has grown has been to redirect all the growth around these emerging urban centers. We've seen not only the millennial generation drive population growth in the district proper, but also in the formerly sub-urban areas of the district which are now urbanizing at a very, very fast clip. In fact, these areas that I just showed you, despite the fact that they cover something like less than 5% of the land area of this region, they're capturing 25% of the household growth. And that's being driven, not just in part by a robust economy, which is less robust today than it was before the crash and sequestration, but also because of the fact that we've got the infrastructure for a very low cost of transportation economy driven in large part by infrastructure investments in transit. So over the last 10 years, the District of Columbia proper added something like 80,000 people. The bulk of them were between 18 and 34 years old and they do move here because they don't need to own a personal combustion engine. They can get around by using Metro, ride-on, R, dash, the bus, but also now Lyft, Uber, and now Bridge. When you lay over the Metro rail network on top that you can see what's connecting all of these emerging urban areas and why we're so competitive. And the fact of the matter is it's not because we're a government town. We are no longer a government town. This region of 5 million and the rail network which serves them every single day and provides 1.2 million trips does so for a workforce that is still strong in federal government, no longer just federal government. We're talking about computer scientists. We're talking about healthcare workers. We're talking about biotechnology. We're talking about energy. We're talking about oil and gas. All of these things contribute to this DC economy. And so in as much as this infrastructure was important as a state in the region for 20 years it's now actually providing the catalyst for us to be such a competitive place for young workers to move to. This is the pipeline. So what we were able to find out from the real estate economy which for us is the bellwether of private sector activity. We monitor the real estate economy because it tells us where do jobs wanna go? Where do households wanna go? We know the following. We know that right now 84% of all the construction activity in this region, this region of 5 million people that goes from West Virginia to the Eastern Shore from Pennsylvania to Spotsylvania, 84% of all commercial construction is not within one half mile of a metro rail station but within one quarter of a mile of a metro rail station. We know of all of the leasing activity last year, 92% of all the leases north of 20,000 square feet took place within one quarter mile of a metro rail station. And we know that of the 100 million square feet of development that's currently slated to go forward, 50% of it's pre-leased, 30% of it's under construction and all of this is taking place around transit infrastructure. So this is an example of what this looks like. This is an aerial view of a place formerly known as Tyson's Corner, formerly known as a strip mall connected by freeways for lack of better terminology. And now you can see the pipeline of projects emerging around four brand new metro rail stations in part funded by the New Starts program, very important federal investment here. And of the roughly $3 billion that's been spent on phase one, we're already recognizing $18 billion in private sector investment around these four stations alone and we're only getting started. It's about 20 million square feet of office coming out of the ground, about 20,000 residential units, 10,000 hotel rooms, two million square feet of retail, that's more than currently is in Tyson's gallery today. And we're only at about 25% of the total build out capacity of the four Tyson stations. So when anyone tells you that transit is somehow a money pit, doesn't realize that we're already recognizing a six to one return on investment. I put my money on that any day and we've only gotten started. Going forward, the team that I managed has been taking a look at the pipeline going forward. I mentioned there's about 100 million square feet of construction or projects under development. A lot of this has taken place at or near metro rail stations. And the important for the knowledge economy here again is that these are actual jobs, this is where they wanna locate. And in DC, these are largely private sector jobs. The growth in DC going forward is going to be in professional and business services. These are private sector jobs, private companies that are locating at or near transit. And so the punchline for this group is that the discussions about transit infrastructure anchoring competitiveness, anchoring where jobs want to be, anchoring the innovation economy is no longer fanciful planner talk. We actually can see the bricks and mortar of this idea coming to reality. And it's very important that we move forward and absolutely get the fodder of funding in place. Stop killing the cow that, or stop killing the golden goose, killing the cash cow. I invented the sacred cow. My people did at least so I can slaughter it a little bit. So the point here is that if we know what works and we know that transit infrastructure means huge returns on investment, we know that that's where jobs want to be. And we know that the payoff is bigger than the pay-in. Why stop that? Why stop what works? Why not double triple quadruple down on that and continue to make every city in this nation as competitive as it can be. So I'll end there short and sweet and we'll take questions. Thank you. Thank you. That was terrific. Okay, let's open it up for any questions or comments and just identify yourself, please. Go ahead. Great to hear. I want to follow up on your presentation, really all of them, but particularly yours. We all are in agreement, I think, that the gas tax needs to be increased. We need a long-term program. You're singing to the choir, but we need other sources of revenue. And one of them that I think it's time to begin to get a base of support around