A 76-year-old man in LA county was hit by a truck while riding his bike in 2008. Republicans want to keep current trucking laws in place that Democrats and others say lead to driver fatigue, causing accidents like this one. Photo: Aitken Aitken Cohn

October 28 was the original deadline by which the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was supposed to announce new hours-of-service regulations for trucking, but in the end, they gave themselves another month to do it.

The pending change is the result of a lawsuit brought by Public Citizen, the Teamsters Union, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, and the Truck Safety Coalition against the FMCSA to tighten the standards. They have agreed with the FMCSA to change the current 11-hour driving day and the 34-hour rest period before starting a long workweek to a 10-hour driving day, keeping the 34-hour “restart” but with new restrictions.

The 11-hour rule was a “midnight regulation” made during President George W. Bush’s final days in office, according to the Teamsters. The Bush administration increased the workweek from 60 to 77 hours of driving and reduced the restart period from 50 hours to 34.

The Teamsters say truck crashes cost the nation $20 billion in 2009, and that truck driver fatigue is a major factor in truck crashes. Some statistics indicate fatigue is a factor in 30 to 40 percent of truck crashes, though the FMCSA itself puts the number at 5.5 percent.

“We will continue to push for a rule that protects truck drivers, instead of the greed of the trucking industry,” said Teamsters President Jim Hoffa when the court case was decided two years ago. “Longer hours behind the wheel are dangerous for our members and the driving public.”

The problem isn’t limited to highways. Six percent of pedestrian fatalities and nine percent of bicyclist fatalities in 2009 were caused by crashes with large trucks, according to the NHTSA. Between 1996 and 2005, crashes with large trucks accounted for almost a third of all cyclist fatalities in New York City, according to a joint report by NYC agencies [PDF].

Industry lobbying groups including the American Trucking Associations and Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association have mobilized against the changes. OOIDA says new safety rules would negatively impact not only “driver flexibility and the business operations of small-business truckers” but highway safety as well.

Some lawmakers have aligned with the trucking industry. Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) has claimed that reducing the hours of service is “cost-prohibitive” and that the “impact on safety is unclear.” Republicans are uniformly against the changes, with everyone from House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor to Transportation Committee Chair John Mica working “aggressively” to block any alteration to the hours-of-service provisions.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has urged Congressional leaders to go along with the new safety rules, saying they apply “the most comprehensive and up-to-date data and analysis to the issue of driver fatigue and allowable hours of service” while allowing carriers “new operational flexibility.”

This is the third time the Bush-era rule has been struck down by the courts, but the FMCSA kept reinstating it — first in late 2007 and then about a year later. This time, the agency appears ready to make a change.

Truck traffic in Maspeth. Photo: slowpoke_taiwan via Flickr.

Speaking at the Municipal Art Society’s annual summit this afternoon, outgoing Port Authority chief Chris Ward said he wouldn’t be sending any parting shots at the New York region’s leaders, but he didn’t hold back from proposing some big and bold ideas. With only a few weeks left at the Port Authority, Ward issued a call for the construction of a cross-harbor freight tunnel and a rail freight distribution system for the city, as well as the abandonment of container shipping at the Red Hook terminal in Brooklyn.

“The city is bedeviled by intraregional truck trips,” said Ward. Having large diesel trucks criss-crossing the dense, congested region 364 days a year, he said, “is an economic and environmental crisis.”

“We must, we must finally realize small-scale rail freight distribution within this city,” he declared, noting that under his leadership, the Port Authority had acquired facilities in New Jersey needed to eventually build a long-desired cross-harbor rail freight tunnel. Beyond that, said Ward, the region needs to develop small, clean vehicles capable of carrying freight the last mile from rail stations to final destinations.

Ward also argued for a rethinking of the Brooklyn waterfront, which he called the last great challenge for the city from a planning perspective. “[The] Red Hook [shipping terminal] has to move down to the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal,” Ward said. “Red Hook is the wrong location.” Container shipping there, he said, is both inefficient from a transportation perspective and standing in the way of the city’s other plans for the waterfront, including the eventual development of the southern portion of Governor’s Island. “You will not be able to get the needed amount of people, whatever the use is, to Governor’s Island as long as you have a container terminal there.” With the container port moved, he argued, new transportation infrastructure could connect Red Hook and Governor’s Island and spur major new development in the area.

