Streetsblog New York City

2010 is almost over, and it’s about time to step back and assess all the progress that’s been made in just the past 12 months. This year alone, New York City has seen the transformation of Broadway near Union Square, the taming of traffic on Prospect Park West, the launch of Select Bus Service on one of the nation’s busiest bus routes, the addition of several miles of protected bike routes in Manhattan, and pedestrian safety improvements throughout the boroughs.

With a conflict-hungry press corps ready to pounce on every change and electeds willing to oblige with camera-ready political theater, livable streets improvements are catching a lot of static right now. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign is trying to cut through the noise by sending a big thank you to the mayor and leaders in his administration overseeing transportation policy.

If you want to see NYC continue to be a bold leader in green transportation and safer streets in 2011, tell the people in charge and sign on to Tri-State’s thank you letter.

This November, New York voters will elect the occupants of every seat in the State Senate and Assembly, as well as their next governor, attorney general, and comptroller. For many races in heavily Democratic New York City, the deciding moment will come a lot sooner -- on primary day. That's just two weeks away on Tuesday, September 14.

In the next few days we should get to see the responses to candidate surveys sent out by Transportation Alternatives and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which went to everyone running in the five boroughs and the seven other counties served by the MTA.

We've also got three live debates coming up this week and next, starting tomorrow with the contenders for the 10th Senate District in southeast Queens, incumbent Shirley Huntley and challenger Lynn Nunes. The next day, Pedro Espada's opponents in the 33rd District will face off (a debate that Espada has backed out of), and next Thursday, the candidates running to succeed AG hopeful Eric Schneiderman in the 31st District will discuss where they stand on transportation issues.

Here's the full debate schedule from TA, which is organizing the events with local partners:

10th SENATE DISTRICT DEBATE (Richmond Hill)
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010, 7:00-9:00pm
Fairfield Pavilion, 131-10 101st Avenue, Richmond Hill, Queens
Partner organization: Richmond Hill EDC
Moderator: Clare Trapasso (New York Daily News)

33rd SENATE DISTRICT DEBATE (Fordham, Kingsbridge)
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010, 7:00-9:00pm
Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church, 2430 Walton Ave., The Bronx
Partner organization: Picture the Homeless
Moderator: Alex Kratz (Bronx News Network)

31st SENATE DISTRICT DEBATE (Washington Heights, Inwood, West Harlem)
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010, 7:00-9:00pm
The Armory Foundation, 216 Fort Washington Ave (between 168th & 169th Streets), Manhattan
Partner organizations: WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Upper West Side Renaissance
Moderators: Dan Rivoli (West Side Spirit), David King (Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation)

Kate Slevin is executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, and this post was originally published on TSTC's blog, Mobilizing the Region. If and when the candidates produce transportation platforms, we'll see whether they acknowledge the truth inherent in many of these proposals: You don't have to spend big on transportation to achieve big improvements in safety, sustainability, access to jobs and housing, and New Yorkers' quality of life.

With a deepening budget crisis and continued chaos in Albany, New York’s next governor will inherit no shortage of challenges. Transportation is no exception: Transit systems across the state face incredible deficits and the state lacks a 21st century transportation agenda. How the governor chooses to deal with transportation issues in 2011 and beyond will dictate the future state of our transit and road systems and shape our landscape for decades to come.

So far, all the campaigns have been relatively quiet on transportation issues. Front-runner Andrew Cuomo has said he will upgrade downstate airports and create a state infrastructure bank, but his positions on broader policy and funding questions remain a mystery. Republican candidates Rick Lazio and Carl Paladino have offered even fewer details about their transportation priorities, and neither has a transportation section on their campaign website.

What should the next governor’s transportation agenda look like? Below are a few places for the candidates to start:

Reform New York State DOT into a smart growth leader. Old-fashioned approaches to projects, questionable spending decisions, and the collapse of the Champlain Bridge are signs that NYSDOT is ripe for change. A strong, reform-minded leader at the department could bring that change, as Janette Sadik-Khan has done for NYCDOT and Joseph Marie did for the Connecticut Department of Transportation until a few weeks ago. Existing New York state programs could serve as launching points. NYSDOT's GreenLITES program, for example, views transportation projects through a lens of sustainability; the proposed Community Corridor and Land Use Planning Initiative would have the agency work with communities to develop comprehensive solutions to transportation problems; and the state is working with towns toward smart growth planning in the Lower Hudson Valley. New Jersey’s NJFIT program and Pennsylvania’s Smart Transportation program also offer ideas.