is transit-oriented development and value capture out of transit-oriented development. Now last year, Congressman Petri, who unfortunately is retired, and Congressman Lepinsky, who is still with us, fortunately, introduced an excellent bill, which I was involved with at the end of the session. Art and his group vetted it at the end of the session, but it's a value capture bill to encourage and incentivize and allow the use of federal innovative financing through RIF to put in infrastructure for commercial development if they'll put in a value capture mechanism to put money back into the rail operation. Just as the commercial development really needs the transit and the rail operation, the rail operation needs that source of revenue. And my belief is that can be a tremendous source of revenue for passenger, both inner city and commuter rail. And I would really like to see these groups begin to focus on that issue and get behind that kind of a concept. And that's the end of the sermon. Well, amen. Right. Okay, any reaction, comment with regard to that? Okay, go ahead. Tax incremental financing is a version of that. And that's essentially what we use to cover the local share of some $60 million in Milwaukee was exactly that. I mean, basically you build the rail, development follows and the increment between the base amount of that development and what the new development generates is used to finance the construction. So we're, but the total numbers would be the question of how much money can you actually generate through that mechanism. It's happening in a lot of the international programs without cross-credit. Okay, did either, Jen or Shine, did you wanna say anything? Did you wanna say anything about it, Art? Okay, great. Thank you very much. Any other questions or comments? Okay, back here first, and then over here, yeah. Yeah, I have a good job on that one. In Maryland right now, we're waiting for a decision that the governor of Purple Line and the force of suburbs, Redline and Baltimore, what sort of impact did the Redline have on Baltimore that it's cool to see it recently? Anybody wanna talk about that? Okay, Shine. So the way to think about that question is to imagine, let's go back 40 years, what was taking place in downtown D, right around us, 40 years from now, 40 years ago, or even 20 years ago when we were finishing the construction of the Greenline, if you remember, or actually commencing construction on the Greenline. The areas of town right now that are hot, that are booming, aren't areas that you would have walked up and down with a flashlight and a baseball bat and broad daylight in 85. And yet they command right now the highest prices per square foot in the eastern seaboard. They are very attractive for both commercial and residential development. They're safe, inviting, high value neighborhoods. And they are that way in part because of the benefit that transit has conveyed to those neighborhoods. Not entirely, I don't wanna argue that somehow transit is a panacea for all sorts of social problems and all sorts of a legacy of underinvestment in less resourced communities. That's not something that any type of infrastructure investment's going to solve, but it helped. And so I think that for those who are looking at a community like Baltimore that has experienced chronic underinvestment, not just for years, but for decades and generations. Can that type of physical investment and connectivity help? Absolutely. Is the payoff gonna be next year? No way. These type of things take decades to germinate and to gestate and to produce the impact that we do see in any type of investment, including a transit investment. But one case in point from our own experience here, we just opened up the silver line. And one thing that we forget about the silver line is it actually connects into Maryland. And there are a growing number of commuters that formerly were shut off from the job growth that's taking place in the Northern Virginia suburbs because they would have either had to own a car and drive across the Wilson Bridge and pay for the upkeep and insurance of that vehicle as well as the hour and a half each way in traffic or now take a comfortable one seat ride from Largo to Tyson's and walk to their job. I've seen it myself. So the question, the near term question is would that investment give access to employment to opportunities for employment education to residents in Baltimore? For whom right now that type of access is cost prohibitive? So none of this, as we all know, happens as you said overnight, but it does require some real planning and starting to have that vision and realization and to start that work. And that means having a commitment. Okay, over here first and then over here first. It's a social question because I live in that high growth area, the Green Line. And the Green Line next to Baseball Stadium. And that's fine, go ahead. And my question is there is a lot of talk about the millennials and not eating a car and going with bikes and et cetera. But I know two things. One, more of the millennials after a year down there are buying a car and then parking it. And the second thing is there's no parking space for them. That's becoming a major issue. So how do you deal with the lack of parking, the demand for millennial, you know, all the attention is placed on millennials. And what about the millennial 10, 15 years from now when they have to have a larger home and they have a family and they have to commute by car or by some other way into the city or into some other area? So the question, the question broadly speaking is, the phenomenon we're seeing with the late Gen Ys and millennials somehow eroding and are they exhibiting parents, exhibiting trends that are more closely resembling of their parents' generations? And there's always a difference between research and research, right? So for every individual that I meet that tells me a story of limited parking in their neighborhood, I appreciate hearing the story but the actual data tells a drastically different story from what's taking place via personal anecdote. So we take a