Bold thinking about the future of Governor’s Island also came from Columbia professor Vishaan Chakrabarti, the former head of the Department of City Planning’s Manhattan office. In a speech laying out a vision for radically densifying New York City, Chakrabarti highlighted a project by some of his students that imagined connecting the Battery to Governor’s Island with landfill, extending the subways to the island and opening it up to new development. The amount of landfill needed, he said, was a tiny fraction of what’s currently being put down in Hong Kong or Tokyo Bay.

Chakrabarti put forward a number of proposals to spur major new development, along the lines of the Hudson Yards project he helped usher through. The buildings along Park Avenue, he said, were built once Grand Central transformed transit access to that part of Midtown. Once East Side Access is complete, Chakrabarti said, “we should really be thinking about whether this area needs to be rezoned, changed into taller, greener buildings.” New York should complete the full Second Avenue Subway and then explore intense densification on the Lower East Side along the new subway line.

Manhattan, Chakrabarti said, is one of the most dense, productive and desirable places in the entire world. “Right outside of that, we have the density of Los Angeles,” he said, flashing a photograph of Long Island City. “We have one and two story buildings 15 minutes outside of our urban core.”

Joan Byron, director of policy at the Pratt Center for Community Development, told us the update to the city’s sustainability plan includes some promising developments on the truck traffic front. She noted that some of the biggest differences between the revised PlaNYC and the original have to do with freight transportation:

PlaNYC 2.0 re-affirms the city's commitment to stop relying on truck-based waste transfer stations located mainly in the South Bronx and Brooklyn.

PlaNYC 2.0 includes a lot more specifics about freight than 1.0 did. The big projects it references — the Port Authority’s Cross Harbor Rail Freight Study, rail and barge upgrades at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal and at the 51st and 65th Street (Brooklyn) yards, and incorporation of rail improvements in the rebuild of the Hunts Point Produce Market — are already committed or underway, but it’s still significant that the plan calls them out. And it’s great that the city will be gathering more data about food-related freight movement, because the patterns of long-haul, regional, and local food movement have changed a lot in recent decades, and will continue to change, as food production continues to simultaneously globalize and to localize.

It’s great that there’s some space given to local truck congestion issues. I’d like to see more about pilot projects, and also a commitment to better data gathering and analysis by NYCDOT. There’s shockingly little information available now about types of goods being trucked within the city, their origins and destinations, specific time and other constraints affecting different subsectors, etc. Without a better understanding of the problem, it’s hard to know where the opportunities are for innovative solutions.

The Pratt Center cares about freight movement for a couple of reasons. Low-income communities and communities of color bear a disproportionate share of the impacts of both local and long-haul trucking. And truck-dependent industries — food production, construction, service and repair (of everything from TV cable boxes to big-building mechanical equipment) are important blue-collar employers that offer some of the best remaining pathways into the middle class for New York’s workforce. So there are environmental and economic justice reasons to make freight movement work better citywide.

Byron singled out the PlaNYC update’s section on transporting trash as a good sign:

It’s also a great relief to see explicit treatment of solid waste in this version of the plan, including a re-affirmation of the city’s commitment to implementing the Solid Waste Management Plan by moving ahead with planned marine transfer stations in Manhattan. Shifting away from truck-based garbage export will enable the city as a whole to reduce carbon emissions associated with solid waste disposal. And fairly sharing the burden of managing our trash gives all of us a stake in reducing our total tonnage. The status quo, relying on truck-based transfer stations located mainly in the South Bronx and Brooklyn, has kept the problem out of mind and out of sight for the wealthiest New Yorkers whose consumption contributes the most to the problem.

Theresa Alonso, 64, was killed by a truck driver in June 2010 when the light changed as she crossed Richmond Terrace in Port Richmond. Photo: Daily News

A little-known bill that could save lives has cleared the State Senate Transportation Committee.

Under S.3151, sponsored by Brooklyn Republican Marty Golden, trucks weighing over 26,000 pounds that are driven on city streets would be required to have convex (or “crossover”) mirrors allowing their drivers to see what’s directly in front of them.

This sounds like common sense, but according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data cited in the bill, 71 percent of pedestrians killed by large trucks in 2005 were “initially impacted from the front of the truck.”

When a truck driver sits at an intersection or turns a corner, a pedestrian can get caught in the “blind spot” created by the height of the truck’s hood. Collisions of this type killed Brooklyn schoolkids Juan Estrada and Victor Flores in 2004 and claimed the life of grandmother Theresa Alonso in Staten Island last summer. Between 1994 and 2003, 204 New York City pedestrians were killed and 4,698 were injured by collisions involving trucks.

The crossover mirror is nothing new; it’s been standard equipment on school buses for decades.

