Cleveland's HealthLine. Photo courtesy of ITDP

Last month the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy released its report, “Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit” [PDF], which proposed a LEED-like rating system for bus rapid transit projects and laid out a strategy for American cities to build systems as good as the world’s best BRT. While more than 20 American bus projects have claimed the BRT mantle at various times, the ITDP report named just five American cities with bus corridors that made the grade and earned the title “True BRT.” Streetsblog is pleased to publish a series of case studies from ITDP examining these innovative transit projects. We started with Pittsburgh and today, we focus on Cleveland.

Cleveland doesn’t often get recognition for being a leader in innovative transportation – but maybe it should. A recent report from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) awarded Cleveland the highest rating of any American BRT system.

Cleveland’s first BRT line opened in 2008. The HealthLine stretches 6.8 miles along Euclid Avenue, connecting the city’s main employment centers, including downtown Cleveland, the Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospital, coming within a half mile of more than 200,000 employees and 58,000 households. In just three years, ridership has increased more than 60 percent over the bus routes that formerly ran along the corridor. This promotional video shows how the HealthLine mimics light rail for a better passenger experience.

The BRT, and the streetscape improvements that were added as part of the construction, have helped spur new developments along the corridor. By the time the system opened, over $4.3 billion had been invested or pledged along the route in the form of rehabilitations of old buildings into housing and retail centers, as well as major expansions of nearby university, museum, and hospital infrastructure.

The HealthLine includes BRT best-practice features like off-board fare collection, median-aligned bus-only lanes, and at-level passenger boarding. Passengers have reported average time savings of twelve minutes, and average speeds along the corridor have increased 34 percent over previous service. Riders can travel from downtown’s Public Square to University Circle, four miles away, in a swift 20 minutes.

The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA), which operates the HealthLine, is the nation’s thirteenth largest public-transit system. The RTA has done an impressive job at winning customer satisfaction and communicating with the public. Just six months after the HealthLine opened, the RTA reported a 90 percent approval rating by riders; 92 percent said the service was reliable and 94 percent said the trips are on time.

The HealthLine was the nation’s first federally-funded BRT system, receiving $82.2 million from the FTA in the form of a New Starts grant. Combined with state and local sources, the project totaled $200 million for buses, station infrastructure and streetscape and roadway improvements along the corridor, including the planting of 1,500 new trees.

An $85 monthly pass gets you unlimited rides for one calendar month on all rapid routes and regular buses. “With the recent surge in gas prices, even more people are trying RTA and the HealthLine and discovering the benefits of riding RTA,” said RTA CEO and President Joe Calabrese. With gasoline prices hovering around four dollars per gallon in northeast Ohio and elsewhere in the U.S., saving on transportation becomes a higher priority. Kionte Watkins, who was surprised with a free one-year pass for being the ten millionth rider, commented that she “started taking RTA a month ago to save money on gas and parking and I really love it.”

Holly LaDue is a publications consultant for ITDP. You can read more about the future of BRT in the United States at www.itdp.org.

Pittsburgh's East Busway serves 15 bus routes and more than 25,000 riders daily. Photo: ITDP

Last month the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy released its report, “Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit” [PDF], which proposed a LEED-like rating system for bus rapid transit projects and laid out a strategy for American cities to build systems as good as the world’s best BRT. While more than 20 American bus projects have claimed the BRT mantle at various times, the ITDP report named just five American cities with bus corridors that made the grade and earned the title “True BRT.” Streetsblog is pleased to publish a series of case studies from ITDP examining these innovative transit projects, starting with the country’s first BRT routes, in Pittsburgh.

In recent years, Pittsburgh’s reputation has been rejuvenated. The former industrial hub is becoming an innovative model for urban re-development, and an attractive place to live and work.

Pittsburgh’s leadership on the urban sustainability front is not a recent phenomenon – in fact, it was the first city in the United States to implement elements of bus rapid transit, and it paved the way for more robust U.S. BRT systems.

In 1977, only three years after Curitiba, Brazil implemented the world’s first BRT system, Pittsburgh opened the South Busway, 4.3 miles of exclusive bus lanes, running though previously underserved areas of the city, from the western suburbs to the downtown. The city was concerned about worsening traffic congestion, and, lacking the funds to rehabilitate the city’s streetcar lines, took inspiration from Curitiba and created the South Busway. Funding for the system came from U.S. DOT, the state of Pennsylvania and Allegheny County. The Port Authority of Allegheny County, a county-owned, state-funded agency, operates the system.

