Surface parking lots in Downtown East, Minneapolis by Tony Webster licensed under Creative Commons.

Many downtown parking lots are getting a new life as housing and offices. A plan to build a high-speed rail connecting Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver gains traction. Dallas takes on transportation as its first climate change issue.

Downtown parking lots become golden opportunities: In 2016, more than 200 downtown surface parking lots in the US were sold, more than double as many as sold between 2006 and 2014. As coastal cities boom, developers are eyeing such lots to cash in on the economic growth. In Los Angeles, a former light rail park-and-ride 10 miles west of downtown will open next year with 200 apartments and 240,000 square feet of office space, which will be leased to HBO, Cinemax, and other operations. (Tom Acitelli | New York Times)

A vision for a rail system from Portland to Vancouver: Right now, traveling the 315 miles from Portland to Vancouver would take about eight and a half hours. Roger Millar, Washington State’s secretary of transportation, sees a faster alternative—a trans-national, ultra-high-speed rail line that can hit 250 mph and connect Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver within super-commuting range. (Gregory Scruggs | Citylab)

Dallas’ climate plan to transform transport: The city’s environment and sustainability committee presented a draft of one area of its first climate action plan: transportation. The committee chose to address transportation first because vehicles create most of the city’s emissions. The plan aims to address single-occupancy vehicles, adapting transit vehicles to low or no emissions, improving walkability, and utilizing land use to improve access to walking, biking, and public transit. (Jesus Jimenez | Dallas Morning News)

Why does a Ford site need $101M in TIF subsidies?: St. Paul is redeveloping a 122-acre parcel of vacant land that once held a Ford manufacturing campus. The project, overlooking the Mississippi River in an affluent area, is seen by many in the development world as a dream project, yet somehow it needs roughly $101 million in tax increment financing (TIF) subsidies. TIF allows property owners to use their own property taxes for on-site purposes, rather than flowing that funding into the city’s general fund. Some are concerned about funding being withheld from less affluent parts of the city. (Frederick Melo | Twin Cities Pioneer Process)

Cali will consider vehicle miles traveled in its planning: The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) acknowledges that its current practices have not solved urban congestion, and have instead lead to more driving and emissions. Environmental review currently uses the Level of Service (LOS) metric, which only considers how much congestion a project will cause. State Bill 743 will require land use and transportation projects to adhere to a new metric, Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), which instead measures how much more driving demand is generated from a project. (Melanie Curry | Streetsblog Cal)

What changed climate converts’ minds: About 43% of Republican voters are more concerned with climate change than they were a year ago. For Republicans under the age of 40, that figure jumps to 58%. As more scientific research disproves climate change counterarguments and more economic benefits from addressing climate change are discovered, conservatives are encouraging Republicans to come up with their own climate change legislation to counter the Green New Deal. (Erica Evans | Deseret News)

Quote of the Week

“First off, they find that drivers are much more price responsive than the majority of the existing literature finds. This is relevant, as government agencies use these numbers to project energy consumption at the national level…They estimate that a 10% increase in gas prices leads to a 3.7% decrease in gas consumption, when most of the literature suggests a 0.3% decrease. Wow.”

Maximilian Auffhammer in the UC Berkeley Business School Energy Institute blog discussing the findings from a 10-year fuel use dataset.

This week on the podcast, Tony Garcia of the Street Plans Collaborative talks about their TRB Tactical Transit paper.