As was the case last year, when it passed the Assembly, a coalition of street safety advocates is urging senators to adopt the bill. John Quaglione, a spokesperson for Senator Golden, told Streetsblog: “As of right now, the legislature is focused on the approving a state budget by the April 1 deadline. The legislation [S.3151] has support within both houses of the state legislature and there is a chance that this may be the year that this bill becomes law in New York State.”

To reduce double-parking, DOT is adding dedicated loading zones in the morning along much of this Church Avenue strip. Image: NYC DOT

The fight for scarce street space is always fierce in New York City, and as DOT’s efforts to install bike and bus lanes across the city have revealed, the most contested zone of all is probably the curbside. On commercial streets, drivers can’t get enough of the underpriced on-street parking while businesses want curbside access to load and unload deliveries. The result is rampant double-parking, cruising, and ultimately congestion — slowing down buses and creating more dangerous conditions for pedestrians and cyclists. In some cases, local displeasure about curbside dysfunction manifests itself as opposition to seemingly unrelated livable streets improvements, like the Fifth Avenue bike lane in Park Slope.

Image: NYC DOT

With a new program on Brooklyn’s Church Avenue, DOT is trying to solve at least one part of the puzzle. Starting in mid-January, 40 parking spaces on Church Avenue will be dedicated exclusively for deliveries from 7 a.m. to noon on weekdays. On the block between 18th and 19th Streets, truck loading will be available until 3:00 p.m.

With 65 percent of all deliveries to the neighborhood already taking place before noon, according to DOT, the idea is to give trucks the space they need at times when they’re just going to take it anyway. If successful, all the area’s deliveries could be made in the dedicated spaces within the time window. Theoretically, no trucks would double-park, morning or afternoon.

One group that should be particularly excited: the 38,000 weekday riders on the B35 bus, the sixth busiest route in the city. They’re paying the price for the fact that at least one Church Avenue lane — and there’s only one in each direction — is blocked by double-parkers for a quarter of the day, according to DOT.

The program has strong backing from local businesses. According to Community Board 14 chair Alvin Berk, a few years ago, the Church Avenue BID came to the community board with a proposal to bring ParkSmart to the stretch, raising meter rates during peak demand hours. “At the time, its utility hadn’t been demonstrated,” said Berk (the program has since been shown to cut traffic and increase the number of cars that are able to park), so the board proposed an alternative.

First, two-hour metered spaces were reduced to one-hour, with the intention of increasing turnover. The new delivery zones are the final part of that plan. “We’re very optimistic about it,” said Berk, who added that ParkSmart could be back on the table if this program doesn’t show results after a year or so. The BID has also endorsed the plan.

The cross over mirror, on the right, allows truck and school bus drivers to see in front of their hood. Photo: Moblog.

Governor Paterson has called a special session for the legislature next week, and it’s full of big, tough bills. For example, both David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo are urging legislators to close a $315 million deficit, an action which could again steal dedicated funds from the MTA. Education funding is also on the docket.

But here’s a small, simple way for Albany to save lives next week. Right now, the drivers of large trucks have a huge blind spot right in front of the cab. That puts pedestrians, and especially small children, in danger.

In 2004, Brooklyn fifth-graders Juan Estrada and Victor Flores were killed by a truck driver as they were walking home from school. They were crossing Third Avenue with the light as the truck turned right. The driver, John Olson, later said he never even saw the kids.

This cause of death is all too common. Seventy percent of all pedestrians killed in collisions with large trucks were struck by the front of the truck, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [PDF].

There’s an inexpensive and easy fix. “Cross over mirrors” are convex mirrors positioned on the front of the truck that let the driver see into that blind spot. The mirror and the assembly kit list at between $23 and $57, not counting bulk discounts.

Here’s where Albany comes in. There’s a bill, S2057, which would require all trucks driving on New York City local streets to install cross over mirrors. That’s already the law for school buses, and the law for large trucks is almost across the finish line. It’s been in the works for years, and thanks to a strong push from the New York City DOT, the bill already passed the Assembly and the Senate Transportation Committee, where it didn’t receive any nays. All it needs is the full Senate to take it up and then the governor’s signature.

“How can parents let children walk to school and enjoy their neighborhoods when there are 26,000 lb trucks rolling around that can’t see them in a crosswalk?” said Transportation Alternatives’ Lindsey Lusher Shute. “Crossover mirrors should have been passed long ago — and any legislator that opposes this legislation will have a lot of explaining to do when another preventable tragedy occurs.”