The success of the South Busway helped the city leverage funding for the expansion of the network, and in 1983, the Martin Luther King, Jr. East Busway opened. The East Busway began as a 6.8 mile network, with an additional 2.3 miles added in 2003, connecting the eastern suburbs with downtown. Fifteen bus routes run along its corridor. Its current weekday ridership is 25,600, with annual ridership close to 7 million.

The East Busway built on the success of its predecessor and offered fundamental BRT features including a dedicated busway, service as frequent as every two minutes during peak period, signal prioritization, and direct service operations (more on that soon). However, there is no off-board fare collection. Instead, passengers pay upon entrance for in-bound trips and upon exit for outbound trips, which helps reduce delays in service because of fare collection.

Pittsburgh is currently the only BRT system in the United States that operates a direct service model, meaning that local, limited and express services share the East Busway, accommodating a wide variety of transit needs. As the buses serving suburban routes enter the main corridors, they transfer onto the dedicated bus lanes via connection ramps, making transfer-free trips for passengers. The BRT buses can also exit the busway and use city streets to deliver passengers to destinations.

Today Pittsburgh is moving ahead with expansions and improvements to its BRT network. A new proposed route – downtown to Oakland – is a dense corridor packed with housing, employment centers, universities and businesses. All told, 110,000 people work along the route. The city’s transit agency estimates 68,000 riders a day will use the new route, or 24 percent of the Port Authority’s current total ridership.

In creating its existing busways, the Port Authority did not have to re-purpose car lanes for the BRT, an issue that has generated anti-BRT sentiment among residents in cities like Eugene and Los Angeles. Plans to re-purpose on-street lanes to grow the BRT system in Pittsburgh will almost certainly encounter similar resistance, but the public’s familiarity with the East Busway and South Busway should help overcome such obstacles.

Stephanie Lotshaw is a program associate at ITDP. You can read more about the future of BRT in the United States at www.itdp.org.

In ITDP's BRT rating system, the SDX route in Las Vegas eked out a bronze-standard rating, one of only five American routes to pass the threshold of "true BRT." Image: ITDP

Attempts by U.S. cities to build Bus Rapid Transit systems tend to get stymied by a Catch-22: Most Americans have no experience riding great BRT, so mustering the political will to build full-fledged systems — and reallocate the necessary street space from cars to buses — is often fiendishly difficult. The results — incremental bus improvements sold to the public as BRT — are too watered down to showcase the full extent to which bus-based systems can attract riders and get people to switch from driving to transit.

In Boston, for instance, bus speeds for one route on the Silver Line Waterfront corridor actually decreased despite the project’s $619 million pricetag. Meanwhile, cities in Latin America, Asia, and Africa are rolling out new, high-capacity BRT systems at a rapid clip, leaving American transit networks behind.

Cities can get away with calling half-measures “BRT” in part because there are no standards in place to define what truly qualifies as BRT. If all it takes is pre-paid boarding and longer spacing between stops, then the term loses meaning. In a new report, “Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit” [PDF], the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy sets out to fill this void with BRT standards that American cities can shoot for.

ITDP is proposing a scoring system to grade bus-based transit corridors, which would work much like the LEED certification system for green buildings. The authors say their scorecard has yet to be perfected, but it already spits out results that make intuitive sense — like the fact that no U.S. city has ever built a first-rate BRT corridor. While American attempts to build bus rapid transit systems have shaved travel times and attracted new riders to transit, ITDP concludes that every single one has failed to meet the highest standards for BRT design.

“Based on what we’ve seen in our work in cities around the world, we think there’s still more that could be done,” ITDP director Walter Hook said in a statement accompanying the report. “Getting at least one truly world-class BRT system built in the U.S. could inspire cities around the country to rethink the way they use buses in the fight against increasing traffic congestion and rising fuel prices.”

