Streetsblog New York City

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. Image: Office of the Public Advocate

Election Day is more than a year away, but the race to become the next mayor of New York City is well-underway. In the last two issues of its magazine, Reclaim, Transportation Alternatives has been asking the would-be mayors for their thoughts on transit (in the more recent interviews, one question about cycling was added). So far, TA has received responses from all of the major candidates except 2009 Democratic nominee Bill Thompson.

All this week, Streetsblog will be re-printing the candidates’ responses. Here are the answers TA received from Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.

Q: What role does a well-funded public transit system play in New York City’s economic growth?

A: Public transit is an economic pillar . It’s what connects workers with employers and customers with businesses. And it’s one of the reasons New York is so resilient even in hard economic times. The transit system drives down the costs of transportation for everyone, helping New Yorkers of all income levels have access to jobs and opportunity in every part of the city.

Q: What would you do as mayor to address transit deserts, which are locations where riders are faced with hour-plus commutes, multiple transfers or multi-fare rides?

A: We’ll need to rely heavily on improving bus service—which already reaches many of these areas—to reduce the long travel times so many New Yorkers face. The introduction of real-time bus tracking or offboard fare collection presents promising tools here. We need to recognize that the increase in economic activity that comes with giving more New Yorkers access to the transit system can help make these expansions viable and cost-effective in the long-term.

Q: When transit fares go up on 1/1/13, it will be the fifth fare hike since 2008. Do you think transit riders are paying their fair share, and is it time for elected officials to seriously consider new sources of revenue for public transit?

A: I’m concerned that built-in, guaranteed fare increases put too much pressure on working families. Raising the cost of transit is akin to raising the cost of working. Going back to the fare box over and over creates a bad mentality for those making the budgets—it becomes about what they can get out of the transit system, instead of how to ensure the service we need is adequately funded.

Hylan Boulevard Select Bus Service, launching this September, will only run in bus lanes for some of its route. Using a unique package of improvements, it should still cut travel times on the corridor by 20 percent.

New York City’s fourth Select Bus Service route will travel down Staten Island’s Hylan Boulevard as soon as this September. The improvements are expected to speed travel times by 20 percent along the island’s second-busiest route, according to a report by the MTA [PDF].

As on existing SBS routes, the Hylan service will make fewer stops than local or even limited buses and drive in dedicated and camera-enforced bus lanes. But as befits a borough with different transportation infrastructure and needs than the Bronx and Manhattan neighborhoods that currently have SBS routes, the plan for Hylan Boulevard will use a distinct mix of bus improvements to achieve 15-minute time savings on the full length of the S79 route.

Hylan Boulevard SBS won’t have off-board fare payment, for example. The MTA has argued that because only a few riders will board at any given stop, it won’t be worth it to have them pay on the sidewalk rather than on the bus. Around 8,800 people ride the S79 on an average weekday.

Nor will the buses have the benefit of bus lanes on the whole route. Bus lanes will be painted where they can help bypass congestion, but not in lightly trafficked areas. Nor will bus lanes be added where the effect on auto traffic would be the most intense. The three areas with bus lanes will be Hylan between Clove Road and Lincoln Avenue, Richmond Avenue near the Staten Island Mall, and the southbound side of Richmond where it approaches Hylan.

Instead, “advance signals,” which allow buses to stop closer to a red light than private vehicles, will give transit a boost at intersections. Advance signals make it easier for buses to move away from the curb after stopping and can be used to allow buses to jump a queue of stopped cars. Transit signal priority, which holds the green light a little longer for approaching buses, will be added in 2013.

The Department of Transportation will also install badly-needed pedestrian infrastructure along the SBS route, making it easier and safer to get to and from the bus in the first place. New sidewalks, curbs, pedestrian refuge islands and bus shelters are planned at many locations along the corridor.

Finally, Staten Island will continue to be the beneficiary of the MTA’s experiments with information technology. The borough was the first to receive a full roll-out of BusTime, which provides real-time bus location information online or by phone. Now, the MTA will use the Hylan Boulevard SBS as a pilot for putting real-time information, similar to the route information on newer subways, onboard the bus itself.