A coalition of safety advocates, including Transportation Alternatives, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Chekpeds, the Communities Impact Diabetes Center, the East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership, the New York City Strategic Alliance for Health and Sustainable Flatbush, just sent a letter to State Senator Martin Dilan, the bill’s sponsor and the Transportation Committee chair, urging him to push the bill to the floor. Dilan’s active support could make or break efforts to push the bill through this year.

However, a spokesman for Dilan said that the bill is unlikely to come up on Monday, when the special session begins. He wouldn’t say whether Dilan would fight to bring the bill to the floor, adding that it’s a little early to say.

The lack of an eastbound toll on the Verrazano allows trucks to make three major crossings without paying tolls, creating a counterclockwise loop of truck traffic. Image: Sam Schwartz.

The one-way tolls on the Verrazano Bridge have been a major cause of truck traffic in New York City since they were instituted in 1986. Though numerous efforts to restore two-way tolls have failed over the last two and a half decades, technological progress may finally bring victory within reach. Congressman Jerry Nadler thinks that the MTA’s moves toward cashless tolling could make two-way tolls politically feasible, and he’s trying to pass the federal legislation necessary to allow them.

The one-way tolls concentrate truck traffic in the city along specific routes and hit some communities — like Chinatown — especially hard. Trucks from New Jersey can drive into Staten Island, cross east on the Verrazano for free, drive up the BQE or Brooklyn local roads to the free Manhattan Bridge, then cross Lower Manhattan and head back to New Jersey for free through the Port Authority’s tunnels, which impose no tolls heading westbound. This long counterclockwise circle can save trucking companies a fortune in tolls, while endangering and clogging up New York City’s streets for everyone else.

“A two-way toll would eliminate the flow of trucks entering New York City via Staten Island in order to escape the charges on the Hudson River bridge and tunnel crossings,” said Nadler, who represents hard-hit Lower Manhattan. “With the MTA now poised to test new toll-collection technologies, which are likely to be implemented across the region, all New Yorkers will reap the benefits and the MTA will generate new revenue that it sorely needs.”

You may be wondering: How did such a senseless policy get enacted in the first place? The answer: Staten Island politics. Residents were sick of the long lines of traffic building up behind the tollbooths on the Staten Island side of the bridge, spewing exhaust near their homes.

In response, Congressman Guy Molinari, with strong support from Senator Al D’Amato, stuck a provision into federal transportation law forbidding two-way tolling across the Verrazano in 1986. Eliminating the eastbound charge meant that tolls only caused back-ups on the bridge itself and in Bay Ridge. The MTA was opposed to the move at the time, and the following year reported increased traffic through Lower Manhattan and millions in lost toll revenue as a result of the switch.

For years, prominent New York politicians have fought to restore two-way tolling. In 1988, Governor Mario Cuomo recommended that two-way tolls be allowed at least for trucks, a move that had the support of Mayor Ed Koch. In 1993, Mayor David Dinkins joined with the Manhattan and Brooklyn borough presidents and the MTA to petition the feds for two-way tolls.

Those efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. In 1995, the one-way tolls were actually further entrenched, when the arrangement was codified in a permanent federal law, the National Highway System Designation Act, for the first time.

Attempts to bring back two-way tolls and dam up the river of truck traffic remained something of a regular, if futile, occurrence. Nadler’s predecessor, Ted Weiss, was also a fierce proponent of two-way tolling. And Nadler himself introduced legislation to allow one-way tolls in 1999, 2001 and 2003, according to the Brooklyn Paper.

Nadler thinks the situation might be different this year. The key is cashless tolling, a technology ready for widespread implementation. The MTA recently announced its plans to use cashless tolling for all traffic on the Henry Hudson Bridge by 2012. If traffic doesn’t even have to stop to pay the tolls, Staten Island’s whole objection to eastbound tolls should disappear.

According to a spokesperson for Nadler, the Congressman is working with Transportation Committee chair James Oberstar to determine the right legislative vessel for the Verrazano language. The federal transportation bill, which seems to have new momentum, is one option, he said.

Nadler’s district director Rob Gottheim was at a Manhattan Community Board 2 Tuesday night talking up the plan.

Even with the advent of cashless tolling, however, two-way tolls could still be a heavy lift politically. The unused eastbound tollbooths were recently torn down and at that event, Staten Island Congressman Michael McMahon announced that “it gets rid of the specter of the two-way toll.” And unlike past mayors, Michael Bloomberg doesn’t appear to have ever publicly spoken up in favor of two-way tolls. We have calls in with both McMahon and Bloomberg’s offices to confirm their positions.

