Streetsblog New York City

The city's Department of Health has made encouraging physical activity, which can help prevent obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other ailments, a top priority. As part of promoting healthy lifestyles, the Department's Brooklyn District Public Health Office spent last summer studying cyclist behavior in Bedford-Stuyvesant to learn who in that neighborhood travels by bike, and how, so as to better be able to promote cycling in the broader North and Central Brooklyn area. The recently released results [PDF] provide a rare neighborhood-scale look at who cycles, how they ride, and what they think of biking conditions. 

DOH studied cyclists on four blocks with bike lanes. Two, DeKalb Avenue where it crosses Throop and Bedford Avenue where it crosses Fulton Street, had buffered lanes. The others, Tompkins at Putnam and Franklin at Myrtle, had unbuffered painted lanes. The researchers gathered most of their data on cyclist behavior using video cameras, and also conducted more than 300 surveys. 

During the 10 recorded hours at each intersection, spread across the week, over 2,400 cyclists rode through the study areas: more than one per minute at each crossing. Most cyclists -- 89 percent -- rode in the bike lane, and those riders were obstructed by an illegally parked or idling car fully 10 percent of the time captured on camera. 

Demographically, 80 percent of the cyclists were men, with 40 percent identifying as black, 39 percent as white, 15 percent as Hispanic, and two percent as Asian. They tended to be regular commuters, with 65 percent reporting biking for half an hour or more at least five days in the previous week, and most lived in the area.

The survey also underscored the need for further bike safety improvements across the city. Of the cyclists surveyed, 27 percent had been involved in a crash in the last three years alone and a full 74 percent had felt unsafe on their bike. 

One reason that DOH survey is particularly important is the lack of decent data about biking behavior outside Manhattan. DOT's screenline count tracks only the crossings into the Manhattan CBD while a Department of City Planning study from last year looked at Manhattan bike lanes between 2001 and 2008. Census data covers the entire city, but is believed to undercount cycling by ignoring non-commute trips. These Bed-Stuy numbers may only be a one-year snapshot of a single neighborhood, but it's all part of painting a fuller picture of New York City cyclists. 

With good data and targeted traffic enforcement, police departments around the country are saving lives. The Data Driven Approach to Crime and Traffic Safety policing system, or DDACTS, run by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, is reducing crashes by putting officers where they need to be to address the traffic violations most likely to lead to injury and death.

Though the NYPD recently reinstated a program to focus traffic enforcement on hot spots for crashes, DDACTS includes a component that street safety advocates say is still missing here in New York: focusing on the most dangerous types of traffic crime. 

Through DDACTS, the feds provide technical assistance to local police departments about how to reduce both traffic crashes and overall crime. After using geospatial data to identify "hot-spots" prone to both traffic crashes and criminal activity, the police then focus enforcement in those areas, particularly by enforcing traffic laws.

The Metro Nashville Police Department, for example, identified impaired driving as a leading cause of crashes at local hot-spots. By focusing enforcement on that issue in those locations -- the number of arrests for impaired driving increased from 3,242 to 5,995 per year -- the number of fatal crashes annually decreased from 77 to 67.

"If you have an area that has a high incidence of alcohol-involved crashes," said Earl Hardy of NHTSA's Enforcement and Justice Services Divison, "you need to address alcohol enforcement. The same with speeding or any other causative factor." 

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The federal appeals court verdict this week barring New York City from mandating that new taxicabs be fuel-efficient hybrids has left the mayor fuming and other New Yorkers scratching their heads. Why should Washington pre-empt the city from tripling the fuel-efficiency of our nearly 13,000 yellow cabs, a step that would materially reduce petroleum use, given that three to four percent of all vehicle-miles traveled in the five boroughs are by medallion taxis?

Why, indeed? Yet the recent subway and bus cuts and the next round of fare hikes unveiled yesterday by the MTA raise similar questions about oil impacts. These moves too will drive up gasoline use, not by blocking deployment of greener taxis but by deterring some use of transit due to higher fares, longer walks or waits, and less comfortable service.

