Executive Director Steve Heminger's Report to the Commission Meeting of February 25, 2015
Secretary Foxx Visit
February 2, San Jose
Vice Chair Cortese, Commissioner Liccardo and I joined other state and local officials in welcoming U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to the Mineta Transportation Institute for a discussion about his visioning initiative known as “Beyond Traffic 2045”. Later in the day, Secretary Foxx was interviewed by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt on a webcast that garnered quite a bit of national press attention. For more information, please follow this link: www.dot.gov//beyondtraffic.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Testimony
February 25, Washington DC
I will be absent from your Commission meeting because I have been invited to testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee about reauthorization of the federal surface transportation program. The current federal authorizing legislation (MAP 21) expires in May.
Access to Jobs and Opportunity
This month’s map shows Bay Area employment centers, tracts with long-standing poverty (defined as 30% or more of population having income less than 200% of the federal poverty level in 1990, 2000, and 2010), Communities of Concern, Priority Development Areas, and Kirwan Opportunity Index Areas. The Kirwan Institute at Ohio State University has done extensive work which examines neighborhood conditions and proximity to opportunities such as high performing education or sustainable employment that have a critical impact on quality of life and self-advancement. The central premise of opportunity mapping is that residents of a metropolitan area are situated within an interconnected web of opportunities that shape their quality of life. Opportunity mapping provides an analytical framework to measure opportunity comprehensively in metropolitan regions and determine who has access to opportunity rich areas.