A truck loading at a waste transfer station in the South Bronx. Photo: jrwiener via Flickr

A proposed amendment to the City Charter could help free certain neighborhoods from the grip of truck traffic and other unhealthy side effects of public facilities.

Although the Charter Revision Commission looked set to leave New York's land use process fundamentally untouched, one significant land-use related change to the city's constitution may make it onto the ballot after all. A change to the "Fair Share" provision of the charter, which aims to spread the burdens caused by public infrastructure evenly across the city, is part of the draft amendments released on Wednesday.

Fair Share requires city agencies deciding where to place a facility to take into consideration the existing distribution of public facilities, whether a health clinic or a garage. Though they aren't required to spread undesirable operations them evenly across the city, city agencies are forced to reckon with questions of equity as they site them. 

As anyone who's traveled across New York City knows, however, some neighborhoods still bear completely disproportionate burdens. "The Fair Share process as a whole is ripe for a complete overhaul," argued Eddie Bautista, the executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. Because the Charter Revision Commission communicated its unwillingness to tackle big issues early on, though, Bautista put forward a set of smaller suggestions. Only one of those made it into the commission's draft amendments, in a slightly altered form.

Currently, said Bautista, city agencies only consider city-owned facilities, with a few exceptions like health and social service providers, in their Fair Share assessment. The Commission's proposed amendment would pertain to all transportation- or waste-related facilities owned by the state, the federal government, or private companies contracted by the city. Including those sites dramatically changes the picture of which neighborhoods are forced to carry the burden of keeping the city running. 

Take Williamsburg/Greenpoint, said Bautista. "You have something in excess of 40 percent of the city's solid waste there," he said, "and those are all private waste transfer stations." Each one of those transfer stations invites a flood of unhealthy truck traffic, the emissions of an industrial operation, and of course, any health hazards in the waste itself, but currently don't show up on the Fair Share map at all. 

Similarly, Sunset Park's Jackie Gleason bus depot is the largest in Brooklyn, but because it is operated by the MTA isn't on the map. As Bautista put it, "pollution doesn't start and stop with city-owned facilities."

"It's definitely a step in the right direction," said the Pratt Center for Community Development's Elena Conte, who added that the changes would provide a "more detailed and realistic picture of cumulative impacts in the district." 

Even this limited addition to Fair Share, however, has its share of loopholes. "Why are power plants excluded?" asked Bautista. A more effective solution, Bautista proposed, would be to base decisions on public health data in different neighborhoods, in addition to the location of other polluters. That would focus the city's attention on what really matters, its citizens' health.

The Charter Revision Commission remains open to public testimony from now through a hearing on Monday, said Conte, at which point it will vote on final amendments to put on the ballot as referenda. "We're going to continue to push them," she said. "This is an issue that is at the heart of equity in New York City."

Photo: So Cal Metro/Flickr

With an average of 23.8 peds or cyclists killed per hundred million miles driven, garbage trucks had by far the highest fatality rate in the study, exceeding the all-vehicle average of 1.7 killed per hundred million miles by a factor of 14. Within the garbage truck category, the per-mile rate of killing pedestrians and cyclists was two-thirds higher for private haulers than for NYC Department of Sanitation trucks.

Six hours before Rivera was killed, operators of a Philadelphia garbage barge ignored a radio distress call from a stalled “duck boat” and rammed it, killing two tourists and sending 30 more into the Delaware River, the National Transportation Safety Board revealed yesterday.

Investigators from the NTSB, the federal agency chartered with determining causes of transportation accidents and formulating recommendations to improve transportation safety, are combing the Delaware River for clues in the duck boat-barge smashup. Yet none can be seen in Bushwick, just as no NTSB personnel have looked into any of the 100 or so other garbage truck-related pedestrian and cyclist fatalities dating to the mid-nineties.

The public associates the NTSB principally with investigating air crashes, and to a lesser extent with rail, marine and pipeline incidents. Yet the safety board’s charter (PDF, section 1131) also requires it to:

Investigate... and establish the facts, circumstances, and cause or probable cause of... any other accident related to the transportation of individuals or property when the Board decides [that] the accident involves problems of a recurring character. (emphasis added)

Citing this mandate, I wrote on behalf of Right of Way to NTSB chair Jim Hall in 1997, asking his agency to analyze what I said were “Two types of accident causation [that] are particularly recurrent in recent bicyclist fatalities in New York City: Dooring and interference from heavy trucks.” My letter was passed to the director of the USDOT Office of Environment, Energy and Safety, who dutifully cited ongoing agency programs while ignoring my plea to intervene in dooring and truck incidents. Further entreaties to Mr. Hall and other staffers at both USDOT and the NTSB were equally unavailing.