Not every “disappeared” bus or subway trip will materialize as a car trip, of course. Some trips will be made on foot, by bike or by sharing a car, and some others won’t happen at all. But the number of additional car trips caused by the cuts and hikes will be significant, as will the increase in gasoline to fuel them.

I’ve estimated the impacts, using the BTA spreadsheet that has been written about here and was profiled recently in Wired magazine. I inputted an average 7.5 percent bus and subway fare hike along with a five percent increase in the time required to complete an average transit trip. (That's a rough "proxy" for the effects of increased crowding and unsanitary conditions as well as of longer waits between buses and trains and longer walks caused by eliminating some lines.)

The result: by inducing additional car trips as well as reducing the fuel-efficiency of all vehicles due to worsened traffic congestion, the transit cuts and hikes will lead New Yorkers to use an extra 13.5 million gallons of gasoline per year.

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Earlier this week, Ken Archer at Greater Greater Washington posted this revealing graphic showing the relationship between the amount of driving we do in the United States and the death toll on our roads. Even as conventional traffic safety techniques have made driving less deadly, the rise in miles driven knocked back those improvements. It wasn't until our collective mileage flattened out that safety gains could be fully realized. Thousands of lives were saved when the growth in driving came to a halt.

So it should seem obvious that policy discussions of the risk posed by traffic should prioritize measures to reduce driving and encourage travel by other means, but, as Archer notes, public health authorities tend not to attack the problem that way:

Traffic is the leading cause of death among children worldwide and the leading cause of death among 1-34 year olds in the United States. So, why isn't traffic considered the top threat to public health by the CDC, WHO and federal, state and local governments?

Why don't officials approach traffic reduction with the same urgency that they approach, say, tobacco or malnutrition? The answer can be found in the CDC's publications on injury prevention...

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It seems that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has not only given up on a carbon cap in this year’s energy bill, but also ruled out provisions promoting transit and smart growth. In Reid's effort to pass an energy bill this year, even a weak bill, advocates say that chances to include major transportation reforms don’t look promising.

A large part of the bill Reid introduced yesterday, officially known as the Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Accountability Act of 2010 [PDF] is devoted to oil spill cleanup. The only section that mentions transportation encourages the expansion of plug-in electric and natural gas vehicles, with billions of dollars in incentives for consumers and federal and commercial fleets. Neither of those methods of personal transportation do enough to address the core goals of averting catastrophic climate change and reducing dependence on fossil fuels. The batteries in electric vehicles are often powered by coal, and natural gas is a finite resource.

What happened to the idea of including language to support smart growth and invest in transit? After Reid said last week that the Democrats didn’t have the votes for a comprehensive energy bill, advocates expected a watered-down version. But some still hoped for a chance to offer amendments drawn from the Oil Independence Bill introduced by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and others last month.

Transit advocates are less sanguine now. “It seems likely that Senator Reid will probably not allow amendments to the bill,” said Smart Growth America policy associate Stephanie Potts. “We’ll wait and see.”

Her comment was echoed by Colin Peppard, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s deputy director of federal transportation policy. “It’s a pretty limited package,” he said. “It seems like the opportunity for moving something broader and more meaningful has been closed off for the time being.”

But “there are still plenty of opportunities” to introduce legislation for transit support this year, said Peppard. “It’s a full schedule, but it’s our job to put pressure on” Congress for those issues.

Merkley’s spokesman Mike Westling hedged his bets. “I’m sure it’s something we’ll look at,” he said. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

A source on Capitol Hill said the likelihood is low that transit provisions will make the final cut in the energy bill, because Reid wants to get it passed before Congress leaves for its August recess. But Merkley and Delaware Senator Tom Carper are still hoping to push elements of the CLEAN TEA legislation -- which tied climate goals to smarter transportation and land use planning -- perhaps as part of the eventual overhaul of the national transportation bill.

This afternoon the MTA officially unveiled the fare and toll increases it's proposing to help close the agency's remaining $400 million budget gap. The dailies had already reported many of the measures on the table, and it looks like the burden is going to fall mainly on New Yorkers who use subways and buses the most. The price of a monthly unlimited Metrocard is either going up to $99 with a 90-ride cap, or it'll go up to $104 and stay truly unlimited.

