Browsing by Author "Vandrasek, Barbara J."
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Item Automated Enforcement of Red-Light Running & Speeding Laws in Minnesota: Bridging Technology and Public Policy(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2009-10) Adams, John S.; Vandrasek, Barbara J.This report reviews the use of technology for automated enforcement of traffic laws around the world and across the United States, especially red-light running and speeding, with a focus on Minnesota. Automated enforcement to tag red-light runners and speeders is common internationally and domestically. The report reviews evidence and suggests how Minnesota can use automated enforcement to improve safety, cut deaths and injuries, and reduce the appalling annual cost of property damage due to motor vehicle crashes. Citizens of libertarian bent resent laws requiring that they protect themselves while allowing society to absorb extraordinary costs when they or others are injured or killed in traffic crashes. Others express fundamental resentment of “intrusive government” at all levels and the traffic rules governments impose. Thus, linking automated enforcement technology with effective and politically acceptable public policy presents genuine public safety and public-health challenges. Chapters summarize the high cost of crashes; problems and behaviors linked to red-light running and speeding; case studies of automated enforcement of traffic laws; the short-lived Minneapolis “Stop-on-Red” program; the yellow-light phase controversy; Minnesota litigation ending the Minneapolis program; diverse political cultures and debates across the U.S. concerning automated enforcement; and best practices for implementing automated enforcement legislation and programs. Five appendices summarize legal issues surrounding automated enforcement of traffic laws.Item Case Studies of Development in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Region(2004-09-01) Vandrasek, Barbara J.; Adams, John S.This report brings together several aspects of land development dynamics that have been examined in previous reports of the Twin Cities Regional Dynamics section of the Transportation and Regional Growth Study, in a series of place-based case studies of Minor Civil Divisions (MCDs) and school districts within the Minneapolis- St. Paul metropolitan region. The report focuses on the local property tax as the locus of interaction between municipal revenue generation and service provision, and the K-12 education finance system in the State of Minnesota. The report finds that local units of government are vulnerable to larger spatial trends over which they have little control, and thus an absence of region-wide or statewide policies to equalize support for PreK-12 education funding and delivery of services will encourage competition for development dollars and uneven development across the region.Item College and University Campuses in Greater Minnesota as Traffic Generators(University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies, 2009-06) Vandrasek, Barbara J.; Adams, John S.This report evaluates the significance of selected Minnesota college and university campuses located in regional centers outside the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan commuter field with respect to the highway traffic that they generate. It examines campuses as places that generate motor vehicle traffic each day, and analyzes the absolute and relative significance of campuses in Greater Minnesota as traffic generators within the counties and wider commuting field in which they are situated. Expanding upon findings from two previous studies that investigated land development trends and increasing highway traffic for a sample of Minnesota’s 49 regional centers and their adjacent commuting fields, the report examines the volume of personnel moving to and from campuses each day, estimates traffic generation rates for different types of schools and their varying impact on traffic generation using trip generation factors supplied by the Institute of Transportation Engineers. It provides 27 campus-based cases, and discusses societal trends likely to affect schools as traffic generators, and concludes with speculations on the implications of these trends for transportation planning in Greater Minnesota. The geographical scale of analysis matters in assessing the relative impact of a school or campus as a traffic generator. If the impact if extremely local, it is likely to be a city responsibility. If the scale of analysis is the county, both city streets and county roads experience traffic impacts. At the scale of the entire commuting field, state highways may be affected. In this analysis, counties were used as the most appropriate spatial unit of analysis.Item Development Impact Fees for Minnesota? A Review of Principles and National Practices(1999-10-01) Adams, John S.; Cidell, Julie; Hansen, Laura J.; Jung, Hyun-Joo; Ryu, Yeon-Taek; Vandrasek, Barbara J.Over the last two decades, local governments throughout the country have been looking for additional sources of revenue. Cuts in federal and state intergovernmental revenues, historically high interest rates, changes in tax-exempt bond markets, and voter resistance to increased taxes have forced governments to increase their reliance on fees and user charges. Local governments face a dilemma of escalating demands for public facilities and services caused by new development without having sufficient revenues to finance these demands. Existing residents are resistant to higher taxes and fees to fund the services and improvements required by new residents. In addition to problems of growth, many communities are struggling to finance backlog needs to bring aging or nonexistent systems of infrastructure up to modern standards. As a consequence of these problems, there is considerable interest in impact fees, which are charges to developers for off-site infrastructure improvements made necessary by the new development. Impact fees are viewed as a way for growth to "pay its way." In light of the economic pressures on local governments, it is clear why they have turned to impact fees. For growing jurisdictions, impact fees represent a vast store of potential revenue that can be tapped at less political cost than other sources. This practice does not mean, however, that impact fees are always the best solution or the wisest solution for infrastructure finance when taking account of social equity considerations and the need to maintain long-term community support for capital spending programs. Impact fees pose several considerations simultaneously: legal, economic, technical, administrative, policy, and financing alternatives. When faced with a proposed future fee scheme, builders, business people, property owners, and future home buyers should study all sides of the issue at once, not just the legal or economic questions. Impact fees raise fundamental social questions such as: Who really pays? How is the fee calculated? Where