Livable streets prodigy Elli Giammona. Photo: The Missoulian

Elli is a 9-year-old in Missoula, Montana who a couple of years ago began to question why she couldn't bike to school. When her mother explained that it wasn't safe because the road leading from their home to Hellgate Elementary -- a typical suburban arterial, from the looks of it -- didn't have a sidewalk, Elli took action.

With encouragement from her mom and the help of her younger sister and older brother, she petitioned Missoula County, gathering signatures and composing a letter explaining the benefits of a walkable Mullan Road. The Missoulian reports:

The letter is dated Jan. 14, 2009, around the time [county public works director Greg] Robertson was looking for a project eligible for American Reinvestment and Recovery Act dollars. Criteria? A quick turnaround, a project in the urban area, and one uncomplicated by problems like right-of-way negotiations and extra environmental reviews.

"Honestly, I didn't have any other projects for consideration at the time that would have met the criteria," he said.

Long story short: A new trail is expected to be finished in time for Elli to ride it to school next fall.

Not only has Elli made it safer for herself and her neighbors to ride a bike or take a walk, she's also made plain how completely the stars must align for something as simple as a car-free ribbon of asphalt to become reality. (Even now, the planned Missoula trail won't connect with the school because of right-of-way costs.) Just a few decades ago a kid riding or walking to school would be considered the epitome of American wholesomeness. Now it's a symptom of child neglect, in part because of infrastructure so obviously inhospitable that even a 7-year-old gets it.

Maybe, above all, Elli Giammona and her family have given us hope for a future in which full-grown adults get it too. One where it won't take an act of Congress to get a child to school safely.

Here's another installment in what could ideally become a series on how police departments are doing right by pedestrians and cyclists. We posted the Chicago bike video a couple of weeks back. We now present the Sacramento crosswalk sting. (Warning: Insufferable Geico commercial may precede video.)

Back in April, TV station KCRA filmed a plainclothes Sacramento officer busting motorists who couldn't be bothered to yield the right of way. Notice how, though they cite the potential amount of the fine, neither the anchor nor the reporter ever intimate that the operation is a money-making scheme? Instead of sticking a mic in a driver's face for a quick-and-dirty accusation of extortion -- a near-must in most any mainstream media story about traffic enforcement -- the reporter is completely sympathetic to the pedestrians in harm's way, and rightly credits the officer for putting his life on the line.

Ben wrote earlier this year how similar measures could be effective here in New York. Wouldn't it be great if we could all point to a law-breaking vehicle and have NYPD swoop in?

Small islands are often natural fits for car-free or car-reduced environments. Some take advantage, some don't. Based on my dozen or so visits over the last 13 years, most recently in July, I'd say Key West, Florida, falls mostly into the former camp.

In many ways, Key West is a prototypical American beach town. There are plenty of novelty t-shirt shops, the requisite seafood shacks, and a plethora of bars for sun-baked tourists to imbibe to the sounds of bad cover bands. But in addition to its noted architecture, the southernmost city in the contiguous U.S. is also home to a significant number of historic sites, two of the most famous probably being the Ernest Hemingway House and Truman's Little White House. With these and other attractions dotting "old town," and with little space for wide streets or sprawl development among its six square miles of land area, Key West has maintained much of its original residential and commercial density, along with a highly walkable and bikeable street grid [PDF].

And unlike other tourism-dependent east coast towns that are inexplicably hostile to non-motorized modes of travel -- we're looking at you, Savannah -- Key West is that rare U.S. small city where pedestrians, cyclists and motorists commingle with relatively minimal conflict.

That's not to say that, considering the number of bike riders -- many of them inexperienced tourists -- the city doesn't have its share of cyclist-involved crashes. Key West bike coordinator John Wilkins does not have complete data, but says, "I do know it is not good if you look at the numbers only. We may have a high accident rate but not compared to the amount of people who bike."

Eddie Marsh is a member of the local bicycle action committee, and rents out bikes in Key West. "People use bikes as part of their life," he says. "It is a practical decision, not a political one. There is no typical cyclist here. It might be a drag queen, a tourist, or, as I once saw, a guy smoking, with a big John McCain sign.

"I send a lot of people out on the street who haven't ridden in years. I tell them to stick to the low-traffic streets, and take the advice of Thich Nhat Hanh: smile, breathe and go slowly."