So that's either a 12 or 17 percent hike for people who rely on the transit system for commuting and other daily trips, compared to the overall 7.5 increase in fare and toll revenue. Right after the biggest service cut in a generation. And there's more pain coming.

All this is happening in an election year after the state legislature stole $143 million from the MTA and TWICE failed to put road pricing to a vote, passing up the chance to direct the revenue toward transit. With the primaries for State Senate and Assembly seats coming up in less than two months, now would be the appropriate time to hold legislators accountable for allowing this slow-motion train wreck to unfold.

A lot of attention will be focused on bridge toll obstructionist Pedro Espada's high-profile campaign to hold on to his Bronx State Senate seat. Espada is facing a group of challengers -- including one with backing from the Working Families Party -- in the September 14 primary, where the outcome of most New York City races is really decided.

Espada is far from the only elected official who owes transit riders some answers. Most other incumbents haven't become such magnets for public scorn, but hardly any of them can say they did all they could to prevent the fiscal catastrophe that transit advocates saw coming from a mile away. No one in the Senate or Assembly, after all, ever had to vote on congestion pricing or bridge tolls.

A glance at Gotham Gazette's indispensable candidate database reveals that some incumbents won't get to coast to the general election without facing any competition. Yes, the challengers may be longshots, and many aren't focusing on transit funding, but they're keeping the incumbents honest. Congestion pricing foes, like Denny Farrell in Upper Manhattan, and legislators who should have led on the issue but didn't, like Joan Millman in northwest Brooklyn, will have to defend their records.

With the public circus of fare hike proceedings about to ramp up, we're going to hear a lot of teeth-gnashing about the MTA (the WFP, whose party line many incumbents will be running on, is already on the case). But a lot more is riding on those primary elections than on the fare hike hearings. The next month and a half is no time to lose sight of that. It's our chance to get elected officials on the record about how they'll turn around the finances of our transit system.

It may be the middle of summer, but if you're paying attention, it's already election season. With a string of primaries leading into November's main event, voters will consider transportation issues from now through the fall. In some races, like for California governor, it's one of many hot-button topics being debated by the candidates. In others, transportation is right there on the ballot.

Three Tuesdays from now, Thurston County, Washington, home to state capital Olympia, will vote on whether to increase its sales tax by 0.2 percent in order to fund transit. And according to the Seattle Transit Blog, the stakes are high:

The revenue predicament of Intercity Transit should by now be familiar. Tax revenues are down about 13% from 2007 levels. The agency has already cut some nonessential programs and raised fares, and is now facing a 9% cut in February 2011 and a further 14% in 2012.

Likely 2011 cuts include, according to this handy fact sheet:

• Elimination of the Dash shuttle (Capitol Campus-downtown Olympia)
• Elimination of Rt. 42 (SPSCC-Family Court)
• Reduction in Rts. 13 (Tumwater-Olympia), 41 (TESC-Olympia), 94 (Yelm-Lacey-Olympia) and 620 (Olympia-Lacey-Tacoma)

followed in 2012 by:

• Elimination of all transit service on Sunday [just like everyone else]
• Elimination of Rt. 67 (Tri Lake-Lacey)

More from around the network: Midwest High Speed Rail reports that construction between St. Louis and Chicago begins as soon as September. SoapBoxLA looks at how to introduce a new director of city planning. And Car Free Baltimore explores the relationship between street crime and choosing to walk. 

Reader Lisa Sladkus sent in these photos of new pedestrian refuges on West End Avenue in the 60s. Above is the refuge that just went in at 66th Street, and after the jump you can see one on 61st Street. Both are awaiting plantings in their tree pits.

These refuges are the most visible improvements in DOT's Safe Streets for Seniors project on the Upper West Side [PDF], one of 25 areas where street safety measures are slated to help reduce the risk of traffic injuries for older New Yorkers. The UWS project will also lengthen walk signals, install leading pedestrian intervals to give pedestrians a head start before traffic can turn into the crosswalk, and add curb extensions at more than a dozen street corners on Amsterdam, Broadway, and Central Park West. Some of those neckdowns have started to pop up already, and more are coming in the next two years, once the Department of Design and Construction gets down to it.