More than 20 American bus projects have claimed the BRT mantle, the authors report, but only five even qualify as true Bus Rapid Transit: Cleveland’s HealthLine, Los Angeles’s Orange Line, Pittsburgh’s East Busway, Eugene’s EmX, and Las Vegas’s SDX. Those corridors all distinguished themselves by running buses in the center of the roadbed and physically separating them from regular traffic — two characteristics that factor heavily in ITDP’s 100-point scale.

Even the best American systems barely make the cut as “true BRT.” The top-rated bus line in the states, the HealthLine, scores a 63. That’s good enough for what ITDP calls the bronze-standard BRT rating, but far short of the gold-standard systems in Bogota (a 93) or Guangzhou (an 89) that use BRT infrastructure for several routes and carry tens of thousands of passengers per hour. Boston’s Silver Line and New York’s Select Bus Service, meanwhile, scored below the 50-point threshold ITDP has set for projects to qualify as BRT.

To break free from the BRT Catch-22 in the United States, some city will have to go out on a limb and build a gold-standard system that other American cities can look to as a model. With Rahm Emanuel’s recent pledge to build BRT with a full complement of features, Chicago might be that city. ITDP also identifies upcoming bus projects in the Bay Area and Montgomery County, Maryland as candidates to raise the standard for American BRT. (The full report goes into tremendous detail about the hurdles that stand in the way of building these projects as robustly as possible, including antiquated engineering guidelines that prioritize traffic flow.)

Once someone decides to build world-class BRT in the United States, it shouldn’t be long until Americans see what it can do. The ability to move quickly from design to implementation is one of the chief advantages of BRT. If an ambitious new Midwestern mayor set his mind to it, the nation’s first gold-standard BRT system could be up and running by 2014.

Grosvenor Square, London, the site of Europe's first parking meter, shows how putting a price on parking clears up the street and makes parking available. Image: ITDP.

Flashback to Europe, sixty years ago. Just emerging from the ruin of total war, the continent was in the midst of a nearly unprecedented reconstruction. Over the next decade, industry finally was able to turn toward consumer products, from stockings to refrigerators and, of course, the automobile. Italians owned only 342,000 cars in 1950, but ten years later that number had increased to two million, according to historian Tony Judt. In France, the number of cars tripled over the decade.

With mass car-ownership fundamentally new for Europe, parking policy was practically non-existent. The first parking meter — an American invention — only made it to Europe in 1958, arriving in front of the American embassy in London. In most places, cars could park not only for free but wherever they wanted: on the sidewalk, in a public square.

When they realized that simply giving drivers free rein to park anywhere was untenable, Europeans attempted to build enough parking to meet the population’s galloping demand. Public space, from sidewalks to canals, was turned into parking space. Zoning forced all new development to use money and space for parking. All these concessions, however, only made European cities friendlier to cars and further drove up demand.

Today, however, all that is in the past. As outlined in the new report from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, “Europe’s Parking U-Turn: From Accommodation to Regulation,” the continent is now leading the world when it comes to innovative, intelligent and sustainable parking policy [PDF].

Across Europe, cities have come to understand that oversupply or subsidy of parking leads to too much driving. The effect is considerable. In Vienna, for example, when the city began to charge for on-street parking, the number of vehicle kilometers traveled plummeted from 10 million annually to 3 million. In Munich, the introduction of a new parking management system has resulted in 1,700 fewer automobiles owned in the city center each year since 2000.

Zurich has emerged as a world leader on parking policy. Here, on-street parking was replaced with pedestrian space, likely to compensate for new off-street spaces. Image: ITDP.

Looking across the Atlantic offers a wide array of strategies to manage parking more effectively.