Since the Keys segment of the Overseas Railroad was partially destroyed by the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, then replaced by what is now the southernmost leg of U.S. 1, Key West has remained primarily accessible by car, plane and, of course, boat. In the not too distant future, Wilkins and others hope, bikes will be added to that list, at least for residents and visitors coming from the Upper Keys, with the planned build-out of the Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail.

In the meantime, says Wilkins, Key West is adding bike lanes. "We continue to iron out trouble spots as funds are available."

Charles Diez

Wheras Diez originally faced up to 13 years in prison, felony assault carries a penalty of around two years. Reports the weekly Mountain Xpress:

Grand juries deliberate in secret, and District Attorney Ron Moore submitted both the assault and attempted-murder charges. He told Xpress that he doesn’t know why the grand jury rejected the murder charge.

We don't either, but we can guess. 

(h/t Cookster) 

Investigation continues after another recent pedestrian death in Ocean City, NJ, where locals say they are accustomed to reckless drivers and crashes. Photo: pressofAtanticCity.com

Though he somehow got a job delivering pizzas, police discovered that Maguino did not have a drivers license. Despite the brazen recklessness and flouting of the law that led to Alice Myers' death, prosecutors and a judge agreed last week to let Maguino off with three years of probation and a $500 fine, plus 75 hours of community service and $162 in "penalties." Explains the Star-Ledger:

[T]here was no recklessness by Maguino, who was driving under the 35 mph speed limit. He was not intoxicated, and there were no mechanical problems with the car, Morris County Assistant Prosecutor Kelley Lavery told Judge Thomas Manahan.

Myers was dressed in dark clothing when she entered the street as the northbound Maguino had a green light. A nearby street light also was burned out and a crosswalk signal did not work, Lavery said.

"This was an accident," Lavery said. "All indications are he was not operating his vehicle recklessly. The state decided that ethically it could not pursue a death-by-auto charge."

As a result, prosecutors ruled out more-serious death-by-auto or manslaughter charges, and Maguino pleaded guilty to third-degree leaving the scene of an accident, which has no presumption of jail time, and to a traffic summons of driving without a license.

Judge Manahan agreed to the plea deal for Maguino in spite of protests from Myers' husband and son.

If New Jersey authorities are serious about reducing the number of pedestrian deaths by auto, they would do well to examine what's happening in their courtrooms along with conditions on their streets. Not that New Yorkers have room to chide, but in any state where an unlicensed driver can take a life and remain immune even to charges of recklessness -- and in cases where the victim is left to die in the street, no less -- it's practically guaranteed that motorists will feel free to endanger pedestrians at will.

For further proof of the mindset engendered by such cavalier attitudes toward street safety, check out the comment sections of the Maguino stories. Notice how many readers are far more distressed by Maguino's immigration status -- he's a Peruvian reportedly in the US illegally -- than the fact that he killed an innocent human being.

The shooter, Charles Diez.

Police said the driver, Charles Diez, claimed he was upset that the victim was bike riding with his child on the heavily traveled Tunnel Road.

Diez pulled a gun and opened fire, hitting the victim in his bicycle helmet, according to police. They said the bullet penetrated the outer lining of the helmet but did not actually hit the victim's head.

Diez, a firefighter, has been charged with attempted first degree murder. We'll see how the "I shot the father to protect the child" defense holds up in court.

Downtown Roanoke. Photo: ocracokewaves/Flickr

Watching the Ciclovia video was very inspiring. I don't often think that Colombia could be an example for the world. So I feel proud of Bogotá to have many features to showcase, such as Ciclovia and Transmilenio. I thought the video was worth more than 1,000 words, and it was the easiest way to get people's attention toward having a Ciclovia in Roanoke.

At first I used it to introduce Ciclovia to the people that are currently helping me with the event -- city officials, artists, friends, etc. I broadcast it during an Earth Day festival hoping to get some volunteer interest. Now that I'm actually having the event, I'm using it to get more organizations involved. I'm introducing the event with a brief description and including a link to the video so that they get a better idea. 

I really think that without the video (the short version actually is the one I use the most), it would have been very hard to even get a permit for it, because it is such a new concept for this region.

Check out this livable streets story from Ocean City, New Jersey, where a local arts group, high school art students, and the police department teamed up for a street mural installation. The kicker: the project was inspired by Streetfilms (look for the shout-out at the 4:30 mark).