Other neighborhoods receiving Safe Streets for Seniors improvements this summer are Chinatown, Jamaica Hills, Borough Park, Midwood, and Sheepshead Bay (where safer streets go unappreciated by Brooklyn Community Board 15).

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New York State still lacks a complete streets law, despite the bill's overwhelming passage through the State Senate and the support of the Assembly's Transportation Committee. After a series of amendments in June, the Assembly bill now matches the stronger Senate version, but is stuck in the Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Upper Manhattan rep Herman "Denny" Farrell. 

In the face of state inaction, Long Island's local governments are taking street safety into their own hands, passing their own complete streets policies. However, there's only so much that towns can do; some of their most dangerous streets are outside their jurisdiction. A comprehensive approach to street safety requires action from the Assembly. 

The Town of Babylon, which encompasses several smaller communities and is home to more than 200,000 people, passed Long Island's first complete streets policy earlier this month. The legislation acknowledges the town's auto-dependency and Long Island's history as a region that pioneered sprawl, while promising to move beyond that legacy. "This Policy will fundamentally change the relationship between driver and pedestrian by creating streets that regard these users equally, with equal right to access and use," reads the preface to the bill.

Any roadwork under the town's jurisdiction -- whether planning, repair, or new construction -- must now be designed and executed to accommodate pedestrians of all abilities, cyclists, and public transportation. While not every street will have sidewalks or bike lanes, Babylon is committed to building "an interwoven array" of streets -- networks for walking, bicycling, and transit so people can reach destinations safely and quickly without having to drive.

To ensure that the new policy has staying power, Babylon will develop a new Sustainable Complete Streets Master Plan within 18 months and evaluate its streets based on a new array of metrics, including the increase in walking and biking and the reduction in car speeds in pedestrian areas.

Babylon isn't the only Long Island town working to complete its streets. Both Islip and Brookhaven, which cover big geographic areas and have the populations of medium-sized cities (around 300,000 and 450,000 people, respectively), will be voting on complete streets policies in August. 

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"We know we don’t have the votes."

With those seven words last Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dashed hopes for a comprehensive climate bill. Prospects also dimmed for a transportation component in the final energy legislation that emerges from the Senate. Reid is expected to announce that plan later today.

Up until Reid's announcement, advocates for transportation reform had reason to believe the Senate bill might include some form of action to improve fuel efficiency, increase transit options, and encourage more sustainable land use patterns -- ideas drawn from the Oil Independence Bill introduced by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley. The oil independence legislation contained elements of Delaware Senator Tom Carper's "CLEAN-TEA" bill, introduced in March 2009, which would have funded the planning and implementation of green transportation projects with revenues from a carbon emissions cap-and-trade system.

Instead, Reid indicated that his bill will likely contain language dealing only with the Gulf oil spill and some energy efficiency provisions.

"The package that Reid announced [Thursday] doesn’t address climate change at all,” said Colin Peppard, deputy director of federal transportation policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "What we were hearing from staff on the Senate side is that basically up until pretty close to Reid’s announcement, there was still consideration for pieces of the Merkley bill."

Reid’s announcement “took the entire environmental community off-guard,” said Stephanie Potts, a policy analyst with Smart Growth America.

While the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe became an emblem of the need to wean the nation off oil, it did not stiffen many spines in Congress. In fact, said Potts, the Gulf spill may have worked against a broader climate bill by narrowing the avenues for compromise and horsetrading. Without expanded offshore drilling as a bargaining chit, there were few lures to win the votes of some recalcitrant Senators, especially those from coastal states.

In the end, the globs of brown in the Gulf of Mexico didn't overcome the absence of will to raise revenues. "The biggest obstacle is lack of funding," said one source close to the legislation, who said some transportation component may still surface in the final bill. "[Reid's bill] has not been released. There are opportunities to effect influence on that legislation, that bill, via amendments."