Yet even without federal support, municipalities are hardly powerless to reduce heavy truck dangers to cyclists and pedestrians. As the Portland (OR) Office of Transportation reports, fleets can be required to equip heavy trucks with “under-run” protective devices such as metal plates and guide bars to prevent cyclists from being dragged under the truck wheels. “Aspheric mirrors” can reduce truckers’ blind spots, without the visual distortion found in standard convex mirrors.

Proactive policing could summons operators for reckless maneuvers such as unsignaled turning, aggressive passing and rapid backing -- practices that are relatively rare for NYC Sanitation drivers but appear endemic among less-regulated private haulers. Taking the long view, taxes on packaging and disposable products, along with policies encouraging families to avoid manufactured food in favor of fresh food, could shrink dump truck traffic at the source by reducing the need for garbage collection in the first place.

But don’t look for Jim Hall to help. Hall, who stepped down from NTSB in 2001, is being groomed by the cellular communications industry to be the public face of a new lobbying campaign to fend off federal restrictions on use of mobile devices by drivers (watch the PowerPoint). The campaign, billed as The Drive Coalition (Drivers for Responsibility, Innovation and Vehicle Education), suffered a setback last week when criticism by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood forced them to shelve their rollout, according to Transportation Nation.

Perhaps safety campaigners should dust off that 1997 Right Of Way letter and send it to LaHood.

A reader sends this photo of a huge rig using Kent Avenue's new protected bike path as its own, highly illegal shortcut. Our tipster says the trucker was bearing down on him at a rapid clip for several blocks before slowing down enough to hear an inquiry through the window: "What do you think you're doing?" The driver's response was unenlightening and filled with obscenities, we're told. This shot was taken after the confrontation.

The last time we checked in on the Kent Avenue project, which converted the street to one-way flow, truck traffic was the burning issue. The 90th and 94th precincts are supposed to keep trucks off streets where they don't belong. From the looks of it, police need to send a stronger message.

See the head-on view of the rig after the jump.

One section of the Kent Avenue two-way bike path has been painted. Two more will follow. Image: NYCDOT [PDF].

We've got another dispatch from the ongoing bike lane drama that is Kent Avenue. At Wednesday night's information session hosted by Brooklyn CB1, the DOT team gave a short presentation [PDF] outlining their plan to address truck traffic changes caused by converting Kent to one-way flow. Then the public was invited to comment.

Truck routes in North Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

A couple of things to keep in mind. The traffic changes are happening in three phases. So far only the first has been completed. Once the whole thing is finished and truckers have had some time to learn the new traffic patterns, the straightest shot heading south goes nowhere near Wythe or North 11th. DOT intends to promote this route, which takes trucks down McGuinness Boulevard instead, and work with the local police precincts to keep truckers off streets where they're not supposed to drive.

As for the notion that the project makes streets less safe (some opponents went so far as to say the new traffic patterns will endanger children), it's hard to take seriously. This is not just a one-way conversion: The crossing distances will be shorter and the roadway narrower on Kent Avenue, which motorists used to treat as a little stretch of autobahn in Brooklyn. Now that traffic will be calmer.

The bike lane was always intended to be a precursor to the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. The new design now occupies the greenway footprint, so opposing the bike lane is tantamount to opposing the greenway. An area undergoing as much residential development as North Brooklyn sorely needs this new space for pedestrians and cyclists. Walking to the waterfront will feel much safer and more appealing, and biking to the Williamsburg Bridge won't just be limited to a few brave souls. CB1 embraced those improvements when it approved the greenway plan last April [PDF]; the same benefits should feel much more tangible once the Kent Avenue bike lane is completed next month.

Come out tonight and support the city's first two-way, on-street protected bike path.

DOT representatives will be presenting their plan to address traffic changes caused by the new one-way vehicular flow on Kent. The new design establishes the greenway footprint and re-establishes on-street parking and loading zones. No new truck routes have been created, though southbound truck traffic will travel differently than before. Plenty can be done to mitigate the truck traffic changes, but there's a lot of hearsay and misinformation floating around. You can be sure that some North Williamsburg residents living close to those designated truck routes will be there tonight, and they'll be loud. A show of support for safe cycling would give a big boost to this important link in the city's bike network.

