Much of the answer, says Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former Baltimore cop, boils down to the way police perceive their work:

Photo: Wiley Norvell.

The NYPD fails to enforce traffic crime in part because the NYPD does not track traffic crime. And part of the reason the NYPD doesn't track traffic crime is because deterring it doesn't bring the same clear rewards as more traditional law enforcement.

"It doesn't draw on the skills police see themselves as having. It is annoying and time-consuming for officers to do traffic stops," Moskos says. "Partly because the people you are helping aren't there to appreciate how you are helping them. There is not much gratification for traffic work on a personal or professional level, because the people you are helping are not there to thank you."

To make the benefits of law-abiding behavior behind the wheel more apparent, perhaps a good first step would be to strengthen the NYPD's working relationships with advocates for street safety. (Case in point: San Francisco's new police chief, George Gascon, said he would consider creating a liaison to cyclists in an interview with Streetsblog San Francisco last month.)

Drawing on the "broken windows" school of policing that NYPD has famously employed for two decades as a core strategy to deter crime, Singer notes that New York's streets will remain hazardous as long as motorists perceive the consequences of reckless driving to be arbitrary and rare:

Applying the rigor of the Broken Windows Theory to traffic enforcement would change the way the NYPD measures and deters traffic crime. The new regime would end the practice of consistently ignoring moving violations spotted through the patrol car window. But more importantly, as the application of Broken Windows did with street crime, it would indicate to drivers that they cannot get away with it, that the lawlessness police ignored in the past will no longer be tolerated in the present.

"There is no question about it, you would have to do this on a regular basis, almost consistent basis, to be effective," says Lou Riccio, Commissioner at the NYC Department of Transportation during the Dinkins administration. Riccio was one of several traffic experts interviewed for the "Executive Order" report. "That's the problem with enforcement, it is random. [Behavioral psychologist B.F.] Skinner said [you need] random rewards and certain punishments. What we do is no rewards and random punishments, and they may actually exacerbate the problem. If [drivers] get caught, they think it's just the bad luck of the draw. And therefore they don't change their behavior."

The unidentified driver of this car, who injured six when he slammed into a Queens bus stop this month, is one of thousands of city motorists who harm and endanger others without consequence.

Maureen McCormick has specialized in prosecuting reckless drivers for 14 years. She led the Kings County Vehicular Crimes Bureau in Brooklyn, and now works for Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice. On Tuesday, McCormick said she believes the state's criminally negligent homicide statute, by virtue of its status as a Class E felony -- the least severe of all felony categories -- is "illogical on its face." Further, McCormick said, courts often go soft on killer drivers by twisting the language of the statute in ways unintended by the state.

McCormick cited a 2008 case as an example. Here is her account from a March Streetsblog interview:

As recently as May 2008, New York's highest court held that a 17-year-old driver who violated his junior license by driving with four unrelated passengers, without seatbelts, and who also was speeding at 70-72 mph through a curve with a posted caution speed of 40 mph, and who lost control sending the car over an embankment and killing three of his passengers, could not be held criminally liable (People v. Cabrera, 10 NY3d 370 [2008]). This decision alone has resulted in numerous defense motions to have cases dismissed claiming that "speed alone" or any traffic infraction "alone" is not sufficient to sustain criminal negligence. Our position is that this is nonsense.

McCormick wants state legislators to tell the courts they are misinterpreting the law. Another panelist, Oregon civil attorney and bike lawyer Ray Thomas, suggested that instead of trying to read defendants' minds -- the Cabrera case turned on the driver's perception of risk -- states should rely on objective, definable criteria. In Alabama, to cause a death while violating a traffic law is to commit homicide, regardless of intent. In Alabama, Georgia, Idaho and North Carolina, the severity of the charge stemming from a non-fatal crash depends on the extent of the victim's physical injuries. These approaches have worked well, Thomas said. Another way to remove subjectivity from court decisions, and to reduce the chance of reversal on appeal, said Thomas, is to assign penalties to certain acts undertaken while driving, like texting.

Thomas was instrumental in the successful push for Oregon's "vulnerable user" law. Focusing on road workers and school kids is a good way to win over police and appeal to the "protective impulses" of legislators, Thomas said. While acknowledging that Oregon, too, has a long way to go in the traffic justice arena, its vulnerable user law has singled out anyone not "encased in a steel exoskeleton," as Thomas put it, as worthy of extra care. A driver convicted of causing death or serious physical injury to a vulnerable user in Oregon must complete a traffic safety course and 100 to 200 hours of community service, or else pay a fine of up to $12,500 and lose his or her license for one year.

New York has its own vulnerable user law in the works, named after Hayley Ng and Diego Martinez, two pre-schoolers who died when an unattended, idling van backed onto a sidewalk in Chinatown. But given the horrific consequences of driver-on-pedestrian violence, such measures are abysmally inadequate. As McCormick said Tuesday, to truly be punished in New York State for killing someone with your vehicle, you almost have to be intoxicated.

Not that weak laws are 100 percent to blame. The only charge that applies to either a vehicular assault or homicide that does not require the presence of alcohol or drugs, said Peter Goldwasser of Transportation Alternatives, is criminally negligent homicide. Between 1994 and 2008, there were only 29 indictments for this crime in all of New York State, according to Goldwasser. During that period, about 10,000 people died on New York State roadways.

The third symposium panelist, Brooklyn-based criminal defense attorney Scott Cerbin, believes New York prosecutors have the tools at their disposal to dispense justice, but lack fiscal resources. Due to overwhelming case loads, Cerbin said, the majority end in pleas, which result in lighter sentences. In fact, Cerbin is skeptical that Cy Vance will be able to substantially beef up Manhattan's vehicular crimes unit as promised, especially if the city experiences a surge in other violent crimes. McCormick agreed -- to a point -- likening traffic safety efforts to school art and music programs: the first to be cut when budgets get tight.