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Yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act, the landmark law that set federal standards to make public places universally accessible. Two decades later, the ADA has improved access for millions, but in many places, the spirit of the law seems lost on those who shape the streets.

To get a sense of how far we have to go before our streets safely accommodate everyone, look no further than the Buford Highway, the suburban arterial roadway outside Atlanta featured in this PBS report (hat tip to Stephen Davis at T4America). The one-two punch of automobile-centric street design and development patterns have made this road a deadly hazard for anyone without a car -- an increasingly large segment of the local population.

At the League of American Bicyclists blog, Jeff Peel makes the connection between the dangers people face on roads like the Buford Highway and the "unfinished business" of the ADA:

While we should take today to celebrate this historic achievement, let’s also take a moment and think about the work remaining to be done. Twenty years after ADA, and almost 40 years since the first requirements for curb cuts in Federal projects, it’s shocking that lack of access is still an issue anywhere in the transportation system. The fact that it is still an issue highlights the entrenched nature of State DOTs and local public works agencies that are so resistant to change. Where the ADA has forced transportation agencies to integrate the needs of people with disabilities into planning and projects, the needs of everyday pedestrians, transit users and, of course, cyclists are still routinely overlooked or dismissed. And don’t forget, the ADA didn’t require sidewalks -- it says that if they are present, they must be made accessible. That’s why Complete Streets is so critical and is part of the unfinished business of ADA, and that’s why the disability community has been such a leader in the Complete Streets movement.

Elsewhere on the Network: Where the Sidewalk Starts looks with envy to Victoria, British Columbia, where lawmakers are looking to decriminalize the act of jaywalking downtown. A USA Today report on commuters opting to take light rail or bike to work prompts some ideas from Walkable DFW on how to structure incentives to commute by transit. And Rob Pitingolo ponders the growing popularity of intercity bus travel.

With the city's budget battered by the economic crisis, the Bloomberg administration is looking for ways to reduce the cost of city government. One place they're turning: the city's fleet of 26,000 motor vehicles. The city announced last week that it expects to save $71 million by streamlining fleet management, including measures to cut fuel use and decrease the number of vehicles it owns. The city will also explore ways to use car-sharing to make the city's fleet more efficient.

The size of the municipal fleet makes it a tempting target for those seeking to increase the city's efficiency and environmental sustainability. Of those 26,000 vehicles, 60 percent are passenger vehicles, SUVs and vans. The vehicles in that portion of the fleet travel an average of 7,500 miles per year. Another 30 percent of the fleet are heavy-duty vehicles like fire or sanitation trucks. Those travel an average of 4,000 miles per year, but are also used extensively while stationary, according to mayoral spokesperson Jason Post. The remaining 10 percent of the fleet is made up of off-road vehicles, including forklifts and tractors. Managing the fleet currently requires more than 1,500 employees, spread across nine agencies. 

Much of the savings announced last week will come from back-end efficiency measures, like privatizing and centralizing some aspects of fleet management. But the city will also cut costs by reducing the number of cars it owns, making those cars cleaner, and possibly reducing the amount of driving overall.

To get a handle on the costs of driving, in both dollars and environmental impact, the city will begin tracking its total fuel use and vehicle emissions. Such a tracking system could quantify the benefit of continuing to shift toward an electric vehicle fleet, Post said. It could also, if taken seriously, illustrate the benefits of reducing the city's driving altogether.

Most intriguingly, the city is exploring ways in which car-sharing could save taxpayers money. Some vehicles at every agency are already part of a pool, said Post. But the shared portion of each pool could be expanded, he explained, and even run by a third-party operator, like Zipcar or Hertz.

Car-sharing could lead to a significant reduction in the number of vehicles owned by the city. In Washington D.C., using Zipcar allowed the city to replace 360 vehicles with 71 shared vehicles, according to the New York Times, while Philadelphia shed 140 vehicles from its fleet via car-sharing. As with regular consumer car-sharing, municipal car-sharing customers would pay per trip, increasing the cost of each mile driven compared to city-owned cars. That in turn could create an incentive for the city to do its business without relying so heavily on the car.