Fall 2016 Rebooting New England by PennPlanning

REBOOTING NEW ENGLAND: A â&#x20AC;&#x153;Met-Workâ&#x20AC;? Strategy for Bypassed Metros Fall 2016 Regional Planning Studio Department of City and Regional Planning School of Design University of Pennsylvania Leading Faculty: Professor Bob Yaro Advisors: Foster Nichols, Emil Frankel, Vincent Goodstadt This report serves as the capstone requirement for a Masters in City Planning for the following candidates: Darcy Anders | Adam Berkowitz | Kyle Kager | Sanford Klanfer | Ziming Liu | Jessica Neubelt | Diwen Shen | Jarred Toups | Dan Wang | Jia Wei | Luyun Zhao | Qian Zhang Special Acknowledgment: We are deeply indebted to AECOM and WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff for their support for our Manchester Studio and for the participation of their staff in both the US and UK. Special thanks are due to Chris Ward, AECOM, New York and Andrew Jones, AECOM, London and Jerry Jannetti and Foster Nichols at WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff for their advice and financial support. ii

FOREWORD The Rebooting New England graduate planning studio was convened by the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design in the Fall of 2016. The course, consisting of 12 students in the final year of a Master’s Degree program in City and Regional Planning, was led by Professor Bob Yaro, and advised by Emil Frankel, of the Eno Transportation Institute, Foster Nichols of WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff, Kip Bergstrom, former Deputy Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, and Vincent Goodstadt, Past President of the Royal Town Planning Institute. This studio’s work builds upon 12 years of PennDesign studios, as well as the recently completed Federal Railroad Administration’s NEC Future Tier I environmental impact stadium for Northeast Corridor Rail. Rebooting New England sets forth a strategy to rebuild the economy of New England’s cities, which have been bypassed economically and physically for decades. This strategy is underpinned by a modern high-performance rail network between New York and Boston that would link all of Southern New England’s major cities with these two global cities and with each other. This would serve to integrate the labor and housing markets of the entire New York - New England megaregion into what could become the world’s largest innovation economy. The following recommendations emerged from three months of research and dialogue with practicing professionals, including a distinguished group of advisors from New England and the United Kingdom. A weeklong charrette in Manchester, England, as well as a roundtable discussion in New Haven, Connecticut, provided pivotal guidance from key elected officials, professionals and scholars. Connecting the Dots: Brexit and the 2016 Election Two revolutionary political events --the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and election of Donald Trump in the US-- occurred in 2016. In both countries, the deciding ballots came from older manufacturing cities and regions plagued by decades of industrial decline. Several generations of both British and American policies have exacerbated industrial decline by calling for tax cuts, austerity budgets and a laissez-faire approach to economic development. These policies largely overlooked formerly industrial regions, leaving them to their own devices. In response to this recent history and the display of the public’s sentiment in the Brexit vote, the UK’s Conservative government has adopted a bold investment and reform program. One of these projects is the Northern Powerhouse, an economic revitalization plan for the North of England and its older industrial cities. Underlying this strategy is the $52 billion high-speed rail 2 (HS2) project, which will link London with Manchester and Leeds. A planned HS3 line will create a network that links all of the major cities in the North of England with each other. It is proposed here that the new administration adopt a similar approach to revitalize the economy of Southern New England with a new high-performance rail network linking New York to Boston and all of New England’s urban centers. Following the results of the 2016 election, the urgency of the transformation of older industrial cities cannot be denied. This report is a much-needed blueprint that can be used to rebuild the economy of Southern New England as well as the economies of the entire Rust Belt. Rebooting New England’s strategies also provide important economic benefits to metropolitan New York, the nation’s largest economy, and metropolitan Boston, the nation’s largest concentration of world-class universities and teaching hospitals. By linking the economies and mobility systems of these metropolitan areas with the rest of Southern New England, this plan creates the capacity and connective tissue that will catalyze this region’s transformation into the world’s largest innovation economy. Sincerely The Upenn Studio Team

iii

PLANNING TEAM DARCY ANDERS

ADAM BERKOWITZ

MCP 2017 Public-Private Development Portland, Oregon

MCP 2017 Transportation Planning Port Washington, New York

Darcy is interested in developing polluted brownfield sites, public-private open space, and sustainable urban neighborhoods. She graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Landscape Architecture in 2010, received an Oregon ASLA student honor award, and worked as a Landscape Architect in training in Austin, TX for three years.

Adam’s interests include the economic impacts of new railway infrastructure and mass transit service planning. Adam graduated from New York University in 2012 with a degree in journalism, and then field produced local news reports in New York City. During this time, he extensively covered major infrastructure projects including East Side Access, the Second Avenue Subway, and bike lane expansion.

KYLE KAGER MCP 2017 Public-Private Development Charleston, West Virginia Kyle is interested in shaping the built environment by working at a real estate investment group. He graduated from American University with a BS in Real Estate Finance from American University in 2015.

SANFORD KLANFER

ZIMING LIU

MCP 2017 Transportation Planning Stamford, Connecticut

MCP 2017 Transportation Planning Hubei, China

Sandy’s planning interests include transportation’s role in promoting social equity and enhancing cultural vitality, with a particular focus on ethnic enclaves and immigrant communities. Sandy graduated from Amherst College in 2009 with a degree in sociology, and before arriving at Penn in 2015, held communications and marketing strategy positions at several different non-profit and for-profit organizations.

Ember’s planning interests include infrastructure economics and finance, transportation planning and modeling, big data and spatial analysis, and international development. Ember graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a degree in Civil Engineering in 2015.

JESS NEUBELT HSPV + MCP 2017 Community + Economic Development Mystic, Connecticut Jess is interested in neighborhood-scale preservation, affordable housing, and ways that policy can encourage social justice in the built environment. Jess graduated from Skidmore College in 2011 with a degree in archaeology, which she parlayed into an internship with the National Park Service and then a research position with an historic preservation consulting firm in Washington, DC.

PLANNING TEAM DIWEN SHEN MCP 2017 Transportation Planning Bejing, China

JARRED TOUPS

Steven is interested in the intersection between transportation, economic development, and equity. He has previously participated in academic research related to public transportation and innovative mobility, and has taken internships at government transportation and planning agencies in San Francisco and Philadelphia. Steven received his B.A. in Economics and Statistics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015.

MCP 2017 Urban Design Frisco, Texas

DAN WANG MCP 2017 Public-Private Development Langfang, China

Jarred’s planning and design interests include rail rightof-way street design, transitoriented development, and the interaction between transit infrastructure and the urban fabric. Jarred obtained his BA from Tulane University in New Orleans in 2015, where he studied urban studies, French, and political science.

Dan is interested in transitoriented development, multi-modal transportation planning, and station and urban design. She graduated from National University of Singapore in 2015 with a Bachelor degree in Arts (Architecture). Her undergraduate concentration is in Design, Technology and Sustainability.

JIA WEI MCP 2017 Transportation Planning Shenyang, China

LUYUN ZHAO MCP 2017 Smart Cities Qinhuangdao, China Luyun’s planning interest include data-driven analysis for transportation and economic planning. Luyun graduated from Peking University in 2015 with a degree in urban planning and a double major of economics.

Jia is in transportation concentration of city planning program in Upenn. In 2015, Jia obtained her bachelor degree from Beijing Forestry University, where she majored in city planning and concentrated in urban design. She is interested in multimodal transportation planning that includes rail planning, bus rapid transit planning and bike sharing system planning. She is also interested in site planning and urban design to investigate the organization of urban space.

QIAN ZHANG MCP 2017 Public-Private Development Xi’an, China Qian’s planning interests include economic development strategies, real estate development and the feasibility study and financing aspects of specific projects. Qian graduated from Peking University in 2015 with a degree in city planning and a dual degree in economics.

ADVISORS BOB YARO

FOSTER NICHOLS

Bob Yaro is a Professor of Practice at the University Foster Nichols is a Technical Fellow and Manager of Philadelphia. He led Regional Plan Association of Transit and Rail Operations Planning at (RPA) for the NewYork metropolitan tri-state region WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff. Foster specializes for the last two decades. The RPA is America’s in the development of strategic plans for most established independent metropolitan transportation systems and the planning and policy, research and advocacy organization. He is design of passenger rail systems and terminals. an Honorary Lifetime Member of the Royal Town He has performed over two dozen commuter Planning Institute. He also initiated and led America 2050, RPA’s national rail and high-speed rail corridor planning and feasibility studies infrastructure planning program for the United States. He also led the across the U.S. and South Africa. He also has played key roles in the Northeast Alliance for Rail and the Empire State Transportation Alliance. development of master plans for major rail terminals including New York’s Penn Station and Washington Union Station. Foster has been a technical advisor to the University of Pennsylvania Graduate Design Studio since 2010, when the Studio first developed its plan for high-performance high-speed rail in the Northeast Corridor.

VINCENT GOODSTADT

EMIL FRANKEL

Vincent is an advisor to the public and private sectors on strategic planning, urban design, and collaborative planning across the UK and internationally. He has held a range of senior planning posts in local government in particular in the fields of strategic policy and project delivery. He is a Past President of the Royal Town Planning Institute, a Vice-President of the Town and Country Planning Association, an Honorary Professor (University of Manchester), a Fellow of the Academy of Social Science and a Built Environment Expert with the Design Council/CABE. He has a range of international roles including with the European Council of Spatial Planners.

Emil H. Frankel is a senior fellow of the Eno Center for Transportation and an independent consultant on transportation policy and public management issues. From 2007 to 2014 he was Director of Transportation Policy and a Visiting Scholar and Senior Advisor at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He served at Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy of the United States Department of Transportation from 2002 to 2005 and as Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Transportation from 1991 to 1995. From 1995 to 2001 and 2008 to 2009 he was Visiting Lecturer at the Yale School of Management and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He received his LL.B. from Harvard Law School, and was a Fulbright Scholar at Manchester University in the United Kingdom.

KIP BERGSTROM

ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTORS

Kip Bergstrom is an economic development strategist focused on the intersection of innovation, transportation and urban revitalization. He currently is coordinating the launch of the Innovation Places Program, which is building dense concentrations of innovators and entrepreneurs at transit hubs in Connecticut. He has held executive positions in the private, public and non-proft sectors, including serving three New England mayors and three New England governors. He previously served as Deputy Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development and as Executive Director of the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council. He was the first student to specialize in economic development at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the John F. Kennedy School of Government, from which he earned a Masters in City and Regional Planning.

James Lima | James Lima Advisors Matthew Nemerson | Economic Development Administrator, City of New Haven, CT Mark Pisano | Professor of Practice, University of So. California, and former ED of Southern California Association of Governments Lyle Wray | Executive Director, Capital Region Council of Governments, Hartford, CT Cecilia Wong | Professor at School of Environment Education & Development: U. of Manchester Ian Wray | Visiting Professor U of Liverpool and former Chief Planner, Northwest Development Agency Richard Green | AECOM Northern Powerhouse Director Peter Jenkins | Director, Building Design Partnership Tony Lloyd | Police Commissioner & Interim Mayor of Combined Authority for Greater Manchester

Cathy Wignall | Assistant Director Urban Strategist: Deloitte LLP. Manchester Jim Steer | Founder & Director Steer Davies Gleave Paul Swinney | Principal Economist: Centre for Cities Bob Wolfe | MRTPI Chair of the Great North Plan & Northern Summit Project Board Kirsty Pearce | Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Areas Director for the North West and the Northern Powerhouse Henk Bouwman | Independent Transport Commission & Secretary General of the METREX European Strategic Planning Network David Brown | CEO Transport for the North Andrew Jones | AECOM UK Leader for Design, Planning and Economics Sir Howard Bernstein | Chief Executive, City of Manchester, England

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

viii

INTRODUCTION

A REGION BYPASSED

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE, UK

MET-WORK PROPOSAL

BENEFITS & COSTS

ON THE GROUND

113

WAY FORWARD

135

CONCLUSION

163

APPENDIX

173

vii

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Southern New England requires a recovery strategy to overcome decades of economic stagnation and population decline. Struggling mid-sized cities across Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island reflect the recent misfortunes of a region that once gave birth to America’s Industrial Revolution, and to the nation itself. Cities like Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury and New Haven in Connecticut; Worcester and Springfield in Massachusetts; and Providence in Rhode Island share a similar story of chronic unemployment, low educational attainment, segregation, steep taxes, and economic underperformance. The post-industrial decline of Southern New England’s manufacturing economy may have facilitated its present circumstances, but the region’s underfunded and poorly maintained transportation network has undermined its capacity for a comeback. While New York and Boston’s booming employment markets viii

support the majority of Southern New England’s high-income areas, new economic growth opportunities have generally bypassed the region’s mid-sized cities. Congested highways and limited passenger rail options have effectively isolated places like Worcester and its peer cities from New York, Boston, and perhaps most importantly, each other. The recent election of Donald Trump was driven by government priorities that have prolonged the despair of post-industrial economies around the nation. This includes decades of government disinvestment in new transportation infrastructure - especially rail. With the election of President Trump comes a potential opportunity to fund the type of regional-scale infrastructure projects that could underpin the revitalization of Southern New England. However, examples from other corners of the world suggest that a rail plan cannot unilaterally transform a region. The North of England provides a particularly useful basis for comparison to Southern New England given their geographical similarities, a shared historical narrative surrounding postindustrial decline, and the recent vote for Brexit, a referendum carried in large part by the North of England’s struggling working class, which parallels the election of Donald Trump. This studio’s proposals are heavily influenced by lessons learned during a 10-day charrette to Manchester, England, which opened a dialogue with powerful local and national political figures, economists, and transportation industry leaders. In recent years, the U.K. Government has heavily invested in the “Northern Powerhouse” initiative, designed to improve the region’s chronic economic underperformance. This includes provisions for new rail lines that will better connect the North of England’s mid-sized cities both to London, the nation’s strongest economy, and to each other. Unlike the prevailing U.S. model, the Northern Powerhouse frames the concept of regional economic transformation around the effective coordination of infrastructure investments along with funding programs for research institutions and targeted economic development

strategies. Realizing the co-dependence of these two variables in transforming a regional economy was among the most significant takeaways from the Studio’s Manchester Charrette. The Northern Powerhouse is based on the notion that the North of England should be more than the sum of its parts. It led to the creation of a regional transportation entity with the additional power to engage in strategic planning, economic development, and service delivery. By pooling ideas and capital, and cooperating to promote regional economic prosperity, the North of England’s mid-sized cities are functioning more as a constellation than a disconnected assortment of metros consumed by local interests. This studio applies these concepts throughout Rebooting New England, a transformational economic development strategy for Southern New England Rebooting New England is a comprehensive proposal that integrates a bold rail plan concept with targeted economic development strategies. This plan is designed to transform Southern New England’s struggling mid-sized metropolitan areas into a unified regional network that is well positioned both to incubate innovative industries and to compete globally for growth opportunities. The backbone of Rebooting New England’s transportation strategy is a highperformance rail network that would provide multiple layers of mobility throughout the region. A new high-speed spine between New York and Boston via Long Island, Hartford, and Providence will reduce today’s end-to-end travel times by more than half, and drastically improve service between these midsized size cities and the booming economies that bookend the route. To better integrate New England’s other cities – places like Worcester and Springfield in Massachusetts; Waterbury and New London in Connecticut; Manchester, New Hampshire and Brattleboro, Vermont – the plan proposes adding or upgrading over 600 route miles of high-performance branch lines. The combined highx

speed and high-performance lines will act as a powerful circulation system for a

united New England. To complement this rail plan, Rebooting New England features a detailed plan for strategic economic development. Broadly described, the four fundamental goals of this plan are as follows: •

Create a federally supported regional economic development body for

New England that encourages co-operation and cost-sharing; •

Expand the tax and employment base of New England’s states and

towns; •

Develop a large and highly-skilled work force to staff the region’s

emerging innovation economy; •

And revitalize New England’s bypassed urban centers.

By leveraging improvements in regional accessibility and mobility, this plan’s economic development strategies will make Southern New England an attractive destination for global thought leaders and talented millennials alike. A more productive Southern New England and Long Island would strengthen the national economy and generate a broad range of social, and environmental benefits across the region. Rebooting New England’s workforce development initiatives will create an abundance of advancement opportunities for local New Englanders, ensuring an equitable distribution of social benefits. Meanwhile, the high-performance rail network will reduce regional auto and air dependency, which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help to decongest New England’s highways and airports. This proposal presents a pathway to a brighter future for Southern New England. Rebooting New England’s rail plan and economic developments strategies are posed to transform a region known for its historical significance and charming towns into America’s innovation capital, and a globally recognized economic stronghold.

PHOTO OR GRAPHIC

xii

Boats in Watch Hill Harbor, Watch Hill, RI

INTRODUCTION From the sandy tip of Cape Cod to the snowcapped peaks of Vermont’s Green Mountains and all the fall foliage in between, New England is home to an undeniable natural heritage. Add to this its cultural landscape—wooden sailboats, shingled homes, stone walls, and iconic town greens—and one begins to understand the magic of New England. It is known for its high quality of life and sense of living history. But the status quo is no longer working for this region, perhaps best known for its past and its traditions. For every summer home in the region, there are many more families struggling to afford their first home; for every excellent public school district, there is another teetering on the edge of collapse. Over the past few decades, the manufacturing economy of the region’s mid-sized cities has declined, bringing New England’s economy and fiscal health down with it. All six New England states, but particularly the Southern New England states of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have faced decades of chronic economic underperformance and struggled to manage hundred-million dollar

Metro-North commuter trains travel along the Northeast Corridor in Bridgeport, CT.

INTRODUCTION budget deficits. Policy makers have experimented with tax cuts and revenue increases alike, but nothing has worked to turn the region around. The status quo cannot continue if New England hopes to survive the coming decades with any of its legacies in place. To adopt the language of the tech sector, the region’s politics require disruption and its economy, innovation. And as with the region at an abstract level, New England’s physical assets and infrastructure are long overdue for radical transformation. Over the course of the fall semester of 2016, and in the footsteps

New Haven’s colonial green still serves as the center the city.

of many predecessors, this studio tackled this very problem of New England’s troubling outlook. Rebooting New England expands on past PennDesign studio reports that looked at high-speed rail alignments and the dynamics of megaregions—large networks of metropolitan areas that share economic, ecological, and transportation connections—by explicitly combining their fields of interest. It also builds on initial studies for the Federal Railroad Administration’s “NEC Future: A Rail Investment Plan for the Northeast Corridor”.

NEC stands for Northeast Corridor.

This studio also owes its inspiration and many of its policy and

The NEC Future Plan was commissioned in 2012 by the Federal Rail Administration and was prepared by Parsons Brinkerhoff. The report is scheduled to be finalized in 2016.

investment proposals to the Northern Powerhouse (“NP”) Initiative, the British government’s economic development plan for a comparable region in the North of England. In October 2016, this studio and a team of expert advisors participated in a week-long Charrette in Manchester,

www.necfuture.com

England with key elected officials, professionals and scholars who have participated in developing and implementing the NP initiative. As part of this process, the group conducted field visits to Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield to see how the NP project was beginning 3

INTRODUCTION to transform the prospects of these cities. Rebooting New England summarizes the studio’s findings and recommendations and explores opportunities for New England’s rebirth as a vital economy and desirable place to live. Specifically, it proposes ways that investments in a high-performance rail network can underpin a broader set of strategic economic development policies in order to radically transform the trajectory of this struggling region. This report argues that the implementation of these proposed highperformance rail network and economic development strategies is imperative for the region’s transformation and the nation’s long-term economic growth. Whereas earlier PennDesign studios have focused on high-speed rail, this studio has also prioritized rail’s frequency, affordability, reliability, and the importance of greater levels of connectivity between large and mid-sized cities; these comprise the attributes of “high-performance rail”. Likewise, this studio has spent a great deal New England is composed of six states in the northeast, not including New York City and Long Island. However this study includes New York City as part of the region under analysis

Gulf of Saint Lawrence

New Brunswick Quebec

o ay

NORTH ATLANTIC

NH MA

Massachusetts Bay

NY CT PA

RI 20 MILES

INTRODUCTION more time investigating the economic development policies, urban development projects, and institutional frameworks that can optimize the economic and other benefits of such a high-performance system. Rebooting New England proposes a series of interventions ranging from the establishment of cost-sharing municipal partnerships to the streamlining of federal permitting and review processes; it also advocates for transit-oriented development that respects historic cores and the need for workforce development programs to satisfy the needs of existing advanced manufacturing firms. The studio also departs from predecessors in its belief that traditional cost-benefit analysis—which focuses on a project’s direct economic consequences—is an inadequate measure of a transformational infrastructure project’s impact. Rebooting New England examines its own proposals through a cost-benefit analysis that incorporates the full range of benefits and positive externalities the proposals would provide. These include reducing blight in revitalized cities, providing faster connections between cities, growing job opportunities, building advanced technology’s industrial foothold in the region, and boosting the entire national economy. The report also acknowledges the value of reducing negative externalities currently associated with the region’s economy, like congestion, pollution, high housing costs, and socioeconomic inequality. With the implementation of Rebooting New England’s proposed high-performance rail network and suite of economic development strategies, the region’s economic geography stands to be truly transformed. Without such a project, the economies of New England and the greater United States will continue to languish and their residents will suffer from greater socioeconomic inequity.

PHOTO OR GRAPHIC

A historic street in Providence, RI typifies what people consider New England to be

A REGION BYPASSED CHAPTER OVERVIEW New England is well known to outsiders first as a place of colonial history, charm, and wealth, and secondarily for its industrial past. While industry, wealth, and charm do still abound in New England, they do not represent the reality of many of the region’s older industrial cities, which have been struggling for decades with the loss of jobs and their tax base. Today, most of these cities—which include Bridgeport, New Haven, Waterbury, and Hartford in Connecticut; Worcester and Springfield in Massachusetts; and Providence in Rhode Island— suffer from economic disparity, chronic unemployment, low educational attainment, segregation, steep taxes, and stagnating or declining populations.

Bridgeport, CT is ideally located to become a successful commercial port with a blend of historical small marine industry and modern industrial production. Worcester, MA sits west of Boston and has a strong and growing connection to the to the Hubâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vital medical and education sectors. Yet it suffers from high unemployment, and property vacancy.

Yale University, in New Haven CT, is an example of the many quality higher education institutes in the region. These are not only critical suppliers of employees to growing industries, but are also heavily committed to the area. The mayor of Hartford, Luke Bronin, has some difficult decisions to make, as his city is quickly approaching a critical fiscal crisis. Years of disinvestment have left only drastic options for Hartford and Connecticut.

A REGION BYPASSED

EXISTING CONDITIONS WEAKNESSES AND OBSTACLES TO SUCCESS Without serious intervention, New England’s future will not be as bright and prosperous as its past. It is struggling on many fronts, some of which local actors can influence for the better (economic growth), and some of which they cannot (its cold winters and physical distance from other parts of the country). These major challenges are described below. Bridgeport CT, like many cities in Southern New England, has experienced job and population loss in the post-industrial era

Geography and Access The Hudson River and Long Island Sound separate New England from the rest of the Northeast Megaregion and the rest of the country. New York City’s density of bridges and tunnels, in addition to its

The Northest Megaregion is a network of metropolitan regions that stretch from Boston to Washington DC.

position as the closest point between New England and the rest of the Eastern Seaboard, have made it the gateway to the Northeast. For this reason, two of New England’s primary highways (I-95 and I-84), its

A REGION BYPASSED passenger train routes (Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, Acela service, and others), and many of its flights are routed through the country’s largest and densest metro area. This funneling of all transportation modes results in longer, slower, costlier transportation outcomes for anyone or anything moving in and out of New England. Current highway traffic volumes in Southern New England

ALBANY

BOSTON

WORCESTER

SPRINGFIELD

PROVIDENCE t Conn e c

H u d s on Rive r

Cape Cod Bay

HARTFORD

cu t

WATERBURY

iv e r

NEW HAVEN

NEW LONDON

BRIDGEPORT

Long

Is la n d

Sound

Legend Annual Average Daily Traffic 0 - 49,999 50,000 - 99,999

NEW YORK

100,000 - 282,000

20 MILES

The region’s highways, particularly those near New York City and Boston, are heavily congested, making car trips to either city long, slow, and expensive. Residents of the Stamford-Bridgeport area face the second-worst congestion for a medium-sized metro in the country (Hartford ranks 5th and New Haven, 11th), and the state estimates

The New Haven Line, which runs between New York and New Haven, is the nation’s busiest passenger rail line.

that wasted fuel, accidents, and higher operating costs caused by congestion cost the state $2.6 billion every year.1,2 Due to poor rail freight infrastructure in New England, the transport of most goods is also relegated to the region’s already highly congested highways. This leads to reduced reliability and increased costs for the region’s supply chains as well as its exports. 11

A REGION BYPASSED Similarly, the area’s commuter- and inter-city trains often share RNI

tracks, again leading to congestion and reduced speeds. The nation’s

WORCESTER

ALBANY

BOSTON

SPRINGFIELD PROVIDENCE HARTFORD

and New Haven—experiences frequent delays resulting from decades

WATERBURY

EVER

NEW LONDON

BRIDGEPORT

of disinvestment. Even with the recent replacement of overhead

NEW HAVEN

NEW YORK

20 MILES

Air Travel Consumer Report, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Issued October 2016

busiest passenger rail line—the New Haven Line between New York

catenaries (power supplies) and other infrastructure, it will take decades to bring this line to a state of good repair with current levels of investment. Recent speed reductions and other safety measures on the New Haven and other lines have increased travel times in recent years, further discouraging ridership east of Fairfield. Even more so than with vehicular accidents, a single delay on New England’s railroads can ripple through the entire region’s transit system for hours. The major New York and Boston airports are operating near their capacity limits and are further limited by congested airspace. New York airports in particular are operating at all time high (and still growing) passenger volumes, resulting in additional system-impacting delays that extend far beyond one particular incident. August 2016 data, for example, recorded that only 70% of flights at each of New York’s three major airports arrived on time and only up to 74% departed on time; Logan Airport in Boston did not fare much better.3 Greater New England is home to several smaller airports, including Bradley International Airport in Hartford, T.F. Green in Providence, and MacArthur Airport in Islip (on Long Island), but they are poorly connected to the rail network and offer minimal or no international flights. Thus, global travelers are largely forced to contend with overly burdened and hard-to-access airports in NYC and Boston.