Cerbin also said that NYPD officers virtually never charge motorists with reckless driving, and prefer to issue summonses rather than make arrests. This breakdown at the point where a traffic offense occurs, be it a fender-bender or a gruesome death, illustrates what could have been the theme of the day: in the words of Ray Thomas, "perspective imposes outcome." Every level of lawmaking and enforcement -- from the cop to the assistant district attorney, the state court judge to the state legislator -- is populated by people who identify as much or more so with fellow drivers as with victims of vehicular violence.

Thomas argued that, since a vehicle can do catastrophic damage even with no intent to harm, a new paradigm is needed wherein driving a car is considered a privilege requiring a considerable amount of care, with commensurate consequences for recklessness. What we have instead is a system so infused by car culture that anyone outside a vehicle is considered to be tempting fate. As for other drivers or passengers who lose their lives, well, accidents happen.

Whether a cultural shift is needed to bring about changes in laws and enforcement, or vice versa, one thing is clear. To paraphrase Maureen McCormick: We have a lot of work to do.

Headless meter poles on Madison Avenue, awaiting rebirth. Photo: Wiley Norvell.

New York's trusty single-space parking meters are a dying breed. They've served commercial corridors admirably, but they're rapidly giving way to muni-meters (which are much better suited for innovations in curbside pricing, like DOT's PARKSmart program).

The downside of the shrinking meter supply: New Yorkers have even fewer options to lock up their bikes. While DOT is in the process of adding 5,000 bike racks in the next few years, the rate of rack installation hasn't kept up with the rapid pace of meter removal. So cyclists could breathe a little easier last week, when DOT revealed that it will repurpose defunct meter poles as bike racks, a policy that advocates had been urging the agency to adopt.

We're already seeing signs of re-born meters out on the street. Transportation Alternatives' Wiley Norvell sent this pic of headless poles on Madison Avenue, where DOT will convert four meters per block (two on each side of the street) into bike racks.

Prior to voting overwhelmingly in favor of protected bike lanes at last week's Manhattan CB 8 meeting, the board also approved a motion to convert meters to bike racks on Madison from 69th Street to 90th Street. But not before a lengthy debate prompted by the board's liaison to the Madison Avenue BID. Apparently concerned about sidewalk clutter, the BID doesn't want converted bike racks on the avenue itself, but on the corners of each side street instead. (This would defeat the purpose of the conversion, since there are no parking meters on side streets.) The notion that customers ride to their shops has yet to gain sway with this particular BID.

As Norvell told Streetsblog, more official bike parking is good news for everyone who uses the sidewalk. "Lack of on-street parking is why bikes end up chained to anything and everything that's nailed down," he said. "Converting these existing poles to bike racks is a fast and inexpensive way to increase the supply and keep sidewalk clutter under control."

So, what will the meters look like once the conversion is complete? We have a request in with DOT for an image of the final product. Norvell tells us the re-purposed meters will incorporate the "hoop" design of the city's new official bike rack. For some out-of-town previews, here's how they do it in Sacramento and Baltimore. And Matt Roth at Streetsblog San Francisco wrote up a great piece this summer detailing how several other cities handle the disappearing parking meter problem.

Cy Vance, far right, joined by (l-r) Oregon attorney Raymond F. Thomas, TA's Peter Goldwasser, New York attorney Scott Glen Cerbin, and Nassau County prosecutor Maureen McCormick. Photo: Brad Aaron

Don't take our word for it. This is the message from Cy Vance Jr., the candidate who next Tuesday is all but certain to be elected Manhattan's next district attorney. Speaking at today's legal symposium on vehicular violence at the Cardozo School of Law, Vance called the number of city traffic fatalities "extremely large" when compared to its 500 annual murders, and reiterated his campaign pledge to make vehicular violence a priority on his watch.

"Safety on our streets is going to be a very, very important issue for our office," said Vance, who noted that his son is a Manhattan cyclist.

Vance restated his commitment to allotting additional resources to the Manhattan DA's Vehicular Crimes Unit, as well as his intent to curb dangerous driving with prevention techniques currently applied to other potentially deadly behaviors. Vance also said he plans to approach traffic crime through the "community justice" model [a concept explained in this PDF], working with NYPD precincts to identify specific problem areas.

Much of today's event -- co-hosted by the Cardozo School, Transportation Alternatives and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign -- was devoted to what other states are doing to hold killer drivers accountable. We'll delve into that in a follow-up post. Vance said that he, too, plans to look nationwide to keep up with case law.

"I have a lot to learn," he said. "I will be an active student."

Painted lanes are not enough, East Siders told CB8 last night. Photo: BicyclesOnly/Flickr.

Thanks to groundwork laid by Transportation Alternatives' East Side committee, yesterday's proceedings offered further evidence that, as Charles Komanoff wrote a few weeks ago, cyclists are shedding their status as "the embattled minority." By and large, the discussion lacked duke-it-out drama. During the public comment period, eight speakers testified in favor of the resolution, including TA's bike advocacy director Caroline Samponaro, who delivered a few hundred signatures for good measure. None spoke against. And when it came time for the board to take up the matter, a few CB 8 members identified themselves as bike commuters.

People spoke movingly about their harrowing experiences trying to ride in their own neighborhood, and about the inadequacy of un-protected bike lanes. "Painted lines on the road are not safe," said Jack Russell, 62, a 29-year resident of Yorkville. Given the lack of protected space and the disconnected state of the East River greenway, several cyclists testified that they ride far out of their way -- over to the Hudson River path -- to get downtown. Anthony Romer, a recent transplant from Madison, Wisconsin, told the board that he just doesn't ride as much since he moved to New York: "If I ride here, I put my life on the line."

