5 Things For The Next President To Do
There are hundreds (or more) of candidates running for office this election cycle that are using Strong Towns talking points in their campaign.
We have the power to make our streets safe and productive places. We have the ability to make housing more abundant and affordable. We need to reject the big-project mentality and focus on continual, incremental improvements throughout all of our neighborhoods. If we want to prosper, we need to be serious about our budget, our long-term liabilities and doing the math. We need to be decent to each other.
We see these messages being shared. We hear from the candidates using them. We are inspired by what they are doing and what they hopefully will do once in office.
Strong Towns is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We don’t do partisan politics. We don’t endorse candidates. We don’t work on individual campaigns. And, most importantly, we try really hard to avoid the framing, language and rhetoric that polarizes people along partisan lines.
This is more than a communications strategy. Strong Towns is doing something different, something that doesn’t track with our left-right political spectrum. We are dedicated to making meaningful progress in pursuing our mission, regardless of who wins elections.
To that end, here are five things we want to see the next president do to support the prosperity of America’s cities, towns and neighborhoods.
Let the Highway Trust Fund Expire
Most Americans believe that the cost of highways is covered by the gas tax. Most Americans are wrong.
The gas tax feeds into the Highway Trust Fund, an almost sacred institution that was established in 1956 to fund the initial construction of the Interstate Highway System. There is broad awareness in public policy circles that this approach needs a reset. Not only is the Trust Fund failing to meet today’s challenges, but many of our great transportation struggles are, to some extent, either caused or worsened by the Trust Fund itself.
The Highway Trust Fund started running persistent deficits back in 2008 — the last time the gas tax covered the cost of America’s roads. In 2022, the gas tax funded only 76.9% of transportation projects. As the backlog of maintenance and the list of urgent needs grow, that funding gap is widening. A reality check is looming when the current authorization ends on September 30, 2026.
The pain of that reckoning is magnified by the broken covenant that is the Highway Trust Fund. Citizens pay taxes, but roads and bridges are not properly maintained. Transit systems are grossly underfunded. Yet, there is seemingly always money for that next expansion project. We fail to meet our basic commitments while adding more liabilities to the ledger.
Growing and expanding a new transportation system was the challenge of the 1950s when the Trust Fund was created. Our challenge today is to maintain and optimize the transportation system that already exists. That is a very nuanced and localized calling. We get localized nuance by letting the Highway Trust Fund expire and reducing the federal gas tax to only what is needed to fund basic maintenance of the base interstate system.
Appoint Someone Focused on Safe Streets to Head the NHTSA
The mission of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is “to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes, through education, research, safety standards, and enforcement.” Let me bring some clarity to this mission by putting it into a table:
This is critical work. The NHTSA’s own website tracks lives lost on U.S. roads — 42,514 in 2022 — so the stakes are clear. We need an agency that is hyper-focused on saving lives, preventing injuries and reducing the economic costs of road violence.
So, why is this agency embroiled in battles over fuel efficiency standards? What do Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards have to do with traffic safety? This isn’t an argument about the importance of emissions standards; traffic safety deserves its own focused advocacy. NHTSA has leadership turnover and organizational tumult because it is being asked to fight battles over nonsafety issues.
We need an agency hyper-focused on traffic safety. That is supposed to be the NHTSA. It’s not.
Sadly, even when the agency does focus on its mission, it is captive to all the erroneous industry tropes. The NHTSA authored the notorious and incorrect “94% of crashes are caused by driver error” report. Their website accurately reflects their priorities. Click on any of the menu items and you’ll get a sense of what the nation’s highest traffic safety office is about: assigning blame for crashes to others, deflecting responsibility and promoting industry gadgets.
For example, this child safety page that tells parents not to leave their kids in cars but fails to mention that traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for children, so maybe parents should consider taking fewer trips with their kids in the car. Or their pedestrian safety platitudes that include a recommendation to “avoid alcohol and drugs when walking; they impair your abilities and your judgment.” NHTSA has more helpful information on buying a hybrid vehicle than building a safe street.
There are many urgent issues facing our nation. Traffic safety is one of them. It not only deserves its own federal agency — it theoretically has one. We need the NHTSA to start acting like it, starting with an administrator obsessively focused on traffic safety.
Kill off Zombie Highway Expansion Projects
In 2009, in the aftermath of the Great Recession, when federal policymakers were touting urgent investments in “shovel-ready” projects, PBS did a segment on zombie highways. These are projects that exist and persist over decades, not because of their usefulness or any real need but because the planning, engineering and initial construction are heavily subsidized by federal transportation spending.