• Free daytime parking was eliminated completely in Munich. 95 percent of Paris’ roughly 50,000 free parking spaces were converted to paid spaces.
• Too often, the decision of how much parking to provide is disconnected from any other city goals. Not in Zurich. Under the terms of the city’s “Historischer Parkplatz Kompromiss,” each development is assigned a cap on the number of trips that can be made by car, which is controlled by the amount of parking provided onsite. The cap is determined by looking at the congestion and air quality in the immediate area.
• Parking maximums have replaced parking minimums in cities such as Zurich, Amsterdam and Strasbourg. The Swiss, Italian and British governments all recommend that local governments use maximums, in the words of the British government, to “promote sustainable transport choices, reduce the land-take of development, enable schemes to fit into central urban sites, promote linked-trips and access to development for those without use of a car, and to tackle congestion.”
• The idea behind parking minimums for commercial space is to ensure that employees of a new development don’t fill up all an area’s parking spaces. Logically, therefore, Hamburg decided that if enough employees at a company had a transit pass, that company should have to reduce the amount of parking it provides.
• Hard caps on the amount of parking downtown are in place in Hamburg, Zurich, and Budapest. No one can build a new off-street space unless the city agrees to take away an on-street space. Despite rising prosperity and car ownership, the number of parking spaces in the center of Hamburg has remained at 30,000 since 1976.
• Regulating parking only works if those regulations are enforced, a job that Europeans have made easier through new technology. Across France, magnetic sensors are employed to determine when cars overstay time limits. Amsterdam uses a fleet of vans with license plate-reading cameras to track violations.
• On-street parking rates better reflect market demand. In London, rates go up to £4.40 an hour ($7.04), and in Amsterdam up to €5 ($6.75). In New York City, by comparison, rates only go up to $3.75.
• Parking management has been closely tied to Europe’s largest bike-sharing systems. In Paris and Barcelona, bike-sharing stations replaced thousands of on-street spaces, and in Barcelona, all parking revenue goes directly to supporting bike-sharing.

Across Europe, there appears to be a much heavier emphasis on providing residential parking permits, public-private partnerships to operate the parking system, and technological conveniences like pay-by-phone parking.

Cities like London and Paris are New York City’s competitors. While they move forward with these innovative programs, New York still forces its drivers and bus riders to sit behind a line of traffic cruising for a rare open space or holding out for one of the city’s many free on-street spaces. New York tacks the cost of unwanted parking onto every new office and residence. In commercial zones, meanwhile, parking spaces are commandeered for hours, reducing turnover and making deliveries a hassle. Not to mention the environmental and safety disasters of encouraging all those extra car trips.

The Mayor’s Office is thinking about tackling parking policy in this spring’s update of PlaNYC, and hopefully they’ll use this ITDP report to adapt some of Europe’s best ideas. Then again, they just bowed to motorist influence in the City Council over raising meter rates by just a quarter. Giving New York City’s parking policy the same U-turn that Europe took will apparently be quite the political lift.

Surface parking stretches halfway to the horizon in the heart of downtown Wichita, Kansas. Image: Wichita Walkshop via Flickr.

If you haven't checked out the ITDP parking report we covered yesterday, it's a highly readable piece of research, walking you through parking policy's checkered past and potentially brighter future.

In addition to describing six cases of innovative parking strategies, the authors draw from a wide-ranging body of evidence about the woeful state of most current parking policy, marshaling revealing facts and figures. We culled some of the ones that leap out the most. Enjoy:

• Ninety-nine percent of U.S. car trips begin and end in a free parking space.
• The average automobile is parked 95 percent of the time.
• Although many businesses today believe they benefit from free parking, curbside parking meters were actually introduced in 1935 by an Oklahoma City department store owner. He wanted to increase parking turnover so that there would always be spaces available for his customers.
• Conventional parking policy counsels providing enough spots to handle car storage on the 30th busiest hour of the entire year, usually the weekend before Christmas. That means intentionally planning for an oversupply of parking the other 8,730 hours of the year.
• At free parking spaces, 40 to 60 percent of vehicles overstay posted time limits.
• Parking typically represents a full 10 percent of development costs. What's more, the people who actually park only pay 5 percent of the cost of non-residential parking, meaning that public subsidies and developer capital pay for the rest.
• In San Francisco, parking requirements have reduced the number of affordable housing units nonprofit developers can build by 20 percent, with each residence costing 20 percent more to build than it would have without parking.
• Seventy percent of Southern California suburban office developments built exactly the number of parking spaces required by law, suggesting that parking minimums are forcing developers to build more parking than they want to.
• How much space does parking eat up? Office space typically requires 175 to 250 square feet per person. In comparison, curbside parking requires 200 square feet per vehicle, and garages require 300 to 350 square feet per vehicle.
• Even in the Park Smart pilot areas of Greenwich Village, where peak hour meter rates have been raised, on-street parking still costs $12 per hour less than off-street parking. At that rate, cruising for 15 minutes to find an on-street space to park for one hour pays off at the equivalent of a $100,000 annual salary.
• NYC has 32 percent fewer meters per capita than Chicago.
• Only two major U.S. cities, Houston and Chicago, are adding more metered parking. In Houston's case, they are more than doubling their metered spaces in coordination with the city's light rail project.