A REGION BYPASSED Co-operation and Connectivity New England is also poorly connected to itself. Despite travel distance of less than 200 miles, there is effectively no commuter connectivity between New York and Boston. Trips between them can take well over four hours by car given even minor traffic. The fastest train trips between the two cities take 3.75 hours and the slower Amtrak regional trains take 5.25 hours. This effectively curtails what could be a high-functioning relationship between two of the country’s most productive metro areas. Current Commute Pattern within Southern New England

Additionally, commuter maps show almost no interaction between cities within the region, despite their proximity to one another. Rather, almost all commuting happens within a city’s immediate suburban ring. Although lived social patterns differ from commuting patterns and there are other types of exchange between these cities, it is clear that New England’s economy is missing opportunities to create real economic synergies between the region’s cities. In particular, the area’s advanced service and technology firms and universities are

A REGION BYPASSED missing opportunities for the spillover effects and productivity boosts associated with strong agglomerations. This may in part be a symptom of New England’s highly fragmented municipal governance system, much of it administered by voluntary boards and commissions, and led by elected mayors selectmen, wardens and burgesses. The states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, and each of their municipalities operate almost exclusively as sovereign entities; there are only a handful of county governments to coordinate services or to ensure collaboration of any sort. With a total of 559 municipalities in the three Southern New England states making independent decisions about how to deliver municipal services and regulate land use, it becomes very challenging to implement large-scale, comprehensive, transformative projects. Although most New Englanders cherish the local control and identity this fragmented system allows, it comes at an enormous cost: some of the nation’s highest property taxes, expensive services, and the inability to efficiently organize economic development, transportation and other activities better delivered at the metropolitan scale.

Fiscal and Economic Challenges Southern New England’s economic and fiscal realities paint a stark picture of the region’s misfortunes. Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, as well as many of their municipalities, are in dire fiscal straits. The 2016 Mercatus report, an annual evaluation of states’ fiscal health, ranked Massachusetts and Connecticut number 49 and 50 respectively among the 50 states; 14

Rhode Island, following significant reforms of its public employee

VENCY: How do the 50 states rank?

erage

Average

Above average

A REGION BYPASSED State Government Fiscal Solvency Rankings for New England shows this region has some of the worst financial burdens in the country

Outlier

20 36 26

29 35

25 47 27

40 46

49 37 50 48 41 38

pension and health care benefit systems, is21 ranked 37th. These abysmal 9

8 rankings result from enormous unfunded liabilities (such as public 18 28

employee pensions and health care 23costs), massive debt obligations,

and consecutive years of large budget deficits. Volatile revenue

streams and insufficient rainy day funds have exacerbated these problems, compounding the challenges that 6 the states face as they try to stabilize their budgets.4

The state budgets are suffering even more for lack of population and Source: Eileen Norcross and Olivia Gonzalez, “Ranking the States by Fiscal Condition, 2016 Edition”

GDP growth. The impact of poor GDPatperformance is visibleArlington, in both VA, June 2016). (Mercatus Research, Mercatus Center George Mason University, Note:and All data are retail for FY 2014. residential office markets throughout the region’s smaller

and mid-sized cities. All seven cities that are the focus of this report have higher vacancies than either Boston or New York; in Hartford, office vacancy rates were up to 23% in the years following the recession and have been counted as high as 18% in this past year.5 Residential markets have also struggled to recover from the Great Recession, despite some very high-value housing markets in nearby suburbs of New York and Boston. 15

A REGION BYPASSED Poverty rates for selected New England cities and New York

Finally, despite the region’s wealth, it is also home to chronic poverty. In Bridgeport, for example, there are census tracts where more than 50% of residents live in poverty just miles from neighborhoods in nearby Fairfield and Westport where median household income is over $230,000.6 This pattern of poor and segregated inner cities surrounded by a ring of wealthy suburbs is repeated across all of Southern New England. Educational outcomes, life expectancy and other socioeconomic indicators also follow this trend and are highly correlated with geography. Employment is one part of the poverty puzzle, and it reveals other challenges. High unemployment rates in some areas reflect the lingering effects of manufacturing decline and the relocation of other major firms outside of the region. This was demonstrated most recently by General Electric’s relocation of its headquarters from Fairfield, CT to Boston’s seaport district. Troublingly, in many sectors, low employment rates are also paired with job vacancies, largely due to a mismatch between the skillset of the local labor pool and those required by open positions in advanced manufacturing, technology, and healthcare fields. In light of the mass retirement of Baby Boomers, that problem stands to increase significantly in the coming years. 16

A REGION BYPASSED Stagnant Population All of the above factors contribute to stagnant population levels in most parts of the region. Every focus city apart from Waterbury, CT added residents between 2000 and 2010, marking a slight uptick after decades of decline. The region as a whole, however, is failing to keep pace with the country’s recent and projected growth rate. This means New England is missing out on natural opportunities for economic growth. Population growth rates for selected cities in New England from 2010 to 2015

While some New Englanders are clearly rediscovering the appeal of living downtown—and local opportunities to do so—the region as a whole is failing to capture the interest of city-loving millennials. Considering the cultural and economic strength of Boston and New York, it is no surprise that the smaller cities in between find it hard to compete for this cohort’s affection. New England has fewer jobs, fewer opportunities for growth within the jobs that exist, and fewer amenities to make up for its professional shortcomings. The inability to attract millennials is an even greater weakness when one considers the expertise that this cohort—many of whom have graduated from New England schools that are some of the country’s

A REGION BYPASSED top liberal arts colleges and research universities—are taking with them when they move to New York, San Francisco, or elsewhere. New England attracts more out-of-region students for higher education than any other part of the country (33% of students in 2008 were from outside the region). However it has the lowest regional retention rate with 63% of all graduates staying in the region, while less than 20% of the large international student population stays in the region.7 The region is experiencing this “brain drain” at every possible stage: when students graduate from some of the country’s best public school systems, from college at one of the region’s many high-quality liberal arts schools, and with advanced degrees from research institutions like Yale, UMass, Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Brown, and the many others dotting the region.

ASSETS AND OPPORTUNITIES TO REVERSE CURRENT TRENDS Although New England faces significant challenges, the region has rich assets to build upon, and many opportunities for economic growth and revitalization. While few people move to New England for its climate, the region is known for providing a very high quality of life, with access to excellent schools, interesting cities, and opportunities for a wide variety of outdoor recreation. The region’s industrial infrastructure, while degraded, could be paired with its powerful regional anchor institutions to catalyze redevelopment. New England’s states (and its cities and towns) will need to take advantage of every opportunity and asset over the coming decades, but if done strategically, the region may again become the nation’s most prosperous and most productive.

A REGION BYPASSED Rich Heritage New England is in a unique position to adapt the built environment of its past in order to catalyze growth and reinforce its historical identity. In a world of globalization and rapid growth, New Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sense of place and its heritage of innovation and entrepreneurship will be an increasingly valuable asset. New England was the birthplace of the industrial revolution in the US. The first industries to take hold were shipbuilding and fishing, which can still be seen in certain coastal towns today. True industrialization New Havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s historic Green

came with the rise of the textile industry in the 18th century in mill villages along the Blackstone Valley in Central Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and boomed with the increase of immigration to manufacturing centers such as Lowell, Lawrence and Fall River, MA, Bridgeport and Willimantic, CT and Central Falls and Pawtucket, RI in the 19th century. As textiles evolved into a wider variety of wares, and arms manufacturers emerged to take advantage of innovations from Connecticut industrialists like Eli Whitney and Samuel Colt, the region pioneered and perfected precision manufacturing processes. The success of manufacturing in New England transformed the region

A REGION BYPASSED into one of the wealthiest and most highly educated places in the country. While lower costs in the American south and west ultimately

The former Yale and Towne Lock Company plant in Stamford, CT, before renovation (above) and today (right)

led to a substantial decline in the region’s industrial productivity, jobs, and population, the infrastructure, buildings, and property patterns remain. And not every firm fled in the middle of the century. Southern New England retains a number of cutting edge industries and companies, such as Pratt and Whitney jet engines in central Connecticut, Sikorsky Helicopters in Norwalk, CT and Electric Boat in Groton and New London, CT, as well as the precision manufacturing supply chains that support these major industries.

Economic Context Southern New England’s cities are located in a very strategic location. Each of this report’s focus cities are located within 100 miles of either Boston and New York, and Hartford has the good fortune to be located 20

A REGION BYPASSED about 90 miles from both. New York is the largest city in both North America and the Northeast Megaregion, and both it and Boston are far outpacing the rest of New England in terms of economic and population growth. This population and employment growth, as well as Boston and New York’s unusually high per-capita GDPs, create significant potential for improved economic connections in the surrounding states. But it will be up to Connecticut’s policy makers and developers, for example, to benefit from New York’s growth, and not let Westchester County, NY or northern New Jersey capture all of the region’s spillover. Aggressive and creative pursuit of firms and investment can help this region capitalize on what would otherwise be circumstantial and minimal gains. New England’s economy is also supported by strong anchor institutions such as research universities, teaching hospitals, and Fortune 500 companies that stretch across the entire region. Some of the most prominent institutions include Harvard, Tufts, and MIT in the Boston area, Yale in New Haven, Brown in Providence, the health insurance industry and the nearby University of Connecticut in Hartford, the Groton Naval Base and Electric Boat in Groton (CT), UMass Medical School in Worcester, and just across Long Island Sound, Cold Spring Harbor and Brookhaven National Labs on Long Island. Additionally, Hartford, Bridgeport, and Worcester are home to fairly high concentrations of jobs in advanced industries, so-located to take advantage of the high-quality research, scholars, and professionals coming out of the region’s schools. If New England can retain a larger share of its colleges’ and universities’ graduates, it has the potential to harness and aggressively grow 21

A REGION BYPASSED Key regional employers in growth industries in southern New England, including IT, Advanced Manufacturing, Finance, and Pharmaceutical and Biotech. ALBANY

BOSTON

WORCESTER

SPRINGFIELD

PROVIDENCE t Conn e c

H u d s on Rive r

Cape Cod Bay

HARTFORD

cu t

WATERBURY

R iv e r

NEW HAVEN

NEW LONDON

BRIDGEPORT

Long

Is la n d

Sound

Legend Employment Size

276-750

Advanced Manufacturing

750-1850

Financial Institution

1850-4000

NEW YORK

Employer Type

0-276

Pharmaceutical&Bio Tech

4000-13000

20 MILES

these and other advanced industries. Due to the extraordinarily high housing prices and commercial rents and increasing congestion in Boston and New York, growing tech companies and their highly skilled workers could be encouraged to relocate to Southern New England, if transportation links to these anchor cities can be improved.

Population growth The U.S. population is expected to continue to grow by 25% by 2050, in large part due to immigration (though this trend could change if the Trump Administration follows through on its campaign promise to reduce immigration levels).8 Although New England states are currently lagging behind this growth rate, there is a huge potential for the region to improve competitiveness and attract more growth than is currently occurring in other places. Despite its economic woes, the region still boasts a very high quality of life for those earning a wide variety of incomes, and does provide access to cultural, educational and 22

A REGION BYPASSED recreational opportunities that are not available in other parts of the country. While New England has low fertility rates compared with much of the country, it does attract foreign-born populations. Significantly, it captures a substantial share of immigrants who come to the region in their 20s and 30s, typically to pursue higher education or other research opportunities. Statistically, the foreign-born students are more likely to have STEM backgrounds and more likely to have (or pursue) an advanced degree than other college graduates in New England.9 The difficulty of securing work visas, however, results in many leaving the region, or the country altogether. If Southern New Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s states launched efforts to ease these federal restrictions, particularly for small firms that may not have the resources to do it on their own, they would essentially guarantee themselves an increased labor pool of young, highly skilled workers.10 Naugatuck Valley Community College (NVCC) is a public, two-year, associate degree granting, co-educational, nonresidential college. It is one of 17 institutions comprising Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (ConnSCU) and offers the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Machine certificate.

A REGION BYPASSED The New York metropolitan region is currently experiencing a housing crisis with its current population, and is expecting more people to move to the area and New York City is expected to add one million residents by 2040

Overflowing Megacities The growth of New York and Boston creates enormous economic value, but it also threatens these cities’ quality of life. Increases in land values, congestion, pollution, competition, and cost of living in New York City and Boston has created opportunities for Southern New England’s mid-sized cities, which are far more affordable than Boston and New York in all respects. For example, in 2015, the median gross rent in Springfield was $823 compared to over $1320 in Boston and $1255 across the five boroughs of New York; commercial rents are also dramatically lower.11 New York and Boston are also choking from traffic congestion and have among the nation’s longest and costliest commutes. Southern New England’s cities have the potential to become viable alternatives to Boston and New York as places to both live and work. Almost any location in the region enables individuals and families to live in larger homes for less money, find quality schools, and enjoy 24

easy commutes to work. If rail links to New York and Boston were

A REGION BYPASSED to be improved, individuals will increasingly be able to work in one of these cities and live in one of New England’s smaller cities and towns, where they can enjoy some level of urban living without the negative externalities. And firms priced out by rising commercial rents in New York or Boston could move some of their operations, or entire companies, to New England’s cities if these places achieved the revitalization called for in this report.

Rail Plans Currently, the federal and state governments are beginning to plan for long overdue investments in rail. There have been multiple analyses of the transportation problem in the Northeast and recommendations for its transformation

Several large-scale rail improvement plans have been completed, but remain unfunded or are in the beginning stages of construction. These plans include the Federal Rail Administration’s Draft Northeast Corridor (NEC) Future Tier 1, which proposed that the existing shoreline alignment be upgraded to provide improved rail service between New York and Boston. (This proposal has already generated vehement opposition from residents of Connecticut’s rural shoreline communities and would not enable 100-minute high-speed rail service between 25

A REGION BYPASSED New York and Boston called for in this report, given this alignment’s current congestion, extensive curves and other limitations.) Other recently completed rail plans include Let’s Go CT!, an ambitious $100 billion statewide transportation investment plan; and MBTA’s plans for the Boston-to-Concord line in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Connecticut is currently modernizing the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield (NHHS) rail corridor and is investing in state of good repair investments on the New Haven Line. And the private Boston Surface Railroad Company is proposing to create new commuter rail services between Providence and Worcester and Manchester, NH and Boston. Additionally, the need for massive investment in infrastructure was one of the very few points of agreement in the otherwise extremely divisive 2016 Presidential election season. The Trump administration has reiterated its intent to pursue an aggressive $1 trillion infrastructure investment program for the country. If all of these projects were to proceed, New England would become a far more connected region with a transformed economic geography. Its residents would benefit from shorter, more reliable travel times and greater housing and career opportunities; its cities would benefit from faster connections to New York City and/or Boston; and its firms would benefit from larger labor pools. Combined with a comprehensive economic development plan, the transportation plans being proposed and debated today stand to radically transform the region’s future.

REFERENCES 1. Ann Radelat, “New Report: CT traffic is bad – and likely to get worse,” CT Mirror, 26 August

2015, <http://ctmirror.org/2015/08/26/report-traffic-in-ct-bad-likely-to-get-worse/>

A REGION BYPASSED 2. Let’s Go CT! Connecticut’s Bold Vision for a Transportation Future, Connecticut Department of Transportation (February 2015), 23.

3. Air Travel Consumer Report, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Issued October 2016.

4. Yolanda K. Kodrzycki and Bo Zhao, “Achieving Greater Fiscal Stability: Guidance for the New England States, New England Public Policy Research Center Research Report 15-2 (Boston: The Federal Reserve, October 2015).

5. “These Are The 10 US Cities With The Most Vacant Office Space.” Bisnow. N.p., 02 Feb. 2016. Web. <https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/office/these-are-the-10-us-cities-with-mostvacant-office-space-54684?single-page>.

6. Buchanan, Mary, and Mark Abraham. “Connecticut Has More Concentrated Poverty (and Wealth) than Most Metros.” TrendCT. N.p., 04 June 2015. Web. <http://trendct.org/2015/05/27/ connecticut-has-more-concentrated-poverty-and-wealth-than-most-metros/>.

7. Alicia Sasser Modestino, “Retaining Recent College Graduates in New England: An Update on Current Trends,” Policy Brief 13-2, New England Public Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (Boston: The Federal Reserve, 2013).

8. Sandra L Colby and Jenner M. Ortman, Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S. Population: 2014-2060 Population Projections and Estimates, U.S. Census Bureau (March 2015), <https://www.census.gov/population/projections/data/national/2014/publications.html/>.

9. Tara Watson, “Immigrants as a Potential Source of Growth for New England’s Highly Skilled Workforce,” Policy Brief, New England Public Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (2013), 2.10. Ibid, Pg. 4.

11. “Table DP-04: Selected Housing Characteristics,” American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, U.S. Census Bureau (2015).

PHOTO OR GRAPHIC

The lightrail system in Manchester, UK connects the city core to the main regional rail system, metropolitan area bus system, and key destinations within the city

THE NORTHERN POWERHOUSE CHAPTER OVERVIEW The Northern Powerhouse (NP) is an economic transformation plan for the North of England, a region dominated by older industrial cities that have experienced economic decline and stagnation for decades. The project was originally conceived by the UK’s 2010-2015 coalition government and later embraced by the 2015-2020 conservative government, now being led by the new Prime Minister Theresa May. The NP plan is anchored by several core cities in the North of England, including Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, and Newcastle. The plan is designed to address the long economic decline of these cities, which have never fully recovered from the loss of manufacturing employment that began in the 1960s. It encompasses major investments in transportation links, investments in core industries around science and technology, and the devolution of powers from central government to strengthened municipal and regional authorities. This plan not only seeks local benefits by bringing prosperity to the north, but also to grow the national economy and “rebalance” the UK’s economy away from Greater London by creating a better accessible, dynamic, collaborative, and united North of England. A key component of the studio’s work plan was a 10-day charrette in Manchester, England in October 2016, which enabled the studio to learn directly from a number of key public officials and scholars who helped initiate and are now implementing the Northern Powerhouse project. While in the United Kingdom, studio participants also visited most of Northern England’s other core cities, to better understand issues facing these places, and the role the NP process is playing in supporting their revitalization. At the beginning of the charrette, the PennDesign studio presented initial rail and economic development proposals for Southern New England and received feedback on these proposals from a group of British experts in a wide array of fields. For the rest of the week, students took part in many discussions on the NP’s transportation planning, economic development and governance strategies. At the end of the 10-day charrette, the PennDesign team synthesized the lessons learned to present a revised vision and proposals to revitalize New England’s rail network and economy. 29

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE COMPARISON BETWEEN NEW ENGLAND AND THE NORTH OF ENGLAND Many striking similarities exist between the North of England and New England, including scale, geography, history, and economic positioning. These commonalities are described below.

History Manchester, England (left) and the Colt Factory in Hartford, Connecticut (right) both developed industries on the latest technology of the day, creating the wealthiest regions in the world

The historical narrative of the two regions is one of their strongest similarities and is key to understanding the current situation in both places. First and foremost, Manchester is the birthplace of the British Industrial Revolution. Its subsequent rise to industrial pre-eminence also reinforced the city’s pre-existing role as a major trading hub. Just as Manchester was the heart of England’s industrial age, New England was the epicenter of the American Industrial Revolution. The region and some of its early textile manufacturing and trading centers, such as Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts and Pawtucket, RI, owe Manchester a debt of gratitude for this legacy, as many of New England’s first industrialists hailed from northern England and brought ideas, designs, and institutional knowledge with them. 30

THE NORTHERN POWERHOUSE WWII brought many changes to the two regions, the bombing of the factories in England and construction of new defense plant across New England

As the epicenters of the new industrial age, both Manchester and its counterparts in both the North of England and New England enjoyed an explosion of jobs, income, and great wealth. This was particularly true for New England, where the excesses of the Gilded Age can still be seen inscribed across the landscape. This prosperity, however, was not to last. Shifting economic patterns in the post-war era encouraged industry to pursue cheaper labor in the south, and later overseas, quickly eroding competitive advantages in both New England and Northern England. As urban centers lost jobs and incomes, residents followed suit and developed new residential centers in outlying suburbs. Cities lost their major sources of tax revenue, and were left to contend with the challenges of populations that could not afford to live elsewhere. By the 1980s, the older Rioting in Liverpool and neglect in Hartford resulted from the departure of people and wealth from the city centers

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE industrial cities of New England and Northern England experienced widespread vacancy and abandonment. While the North of England has begun to bounce back from this postindustrial shift, New England’s core cities still lag behind. Boston is the great exception to this story; despite losing almost 250,000 residents between 1950 and 1980, the city and the surrounding metropolitan region have transformed their economy into one dominated by advanced technology and services, leading to significant population and economic growth and rapidly rising household income over the past quarter-century. Population of New England Cities

Geography The populations and geographic spacing of the two regions have similar clustering and cover similar distances.

774,060 530,292 248,269

295,817

Springﬁeld

141,677

Waterbury

Worcester

370,144

Hartford 247,448

9,772,872

294,346

1,743,591

New Haven

Boston

478,580 Liverpool

Manchester

Leeds 569,737 Sheﬃeld

563,699

Providence 8,673,713

Bridgeport

London

New York

Southern New England and the North of England are very similar geographically, both in terms of scale and organization. Both regions 50 MILES

span approximately 200 miles, from New York to Boston in New England, and between London and Manchester in England. This point of analysis, however, also illustrates an important distinction between the two regions. The New England study area is a bi-polar axis, contained between metro New York and metro Boston, with the focus cities located in the interior. The North of England, on the other, lacks 32

a second major city opposing London (in the way that Boston opposes

THE NORTHERN POWERHOUSE New York), though Manchester is also approximately 200 miles from Edinburgh - Glasgow.

Demographics and Economics The six states of New England and the North of England both support populations of about 15 million people. Both are also dwarfed by the nearby metropolitan regions of London and New York (metro Boston, while also large, is much smaller than the previous two). Unemployment rate percentages for the US and the UK in 2015 14.4% 14.5% 14.7% 13.5%

12.8% 11.6% 10.3%

10.2% 8.7%

8.8%

8.1%

7.4% 6.0%

on nd Lo

eﬃ Sh

eld

r Le

te es ch

an M

Liv

rk Yo w

on st

U K N AT I O N A L AV E R A G E

en id

st ce

ov Pr

gﬁ

eld

or W

rin Sp

rtf

bu er at

n ve

po ge

w Ne

id Br

U S N AT I O N A L AV E R A G E

6.0%

Once great centers of wealth and stability, both regions lag behind on a range of socio-economic measures. The North of England and New England cities both struggle with higher vacancy (commercial and residential) and unemployment rates than their anchoring cities. Additionally, the majority of New England’s high-income areas are directly connected to the greater New York and Boston areas, while the majority of the UK’s wealthy residents reside in Greater London. In both regions, the highest poverty rates exist in the core cities themselves.