Replace the Sheridan Expressway with parks and housing. Few projects offer the smart growth, equity, and sustainability benefits of removing the underutilized Sheridan Expressway in the South Bronx and replacing it with more appropriate development. The next governor should back this proposal and make it a hallmark of a broader sustainable redevelopment effort.

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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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At a public meeting last night, the state Department of Transportation released a traffic analysis of the proposal to tear down the Sheridan Expressway, the Moses-era "highway to nowhere" that separates Bronx residents from the Bronx River waterfront. The main conclusion appeared to bode poorly for the plan to replace the highway with housing and parks: According to the state DOT, removing the Sheridan would force traffic onto local streets.

In response, advocates for transportation reform and environmental justice warned about potential flaws in the methodology behind DOT's traffic analysis. They also questioned the assumptions behind the agency's impending environmental review, which won't take into account any of the benefits of what will replace the Sheridan. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign's Kyle Wiswall called the DOT's environmental analysis "an exercise in futility" that "seems to be engineered to reach a preconceived result" -- keeping the highway in place.

For years, the state DOT has been studying ways to improve the highway system near Hunts Point, a regional food distribution center that's a hub for truck traffic. Currently, trucks travel onto the peninsula via local roads, destroying the quality of life for area residents even as the many highway interchanges in the South Bronx -- the Sheridan, the Major Deegan, and Bronx River Parkway all run between the Cross Bronx and Bruckner Expressways -- snarl highway traffic.

Thanks in large part to a sustained advocacy campaign, under the umbrella of Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance, the teardown option has gradually gained momentum and entered the official discussion of what to do with the Sheridan.

The DOT has now narrowed their proposal down to two possibilities. In some ways, they are identical. Both would add an exit on the Bruckner that could connect more directly to Hunts Point, intended to keep truck traffic off local streets. Near where the Bruckner meets the Sheridan, it briefly narrows from three lanes to two, before widening again; both plans would add a lane on that segment to eliminate the bottleneck.

But the difference between the two plans is a big one.

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For as long as Streetsblog has been covering the transportation reform beat, Albany has been a graveyard for progressive transportation legislation affecting New York City. Sheldon Silver and Assembly Democrats buried congestion pricing there in 2008. The State Senate poured cement shoes for bridge tolls last year, hobbling the attempt to provide the MTA with greater financial stability. Now our transit system is shrinking, and the fiscal disaster that the state has unleashed on bus and subway riders seems poised to grow worse.

While several good pieces of legislation can make it through the gauntlet this month, bills authorizing bus lane enforcement cameras, complete streets policies, and more effective legal protections for pedestrians and cyclists have all met untimely demises in recent legislative sessions as well.

So Streetsblog readers probably have a lot they'd like to ask their representatives in the state capitol, and the challengers they may face. With primaries for every seat in the Assembly and the State Senate coming up on September 14 (mark your calendars!), it's time to start putting those questions to the people who want your vote. In July, Transportation Alternatives and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign will send a survey to every registered candidate in the MTA service region -- the five boroughs plus seven downstate counties.

TA put out a candidate survey for NYC electoral contests last year -- receiving answers from 73 contenders -- but this is something of a first, I believe, for Albany races. If you'd like to help formulate the questions, TA and Tri-State want to hear your ideas.

Word is that they're especially interested in what you'd like to ask Andrew Cuomo, Rick Lazio, Carl Paladino, and any Baldwin brother who might throw his hat into the governor's race. Tops on my list would have to be: "How are you going to stop state government from crippling our transit system by plundering dedicated MTA taxes?"

What's on yours?

More than 10,000 pedestrians are injured every year on New York City streets. The people who are most at risk are senior citizens, new research from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign shows. Pedestrians over 60 years old, and especially over 75, are far more likely to be killed by cars than younger walkers. 

Older pedestrians across America are at higher risk of being killed in a car crash, but the problem is particularly acute in downstate New York. Nationally, pedestrian fatality rates are 1.5 times as high for Americans 60 and older than for those under 60. In downstate New York, older pedestrians are killed 3.7 times as often. The pedestrian fatality rate for those over 75 is even higher, almost five times that of those under 60. 

Between 2006 and 2008, 290 pedestrians aged 60 or over were killed by drivers in downstate New York.

Culling information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Tri-State found that of the 12 downstate counties, Manhattan had the highest rate of pedestrian fatalities among senior citizens. Because seniors walk more in New York City, the need to build streets where they can get around safely is all the more striking.