Ocean City Mayor Sal Perillo says the benefits are threefold: the mural has spurred community involvement, improved neighborhood aesthetics, and will ideally serve as a traffic-calming device along a designated bike route. Depending on community reaction, Perillo says, other intersections could get the same treatment.

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.

• St. Louis - An election is being held to give Metro a half cent more in order to keep up with operating expenses and expand Metrolink, the region's light rail system. It's called Proposition M.
  
• Los Angeles - This would be a half cent sales tax for capital expansion. It's called Measure R.
  
• Oakland/Berkeley - AC Transit is looking to raise the parcel tax $48 annually to pay for operations. This measure is called VV. Update from the comments on a different ballot measure in Berkeley: KK in Berkeley would make it more difficult to build BRT or light rail, by requiring a vote of the people any time a lane is converted from auto to transit use.
  
• Kansas City - A half cent sales tax is on the ballot to build a starter light rail line.

Californians will also be voting on a bond issue for high-speed rail. The long-awaited, hard-fought Proposition 1A would devote $10 billion toward a bullet train line from Northern to Southern California. It has the backing of Governor Schwarzenegger and was polling at close to 50 percent as the vote neared.

With transit agencies straining to keep up with demand as federal support lags, referenda like these could be key to growing and sustaining many local and state systems.

If anyone knows of other big transportation votes happening today, please leave in comments.

Photo via Streetsblog Los Angeles

Via TreeHugger, this YouTube clip features Oakland's Trunk Boiz boasting about their scraper bikes, which sport custom-painted frames and rims to match (more photos here). The video has become an online sensation, drawing more than two million views. Tyrone Stevenson, one of the creators of the scraper bike style, is ready to capitalize, reports NPR:

"Oakland has been taken over by scraper bikes," says Stevenson. "On the Internet, it is worldwide. There's people from literally across the world making these bikes, from Portland, Oregon, to Japan to Australia to Jamaica."

Stevenson says he's already making a living scraperizing bikes, but he's got big plans for the future: trademarks, patents and, someday soon, a scraper bike shop.

Stevenson's rhyme also includes the heavy favorite for Streetsblog's 2008 Lyric of the Year:

I'm movin' on my scraper bike
I'm cruisin' on my scraper bike
My scraper bike go hard
I don't need no car

That's the sound of America's youth culture catching up to the Japanese.

Someone swiped the bike of the British opposition leader, David Cameron, who happens to be a national advocate for parking that gas-guzzling automobile and pedaling instead. Mr. Cameron, the Conservative party chief, regularly commutes to work at the House of Commons by bicycle.

As the story filled with humble details goes, he stopped at a supermarket on his way home, to pick up some items for dinner, and left his mountain bike locked to a bollard, a short and stout barrier whose main purpose is to block vehicle traffic while letting pedestrians pass. Mr. Cameron would regret the decision minutes later.

Sloppy locking technique aside, what's news to me is that the leader of the UK's right-wing party is a bike commuter and advocate for switching modes. This is the first I'd heard that Cameron is cut from the same cloth as London Mayor Boris Johnson, another Tory and avid city cyclist. Turns out several Tory MPs like to ride to work too. In America, this would be like Bloomberg biking to work every day, Republican congressmen joining Earl Blumenauer on his commute to the Capitol, and John McCain championing cycling as transportation.

Of course, associating bikes with one side of the political spectrum or the other may be missing the point, as one MP told the BBC: 

"I have to say it is not an ideological crusade as far as I'm concerned. It is just a convenient way of getting about."

Photo of David Cameron pre-bike theft: Daily Mirror

Mayor Bloomberg chose Sadik-Khan, and now we have separated bike lanes, brand-new plazas, a boulevard-like design for Broadway, and more. We need a similarly visionary leader for DDOT.

Perhaps because D.C. is such a wonk-filled town (or maybe because it was one of America's first planned cities), greater Washington boasts a healthy number of really smart, high-quality blogs covering urban planning, transportation policy and livable streets. I'll be looking forward to seeing how these bloggers help shape the public discussion as Fenty goes about choosing his next transportation commissioner. Here's some good D.C. reading...

• The WashCycle
  
• Beyond DC
• Goodspeed Update
• Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space
• Rethink College Park

Time to trade in the 22's and hydraulics for a Schwinn?

The Guardian reports that SNCF, France's national rail company, is taking advantage of a boom in ridership to make aggressive plans for expansion. While SNCF positions itself to help ease the impact of high fuel prices on the French public, what are American leaders preparing to do? Drilling offshore and taking a few hits from the strategic petroleum reserve aren't going to cut it.