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE Transportation Both New England and the North of England struggle with underfunded and poorly maintained transportation infrastructure, which has led to highly congested roads, railroads, and airports. In New England, the United Statesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; disinvestment in intercity rail has caused the heavily utilized Northeast corridor rail right-of-way to deteriorate significantly. As a result, rail travel between Boston and New York takes twice as long as comparable trips in the United Kingdom. In the UK, most new infrastructure development has been focused in the south, on projects like Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Crossrail project, the London Overground network, and the High Speed 1 (HS1) rail link which connects London to European high-speed rail and the Channel tunnel. The rail network in the North of England is far more comprehensive than that in New England

In the US, investments along the Northeast Corridor are also presumed to begin in the south, favoring the connection between Washington D.C. and New York City over that between New York and Boston. 34

THE NORTHERN POWERHOUSE Meanwhile, both Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration have identified the proposed $20+ billion Gateway tunnel project under the Hudson River to be the NEC’s highest investment priority, although this project also remains largely unfounded. The rail system in the North of England is expected to expand to encourage economic development in the region

The fundamental difference between the two regions, however, is the British Government’s determination to invest heavily in its rail infrastructure. In addition to the work that has already been completed around London, the government has already invested several billion dollars to rebuild the existing West Coast Main Line rail link between London and Glasgow. It is also committed to building High Speed 2 (HS2), connecting both Manchester and Leeds to London. Plans are also underway for High Speed 3 (HS3), an east-west route that would improve connectivity among all of the North’s major cities. While some see HS2 and connections to London as the region’s future, others believe that HS3 would provide broader benefits by strengthening the region internally as a competitor to London. In comparison, the proposed HSR route from Boston to New York would also directly serve most of the mid-sized cities in New England, combining the best qualities of HS2 and HS3.

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE THE NORTHERN POWERHOUSE INITIATIVE As discussed above, the Northern Powerhouse (NP) initiative serves as an important precedent for this studio. First announced by

An economic development initiative that combines the opportunities in Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, and Sheffield

Chancellor George Osborne in 2014, it is an infrastructure and economic development plan that focuses on five core cities: Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle.1 The NP initiative includes several strategies intended to foster agglomeration effects, including further developing the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s transportation network, investing in science and innovation, and devolving powers from Westminster to

Mega projects and regional revival: comparing proposals for Atlantic Gateway

local 743 governments. Detailed economic development strategies for the NP region are now being developed by Transport for the North (TfN) a new agency established to coordinate transport and economic

Figure 2 Proposals for the UK High Speed Two rail network. Source: Department for Transport, 2013.

development investments across the region.2

The transportation strategy, in particular, plays a crucial role in the Northern Powerhouse plan, which aims to create synergies between Northern Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s several independent urban economies in order to transform what are now several independent metropolitan economies into a single unified megaregional economy. The whole NP region would benefit from expanded labor and housing markets as well as new forms of agglomeration. It proposes to do this by creating frequent, reliable, and fast rail service between all of the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s major cities. The plans include several different transportation strategies, addressing such wide-ranging challenges as overcrowded passenger rail, freight The main line in HS2 splits in a Y shape as it connects the northern cities to London

and logistics planning, and congested highways and airports. The primary goals of these transportation strategies are to reduce travel times, increase frequency and choices, capitalize on smart technology, and improve service quality.

THE NORTHERN POWERHOUSE Station development needs to accommodate high speed trains, express routes, and regional trains to create effective transfer options and optimize regional access

Apart from building the transportation network, the Northern Powerhouse initiative also emphasizes the importance of research and economic development. Within the framework of a single megaregionscale economy, each city-region has identified its strength in the Strategic Economic Plan.3 The Northern Powerhouse as a whole will aggregate these individual strengths to expand the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s knowledge-based economy. Each of this economyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s key sectors, including communications, business services, media and digital enterprises, education, and advanced manufacturing, requires a highly educated workforce. The NP agenda directs economic development funds and regional priorities towards specialized research and job training opportunities.4 The UK government established Transport for the North (TfN) as part of the NP strategy. TfN is charged with developing and executing the transportation plan for the whole region.5 TfN is also working with

Transport for the North (TfN) is a unique partnership between central government, northern city-regions, and the Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP)

municipal governments and the business community to complete a broader economic development strategy for the region, which will be underpinned by its transportation investments. Already the UK government is working to strengthen research universities and teaching hospitals, and create technology transfer 37

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE The AMRC is an example of how government investment can attract private sector research and development, creating valuable jobs for the area residents

institutions such as the National Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Center (AMRC) at the University of Sheffield to insure that technologies created in these places benefit the local, regional and national economy. These and other institutions are also providing workers with the essential skills required to participate in advanced services and technology economic sector, with the University of Sheffield’s AMRC training center as a prominent example. In the area of governance reform, the Northern Powerhouse has also advanced a series of so-called “Growth and Devolution Deals,” which are providing incentives for municipalities within metropolitan areas to collaborate in delivering transportation, skill development, health care and other services.6 Devolution transfers power and accountability from central government to individual cities and regional “combined authorities”—new regional governments with responsibility for strategic planning, economic development, and service delivery—enabling them to make more appropriate decisions about how to prioritize expenditures. The UK government has also encouraged the direct election of mayors for metropolitan areas, now increasingly managed under the combined authority model. These new units of governments can collaborate with each other and with other government entities, such as TfN, to advance infrastructure 38

investments and policy reforms that benefit the whole North of

THE NORTHERN POWERHOUSE England as well as its component city-regions.

LESSONS LEARNED The Northern Powerhouse initiative is attempting to tackle chronic economic underperformance through a wide-ranging set of investments, programs, and policies. A summary of the studioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s key

Human Capital development and labor access was a huge component in the success of the AMRC

takeaways from its 10-day Manchester charrette follows below. Lessons learned cover economic, political, and transportation concerns, and each lesson has informed the studioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s findings and recommendations for New England

1. Regional Economic Transformation The Northern Powerhouse experience underscores the need for a truly comprehensive approach to transform the economy of large regions such as the North of England or Southern New England. The NP initiative includes strategies and investments required to improve transportation and infrastructure, upgrade the labor force, establish competitive industries, reform governance and adopt marketstimulating policies and incentives as part of a holistic transformation plan. A similar comprehensive strategy, built on modernized rail infrastructure, should be considered to transform the economy of Southern New England into a competitive, resilient, and highly productive region. A key take away from the studioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s charrette in Manchester was that improvements to infrastructure are crucial in creating the foundation of growth and renewal of urban and regional economies by expanding 39

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE labor and housing markets and encouraging agglomeration economies to emerge. It is also clear that investing in transportation infrastructure is necessary, but not sufficient to achieve this economic transformation. To realize this goal, a broader economic development strategy is required. Elements of this strategy include improving workforce skills, strengthening primary industries and creating a pipeline for new technologies and innovation from the region’s research universities and teaching hospitals, improving local transportation systems and reinforcing the “quality of place” of older cities Labor force quality is a major factor in a region’s competitiveness. With a poorly skilled workforce and fragmented labor market, the regional economy is stagnant and fragile. To have a resilient and competitive economy, there needs to be a highly-skilled labor pool. City-regions must invest in developing a skilled labor force, by providing education and training in different environments, including school education, technical and professional education, and research and development. The Northern Powerhouse demonstrates how important it is to equip the economy with a skilled labor force, which boosts employment and attracts industries like advanced manufacturing and technology. The success of primary industries is also a major factor in a region’s success. In the case of the Northern Powerhouse, advanced manufacturing, energy, and health innovation have been identified as the prime industries. These industries receive financial and political support from the government as well as benefit from local universities’ talent and research facilities. The Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre at the University of Sheffield provided the studio with a world-class example of successful 40

THE NORTHERN POWERHOUSE The AMRC includes an apprenticeship program that is connected with the regional community college. This creates a reliable pipeline of employees and serves as another business incentive

technology transfers. The AMRC is an incubator of new technologies that creates a platform for the open exchange of ideas while providing for reduced research and development costs through a facility subscription model. The AMRC is also home to a training facility for young adults interested in bypassing typical academic trajectories and launching right into technological careers. The AMRC has done all of this by strategically attracting corporate partners, most notably Boeing and Rolls Royce, to join an academic enterprise, creating a network of mutually beneficial relationships. The Centreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s location on the site of a former industrial compound, which was contaminated and deteriorating, also mitigated a substantial environmental and economic challenge for the city of Sheffield.

2. Politics and Governance One of the most important concepts gleaned from the Northern Powerhouse is the establishment, by the national government, of a regional statutory institution to fund and to plan for key transportation investments across the North of England. In addition to these core responsibilities, this new agency, Transport for the North (TfN), is also preparing a comprehensive economic development agenda for then

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE region in partnership with local authorities and other stakeholders. TfN is able to use its regional outlook to make planning and investment decisions holistically and helps to fund both local and regional level projects, which might not otherwise be feasible. In the Northern Powerhouse region, the funding sources of these infrastructure projects come not only from national and local governments, but also from public-private partnerships. As a result, the public and private sectors can share risks, and the project can benefit from the private sectorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s expertise in cost-effective project delivery. The Northern Powerhouse initiative also demonstrates the importance of beginning with a transportation strategy. Transportation projects lead to tangible results, unlike many policy victories, and are therefore favored by many politicians. They are easier to implement than projects that tackle fundamental human capital challenges, such as educational reform or skill training. A well implemented transportation plan can generate political will, political capital, and the publicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trust, thus building the political support to address more complicated, but less tangible projects. An additional, important takeaway from the Manchester charrette was the value of combined authoritiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;new consolidated metropolitan governments with responsibility for strategic planning, transportation, economic development and shared municipal services. Each participating local government keeps its local identity and responsibility for local services, but benefits from more efficient economies of scale in the above areas. The studio heard directly from leaders of the Greater Manchester 42

Combined Authority about the economic and political advantages of

THE NORTHERN POWERHOUSE this new approach, which incentivizes collaboration among center cities and their surrounding suburbs, which have historically competed for national resources, talented labor, and employers. This model could be adapted to meet similar challenges in Southern New England, where all three states have abolished county government and most other forms of cross-border co-operation.

3. Transportation HS3 is a logical progression following the success of HS1 and the construction of Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Crossrail project

The North of England clearly demonstrates the need to improve both inter-city and intra-city connections. Both kinds of services are being planned and more importantly, integrated for the convenience of passengers. As a result of planned transportation investments, not only will passengers in the region be able to travel between its cities more easily, they will also enjoy improved mobility within individual cities, through improved tram and bus service and the subsequent reduction of roadway congestion. A plan for enhancing transportation systems in southern New England should take a similar approach. A key insight gained from the Manchester charrette was that the Northern Powerhouse initiative emerged from the governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision to build the HS2 high-speed rail link between London, Manchester and Leeds. The impetus for this decision was the 43

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE realization that investments in the aging West Coast Main Line rail corridor had resulted in an overwhelming increase in demand for rail travel along this vital corridor, which links London with the North of England and Scotland. Transport planners determined that the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mobility system would require additional capacity between London and the North, and that investments in expanded air service and motorways were not practical, cost effective, or politically feasible. This left the alternative of building a new rail link in this corridor, and planning officials and politicians concluded that if a new rail line were to be built, it should be built to modern, 21st century standards. This led to the 2010 decision by UK Transport Secretary Lord Andrew Adonis to build HS2, the new HSR link between London and the North of England. This decision was subsequently ratified by governments from all three major parties and successive governments, who believed that HS2 could transform the economic geography of the North of England and the whole country Transportation planners in England recognize several attributes of high performance rail. These criteria include speed, frequency, quality, reliability, and affordability. Speed and frequency are essential to encouraging as much ridership as possible; riders want to know that they can take a train when they need one at any point in the day. The quality of the trains must also be up to a high standard: a clean, appealing environment with complimentary services such as free wifi serves to attract more passengers. Reliability is important for ensuring customer loyalty and railâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s utility for a wide variety of travel types. Last but not least, the price of the service should be set at levels that are affordable to most residents of the service area. 44

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE Finally, transportation planning is more than building and operating the infrastructure. It is also about promoting transit-oriented travel, transit-supportive development, and transit-dependent lifestyles. It is important to recognize, however, that there are significant differences between the travel patterns and lifestyles in the North of England and Southern New England. In Northern England, transit is convenient, affordable, and very popular among the public, while in autodependent Southern New England, transit has extremely low mode share, and is sometimes considered to be an inferior choice. Hence, in addition to building high-performance rail, it will also be necessary to transform travel patterns, attitudes and development patterns around this new travel mode, in effect, encouraging the emergence of a transitoriented lifestyle in Southern New Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cities.

REFERENCES 1. Magazine (2015) BBC News - What is the Northern Powerhouse? <http://www.bbc. com/news/magazine-32720462/>. 2. Transport for the North (2015) The Northern Powerhouse: One Agenda, One Economy, One North <https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/427339/the-northern-powerhouse-tagged.pdf>. 3. Ibid

4. Ibid

5. Transport for the North (2015) Partnership Board, <http://www.bbccom/news/ magazine-32720462>. 6. Transport for the North (2015) The Northern Powerhouse: One Agenda, One Economy, One North, <https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/427339/the-northern-powerhouse-tagged.pdf>.

The resurgence of Downtown Providence is a product of strong local government leadership and vision

Transformation Plan CHAPTER OVERVIEW This report proposes a transformational economic development strategy for Southern New England, which would reverse decades of decline in the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bypassed cities by turning todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s isolated cities into an integrated network of connected cities and metropolitan regions stretching from New York to Boston. The strategyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s premise is simple: a unified regional undertaking, backed by the substantial commitment of federal, state, and private investments, would catalyze the economic transformation of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the adjoining areas of Long Island, southern Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, all of which are suffering from stagnant population and economic growth. It would also provide significant benefits to the booming economies of metropolitan New York and Boston, by expanding their currently overheated housing, labor, and commercial office markets and relieving congestion on their gridlocked roads and rails.

TRANSFORMATION PLAN INTRODUCTION This approach represents a significant departure from each state’s current approach, in which economic development plans for Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island acknowledge the need for regional co-operation, but mention their neighbors almost exclusively in terms of comparative statistics, not collaborative action.1,2 The six states of New England together comprise about onequarter the land area of Texas, yet boast six different transportation, housing, and economic development strategies. This contributes to the region’s underperformance in national and global markets. In order to reverse the region’s economic and fiscal fortunes, Southern New England’s states must begin to intensively collaborate internally, as well as with New York and northern New England. The foundation of this proposal is a massive investment in a high-performance rail system that would enable (and require) the region to do just that. To succeed, however, this rail investment must be accompanied by a comprehensive regional economic development strategy, in order to turn an infrastructure project into economic transformation project. Rebooting New England first proposes that the Federal Rail Administration (FRA) and states proceed with a true high-speed corridor between New York and Boston, based largely upon Alternative 3.2 in the FRA’s NEC Futures Tier 1 Environmental Impact Statement. This includes two major sections of new construction. The first would include two new high-speed tracks running east on Long Island from Penn Station New York to Port Jefferson, Long Island, much of it on existing rights-of-way. This would then connect to a new tunnel under the Long Island Sound stretching from Port Jefferson to Stratford on 48

TRANSFORMATION PLAN the Connecticut shoreline. The second new segment would include two high-speed tracks from New Haven to Hartford and then on to Providence. This route would permit 100-minute travel times between New York and Boston, and also provide the eight million residents of Long Island and Greater Hartford with high-performance Northeast Corridor rail service. The details of this proposal, including how it deviates from Alternative 3.2, are outlined in Part 4 of this chapter. This high-speed line alone will not reverse New Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fortunes overnight. With this in mind, this plan argues for a complementary set of regional strategies and investments, including a robust The transformation plan aims to make economic and transportation connections between currently isolated cities. To do so, it proposes a series of inter-city, intracity-region, and intra-city connections, accompanied by policies to promote cooperation and the leveraging of individual city-regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strengths.

network of regional transportation projects that would upgrade and expand opportunities for global, intra-city, and inter-city travel. The first of these would be an upgraded New Haven Line commuter rail corridor between New Haven and Manhattan, which would relieve congestion and improved travel times, capacity and reliability on the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s busiest commuter rail corridor. This and other proposed rail

TRANSFORMATION PLAN investments would connect every major population and employment center in Southern New England to the main high-performance rail spine. By turning what is currently a slow, congested and unreliable inter-city and commuter rail corridor into a comprehensive transportation network. By doing so, this proposal would reduce Perhaps a tile maker needs a show room near their customers while their factory needs cheap land in abundance to keep the tile price low. The sales people in the showroom need a working knowledge of the products and the factory’s abilities, while the manufacturers in the factory need real time information about the orders they are processing. The necessity of this communication often causes such a firm to choose a medium priced building on the edge of a city, sacrificing some customer exposure and paying somewhat more in rent. Enabling the company to have their showroom in the core of the city, and their factory in a lowrent industrial park without losing their communication ability increases the entire company’s productivity.

vehicle dependence, congestion, travel times, and travel costs for individuals at all income levels across the region. Finally, this plan acknowledges the need for significant economic development measures to accompany the proposed high-performance rail network. When combined with comprehensive economic development, these rail investments would expand labor and housing markets to transform the economic geography of the entire region. The full strategy, which combines economic development and transportation, unlocks the economic potential of Southern New England, home to one of the most highly educated and productive populations in the country. Currently, despite its skilled workforce, all three states are among the nation’s poorest performers in terms of fiscal health and economic stability.3 All three Southern New England states have already begun to implement ambitious strategic economic development plans, yet these have not coalesced into an integrated strategy for the whole three-state region. And they have also failed to build synergies with the booming economies of metro New York and Boston. In the absence of a shared economic development plan, the potential to collaborate with New York and Boston is also made more difficult as New England’s cities and states compete with each other, Long Island, the Hudson Valley, and North Jersey in a zero-sum game to attract firms wishing to

expand beyond New York or Boston. By comparison, this plan argues

TRANSFORMATION PLAN that through collaboration and shared investments, every New England state as well as New York and Boston, can reap far greater rewards. To achieve these goals, Southern New England needs an investment, infrastructure, and economic development strategy backstopped with federal funding commitments on the scale of the New Deal’s Tennessee Governor Charlie Baker attends Gina Raimondo’s inauguration in a show of support and collaboration

Valley Authority economic development program. There are many other historical precedents for federal action on behalf of one region’s economic health in periods of economic crisis (for elaboration on this point, see New Strategies for Regional Economic Development, 2009). There are also numerous international models, one of which is the UK’s Northern Powerhouse initiative. The depressed economies of New England’s older cities represent a crisis worthy of concerted state and federal action at this scale. The results of the 2016 elections, for Brexit in the UK and for Donald Trump in the US, resulted in part from the frustrations of middle- and working class voters in both countries, many of them residents of formerly industrial cities. These voters and their communities have been adversely affected by globalization and automation that has reduced employment opportunities and 51

TRANSFORMATION PLAN incomes for workers who lack the skills needed to emerging advanced technology and service sectors. And most of these growth industries have developed in larger metropolitan regions, like metro New York and Boston. Britain’s new Prime Minister, Theresa May, is already advancing strategies for Britain’s bypassed cities and regions; and the Trump administration should do likewise. In many ways, New England’s older industrial cities, perhaps the first places in the nation to experience the negative impacts of globalization, represent the eastern edge of America’s Rust Belt. A national demonstration of innovative economic development strategies in Southern New England could provide a powerful model for similarly bypassed places across the Rust Belt, and indeed across the country. The economic development strategies and rail projects that could propel New England into just such economic productivity are outlined in the pages that follow.

REGIONAL PROSPERITY

Before discussing specific economic development proposals, it is

TRANSFORMATION PLAN important to understand the underpinning theory that influenced the planâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development. The section below outlines major economic ideas and assumptions central to Rebooting New England.

Metropolitan Productivity Engines In recent years, larger metropolitan regions like those surrounding New York and Boston have become the drivers of the national and global economy, while most smaller cities and metros, like those in Southern New England, have lagged in economic performance. Larger metros, their employers and workers have all benefited from agglomeration effects. Agglomeration is the collective benefit companies receive from clustering together. There are three main components to this phenomenon; thick labor markets, knowledge spillover, and economies of scale. All three of these increase individual productivity, which then increases wages and a regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overall prosperity per capita. Thick labor markets do not just benefit the employers looking for the best hires, but also the potential employees looking for the best return for their talents. Finding the perfect match increases profits for both parties.4 People need to live within a reasonable commute distance of their workplace or they cannot work there. This creates a finite pool of employees for businesses based on where they locate. Large cities offer a wide variety of people and skill sets, or what is called a thick labor pool.5 Businesses located in thick labor pools can choose the bestsuited employees and increase their overall productivity. Moreover, a large labor pool increases competition and keeps labor 53

TRANSFORMATION PLAN costs low. Companies that sell to national or global markets cannot raise prices along with rising local costs of labor, and are thus forced to relocate if a city’s labor force becomes too expensive. A large pool of people competing for jobs prevents companies from moving out of the region.6 Conceptual map of a interconnected region, in which employees and firms have greater pools of opportunity. Rebooting New England aims to make this type of region possible. ALBANY

BOSTON

WORCESTER

SPRINGFIELD

PROVIDENCE t Conn e c

H u d s on Rive r

Cape Cod Bay

HARTFORD

cu t

WATERBURY

R iv e

NEW HAVEN

NEW LONDON

BRIDGEPORT

Long

Is la n d

Sound

NEW YORK

20 MILES

However, the physical world limits a region’s labor market. Existing neighborhoods, bodies of water, mountain ranges, industrial areas and poor transit connections prevent the expansion of new housing for a labor market to match a city’s demand. New York and Boston are both approaching these limits, while Southern New England’s smaller cities have unused capacity in their economies and labor and real estate markets. In 2010, all the region’s cities over 100,000 people (except Stamford) had residential vacancy rates greater than 10%. Meanwhile people who are not able or willing to move to, or endure long-distance commutes to, big-city jobs are left in these towns looking for work. Also in 2015, these cities had an average unemployment 54

TRANSFORMATION PLAN rate of 12.57%. Expanding the effective reach of New York and Boston to these underutilized populations and cities would at once enable their continued growth while also revitalizing downtowns and neighborhoods in New Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s small and mid-sized cities. Existing populations would gain new opportunities for gainful employment, and Map of current independent metropolitan areas in the region, which limit firms and employees to opportunities in their immediate vicinities. ALBANY

BOSTON

WORCESTER

SPRINGFIELD

PROVIDENCE t Conn e c

H u d s on Rive r

Cape Cod Bay

HARTFORD

cu t

WATERBURY

R iv e r

NEW HAVEN

NEW LONDON

BRIDGEPORT

Long

Is la n d

Sound

NEW YORK

20 MILES

new residents would bring new vitality to local residential, retail and commercial markets, while expanding municipal and state tax bases. Although confidentiality agreements and non-compete clauses are prevalent in the knowledge economy, they cannot prevent knowledge spillovers (the effects of sharing new ideas and technology with those around you) through business and social relationships. These can happen within one sector, like the tech industry in Silicon Valley, or across multiple sectors, as with the SWOT analyses that swept the corporate world in the 1960s and 1970s. The transfer of ideas speeds the production of innovation and progress.7 Another way to increase productivity is to decrease costs. Economies

TRANSFORMATION PLAN of scale were famously first harnessed by Ford and his Model T assembly line, but this factor also applies to transportation, utilities, fire, police, food production, and other mundanities of life. People and companies clustered together can share the cost of these services, decreasing the average cost of living and doing business. This has an especially large effect on those goods-producing sectors that rely on low supply chain costs. These companies often have the same supply chain infrastructure needs, and can then form a mutually beneficial environment from clustering.

Employment Network Benefits The most successful method to create and maintain these connections is through face-to-face meetings. If there is a low cost way to do this, businesses will be able to have more meaningful connections and do more business. Connecting existing job centers to each other with Economies of scale can help small municipalities share the high costs of providing public services with substantial operating and capital savings. These include public safety, waste management, library systems, and school districts.

affordable travel will enable greater face-to-face communication across a larger geography, and thereby increase the productivity of businesses in each. 56

TRANSFORMATION PLAN Not every part of a business belongs in the core of a city, and neither does every business aspect belong in a suburban industrial park. However, the crucial interaction of employees within a company traditionally leads firms to choose bringing their employees together in one location. This allows for efficient communication, but costs more in rent than the business should be paying. Allowing companies to easily access industrial land and a city business district through an intracity network, allows the location of business activities where they are needed most, which then boosts productivity. Companies are not just dependent on internal communication, but also on meaningful connections to their customers and business partners. These critical relationships occur across multiple market scales, and are subject to the quality of transportation between cities and regions. Thus, an inter-city network becomes a vital part of a business strategy and success. In addition to enabling these business relationships, efficient physical connections are particularly important when it comes to non-mobile job generators such as universities, seaports, and airports. These resources tend to attract new businesses that benefit from the labor markets opened up by transit networks, and they are well-distributed spatially throughout the region. Access to these resources is enabled by a fast and affordable medium-distance transport mode. To take full advantage of agglomeration effects, an efficient and convenient high-speed rail connection between New York and Boston is necessary. The direct HSR connection proposed in this report will provide for 100-minute travel times between the two cities. But it will also permit a range of other services connecting all of Southern New 57

TRANSFORMATION PLAN Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mid-sized cities with each other and with New York and Boston. There are already strong connections between New York and Boston, as evidenced by demand for flights between the two cities. Additional air links connect New York and the smaller cities in New England. Shifting passenger travel between these job centers to rail will help decongest currently at-capacity Logan and New York airports and allow them to serve more national and global trips. This in turn improves connections within the region and between the region and the rest of the nation and world. Housing and Quality of Life Benefits Quality of life is greatly affected by an individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s employment opportunities and income potential in relation to a placeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cost of living. For the typical American household, housing is the single greatest annual expense. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has recommended that to avoid being overburdened by housing costs, households should attempt to limit the share of their spending on housing to 30% of their income.8 If a household is paying

1:4 0

7 3:4

ice Serv g n sti i x ce ervi S d

Prop os e

Difference in travel times between current Acela service--the fastest currently available-and the proposed high-speed route, to be discussed in more detail later in this chapter.