"In most of the country, once you age out of driving you're kind of stranded," said Tri-State's Michelle Ernst. "New York is great because you can walk, but that means that more older people are exposed to the dangers of being hit and killed by an automobile." Brooklyn had the second highest rate of pedestrian fatalities among older residents, followed by Nassau County, Staten Island, and Orange County. County-by-county fact-sheets are available on Tri-State's website.

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The campaign to rein in sprawl and build more livable communities across New York state intensified yesterday, as advocates redoubled their efforts to pass two critical pieces of legislation in Albany. Groups working to advance complete streets legislation, including AARP and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, and those pushing for statewide smart growth policies, such as Empire State Future, announced they will be teaming up to pass both bills.

The complete streets bill, sponsored by Brooklyn Senator Martin Malavé Dilan, would require that all new and reconstructed roads "accommodate all users," old or young, whether they walk, bike or drive. If passed, the law would "make complete streets the norm rather than the exception," said Nadine Lemmon, Tri-State's Albany legislative director. As Streetsblog reported last month, the legislation is moving quickly through the State Senate, but hasn't progressed beyond the Assembly transportation committee, chaired by Rochester Democrat David Gantt. 

The public infrastructure act, sponsored by Westchester County Senator Suzi Oppenheimer, Brooklyn Senator Velmanette Montgomery and Buffalo Assembly Member Sam Hoyt, would shift state infrastructure spending -- on roads, sewers, schools and housing -- away from far-flung sprawl and toward projects in line with smart growth principles. More than a dozen state departments, agencies, and authorities -- including heavyweights like the state DOT, the Port Authority, the Department of Education and the Empire State Development Corporation -- will be required to focus their spending on existing infrastructure in developed areas.

Under the smart growth bill, infrastructure projects would also need to protect the state's environmental resources, foster compact, mixed-use development, and reduce automobile dependency. Agency heads can only ignore these criteria if they sign a written justification of their decision. "We're going to make it very hard to build another sewer line into another greenfield," said Peter Fleischer, the executive director of Empire State Future, New York's smart growth coalition. 

Fleischer added that unlike past smart growth legislation that's come out of Albany, this one has some teeth. "It clearly instructs state departments, agencies, and corporations," he said. "It doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room." 

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Between 2001 and 2009, the share of trips that Americans made in cars dropped by more than four percent, with walking, bicycling and transit use picking up the slack, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Last year, 11.9 percent of all trips were on foot or by bike, while 4.2 percent of trips were on transit. Both figures signify major increases.

The National Household Travel Survey, the source of the new stats, is the gold-standard for transportation data. As Mobilizing the Region reported, while the Census only tracks how people get to work, the NHTS gathers data on all trips taken. It also distinguishes between, say, driving to a park-and-ride bus area and walking to the local bus stop.

The downside to the NHTS is how infrequently the survey is conducted, which makes it difficult to determine how much the 2009 data reflects a larger trend, and how much may be due to temporary changes brought on by fluctuating gas prices and the recession.

The high quality of NHTS data means that it can supplement NYC DOT's own numbers, which have shown a large rise in cycling over the same period. We've put in a request to the state DOT and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council to get access to city-level data once it becomes available. 

Hours after the Tri-State Transportation Campaign released a report yesterday identifying New York's deadliest roads, 13 AARP volunteers surveyed part of Third Avenue in an effort to make walking in New York safer.

The surveyors braved the January cold to spend their afternoon standing on the corner of Third and 49th Street, clipboards and stopwatches in hand, documenting the conditions at the intersection. Tri-State's report revealed that nine pedestrians were killed on Third Avenue between 2006 and 2008, making it one of the deadliest streets for pedestrians in downstate New York. A 58-year-old man was killed at the survey site on February 21, 2008.

Third Avenue is seven lanes wide at this location, so it's perhaps no surprise that so many tragedies occur there. Small fixes, though, could make a big difference. Volunteer Marlene Ramsey identified the crosswalks, badly in need of repainting and more visible zebra stripes, as the biggest problem with the intersection. Standing next to her, Alice Wade requested countdown timers for walk signs. Without them, she said, "I have to rush across the street and be scared I'll fall."

Some of the surveyors had personal experience with the hazards of Third Avenue. Volunteer Bobby Lee, who lives between Second and Third Avenues, explained his motivation for fighting for safer streets. "There was an older adult in my neighborhood who got run over by a bus," he said. "The bus driver was traumatized and the older adult was dead." Susan Ryckman, who lives on Third Avenue, reported, "I had two close calls walking here today. It really is dangerous."

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