It's true that community board members were not asked to render a decision on a specific route. But they had plenty of real New York City examples to draw from (not just tales from Europe) as they formulated their votes. Anyone who's ventured outside in Manhattan recently can picture the Ninth Avenue bike lane and the newly transformed Broadway, which were invoked on more than one occasion last night. If last night's vote is any indication, it's hard to argue with the impressive safety records of these existing Class 1 bike facilities. They provide solid proof that safer streets for cyclists are safer for pedestrians too.

Three years ago, when local resident and activist Glenn McAnanama approached CB8's transportation committee about better bike lanes for the neighborhood, the idea that bike infrastructure makes streets safer didn't gain much traction. "Whenever cycling came up they turned it into a discussion of scofflaw cyclists," he said. "Increasing the number of cyclists in the neighborhood was not on their agenda." He views last night's vote as a sign that the CB has committed to street safety and wants to "get more iterative with the DOT."

The vote of confidence in protected bike lanes would never have happened without the advocates and volunteers working on TA's East Side campaign. "Last night was really the culmination of a year-long effort by our East Side committee to be more engaged with the community board," said Samponaro. "Going to your community board and advocating for these things at a local level can bring change."

For Samponaro, the signature moment of the night came when 11-year-old Clark Vaccaro talked about the dangers he faces on his ride to school. "I don't think the CB expected that," she said. "It becomes very hard to vote against these measures when you see the faces of people who are asking for them."

Photo: New York Times

Vance will deliver opening remarks at the symposium, set to convene at 9 a.m. at the Cardozo School, 55 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan.

"I am pleased to be invited to next week's event," Vance said in a statement to Streetsblog. "This seminar will address very important public safety issues facing Manhattan and our entire city."

The presence of the candidate who in all likelihood will be Manhattan's next top prosecutor (Vance, a Democrat, faces no Republican opposition in the November 3 general election) again gives safe streets advocates reason to believe that long-awaited progress in the fight for traffic justice is at hand.

"Mr. Vance’s actions continue to indicate that, if elected, his office will give vehicular crimes the attention they deserve," said TA’s Peter Goldwasser.

The October 27 symposium is free and open to the public. Further details are on the TSTC web site.

Diego Martinez and Hayley Ng are among the many victims whose killers never face justice.

Later this month, Transportation Alternatives, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law will hold a symposium addressing the prosecution of vehicular homicide in New York State. TSTC's Mobilizing the Region reports:

Prosecutors, defense attorneys, and legal advocates will examine the existing legal framework and discuss innovative or untried techniques and those in use in other states. The program is free and open to everyone. Attorneys will be eligible for CLE credit.

"This is a watershed moment," says TSTC's Kyle Wiswall. "There are too many examples of mayhem on the streets that go unprosecuted. We'll be discussing why this is so, and, perhaps more importantly, what can be changed to find justice for the vulnerable users and victims of careless driving."

No word yet on whether they will be in attendance, but this would be a great opportunity for members of Team Vance to get a head start on the new Manhattan DA's traffic justice agenda. Peter Goldwasser, general counsel for TA, is optimistic that the symposium can build on recent progress in the fight against vehicular violence.

"It's our hope that the discussion will lead to concrete progress in finding justice for the innocent victims of careless and negligent driving," Goldwasser says. "We want to get to the very root of the problems lawmakers, prosecutors and judges encounter when these cases arise. Furthermore, with the recent election of a new Manhattan District Attorney who specifically included a pedestrian safety plank in his campaign platform, we are further encouraged that change is afoot."

Panelists will include Maureen McCormick, a former Brooklyn prosecutor who now works for Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice, known nationally for her vigorous pursuit of justice for victims of drunk driving.

"With this symposium," says Wiswall, "we will help move the issue of traffic justice from awareness to action."

The symposium will be held on October 27 from 9 a.m. to noon at the Cardozo School of Law, 55 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan. RSVP info and other details are here.

Site of James Langergaard's fatal August 14 crash

Tomorrow, TA will be holding a special Queens Boulevard Bike Pool ride in honor of James. The ride will pause at the site of James' crash to dedicate his ghost bike. The ride meets at the Queens foot of the Queensboro Bridge bike-pedestrian path (Queens Plaza North at Crescent Street in Long Island City), and ends in Forest Hills. Riders depart at 6:30 p.m.

I recently helped install James' ghost bike and saw for myself the intersection where my friend perished. Queens Boulevard is notoriously dangerous to cross, but this is a particularly forbidding stretch for anyone not encased in steel and glass.

James was riding south on 69th Street and had begun the perilous traverse of a 10-lane highway. After crossing three lanes of the "access" road, he came to the four-lane "express" portion of the Boulevard. Vehicles traveling down this corridor are given copious visual cues that they are on the urban equivalent of a limited-access freeway. They hurtle along a concrete, fenced-in channel that could be transplanted to any suburban no-man's land without alteration. The only things out of place would be a crosswalk and a 30-mph speed limit sign, which may be the highway department's idea of a joke given the inducements to exceed it.

As he approached the express lanes, James' view of traffic coming towards him from the left would have been partially obscured by a fence and signs placed in the median. He wouldn't have gotten a clear view of approaching traffic until he was only a few yards from the intersection. All he had to remind him that he was about to enter a zone of mortal danger was a distant "Don't Walk" signal at the other end of the intersection. That and a thoughtful sign placed on the median to his left warning any pedestrian foolish enough to venture across this deadly expanse to "Be Alert: Proceed With Caution."

According to witnesses, James was crossing against the light. But capital punishment should not be the likely penalty for an error in judgment. James was arguably as much the victim of an infrastructure designed exclusively for the convenience of motorists. All others who stray into the area are an afterthought, at best.

By coming on the ride or attending the dedication, you can help send a strong message to the community and the city that these casualties of the Boulevard will not be forgotten, and that such inhuman landscapes in the middle of a congested city must not be tolerated and must change.

