Former Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who served for eight years in George W. Bush's DOT, sat down with Streetsblog Capitol Hill this week to urge that Congress add a dedicated funding stream of $1 billion each year for transportation technology to the next long-term infrastructure bill.

Since leaving office, Peters has transitioned to private consulting work in her home state of Arizona and joined the board of directors at Aldis, a Tennessee-based traffic management company.

Alids' GridSmart program, a panoramic camera that captures vehicles and pedestrians at intersections and helps "smartly" synchronize traffic signals accordingly (see the above video), would stand to gain if Congress heeds Peters' advice and directly funds transportation technology.

Peters acknowledged that her proposal for the next infrastructure bill would help Aldis, but she described the billion-dollar dedicated funding as an opportunity for states and cities to choose their own high-tech solutions for traffic management. "This is a great application," Peters said of the GridSmart, "but there are others out there."

The House's original version of the 2005 transportation bill, which was recently extended for another month amid political wrangling, included $3 billion over five years for technological upgrades, also known as "intelligent transportation." But that money was removed from the legislation during conference talks with the Senate, Peters noted, leaving states without federal help with modernizing their congestion management.

The annual $1 billion fund Peters is backing would be distributed to states by formula, but state DOTs would have to report back to Washington on how effectively their technological investments were meeting specific performance targets. (For more on Peters' support of a federal role in setting transportation standards, see Part I of the Streetsblog interview.)

What standards does Peters think should be used to judge state DOTs' technological upgrades? Decreased delay time, but also safety for drivers as well as pedestrians. On that issue, the GridSmart program would also get a leg up -- Aldis' cameras have the ability not just to lengthen green lights for a row of trucks, but also to extend red lights so a large volume of pedestrians could cross a street without being trapped on the sidewalk.

Peters said she could also see states being asked to use their transportation technology money on better road pricing systems, such as the traffic management cameras that were installed as part of Miami's federally funded I-95 HOT lanes.

The House's current draft of a new long-term infrastructure bill does not include dedicated money for transport technology, but "intelligent transportation" is not without its congressional allies; Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) has founded a caucus that focuses on the issue. And the likely delay in taking up the next long-term bill could end up giving Peters and Aldis more time to press their case.

Although there is undoubtedly an amazing streets renaissance going on in NYC, there still remain places in dire need of improvement. Every workday, heavily-used areas like the blocks surrounding Penn Station are overwhelmed with pedestrians making their way home via buses, subways, the Long Island Railroad and Amtrak. The sidewalks are so clogged by this "crush of humanity" that people are forced to walk in the streets. If you've never seen it, or if you're claustrophobic, get ready.

Open Planning Project Executive Director Mark Gorton recently went out to sample the atmosphere on a typical weekday evening and posits that we can do much better in how we choose to allocate street space. His words sum it up nicely:

The reason it's so crowded here is not because there's not enough space. It's because we give all of our space to the least spatially-efficient form of transportation available. 

Of course he is referring to the automobile -- especially the single-occupant vehicle. Oddly enough, I did a PSA over three years ago which aired during our New York City Streets Renaissance campaign launch. I filmed most of it in the same location. It still looks much the same, perhaps worse.

Data: IBM's CPI

When asked what value they would place on every 15 minutes sliced from their daily commute, 36.5 percent of CPI respondents said between $10 and $20. That's about five times the recent trading price of a ton of carbon emissions on the nation's climate-change exchanges.

And the price of a shorter commute was higher in more congested cities. In Los Angeles, 22 percent of residents said every 15 minutes not spent en route to work would be worth between $31 and $40 -- or more than $100 per hour.

What does the data mean? For one thing, those who fear that voters would revolt if asked to pay more for a more efficient, less congested transport network shouldn't let that stop policy-making. As every successful politician knows (and the president is re-learning on health care), messaging is the key to winning over the public.

In other words, Democrats who feign unwillingness to subject voters to higher gas taxes are ignoring their ability to control the message. When a greater contribution to transportation is pitched as a way to shorten commutes and give workers more free time, the prospect becomes more desirable.

And it's not that lawmakers don't know how to decrease congestion, particularly in the urban areas that were polled to produce the CPI. Reducing the number of car trips and lowering demand during peak travel times are proven to be a cheaper and more effective method of battling congestion than expanding highway capacity.

Is it time to nickname the White House's Sustainable Communities Initiative the "Shorter Commutes Initiative"?

Ed Fay: time-polluter and proud of it. Photo: Daily News.