Over in France, all the new riders have SNCF chairman Guillaume Pepy thinking big:

The state-owned SNCF delivered a net €1.1bn (£875m) profit last year and first-half figures, due next week, are said to be sparkling. Pepy envisages up to 80m extra passenger trips this year or an increase of around 8%.

"This change will speed up because we are facing a twin energy and environment crisis," he says, pointing to surging fuel costs and growing personal worries about carbon footprints. "People want sustainable mobility and, in France, more trains and more SNCF."

The growing number of passengers is maxing out the current system, which Pepy sees as an opportunity, especially in a time of escalating fuel prices. He wants to double the size of SNCF's high-speed network by 2015, make rail stations into multi-modal hubs, and capture market share from energy-intensive air and road travel.

The new SNCF chairman sees rail stations, mainly in the regions, becoming new transport (and commercial) hubs not just for trains but for buses and trams -- "all those places where people don't want to bring their cars."

SNCF executives believe rail can take market leadership from air and road on journeys up to four hours long and point to the success of Eurostar (part owned by the group) in increasing traffic so far this year by around a fifth on the back of shorter journey times between London and Brussels/Paris. You can even get to Marseille from Paris in little more than three hours.

Contrast to the attitude among many politicians and opinion leaders here in the U.S. -- typified by this Wall Street Journal op-ed -- which views public management of rail systems skeptically, to put it mildly. Congress may be taking a long-overdue step toward investing more in Amtrak, but that is triage compared to the direction SNCF is heading in, as high-speed train service in Europe widens its already considerable performance lead over American intercity rail.

Photo of high-speed trains at the Gare de Lyon in Paris: Feuillu/Flickr

Four miles of the Health Line are currently operational along Euclid Avenue, a major downtown thoroughfare that was once packed with streetcars, buses and pedestrians. The route will stretch nearly ten miles when completed this October. With its sleek articulated buses, new stations, and improved trip times, the service aims to woo commuters out of their cars and onto transit:

The transit corridor is geared toward attracting professionals, many of them doctors and other health-care workers who commute to a medical district anchored by the renowned Cleveland Clinic. Medical companies are paying the city's transit authority $12 million for the naming rights.

The challenge facing Cleveland -- and ultimately Chicago -- is how to set the new service apart from the stereotype of bus travel as slow, outdated and used mostly by society's have-nots.

"In Cleveland, suits don't ride buses. We are out to change that," Joseph Calabrese, chief executive officer and general manager of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transportation Authority, said last week.

In addition to being a full-featured service with pre-payment, dedicated lanes, signal prioritization, and yes, enforcement cameras on every bus, what makes the Health Line worth studying is the smart planning behind it. The new bus lanes take advantage of excess capacity on wide streets, and the route not only provides direct connections to an employment center, it is also a critical component of efforts to lure businesses and residents to Cleveland's urban core:

In addition to its transportation benefits, the Health Line is extending an economic lifeline to neighborhoods on the route that have been in need of resuscitation for many years. The city has lost almost half of its population of 1 million-plus when it was a bustling manufacturing center during the first half of the 20th Century.

Young professionals and empty-nesters are slowly returning to the city center and to a blighted warehouse district, where restaurants, neighborhood bars, boutiques and other businesses are sprouting.

Other Rust Belt metropolises and older cities with pre-automobile development patterns could employ a similar transit-oriented strategy to great effect. With rising fuel prices nudging more Americans toward denser, urban areas, many U.S. cities should join Chicago in looking to Cleveland for inspiration.

Image of Cleveland RTA's new articulated bus: Euclid Transit Transportation Project

Last year, health care giant Humana started a bike-share for employees at its Louisville, Kentucky headquarters. As of this May, some 2,500 of Humana's 8,500 Louisville-based workers had enrolled in the "Freewheelin" program, which, as the name implies, is offered at no charge. Humana is bringing 1,000 Freewheelin bikes to Minneapolis-St. Paul for the Republican National Convention in September, and will leave behind 70 of them, along with checkout kiosks, for use in the Twin Cities' own fledgling bike-share program. Humana is also providing bikes for the Democratic convention in Denver, which plans to put them to use in a new city program of its own.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, Saint Francis Health System launched "Tulsa Townies" last August. The Tulsa program is also free, and bikes are available to the public at four checkout stations, all located in parks along the Arkansas River.