Mayoral candidate and publishing exec Tom Allon. Photo: Tom Allon for Mayor

Election Day is more than a year away, but the race to become the next mayor of New York City is well-underway. In the last two issues of its magazine, Reclaim, Transportation Alternatives has been asking the would-be mayors for their thoughts on transit (in the more recent interviews, one question about cycling was added). So far, TA has received responses from all of the major candidates except 2009 Democratic nominee Bill Thompson.

All this week, Streetsblog will be re-printing the candidates’ responses. Here are the answers TA received from Manhattan Media CEO and alphabetical frontrunner Tom Allon.

Q: What role does a well-funded public transit system play in New York City’s economic growth?

A: A well-funded transit system and well thought out alternative transit system is crucial to the city’s economic growth. We need to provide affordable and efficient mass transit for workers so that we can continue to attract immigrants and others from within the U.S. to come here to become New York taxpayers. We also need to push new ideas like more bike lanes, light rail and rapid transit bus routes, as well as more taxi medallions, to provide for the diverse needs of a growing population.

Q: What would you do as mayor to address transit deserts, which are locations where riders are faced with hour-plus commutes, multiple transfers or multi-fare rides?

A: We need to help those areas with rapid transit bus, bike share programs and cabs-on-call to help those in transit deserts. We also need to come up with cost discounts for those with multi-fare rides so that they can live in the city and afford to work here rather than move to the suburbs for easier commutes and lower taxes.

Q: When transit fares go up on 1/1/13, it will be the fifth fare hike since 2008. Do you think transit riders are paying their fair share, and is it time for elected officials to seriously consider new sources of revenue for public transit?

A: We are not getting our fair share. The costs of subway and bus rides has far outpaced inflation and has made our city less livable. The MTA has assets that it can use to raise other revenues—from land leasing to advertising opportunities to naming rights of subway stations and bus stops. We need to think creatively how to raise revenues while at the same time trying to figure out a way to lower fares.

Citi Bike will make it a lot quicker to get from Stuy Town to Penn Station. Image: CiBi.me

Pretty much anywhere you go within the bike-share service area, you’ll be within a few blocks of a bike-share station. There’s probably a station around the corner from your office. Odds are, it’ll be a boon for any of those tricky diagonal trips that aren’t well-served by the subway.

To find out exactly how long it’ll take to get around New York on bike-share, there’s now a new online tool: CiBi.me (disclosure: the site was designed by OpenPlans, Streetsblog’s parent organization). Plug in your origin and destination and the site will identify the nearest bike-share stations and map you a route between them. A triangular slider lets riders prioritize faster, flatter, or safer routes.

I played around with the site this afternoon and I’m increasingly convinced that bike-share is going to transform the way New Yorkers get around. You can’t beat the train for a trip straight up Eighth Avenue, but for many trips, bike-share is going to be the go-to way to get from A to B. A trip from the middle of Stuy Town to Penn Station, shown above, would take only 16 minutes, according to the site.

Play around with the site and let us know: For the trips you take regularly, will bike-share come out on top?

This morning, a Minnesota Public Radio host asked me if the exurbs, whose growth rate flattened when the recession hit, are going to come back. Lots of people from far-distant suburbs like Blaine and Farmington called in, saying they like the way of life out there – they like having acres of trees buffering them from their nearest neighbor — and people won’t want to stop living in communities like that.

Source: The Demand Institute

The data suggests otherwise, though. Earlier this week, the Demand Institute (a think tank created by the Conference Board — “a global, independent business membership and research association” — and Nielsen — yeah, the TV ratings people) released a report on the housing recovery. They say the worst of the housing crash is over and glimmers of recovery are on the horizon. But hope isn’t spread out uniformly across these United States. Those exurbs like Blaine and Farmington, Minnesota? They’re not coming back so fast.

Urban areas didn’t lose as much value during the recession. Home prices didn’t crash so hard. Not so many people found themselves under water, owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. And urban areas are bouncing back faster. The Demand Institute calls these places “Resilient Walkables.” Only 15 percent of the U.S. population lives there.

The report bases its prognosis for recovery on seven factors: population size, walkability, severity of the crash, current affordability, unemployment, foreclosure inventory, and foreclosure policy. The Institute found what Angie noted earlier: Walk Score is positively correlated with strong housing prices. The Institute’s analysis of almost 1,700 U.S. cities showed that walkable cities had more positive price growth.

And it found that these “Resilient Walkables” were resilient indeed, with house prices projected to rise three percent next year and five percent a year for the four years after that.