I decided that I'm not going to give the transicrats another cent to get to and from work. The MTA has stuck it to all of us countless times over the years and now it was time for me to pay them back. I will personally screw them out of $1,000 over the next year.

The ironies are many. For one thing, Fay could offset that toll hike three times over by signing up with E-ZPass, but he swears by cash. For another, since straphangers are a big part of the dwindling market for the daily paper, you could say that Fay’s rebellion undermines his employer by shrinking NYC Transit's take from the toll revenues. There’s also the fact that in stiffing the MTA Fay is paying a stiff price in lost time; by his own estimate, detouring around the tolls adds 15 minutes each way to his commute. As one Streetsblog commenter pointed out, Fay implicitly values his own commuting time at not much more than the minimum wage.

But Fay’s biggest grotesquerie is his obliviousness to the consequences of his commute for other drivers. By my estimation, an average 11-mile rush-hour car trip into the Manhattan Central Business District and back out again creates three to four hours of aggregate delays to all the other people trying to get around in cars, trucks and buses on the same roads at the same time. (With the recessionary drop in traffic, that figure is currently somewhat lower, but it’s also higher in Fay’s case if most of his return trips take place in the p.m. peak.)

By choosing to car-commute daily into the CBD, Mr. Screw-the-MTA is mostly screwing his fellow drivers.

And this is true whether Fay drives on local streets or ponies up the $3 bridge toll ($2.09 with E-ZPass). To be sure, those three to four hours of delay are spread among thousands of drivers, no one of which loses more than 10 or 20 seconds queued behind Fay’s automobile at each stoplight or highway ramp. And his contribution to traffic delays is no greater than that of anyone else who drives in the same places at the same time.

What’s different is Fay’s glee. He’s spewing pollution, not so much from his tailpipe (autos rank relatively low in emissions these days), but "time pollution," by stealing precious minutes and seconds from his fellow New Yorkers. And he’s proud of it:

Each night I add $6 to the pile. And when the pile gets to $1,000 -- about eight months from now -- I'll take my family out for a spectacular dinner and raise a glass toasting the bloated bums at the MTA and the toll increase that sent me over the edge.

Fay's bluster notwithstanding, I’ll wager that after the big blowout he'll tire of rat-running and revert to the toll bridge. After all, even if he makes “just” $100,000 a year at the News and values his commute time at only half his imputed hourly pay, he’s still trading $12.50 worth of time each day to save a measly $6.00. But that return to sanity won’t solve the systemic dysfunction by which anyone choosing to make a single car-trip to and from the CBD can impose $100 in societal delay costs but pay just $5 or $10 in tolls themselves.

What Fay confronts us with is nothing less than the moral imperative of congestion pricing. Decisions that impose large delay costs on others demand commensurate charges. These need not begin at full-price. Congestion fees on the order of one-tenth of the full cost, as Ted Kheel and I propose (with revenues allocated to benefit transit), would be an excellent start. Let Ed Fay, time-polluter, pay.

When New York City opened up new pedestrian zones in the heart of Midtown this summer, naysayers predicted a traffic nightmare. Nearly two months later, we're still waiting for the much-feared Carmaggedon.

In this video, Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton takes us on a tour of Broadway's car-free squares and boulevard-style blocks, where conditions have improved dramatically for pedestrians, cyclists, and, yes, delivery truck drivers. As Mark says, the counterintuitive truth is that taking away space for cars can improve traffic while making the city safer and more enjoyable for everyone on foot. There are sound theories that help explain why this happens -- concepts like traffic shrinkage and Braess's paradox which are getting more and more attention thanks to projects like this one. While traffic statistics are still being collected by NYCDOT, there's already a convincing argument that Midtown streets are functioning better than before: To understand it, just take a walk down Broadway.

(Photo: TTI Urban Mobility Report)

The TTI found a one-hour drop in the annual traffic delays suffered by the average urban American in 2007, a result attributed to the run-up in fuel prices and the beginning of the economic slowdown. The Wall Street Journal deemed the one-hour reprieve "The Upside of Recession," while LA Weekly dubbed Southern California's congestion decrease a "Recession Bonus."

Other coverage of the TTI report emphasized a different breed of cold comfort, playing up the congestion rankings that were given to major cities. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution resorted to surveying drivers on their local roads' drop from second-worst to third-worst in the nation (surprisingly, no one was celebrating), while D.C.-area outlets seemed to take morbid pride in their ascension to the No. 2 spot.

If only the TTI report had a solution to urban traffic woes that had a measurable impact on congestion! Oh, wait. As the chart above shows, transit service saved the nation's cities 645 million hours of delay in 2007. That's more than double the number of hours saved by all five most prominent road "operational improvements" combined -- with HOV lanes being the most notable of those latter options.