TRANSFORMATION PLAN more than this then they are considered to be housing burdened. Currently both New York and Boston, with their rapidly growing populations and job opportunities, are experiencing a housing crisis. In New York City, for example, more than half of the city’s households spend more than 30% of their income on housing and only 64% of all NYC apartments are considered affordable for medianincome residents.9 Meanwhile, cities such as Bridgeport, Danbury and Waterbury, which are just outside the New York metropolitan commuter-shed, are struggling to attract new residents and address vacant housing that blights their neighborhoods. Simply bringing the existing housing stock of these and other cities into the New York City commuter-shed and housing market would not only lower the cost of housing for the New York metro region, but also help renew these cities neighborhoods and population levels.

Ensuring Mutually Beneficial Outcomes As the high-performance rail lines shorten travel time between Southern New England’s cities, there is enormous potential to create additional economic synergies and agglomerations. The New York and Boston MSA’s are both experiencing crush loads in their transportation systems as well as escalating housing prices and commercial rents. According to research from Regional Plan Association’s emerging 4th Regional Plan, the New York metro area will add 2 million jobs and 3.7 million additional residents by 2040; the current housing, transportation, and service delivery infrastructure is not built to support this. Already, many of the young, well educated workers that both cities depend on for their continued growth are finding themselves priced 59

TRANSFORMATION PLAN out by rising rents. In a city suffering from astronomical housing costs, adequate, affordable, and livable housing will be essential to sustain New York’s vitality. The Boston MSA faces similar challenges. While new capacity can be added in their transportation systems and real estate markets, this will come at an enormous cost. By the time the HPR is completed, however, all of Southern New England’s mid-size cities will be within 60 minutes of either New York or Boston (except for Springfield, which will be 90 minutes away from both). Faster commuting opportunities will work to integrate these smaller cities with Boston and New York’s economies. The cheaper housing stock, labor market, and service industries of New England’s older industrial cities will serve an important role in accommodating the economic growth of Boston and New York. Conceptual map showing current temporal distances between cities with existing rail connections.

There is extensive experience in Europe and Asia that suggests that large cities served by high-speed rail gain economic advantage from these investments at the expense of smaller cities, which effectively 60

empty out of people during working hours. But there also a number of

TRANSFORMATION PLAN smaller cities that have proven that they can, in fact, benefit from HSR service. One of the foremost of these is Lille, France, a former coal and steel center that had fallen on hard times before the Eurostar HSR service was initiated between London, Paris, and Brussels. Formerly outside the influence of these large metropolitan economies, Lille is now at the center of a new megaregional economy that encompasses all of these cities. Lille has been transformed by its new strategic location in northwest Europe. It did this by investing in urban â&#x20AC;&#x153;quality of placeâ&#x20AC;? improvements to its downtown, and construction of new facilities and services designed to capitalize on its strategic location. These include new office, shopping, conference center, and housing choices serving businesses and visitors from its now accessible larger neighbors. Stamford, CT, a former manufacturing center that fell on hard times in the 1970s and early â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;80s, when lock manufacturing and other industries closed or left town, serves as a second example of this transformation. Stamford mobilized to take advantage of the creation of Metro-North Railroad in 1983, and the improved 50-minute commuter service it provided to Manhattan. Stamford replaced former industrial sites with new offices, a downtown shopping mall, and a performing arts center, among other amenities. A number of Fortune 100 firms relocated their headquarters to Stamford from Manhattan, followed by the location there of major financial services firms, including Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), GE Capital, and others. In recent years Stamford has become a national center for hedge funds, private equity firms, and media firms staffed in part by professionals and managers who commute from New York City to Stamford. Consequently, for the past two decades, as many people, if

TRANSFORMATION PLAN not more, have commuted from New York to Stamford, rather than the other way. Under the HSR proposal advanced in this report, nearly all of Southern New England’s cities would be brought within a one hour travel time from either New York or Boston --and in the case of Hartford, both NY and Boston. If these cities create the kind of quality of place and specialized economic development actions that Lille, Stamford and cities in Southern England have taken, they can expect to experience similar economic benefits. Rebooting New England provides a blueprint to substantially increase the region’s capacity, and therefore capitalize Before and after redevelopment of a Stamford warehouse building, now part of a vibrant commercial, industrial, and retail neighborhood just south of the train station. Stamford enjoys express commuter service to midtown Manhattan multiple times an hour during rush hours.

on the new locational advantages described above. The completed HPR will enable the whole extended region to share a larger, more diverse labor pool and housing market. It will also create larger economic agglomerations that facilitate the flow of knowledge and other resources across the whole integrated New York - New England region. Consequently, Southern New England and Long Island will have the potential to match New York and Boston’s GDP growth.

REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES A regional transportation network will go a long way to extending labor 62

TRANSFORMATION PLAN and housing markets for Southern New England’s urban cores, as well as for Long Island, New York City, and Boston. It will connect urban centers to each other and their suburbs, and it will generally ease the friction of distance between New York and Boston, two of the country’s most dynamic metropolitan economies. Only with accompanying Conceptual map showing shortened temporal distances that would exist between cities with high-speed transportation links.

local and regional economic development strategies, however, will the proposed high-performance rail system (HPR) further optimize agglomeration potential by creating a larger, region-wide network of employers, employees, academics, anchor institutions, communities, and local governments. Whereas spillover benefits are at present arbitrarily inhibited by state and municipal boundaries, this approach would encourage collaboration that transcends these boundaries.

Economic Echoes Southern New England has relied on suburban wealth and growth— the region’s predominant development pattern since the mid-20th 63

TRANSFORMATION PLAN century—to support its regional economy for several decades. The Great Recession and subsequent erosion of the country’s residential real estate market, however, substantially lowered property values across Southern New England. The region is only now beginning to regain housing occupancy and market values. In Connecticut, where firms in the finance, insurance, and real estate (“FIRE”) sector dominate many municipalities’ industry mix, the Great Recession took an additional troubling toll on corporate tax receipts. As a result of this fiscal upheaval, all three states in the region have faced hundreds of millions in structural deficits since the end of the recession in 2010. Southern New England also faces two significant problems related to the mass retirement of the Baby Boomer generation. First, public pension contributions demand increasing shares of state and municipal budgets, which most units of government find difficult to fully fund. In addition, firms are losing a significant portion of their workforce to retirement, and many have struggled to find adequately trained replacements. Millennials are not filling the employment pipelines for these vacated positions, due to a lack of vocational training in the public school system, the diminished status of industrial sector jobs; and the ever-increasing attractiveness of social and employment opportunities of major cities like New York and Boston. Finally, like many other urban areas around the country, Southern New England’s mid-sized cities were hollowed out during decades of de-industrialization and de-population. Although some downtowns, most notably those of Hartford, New Haven, and Providence, have made strides towards recovery, these cities are broadly in need of reinvestment. And while every city still boasts historic and high-quality 64

neighborhoods many of their commercial cores are now riddled with

TRANSFORMATION PLAN vacant lots, parking, and low-quality contemporary architecture. These changes have had the combined effect of undercutting the cities’ urban quality, pedestrian scale, liveliness, and sense of place. It is more pressing than ever that the Southern New England region identify opportunities to grow its tax base, create jobs, diversify its economy, and rebuild its identity. Luckily, the region need not start from scratch.

Recognizing Assets This plan builds upon the region’s many assets. First and foremost, Southern New England is strategically located between New York City and Boston. Both cities are growing rapidly in terms of employment numbers and cost of living, two factors that could benefit the region’s cities if they were better connected to these places via fast, reliable, and affordable transportation. The proposed high-performance rail network would bring each of the intervening cities of Bridgeport, New Haven, Waterbury, Hartford, Providence, Springfield, and Worcester within 90 minutes (and most within 60 minutes) of either New York or Boston. New England is also home to some of the country’s finest education institutions, including four out of seven Ivy League universities (with the other three in very close range), Tufts University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, the Universities of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and a great number of the country’s top-ranked liberal arts colleges. Along with these institutions of higher education come excellent teaching hospitals, world-class museums, research facilities, and, most importantly, a dense pool of talent. A

TRANSFORMATION PLAN Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript LIbrary at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

strategic urban and economic development plan for the region would encourage talented, highly skilled students to remain in the area after graduation. Many of the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s small and mid-sized cities have a number of high-quality building blocks in place for their successful revitalization. Above all, they have long-lasting, well-designed historic buildings and districts full of character and re-use potential, including numerous places for industrial redevelopment on the sites of extant or longdemolished factories and mills. Most of the cities also have pedestrianscaled street grids that predate motorization, which lend themselves to vibrant, walkable neighborhoods. Cities such as Hartford and Bridgeport, which suffered from rampant clearance, demolition, and housing abandonment, have that many more sites readily available for development. Some of the above-mentioned universities have already gone a long 66

way to revitalizing their surrounding communities, as Yale has done in

TRANSFORMATION PLAN New Haven, Brown has done in Providence, and Trinity and Wesleyan have done in Hartford and Middletown. Even without a wealthy university, however, each of these places has access to a significant anchor institution, or anchoring economic clusters with a stake in ensuring their host communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s success. Existing street grid and potential for an intra-city transit network will strenghten the cores of mid-sized cities.

Finally, the New England states are well suited to manage the adverse impacts of climate change. They have diverse ecologies, abundant access to fresh water, and cooler summers than much of the country. Even if global efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change succeed, many places in the U.S. South and Midwest may become less livable, as they become hotter and dryer. In 2016, severe droughts in California and Tennessee have triggered massive, deadly wildfires. New England is relatively protected from these sorts of disasters. If need be, the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s natural resources, particularly if paired with well-developed transportation, housing, and economic development strategies, could support much larger populations.

Optimizing Opportunities The Obama administration took steps to promote the growth of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s advanced manufacturing sectors, and Southern New 67

TRANSFORMATION PLAN England has benefited from those efforts. The federal Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership program has singled out Connecticut’s aerospace and shipbuilding industries, for example, as a future economic asset for the country. This designation brings with it dedicated technical assistance channels as well as preferential treatment for a variety of federal grants.10 The administration has also regularly awarded grants to innovative research facilities and projects, including multiple grantees in Southern New England and on Long Island.11 While this recognition of advanced manufacturing’s growth potential—and the important role played by innovation—is critical, it is not sufficient. Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island have also each launched major efforts to build on their locational advantages, attract firms, train a new generation of highly skilled laborers, and invest in infrastructure upgrades. This plan assumes that these programs will continue to be statewide priorities and that, with coordination and a strong transportation network, the states can work together to optimize their individual and collaborative efforts for regional gain. The following section discusses major themes, objectives, and methods that are at least partially embraced at the state level and, going forward, should be implemented with the full region in mind. Rebooting New England builds on the above assets and opportunities in order to help states overcome recent economic challenges and ultimately achieve new levels of economic performance and social equity. The four major components of this plan are outlined below.

1) New England must launch a federally supported regional economic development partnership to

• Coordinate economic, housing, community, and

TRANSFORMATION PLAN workforce development efforts to optimize the use of limited resources; • Modify federal immigration and visa rules to permit graduates of New England universities with needed skills to remain in the region following graduation; and • Develop a regional marketing strategy to grow New England’s national and overseas reputation for its collective manufacturing, education, and location strengths.

2) New England states and municipalities must grow their tax and employment base by • Fostering a more attractive business climate, including business-friendly taxes and regulations; • Growing industries around non-mobile assets such as universities, teaching hospitals, existing industry clusters, and airports; • Encouraging social and organizational networks for entrepreneurs, small businesses, researchers, and executives; • Supporting innovation and entrepreneurship through small office and co-working leasing, and efficient incorporation and patent processing; and • Providing for the specific needs of growth-stage firms.

3) New England must grow the size and skills of its workforce through • The implementation of (re)training programs in order to grow its existing labor pool’s skill set; and • Retention of more college graduates and advanced degree holders.

4) New England must revitalize its urban centers by Proposed regional economic development body

Regional Economic Development Body

ECONOMY

HOUSING

COMMUNITY

JOBS

MARKETING

TRANSFORMATION PLAN • Developing strategies to provide lifestyles that complement New York and Boston; • Promoting urban “quality of place” amenities and expanding choices to encourage larger downtown populations; • Leveraging historic assets (in part through an expansion of historic rehabilitation tax credits at the state level, and specifically for owner-occupied housing); • And growing more diverse, balanced portfolios of employers in order to ensure long-term economic stability.

Co-ordinate Economic Development Efforts at Regional Level As discussed above, the New England states and municipalities must begin to collaborate in earnest. The region’s current highly fragmented governance system not only temporarily hinders business and programs, but continually depresses the beneficial productivity effects of agglomeration.12 With this in mind, this plan calls for the establishment of a regional economic development partnership to co-ordinate planning efforts, fundraising, and project delivery, as well as to market the region as a whole. By increasing communication and coordinating expenses, this region can better deploy its limited resources to grow a more skilled workforce, invest in efficient infrastructure, provide affordable housing where it is needed most, and develop joint research facilities or educational consortiums without regard to arbitrary political boundaries. A regional economic development partnership should also focus on regional branding and marketing. In light of global competition for both manufacturing and technology firms and contracts, “New England” is likely to carry more weight than “Connecticut” or “Rhode Island.” By highlighting New England’s collective strengths, the region would fare far better than it does now, with adjacent states (with fewer individual assets) competing against each other. This works in the pursuit of 70

firms as well as tourists. A visitor to Springfield is within two hours of

TRANSFORMATION PLAN The region’s highly balkanized network of municipal governments --a legacy of the colonial period-- has left New England with strong local identity but limited opportunities for regional cooperation

MA: 351 cities and towns

CT: 169 cities and towns

RI: 39 cities and towns

Boston, western Massachusetts’ arts scene, New Hampshire’s taxfree shopping, Vermont’s pristine natural environment, in addition to Connecticut and Rhode Island’s beaches, restaurants, and colonial greens. Any marketing campaign that only advertises a single state’s assets fails to capture the collective possibilities of a New England vacation or business relocation.

Grow Tax and Employment Base A simple expansion of New York and Boston’s labor markets and a reduction in travel times between the two cities would certainly increase regional and national prosperity, but it would be overlooking a unique opportunity to engage the region’s smaller cities. There are many other tools that the region can put in place to grow its tax and employment base. This plan assumes that a well-connected network of New England’s cities would create an attractive environment for new and growing 71

TRANSFORMATION PLAN businesses. With far lower commercial and residential rents than in New York and Boston, these smaller cities—and firms that choose to locate within them—could capture a part of New York and Boston’s labor and consumer markets. With a fully developed and regionally coordinated transportation system, firms in New England would also benefit from lower supply chain and transportation costs. These two factors significantly reduce barriers to entry for new firms as well as encourage increased interaction between firms, their employees, and their customers. Policies and incentives should be used to further develop businessfriendly climates in all three Southern New England states. Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island all have high taxes, lengthy permitting processes, and relatively high costs of living (compared to the central and southern United States), which combine to create particularly high costs of doing business. Additionally, projects receiving public assistance should always subscribe to the triple bottom line—creating more equitable, sustainable, and economically sound outcomes—in order to ensure maximum public benefit. Strong social and organizational ties are another part of a healthy business climate. New England has dense networks of business and civic organization, which the region’s cities should take any opportunity to grow. Active chambers of commerce, for example, serve as marketing bodies as well as sources of technical assistance and hosts of peer-networking opportunities. Co-working spaces, a more recent trend, perform similar roles for individuals and smaller firms; they provide facilities and a built-in-peer network to firms that cannot afford or do not wish to occupy a space of their own. 72

TRANSFORMATION PLAN The region should also go to great lengths to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. This can include authorizing tax incentives and taking steps to reduce the burden of permitting, but should also include providing grant funding and courting venture capitalists to the region, either of which could provide seed funding or low-cost debt financing for risky projects. In addition to financing, new businesses need access to affordable spaces, which can range from the co-working spaces to dedicated incubator program spaces, cheap manufacturing facilities, The Parkville neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut has begun to develop a reputation as an appealing environment for entrepreneurs. Connecticut, the first state in the region to make encouraging start-up businesses a matter of state policy, is considering funding this neighborhoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s continued renaissance through one of its first Innovation Places grants.

or small retail locations. Established small businesses would also benefit from the increased availability of affordable space and low-cost financing. Finally, the region must support growth-stage firms. Connecticut recently became the first state in the country to develop a program specifically focused on growth-stage businesses, offering grants and technical assistance developed with the unique needs of a rapidly growing business. This is a valuable advantage to have in an economy that is still recovering from the effects of the Great Recession and only beginning to understand the full potential of the advanced 73

TRANSFORMATION PLAN manufacturing fields. Small firms that begin in the vicinity of Yale, MIT, Harvard, and other institutions, for example, may be encouraged to stay for specific grant programs and government assistance that is not yet available elsewhere.

Develop a Highly Skilled Workforce With the advent of the Baby Boom generationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mass retirement, New England must identify every possible way to train and retain a new generation of skilled laborers. Coordination between high schools, community colleges, universities, government agencies, and employers is necessary to establish a highly skilled workforce. Such a labor pool would encourage major employers to remain in the region as well as lure new employers to the region. School-to-profession pipelines, largely absent from the American education system, should be a renewed priority in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, all of which are home to many employers in the advanced manufacturing and biotech fields. In our current economy, which privileges college education and advanced degrees, this will require a concerted effort to restore the reputation of manufacturing jobs. Students at every level should be able to easily find apprenticeships and internships opportunities; where additional financial support for these positions are required, states should take every effort to provide funding. Adult training programs to prepare the existing labor force for new employment opportunities are also necessary.13 In addition to training workers not currently in school or the workforce, 74

New England must do a better job of retaining its college graduates and

TRANSFORMATION PLAN advanced degree holders. The region boasts the highest in-migration of students from around the country, but fails to keep even its local students at a rate competitive with other regions.14 The region’s one existing strength in this regard is in retention of international students with advanced degrees; the more New England can cooperate with the federal government to facilitate acquisition of visas, the more it Ribbon-cutting ceremony at Mount Wachusett Community College’s new Manufacturing Workforce Certification Center, which opened in 2013. Facilities like these, typically on community college campuses, provide the majority of technical training currently available to members or prospective members of the advanced manufacturing workforce.

can ensure a growing, highly skilled workforce with valuable diverse perspectives and backgrounds. Ideally, graduates of New England’s colleges and universities and teaching hospitals should receive green cards with their diplomas, which would ensure a large supply of skilled workers to meet the region’s need for skilled workers.

Redevelop and Revitalize Urban Centers Growing the number of jobs available and reducing barriers to entry for new firms will help to retain some portion of graduates, but many more will continue to be drawn away by the allure of the country’s premier cities: New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C, among others.

TRANSFORMATION PLAN New England’s cities must develop strategies to recreate the attributes of these global cities. While they may never boast the government jobs of Washington nor the diverse lifestyles of San Francisco, they do have advantages to work with. For any of New England’s cities to increase their competitiveness—with the major cities around the country or the long-privileged suburbs— they must promote urban amenities and expand choice. This includes but is not limited to providing more lifestyle advantages than suburbs can, and at least some approximation of the entertainment, recreation, and housing choices afforded those living in larger cities. Several small New England cities, such as Northampton, MA and Middletown and New Haven in CT, have created urban housing, retail, restaurants, cultural, and public realm opportunities that match those of larger cities, albeit with less congestion and better access to countryside than is possible in major metropolitan centers. This will also require that cities balance affordability for a wide variety of residents, increase access to public transportation, and encourage commercial as well as residential development. In doing so, they can avoid displacing existing residents due to rising rents and gentrification. This approach will tend to involve densification of the downtown areas, many of which currently lack any substantial residential population to support evening and weekend activity. (See Chapter Six “On the Ground” for how this type of development could emerge in Hartford, Connecticut.) New England’s towns and cities have the advantage of a rich past, and governments and residents that have tended to value their history. They also benefit from walkable street grids, strong park systems, 76

TRANSFORMATION PLAN and beautiful civic buildings such as schools and libraries, all of which date to wealthy periods in the region’s history. Outside of central business districts, historic architecture still largely prevails in the region’s small and mid-sized cities, lending a strong sense of place to their neighborhoods and commercial corridors. Historic buildings and districts often provide affordable housing and commercial space for young residents and new businesses; they also contribute the type of character that cannot be found in most suburbs. Cities must leverage these historic assets in their built environment in order to distinguish themselves. Of the three Southern New England states, Connecticut currently invests the most in creating historic rehabilitation tax credits by allocating credits for both commercial and private residential properties (the latter is increasingly rare in the country’s current fiscal and political climate). Massachusetts and Rhode Island should recreate their own historic home rehabilitation tax credits, both of which existed until revenue shortfalls led to their elimination during the recent recession. State credits, when combined with the federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit (HRTC) and even occasionally the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), can go a long way to financing renovation and re-use projects. Finally, New England must be careful not to focus too exclusively on its current range of industries; part of a holistic economic development strategy must be to grow a balanced, diverse portfolio of employers. Most of the region’s cities have a handful of firms and institutions with an outsized influence on their economies, be it Aetna and The Hartford in Hartford, Yale and Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, or Brown University and Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence. In order

TRANSFORMATION PLAN to ensure stability in the future, these cities must be careful to expand and complement their largest employment sectors. Opportunities for growth across the region include renewable energy, tourism, and marine research as well as growing employment in the growing economic sectors in New York and Boston. In particular, the information technology, pharmaceutical, media, and communications sectors have A network of cities enabled by improved intercity and intra-city transportation.

potential to expand in Southern New England if the transportation improvements outlined in this report are built. This four-pronged approach to economic development will thoroughly disrupt the status quo in New England, a region that finds comfort in the familiar and the traditional. But disruption is necessary if New England—and by the extension the United States—is to radically transform its economic geography and productivity. Following the successful implementation of these economic development strategies and the development of the above proposed high-performance rail system, New England’s bypassed cities will become a thriving network 78

of metropolitan areas, better connected to each other, the east coast’s

TRANSFORMATION PLAN major cities (including New York City and Washington, DC), and the globe.

TRANSPORTATION PROPOSAL The backbone of the economic transformation plan for Southern New England is a proposed high-performance rail network that would provide multiple layers of mobility: intercity rail, local transit, and global connections. Intercity rail includes a high-speed rail main spine between New York and Boston via Long Island, New Haven, Hartford, Providence, and Boston, as well as multiple high-performance rail lines and regional lines to feed the main spine and to fill in gaps between major mid-sized cities in the existing rail network. Local transit includes expanded transit access to new and existing rail stations, including bus rapid transit, light rail, and shared mobility options such as carshare, bikeshare, and transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft. Finally, global connections include providing seamless access between the intercity rail network and major airports in the region. Our proposal greatly expands the quality and quantity of mobility options in Southern New England to enable the region’s economic transformation and meet the travel needs of the century.

High Performance Rail An important takeaway from the studio’s Northern Powerhouse Charrette in Manchester, England was that the UK Government’s decision to build the London to Manchester and Leeds High-Speed 2 line (HS2) was driven by the fact that all of the existing modes --motorways, airports and conventional rail lines linking London with the North were highly congested. This was after spending several

TRANSFORMATION PLAN billion pounds upgrading and modernizing the existing West Coast Main Line rail link between London and Manchester. And it became clear that it would be difficult or impossible to create alternate runway and motorway capacity in this congested corridor. For this reason it was determined that a new North-South rail line was needed, and that if such a line were to be built it should be built to modern 21st century Road, River, and Rail combine to form the diverse infrastructure necessary for a complete transportation system

high-speed rail standards. Establishing a similar high-performance rail network between New York and Boston will provide similar benefits, by alleviating congestion 80

from existing highways, rail, and airports, expanding labor and housing

New Rochelle

To: Washington D.C.

