[flickr]photo:5103842556[/flickr]
Portions of the North/Clybourn Red Line station were completely rebuilt using funds contributed by Apple in an example of joint development – a value capture financing tool. Photo by Kevin Zolkiewicz.
Ed. note: Jason Saavedra was a fellow student at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. He is now a planning, policy and communications consultant and writes for a blog called the Terre Haute Project in Terre Haute, Indiana. -Steven
As a nation, we are not investing enough money in our transportation infrastructure. We pay for transit, sidewalks, roads, and trails using a set per-gallon fuel tax – an unsustainable revenue source (see note 1) – and the recently proposed MAP-21 surface transportation bill does not propose any new fees or tax increases to ensure that federal money will be available to pay the cost of maintaining our transportation system.
The unsustainable nature of our current transportation funding system is not really news, and Grid Chicago readers are particularly well-informed: we discussed the shortfalls of “traditional” transportation funding in a recent series of posts. But what may be news to you is that forward-thinking local communities are choosing to go the DIY route: they are looking for innovative ways to pay for needed infrastructure investment themselves.
This is where Value Capture (VC) comes into play. Continue reading Value Capture: Financing sustainable transportation