The report's authors devote an entire section to solutions to congestion, recommending "a balanced and diversified approach" tailored to the needs of each area. Promoting "denser developments with a mix of jobs, shops and homes, so that more people can walk, bike or take transit" is featured on the list.

But unfortunately, the value of transit and denser urban development got only sporadic mention in most coverage of the TTI report. The Oregonian was one of the exceptions; its reporter drew a line between Portland's less grim traffic situation and its planning priorities. Here's an excerpt:

The report also underscores how different the mass-transit and car-commuter experiences are in Portland than in most urban areas. It shows in clear, numerical terms how significantly higher mass-transit use and compact-growth patterns affect the rush-hour commute.

Consider that traffic and congestion normally get worse in the most highly populated metro areas. Portland is the 24th-largest metro area by population, but its 37 hours of delay make it the 34th worst.

The more urban media digs into not just their rank in the congestion tables, but the reasons why their city is stuck, the better.

A new report on the costs of aging roads [PDF] has gotten a lot of attention over the past week, with both Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and the Washington Post touting its conclusion on the danger of "deficient roadways."

On its face, the report sounds like an argument for prioritizing road repair and modernization over new construction, which is certain to be a flashpoint as Congress works on a new federal transportation bill. But some of the upgrades that the authors suggest rely on outmoded assumptions about driver safety -- not to mention pedestrian safety, a concept never mentioned in the report.

Here's an excerpt:

Numerous solutions -- some simple, some complex -- could help make the roadway environment safer for users. These improvements include structural changes such as adding or widening shoulders, improving roadway alignment, replacing or widening narrow bridges, reducing pavement edges or drop-offs, and providing more clear space in the area adjacent to roadways.

Adding or widening shoulders for bike lanes or pedestrian paths is one thing, but the notion that driving can be made safer by widening and straightening roads (or "improving roadway alignment," as the report puts it) has been debunked by "Traffic" author Tom Vanderbilt, transportation planner Eric Dumbaugh, and others. In fact, making roads more complex and curvy can often serve as a deterrent to unsafe driving practices, particularly on urban streets.

But the report, commissioned by the Transportation Construction Coalition (TCC), seems to have concluded that urban areas don't need to be considered separately from interstates.

"Although this study did not break out costs by class of roads, interstate highways are built to higher safety standards than other roads," the authors state -- as if a new four-lane freeway through Chicago or Brooklyn would be a reasonable safety-enhancement move.

Roger Henderson, an engineer at Henderson Consulting in North Carolina, said the report made a solid attempt to link transportation and public health but made "a critical mistake" in treating all roads in the same way.

The report seems to argue, Henderson said in an interview, that "federal money should be spent to cut down trees and move poles away from the roadway. I agree completely when it comes to interstates, but this is the wrong study to make conclusions in any urban setting."

The report's sponsorship may have had an effect on its conclusions, Henderson added. Indeed, the TCC is an alliance of unions and trade groups that -- as as the Post succinctly put it -- "has a vested interest in funding for road construction."

Taking its origins and questionable assumptions into account, however, two maps in the report tell an interesting tale of the regional toll exacted by traffic.

The map above depicts road-related crash costs for every million vehicle miles traveled on state roads, and the map below depicts road-related crash costs for every existing mile of roadway.

The southeastern states of Louisiana, South Carolina, and Tennessee rank in the top 10 on both maps, earning them the status of "worst road-related crash problems," according to the TCC study.

By contrast, California and most of the northeast corridor rank high in crash costs per roadway mile (see below) and much lower in costs per million VMT (see above). The study's authors, who hail from the Pacific Institute of Research and Evaluation, attribute the trend to "traffic density" -- making a powerful argument for giving special attention to expanding transit options, including high-speed rail, in California and the northeast.

Still, without an alternative to driving in highly developed areas, simply repairing roads isn't enough.

Can Virginia Democrat Creigh Deeds win on a transportation-centric platform? (Photo: Waldoj via Flickr)

And now that Deeds is moving on to an even more hotly contested general election, his handling of the transportation debate could become a bellwether on the national level.

Deeds has long vowed to make Virginia's epic congestion problems his top priority, and his support for increasing the state's gas tax -- currently low enough to rank 40th in the nation -- to fund transport improvements is already drawing fire from the GOP. The Republican Governors Association's first release criticizing Deeds begins:

Despite prevailing in tonight’s gubernatorial primary, even Democrats know Creigh Deeds’ record of hiking taxes makes him unelectable this fall.