Jamaica

Nassau Hub

PENN STATION

Bristol

Suﬀolk Hub

NEW YORK

Morris Park

Westﬁeld

Ronkonkoma

Meriden

New Britain

Hartford

Bloomﬁeld

Bradley Airport

New Haven

Waterbury

Pittsﬁeld

Bridgeport

Danbury

To: Albany, NY

Stamford

Cross Westchester

To: New York, NY

ALBANY

Palmer

Old Saybrook

Middletown

Rocky Hill

Westerly Mystic

Norwich

Willimantic/UConn

Putnam

Webster

Riverside

Westford

Lowell

Nashua

Pawtucket

Providence

Woonsocket

Northbridge

Kingston

Walpole

Westborough/ I-495 Medﬁeld

Haverhill

Fall River

Wareham

Barnstable

20 MILES

Connection Outside of Study Area

Regional Service - Commuter Rail (Existing)

Regional Service - Commuter Rail, Light Rail, or Bus

High Performance Service

High Speed Service (Main Spine Highlighted)

Major Airport

Station - High Performance or Regional Service

Station - High Speed Service

Major City or Hub

New Bedford

Bridgewater Taunton

Mansﬁeld/I-495

Brockton

Route 128

Attleboro

SOUTH STATION & WEST STATION (BEACON PARK)

BOSTON

Boston Back Bay

Kendall

Woburn

Lawrence

Portsmouth

To: Durham, NH; Portland, ME Exeter

Manchester-Boston Airport

Manchester, NH

To: Concord, NH

Framingham

TF Green Airport

Auburn

Clinton

Fitchberg Leominster

Worcester

Gardner

New London

Windsor Manchester, CT

Windsor Locks

Enﬁeld

Springﬁeld

Holyoke

Northampton

Amherst

Greenﬁeld

Brattleboro

To: Burlington, VT; Montreal, Canada

TRANSFORMATION PLAN

TRANSFORMATION PLAN markets, and fostering synergies between key anchor institutions and industries. The proposed high-performance rail network includes the following layers: •

A high-speed rail main spine between New York and Boston

via Long Island, New Haven, Hartford, and Providence, extending to Lowell. Dedicated high-speed rail tracks and Electric-Multiple-Unit (EMU) trainsets would support speeds up to 220 mph, with up to 8-12 trains per standard peak hour and multiple service classes and stopping patterns, significantly increasing capacity, reducing travel times and improving the travel experience compared to existing transportation options. The existing New Haven Line would be retained and upgraded to provide secondary, high-performance rail service along the nation’s most heavily used passenger rail line serving markets in New Haven, Fairfield, Westchester, and Bronx Counties. •

Multiple high-performance rail lines to feed the main high-

speed rail network and to provide direct connections between major mid-sized cities, including the Shore Line (New Haven-New London-Providence), the Knowledge Corridor (New Haven-HartfordSpringfield), the Inland Route (Springfield-Worcester-Boston), the New Hampshire Capitol Corridor (Lowell-Concord), the Downeaster Corridor (Haverhill-Portland), the Worcester-Providence line, and connections to Bradley Airport, Waterbury, Danbury, New Bedford, and Fitchburg. Most high-performance rail lines use existing passenger or freight lines, which with improvements could support speeds up to 90 to 110 mph, with up to 2-4 trains per standard peak hour. Trains can continue on high-speed tracks to provide passengers one-seat-rides to major cities. • 82

Expanded regional rail connections to feed the intercity

Is la n d

Sound

NEW LONDON

PROVIDENCE

nd d Sou

NEW HAVEN

iv e

NEW YORK

cu t

NEW LONDON

Sound

NEW HAVEN

NEW LONDON

PROVIDENCE

NEW YORK

1 hour service area 1 hour service area

Sound

NEW LONDON

PROVIDENCE

30 min service area

Is la n d

BRIDGEPORT

NEW HAVEN

HARTFORD

SPRINGFIELD

WORCESTER

20 MILES

Cape Cod Bay

BOSTON

1 hour service area

Cape Cod Bay

BOSTON

30 min service area

Providence Station

WATERBURY

Long

30 min service area

20 MILES

Cape Cod Bay

ALBANY

NEW YORK

Is la n d

iv e

Is la n

t Conn e c

cu t

Long

PROVIDENCE

BOSTON

20 MILES

Long

BRIDGEPORT

WATERBURY

HARTFORD

WORCESTER

SPRINGFIELD

t Conn e c

BRIDGEPORT

WATERBURY

HARTFORD

SPRINGFIELD

WORCESTER

1 hour service area

0.5 hour service area

Cape Cod Bay

BOSTON

ALBANY

New York Stations

NEW YORK

Long

NEW HAVEN

iv e

BRIDGEPORT

WATERBURY

HARTFORD

WORCESTER

SPRINGFIELD

ut tc Conn e c

iv e

ALBANY

H u d s on Rive r

ALBANY

H u d s on Rive r

Hartford Station

cu t

H u d s on Rive r

t Conn e c

H u d s on Rive r

Boston Stations

TRANSFORMATION PLAN

TRANSFORMATION PLAN rail network, including service to Amherst, Middletown, Brockton, Fitchburg, Framingham, Barnstable, Norwich, and Portsmouth. These regional connections can operate as standalone lines or be integrated into and serve as extensions of the broader intercity rail network. These regional connections can alternatively be in the form of light rail or bus service. Planning Process. This rail plan originated from a careful analysis of multiple factors. First, the rail plan is compatible with and builds on NEC Future Alternative 3.2, which transforms the role of rail and enables the most potential for economic growth, as well as other existing state and local rail improvement plans. The goal of this effort was to refine proposed rail alignments and expand route coverage to broaden mobility and economic benefits across New England. For example, the main high-speed rail spine between Hartford and Providence follows highway and power-line rights-of-way along the Willimantic River Valley -- a slightly longer route but one which requires considerably less tunneling compared to the original NEC Future proposal. These investments would be phased to provide service to largest and easiestto-reach markets first, followed by investments to smaller markets in subsequent phases. The key feature of the proposed rail network is the Long Island Sound Tunnel, which originated from a 2010 studio report by the University of Pennsylvania and was included in NEC Future. This alignment establishes a double-track high-speed route that provides the largest reduction in travel times and increase in capacity, and creates a strategic linkage between the Long Island economy with New England, without the extensive land-acquisition required for 84

straightening and widening the right-of-way of the existing New Haven

Is la n d

Sound

NEW HAVEN

NEW LONDON

PROVIDENCE

Sound

NEW HAVEN

iv e

NEW YORK

cu t

NEW LONDON

Financial Institution

4000-13000

20 MILES

Pharmaceutical&Bio Tech

Advanced Manufacturing

750-1850 1850-4000

276-750

Employer Type

0-276

Employment Size

Legend

Cape Cod Bay

Sound

NEW HAVEN

NEW LONDON

NEW YORK

Long

Is la n d

BRIDGEPORT

WATERBURY

Sound

NEW HAVEN

HARTFORD

WORCESTER

NEW LONDON

SPRINGFIELD

iv e

Is la n d

t Conn e c

cu t

Long

PROVIDENCE

BOSTON

ALBANY

Is la n d

PROVIDENCE

Interstates

Active Rail

Legend

PROVIDENCE

20 MILES

Cape Cod Bay

BOSTON

20 MILES

Cape Cod Bay

BOSTON

Main Employment Centers

NEW YORK

Long

BRIDGEPORT

WATERBURY

HARTFORD

WORCESTER

SPRINGFIELD

t Conn e c

BRIDGEPORT

WATERBURY

HARTFORD

SPRINGFIELD

WORCESTER

20 MILES

Cape Cod Bay

BOSTON

Existing Rail & Highways

Anchor Institutions

NEW YORK

Long

iv e

BRIDGEPORT

WATERBURY

HARTFORD

WORCESTER

SPRINGFIELD

cu t iv e

ALBANY

H u d s on Rive r

ALBANY

H u d s on Rive r

ALBANY

t Conn e c

cu t

H u d s on Rive r

t Conn e c

H u d s on Rive r

Missing Travel Links

TRANSFORMATION PLAN

TRANSFORMATION PLAN Line, which traverses a dense, built-up area. Second, while accommodating high-speed travel between New York and Boston, the main travel market in the rail network, this proposal brings into the network over 30 of the 50 major mid- to small-sized cities with populations over 50,000 (Source: 2010 Census) -- the remaining of which are either already connected by commuter rail, or are within a close distance to a proposed station. Emphasis was put on identifying missing links in the existing rail network, by estimating potential demand through gravity model and comparing to existing travel patterns. The most significant missing links in the region were observed for Suffolk (Long Island), Hartford, New Haven, and Manchester, NH, which would greatly benefit from improved rail service. The proposed network also connects clusters of anchor institutions, including teaching hospitals, research universities, and centers of advanced industries such as advanced manufacturing, biotechnology and information technology, many of which are located outside of the major cities. This proposed network also serves major airports, which will be discussed later in this section. Third, this proposed network would use existing passenger or freight rail infrastructure where possible to maximize route coverage with incremental capital investments. Southern New England currently is served by a vast network of freight-only railroads, most of which operated passenger trains up until the mid-1900s by private railroad companies. Many of these railroads are still active and now owned, maintained, and operated by private freight operators. Through double-tracking, signal-upgrading, the re-establishment of passenger rail stations, and other marginal investments, freight railroads could 86

be readily converted to accommodate high-performance passenger

TRANSFORMATION PLAN service and greatly expand the catchment area of the high-speed main spine. The restoration of passenger service on these lines would require operating agreements with freight operators or the purchase of these lines, and an update to FRAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s safety regulations to allow freight and passenger trains to operate at the same time. The revival of the role of rail travel in the region would also enable mid-sized cities to be better interconnected to foster cooperation and agglomeration economies outside of the megacities Boston and New York. Example projects include the re-establishment of passenger rail service between Worcester and Providence, and in some cases where rail rights-of-way do not exist, the construction of a new rail line along freeway rights-ofway such as between Providence and New Bedford. Other factors that were built into the rail plan include the flexibility of modes for regional connections and feeder services, the creation of redundancy -- such as the Stamford-Danbury-Hartford line -- to increase reliability, and the integration of rail service to serve the needs of multiple states, and particularly, to maximize the potential to build political support from congressional delegations from all six New England states and New York.

Ridership Projections Following development of this proposed rail plan, high-level ridership projections were created for the year 2040 using a gravity model of intercity travel demand based on their travel times between all origin-destination pairs in the study area. The gravity model is a high-level sketch model that projects travel demand between any

TRANSFORMATION PLAN two geographies based on the relative “size” of those geographies (positive relationship) and the “distance” between them (negative squared relationship). For “size”, we calculated the total number of jobs within 5 miles of each proposed rail station as a proxy for the amount of economic activity covered by the station; for “distance”, we used temporal distance -- the expected travel time provided by the proposed rail network between each station pair. The ridership forecast was calibrated using NEC Future’s 2040 ridership projections, and adjustments were made based on a new projected GDP growth scenario – which will be detailed later in the report – taking into account the potential benefits brought by the economic and transportation investments proposed. In terms of passenger volumes by rail line, the most travelled route is the main high-speed spine between New York – Boston (over 50,000 – 100,000 roundtrips per average weekday); Boston – Lowell and Lawrence (over 50,000 roundtrips); the New Haven Line, Boston Gravity -based travel demand calculation

ALBANY

BOSTON

WORCESTER

SPRINGFIELD

PROVIDENCE t Conn e c

H u d s on Rive r

Cape Cod Bay

HARTFORD

cu t

WATERBURY

iv e

NEW HAVEN

NEW LONDON

BRIDGEPORT

Long

NEW YORK

Is la n d

Sound

20 MILES

TRANSFORMATION PLAN Projected rail ridership by 2040

ALBANY

BOSTON

Station by Local Employment Projected Weekday Roundtrip Ridership by 2040 (Geometric Scale) 50,000 - 100,000 10,000 - 50,000 0 - 10,000

NEW YORK

20 MILES

– Worcester and Hartford - Springfield (over 10,000 roundtrips); Willimantic – Worcester, Providence – New Bedford, and Lowell – Manchester (over 5,000 roundtrips). Among the top intercity markets are the New York - New Haven, Boston - Providence, New York Hartford, New York - Bridgeport, and Boston - New York. Compared to existing rail options as well as NEC Future’s alternatives, this proposed rail network has a much larger catchment area and serves important links between major mid-sized cities that were previously missing. The top travel markets not including Boston or New York are: Hartford New Haven, Hartford - Providence, and Hartford - Springfield. These projections showcase how the proposed rail network would bolster intercity travel for both large and mid-sized cities, expanding mobility across the region for commuting, business travel, and leisure travel. As one of the largest cities served in the middle of the rail network, Hartford has the potential to reap large economic benefits, which would be discussed in greater detail in a later chapter. Lesser traveled links such as the Worcester - Willimantic line and the Worcester

TRANSFORMATION PLAN â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Woonsocket - Providence line are also expected to serve up to over 2,000-5,000 riders per day, feeding the high-speed rail main spine and connecting mid-sized cities, while also keeping up to 2,000 private automobiles off the road.

Local Transit Integrating local transit and mobility options is essential for intercity rail to succeed. Rail stations would become local multimodal transit hubs that seamlessly connect riders to their final destination, supported by integrated route information and ticketing and payment methods. Shared mobility options such as carshare, bikeshare, Uber and Lyft, and on-demand bus shuttles should be encouraged, and dedicated boarding areas should be reserved rather than providing an over-supply of private parking. Finally, fast intercity rail service would make land around stations more attractive and potentially become anchors for the revitalization of city centers. Development around rail stations should create dense, mixed-use, and walkable neighborhoods. Detailed urban design interventions are also discussed in a later section. Mid-sized and smaller metro areas would establish frequent bus networks to expand the coverage of high-speed and high-performance rail beyond the downtown or station areas. Currently, the majority of bus service within the small or mid-sized towns have relatively poor frequencies, ranging from 30 minutes to over 60 minutes. Infrequent bus service discourages time-sensitive riders and prevents transfers between lines, limiting each lineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s coverage. On the other hand, the limited amount of frequent bus service are often solely concentrated around downtown hubs are often not specifically branded to be visible 90

New Britain Station

Central Connecticut State University

University of Connecticut Health Center

BloomďŹ eld Station

Bradley Airport Station

Rocky Hill Station

Hartford Station

Windsor Station

Windsor Locks Station

Manchester Station

Downtown Manchester

Infrequent Bus Network

Frequent Bus Network - Key Missing Links

Frequent Bus Network

Regional Rail

High Speed or High Performance Rail

Rail Station

Buckland Hills Mall

Manchester Station Frequent Bus Connection

TRANSFORMATION PLAN

TRANSFORMATION PLAN to riders not familiar with the local bus system. The studio proposes the following, easy-to-implement improvements to local bus and transit networks, using Hartford as a case study: •

Establish a “frequent network” brand for existing bus service

with headways less than 15 minutes all day, enabling local residents and intercity rail passengers to easily understand and use available service without relying on a vehicle. •

Expand the coverage of “frequent network” bus service to

connect between major job and population centers in the metro area, rather than solely concentrate around traditional downtowns. This could be down by reducing overlapping routes with excess capacity, as high frequencies would enable easy transfers between routes. Potential areas to expand the “frequent network” bus routes include: West Hartford, Farmington (UConn Health Center and Central Connecticut State University), Rocky Hills (proposed regional rail station), Manchester (between downtown, the proposed high-speed rail station, and Buckland Hills mall), and Willimantic (between the proposed highspeed rail station and UConn Storrs Complete streets and bicycle and pedestrian improvements would complement the proposed rail and transit network by improving access to stations and making station areas and city centers more attractive. Currently, many cities such as Hartford have recently adopted complete streets policies to improve traffic safety, health, economic vitality, and the quality of life. Many other cities and town centers, though, are traditionally car-oriented and not friendly to alternative modes. The proposed rail network would facilitate complete streets designs, starting with station areas, with the following elements: (Source: 92

TRANSFORMATION PLAN CROG) •

Pavement markings and signs

Bus-rapid-transit service allows higher quality bus stations and more reliable travel times

•

Sidewalks and pedestrian safety improvements such as

medians, curb extensions and crosswalks •

ADA accessible curb ramps and accessible pedestrian signals

•

Transit shelters and signage and improved pedestrian and

bicycle access to transit stops and stations •

Bicycle detection at intersections and bike lanes, or shared use

lanes, and bicycle parking facilities To illustrate potential bicycle and pedestrian improvements on a city-wide scale, using Hartford as a case study, the studio proposes to expand the on-street bike lane network to connect major transit hubs, employment centers, schools, shopping centers, neighborhoods, and tourism attractions and landmarks. The proposed bike network is shown in dotted green line. The bicycle network would be also integrated with the state’s bike lane system and, as shown in the orange line, connect to regional destinations including Bloomfield and

TRANSFORMATION PLAN West Hartford. To encourage outdoor activities such as hiking and biking, Hartford also has the opportunity to complete its multi-use trails. The East Coast Greenway, for example, passes through the city, and improvements along the alignment would encourage recreation, remove physical barriers, and improve safety for local residents. Other programs such as Bike Share, and bicycle-related education workshops and events would accommodate the use of bikes as a feasible mobility option, not only for the major cites such as Hartford but also smaller town centers that usually lack non-auto access.

Global Connections The rail network prosed in this report would also support the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The local modes of transportation are vital to the success of the regional modes

TRANSFORMATION PLAN major airports to expand national and global connections. The studio proposes establishing seamless rail connections to position Bradley Airport (Hartford-Springfield), T.F. Green Airport (Providence), Manchester-Boston Airport (Manchester, NH), and Long Island MacArthur Airport (Ronkonkoma) as high quality alternatives to congested New York and Boston airports. Concurrently, New York and Boston airports would also become much more accessible to residents and businesses in the region. To achieve this goal, the proposed rail network would establish new rail stations at Bradley Airport and Manchester-Boston Airport. The Bradley Airport station would bring Hartford and Springfield within around 20 minutes via rail, which could be in the form of light rail tram-trains or regional rail services, or also intercity rail services that continue to Boston or New York. The Manchester-Boston Airport Station would be connected to the airport terminal via shuttle bus or Air Train, and would provide fast links to downtown Manchester as well as to the Lowell region.

TRANSFORMATION PLAN

REFERENCES 1. Rhode Island Rising: A Plan for People, Places, and Prosperity, Rhode Island Statewide Planning Program (December 2014); Connecticut: Still Revolutionary, Economic Development Strategy, Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development (2015)

2. Opportunities for All: The Baker-Polito Strategy and Plan for Making Massachusetts Great Everywhere, Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development (December 2015).

3. Norcross, Eileen. “Ranking the States by Fiscal Condition.” MERCATUS RESEARCH (2015): n. pag. Mercatus Center at George Mason University, 2015. Web. <https://www.mercatus.org/ system/files/Norcross-StateFiscal-Condition.pdf>.

4. Moretti, Enrico. The New Geography of Jobs. Boston, MA: Mariner / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Print.

5. Ibid

6. Moretti, Enrico. “Local Multipliers.” American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings, May 2010. Web. <http://eml.berkeley edu//~moretti/multipliers.pdf>.

7. Bottazzi, Laura, and Giovanni Peri. “Innovation, Demand and Knowledge Spillovers: Theory and Evidence from European Regions.” SSRN Electronic Journal (1999): n. pag. Web.

8. Schwartz, Mary, and Ellen Wilson. “Who Can Afford To Live in a Home?: A Look at Data from the 2006 American Community Survey.” (2008): n. pag. US Census Bureau. Web. <https://www. census.gov/housing/census/publications/who-can-afford.pdf>.

TRANSFORMATION PLAN 9. “PlaNYC: A Greener, Greater New York.” (n.d.): n. pag. Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency, 2011. Web.

10. “Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP): The Connecticut Advanced Manufacturing Communities Region,” U.S. Economic Development Administration, accessed 30 November 2016, <https://www.eda.gov/imcp/files/2nd-round/IMCP-2-Pager-Handoutconnecticut.pdf>.

11. “U.S. Department of Commerce Invests $15 Million in Entrepreneurs Across the Nation to Move Ideas to Market, Promote American Innovation.” U.S. Economic Development Administration, 15 Nov. 2016. Web. <https://www.eda.gov/news/press-releases/2016/11/15/ris. htm>.

12. Ahrend, Rudiger, Emily Farchy, Ioannis Kaplanis, and Alexander C. Lembcke. What Makes Cities More Productive? Agglomeration Economies and the Role of Urban Governance: Evidence from 5 OECD Countries (n.d.): n. pag. Spatial Economics Research Center, July 2015. Web. <http://www.spatialeconomics.ac.uk/textonly/SERC/publications/

download/

sercdp0178.pdf>.

13. “House of Lords - The Economics of High Speed 2.” House of Lords - Economic Affairs Committee, 25 Mar. 2015. Web. <http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldselect/ ldeconaf/134/13402.htm>.

14. Alicia Sasser Modestino, “Retaining Recent College Graduates in New England: An Update on Current Trends,” Policy Brief 13-2, New England Public Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (Boston: The Federal Reserve, 2013).

New tunnels, like those built for the 2nd Avenue Subway, are a crucial component of Rebooting New England.

BENEFITS & COSTS CHAPTER OVERVIEW Implementation of a regional program like Rebooting New England will depend on a significant financial commitment from both public and private sources. To build confidence among potential sponsors and secure adequate funding, the project’s financial viability must be firmly established. This chapter makes the case for Rebooting New England through a benefit-cost analysis (BCA), which weighs the project’s benefits to society against the magnitude of funding it will require. The resulting benefit-cost ratio (BCR) is a valuable tool in determining whether a proposed project is a worthwhile investment. Based on even the most conservative estimates, Rebooting New England generates a BCR of greater than 2, indicating that the cumulative value of this proposal’s benefits between 2020 and 2060 will be more than double its costs. Additional analysis highlights social and environmental benefit streams that transcend the economic-based metrics used to generate the benefit-cost analysis. This chapter discusses all parts of this analysis, which is far more expansive than a traditional cost-benefit analysis. First, it compares two different models used to project GDP growth and the project’s economic benefits. Next, the chapter surveys a wide range of benefits that are more challenging to quantify in U.S. Dollars and therefore not explicitly included in the economic growth projects. These benefits include job growth, decongestion of road and air travel networks, social benefits, and environmental benefits. Another section addresses estimated construction, operation, and maintenance costs. Finally, all of these assessments are brought together to develop a final benefit-cost ratio. This, two, is presented in two models. 99

BENEFITS & COSTS TWO MODELS FOR ECONOMIC BENEFITS AND GDP GROWTH

Construction for the New England rail project is proposed to begin in Year 2020. Completion of the rail project is expected 20 years later in Year 2040. The BCA analyzes the benefits and costs of the rail project from 2020 through 2060 (20 years after completion). The evaluation period complies with standard practice for analyzing benefit creation set out by the California High Speed Rail Authority as 20-50 years after rail completion.1 It should be noted that although this evaluation period ends 20 years after the completion of the rail project, the useful life of the proposed investment would extend far beyond the 20-year time frame. GDP growth and economic benefits were forecasted for the eight MSAs seen here:

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH

SpringďŹ eld, MA

Worcester, MA-CT

Providence-Warwick, RI-MA Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT

New Haven-Milford, CT Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA

Two different GDP growth and economic benefits were created using different evaluation metrics. The first of these, a simple GDP projection model, is based on the California High Speed Rail proposal published 100

in 2014. The second economic benefits model is more comprehensive

BENEFITS & COSTS in scope. In addition to calculating GDP growth, it incorporates transportation user benefits and ticket revenues. The first of these, a simple GDP projection model, estimates the future GDP for the study MSAs in three Scenarios: •

Scenario 1 projects the GDP growth for the study MSAs without

rail or economic intervention; this is the base line GDP. •

Scenario 2 illustrates the full benefits of the rail and the

economic intervention for the study MSAs. •

Scenario 3 illustrates 60% of the full benefits of the rail and the

economic intervention for the study MSAs. This model adds the benefits of the rail project for all eight MSAs and the ensuing economic benefits in Year 2060. It discounts the present value of the benefits (PVB) to today’s value by discounting the benefits found in Year 2060 by a 7.00% real discount rate. This results in a PVB of $86.2 billion. For more detail about this model’s assumptions and results, see Appendix 2. The second benefit estimates are based on a cumulative GDP model, and are calculated for four scenarios. •

Scenario 1 projects the GDP growth for the study MSAs without

rail or economic intervention; this is the base line GDP. •

Scenario 2 illustrates the full potential benefits of the proposed

rail and the economic development programs. •

Scenario 3 assumes that the full HPR network and a range of

economic development strategies are implemented, leading to 60% of 101

BENEFITS & COSTS the full benefits of the rail and the economic intervention for the study MSAs. •

Scenario 4 assumes that the rail project is constructed, but

unaccompanied by economic development strategies. The project delivers slight economic growth to New York and Boston, but has no impact on the GDPs of Southern New England. The Cumulative GDP Model reflects the combined sum of GDP projections across the study MSAs from 2020 to 2060. Aggregate GDP estimates were generated for the same two scenarios captured by the Simple GDP Model, and a third scenario where the rail plan is not supplemented by local and regional economic development strategies. In this “low growth” scenario, GDP growth rates increase exclusively for the New York and Boston MSAs, and remain constant for New England’s smaller metros. This model compares the GDP estimates for the three build scenarios to a base, no-build option. The difference between each scenario and the no-build represents the added GDP benefit associated with this proposal. This model indicates that Rebooting New England will add between $537 billion and $1.03 trillion to the region’s GDP from 2020 to 2060. It should be noted that this iteration of the benefit-cost ratio incorporates several elements not captured by the BCR derived from the Simple GDP Model. These include transportation user benefits, which represent the monetized value of travel time saved, and ticket revenues. For more detail about this model’s assumptions and results, see Appendix 3.

