policy and advocacy

Issue Brief - Transportation Enhancements Program, U.S. Department of Transportation

Enhancing Communities' Infrastructure Through the Arts

ACTION NEEDED
We urge Congress to:

• retain the Transportation Enhancements Program in the reauthorization of the Transportation Equity Act, including coordination of state TE goals with other agencies such as arts, humanities, tourism, historic preservation and economic development. 

BACKGROUND
Since Congress first enacted Transportation Enhancements (TE) in 1991, more than $2.4 billion has been invested around the country in facilities for walking and bicycling, historic preservation, scenic beautification, land acquisition, and environmental mitigation.  In 1998, the TE program was reauthorized in the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21, formerly ISTEA, Intermodal Surface Transportation Equity Act), ensuring that through 2003, about $620 million in annual funds will be made available to state transportation agencies for these types of projects.

TALKING POINTS
The enhancements provisions of TEA-21 have created a unique opportunity for state and local departments of transportation to work in partnership with state and local arts agencies and with humanities councils to design and build projects in which the arts can fit into and support TE activities:

1. Artist residencies enable artists to apply their skills to transforming streetscapes, bridges, sound walls, trails, interchanges and other transportation features into community landmarks:
• Colorado’s America the Beautiful Trail engaged teams of visual artists, poets, trail representatives and local residents to develop art benches incorporating visual and literary elements illustrating the history and culture of this 76-mile trail.
2. Folk arts specialists assist transportation personnel in documenting local cultures and artists to help engage communities connected by a historic highway or scenic byway:
• North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Heritage Trail involved a collaboration between the Cherokee community, state tourism office and statewide folklore organization to create a medicine trail to highlight medicinal plants important to the Cherokee people.
3. Public art experts sponsored by as many as 200 local arts agencies and 24 state arts agencies provide advice to project engineers and designers in developing artist-focused projects:
• San Francisco’s Promenade Ribbon Sculpture is a synthesis of arts and infrastructure enhancing a waterfront transportation system with seating, tables for outdoor eating, walkways and protective barriers.  The project’s success led to legislation mandating the inclusion of arts in new transportation improvement projects in the city.
• New Mexico’s Cultural Corridors commissions site-specific monumental artworks, with the help of transportation funds, to promote New Mexico’s interstate roadways as a cultural resource, drawing on a collaboration between highway engineers and artists.
4. Cultural information is made available at visitor and welcome centers and with trail markers and directional signs indicating historic and cultural offerings, often increasing the amount of tourist dollars spent in local communities:
• Alaska’s Seward Highway and Denali Highway present scenic byway interpretive sites and historic signs developed using TE funds combined with local dollars.