Can the GOP successfully paint Deeds as a profligate for wanting to pay for transportation upgrades? President Obama survived a similar challenge during last year's campaign when his opponents began pressing for a federal gas tax holiday, but Virginia Republicans may have better luck peeling off rural voters with their knocks on Deeds.

Deeds could help his cause by getting more specific about the types of transportation projects he wants to pursue. His lack of detail thus far has caught the attention of the Washington Post, the newspaper that provided him a game-changing endorsement.

The newly minted Democratic star could begin by reviving three transportation bills he offered during last year's Virginia state Senate session. The three proposals would encourage less punishing commutes by giving tax credits to employers who provide flex-time scheduling and telecommuting, as well as a tax deduction to anyone who takes transit, walks or bikes to work.

Average weekday eastbound trips, 2008. Source: TSTC/Port Authority of NY & NJ.

The Lincoln Tunnel XBL was established all the way back in 1971. In the last 38 years, bus ridership crossing the Hudson has boomed, especially this decade, but capacity for buses hasn't kept pace. Unless provisions are made to accommodate more bus travel -- and soon -- riders will face slower trips, the ridership gains of recent years will flatten out, and traffic troubles will deepen as more commuters choose to drive.

The good news is that it doesn't take all that much time or money to deliver some significant enhancements for bus riders. In a new report, "Express Route to Better Bus Service" [PDF], Tri-State lays out a strategy to expand on the success of the Lincoln Tunnel XBL and make bus travel more attractive for all trips across the Hudson. It's a wake-up call for the Port Authority to get moving on some long-overdue improvements.

"A population nearly the size of Cincinnati travels by bus across the Hudson River every weekday, but plans to enhance service for these riders are stalled," said Tri-State's Veronica Vanterpool, co-author of the report. "With bus travel anticipated to grow, we need to stop treating bus riders like second-class citizens and provide them with faster commutes and better access to information."

Tri-State recommends creating a westbound Lincoln Tunnel XBL during the evening rush and moving full-speed ahead with plans for a new high occupancy/toll lane for the morning commute (which has been stuck in the study phase for way too long). The report also touches on strategies to speed bus service across other Hudson River crossings, organize on-street loading for the city's growing volume of private bus operators, and make it easier for riders to plan their trips.

Follow the jump for the full slate of Tri-State's major recommendations.

Key Recommendations 

Short Term

1. Expedite the completion of the Lincoln Tunnel High Occupancy Toll Lanes study and implement the recommendations immediately.
2. Establish a westbound XBL in the Lincoln Tunnel during the evening rush hour.
3. Create an online portal for regional bus riders, with maps, route schedules and carrier information.
4. Improve communications technology for buses and update signage.
5. NYC should develop, with community input, strategies for formalizing bus loading/unloading and bus parking areas in neighborhoods across the city.
6. Coordinate with MTA and Westchester County’s Bee-Line to create and/or expand existing bus service between Westchester County and George Washington Bridge Bus Station.

Long Term

1. Study the potential for High Occupancy Tolling on the Holland Tunnel and GW Bridge.
2. Move forward plans to renovate and add capacity to the Port Authority Bus Terminal with community input, and to construct a bus garage on the West Side.

Hike 1, the 10-12 percent rise in subway, bus and rail fares set to take effect within a month, is a fait accompli. But Hikes 2 and 3, set for 2011 and 2013, are fair game. With municipal and state elections in the offing this year and next, the timing couldn't be better.

Hikes 2 and 3 are each intended to net $400 to $500 million annually. A geographically balanced traffic-pricing plan can replace that, no sweat. The MTA rescue plan I laid out in March, featuring a time-varied ($1-$2-$3-$4-$5) price to drive into the Manhattan CBD (charged inbound only) along with a 20 percent taxi fare surcharge, would bring in $1 billion a year. The plan can be ratcheted up as need warrants and politics allow.

I know, I know -- tolls have already failed, twice. But the Bloomberg and Ravitch Plans were grossly skewed, with a Jersey exemption and a Manhattan free pass, among other failings. The messengers, through no fault of their own, were flawed as well.

Rather than a billionaire mayor or another permanent-government state commission, we need a popular movement made up of straphangers, bus riders, truckers and tradespeople (who will easily make up the CBD toll in saved time), business interests, pedestrians and cyclists -- a true New York majority. And we should start posing the question now, as the 2009 municipal elections get in gear: Which should the MTA toll -- transit users or traffic?