102

BENEFITS & COSTS ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Employment growth constitutes the next largest benefit stream associated with this project; though certainly an economic indicator, it has not been calculated for its dollar-by-dollar impact. The HPRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s construction will directly create construction jobs for a twenty-year period. Upon completion, the HPR will support new, long-term operations and maintenance jobs, also considered to be direct jobs. Construction of the rail network will indirectly create jobs to supply demand for the manufacturing and transportation of necessary parts and materials, as well as supporting jobs in the service sector. Finally, all of these new jobs will generate greater household incomes, which will in turn induce new jobs in commercial, retail, and service sectors. In total, construction of the HPR network will create or induce nearly 3,000,000 new jobs. A more detailed discussion of these predictions can be found in Appendix 4. In addition to economic benefits, the Rebooting New England proposals would generate a wide variety of harder to quantify transportation, social, and environmental benefits. Though less easily calculated as part of a benefit-cost analysis, they are important components of this planâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intended transformation. Politicians and policy-makers should consider these additional positive externalities as they evaluate the merits of this plan in relation to their local stakeholders. A non-exhaustive list of these benefits are listed below.

Other Transportation User Benefits Some other transportation user benefits, which have not been directly quantified in this report, are worth noting. In addition to the savings in

103

BENEFITS & COSTS travel time, users of the HPR network will reduce their vehicle-related expenses, as well as gas and oil consumption. Additionally, as mode share shifts away from automobile and towards rail, overall highway congestion will be mitigated and thus save time for remaining highway users; in Southern New England, this has particularly significant benefits for the transportation of freight and commercial goods. Furthermore, the role of short connection flights within New England— particularly between New York City and Boston—can be largely substituted by high-speed rail. As demand for Boston—New York flights declines, some of those slots can be released and redistributed to higher value flights, delivering a huge benefit to the highly congested airports in those cities.

Social Benefits An inherent outcome of the fully implemented HPR network is transformation mobility, which would enable a more equitable Southern New England. Beyond increased employment opportunities, the social benefits associated with this project span from economic opportunity and environmental justice to public safety and welfare. The vast increase in reliability, reduction of travel time and cost per ride significantly reduces the transportation burden on low-income families. This savings is particularly drastic when auto insurance and loan payments are factored in. The region’s mid-sized cities will also gain new housing, commercial, and retail development that will inject new vitality and excitement to their downtowns. If well planned, these investments will be 104

BENEFITS & COSTS accompanied by “quality of place” improvements that will be needed to attract and retain skilled workers and recent university graduates. This will lead to gains in property tax and other revenue streams needed to improve schools, public safety, and other services that improve the quality of life of both current and new residents. Meanwhile the large quantity of housing stock brought into reasonable distance of employment reduces the average housing cost and therefore the housing burden on low-income families. Many of Hartford’s abandoned factories and warehouses can be transformed into highly desirable housing.

Assuming real estate demand increases in each of Southern New England’s cities, the market will be incentivized to redevelop brownfield, remediating environmental contaminants that might harm unwitting users or neighbors of these sites. Vacant residential and commercial properties will be rehabilitated or replaced as well, reducing the social ills that often accompany blighted buildings. Finally, train transit is significantly safer than automobile travel, meaning that the entire population of the region will be safer. Additionally any reduction in high-traffic, high-capacity roads will improve the safety of people that living near them, and particularly

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 12,628, passenger car occupants were killed in 2015: compared to 13 fatalities related to train accidents.

children. 105

BENEFITS & COSTS Environmental Benefits Rail systems tend to concentrate accessibility around stations and in urban areas, focusing much of the new development in downtowns that urgently need it. When combined with strategic zoning measures, this can have the effect of reducing development pressure on nearby small towns and rural communities. In the long-term, this will protect the traditional New England landscape and wildlife habitats that are so much a part of the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s appeal to residents and visitors alike. Wellutilized train networks, which require far less space per capita than road networks, also contribute to land conservation. Another substantial environmental benefit is generated through the expected mode-shift from automobiles to train transit. This will reduce the amount of energy consumed per capita, as well as the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere per capita. Even if the federal government pulls back from its Paris Accord carbon reduction commitments, it is expected that Northeastern States that RGGI member states include CT, DE, MA, MD, ME, NH, NY, RI, and VT

are members of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) will remain committed to addressing climate change. It will be important to identify new renewable energy sources to power the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s HPR train-sets, most of which will be operating on electrified lines. If this is done, the region should see significant reductions in carbon production as mobility shifts from cars and planes to rail. Regional mode-shift will also have a positive effect on water quality, as highways are a main source of pollutants. Highway pollutants, namely grease and oil, are hard to trap or filter and therefore run off into our streams and oceans. While trainsets produce similar contaminants to personal vehicles, their efficient utilizations produces far fewer

106

BENEFITS & COSTS contaminants than a comparable number of trips taken in car. Rail also involves minimal impervious surfaces, meaning that water falling on train tracks is likely to be filtered by the earth before entering streams, as well as moving slowly and preventing flood events.

COSTS Transforming the existing Northeast Corridor into an efficient and unified rail network will require a heavy investment in both new and upgraded infrastructure. The existing NEC Spine includes approximately 540 track miles between New York and Boston, and another 86 track miles between New Haven and Springfield.2 Implementation of the proposed HPR network in its entirety would add an estimated 750 new track miles and upgrade nearly 2,000 more track miles. Preliminary cost estimates, calculated using data assembled by Amtrak and their consultants for the NEC Future plan, produce a construction subtotal of just over $120 billion. A contingency factor is applied to the construction subtotal to accommodate for future variation in unit costs and quantities, as well as unforeseen construction conditions. Soft costs are a second factor added to the construction subtotal to cover the professional services required to plan, design, and manage the project. However, better project management, more efficient permitting and procurement procedures, and access to more reliable funding sources can reduce the magnitude of softs costs and contingencies. To demonstrate the potential cost savings associated with Rebooting New Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s proposed reforms, two alternative scenariosâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;with

107

BENEFITS & COSTS incrementally smaller contingencies and soft cost factorsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;were analyzed. The most aggressive scenario generates a $140 billion capital cost estimate, which is a 20% discount from the baseline figure. This estimate also reduces the required annual investment by nearly $2 billion, an important consideration when trying to secure a reliable long-term funding source. Published by the White House Council of Economic Advisors in 2011. Based on these estimates, Rebooting New England should generate roughly 1.5 million short-term jobs and 150,000 - 245,000 permanent jobs.

Operations and maintenance costs were calculated for each of the three proposed phases of construction. This calculation accounts for on-board crew and engineers, energy; maintenance of rights-of-way, facilities, and rolling stock; and administrative costs, including sales and marketing. Annual operating costs will more than double following Phase II, largely due to the completion of the new high-speed spine from New York to Boston via Long Island, Hartford, and Providence. Finally, costs include an estimate for ticket revenues, which is based on analysis prepared for the NEC Futures report. It assumes that the HPR network will operate at a profit during construction and postcompletion. Further details regarding methodology and assumptions may be found in Appendix 5

108

BENEFITS & COSTS BENEFIT-COST ANALYSIS The simple GDP model calculated the benefit-cost ratio by dividing the present value of the benefits (PVB) by the present value of the costs (PVC) for Scenario 2. The PVB was already calculated to be $86.2 billion and the PVC was found to be $34.3 billion (after being discounted to the present value using a discount rate of 7.00%). The result of dividing the PVB by the PVC is a benefit-cost ratio of 2.51. The cumulative GDP model indicates that Rebooting New England will generate benefit-cost ratios as high as 4.49. Even the lowest-growth scenario, which assumes no economic benefits for Southern New England, results in a benefit-cost ratio of 2.33. Unlike the simple BCR, the cumulative BCR estimate reflects both capital construction costs and operating & maintenance costs. Like the GDP estimates, these added benefit and cost elements reflect aggregate sums over the aforementioned 40-year period. Despite these differences, both BCR models take a conservative position on Rebooting New England’s estimated costs; they also both use a conservative discount rate of 7%. Beneﬁt-‐Cost Ra-o for Ac-on Alterna-ves 5

Benefit-cost ratios for all action alternatives demonstrate Rebooting New England’s financial viability

4 3 Simple GDP Model Cumulative GDP Model

2 1 0 Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

109

BENEFITS & COSTS Differences in methods and inputs aside, these two BCR models reach compatible conclusions. Every potential benefit-cost ratio reflects economic benefits specifically attributable to Rebooting New England’s high-performance rail and economic development recommendation. And in every scenario, the proposals’ benefits are valued at least twice as high as the proposals’ costs. The signals that in addition to being transformative, Rebooting New England’s proposals are also a great investment. The strength of this BCR analysis should communicate to the private sectors that it is a viable opportunity for public-private partnerships. The range of benefitcost ratios, all quite high, should also persuade the federal government that the proposed rail projects warrant lower interest rates.

110

BENEFITS & COSTS REFERENCES 1. “2014 California High-Speed Rail Benefit-Cost Analysis.” California High-Speed Rail Authority, Apr. 2014. Web. <https://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/business_plans/BPlan_2014_Sec_7_ CaHSR_Benefit_Cost_Analysis.pdf>.

2. “EVALUATION REPORT E-09-05 Amtrak’s Infrastructure Maintenance Program,” Amtrak Office of Inspector General, <https://www.amtrakoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/ EVALUATIONREPORT-92809.pdf>

111

PHOTO OR GRAPHIC

112

Hartford’s Constitution Plaza

ON THE GROUND CHAPTER OVERVIEW Most of Southern New England’s older industrial cities have experienced economic decline for decades. It may seem improbable that these places can recover their former prosperity, but many of them -- such as Hartford, Providence and Worcester – were once among the nation’s wealthiest cities. Despite decades of disinvestment and decline, they all retain strong economic assets and good “bones,” including historic buildings, districts, and landmarks, diverse housing stock, walkable downtowns, and excellent infrastructure. They are all home to strong “eds and meds,” and Providence and Hartford have the added fortune of serving as state capitols. This chapter outlines a blueprint for pairing these existing assets with the economic and infrastructural benefits of the high-performance rail (HPR) network to catalyze extensive downtown redevelopment. By concentrating interventions in existing urban fabric, as opposed to the decades-long trend of locating growth in outlying suburban areas, cities like Hartford can create vibrant downtowns that will be attractive to retirees as well as a younger generation of workers, across class. Renewed capital investment will restore interest and pride in these core cities, and further encourage the growth in population and tax base that they all need. This will reduce the potential for high-speed rail to further drain smaller cities of their employment and population base. As Southern New England’s cities become more fiscally stable, they will have more disposable resources to pursue social transformation and implement the types of economic development strategies discussed in Chapter 4. The impacts, combined, will benefit the city, the metropolitan area, the state, and the region at large.

ON THE GROUND REGIONAL PRECEDENTS As recently as three decades ago, now-vibrant cities like New York, Boston, and Stamford were experiencing economic decline and wrestling with the loss of residents and jobs. All three cities faced the challenges of rising crime and deteriorating quality of life, and in the case of New York and Boston, extensive housing abandonment. Yet they have all successfully reinvented themselves and their economies. This transformation required strong, visionary, and sustained leadership, support from state and federal governments, and major infrastructure investments. As noted in Chapter 4, Stamford’s transformation was underpinned by the creation of Metro-North Railroad in 1983, which established excellent commuter rail service to Manhattan. This pulled Stamford into metro New York’s labor and housing market, and allowed it to become integrated into the nation’s $1.5 trillion economy. Also contributing to Stamford’s success was the consolidation of the City and Town of Stamford and two other suburban governments into a single unified municipality with a strong tax base, schools, and services. Three decades of sustained mayoral, business, and civic leadership helped achieve the city’s transformation from a failing manufacturing center first, into a center for corporate headquarters fleeing New York City and subsequently into one of the nation’s leading financial services and media centers. Achieving similar transformations in Southern New England’s other historic, industrial cities will require the same ingredients: major investments in infrastructure and downtown and neighborhood revitalization, support from state and federal governments, sustained 114

ON THE GROUND mayoral and business leadership, governance reform, and improved city services, public safety, and schools. The construction of the proposed high-performance rail (HPR) network will provide one component—major infrastructural investment—and will bring all of these cities into New York or Boston’s housing and labor markets. This would enable the same kind of economic transformation that occurred in Stamford when Metro-North commuter rail service brought Stamford into New York’s economic orbit. Stamford’s Metro-North Station is but one example of infrastructure investments that helped the city change course to a more prosperous future.

At the same time, high-speed connections between Southern New England’s smaller cities and the anchoring metropolitan areas of New York City and Boston threaten to destabilize their employment bases. As the barriers of travel to and from New York and Boston are reduced, firms and members of the workforce alike may choose to relocate in these major urban cores. A strong urban development plan for each of Southern New England’s

115

ON THE GROUND cities is a necessary counterweight to the draw of New York and Boston. By identifying and building on their existing assets—ranging from geography to industrial mix to anchor institutions—every city must develop a clear plan to attract and retain more residents and more employers. Their downtowns must offer the high quality of life associated with their surrounding suburbs, which cannot be replicated in large cities. At the same time, they must generate real cultural vibrancy and develop an amenity mix that can compete with larger cities. As in the case of New York, Boston and Stamford, this transformation will not be achieved overnight. It will require decades of persistent leadership, investment, and follow-through.

VALUING THE LOCAL Thus far, this report has discussed New England’s transportation and economic infrastructure on the regional scale, outlining a way to better integrate a cohort of similarly sized cities and their metropolitan areas. The regional benefits of this groundbreaking networking of New England are abundant – including improved travel times and accessibility throughout the region, better connectivity with metropolitan giants New York and Boston, and agglomeration potential between the region’s unique assets—but it is crucial to illustrate this plan at the urban scale as well. A fundamental asset leveraged by this transformation plan is the proximity of New England’s numerous mid-sized cities, whose shared history reveals greater economic potential than their current conditions 116

ON THE GROUND suggest. These individual cities – including Hartford, New Haven, Waterbury, Bridgeport, Springfield, Providence, and Worcester – and their metropolitan areas are key units of analysis for this plan’s geographic, economic, and transportation logic. New England is a region of closely clustered mid-sized cities

ALBANY

Lockheed Martin

BOSTON

WORCESTER

Pratt & Whitney HARTFORD

PROVIDENCE Con n e c

H u d s o n Ri ve r

SPRINGFIELD

General Dynamics

ic u

WATERBURY

i ve

UTC Aerospace Systems Sikorsky NEW HAVEN

Lo n g

BRIDGEPORT

Cape Cod Bay

Navy Sub Base NEW LONDON

Electric Boat

Is la n d

Soun

NEW YORK

20 MILES

Southern New England’s cities launched the United States’ industrial revolution and hosted a massive system of trade, wealth, and manufacturing throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Much of this era’s built environment remains and, combined with extant 18th and early 19th century structures, districts and landscapes, graces the cities with an irreplaceable sense of place. However, as the economic condition of these inner cities deteriorated due to a shift economic and shifting population (the post-war suburbanization of America), well-meaning urban renewal policies of the late twentieth century decimated these cities’ physical and societal fabric by constructing massive freeways and oversized blocks. For three decades, urban policy actively rejected historic preservation and old forms of urbanism that are once again revered.

117

ON THE GROUND A high-performance rail network can best serve (and will be best served) with large, key stations in densely populated downtowns of the region’s core cities. This plan recommends that Southern New England’s smaller cities reorient themselves to their historic downtowns, and locate any new stations in or adjacent to these areas. By encouraging as much of the region’s accelerated development as possible to locate near train stations, these cities can build transitoriented density while keeping pressure off of their historic buildings. New Haven’s historic train station and its well preserved architectural legacy are spatially segregated and not easilly accessible from the city’s dense urban core

URBAN DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR REVITALIZATION As cities across the region plan for development in the coming decades, it is crucial that they do not sacrifice good zoning practices and urban form for the sake of easy development. This report recommends four urban design principles that should be at the forefront of each city’s development strategy:

Transit-Oriented Development: the successes of transit and

regional rail have a symbiotic relationship with the success of the 118

ON THE GROUND downtowns they serve (the former creates an incentive to live in the latter, while the latter supplies users for the former). Efforts should be made to locate as many new residents and jobs adjacent to intraand inter-city transportation systems as possible. This will reduce car dependence and congestion while increasing affordability, as new buildings can forego massive parking structures.

Pedestrian and Bike-Friendly Street Grids â&#x20AC;&#x201C; In addition to

building downtowns to encourage transit use, cities should prioritize bike and pedestrian safety, street front interactions with buildings, and mixed-uses to maximize the vitality of their downtowns. In many of the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mid-sized cities, including Providence, Hartford, Springfield, and Waterbury, urban-renewal era highways run right through the center of town. Any effort to reduce the physical and psychological barriers created by these highways will improve connectivity and encourage more foot and bike traffic between CBDs and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Lean Urbanism â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this philosophy of urban design, somewhat

related to new urbanism, should be used to keep transit-oriented development to scale. Like new urbanism, lean urbanism values historic built forms, and advocates for moderately scaled buildings (four-to-seven stories) with narrow and diverse facades, as opposed to the monolithic facades associated with the urban renewal-era and many current development schemes. Additionally, lean urbanism rejects large parcels and favors smaller, narrow parcels as a means to guarantee this leaner urban form. This approach more easily integrates new urban fabric with existing architecture, and enables organic development patterns in which individuals can build on one lot at a time. This will produce the smaller-scale developments that are more

119

ON THE GROUND appropriate for long-term economic development as they allow real estate development to keep pace with the current cycles of supply and demand, allowing for a less volatile real estate market and more gradual urban development strategy.

Lean Urbanism’s Trademark - more information can be found at leanurbanism.org

Historic Preservation – whenever possible, the preservation

of New England’s unique historic buildings and districts should be prioritized and incentivized. The region’s downtowns boast architecture from the colonial, early federal, and industrial eras, as well as midcentury growth, all of which lend distinct character, opportunities for creative reuse, and affordable housing in markets where luxury apartment towers tend to dominate new development. Most of New England’s downtowns also host historic parks, greens and plazas that should be restored and embellished to create a focal point for urban revitalization efforts. HARTFORD DEVELOPMENT The rest of this chapter presents a high-level illustration of how this revitalization strategy might occur. Hartford is used as a case study, meant to reflect universal principles but highlight how particular characteristics can be used to a city’s advantage. Hartford benefits from its central location within the region, which will become a central node on the proposed high-speed rail line, less than one hour from both New York and Boston. Considering its present location an hour’s drive from Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor routes, the proposed HPR stands to dramatically change Hartford’s economic and social role in the region. Two key considerations inform the case study that follows:

1. 120

This case study is not intended to prioritize Hartford’s

ON THE GROUND Downtown Hartford in winter - the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history and strategic position in the region suggest a greater economic potential than what currently exists

revitalization over its peer cities. It is simply used to demonstrate a process that can and should be replicated throughout the region.

This is not a prescriptive downtown redevelopment plan of

Hartford. It is an illustrative exercise to demonstrate how Hartford can capture accelerated economic growth in a spatial strategy that revitalizes its downtown and takes advantage of new infrastructure through the best means possible. The Process First, it is important to understand the existing conditions of downtown Hartford. The juxtaposition between the well-developed eastern half of downtown and the vacancy-plagued western half is stark. Additional gaps disrupt the built environment surrounding downtown, largely due to the path of Interstate 84. Although the central business district (CBD) is home to thousands of jobs, the 2014 American Community Survey (5-year) estimated that fewer than 1,800 residents lived within the CBD, hampering night and weekend business opportunities. With the above factors in mind, this plan proposes the following major infrastructure projects: 121

ON THE GROUND Figure ground of Downtown Hartford, where downtownâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s isolation from the rest of the city is most evident to the north and west

Diagram of major infrastructure assumptions for Hartfordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s high-speed overhaul.

122

ON THE GROUND

Interstate burial: Proposals have been made in recent years to

bury certain sections of Interstate 84 as it hugs downtown Hartford. This case study proposes burying the highway from Broad Street in the west to High Street in the east. This allows enough space for the CBD to grow north and west and better connect with insurance campuses west of the interstate. Pedestrians and bikers will face fewer grade changes, dark overpasses, and long stretches without visual stimulation.

High-Speed Rail Right-of-Way: the proposed high-speed trunk

line seeks to maximize speed and efficiency of the system without further damaging the built environment â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in Hartfordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s case, the best solution is to tunnel beneath the city from the southwest to the northeast. This tunnel would be constructed with cutting-edge tunnel boring machine (TBM) technology as opposed to traditional cut-andcover methods, so the impact on Hartford residents and businesses would be minimal.

Station Siting â&#x20AC;&#x201C; The proposed high-speed trunk line will require

a new, high-capacity station. This plan places the station at the intersection of Church and Allyn Streets, one block (400 feet) from the current station, on a current surface parking lot. Both the current and proposed train stations have main entrances on Allyn Street, which will be closed to vehicular traffic in order to allow pedestrian safety and enhance vitality. The historic station will retain operations for light rail and regional rail, but will be renovated to house incubator retail spaces. See Part 3 of this chapter for more about the proposed station. After implementing these three interventions, it will be necessary to establish a spatial relationship between this new infrastructure and new development. This plan establishes one-quarter and half-mile 123

ON THE GROUND buffers around the station site. The first buffer identifies an ideal transit-oriented development (TOD) zone, capturing only locations within a five-minute walk of the proposed station. This zone would incorporate the high-speed station as well as CT FastTrakâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (a bus rapid transit system) downtown stops, creating a multimodal transit-oriented downtown west district. The half-mile radius is considered a reasonable TOD catchment for heavier-capacity, longer-distance services (like the regional and metropolitan rail). The proposed redevelopment agenda prioritizes the quarter-mile zone. The next step is to inventory underutilized land within those zones. This parcel-level analysis includes vacant properties, surface parking lots that encompass an entire parcel, and/or parcels that are being underutilized by their current tenants. This inventory could be used to initiate a discussion between the city, the public and property owners to evaluate whether land is currently being underutilized, and if it has Quarter-mile and half-mile TOD walksheds from proposed Hartford HSR station.

124

ON THE GROUND potential for a higher and better use that would benefit both the city and the property owner. Another important aspect of this process is subdividing properties, when possible into smaller parcels. Following these discussions, the city could initiate re-zoning procedures to promote planned development of these sites. The city could also pursue a land value taxation system, which would incentive the development of vacant or underutilized parcels. In addition to identifying land with potential for infill redevelopment, the studio group prepared residential and office market studies for the city-region. The residential market study looked at housing and population trends for the whole of Hartford County, while the office market study was based off of data for the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s smaller metropolitan core. For 2025, the county is forecasted to add almost 17,000 households, and the metropolitan area is expected to add just under 7 million square feet of office space. Assuming that downtown Underused and vacant parcels with TOD walksheds

125

ON THE GROUND Hartford’s share of this growth is equal to that of its current share (0.4% of households and 39% of office space), this predicts around 2.7 million additional square feet of development in downtown Hartford, of which the overwhelming majority would be new office space. This first scenario represents that the status quo economic and real estate conditions persist in Hartford and New England. Most structures sketched out in this plan range between four and seven stories, and are fairly compliant with Hartford’s form-based code for Downtown 1 and Downtown 2 districts. Although this scenario assumes no major change in economic conditions, it still strives to create environmental conditions that promote connectivity, innovation, and agglomeration. With the implementation of the proposed HPR and economic development strategies, this study predicts that Southern New England’s GDP will grow significantly by 2025 (see Chapter 7 and appendices for more detail). A revitalization plan for downtown The buildings in white show new development and demand in Hartford through 2035, following the plan’s urbanism guidelines and station siting but with no econonmic acceleration

126

ON THE GROUND Hartford should capture much of this renewed economic vitality as well as account for the downtown’s increased competitiveness and appeal within the city region. With a new development node around the high-speed station and in the place of I-84’s current right-of-way, Hartford’s share of new regional office growth could rise from its current 39% of metro-Hartford’s stock to 50% or more. Additionally, for a downtown to become a thriving social and commercial neighborhood, a permanent population of 10,000 to 12,000 is crucial. To achieve this residential density, 35% of the county’s added residences should be constructed in downtown Hartford. This amounts to about 6,000,000 square feet in new residential space for over 6,000 new units (assuming an average unit size around 1,000 square feet). This growth in downtown’s residential population would be similar to the increase that Stamford has experienced over the past decade. When the proposed HSR link to New Hartford’s greater potential, impacted by a better designed and connected downtown, along with faster economic growth at a regional level

127

ON THE GROUND York and Boston is completed, Hartford would gain the same travel times to these places that Stamford has to New York today. 2025 potential downtown Hartford build-out

This second scenario, based on projected GDP growth associated with the met-work strategy, increases the development potential for 2025 Downtown Hartford from under 3 million to almost 10 million square feet in places to both live and work. Its full build-out reflects a large increase from the no-change build-out discussed above, and enables the urban core to extend and meld with Hartfordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s other neighborhoods.