Compare that to the places the Institute calls “Slow and Steady” – where more than a third of Americans live and where double-digit housing declines destabilized the market. Economic indicators are gloomy for these areas, but the authors find the planning solid, so the future is relatively bright. These are places like Charlotte, NC, Dallas and semi-urban D.C. suburbs like Gaithersburg, MD, and the study forecasts three percent growth starting in two years.

Then there are the “Damaged But Hopeful” areas – a category that encompasses big but depressed cities like Chicago and smaller ones like Stamford, CT. Thirty percent of Americans live in these places, too many of them fighting foreclosure. It will take them a little longer to get to three percent growth but from 2017 onward, the Demand Institute predicts that they’ll beat the national average.

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Image: Arizona Department of Transportation

Does walkable development really lead to worse traffic congestion? Opponents of urbanism often say so, citing impending traffic disaster to rally people against, say, a new mixed-use project proposed in their backyards. But new research provides some excellent evidence to counter those claims.

A recent study by the Arizona Department of Transportation [PDF] found that neighborhoods where houses are closer together actually have freer-flowing traffic.

Researchers compared some of greater Phoenix’s denser neighborhoods – South Scottsdale, Tempe, and East Phoenix — with a few of its more sprawling ones – Glendale, Gilbert, and North Scottsdale. Some interesting patterns emerged.

In the more compact neighborhoods, the average household owned 1.55 cars, compared to 1.92 in more suburban areas. Residents of higher-density neighborhoods also traveled shorter distances both to get to work and to run errands, the study found.

The average work trip was a little longer than seven miles for higher-density neighborhoods; in the more suburban neighborhoods, it was almost 11 miles. Residents of the three compact neighborhoods traveled just less than three miles to shop, while residents of sprawling locations traveled an average of more than four miles. All of this led the more urban dwellers to travel an average of nearly five fewer miles per day than their suburban counterparts.

The density divide also played an important role in transit use. Rates varied from as high as eight percent transit ridership in high-density neighborhoods to as low as one percent in the more sprawling areas.

All of this translated into a reduced strain on roadways in the places that had more people — running counter to one of the strongest objections to mixed-use development. Comparing one suburban corridor to two of the streets in the more dense neighborhoods, the study found that on the more urban streets, traffic congestion was “much lower,” or about half as high (measured by the ratio of the capacity of the roadway to the actual volume of cars on it).

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One option being considered for Webster Avenue Select Bus Service would have the buses run in the center of the street, potentially speeding service even more than existing SBS routes. Image: NYC DOT/MTA

Webster Avenue could be the place where Select Bus Service reaches the next level. At a community meeting Wednesday evening, the Department of Transportation and the MTA presented three visions of improved bus service for the corridor [PDF]. Two of the templates can already be found on the streets of New York — bus lanes running curbside and bus lanes offset from the curb by one lane — and bus riders are seeing travel times improve 15 to 20 percent thanks to those improvements. But the potential for a real breakthrough lies in the third template — buses running in the center lanes with elevated platforms — which would be a major step toward true bus rapid transit.

The world’s best bus rapid transit systems all run in the center of the street, where speeds and reliability are significantly better (see Streetsblog’s report on Mexico City’s Metrobús system for an example). Away from the curb, there are significantly fewer obstacles from parking, loading, and turn conflicts.

Since bus riders wouldn’t be able to wait on the sidewalk to board the bus, DOT would build new protected platforms in the street. If the platforms are built totally level with the bus floor, as on the subway, this would make boarding the bus much faster, especially for the elderly or disabled. As on all SBS routes, passengers would pay their fares before boarding, allowing buses to spend time moving rather than waiting for each passenger to dip their MetroCard in turn.

Median-running bus lanes and platform-level boarding are two of the most important features of world-class BRT identified in the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy’s BRT Standard scorecard. Existing Select Bus Service routes haven’t met the threshold for bus rapid transit according to ITDP’s system; the Webster Avenue route, it seems, could break the mold.

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Federally-funded improvements at East New York's Broadway Junction would improve bus service and add pedestrian space at the important transit hub. Image: NYC DOT

The Department of Transportation unveiled a new design for one of Brooklyn’s most important transit hubs at a community board meeting Monday evening. By turning a single block of Van Sinderen Avenue into a one-way street, DOT plans to improve bus service and build new pedestrian space at East New York’s Broadway Junction, which serves five subway lines and five bus routes [PDF].