It is true that the recession has eased traffic congestion. By how much is hard to say, but if vehicle volumes are down 5 percent, the drop in gridlock -- time stuck in traffic -- may be as great as 10 percent citywide and 20 percent within the CBD. When the Albany deal was revealed this week, a policy savant told me it demonstrated "the lack of political support for reducing traffic congestion." He may be right, but I believe that as fare hikes and a general economic recovery restore car use to prior levels, gridlock will again matter.

The German social thinker Wolfgang Sachs drilled to the heart of gridlock several decades ago:

Once a certain traffic density is surpassed, every driver contributes involuntarily to a slowing of traffic. The time that the individual driver steals from all the others by slowing them down is greater many times over than the time he or she might have hoped to gain by taking the car. (emphasis added)

Sachs’ "theft of time" can now be quantified. Using the Balanced Transportation Analyzer computer model I’ve developed with transit advocate Ted Kheel, I estimate it to average almost three hours per weekday car round-trip into the CBD and back home. Meaning: each additional weekday drive into the Manhattan Central Business District imposes aggregate delays on all other motor vehicle users totaling nearly three hours (more for peak-period trips, less for off-peak). Applying an estimated per-vehicle cost of $35-40 per hour spent in NYC traffic (a blend of costs for 18-wheelers, plumbers’ vans, private cars, etc.), the societal "time cost" imposed by each car trip into and out of the CBD is around $100.

(Note: figures in the previous paragraph are derived in the BTA worksheets, "Delay Costs" and "Value of Time," and were revised by the author in August, 2009 to reflect modeling refinements following the May 7, 2009 appearance of this post.)

This “theft of time” by auto trips into the CBD should form one moral basis for our transportation reform campaign. The other, of course, is the need to prevent any further burdening of hard-pressed working people with the MTA’s financial failings.

Ted, who turns 95 on Saturday, has said that if he were younger he would run for mayor on this platform. Here’s a Plan “B”: The advocates who fought valiantly for the Ravitch Plan unite behind a new, effective and equitable approach such as the traffic-pricing plan outlined here -- one that breaks, finally, the triple hell of spiraling fares, traffic gridlock, and the legislature’s tyranny over mass transit. Candidates run for City Council and state legislature on this plan, and we elect them.

Using the Balanced Transportation Analyzer (BTA), I estimate that the fare hikes and service cuts which begin June 1 will:

• Add an average of 6 percent more waiting and travel time to bus and subway commutes; which will...
• cause 40,000 more autos to pile into the Manhattan Central Business District each day; which will...
• slow traffic by an average of 5 percent in the CBD and 1-2 percent across the City; costing...
• drivers, truckers and bus riders $600 million in lost time annually within the CBD, and probably $1.5 billion or more citywide.

The one-two punch of higher fares and less frequent service can be expected to shrink subway use by around 8 percent and bus ridership by 6 percent. This is a calamity not only to our city's vitality but for the MTA as well, since it cuts deeply into the very revenue these measures were supposed to generate. Indeed, the BTA model projects that the real gain in farebox revenues won't even reach $500 million -- well under half of the projected $1.2 billion deficit.

The key criteria by which New York City transportation policies are judged are driver expenses, rider expenses, driver travel times and rider travel times. The MTA and the legislature have managed to worsen three out of four -- and, for good measure, have aggravated others, such as traffic pollution and mayhem. A stopped clock could hardly have done worse.

Advocates spent four months in feverish but fruitless campaigning for a stopgap solution -- the Ravitch Plan -- that was buoyed more by Dick Ravitch's sterling reputation than by its intrinsic merits. Indeed, the plan was rife with inequities:

• Payrolls in exurban Dutchess County would be taxed at the same rate as those of transit-reliant New Yorkers.
• Most Bronx and Brooklyn drivers would pay new tolls and yet those driving in from New Jersey would not.
• Manhattan residents would garner much of the benefit from lighter traffic in the form of quieter streets and faster cab rides, yet they would pay little of the tolls.

In short, “shared sacrifice” was more rhetoric than reality. Plus, the Ravitch Plan offered no incentive to switch trips out of rush hours to less crowded travel times, in effect foreclosing on both choice and efficiency.

On the four criteria above, Ravitch offered not a single solid win. The plan was a Band-Aid, but the times demanded a major overhaul.

True, Albany is broken. Even a perfectly balanced plan would have faced tough sledding. Political reform is essential, but so too is recognizing that transit and traffic won’t get the needed makeover until they are addressed in a unified and broadened transportation vision.