WHERE: Ride meets at the Queens foot of the Queensboro Bridge  bike-pedestrian path (Queens Plaza North at Crescent Street in Long Island City); Ride ends in Forest Hills

WHEN: Friday, October 2; Riders depart at 6:30 p.m.

Monthly bike commuter pools on Queens Boulevard are led by TA's Queens Committee to provide cyclists with a safe ride home, and build support for protected space for cyclists on the borough's most iconic roadway.

Chalk up more bikeway innovation to the folks at the NYC Department of Transportation. Nearly complete, the Sands Street approach to the Manhattan Bridge is now safer and more enjoyable thanks to a New York City first: a center-median, two-way protected bike path. The facility is a perfect solution to counter the dangers posed by a tangle of roads and highway on-ramps that burden the area. Dramatic before-and-afters tell the delicious story.

We'll also take you back into the archives to April 2005, when, following a severe injury to Transportation Alternatives' Noah Budnick, advocates held a passionate rally asking Mayor Bloomberg to not only improve bike access to the Manhattan Bridge, but to all East River bridges. Four years later, there's much to be proud of. As DOT Assistant Commissioner for Traffic Management Ryan Russo points out, back in 2005 about 800 cyclists used the bridge daily. In 2009, those numbers have soared to over 2,600. That gives us a serious case of happiness.

In preparation for Park(ing) Day festivities tomorrow, here's a flashback to last year. If you're setting up a spot, or will be hanging out in one or more the 50-plus spaces to be reclaimed for the day, share your photos with us by tagging them "parkingdaynyc" and "streetsblog" on Flickr. We'll be posting pics from across the boroughs.

Transportation Alternatives will also unveil the winner of the POP.Park competition on St. Marks Place between First and Second Avenues.

See you at the park, wherever it may be.

Cy Vance, at left, with Richard Aborn at a Chelsea pedestrian memorial march in June. Photo: Brad Aaron

At TA's candidate forum, and again at a Hell's Kitchen pedestrian memorial march, Vance heard personally the heart-rending stories of victims of vehicular violence. In response, he issued a detailed plan to ramp up the vehicular crimes bureau, improve crash site investigation techniques and lobby lawmakers for legislation to clamp down on dangerous driving -- including graduated penalties for repeat offenders, so that today's speeding red light-runner isn't tomorrow's hit-and-run killer.

Vance has promised to work with NYPD to target high-casualty areas and, for drivers whose actions result in death, to forgo the arbitrary "Rule of Two" in seeking punishment more suited to the crime.

"After years of watching dangerous drivers who kill put back behind the wheel, we are confident the next DA is going to utilize the robust and varied resources of the office to implement comprehensive pedestrian safety initiatives," TA Executive Director Paul Steely White said Wednesday. Time will tell how quickly, and to what extent, these initiatives come to fruition -- and continued vigilance will no doubt be required. But after this campaign street safety will surely be a hot topic in many contests to come. For that, livable streets advos can give themselves credit.

Team Amsterdam's concept for a bike and bus boulevard down Broadway.

Team Amsterdam won running away at Saturday night's New Amsterdam Bike Slam design battle, the two-team competition to devise the best plan for boosting bicycle modeshare in New York City. But Team New York could go home with their heads high -- they presented a lot of ideas that would work wonders on New York City streets.

The team labels are a little misleading. This was not an exercise in intercity jingoism. Team Amsterdam included Dutch city planners and American designers, by and large, while Team New York featured American planners and Dutch designers. The contest, hosted by Transportation Alternatives and Velo Mondial, asked competitors to come up with an overall vision for increasing bicycling, designs for four specific types of infrastructure, and a plan to make biking culturally mainstream. Some of their ideas you could picture on the streets of New York tomorrow, given sufficient resources. Other concepts were a little more outlandish.

My impression of the evening is that the Amsterdam team won the hearts of the judges thanks to consistent branding, an excellent presentation, and a cohesive message: That biking must become the easy transportation choice for New Yorkers, not the hard choice. They threaded the word "bright" through all of their concepts -- a brilliant, simple, but not at all obvious choice to associate with the bicycle (it's also closely associated with a bike coating prototype that team member Michael Mandiberg is developing).

In terms of realistic and effective infrastructure plans, though, I personally give a slight edge to Team New York. With a tighter presentation, their ideas might have won out.

I'll keep it brief and break down some highlights in bullet point form.

From Team New York:

• "Safe Zones" around bridge approaches with high-visibility bike lanes saturating the grid, a 20 mph speed limit and heightened fines;
• Two-way, separated bike approaches to every bridge entrance;
• A bike boulevard down Broadway -- they presented this concept as a two-way separated path, with plantings, running down the middle of the street with one car lane on each side;
  
• Separated bike paths on Houston Street;
  
• Safe zones around every school and public housing development. In the East Village and Lower East Side, if you traffic calm streets and add protected bike infrastructure around these locations, you'd end up with a fairly well-connected grid. To my eyes, this looked like a brilliant strategy for rolling out safe streets infrastructure; 
• Different scales of bike parking for different needs, including on-street bike corrals;
  
• For major employment centers like the Municipal Building: automated secure underground bike parking, a la Japan, encased in an attention-grabbing transparent structure (pretty far out).

As imagined by Team New York, safe zones would guide cyclists to and from bridge approaches.

• Two-way separated bike approaches to bridge entrances. This team suggested a Williamsburg Bridge bike path stretching to Lafayette Street. I sense a pattern;
• A bike and bus boulevard down Broadway (shown up top, one of the most talked-about images of the night);
• Put most bike infrastructure on neighborhood streets, not traffic sewers like Houston --  a big difference between the two teams;
• A new neighborhood street layout: angled car parking, delivery zones, and bike corrals on one side -- bike lane with no car parking on the other side;
  
• A grade-separated bike "freeway" slipped underneath the FDR. Bold, but not something that seemed appealing to ride on or worth fantasizing about very much;
• A guarded bike parking hub at the Municipal Building with direct connections to the subway.
  