HIGH-SPEED STATION As introduced in the previous section, the plan proposes a new highspeed station to be located one block from Hartfordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s current train station. The site is currently a surface parking lot bounded by Allyn Street on the south, High Street on the west, Church Street to the 128

ON THE GROUND north, and the historic St Patrick – St Anthony church to the east. The two-block stretch of Allyn Street is bookended by Hartford’s Union Station on the west and the XL Center on the east, causing the street to function more as a back alley than a vibrant street that is connected to the urban grid. This plan proposes to re-envision Allyn Street as a pedestrian corridor, anchored by the historic train station on one end and centered around a new, architecturally modern, high-speed train station with two stories each above and below ground. This new station will provide passenger services; public space in the form of a street-level plaza and roof garden; and spaces for retail and dining locations around the perimeter of the site. The plan proposes a new landmark that uses high-quality, modern design to reflect the potential of high-speed rail and a wellconnected region. The proposed station will selectively use materials like brick and cast concrete to acknowledge existing urban fabric, but will strive to create a distinct visual identity.

䌀栀甀爀挀

Hartford’s reimagined Downtown East, anchored by transit-oriented development and a new high-speed rail station mere steps away from Hartford’s existing station

栀匀琀爀攀

唀渀椀漀渀倀

䤀

䠀椀最栀匀琀爀攀

攀琀

䄀氀氀礀渀匀

琀爀攀攀琀

䄀猀礀氀甀洀

匀琀爀攀攀琀

129

ON THE GROUND Site condition The site is currently used as a surface parking lot and bordered by Church, High, Allyn, and Ann Uccello Streets. A church is located in the northwest corner of the block. Despite its location west of the XL Center, which prevents direct pedestrian access from the heart of downtown, the site is very well located. It is within a 10-minute walk from the Connecticut State Capital Building and Bushnell Park, and about 15 minutes from the Bushnell Theatre, the heart of the downtown entertainment district, and the campuses of The Hartford and Aetna Insurance Companies. The site also offers great access to Main Street, which is an important street for commuters arriving via bus rapid transit or regular bus services

130

ON THE GROUND Building Concept Given its strategic location along a pedestrian street, the proposed station will have the dual purposes of providing passenger flow and boosting street vibrancy. With this in mind, the goal of this sketch-level concept is to design a building that can serve many users in different ways. The proposed station comprises four stories, two above and two below ground. Considerable space will be provided for restaurants and small retail locations, around the perimeter of the ground level; rents will be priced moderately enough to encourage local businesses to locate here. Station offices and additional retail spaces will occupy the top floor. The first subterranean level will serve as a transitional level where passengers locate stairways and elevators to their specific tracks. Hartfordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new HSR station represents not only a new piece of transportation infrastructure, but also a center of commerce and the public sphere

131

ON THE GROUND Hartfordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s station utilizes several stories, both above and below ground, to cater to the needs and movements of passengers, shoppers, and citizens alike

Entrances are designed at all three intersections of Allyn, High, and Church Streets in order to dilute the pedestrian traffic from any one point. The main entrance will open onto Allyn Street, with two more entrances facing northwest and northeast. The northeast entrance will be the taxi drop- off and the northwest entrance will correspond to a parking garage to be located across the street. Passengers will also be able to enter the building through numerous retail locations along High Street. Passengers will move through the site from one of several entrances, past ticket and information counters, towards waiting and boarding areas. Vertical circulation to the underground platforms will be channeled through a central column of stairs and elevators; to avoid confusion, site navigation must be simple and well communicated. Furthermore, the flow of passengers must not disturb non- passengers who are engaging in other activities in the station or along Allyn Street. Pedestrian circulation through the site will differ substantially from that 132

ON THE GROUND

of rail passengers. A gentle ramp on the Southeast side of the station will wrap around the building and lead pedestrians directly into the first floor. From here, they can choose to visit the two stories of retail and restaurants offerings (with opportunities for outdoor seating), or move further into the station and find the sky garden. Open space will be provided in front of the station.

The new station will be a catalyst for a more transit-oriented downtown Hartford, as a physical manifestation of the massive investment that this network will place in the region

133

The Connecticut River winds through the Western Massachusetts countryside

WAY FORWARD CHAPTER OVERVIEW Much as the proposals outlined in Chapters 4 and 5 are intended to disrupt the status quo in Southern New England, their implementation will require the overhaul of many norms. A fully realized high-performance rail network will be a nearly $100-billion project. Although gaining this commitment would not be easy, it should be noted that this is virtually the same amount that the British Government has committed to rebuilding the North of England through its the Northern Powerhouse initiative, and it is also similar in ambition and cost to the California HSR project. Although its many benefit streams will easily repay the project’s long-term debts, the shortterm mobilization for the project will require an enormous outlay of capital funds and public trust. Every effort to reduce the project’s cost, shrink its timelines, and insulate it from political interference will accelerate the project’s economic, social, and environmental benefits. These efforts will need to include significant reforms of current environmental review, permitting, and project delivery processes, Amtrak’s current monopoly over passenger rail services, and innovative financing strategies; each of these areas of reform will inevitably face enormous political opposition. The following chapter discusses how this multi-faceted initiative could be financed and realized, focusing on four areas of intervention and implementation. The first section will address necessary reforms to current federal and state review processes, as well as project delivery mechanisms and new governance bodies at the local and regional level. The second section will address reforms of the current passenger rail system and propose creation of a new Northeast Network Rail organization to coordinate efforts at the local, state, and national level. The third section outlines the three primary phases of this project, which would be implemented by Northeast Network Rail, and the fourth and final section introduces a variety of pioneering financing strategies that could help pay for a project of this scale.

WAY FORWARD GOVERNANCE REFORM As introduced in Chapter 4, to complete a project of this scale and complexity on time and on budget will require fundamental reform of current government institutions and procedures. Three specific reforms will have the most impact on the region’s ability to efficiently build a high-performance rail network and capitalize on its benefits. These are: •

An expedited environmental review process and innovative

procurement and project delivery systems •

Creation of a multi-state collaborative economic development

program; and •

At the metropolitan level, new governance systems to

coordinate land use, housing, transit and related strategies, modeled upon Manchester, England’s combined authority (see Chapter 3)

Federal Permitting Process A project on the scale of the proposed high-speed line, which involves a tunnel underneath the Long Island Sound and a new alignment between Hartford and Providence, would typically require several years of planning and environmental reviews, due diligence reporting, and public and legislative hearings. In the case of the California HSR project, these procedures have taken nearly seven years to complete.1 While environmental and other review processes serve as essential protections for public health and safety, they are often also unnecessarily burdensome, adding years and billions of dollars of expense.

136

The Obama administration took the first steps to streamline the

WAY FORWARD federal review process for major projects, particularly those dealing with complex transportation infrastructure. This effort, the Federal Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard, created an online platform where all 11 agencies charged with reviewing transportation projects can coordinate and publicize information on their particular reviews and criteria. This allows for greater transparency and accountability to the public as well as encourages earlier collaboration and synthesis of requirements across agencies. The program also allows the government to better track social and environmental outcomes.2 In just a few short years, the Federal Dashboard program has enabled many projects to complete the federal review process ahead of schedule. A notable success for the program was the permitting process for the replacement spans of the Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson River; whereas the full National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process normally takes between five and seven years for a project of this size, the Tappan The Tappan Zee Bridgeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s existing span on the left and floating construction barges for the replacement span on the right.

Zee project received its approvals in just twelve months.3 The new administration must double down on this effort and afford the largest and most complicated projects, like the one proposed here, the most

137

WAY FORWARD assistance in expediting this review process. To complete reviews on this accelerated schedule will also require that the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York follow the federal governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lead. Massachusetts has begun to address permitting processes for commercial, industrial, and residential development in designated Growth Districts, which has been a key factor in its recent industrial redevelopment project at the former Fort Devens army site.4 The Commonwealth must extend this legislation and rationale to cover major public transportation projects as well. In Connecticut, former Governor Jodi Rell created a Permit Ombudsman position within the Department of Economic and Community Development, with authority to expedite permitting for priority economic development projects.5 This too must be extended to transportation projects, which involve a very different set of costs and benefits than a typical real estate development project. In Rhode Island, where expedited permitting is almost exclusively used for affordable housing projects, additional steps will be required to provide similar priority for the large-scale transportation and economic development projects proposed in this report.

Innovative Procurement and Project Delivery Similar reforms must be introduced to procurement and project delivery systems needed to expedite completion of these rail investments. On the Tappan Zee Bridge project, for example, the New York State Legislature gave the NY Thruway the authority to use Design-Build procedures to complete this process in less than one year 138

WAY FORWARD --a fraction of the time required for conventional procedures, which require consecutive and separate bidding procedures for awarding design and construction contracts. For the Tappan Zee project, the Thruway authority also used a “best value” selection process, instead of the usual low-bid process, which resulted in a higher quality product than is possible under a low bid selection process. In the studio’s Manchester charrette, we were also introduced to the UK’s use of “Special Purpose Vehicle” or SPV procedure for expediting project delivery. Under this system, major infrastructure projects, such as HS1 and 2 and London’s Crossrail project, are delivered by special purpose agencies established for the sole purpose of designing and building these projects. These organizations are able to cut through red tape and personnel procedures and prevent political interference that would ordinarily add years to project delivery and billions to the cost of major projects. Upon completion of projects these organizations are dissolved and staff move on to the next big project. It is recommended that a similar body be established to deliver the NY-Boston HSR route and other major components of the proposed rail network.

Regional Economic Development Organization As noted in Chapter 4 of this report, the proposed rail network will enable, but not ensure the broad range of economic benefits the region needs. To achieve these benefits, investments in local transportation systems, urban “quality of place” improvements, housing, research universities, technology transfer institutions, and workforce development will also be needed. It is proposed that a regional economic development agency be established to help finance 139

WAY FORWARD and coordinate these activities across the NY-New England region. This organization would also work to build New England’s “brand identity” internationally, elevating the region’s name recognition (and subsequent association with advanced manufacturing) to that of Germany’s Rhine-Ruhr region. A 2005 report published by the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City underscores the need for a national economic development policy, as opposed to its current jumble of economic development programs, which are largely focused on broad-based (one-size-fits-all) programs and infrastructure development. It also argues, as does this report, that the future of our national economy depends to a great extent on the competitiveness of the country’s many regions, each of which serves distinct economic roles.6 The proposed New England regional economic development agency could demonstrate the value of regional economic development for other parts of the country. An organization of this type would be even more effective in advancing the region’s economic growth, however, if it were authorized to function as a regional development bank. The United States is home to hundreds of hyper-local community development financial institutions (CDFIs) whose primary role is to fund high-risk community development projects. On the global scale, there are dozens of national and international development banks that fund major housing and infrastructure development projects, the most renowned of which is the Asian Development Bank. This report argues that the United States should establish regional economic development agencies that fill the gap between the two scales, and recommends that the New England region serve as a pilot 140

WAY FORWARD project. If enacted alongside the high-performance rail project and with in-house with professionals devoted to regional collaboration, a regional development bank would be able to streamline the funding and implementation for both major components of this plan. It would also serve as a powerful liaison between Congress, the Executive branch, and state and local governments, allowing state government officials to dedicate their staff energy on local issues.

Combined Authorities A final set of reforms is necessary at the local level. In the North of England, pursuant to incentives from central government, several regions have established “combined authorities” to coordinate transportation, economic development, healthcare, and other services between cities and their surrounding suburbs. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), first established in 2011, is home to 2.7 million people and comprises the central city of Manchester and nine outlying towns and boroughs.7 In 2014, the United Kingdom began the process of devolving several responsibilities from the national government to the GMCA, to allow for greater local control of substantial public budgets. In 2015, GMCA received full control of £6 billion in health funding, with the control of far larger sums of money in the pipeline. Additionally, while each borough retains its independence, the GMCA also created a new elected position of metropolitan mayor to oversee the activities of the city-region’s ten individual councils, lead in creating the Combined Authority’s strategic plan, and implement consolidation and development projects.8 This gives local areas more control over national funding and incentivizes the outlying communities to share responsibility and costs with the center city,

141

WAY FORWARD which they have been historically averse to doing. Creation of similar combined authorities in New England could be incentivized by a similar devolution of federal and state authority and funding to these regional collaborative institutions. This would be a departure for all three Southern New England states, all of which have abolished most county governments, leaving governance in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island fragmented into 559 individual municipalities. While this system provides for local control of most municipal functions, it also requires duplication of services that can easily be shared across town lines, including trash collection, fire and police departments, ambulance services, and maintenance of public parks, to name a few. A cost-sharing and cooperation scheme would have major implications for public education as well, which is in dire need of re-organization in all three states. In Connecticut, for example, the stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Superior Court recently declared the current system of locally funded school districts unconstitutional.9 While the states have abolished county governance, Massachusetts and Connecticut do have advisory regional planning agencies and councils of government. Some, such as the Capital Region Council of Governments (CROG) in greater Hartford, Connecticut, already host shared services for their region; in CROGâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s case this includes information technology, solid waste management, and traffic congestion control. CRCOG and other regional agencies could evolve into combined authorities.

RAIL INSTITUTIONS

142

Implementing the plan laid out in Chapter 4 also requires a new

WAY FORWARD set of rail institutions that will replace the current hodgepodge of overlapping agencies and jurisdictions with a coherent and effective new management and operating structure. The section of the Northeast Rail Corridor between New York and Boston is owned and operated in part by Amtrak and in part by the states of New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. (A small section on Long Island is owned by the CSX freight railroad.) Amtrak has a monopoly over inter-city rail services along the corridor, while the states operate commuter rail services. Dispatching of trains is split between Amtrak and Metro-North Railroad. No agency has overall responsibility for coordinating capital investments or schedules across the system, nor for addressing the current multi-billion dollar backlog of state-of-good repair improvements in the NEC. At the same time, CSX and several short-line railroads own and operate freight services on branch lines across the region. Although its creators imagined that its balance sheet would stabilize after three years, Amtrak has consistently run deficits since its conception in 1970.10 This is both the cause and effect of, significant interference by the US Congress in Amtrak operations. As a result, Amtrak operates infrequent, bare-bones service in most of the United States. It does not have the resources to provide more service without billions in subsidies, nor to perform the necessary upgrades to create a high-performance rail network. Amtrak service is insufficient even in those parts of the country where rail is not a primary mode of travel. In New England, where many people depend on rail, the ownership of rail and provision of services must be done differently. Amtrakâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s political history is proof that high-performance rail cannot be subject to the whims of Congress.

143

WAY FORWARD Recent reforms are a step in the right direction. In 2015 provisions of the federal FAST act permitted Amtrak to retain profits from the Northeast Corridor (NEC) for the first time, in order to finance necessary capital investments along that stretch of rail. The current priority for capital investment in the corridor is the Gateway project, which will build two new tunnels under the Hudson River so that the existing century-old tunnels, still bearing damage from Hurricane Sandy in 2012, can be restored. Paying for this project could require that investments in the New England section of the NEC be deferred for decades. President Obama signing the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act on December 4, 2015. The FAST Act authorized $305 billion for surface transportation agencies, programs, and projects between 2016 and 2020. It also focused on streamlining the country’s surface transportation systems and project delivery process.

To rectify this situation, this report calls for the establishment of a new public benefit corporation called Northeast Network Rail, which would be modeled after Britain’s Network Rail. This proposed organization would be a joint venture between the six New England states, the State of New York, and the federal government. This idea is not new to America—a 1997 blue-ribbon panel on rail travel in the US suggested a similar scheme on a national level—but it makes most sense as a regional initiative in those areas of the country where rail can compete with other modes of transportation.11 144

WAY FORWARD This entity would use federal capital funds to purchase existing stateand privately-owned sections of the NEC rights-of-way, many of which are necessary components in this plan and require substantial investment. This plan would offer cash-strapped state governments an infusion of much-needed capital while relieving them of responsibility for rail maintenance. Moreover, the states would collectively retain a majority stake in Northeast Network Rail, with the remainder of ownership shares held by the federal government. This structure will ensure that rail operates with a minimum of government interference, while also ensuring that rail operations fit into broader economic development goals. Northeast Network Rail will own maintenance yards, stations, and rolling stock as well. Rather than operate trains themselves, however, it will contract with private entities to provide services, much like Network Rail in the UK, on 7 to 10 year contracts. (UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Network Rail has experimented with contract lengths and found that contracts of this length provide the optimal balance between incentivizing superior service provision and ensuring that contracted companies invest in long-term service improvements.)12 Contracts would cover not only passenger rail services, but also track maintenance and station improvements. Both public and private entities would be allowed to bid for contracts. Contracts would be offered on a route-by-route basis, with the potential for multiple operators on the busiest routes, very different from todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conditions. Operators would pay trackage fees and rolling stock rental fees, and in return would keep the revenues from tickets and concessions. Fares, classes of service, and minimum service frequencies would be set by contract, to ensure that services are

145

WAY FORWARD integrated and consistent across the region. It should be noted that this plan does not seek to replace Amtrak as a national passenger rail operator—in fact, given the growth in ridership this plan envisions, this plan could lead to an increase in Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor services and revenues—it merely intends to introduce competition and choice. Potential Northeast Network Rail logo, combining elements of both Britain’s Network Rail and Amtrak’s logos.

Given the proposed expansion of service in the Northeast, the region will require a much larger pool of railroad workers. This plan expects that the workforce operating all of these services would be unionized, and that in return for expansion of their membership, the unions would agree to modify work rules and traditional practices that constrain productivity of existing and new rail services. This should help rail operators provide more efficient service and help make bidding for these services worth their while. To speed the completion of the plan, expedited permitting processes would be used, modeled after the federal “Dashboard” environmental review and Massachusetts’ Chapter 43E Expedited Permitting processes.13 Given this project’s potential to transform the economic geography of the region, the rail infrastructure should be considered a top regional economic development priority.

146

WAY FORWARD Transport Northeast To coordinate investments in New England’s rail network the studio proposes the establishment of a new regional agency, called Transport Northeast, modeled after Britain’s Transport for the North (TfN), which directs transportation investments in the north of England. This agency would be separate from, but closely linked to, Northeast Network Rail, and would be funded by both the federal government and the participating Northeastern states. Transport Northeast would have primary responsibility for planning capital investments in the region’s rail network, and coordinating these investments with state and local economic development plans. Another key role for Transport Northeast would be to better integrate regional and local transport networks, allowing travelers not only to easily move between cities, but also to take advantage of frequent, reliable, first and last mile connections. The British example shows the importance of better local transit links: even with superior intercity transit links, the vast majority of trips are still taken locally, and economic growth depends on these trips being fast, easy, and reliable.14 Transport Northeast would integrate all modes of transportation with economic development planning, ensuring that businesses can find a ready pool of skilled workers in the region, and that those workers can easily get to the jobs this overall strategy will create. Transport Northeast would collaborate with, or be housed within, the regional economic development body proposed in Chapter 4.3.

147

WAY FORWARD RAIL PHASING This massive capital investment program cannot all be undertaken at once. It is proposed therefore that the proposed rail network will be established in three phases, taking ten years, five years, and five years respectfully. The phasing was determined by several factors. The highest priority would be to relieve congestion and choke-points in the existing rail network, such as those on the New Haven Line, which will enable expanded and more reliable rail service once the rail network is completed. Priority should be given to construction of the New York-to-Boston high-speed rail spine, which will produce the greatest travel time savings and will bring the most transformational benefits. This rail spine includes key projects such as the Long Island Sound Tunnel from Port Jefferson, Long Island to Milford, CT , as well as dedicated high-speed tracks between New Haven, Hartford and Providence, where a new right-of-way will be acquired and developed. Feeder lines and regional rail connections will be established at the same time that components of the HSR spine to which they connect are built. The details of the phasing plan are summarized below. Each phase would include accompanying track, yard, signal, and additional required infrastructure elements. â&#x20AC;˘

Phase I (ten years) includes: Implementing planned or studied

upgrades on all existing routes to increase capacity and speeds. Phase I routes include upgrades to the existing Northeast Corridor (the New Haven Line, the Shore Line, the Boston - Providence Line), the Inland Route, the Knowledge Corridor to Northampton, the Downeaster 148

Corridor, and the Long Island Rail Road line to Ronkonkoma. Passenger

WAY FORWARD To: Concord, NH

Rail Infrastructure Phase One

To: Durham, NH; Portland, ME Portsmouth

Upgrading Freight Railroads

Manchester, NH

To: Burlington, VT

Exeter

Manchester-Boston Airport

Brattleboro Haverhill

Nashua

Replacement of ALBANY Draw Bridges

Lowell

Lawrence

Greenfield

To: Albany, NY

Woburn

Pittsfield

Boston South Northampton

Boston Back Bay

Framingham

Worcester

Westborough/ I-495

Holyoke

BOSTON

SOUTH STATION & WEST STATION (BEACON PARK)

Riverside

Route 128

Northbridge

Palmer

Springfield

Congestion Relief on New Haven Line

Woonsocket

Enfield Bradley Airport

Mansfield/I-495 Attleboro

Windsor Locks

Cape Cod Bay

Pawtucket

Providence Penn Station Expansion

Windsor Bloomfield

Hartford TF Green Airport

Meriden Kingston

New London Old Saybrook

New Haven

To: New York, NY

Westerly Mystic

Bridgeport Stamford

Long

Cross Westchester

Is la n d

Sound Penn Station Expansion and Gateway Tunnels

New Rochelle

Phase I Interventions

Morris Park

Existing Rail Network

Ronkonkoma Suffolk Hub

Nassau Hub Jamaica

To: Washington D.C.

NEW YORK

20 MILES

PENN STATION

rail service would be restored on the New Hampshire Capitol Corridor, and the Worcester - Providence Line using active freight railroads. A new rail link will be established connecting Bradley International Airport to the Hartford Line. Finally, construction will commence on the Long Island Sound Tunnel. To: Concord, NH

Rail Infrastructure Phase Two

To: Durham, NH; Portland, ME Portsmouth

Manchester, NH

To: Burlington, VT

Exeter

Manchester-Boston Airport

Brattleboro Haverhill

Nashua

Lowell

ALBANY Greenfield

To: Albany, NY

Gardner

Westford Fitchberg Leominster

Pittsfield

Lawrence

Woburn

Clinton

Boston South

Amherst Northampton

Westborough/ I-495 Medfield

Holyoke Westfield

Auburn

Bloomfield

Route 128

Walpole

Northbridge

Palmer

Springfield

Webster

Brockton

Woonsocket

Enfield Bradley Airport

Boston Back Bay

Framingham

Worcester

BOSTON

SOUTH STATION & WEST STATION (BEACON PARK)

Riverside

Putnam

Windsor Locks

Mansfield/I-495 Bridgewater Attleboro

Pawtucket

Cape Cod Bay

Taunton

Providence

Windsor Manchester, CT

Wareham

Hartford TF Green Airport Willimantic/UConn

Bristol

Fall River Barnstable

Rocky Hill New Britain

New Bedford Middletown

Waterbury

Norwich

Meriden

Kingston

Danbury

New London

Station - High Speed Service

Bridgeport Stamford

Long

Cross Westchester

Major City or Hub

Old Saybrook

New Haven

To: New York, NY

Westerly Mystic

Station - Regular Service

So Is la n d

und

Major Airport Intercity Rail - High Speed Line (Main Spine)

New Rochelle

Intercity Rail - High Speed Line Morris Park Ronkonkoma Suffolk Hub

Nassau Hub Jamaica

To: Washington D.C.