does the money go? How and where is the money spent? Who really benefits from the new or expanded public facilities? What is the impact of the fees on housing costs for new and for existing residents?Item Highway Improvements and Land Development Patterns in the Greater Twin Cities Area, 1970-1997: Measuring the Connections(2003-02-02) Smith, Laura J.; Adams, John S.; Cidell, Julie; Vandrasek, Barbara J.This report uses statistical methods to measure the relationships between improvements in highway transportation and patterns of land development in suburban and exurban areas of the greater Twin Cities. The methods used measure the timing and levels of residential, commercial, industrial, and esidential land development as indicators of the strength and causality of those relationships. The report investigates the key question of leads and lags between highway improvement and land development. Findings of the report suggest that the impact of major highway improvements on land development patterns took one form in the 1970s, another in the 1980s, and still other forms in the 1990s. Findings also illustrate how the lead-lag relationships differ by development type. Although statistical relationships describing correlations of leads, lags, and contemporaneous change were found to be highly significant, the measures of those relationships seldom were constant. They changed from one time period to the next, from one type of development to another, and from one location to another within specific time periods.Item House Price Changes and Capital Shifts in Real Estate Values in Twin Cities-Area Housing Submarkets(2002-02-01) Adams, John S.; Cidell, Julie; Hansen, Laura J.; Vandrasek, Barbara J.This report explores the movement of average prices and price changes for single-unit houses between 1970 and 1995 in three housing submarkets that radiate outward from downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul. The report investigates one way of measuring gains and losses in housing values that might be traced in part to processes of economic growth, tax policy, and the outward movement of jobs, incomes, and the capital represented by housing assets. The report theorizes that these capital shifts are the result of the capitalized value of tax expenditures and property tax differentials between city and suburb, the impacts of utility pricing schemes, and the nature of consumer demand for housing. Additional factors that drive flux in this general pattern of outward movement of capital include energy and consumer price fluctuations, general economic conditions, significant inmigration, and perceptions about both public safety and school quality in different parts of the metropolitan region. The result of this dynamic is that some households realize unearned capital gains simply by virtue of their location, while others find themselves holding a depreciating asset due to factors beyond their control.Item The Role of Housing Markets, Regulatory Frameworks, and Local Government Finance(1998-05-01) Adams, John S.; Bjelland, Mark D.; Hansen, Laura J.; Laaken, Lena L.; Vandrasek, Barbara J.This report examines the land use/transportation dynamic and its influence on metropolitan development in postwar U.S.; changes in housing supply, housing demand, and residential price movements between 1970 and 1990 in minor civil divisions (MCDs) within the seven-county metropolitan area and adjacent counties; a classification of state and local regulations that promote low-density development on the built-up metropolitan edge and beyond and that raise obstacles for cost-effective redevelopment in older settled areas near the cores of Minnesota's major urban centers; and, the changing profiles of taxation, intergovernmental revenue transfers, and expenditures by function for counties and MCDs within the Twin Cities region.Item Transportation as Catalyst for Community Economic Development(University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies, 2007-12) Adams, John S.; Vandrasek, Barbara J.This study presents frameworks and methods for assessing economic development impacts of well-designed transportation projects. A literature review and on-site inspections of U.S. case studies provided lessons learned, best practices, and metrics for assessing outcomes. Project site matters, whether greenfield locations or redevelopments, and whether projects are in fast-growing metro areas, stable ones, or areas losing population and resources. Prevailing land prices and regulatory environments set limits on what can be accomplished. Economic development differs from real estate development. Economic development brings resources into fuller production of valued goods and services such that overall benefits exceed overall project costs over time. It is often accompanied by real estate development; sometimes real estate development provides a catalyst for economic development. Projects can be implemented at locations from downtown to the outer suburbs; distance from the core can affect conditions for project success. A project can be implemented in elite, upper-middle class, middle class, working class, or poor areas, with choice of sector influencing prospects for success. A well-designed project improves the community's balance sheet--enhancing assets, diminishing liabilities, and increasing net benefits to the community over time. It is important to distinguish absolute change from change relative to metropolitan-wide measures.Item Urbanization of Minnesota's Countryside, 2000-2025: Evolving Geographies and Transportation Impacts(2006-06-01) Adams, John S.; Vandrasek, Barbara J.In this study, we examine population and housing change, changes in industrial activity and occupational changes, and characteristics of commuters and the journey to work for those working away from home in 26 regional centers and their commute sheds in Greater Minnesota. We also explore ways in which Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) and Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) might be exploited to shed additional insight into the changing nature of the demographic, economic and commuting patterns that are now pervasive throughout Greater Minnesota. These data are evaluated to explore links between demographic and economic features of working-age populations, and relationships between worker and household characteristics and aspects of commuting activity on the other. The final chapter examines regional economic vitality and travel behavior across the Minnesota Countryside.
When population change in sample regional centers in the 1990s is compared with change in the nearby counties that comprise the centers' commuting fields, four situations appear: those where centers and their commuting fields both had population increases; centers with declining populations, but increases in the commuting fields; centers with growing populations, but with declines in their commuting fields; and situations where both the center and the commute field lost population.