Team Amsterdam's concept for a neighborhood street. The parallel parking spot is for deliveries and the green parallelogram is for bike parking.

Both teams, I should mention, tied everything together with a robust bike-share network.

If there was anything more captivating than the re-imagination of street space on display Saturday night, it was the spectacle of Meatpacking hotspot Cielo crammed with sustainable transportation geeks, with just a smattering of regular club-goers looking totally perplexed and a little miffed.

An aside about the Meatpacking District: This was the first time I'd seen the Gansevoort area in full swing on a weekend night. You've got to see this traffic to believe it. Looking east from Ninth Avenue and 14th Street, the line of cabs, limos, livery cars, and assorted machines for preening stretched as far as I could see, way beyond Eighth Avenue. The notion that a few pedestrian extensions on Ninth Avenue exacerbate all this gridlock is totally preposterous. People on foot need that space or they'd be risking life and limb crossing the street in front of these impatient drivers.

Tomorrow night, Paul White does his best Chairman Kaga.

The teams, each comprised of American and Dutch planners jumbled together, have been roaming the city the past few days, hatching their plans. They've been asked to address everything from law enforcement to bike culture in their presentations. The most interesting visuals should appear in the second round of the contest. That's when the teams will unveil designs for four types of bike infrastructure: a bridge crossing (the Williamsburg Bridge, specifically), a greenway, a neighborhood-scale network of streets, and a large office building (the Municipal Building).

L-r: Council candidates S.J. Jung, John Choe, Evergreen C. Chou, James Wu and Isaac Sasson

With the September 15 primary fast approaching, the race to succeed Liu in District 20 is one of two especially compelling Queens contests, where long-time council incumbents are leaving open seats. (District 26's Eric Gioia is running for public advocate. Streetsblog will profile the race to replace him later this week.)

Of the three District 20 candidates who answered the Transportation Alternatives Candidate Survey -- S.J. Jung, John Choe and Evergreen C. Chou -- all expressed support, to varying degrees, for road pricing, bus rapid transit, bike-share, public plazas, and improved traffic enforcement. Each candidate also said he would like to see innovations like BRT and Summer Streets come to Queens.

Choe served as Liu's chief of staff for eight years, and has the endorsement of his former boss. If elected, Choe says he would advocate for improved service on the 7 train, BRT on Northern Boulevard, and unrestricted subway access for bikes. He would also like to see ferry service on the Flushing River. Choe says he would favor targeted traffic enforcement with increased fines for speeders, and thinks congestion pricing "should be further explored" as a means to reduce traffic and provide funding for transit expansion in areas without easy access to subways.

Choe and Jung, an entrepreneur and community volunteer, are in sync on many if not most transportation issues. But Jung differentiates himself in a couple of key areas. Jung is the only candidate to employ the term "traffic justice" in his survey responses, citing "thorough investigation of all traffic crashes" as a component of a successful strategy to reduce dangerous driving. He also supports "exploring the option" of raising on-street parking rates to "discourage long-term parking, convince some drivers to utilize garage parking and direct others to take public transit."

Chou, a Green Party nominee, is big on bikes: bike lanes, bike parking, bike-share, and bike racks on buses. He would also like to see lower transit fares. While he seems to favor the interests of pedestrians, cyclists and transit users, Chou's positions are largely short on specifics -- though he is the only candidate among the three to declare his unqualified support for congestion pricing.

Candidate James Wu didn't return the TA survey, but according to a Gotham Gazette write-up of the District 20 race, he "would seek to curb rampant jaywalking and reduce speeding." Wu says he would also push to restrict traffic on Main Street in Flushing to pedestrians and buses.

Democrats dominate the District 20 field -- Yen S. Chou and Isaac Sasson round out the Democratic roster -- but with Chou along with Republican Peter Koo in the race, voters won't finalize their choice for John Liu's successor until November.

L-r: City Council candidates Ken Baer, Doug Biviano, Ken Diamondstone, Jo Anne Simon, Evan Thies.

It was an opportunity for the candidates to show how well they understand the most critical transportation problems facing New York City by rebutting Reina with a well-reasoned argument. Traffic generated by the free price on Brooklyn's three East River bridges overruns the 33rd District, which includes parts of Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Park Slope. Congestion pricing, supported by outgoing rep David Yassky, should be as much a no-brainer here as it is in Lower Manhattan.

Only one candidate, Doug Biviano, a former campaign staffer for Kucinich 2008, came close to giving Reina what he asked for. "I'm not against congestion pricing," he said, "but I think we have to be careful about unintended consequences. Do we want to hit people with that toll? In this climate, I don’t think we want to. That would kill contractors."

Biviano was followed by Evan Thies, who played an active role in last year's campaign to pass congestion pricing as a consultant for Environment Defense and the Pratt Center. "I do absolutely support congestion pricing," he said to some applause. "Neighborhoods like this are disproportionately affected by the traffic that’s created by the lack of congestion pricing. Contractors in the outer boroughs supported congestion pricing, because instead of spending time in traffic, they’d be spending more time working for clients." Thies later named congestion pricing his top transportation priority and noted that the next City Council will need to take it up again in 2010 to fund the MTA Capital Plan.

Jo Anne Simon, an attorney who serves as Democratic district leader in the 52nd Assembly District, gave another strong statement in support of pricing. "The gratuitous traffic that comes over the bridges is just that, gratuitous," she said. "We’re a doormat. It’s costing us in infrastructure; it’s costing us in health. The challenge for us as policy makers is to convince people in the outer boroughs that congestion pricing benefits them too. It’s not just for Manhattan."