One project featured by PBS — in 2009 — was Birmingham’s Northern Beltline, which was a $3.1 billion, 52-mile loop around the north side of the city. With the passing of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, this zombie project was given new life after fifteen years. Construction on the first 2 miles began this summer. The remaining 50 miles are TBD.
We’ve reported extensively on Interstate 49 in Shreveport, a zombie remnant of the original 1950s interstate plan. It was never constructed, and it does not need to ever be constructed, but a line on paper has held an entire neighborhood hostage for decades. Spread that same impact over zombie projects in each state and you have hundreds of neighborhoods — tens of thousands of homes and businesses — living under a sword of Damocles caused by unfocused federal transportation spending.
A change in the funding formula to reduce or eliminate the federal match will kill off all the remaining zombie projects. Rightly so. If this is too difficult to pull off, merely changing the scoring priority for what gets federal attention — something an administration can do unilaterally — can mostly accomplish the same thing. Given the massive backlog in highway maintenance obligations piling up in each state, this shift is a great opportunity to appeal to the masses over special interests.
Hold a National Housing Summit
The next president inherits a housing crisis at least five decades in the making. The challenges are many, and they are wickedly complex. There will be calls for superficial action, some type of token initiative to help a small percentage of people (while not harming Wall Street investors), while we wait for the market to sort itself out. Those calls should be resisted.
The reality is that there’s no easy way to solve the housing crisis from Washington DC, but presidential leadership could make a big difference. The next president should hold the first-ever American Housing Week. They should invite mayors, developers, homeless advocates, local bankers and others who are working at the local level on these issues. (I’d let representatives from Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, Wall Street banks, corporate homebuilders, and others traditionally close to power and influence sit outside, but I recognize that this might be too politically costly to justify.)
The goal of an American Housing Week is for the president to leverage power and influence to push folks to make real and measurable commitments. Who here will agree to allow duplexes, triplexes and backyard cottages in every zoning classification? Who is lowering minimum lot sizes, reducing setbacks and eliminating parking requirements? Where are the partnerships with community colleges to train and support neighborhood incremental developers? Which of you local bankers are ready to be part of an approach that funds entry-level housing projects at scale?
Cities have the capacity to make tremendous change at a rapid clip, but they have been taught to wait for the cover of state and federal mandates, conditioned to expect the federal appropriation or state assistance program, before taking simple and necessary actions. Presidential leadership can break through this logjam, call us all to be our best, and put local housing reform at the center of a national dialogue on making the places we live stronger and more prosperous.
The mayor of the first major city that attains a three-hour permit turnaround time for entry-level units (single-family to duplex conversions, backyard cottages, small infill homes) should get an invite and a mention at the State of the Union address. Let’s have our nation’s leaders give that local hero a standing ovation.
Be the Leader who Deescalates the Rhetoric
Our next president can make it much easier for local leaders to build a nation of strong and prosperous places by deescalating the rhetoric.
This isn’t a call for bipartisanship. It’s not a call for dropping core principles, compromising campaign promises or token efforts to appear above the fray. It’s a call for giving room for the calm and peaceful voices that exist in every community to come out of their shells and reengage in public life.
Dramatically narrow the list of those you consider your enemies — it can’t be 40% of the population, however you split them off. With your handful of real opponents, focus on their policies and positions; don’t demonize them or their supporters (no matter how easy or tempting). And it’s not just the president who needs to be a leader on this; it’s especially important for all of the surrogates, spokespeople and policymakers downstream of the Oval Office to do likewise.
Give us an 18-month, unilateral ceasefire. Give us a chance to rebuild our civic conversations.
In a devastating piece of analysis, Epsilon Theory recently published data on how election narratives have shifted since 2012. Not only has our language become far more extreme and far more violent, but that language also persists in our dialogue longer with each election cycle. We are becoming desensitized. This is bad for everyone.
(Source: Epsilon Theory.)
If you think the other side is the greater offender, that's all the more reason to lead on this. Be presidential. Represent the best in us. Demand that those around you live the change you want to see. The president is a reflection of the American people; help us to help you look in the mirror with pride.
Americans of good faith are ready to rebuild this nation with you, starting in their own communities and in their own neighborhoods. Give us the room to see the goodness in our neighbor, to understand that it takes many different types — especially different political dispositions — to create a productive whole. Help us by bringing down the temperature.
And, if you really want to be the leader America deserves, you can even demonstrate what it means to care for your neighbor. It starts with forgiveness.
Charles Marohn (known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) is the founder and president of Strong Towns and the bestselling author of “Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous. He spreads the Strong Towns message through in-person presentations, the Strong Towns Podcast, and his books and articles. In recognition of his efforts and impact, Planetizen named him one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time in 2017 and 2023.