Shaun Donovan and Ray LaHood, two members of the president’s three-man Team Urban (the other being Adolfo Carrion, who has made news of late primarily for various financial indiscretions), got together today to announce plans to coordinate in creating “sustainable communities.” The vehicle? A HUD/DOT task force. [Tune in this fall for CBS’ new drama, HUD/DOT].

Slightly more specifically:

The task force will set a goal to have every major metropolitan area in the country conduct integrated housing, transportation, and land use planning and investment in the next four years…

The task force will develop Federal housing affordability measures that include housing, and transportation costs and other costs that affect location choices.  Although transportation costs now approach or exceed housing costs for many working families, Federal definitions of housing affordability don’t recognize the strain of soaring transportation costs on homeowners and renters who live in areas isolated from work opportunities and transportation choices…

HUD and DOT will engage in joint research, data collection, and outreach efforts with stakeholders, to develop information platforms and analytic tools to track housing and transportation options and expenditures, establish standardized and efficient performance measures, and identify best practices.  An interagency working group, led by DOT, is currently developing performance metrics, research and data needs to support an integrated regional planning framework.  The working group was established in June 2008 to identify opportunities to better align federal programs and resources to reduce traffic congestion, increase transportation mobility, improve air quality and realize other related environmental benefits.

Needless to say, I think it’s extremely important to coordinate housing policy and transportation policy. It’s important that Obama’s officials are aware of this, and really important that they’re going to push local and state governments to integrate land-use and transportation planning.

I’m also very fond of the third item mentioned here — data gathering and research. Policy can be very inertial — we build highways, because highways are what we build! — and without good data on the effects of various policy choices it can be extremely difficult to change course. Good information is crucial in understanding what needs to be changed and how to achieve that change. All of which is my way of saying that I’m glad evidence-based decision making is back in vogue.

I have to say, I have not been disappointed by Ray LaHood so far. The big ticket items are yet to come, but as of this moment, it seems kind of funny that so many people, myself included, were freaked by this appointment.