Ken Diamondstone and Ken Baer, the other two candidates at the forum, also endorsed congestion pricing. Baer took the more enthusiastic stance, noting that pricing revenues can help plug the MTA Capital Plan's $10 billion hole. Diamondstone said he "believes strongly" in the policy but thinks exceptions must be made for people with disabilities and, in a novel carve-out suggestion, musicians.

By this point in the debate, candidate Isaac Abraham was long gone.

Abraham, whose base is in Williamsburg's Satmar Hasidic community, left soon after taking a swipe at the Kent Avenue bike lane, about 30 minutes into the event. (He told the crowd of about 50 that he had a wedding to attend.) At least Abraham made an appearance, which is more than we can say for no-show Steve Levin, a protege of Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez. The day before the debate, Levin backed out of his commitment to attend.

On the question of truck traffic, the need to fund the Cross-Harbor Freight Tunnel was widely invoked by the candidates, but council members can't do much to advance a project that needs billions in federal cash to get built. The more intriguing responses came from Simon and Thies. Simon raised the prospect of truck tolls on the East River bridges (you can do it with E-ZPass transponders, she said), which would put a halt to the free counterclockwise route that sends trucks through downtown Brooklyn streets, while Thies proposed giving Traffic Enforcement Agents the authority to "bust trucks for traveling on non-truck routes."

It wasn't the only question on which Simon and Thies distinguished themselves. While the two Kens showed a solid commitment to street safety measures like automated enforcement and traffic-calming infrastructure, Simon and Thies consistently displayed a broader and more current grasp of transportation issues.

Responding to a question about improving streets for walking, biking and transit, Thies was the only candidate to broach the politically difficult subject of off-street parking reform. "I'd like to prevent garages from being built in developments near subway stops," he said. "It’s bad urban planning, it brings traffic." Simon, meanwhile, made the evening's sole statement on bike-share, a project that she said "needs to be pursued."

Aside from Abraham's early turn at the mic, fireworks over bike lanes failed to transpire. One audience member did mention that she fears cyclists while driving at night, and asked the candidates if they would push legislation requiring cyclist registration and helmet use. To read what they had to say, check out "Audience Question #1" over at TA's candidate survey blog.

Tonight's debate: Come for the bike lane drama, stay for the discussion of parking policy. Photo: Brooklyn Paper.

To get a sense of the hot transportation topics in the district, especially the North Brooklyn neighborhoods closest to tonight's venue, Streetsblog spoke to Teresa Toro, chair of Brooklyn CB1's Transportation Committee, and Michael Freedman-Schnapp of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth.

Here's what they want the candidates to address tonight:

Bike and pedestrian safety. Streetsblog readers are familiar with the twists and turns of the Kent Avenue bike lane saga. In a district that includes approaches to all three of Brooklyn's East River bridges, it's probably not the last such dispute we'll see. "There’s a clear need in the district to continue to improve biking infrastructure and to make walking safer," said Freedman-Schnapp, noting that, in addition to the bridge approaches, corridors like McGuinness Boulevard have particular safety deficiencies that need to be addressed. The fact that all three bridges remain free, Toro reminded us, attracts a disproportionate amount of traffic to the district and discourages people from biking and walking.

Truck traffic. As the latest Kent Avenue dust-up has made apparent, truck traffic is a big issue in North Brooklyn. "Truck-generating uses are important employment sources in the neighborhood," said Freedman-Schnapp, but management and enforcement of truck routes are lacking. For some sharp insight into how better truck route planning can address some of the complaints arising from Kent Avenue's conversion to one-way flow, check out this post from neighborhood blog Brooklyn 11211.

Too much parking, not enough planning. Williamsburg and Greenpoint have seen a spike in car-oriented development since a 2005 rezoning took effect. Thanks in large part to Department of City Planning parking minimums, thousands of new units have been built with more space allotted to parking compared to the existing urban fabric, causing a surge in traffic volumes.

"The rezoning had no transportation plan," said Freedman-Schnapp. "They analyzed the impacts. They had this very thick EIS. Then nothing happened to address those impacts."

The EIS badly misjudged the transportation impacts of the rezoning, Toro said, calling the end result a huge missed opportunity. "The area around the Bedford Avenue station is prime real estate because of its proximity to transit. You have such a clear demonstration of people preferring transit, and yet they're being handed the option of car ownership." She wants to know whether the candidates support studying traffic-calming improvements and enhanced bus-to-subway connections to relieve the area's growing traffic pressures.

The traffic trouble unleashed by abundant residential parking figures to intensify if projects like the Domino Sugar factory redevelopment -- where 70 percent of luxury units are slated to include parking, according to Freedman-Schnapp -- proceed as planned. It will be interesting to see where the candidates stand on reforming the city's parking requirements.

Transit crowding, transit funding. Crowding on the L train is reaching Lexington Avenue line proportions, said Freedman-Schnapp, and even northbound G service can get cramped in the morning -- problems that ultimately boil down to how well we fund our transit system. "[The candidates] can yell at the MTA all they want," he said, "but when it comes down to it, they need more money to improve service, so where’s the money going to come from?"

A bit more background on the generous neckdown at Smith and Bergen spotlighted earlier today: This pedestrian amenity never would have been built without the long-term organizing for the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project. Street protests and advocacy campaigns stretching back more than a dozen years are bearing fruit now.

And advocates are still on their game, pushing for more. This slideshow comes from Dave "Paco" Abraham, a volunteer with Transportation Alternatives' Brooklyn Committee who's had his eye on the corner of Smith and Bergen in particular. "I always thought that intersection needed something," he said. Thousands of commuters pass through the subway entrances on these corners every day. You've got students walking to schools on Bergen and customers heading to the restaurant row on Smith. They're all contending with traffic that tends to accelerate on the excessively wide Bergen as drivers try to make the light at Court Street.