The meeting gets started at 6:30 (sorry about the late notice) at 807 Manhattan Avenue -- the entrance is on Calyer Street.

By all accounts, the new plan enjoys the support of former opponents, including the Satmar Hasidic community and businesses along Kent that would see loading zones return. While supporters may have had the numerical advantage last night, they were not the loudest.

"DOT could barely get through its presentation," reports TA's Wiley Norvell, with lots of heckling coming from residents of North 11th Street (which is already a truck route but would receive diverted traffic). The meeting had already been going on a few hours by the time public comment on Kent Avenue started, Norvell said, and not that many people testified. "A lot of people who were there to speak in favor felt a little browbeaten."

There was no vote on the agenda last night.

No one is dismissing the issue of truck traffic, which could be mitigated, in part, by stricter route enforcement. But the latest plan is the product of an already long and contentious public process. "DOT came up with a design that satisfied those concerns," said Norvell. "There's never a perfect scenario that leaves everyone grinning ear to ear, but there's always a safest scenario."

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.

Check out this video, via BikePortland.org, on bicycle safety, part of a Portland Water Bureau campaign to reduce truck-cyclist collisions there. Last month, the Water Bureau held a bike safety seminar, which involved cyclists climbing into the cab of a city truck to see (or not see) driver blind spots for themselves.

The accompanying vid definitely puts the onus on cyclists (since "drivers are trained for safety"). Still, there's valuable info here on how the road looks from a truck driver's perspective, and it's impressive to see a city not only acknowledging the dangers trucks pose to cyclists, but taking action to mitigate them. Writes BikePortland.org editor Jonathan Maus:

I’m usually skeptical of educational videos as they are often cheesy and pedantic. But this one worked. Much of the footage was taken from inside the truck’s cab on crowded bikeways I’m very familiar with, but they looked completely different from a trucker’s perspective. It was eye-opening and nerve-racking just to watch the truck’s rear and side mirrors as bikes darted in and out of view — I couldn’t imagine the stress of actually operating that vehicle.

This handy illustration, courtesy of DOT via "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz, should be in the training curriculum for every delivery driver who does business in New York. Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson, who came across this graphic last week, says his appeals to delivery drivers stationed in bike lanes are often met by the excuse that it is not illegal to double park. When a vehicle blocks a bike lane, the law says otherwise:

No vehicle is allowed to block a bicycle lane at any time. If there is no curbside spaces on either side of the street within 100 feet of a delivery/pickup location, commercial vehicles may stand, “double parked,” next to a bicycle lane. If there is no active loading or unloading taking place standing a vehicle in such a manner can result in a violation. Please note also that this does not apply to midtown Manhattan.

Streetsblog contributor Ethan Kent sends along this item from CoolTown Studios, profiling what it calls "the contemporary urban delivery vehicle":

So what's the delivery truck equivalent of the bicycle? Look no further than Paris, the home of 20,000 shared bikes, and there you'll find La Petite Reine, a delivery company that utilizes a fleet of 60 Cargocycles.

With a delivery capacity of 400 lbs. and 50 cubic feet within an 18-mile delivery radius, La Petite Reine completes 2500 deliveries every day for larger corporate partners like DHL that can't access the more intimate street networks of more pedestrian-oriented downtowns.

'La Petite Reine' translates to 'Queen of the Road', the name given by the French to the bicycle. Founded in 2001, the company now serves Bordeaux, Rouen and Dijon.

What's that? Great, but it could never work in New York?

Think again.

If BP can stand for "Beyond Petroleum," what's to stop the trucking industry from claiming to "deliver a cleaner tomorrow"? Not much, apparently.

In a story about the current practices of K Street lobbyists, the Washington Post reports that even the American Trucking Associations -- a national trade group -- is adopting an eco-friendly tone:

Record gasoline prices have done more than boost advertising budgets for worried energy lobbies. They also have turned long-held positions of significant lobbying groups upside down -- and decidedly pro-environmental.

The American Trucking Associations last week did a 180 (or pretty close to that) on two key issues. In news releases notable for their use of the color green, the truck company lobby said it would accept a fuel tax increase -- once its most hated policy proposal -- if the extra revenue went toward reducing highway congestion. It also suggested tougher fuel economy standards for trucks, another shocker for the trucking industry.

Guess the ATA might have to iron out some differences with Truckers and Citizens United, a more grassroots-style group that staged a gas-guzzling, street-clogging "rally" in Washington last month to protest the price of fuel.