Our plan rests on three powerful attributes: revenue generation, tolling equality, and sheer efficiency. We achieve these with an inclusive pricing model that asks drivers to pay a fee ranging from $2 to $10 upon entering the Central Business District with the price dependent on the time of day, and charges taxi passengers for their contribution to congestion as well.

The basics:

• Our toll plan generates $1.7 billion a year in revenue; that’s twice as much as the $800 million from Ravitch’s tolls, even though our top toll of $10 matches Ravitch’s $5 (we charge inbound only). As for Sheldon Silver’s $2 toll plan, it nets just $450 million.
• Our plan has no free riders; oops, make that free drivers. Jersey drivers pay the toll, drivers entering the CBD at 60th Street pay the toll, and Manhattanites pay the lion’s share of a 33 percent taxi fare surcharge that raises a quarter of our total revenue. Under the Ravitch and Silver plans, East River drivers who make only 36 percent of crossings into the CBD would be coughing up 60 percent of new toll revenues.
• Everyone wins something in our plan. Buses are free (paid for by $800 million of our $1.7 billion revenue pot). Straphangers get deep off-peak discounts (paid for by the rest -- though some of the reductions might need to be deferred to help stanch the MTA deficit) and a bit more elbow-room in rush hour due to peak-spreading. Drivers get a 20 percent traffic speed-up in the CBD (faster travel “upstream” too), while the variable toll offers a measure of choice.
• Free and faster-moving buses will achieve three goals. They’ll lure enough drivers and straphangers out of gridlocked streets and packed trains to ease crowding on both. By stopping drip-torture boarding that halts movement during Metrocard-swiping, they’ll traverse their routes fast enough to handle the influx. And they’ll provide a huge break to riders across the city, a disproportionate percentage of whom live in poorer, non-Manhattan neighborhoods.

Too good to be true? No, it’s real, the numbers have been checked and re-checked, the plan works.

Politically, who knows? It’s easy to shrug and say that if Albany can’t get it together to enact $2 tolls, there’s no chance for an ambitious plan like Kheel-Komanoff.

And yet … unlike the plans on the table, which impose tolls while giving little back (as did Mayor Bloomberg’s failed congestion pricing proposal), our plan is about gain, and freedom, and relief:

• Gain for the millions of transit riders who will enjoy better service and more spending money.
• Freedom from recurring fare hikes and service cuts.
• Significant relief from traffic congestion that frustrates drivers, dehumanizes our city and saps the economy.

Lately I’ve kept a low profile about our plan out of deference to Dick Ravitch and his well thought out plan that recognizes the gravity of the crisis. But Albany is so stuck, and the dialogue so stilted, that it seems time to air a bolder, more ambitious plan.

Since New Year’s, I’ve discussed the Kheel-Komanoff plan with dozens of electeds and advocates. The private response has been uniformly positive.

There may still be time to win a real hearing -- or at least infuse elements of our plan into Ravitch's. Let’s find each other now, before it’s too late.

The New Jersey "trucker's special." Graphic: Sam Schwartz.

The truck inundation is due to the great counter-clockwise route that truckers take from New Jersey to Long Island and back to Jersey, to avoid paying the one-way, westbound, “double toll” on the Verrazano Bridge, or the two tolls on the George Washington Bridge and high peak hour tolls at the east bound Lincoln Tunnel. This state of affairs leaves a free path from Long Island to New Jersey across the Manhattan Bridge, over Canal Street, and out of the city via the westbound Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

Because the trucking diversion -- the legacy of a deal cut on behalf of Staten Island Republicans -- is inherently political, the best policy options are not available. Congestion pricing would have solved the worst of the truck problem, as would restoring two-way tolls on the Verrazano Bridge, at least for trucks. But despite tough going in the State Senate, the MTA financial crisis and Silver's partial endorsement of the Ravitch Commission toll plan may offer some hope for neighborhoods battered by truck traffic, including downtown Brooklyn and western Queens.

Though no details have been released by the MTA, the Ravitch Commission or Sheldon Silver, it is very possible that truck tolls in the rescue plan will be set to match the truck tolls on other major MTA crossings. That would mean EZPass tolls of $20.25 each way for eighteen wheelers crossing the Manhattan, Williamsburg or Queensboro Bridges. (Trucks are not allowed on the Brooklyn Bridge.) This toll would greatly reduce truckers' financial incentive to cut across lower Manhattan on the way to New Jersey or further west. It's not perfect, but certainly enough to alter the time/money calculation so that some truckers will change routes. More effective, but also more politically difficult, ways to eliminate the great circle route include making the new tolls one-way for trucks westbound on the East River bridges and MTA tunnels, or following the Port Authority's lead and placing peak hour truck tolls on the new truck crossings.