When Abraham heard the city was moving on a big slate of downtown Brooklyn traffic calming measures, he drew up a letter urging the maximum possible sidewalk extension and the addition of bike parking at the northwest corner of the intersection. He met with more than a dozen merchants in the immediate vicinity and asked them to sign on. "I don’t think there was a place I went to that said no," he says. "It was tremendous." He also garnered support from local civic groups and the two nearest schools -- the Brooklyn Heights Montessori School and the Mary McDowell Learning Center.

It's hard to say precisely what effect Abraham's campaign had on the final outcome at this intersection. But there's a lot more sidewalk real estate here than at your typical curb extension, and, at the very least, DOT knew there was widespread local support for something ambitious, thanks to his organizing. DOT is considering the addition of bike parking, a spokesman told Streetsblog earlier this week.

If you're interested in putting together a similar campaign for a specific intersection, Abraham has a whole tutorial about building momentum for a "bike parking swap" posted on the Livable Streets Community site.

When I set out to summarize responses to the Transportation Alternatives Candidate Survey from City Council contenders in Washington Heights and Inwood, I expected it to take some time. It's a crowded field, after all, with challengers looking to knock off incumbent Robert Jackson in District 7 and a full slate of District 10 hopefuls vying to fill the spot vacated by the disgraced Miguel Martinez.

But of the 16 candidates running in both races, not one responded to TA's survey. A single candidate, Victor Bernace in District 7, submitted a bio. But no one deigned to answer TA's questions on the specific transportation needs of their respective districts, or street safety, congestion reduction, parking reform, public space reclamation, bus rapid transit, bike-share, or improving the health of city residents by making it easier to walk and bike.

"You would think that between crushing GWB congestion, sky-high asthma rates and mass transit that is literally crumbling before our eyes, transportation would be a top-tier issue in races uptown," said TA's Wiley Norvell. "It's regrettable none of the candidates took this opportunity to weigh in on some of the most pressing quality of life issues facing the constituents they aspire to represent."

Indeed. So how should Upper Manhattan voters who care about livable streets proceed? Robert Jackson voted for congestion pricing, though he was never a vocal supporter, and he isn't really known for being outspoken on transportation issues one way or the other. Three candidates -- two in District 7 and one in District 10 -- didn't make it on the ballot.

Of the remaining 12, those in District 10 are profiled in a recent Gotham Gazette piece, which reads:

If you want to get elected in Washington Heights, start by getting a car.

Paste posters of your face all over it. Blasting merengue from a large roof-mounted megaphone can't hurt either. Then hit the streets.

Welcome to Upper Manhattan.

I recognized candidate Francisco Spies' name from a van that passed me on an Inwood street a few weeks back, blasting his custom campaign theme song from the aforementioned roof-mounted megaphone. I was able to track down responses to a 504 Democratic Club survey, which touches on transportation options for the disabled, from Cleofis Sarete. Luis Facundo's platform doesn't mention transportation, though he is interested in making "the community energy efficient and green."

NYPD employee Ruben Dario Vargas, who according to Gotham Gazette doesn't live in the district but plans to move there by Election Day, says he's for "street safety" and, again from the Gazette: "wants to make sure two of the district's subway stations, one on Broadway the other on Dyckman, get elevators." Richard Realmuto is also for safer streets, but it seems both he and Vargas are referring to overall street crime.

Ydanis Rodriguez, considered a front-runner in District 10 -- mostly because he has raised the most money -- boasts of both "derailing a proposed toll on Northern Manhattan bridges with Assemblyman Espaillat" and "opposing fare increases with the Straphangers Campaign." So it looks like we can expect Council Member Rodriguez to uphold the Upper Manhattan tradition of protecting the status quo while pandering to all sides.

Another District 10 favorite, Manny Velazquez, is chair of Community Board 12. Here's his transportation plank: "Provide funding for roadway and street reconstruction projects in Northern Manhattan and for the modernization of train stations throughout the district."

To the west, in District 7, Victor Bernace -- again, the only candidate in Inwood or Washington Heights to respond to TA at all -- is an attorney who defends cab drivers in traffic court. According to his bio, however, he at least takes the subway to work, and in this video Bernace says he wants to rid Upper Manhattan of "all vehicle traffic" and make public transportation free. In 2005, Bernace made headlines by holding a fund-raiser featuring erotic dancers.

Julius Tajiddin is a member of CB 10, whose comments on residential parking from a 2007 meeting represent all the relevant info I could dig up among the remaining District 7 candidates.

Tajiddin (Freedom, Justice & Equal) and Fima Shlimel (Libertarian) are the only District 7 candidates who are not Democrats. While that race won't technically be decided until November, voters in District 10 will choose their next council rep in the September 15 Democratic primary. As Norvell said, it's too bad, for them and for Upper Manhattan, that the candidates chose not to distinguish themselves to a committed voter bloc on an issue that affects each and every one of their potential constituents.

At the Transportation Alternatives City Council candidate debate last night, the three Democrats competing in District 25 sat down to tackle concerns about traffic, public space, and street safety. An overflow crowd of about 50 people packed the second floor office of the Queens Diversity Center to see them.

The starkest differences between the candidates centered around how to allocate street space and improve safety. Challenger Daniel Dromm, a school teacher, was the only one to speak unreservedly in favor of design and engineering improvements. "We need to have more bike lanes installed," he said. "We may need to have lighting systems that give pedestrians more time to cross the street."

Incumbent Helen Sears took a different view of cyclist safety. While Dromm had called for better education of both drivers and cyclists, Sears got more specific. "I think every company that makes bikes should have to produce a video that will absolutely show the cyclist exactly what the rules of the road are," she suggested.