To get its green message across, the ATA has launched a campaign called "Trucks Deliver" touting six steps to reduce the industry's emissions. Their congestion mitigation strategy comes after the jump.

The American Trucking Associations advocates initiatives to improve highway infrastructure and reduce congestion.

Relieving highway congestion is a critically important strategy for reducing carbon emissions. Improving the nation’s highway infrastructure is a long-range challenge, and the American Trucking Associations has recommended a 20-year program, focused initially on fixing critical bottlenecks.  Longer-range ideas include creating truck-only corridors which would permit carriers to further increase the use of more productive vehicles. The needed infrastructure improvements can be paid for with a dedicated fuel tax if necessary. If congestion in all 437 urban areas were eliminated, the reduction in truck CO₂ emissions would be 45.2 million tons over ten years -- equal to the annual output of a population the size of the State of Colorado.

Whether the "Trucks Deliver" campaign is an exercise in green-washing, an adaptation to new economic realities, or a sincere effort to reduce the trucking industry's carbon footprint, one thing is clear: They'd still rather not broach the subject of freight rail.

Tonight the DOT will be presenting their plans for improved Manhattan Bridge bike access via the Chrystie Street bike lane to Community Board 3. This plan is going to involve the removal of parking along Chrystie Street, so it is anticipated that there will be resistance at the Community Board level.

It would be great to have supportive cyclists in the room. The details are as follows:

What: CB 3 Transportation Committee Meeting on Chrystie Street Bike Lane

When: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 6:30 PM

Where: Confucius Plaza, Community Room - 33 Bowery (at Bayard Street)

The Manhattan Bridge is the second busiest East River crossing for NYC cyclists. From 2005-2006 (most recent counts), the Manhattan Bridge saw a 90.3% increase in daily cycling trips (829-1,578). As the numbers of cyclists continue to grow, so will daily crossing over this vital connector between Manhattan & Brooklyn.

Chrystie Street is one of the most common routes for cyclists commuting to and from Brooklyn on the Manhattan Bridge. It is also a 'through' and 'local' truck route. (http://home2.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/uppertruckroute.pdf)

According to the City's Bicyclist Fatalities and Serious Injuries Report, 1996-2005, trucks are twice as deadly to cyclists as regular vehicles, even SUVs. The same study found that of all the fatalities between those years, only one occurred in a bike lane.

T.A.'s www.crashstat.org highlights the need for traffic calming and improved design on Chrystie Street as well.

A bike lane along Chrystie Street is a necessary safety measure for cyclists and for pedestrians. This plan will also involve many pedestrian treatments along this dangerous corridor. The number of people the bike and pedestrian improvements will serve far outweighs the number of people who will impacted by any loss in car parking.

At a panel on cyclists' rights, Bob Mionske, a Portland, Oregon attorney and founder of Bicycle Law, offered a cogent explanation of the obstacles cyclists face when it comes to public perception, police enforcement, and holding motorists accountable for injuring and killing cyclists. "Anti-cyclist bias is endemic in the police, the court system, and the media," he said, then described how bias in each arena reinforces bias in the others.

Mionske talked about three examples from his practice:

• A 19 year-old cyclist stops next to a cement truck. Truck turns right and crushes her. Headline the next day reads: "Bike slams into cement truck." Police said the driver couldn't see her, didn't issue a ticket.

• A rider going downhill in the bike lane gets crushed under the rear wheels of a right-turning garbage truck. Cops determined that the driver had violated the cyclist's right-of-way, but he couldn't perceive it. They didn't issue a ticket, even though the sideview mirror was held together with duct tape and bungee cord. Media portrayed it as a "cars vs. bikes" story and ran file footage of a bicyclist on a roundabout, nothing from the scene of the crime. "It's a feedback loop," said Mionske. "The message to society is: Someone died on a bike, but it was probably his fault."

• A mother called, said her son was hit by an F150 truck. Son was issued two tickets for running a light and had $25,000 in medical bills. He had front lights, back lights, and a helmet at the time of the crash. On the scene, the officer asked the cyclist what happened, but the cyclist was in shock and couldn't remember. News said, "Wrong way cyclist hits truck, driver has heart attack," but it turned out that the driver was entering a diabetic coma at the time of the crash. Media wasn't interested when the case against the cyclist was dismissed.

"This just poisons the mind of the public, and the public is who is empaneled in juries," said Mionske. "What you see is, anti-cycling bias starts with cops, is reinforced by the media, and is perpetuated in the courts."

"We need to keep the media accountable, and we need to talk to the police," he said. "But it starts with enforcement."