Across the Canadian border, credit union Vancity last year loaned out close to 50 bikes to residents of Vancouver, British Columbia, to ride free of charge for three weeks before passing them on to other users. The bikes were eventually collected and distributed to low-income would-be cyclists. Vancity complemented its program with a web site encouraging users to blog about their bike-share experience.

And back down in Portland, Oregon, whose municipal program seems to have hit a snag, a homegrown company has put its own twist on the bike-share concept. Rejuvenation, which manufactures and sells "new old stock" vintage home hardware, is raffling off one bike per month, complete with gear, to its employees. Winners must commit to riding their bikes to work an average of at least once a week, or else they must give the bike a co-worker. Rejuvenation also gives out bus passes, along with up to $30 per month to any employee who walks, bikes, or takes transit to work.

Photo: Tulsa Townies

These realities are lost on many of the suburbanites quoted in the Post story, notably Northern Virginia Congressman James P. Moran Jr., who predicts the District's economy will dry up as its streets become more people-friendly (an argument also heard -- and ultimately rejected -- recently in San Francisco, of all places). But one out-of-town legislator has a more tempered view, and offered an insight that also rings true around these parts.

"You'd like me to lambaste the District, but we're all in the same boat," said Montgomery County Council member Nancy Floreen (D-At Large). "I am sympathetic to some of these initiatives. But the challenge is finding the right balance. Not everyone can ride Metro or walk to work."

She placed blame for the problem, in part, on the federal government, which offers many of its employees free parking in the city.

While DC can't stop the feds from giving away parking, it has launched its aforementioned market rate metering program for curbside space, even dedicating a good share of the proceeds to pedestrian and bike improvements. And with no far-flung authority to answer to, the District is free, for example, to use automated traffic enforcement, including red light and speeding cameras.

Left to its own devices to achieve its stated goal of encouraging transit use, biking and walking, it will be interesting to see how this major US city pulls it off, and what other cities, including ours, can learn from it.

Photo of crosswalk flags on Connecticut Ave by billadler/Flickr. DC has one of the highest pedestrian death rates among large US cities.

Johnson's director of transport, Kulveer Ranger, told the Times that Johnson is looking to the proposed Manchester pricing model, which charges for fewer hours per day.

Mr Ranger said: "Flexibility around hours of operation, flexibility around how it is charged; all of those things are options we're looking to consider.

"The mayor has been absolutely clear that he wants to make it fairer for people, not so much as a blunt tool, but something that's a bit more well managed and gives people a bit more flexibility in terms of how it's operated."

The Times, which opposes pricing, relies exclusively on sources from "motoring groups" -- who also speak of "making the system fairer," etc. -- to fill out the story. But in the comments, reader "Barry" recalls how candidate Johnson professed an interest in improving conditions for those who don't or can't drive.

We certainly need more sophisticated road charging, where payment is related to time of day and distance travelled. But to rule out extending the scheme shows that Boris's pre-election claim to support cyclists, pedestrians and bus users over the selfish minority of self-drivers was a sham.

Photo: Guardian Unlimited

The $7-million bike center in Brisbane's central business district was funded by the Queensland government and the Brisbane City Council, and is operated by a private company. The first of its kind in Australia, it offers swipe-card access and some pretty swank-looking accommodations. The cost of membership is roughly comparable to the local transit fare, depending on what type of ticket one uses.

Local government officials, quoted on OurBrisbane.com, see it as one element in an overall strategy:

State Government and Brisbane City Council have welcomed the centre as part of the battle against traffic congestion. Brisbane City Councillor Jane Prentice said the people of Brisbane now had the perfect reason to ditch the car in favour of more active, healthy and sustainable travel options.

"King George Square Cycle Centre demonstrates our commitment to encouraging people to live a more active, healthy and sustainable lifestyle," said Cr Prentice.

"The more people we get travelling on two wheels or two legs, the more cars we take off the road enabling us to live healthier and greener lifestyles that will contribute to ensuring Brisbane's long-term sustainability."

Transport Minister John Mickel said that, by using the King George Square Cycle Centre, the average commuter could save more than $25 dollars per day.

"The average car commuter can spend up to $33 per day on off-street parking alone when travelling into the CBD," Mr Mickel said.

Think a paid bike commuter facility like this one could fly here in New York, say in Midtown or the Financial District?