look at things like driver's license, applications and registrations by age cohort, not only in a national but at a local level. And for the same time period in the age cycle for today's 18 to 34 year old, not only the car ownership but driver's license applications are down 16 to 24%. Higher in areas that have public transportation like the District of Columbia. We see that the school enrollment for schools in the District of Columbia and inner suburbs is through the roof. The waiting list for lotteries is a very, very complicated parlor game that this generation is playing at a time when the boomers and Eisenhower's had bet that they would have already moved out to the far-flung exerbs for schools. So again, the data continues to point against what the presumption about the behaviors is. And I have to live with, you know, as a public steward, I have to rely on actual numbers. Developers are coming to us or not coming to us but coming to permitting jurisdictions asking for our support because they're required to provide parking at ratios that are above what the market can bear and they're ending up with floors of empty parking spaces at very high costs and the costs are too prohibitive to then develop. One needs only to travel up the green line to DCUSA and you'll find an entire level, maybe level and a half right now of parking that the district mandated had to be built as part of that retail project that not only isn't used but it's shuttered now because it costs more to keep the lights on, costs too much to keep the lights on there. There was an assumption that the younger generation that the urban generation would still drive into Target and load up their Target with whatever they're buying and drive out. They're not using the parking spaces. You should convert it into a bowling alley or something really cool because you're paying the interest on the bonds for that parking but not getting any return. So I appreciate the anecdotes but the data tells a drastically different story. Michael Stevens and I are good friends. I've been down in that part of town a fair amount and Michael's very aware of these statistics. And I would encourage you to participate in the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government's planning process. They develop these data sets as well and can provide you specific data not only in your neighborhood but on the region as a whole but it's also a way for you as an interested citizen to participate and develop these long range transportation plans and the tips that you think are appropriate for the region that you live in. Yeah, and I would add I was skeptical that there was that big a generational difference in transportation and land use preferences as what some of the data was suggesting. But I was happy to hear there was this big difference being a big public transit and inner city rail guy. I was very happy that well maybe the good old days are coming back after all. But I have to say I'm becoming impressed that these differences are real. And yes, I've seen reports by the Realtors Association that all young people really do secretly want to buy houses they just can't and well they studied only those people who are actively looking for a house so what kind of survey is that I mean it's almost. And same I've heard I've seen surveys from the automobile sales or marketing organizations showing that all the young people secretly do want cars I just can't quite afford them yet. So I would say the data is there's some mixed results but any truly shall we say scientific research seems to suggest pretty big differences and I've come to believe that they are largely true. Okay, we'll have time for the last two questions over here first and then we'll go over here. Hi, Michael Nix, Alderman from 1990 to 1995 I was the federal lobbyist for Wisconsin Electric which we call the energies. Right. And those light rail lines you talked about that they did away with in the 1950s those used to be part of T-Murl, the Milwaukee Rail and Light Company. Right. And so those discussions that you were talking about back in the 90s I was involved in some of those but I lived here but I lived in Milwaukee for one year I lived in the Yankee Hill from 90 to 91 which is this really nice apartment complex there where Herb Cole the owner of the Milwaukee Bucks some of you know him as a US Senator that's where he used to put his players when he'd first bring players into the team but something you'll like about this Alderman was we were probably a Fortune 200 company back then my CEO's making several million dollars a year. His secretary would call me up before he's coming into town and I'd be like okay I gotta talk to him about nuclear I gotta talk to him about clean air emissions I gotta talk to him about, she goes yeah yeah Michael first things first he wants to be at a hotel that's above a metro. So here's the guy making seven figures and his secretary's calling me up to find out where's the because I said yeah we got this great metro system here and we were having conversations back then in 93, 94 with Portland about well you know we could do this in Milwaukee and where do we put this and do we do it for economic development do we do it to bring in people from the suburbs and I said well man we got this great system here in DC and it works really well and I said you know I drive my car like 2,000 miles a year because I live right by Dupont Circle and here's another thing you'll like the company got me parking spaces one at Union Station and another at Metro Center when I switched offices I said don't pay for my parking put that into my salary because I can drive quicker or I can take the subway quicker than it's gonna take me to drive and they're like no no we want you to have a parking space I said have you seen DC traffic I said we got this great metro system why don't you do but again this was 20 years ago so kudos to you congratulations all you're doing with this it looks great but I know exactly what you've been going to because I was in some of these conversations in the early 90s so kudos to you and kudos to you folks doing