From the new San Francisco branch of Streetfilms, Janel Sterbentz takes a look at one of the city's main bicycle routes -- Valencia Street -- and asks how it would function if signals were timed to give cyclists the "Green Wave" instead of cars. Cyclists would get a smoother ride and feel less compelled to roll through red lights. Pedestrians would benefit from slower vehicle speeds and more predictable cyclist behavior. As for transit vehicles, Janel reports, average travel times for trams and buses have improved on Amsterdam streets with a cyclist green wave. Even motorists, it turns out, should be rooting this on:

While naysayers may object that this will increase traffic congestion, it is more than reasonable to counter that real-time traffic conditions on Valencia Street have already slowed to a general range of 8 to 20 mph. It makes logical sense that retiming traffic signals for actual traffic speeds would increase traffic flow, reduce idling, and minimize stop-and-go movements, thus decreasing pollution.

Portland, Oregon has already realized this and implemented a citywide traffic signal optimization project, which saves motorists over 1,750,000 gallons of gas and 15,460 tons of CO2 each year. It cost $533,000, which was paid for by the Climate Trust of Oregon carbon offset program. In downtown Portland nearly every street is timed for 12 mph, making these streets de facto Green Waves.

Despite data from its own models that suggest drivers on Valencia Street would reap similar efficiencies from slower signal timing, the San Francisco MTA refuses to fund a pilot study. In New York, we could see cyclist green waves bringing a more civilized pace to numerous avenues that currently function as speedways, but let's get specific. Tell us which New York City corridors are outright begging for bike-centric signal timing.

Inauguration parade rehearsal. Photo: Travir/Flickr

The discussion online has covered chokepoints in the Metro system, proper pricing of park-and-ride spots, and the advantages of banning private auto traffic on Virginia-DC bridges. And bike valet parking and the utility of pedicabs. Predictably, AAA came out strong against the restrictions on car traffic, apparently contending that the optimal "mobility" solution would be to let streets completely clog up with private motorists.

This weekend I spoke to a relative of mine in the DC area who predicted carmaggeddon on the Maryland side of the district, as drivers attempt to bypass the ban. I suppose we'll know soon enough whether Virginians are that attached to their cars.

Yesterday NYCDOT released the first Sustainable Streets Index [PDF], a scorecard to measure how well New York is progressing "towards achieving more sustainable mobility." This is the fruit of Local Law 23 (a.k.a. Intro 199), which passed earlier this year after former DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall helped scuttle it at the end of her tenure.

The Times reported this weekend on the major conclusion of the report -- that the transit system absorbed the entire increase in travel within the city from 2003 to 2007. Vehicle traffic remained flat during that period, which saw the city gain 130,000 more residents and 200,000 more jobs. The report also notes that bicycling is the city's fastest growing mode, rising 70 percent since 2002.

While the Times wonders whether the leveling of car traffic argues against congestion pricing, the report provides a graphic representation of vehicle volumes straining against the limits of the street grid. It's a picture that should trouble legislators playing chicken with the MTA's finances and threatening to slash funds for the city's bike network. "Streets and bridges are saturated during peak travel times," says Transportation Alternatives director Paul White, who helped draft Intro 199. "What this document does -- it lays the foundation for orchestrating a major modal shift further in the direction of transit, biking and walking. The first step toward inducing that shift is measuring how people are getting around."

The index includes a raft of graphs charting ridership growth and vehicle traffic levels, and future versions will provide more robust measurements of bicycling and bus ridership:

The Sustainable Streets Index report will be expanded in three important ways next year, when NYCDOT will report:

• A new Citywide Traffic Index*, which will fill gaps in the public's current understanding of traffic levels,
• Performance indicators for key corridors where NYCDOT has made significant operational changes such as bike lanes and Bus Rapid Transit improvements, and
  
• Vehicle speeds determined using GPS technology.

*The Citywide Traffic Index will combine existing and new traffic counts to form a year-over-year time series that more precisely captures changes in travel patterns in the City. New traffic counts conducted for the Citywide Traffic Index will illuminate patterns of travel on streets and highways not currently measured.