Businessman Stanley Kalathara at first insisted that "providing a special route in the street" for bike lanes is "impossible," but later modified the claim, saying that 34th Avenue and 35th Avenue might have the necessary space. (Note: 34th Avenue already has a bike lane.)

Dromm was also the only candidate to express much support for congestion pricing. "I do support some form of road pricing that would help to alleviate the burden on the MTA," he said, adding that he would also support higher gas taxes or bridge tolls to fund transit. "The majority of people in this neighborhood probably do not have cars, and that’s why I make that such a high priority."

According to the most recent census numbers [PDF], Dromm's intuition is correct: 52 percent of District 25 residents don't own cars. Still, Kalathara pledged to oppose pricing in no uncertain terms, and Sears made her support conditional on the construction of additional municipal garages. Apparently the council member subscribes to the belief that car commuters will use her district as a park-and-ride if they can't drive across the 59th Street Bridge for free. Logic dictates otherwise, but if there's any way to fulfill that prophecy, thousands of additional parking spots would do it.

Off-street parking policy was something of an Achilles heel for all three candidates. Their prevailing view: More garages and more parking would reduce the terrible congestion problem in Jackson Heights, one of the most transit-rich neighborhoods in Queens. Someone should send around a copy of Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking to these folks:

• Kalathara: "People are going to buy cars anyway, it has nothing to do with the garage."
• Dromm: "I agree that any development that comes into the community should have parking attached to it. Some people here come from Jersey and don’t use transit. So they need space."
• Sears: "We have very viable commercial areas. It’s a tri-state shopping center; people don’t take public transportation to get here."

After they're done with Shoup, the candidates might want to peruse TA's 2008 report, Guaranteed Parking, Guaranteed Driving, which spelled out that many car trips originate in Jackson Heights precisely because city zoning laws require parking attached to new development.

Each candidate also had one or two ideas that stood out as especially unique or insightful. I'll end on a bright note with some of these: 

• Dromm: "Reducing the speed limit is something we have to look at. These cars come barreling down the streets, especially the side streets, not the avenues. It rattles my windows." 
• Kalathara proposed car-free summer weekends on the major shopping streets in Jackson Heights: "37th Avenue, 73rd Street, and 74th Street -- make it like a shopping mall, car-free so people can shop and have a lot of fun."
• Sears used the disjointedness of Queens Boulevard to justify her stance that it can't accommodate a bike lane: "When [DOT] did studies for traffic, they did not do Queens Boulevard in its entirety, they did sections of it. As a result, they went by Community Boards; none of it connected." Okay, that's a terrible excuse for inaction. But it's also a pretty trenchant observation about DOT, when you consider that nearly all of the Class 1, on-street bike lane miles installed in the past two years have been confined to two community board districts in Manhattan, with two more in Brooklyn slated to receive some soon.
  

Transportation Alternatives documented failure-to-yield violations at the rate of 24 per hour, per intersection. Photo: TA

Transportation Alternatives is out with a new report today, "Chaos to Compliance" [PDF], documenting the sky-high rate of moving violations on city streets, and the NYPD is sticking to its script. Here's the police response to TA's report, which appeared in the Post:

"Contrary to the report, the NYPD posts traffic enforcement resources where they are needed most," said Inspector Edward Mullen. "Traffic related fatalities in New York City are down 15.5% so far this year, and down by more than 35% since the Bloomberg administration took office in 2002."

"We expect to end the year with fewer than 260 traffic-related fatalities compared to 393 in 2001, and 1,360 in 1929, when highest number of traffic-related fatalities was recorded," he added.

But there's not much evidence to support the implication that NYPD has caused the decline in traffic deaths (going eighty years back, no less), as opposed to changes in street engineering or advances in emergency care. "The fact is, NYPD doesn't know the violation rates for the most dangerous driving behaviors," said TA's Wiley Norvell. "They don't know how many drivers are speeding, running red lights, or failing to yield. Because they don't, it's impossible to attribute New York City's decline in traffic fatalities to enforcement."

To get an accurate sense of whether enforcement is deterring dangerous driving, police first need to measure the rate of compliance with traffic laws. How do you do that? Chaos to Compliance suggests it's not that complicated.

TA stationed observers at four intersections during the morning and evening rush. At each intersection, two people stood at fixed points and catalogued the number and type of violations that occurred at pre-determined locations.

Here's what they tallied at 96th Street and Broadway:

• An average of 117 violations an hour
  
• Drivers disregarding traffic signals 44 times an hour -- a total of 350 incidents
  
• Drivers disregarding traffic signs 23 times an hour -- a total of 180 incidents
  
• Drivers disregarding roadway markings 16 times an hour -- a total of 127 incidents
  
• Drivers failing to yield to pedestrians 14 times an hour -- a total of 113 incidents
  

Equipped with information samples like this, NYPD could deploy its traffic enforcement resources more effectively and bring the same level of rigorous analysis to traffic violations that the agency has used to reduce violent crime the past two decades.

NYPD's TrafficStat program, which is presumably what Inspector Mullen was referring to when he said that police deploy "traffic enforcement resources where they are needed most," identifies problem areas where crashes tend to occur but doesn't capture any data on actual violations. Meanwhile, as TA reported in Executive Order, NYPD has abandoned the practice of accident-prone location deployment, a metrics-based enforcement strategy the agency could quickly re-adopt. NYPD's public information office has not returned Streetsblog's inquiry as to whether police intend to bring the practice back.

While the candidates for Manhattan DA pledge to reduce vehicular crime and increase pedestrian safety, the NYPD's commitment to those goals is still an open question. All we can say is that they won't acknowledge the lawlessness on city streets, and they don't appear interested in measuring the type of behavior that causes 260 traffic deaths every year. "It’s frustrating that we’re not using data in an informed way to bring those deaths down to zero," said Norvell.