NEW YORK

Intercity Rail - High Performance Line Regional Rail, Light Rail, or Bus Service (New) Regional Rail (Existing) Connection Outside of Study Area

20 MILES

PENN STATION

149

WAY FORWARD â&#x20AC;˘

Phase II (five years) includes: Establishing the main high-speed

rail spine from New York to Boston via Long Island, by completing the Long Island Sound Tunnel and constructing dedicated high-speed tracks along the entire spine. Phase II also includes upgrading existing active freight railroads. Some would provide high performance rail service, including Hartford-Waterbury and Putnam-Worcester. Others would provide regional rail service, including New London-Willimantic, Mansfield-Framingham, Attleboro-Taunton, Springfield-Westfield, and Bloomfield-Hartford-Middletown. Alternatively, light rail or bus service could be used for the aforementioned regional services to feed the high-speed and high-performance rail network. Rail Infrastructure Phase Three

To: Concord, NH

To: Durham, NH; Portland, ME Portsmouth

Manchester, NH

To: Burlington, VT

Exeter

Manchester-Boston Airport

Brattleboro Haverhill

Nashua

Lowell

ALBANY Greenfield

To: Albany, NY

Gardner

Westford Fitchberg Leominster

Pittsfield

Lawrence

Woburn

Clinton

Kendall

Amherst Northampton

Westborough/ I-495 Medfield

Holyoke Westfield

Auburn

Bloomfield

Route 128

Walpole

Northbridge

Palmer

Springfield

Webster

Brockton

Woonsocket

Enfield Bradley Airport

Boston Back Bay

Framingham

Worcester

BOSTON

SOUTH STATION & WEST STATION (BEACON PARK)

Riverside

Putnam

Windsor Locks

Mansfield/I-495 Bridgewater Attleboro

Pawtucket

Cape Cod Bay

Taunton

Providence

Windsor Manchester, CT

Wareham

Hartford TF Green Airport Willimantic/UConn

Bristol

Fall River Barnstable

Rocky Hill New Britain

New Bedford Middletown

Waterbury

Norwich

Meriden

Kingston

Danbury

New London

Station - High Speed Service

Bridgeport Stamford

Cross Westchester

Major City or Hub

Old Saybrook

New Haven

To: New York, NY

Westerly Mystic

Station - Regular Service

la n d o n g Is

Sound

Major Airport Intercity Rail - High Speed Line (Main Spine)

New Rochelle

Intercity Rail - High Speed Line Morris Park Ronkonkoma Suffolk Hub

Nassau Hub Jamaica

To: Washington D.C.

â&#x20AC;˘

NEW YORK

Intercity Rail - High Performance Line Regional Rail, Light Rail, or Bus Service (New) Regional Rail (Existing) Connection Outside of Study Area

20 MILES

PENN STATION

Phase III (five years) completes and further extends the

rail network with some more demanding but less urgent capital construction projects. Phase III includes: constructing a Charles River tunnel in Boston and extending the high-speed rail line north to Lowell, and constructing new rail along highway rights-of-way from Providence 150

- New Bedford. Other possible projects that would expand the coverage

WAY FORWARD of the rail network include: establishing regional connections from Waterbury-Danbury, Northampton-Amherst, Brockton-Portsmouth, New Bedford-Barnstable, and Gardner-Leominster in the form of regional rail, light rail, or bus service. In the long term, the proposed New England rail network could also possibly expand north to Burlington, VT and Montreal, Canada, west to Albany, NY, and south to New York via White Plains, NY to further expand mobility and provide redundancy in the network. Above all, because of its economic transformational potential, it is recommended that priority be given to the federal investment in the New York to Boston segment of the NEC over the Washington D.C.to New York segment, which already provides reasonable travel speeds and capacity without major missing links.

FINANCING STRATEGIES This section lays out a menu of financing alternatives for the capital investments proposed in this report. These range from debt financing by the federal and state governments, to climate cap-and-trade revenues, to various forms of value capture. Costs associated with the rail project are estimated to run $93.4 billion-dollars (a present value of $78.8 billion-dollars), assuming that the project is subject to conventional permitting, procurement, and project delivery. These costs could be reduced significantly as alternative procedures are used, as discussed in Part 1 of this chapter. According to our calculations, if less than 35% of the added benefits could be captured through various financing strategies, the rail project and ensuing economic benefits would not only increase the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

151

WAY FORWARD productivity (as reflected in GDP), but the rail project could pay for itself with less than 35% of the added economic benefits. For the purposes of this report, monetary values were not quantified for each respective financing option. However, the formula for calculating GDP is the following: GDP = Consumption + Private Investment + Government Spending + Exports – Imports

California HSR Only one other rail project of this scale, the California HSR project, is currently being developed in this country. This project was initiated with a ballot question that authorized $10 billion in bond spending to build the project. An additional $3.3 billion was obtained from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the 2009 Stimulus program). When Congress shut down additional federal support for the project in 2012, Governor Jerry Brown made the decision to use revenues from the state’s climate “cap and trade” program, as well as from P3s as soon as the first operating segments provide sufficient cash flow. A cap and trade system is utilized to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The California High Speed Rail Authority estimates that proceeds from that state’s cap and trade program will be $500 million dollars per year. The Authority does recognize that cap and trade funding levels are subject to fluctuations in total revenue each year, but still is relying on these proceeds to fund significant portions of their rail project. For example, the budget for the Silicon Valley to Central Valley section of 152

WAY FORWARD the project is expected to total $12.1 billion. The costs will be covered by the following sources: $5.2 billion from cap and trade (43.1%), $2.9 billion of federal funds (23.9%), and $4 billion in combined federal, state, and local funds (33.0%).15 Utilizing the proceeds from a regional cap and trade program for the New England rail investment program could also be an appropriate use of these funds. Currently, the Northeast states operate the multi-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The states in the program are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. RGGI was the first cap and trade program introduced in the United States and expects to see a 45% reduction of power sector CO2 emissions from 2005 levels by 2020.16 Rendering of Californiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s high speed rail line, which is currently under construction.

Implementing a more stringent cap and trade program in the Northeast could not only serve to further reduce CO2 emissions, but it could increase the profitability of the program. As is being done in California, cap and trade could be used to pay for a significant portion of the rail project. 153

WAY FORWARD A similar approach could be a financing option for the New England rail network. However, given the interstate nature of this network, it seems more appropriate to seek substantial federal funding for this project. For this reason, we believe that the seven states that will benefit from it should seek an early commitment of federal grant and loan funds from the $1 trillion national infrastructure program that has been proposed by President Trump.

UK Precedents The UK Treasury is planning to use debt financing for the proposed Northern Powerhouse transportation projects, which will total upwards of $100 billion. These projects include the HS2 high-speed rail project connecting London with Manchester and Leeds, the east-west HS3 rail project and improvements to the motorways and freight systems across the region. The British government’s rationale for using debt financing for these investments is that they will result in a significant uptick in economic activity and tax collections that, over time, will more than cover debt service on these bonds. The UK may repeat the same public-private partnership (P3) strategy used for HS1 (the Channel Tunnel - London HSR link), in which the UK Government financed the project with debt and built it using a special purpose delivery public corporation. Upon the successful completion of the project, the UK entered into a 30-year lease with a consortium led by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund to operate the project. In return, the consortium is repaying 40% of the project’s capital cost. A similar approach could be a financing option for the New England 154

rail network. The seven states that will benefit from it should seek an

WAY FORWARD early commitment of federal grant funds from the $1 trillion national infrastructure program that has been proposed by President Trump. Under this approach, the federal government would sell Treasury bonds and advance the funds to construct the proposed rail projects. The distribution of said bonds has not yet been determined and will require further analysis. The general idea would be to issue bonds as capital is needed in order to avoid higher coupon payments. Bonds can also vary by type, name, repayment period, or yield. The bond terms are likely to change based on when capital is needed. For example, a phase of the rail project that requires extensive tunneling will need significantly higher capital injections. As with the British HS1 model, it could be possible to lease completed portions of the rail network to private investor / operators, which would allow the federal government to recoup a substantial portion of its investment over three or more decades. Increased State Taxes, Tolls, Fares and Fees Another funding alternative would be for participating states to agree to uniform increases in gasoline or other excise or sales taxes to finance a portion of the state share of project costs. This could be particularly attractive if the Congress declines to increase the federal gas tax. States could also agree to toll Interstate-95 and other limited access highways in the region (or increase tolls on already tolled facilities), and use these funds to help finance rail investments. It is proposed here that fares on trains in this rail network be used to pay for operating costs, however, with the goal of covering most of the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annual operating expenses.

155

WAY FORWARD Private Investment: Public Private Partnerships Another strategy being used to finance and deliver major public works projects of this kind in the US and around the world is the use of partnerships with the private sector, known as Public Private Partnerships (P3s). Specifically, development of train stations and redevelopment of areas around stations would lend themselves best to P3 engagement. As was demonstrated by the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s HS1 project, it might also be possible to lease portions of the rail network to private investoroperator consortia, in return for annual payments that could be used to cover debt service on the program. Joint development of new and renovated train stations through P3s have been used extensively in Europe and Asia, and are also being proposed for Union Station in Washington. P3s are also being used to develop the Brightline rail project in Florida, and are being proposed for the Houston - Dallas HSR project in Texas. It may also be possible to use P3s to develop key components of the rail project through the use of availability payments or trackage fees. Significant cost savings have been realized by P3s on numerous bridge and other public works projects in the US through efficient project management techniques. However, P3s have higher capital costs than do projects financed through government debt, and for this reason it is proposed here that most or all of the facilities needed for this rail investment would be managed by one or more public special project delivery companies.

156

WAY FORWARD Private Investment: Value Capture A “value capture” system could also be used to pay debt service on federal or state bond. This technique would capture some or all of the increase in property values resulting from rail investments. However, value capture is usually implemented at the local level through the creation of tax-increment financing or “TIF” districts and Special Assessment districts. The increase in property values resulting from the rail project and ensuing economic benefits can be captured in the TIF and Special Assessment districts. This portion captured is the value capture, which can then be used to repay federal or state bonds. A majority of the value capture potential is expected to take place in high-density areas in urban cores and in station development locations. This increase in value could also be directed to municipal governments that will need these resources to improve schools and other public services.

Imports: Increase Tariffs President Trump has proposed that tariffs on imported goods be increased and that some of the proceeds could be used to fund a portion of the President’s proposed $1 trillion infrastructure program. Currently, US tariffs are lower than almost all of its trading partners. According to the World Bank, the U.S. weighted average tariff is 1.44%. The European Union and China are 1.51% and 3.21% respectively. With a potential increase in tariffs on the way, this would be the optimal time to recommend carving out and dedicating a portion of that tariff increase in order to pay for portions of this proposed rail investment. The United States imports totaled $2.309 trillion for FY 2015. If tariffs

157

WAY FORWARD were increased to an average 1.44%, this would produce roughly $33 billion in revenue. All else being equal, if tariffs increased to 1.51% to match the UK and the European Union, this would add $1.6 billion dollars per year in additional revenue. If tariffs increased to match China’s 3.21%, this would add roughly $40 billion in revenue.17 President Trump has also proposed reductions to corporate taxes, which would permit US companies to “repatriate” corporate profits that have been parked overseas. Trump has proposed that these profits would be taxed at the lower rate and that the proceeds would be used to fund a significant portion of his proposed $1 trillion infrastructure investment program. Again, it should be possible to direct some of these funds towards the New England rail project.

158

WAY FORWARD Train stations in England are made to handle high volumes of people as well as be city landmarks

High Speed Trains are prevalent in the majority of the developed world

159

WAY FORWARD REFERENCES 1. Michael Grunwald, “High-speed rail gets a four-year delay,” Politico, 18 May 2016, http:// www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/05/high-speed-rail-gets-a-four-year-delay-000123.

2. “About the Federal Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard” Permitting Dashboard, <https:// www.permits.performance.gov/about/>.

3. “Success in Stewardship: More Efficient and Effective Permitting and Environmental Review Speeds Work on Tappan Zee Bridge Replacement,” Federal Highway Administration newsletter, February 2016, <http://www.environment.fhwa.dot.gov/strmlng/es4newsltrs.asp>.

4. “State Expedited Permitting—43E,” Office of Housing and Economic Development, Commonwealth of Massachsuetts, <http://www.mass.gov/hed/economic/eohed/pro/zoningand-permitting/state-permitting-43e/chapter-43e-expedited-state-permitting.html>.

5. “The Office of the Permit Ombudsman,” Office of Economic and Community Development, State of Connecticut, <http://www.ct.gov/ecd/cwp/view.asp?a=1095&q=456576>.

6. Mark Drabenstott, “Rethinking Federal Policy for Regional Economic Development,” Economic Review, First Quarter 2016, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, <http://www. kansascityfed.org/publicat/econrev/PDF/1q06drab.pdf>.

7. “About Us”, Greater Manchester Combined Authority, <https://www.greatermanchester-ca. gov.uk/about>.

8. Press Association “ Greater Manchester councils to control £6bn of health spending – report,” The Guardian, 25 February 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/25/greatermanchester-councils-to-control-6bn-of-health-spending-report>.

9. Elizabeth A. Harris, “Judge, Citing Inequality, Orders Connecticut to Overhaul its School System,” New York Times, 7 September 2016, <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/nyregion/ connecticut-public-schools-inequality-judge-orders.html?_r=0/>

160

WAY FORWARD 10. Vranich, Joseph. “End of the Line.” 2004, The AEI Press, Washington, DC. Page 12.

11. Ibid, Page 13.

12. The Brown Review of The Rail Franchising Programme. 2013, Queen’s Printer, London. Page 26.

13. “State Expedited Permitting - 43E.” Massachusetts Permit Regulatory Office, n.d. Web. <http://www.mass.gov/hed/economic/eohed/pro/zoning-and-permitting/state-permitting-43e/ chapter-43e-expedited-state-permitting.html>.

14. Transport for the North (2015) The Northern Powerhouse: One Agenda, One Economy, One North <https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/ attachment_data/file/427339/the-northern-powerhouse-tagged>.

15. “California High Speed Rail Funding Picture,” California State Assembly (March 2016), <http://atrn.assembly.ca.gov/sites/atrn.assembly.ca.gov/files/HSR%20Funding%20Chart%20 FINAL.pdf>

16. “Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiatives,” Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, <http:// www.c2es.org/us-states-regions/regional-climate-initiatives/rggi>.

17. Daniel Workman, “United States Top 10 Imports,” 4 November 2016, http://www. worldstopexports.com/united-states-top-10-imports/.

161

The historic city and town greens and commons across New England anchor the region’s historic communities

CONCLUSION CHAPTER OVERVIEW This plan sets forth a strategy to transform the New York-New England region into the world’s largest innovation district, built upon a foundation of a world-class high-speed rail (HSR) line providing frequent, reliable, 100-minute service between New York and Boston. This same rail corridor can also be designed and managed to provide high quality connections between Southern New England’s bypassed and economically distressed mid-sized cities, including Bridgeport, New Haven, and Hartford, CT, Springfield and Worcester, MA and Providence, RI. 163

CONCLUSION OVERVIEW This report outlines a bold proposal to transform the economic geography of Southern New England, built upon the foundation of a new high-performance rail network between New York and Boston, and linking all of the region’s mid-sized cities. By a new high-speed rail alignment running east from Manhattan on Long Island to Port Jefferson and then under Long Island Sound to Stratford, eight million Long Island residents will also gain access to the Northeast rail corridor (NEC). This alignment will also dramatically cut current travel times between New York and Boston to 1 hour 40 minutes from the current 3 hours 45 minutes, creating enormous economic synergies between these two powerful metropolitan economies. This route will also decongest the New Haven Line, America’s busiest passenger rail corridor. While this alignment would cost substantially more than FRA’s proposal, it would also produce wider economic benefits that far outweigh this additional cost. This report also calls for complementary investments in the region’s older industrial cities to needed to achieve the transformation of the region’s economic geography by expanding labor and housing markets to encompass the whole New York-Boston region. These include investments in research universities and teaching hospitals, technology transfer institutions, workforce skills, local transit links, urban housing and amenities as well as reform of metropolitan governance. This studio is part of an ongoing series of research projects undertaken at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design begun in 2004 to investigate the economic development and mobility needs of the Northeast Megaregion and similar places around the world. The 164

2010 Studio report, “Making High-Speed-Rail Work in the Northeast

CONCLUSION Megaregion” called for investments in the NEC to underpin the megaregion’s global competitiveness for decades to come. The final report of the 2010 studio was presented at the White House to Vice President Biden and assembled federal officials (including the Federal Railroad Administrator), ultimately leading to the initiation of the Federal Railroad Administration’s NEC Future planning process. Unfortunately, the FRA’s recently completed NEC Future proposal for investment in the rail corridor falls far short of the vision set forth in this and subsequent Penn reports, and the needs of the region is designed to serve, as described in greater detail below. This studio’s report sets forth an alternative to FRA’s NEC Future proposals for investments in the New York-to-Boston section of the Northeast Rail Corridor. The FRA announced its official recommendation, or “preferred alternative,” on the final day of this studio’s semester in December 2016. While their recommendations include many admirable and necessary elements, we believe that this $120 billion proposal fails to address the mobility and economic development needs of New York and New England. It also provides little or no rail service to more than 10 million residents of Long Island and the Hartford, CT and Springfield, MA metropolitan areas. And it offers only a 45-minute travel savings between New York and Boston, 100 minutes more than the recommendations of Penn’s 2010 report and the current studio report. The FRA’s proposal will not achieve the broader economic benefits that true HSR service can provide, and will not produce the new economic geography that HSR is producing in more than 20 countries around the world. The FRA’s preferred alternative follows the existing Northeast 165

CONCLUSION Corridor alignment between Washington and Boston almost entirely, improving it in place. The FRA proposes its only major deviation from the rail corridor in southeastern Connecticut, where several centuryold bridges and miles of winding track substantially slow (and limit the number of) trains. Their preferred alignment would move inland between Old Saybrook and western Rhode Island, away from the shoreline’s complicating factors. This intervention would facilitate higher speeds, but it would also cause damage to numerous historic sites, natural areas, and wetland habitats that provide the region’s defining characteristics, while providing no new transportation benefits to these communities. This proposal has already engendered vehement public opposition, leading Connecticut US Senator Richard Blumenthal to describe it as being “dead on arrival.” Rebooting New England Rebooting New England proposes an alternative alignment from that selected by the FRA and advises that federal, state and municipal governments also pursue a comprehensive set of economic development strategies, urban development interventions, and government reforms to accompany the rail investments. The report also outlines ways that the additional costs of these investments could be financed and quantifies the proposed project’s wide array of economic, social, and environmental benefits. As part of the research process, the studio held a ten-day charrette in the North of England, where we learned about the United Kingdom’s bold new “Northern Powerhouse” (NP) infrastructure and economic development initiative for a region strikingly similar in geography, industrial history, and economic circumstances to Southern New England. The NP combines investments in high-speed rail and other 166

CONCLUSION mobility projects with wide-ranging economic and urban development agendas. The lessons learned from this charrette were reinforced by research into the impact of other high-speed rail systems, notably those in France and China. The starting point for the studio, however, was not a rail system. Rather, the studio was primarily tasked with addressing the fundamental economic and connectivity challenges faced in Southern New England, the area serviced by the northern half of Northeast rail corridor. Despite a history of wealth and economic productivity, the region has struggled with population decline and economic stagnation for decades as its manufacturing sector deteriorated. Although New York City and Boston have rebounded from this decline with explosive growth, the smaller cities and towns in between are still facing chronic budget deficits, rising poverty and unemployment, and deteriorating infrastructure. This studio concluded that as in the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Northern Powerhouse region, New Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mid-sized cities could be revitalized if they were linked with high-performance rail connections, and took additional, complementary steps to improve local transit, provide skills training for their residents, improve downtown amenities and housing, and undertake select governance reforms. With this in mind, the first component of our proposal is a plan to enhance regional prosperity (see Chapter 4). Without a highly skilled workforce, a diverse industrial base, and business-friendly climate, Southern New Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mid-sized cities will actually be more vulnerable in the presence of high-speed rail between Boston and New York City than they are now without it. As such, these cities must grow their employment bases in order to attract residents and investment; they must simultaneously develop the skills of their workforces in order

167

CONCLUSION to attract employers and grow their tax base. And, taking cues from large cities like New York, Boston, and San Francisco, they must create environments that encourage collaboration and interaction between individuals at different firms. By promoting opportunity for face-to-face interaction, cities can support strong communities and increase the occurrence of knowledge spillovers, a major component of innovative agglomeration economies. The elements of Rebooting New England’s economic development strategy apply these assumptions and pair them with a strong set of regional assets. Southern New England must activate and network its strong anchor institutions, which include some of the world’s best research universities, teaching hospitals, and liberal arts colleges. It must also recognize, protect, and utilize its inherent assets, which include historic neighborhoods and downtowns, diverse natural environments, a beautiful shoreline, and its proximity to New York and Boston. With some targeted investments, the region’s cities can once again be highly desirable places to live and work. Finally, the region must actively support its primary industries: marine science, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, aviation defense, advanced manufacturing, financial and business services, and knowledge production. Southern New England’s states will be most successful at leveraging their assets if they establish a regional economic development body to coordinate planning efforts and investment priorities. The transportation component of Rebooting New England (also in Chapter 4) proposes a different rail alignment than that recommended by the FRA. Unlike that chosen by the FRA, the studio’s high-speed 168

spine would depart dramatically from the existing Northeast Corridor.

CONCLUSION Under this proposal, high-speed trains would leave New York City and travel east across Long Island to Port Jefferson, then tunnel under the Long Island Sound to join New Haven line tracks in Stratford, CT. Following a stop in New Haven, high-speed trains would run north to Hartford, CT before turning east and reconnecting with the existing NEC alignment in Providence, RI. This high-speed spine would be accompanied by a comprehensive set of upgrades to existing NEC track, which would allow for higher speeds and more trains per day along the New Haven line, the Connecticut Shoreline, and the Knowledge Corridor routes. They would also upgrade or reactivate many smaller rail lines. The improvements to these lines would introduce more airport connections, and allow for frequent connections into the high-speed line from all of the midsized cities in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. To fully maximize this high-performance networkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s impact on mobility and highway congestion, individual metropolitan areas must also implement improved local transit systems that connect central cities with their suburbs. Metropolitan Hartford has already begun this type of work with the recent implementation of its bus rapid transit system between Hartford and New Britain. Finally, these city-suburb regions should also improve bike and pedestrian routes, and encourage new shared mobility services (such as Uber) and automated vehicles to address the â&#x20AC;&#x153;last mileâ&#x20AC;? issue of getting travelers to and from their final destination. Rebooting New England recognizes that while many of these interventions require national, regional, and state actions, success also requires attention to local built environments. The urban development toolkit discussed in Chapter 5 encourages municipalities to improve

169

CONCLUSION urban amenities and functionality. These strategies include taking steps to enable transit-oriented development; stitch urban fabric back together by rebuilding street grids that are friendly to pedestrians and bikers as well as intra-city traffic; pursue lean, organic, human-scaled urbanism instead of massive redevelopment projects like stadiums, malls, and convention centers; preserve their historic assets and unique landscapes; and promote affordability for a wide range of incomes, thereby ensuring a diverse population and workforce. While Hartford is used as a case study in this report, these guidelines are meant to apply to cities across the region. Finally, Rebooting New England provides a set of paths forward (see Chapter 6). It first and foremost advocates for a set of reforms to the complex system of permits, approvals, and project delivery that infrastructure projects must navigate. Building on reforms begun by the Obama administration (and successfully demonstrated by the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement project) the studio believes that streamlined processes must be applied to all of the investments proposed in this report, thereby lowering costs and accelerating project delivery. Also, as mentioned above, a regional economic development body must be formed, funded, and empowered to coordinate efforts across state boundaries. This organization should work hand-in-hand with a regional transportation body that would facilitate the integration of existing commuter lines, transit systems, bus routes, intercity rail, and freight rail. By coordinating timetables, fares, ticketing systems, and branding, such an agency could help achieve true transformational mobility. Amtrak, too, must be substantially reformed, and competition introduced to the inter-city passenger rail system.

170

The studio believes that if all of these proposals are implemented,

CONCLUSION Rebooting New England stands to radically transform the economic geography and future of Southern New England as well as the major cities that anchor it. As such, this program is worthy of innovative, federally backed financing strategies. We recognize that current federal funding programs cannot be relied singularly upon to fund this program, but that in no way should render the plan impossible. Indeed, this transformational program could be used as a demonstration project under the Trump Administration’s recently proposed $1 trillion infrastructure program. Significant federal grants, loans, and credit enhancement commitments will be necessary to keep interest costs low and attract private sector investments. The FRA, individual states, and other governmental bodies should follow in the footsteps of California, the United Kingdom, and others to pursue new valuecapture systems and partnerships. The current recommendation for improving the Northeast Corridor will produce modest reductions in travel times between Washington, DC, New York City, and Boston, but will do very little for the communities in between. The proposals outlined in this report identify specific ways that a more ambitious rail investment can trigger far greater social, economic, and environmental benefits. If pursued, Rebooting New England’s recommendations will lead to a growing, fiscally stable, more livable and accessible region with improved economic opportunities for all of the region’s 35 million residents. The strength of this region would in turn contribute to the strength of the United States’ economy and serve as a model for a fully revitalized Rust Belt. The studio hopes that the region’s political leadership and the federal government and will see the benefits associated with Rebooting New England and agree that it is worthy of their full financial and political support. 171