Kheel's team reported these likely consequences from a combination of a 25% across-the-board subway-and-bus fare hike and proposed service cuts, along with a $1.00 increase in MTA bridge and tunnel tolls:

• An additional 30,000 cars (a 4 percent increase) driven into the City’s most congested streets
• A 6 percent drop in subway ridership and a 4 percent drop in bus ridership;
• A 4 percent decrease in already snail-paced traffic speeds

The figures derive from an updated version of the Balanced Transportation Analyzer, the Kheel planners' number-crunching algorithm. The new BTA will be unveiled shortly, together with a revised Kheel Plan, "with time-varying tolls and subway fares sufficient to close the MTA deficit and fund vital expansions." That means the new plan will include the option to charge fares during peak times, spokesman Mark Hannah told Streetsblog. (Charles Komanoff outlined the revisions on Streetsblog this June.)

Free transit was not bandied about much at the Ravitch Commission's public hearings in September, but Kheel's team sees a window of opportunity in the next election. "Our major goal is to make our plan an issue in the 2009 campaign," Hannah said, noting that several electeds have reacted positively to the Kheel proposal. "It's a matter of, at this point, getting a champion."

Meanwhile, for all you wonks in the audience, follow the jump for more information on the methodology behind the projections.

• The team's findings conservatively reflect the expected reduction in car travel from a $1.00 toll increase on MTA bridges and tunnels.
• The Kheel team assumed that the MTA's subway service cuts result in an average 6% increase in the duration of an average trip.
• The BTA assumes conservatively that only half of “disappeared” transit trips re-materialize as car trips; it also takes carpooling into account, so that each new trip in a car adds less than one new car to the roads.
• The BTA feeds back traffic increases to travel demand (i.e., road gridlock is somewhat self-limiting), thus producing a conservative estimate of the number of additional cars resulting from costlier and less-frequent transit service.
• The BTA includes conservative (low) assumptions of the effect of higher fares on subway use (“price-elasticities” of -0.09 for subway work trips, -0.234 for other subway trips).

Now the good news: DOT is considering changes for the area -- especially the pedestrian crossings -- and the agency's ideas will get a public airing tonight at a presentation to Community Board 2. Community groups are encouraging Brooklynites to show up and share their suggestions. Here are the details:

DOT presentation to CB2 Transportation Committee
Tuesday, October 21, at 6 p.m.
St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street in Brooklyn Heights

Photo: Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn

Graphic of crashes and fatalities near Atlantic Terminal, 1995-2005: CrashStat

In a post on Mobilizing the Region yesterday, TSTC says it's time to build on the success of the much traveled Manhattan-bound express bus lane:

The Lincoln Tunnel’s Manhattan-bound XBL is the busiest bus lane in the country, carrying 1,700 buses with over 62,000 passengers on weekday mornings. In fact, it is so popular that it is now congested at times, though it still speeds bus times by 15-20 minutes according to the Port Authority. This has prompted the Authority to study the creation of a bus/high occupancy toll (HOT) lane in the tunnel to alleviate gridlock on the bus priority route.

However, there has been less discussion on how to improve evening rush hour traffic into NJ, which is actually worse. During the average evening peak period (4-7 pm), nearly 15,000 cars travel westbound into NJ; by comparison, around 13,900 cars enter NYC during the morning rush (7-10am). Usage of a Jersey-bound XBL (which would either replace an NJ-bound general purpose lane or be a contraflow lane carved out of NY-bound traffic) would almost certainly rival that of the morning XBL, providing real benefits for the largest share of trans-Hudson commuters and creating further incentives to commute by mass transit.

A Jersey-bound XBL would also help to alleviate some of the problems that the new blocking-the-box crackdown is meant to address. Some of the worst box-blocking hotspots are in Hell's Kitchen, where cars line up for block after block on their way out of Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel.

For more ideas about improving bus service on bridges and tunnels, see Cap'n Transit's series on the topic.

Photo of NJTransit bus leaving Manhattan via Lincoln Tunnel: Jumpy/Wikimedia Commons/MTR

On their blog, Mobilizing the Region, TSTC says that ARC would:

• Double NJ Transit’s rush-hour capacity into and out of Manhattan, meaning more frequent, more reliable, less crowded trains on most lines in northern, central, and southern New Jersey.
• Provide one-seat rides into and out of Manhattan on the Pascack Valley Line, Port Jervis/Main/Bergen County Line, Morris & Essex Line, and Raritan Valley Line. Commuters will no longer have to transfer at Secaucus or Newark to get into and out of NYC.
• Act as an economic stimulus for New Jersey and New York. During construction, ARC will employ (directly and indirectly) almost 100,000 blue-collar, white-collar, and green-collar workers. After construction, the improved transit access will make the region more attractive to new and relocating companies.
• Lower greenhouse gas emissions. By taking cars off the road, ARC will cut more than 65,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year.