mass transit it's fantastic living here in DC. So and basically it doesn't matter sort of the economics behind it whoever's got how much or whatever transit is important to their value system so okay over here or yeah. Thank you I'm Rick Rybeck with Just Economics I wanted to thank the panel I've learned a lot today and I appreciate all the work you're doing for transit. Just wanted to say to the woman who experienced the increase in parking congestion in your neighborhood that you're correct as well as the panelists. I mean even though the numbers are correct that there are very much fewer car ownership and car driving by the young people who are moving to the city you take a place like Southwest Washington near where the stadium is that used to be full of derelict garages, taxi stands, vacant lots, adult nightclubs and you start putting high-rise housing there and townhouses and businesses and all of a sudden even though there's fewer car ownership per person there's just so many more people there you're gonna have more cars and so it requires an integrated approach which looks at parking management, curbside management, car sharing, bike access, pedestrian facilities all to make it work and none of these as Shyam said none of these things work in isolation from each other so just to be clear as much as I'm a transit supporter transit doesn't always make sense everywhere. I mean if you put a metro-type system in the middle of an Iowa cornfield you destroy land value there. You take perfectly good cornfields and ruin them for corn and nobody would want to locate a home or a high-rise in the middle of that Iowa cornfield that's now not good for growing corn and not connected to anything else. So you have to have the right systems in the right places and you have to think about more than just one mode you have to think about all of them and how they work together but I think that with the help of the folks on the panel we can move in a good direction. Thank you. Last question, okay. My name is Beth Ann Ray. I recently relocated from Austin, Texas worked with Linda, I was a staff at the Austin Chamber of Commerce. One of the prevailing comments we would hear in the business community particularly about transit-oriented development was just that you were taking real estate development that would have happened somewhere else and putting it someplace else. How would you respond to that? What data do you have that shows that that's still better development than just dropping it anywhere? Good old day on this. So there's at least 10 counter punches. Let's do three of them. The first thing is the premise that that development would have happened is no longer holding true. We're seeing that the valuations of assets that are located far from urban centers is plummeting and really what we're seeing is the last gasp of sprawl in terms of the real estate markets today and we're still recovering. We're still in the middle of recovering from the last gasp of sprawl and sustaining some of that. What were once high-value suburban master plan communities are now the new slums and policing efforts are on the up because they're being turned into drug houses. Corporate office parks are being abandoned by their former corporate tenants because they don't want to be there anymore. So let's first take that assumption that the development would have happened anyway because the market isn't supporting it. The second counter punch is that the valuation of a square foot of office that is located far from the amenities that an urban community provides is going to be at least half that of the value of a square foot of office in an urban community where you have both transit but also the walkable amenities. So you tell the real estate developers, it's your choice. You're gonna lease that space of office to the same number of employees and you can either take 30 bucks a square foot or 15 bucks a square foot. What would you rather have? And the developer's gonna tell you every single time you'd rather take 30 bucks per square foot. Especially what it means, I've got lower construction costs because I don't have to build all that parking that I otherwise had to build for all of those employees, right? And the third counter punch is talent. It's not just that the corporate office owners don't want to have these large unattractive campuses because really they're less underwriteable but they're having a harder time competing for talent. So for the ultimate tenant who says, I want to be able to access the brightest, fastest, smartest labor pool possible. They're realizing that they have to be in these urban centers or urbanizing suburbs and they can't be as attractive for talent. So the real estate developers are really realizing that as well. Now real estate's a funny thing because assets are sometimes held on to for a generation before they're developed. And so there's vested interests in making those assets which were purchased during the last generational real estate cycle very attractive today and now a new crop of real estate vultures that are coming in and buying the ashes of the last burnout and trying to reposition those for something. So they're going to tell you everything to Sunday to make you believe that those are very valuable assets. But so far we're not seeing the market prop it up. You know what might prop it up if they can convince you to build an interchange which by the way is a transportation infrastructure investment just a different kind but transportation does drive development. The question is whether or not you want to swim upstream or not. Great and we'll let that be the final word and I think that there is a lot of research underway by APTA in terms of really looking specifically at what is happening with regard to businesses in terms of the whole knowledge industry and their connection to transit and where they locate and we look forward to getting even more information out to you about that. And I wanna thank all of you so much on the panel for being here and talking about this. We look forward to working with you in the future. Thank you all for coming.