As it is, there’s not enough space near the main bus stop in the area. Livery cabs, which don’t have any designated curbside space, crowd out the buses that are supposed to stop there, forcing them to load and unload in traffic lanes. The sidewalk is packed with pedestrians and vendors; there’s no room available for badly-needed bus shelters and seating. Busy Van Sinderen is also difficult for pedestrians to cross.

Under DOT’s proposal, the block of Van Sinderen between Truxton and Fulton Streets would be converted into a one-way street with only one southbound lane reserved for private through traffic. Two lanes would be dedicated to buses, allowing plenty of room for them to pull around other buses loading and unloading at a different stop.

Both the sidewalk and the existing median would be expanded into the roadway, creating room for new bus shelters and dramatically shortening the distance to cross Van Sinderen.

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In an overwhelming 31-2 vote (with three abstentions), Brooklyn Community Board 7 passed a motion last night in favor of re-engineering Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park for greater safety. The NYC DOT project [PDF] will add a substantial amount of pedestrian space at intersections from 65th Street to 15th Street, widening medians and narrowing crossing distances on the 88-foot wide street.

Image: NYC DOT

This stretch of Fourth Avenue, currently three moving lanes in each direction plus turn bays, is one of the deadliest streets in Brooklyn, with seven pedestrians killed in traffic between 2006 and 2011. Some of the current medians are less than two feet wide. Under the plan, the narrowest medians would at least triple in width, and wider ones would expand too. The pedestrian space will be reclaimed by converting 17-foot wide combined parking and travel lanes on each side of the street into 13-foot wide parking lanes, though three travel lanes will be maintained northbound during the morning rush, from 38th Street to 17th Street. The changes would be implemented with low-cost materials — epoxy, gravel, planters, flexible posts — and DOT can complete them by this fall.

At a hearing hosted by CB 7′s Fourth Avenue Working Group on Monday, neighborhood advocates said the changes were a long time coming.

Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of the environmental justice non-profit UPROSE, said she could remember discussing traffic calming and greener infrastructure for Fourth Avenue with CB 7 district manager Jeremy Laufer 15 years ago. “This is not new,” she said, urging the board to vote for the plan. “We’ve been talking about these things for a long time in Sunset Park. If we miss the opportunity, we might not get these improvements.”

Lined with schools, subway stations, churches, and stores, Fourth Avenue is full of destinations for this bustling neighborhood of predominantly car-free households. DOT has been working intensively with neighborhood groups and local schools to develop the Fourth Avenue plan. A workshop in February brought together English-, Spanish-, Cantonese-, and Mandarin-speakers to gather ideas about what needs to change on the avenue.

“Almost everyone who goes to school on Fourth Avenue walks there,” said project manager Jesse Mintz-Roth. ”The narrowness of the medians came out over and over in the workshops.”

Last week, three children were struck by a turning driver at Fourth Avenue and 44th Street, one of whom was injured. The crash was fresh in the minds of several participants at Monday’s hearing, including Yesenia Malave-Lee, PTA president at P.S. 503, who said the threat of traffic violence looms over every parent walking their kids to school on Fourth Avenue. “I’m all for the changes being made here,” she said.

Last week, I published a list of seven questions I had as the Transportation Conference Committee started meeting. I was examining the politics, not the policy. Turns out some readers wanted to hear more about the policy.

I asked the Cap’n what his questions would be. The reply:

Meanwhile, reader Ryan Richter sent in his revised list of questions too. They’re a little more specific, so I’ll start with Ryan’s. With any luck, the answers to Cap’n Transit’s questions will be woven into the answers below.

Thanks to both of you for keeping me focused on what really matters in this whole political hullabaloo.

Ryan’s first question:

1. How will public transportation fare after being practically decapitated in the last round?

Public transit came out a winner when members of the House GOP mounted their full-frontal assault against it. “The uprising was so immediate and so bipartisan [the Republicans] backed off,” said Deron Lovaas of NRDC. Democrats and some urban and suburban Republicans blew up at the idea that transit would no longer be eligible for its 20 percent of Highway Trust Fund dollars, which it’s gotten since the Fund’s Mass Transit Account was created under Ronald Reagan in 1983. Surviving an attempt against it makes transit that much stronger now – its opponents know that defunding transit is a losing issue for them.

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