In late October PCAC Associate Director Dr. Jan Wells and Transportation Planner Ellyn Shannon attended the 2008 Rail~Volution conference in San Francisco. This event is a gathering of people from a broad spectrum of disciplines — including elected officials, developers, advocates, urban planners, transportation experts, financiers, citizen groups, architects and many others — who believe strongly in the role of land use and transit as equal partners in the quest for greater livability and greater communities.
High points included prominent keynote speakers Congressman Earl Blumenauer, APTA President William Millar, and New York City’s own Janette Sadik-Khan, Commissioner of NYCDOT. View a presentation.
Mobile tours featured new development and redevelopment around transit stations:
The core of the conference, however, was the workshops covering a variety of topics:
- Principles of transit-oriented development (TOD)
- Building community partnerships for transit
- Best practices for station area planning
- Parking tool kit
- Financing livable communities
- Building support for transit through community activism
Under the last theme, Dr. Wells presented the story of PCAC and its efforts to promote TOD in the MTA service region. (View her presentation).