Graphic: ITDP

"There was a 35-year parking coma during which the federal government, cities, and environmentalists forgot why parking was important," said John Kaehny, who co-authored the report with Matthew Rufo and UPenn professor Rachel Weinberger. "This study shows people are starting to wake up and understand that parking is one of the most important influences on how cities work and what form of travel people choose to use."

The early 70s parking limits beat back the cycle of more car storage, wider roadways, and greater sprawl that decimates urban areas. The underlying idea was simple: Manage the supply of parking, and you can reduce the demand for driving. Yet in America this notion has gone largely unheeded, even in cities.

Instead, the authors note, parking policy is typically divorced from transportation policy and goals like reducing congestion or encouraging walking and biking. In most of our urban areas, planners determine parking volumes using suburban standards, drawing heavily on ill-suited recommendations in "Parking Generation," a manual published by the Institute for Transportation Engineers. The product is cheap, ubiquitous parking -- much of which sits unused most of the time.

Fully 99 percent of car trips in America end in free parking, an incentive that crowds out all other modes of transportation. "Even when the price of parking is free," said Weinberger, "it’s far from free."

The resulting congestion impedes the effectiveness of transit. Traffic volumes and double-parking make bicycling less pleasant and more dangerous. Walkable environments give way to curb cuts, dead walls, and land-devouring parking facilities that spread destinations farther apart. The whole vicious cycle is heavily subsidized, with the cost of parking absorbed into the price of everything from housing to movie tickets.

"In a time of economic distress, we can’t afford to continue these policies,"  said ITDP's Michael Replogle. "Continuing to subsidize parking is very costly for all of us."

Surface parking in downtown Minneapolis. Photo: ITDP/Zachary Korb

In San Francisco and New York, programs to bring the price of curbside parking more in line with off-street parking are reducing the incentive to cruise endlessly for a cheap spot. In Portland, planners have reduced parking requirements for new development near transit lines, helping to improve walkability and increase ridership.

This parking structure in downtown Boulder is wrapped with street-level retail. Image: ITDP/City of Boulder

Other cities will be able to replicate the innovations in the report, said UCLA planning professor Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking. "Weinberger, Kaehny, and Rufo show how cities can begin to repair the damage caused by decades of bad planning for parking," he said. "The case studies of six cities that have reformed their parking policies provide clear blueprints that any city can adapt to fit the local circumstances."

New York City made a major public commitment to Bus Rapid Transit in 2006 when, after years of discussion, the MTA and DOT put forward plans for pilot routes in each of the five boroughs. In the meantime, the city's BRT agenda has encountered a few setbacks in Albany and made a partial breakthrough on Fordham Road, with a service that incorporates some nifty bus improvements, but not enough to merit the BRT designation.

Streetsblog caught up with Hook -- in between trips to Cape Town and Mexico City -- for an email Q&A about why New York City needs Bus Rapid Transit, common misconceptions of BRT in America, and what will make BRT succeed here. This is the first of four installments.

Streetsblog: Is BRT the right mode for New York City at this moment in time? A lot of folks think that BRT is no substitute for light rail or a subway system. How would you pitch the idea of BRT to New Yorkers?

Walter Hook: I was in Philadelphia a few months back, which is a real rail and streetcar-loving town, and I took a lot of heat for suggesting BRT had a place in U.S. cities like New York and Philadelphia, particularly from my friends in the sustainable transportation advocacy community. I understand why a lot of folks in the U.S. see BRT as some sort of marketing trick to pawn off low-quality bus improvements as mass transportation. I think it's because we don't really have a full BRT system in the U.S. Not very many people have been to Bogotá, or Curitiba, or Pereira or Guayaquil to see the best BRT systems. These are not exactly tourist Meccas.

The Second Avenue Subway would be great, it’s needed, it would have higher demand than almost any other metro line in the country. But will it happen?

New York City already has the most extensive subway network in the U.S., and one of the most extensive in the world. Whatever BRT is built, it will need to fit seamlessly into that network. Some subway lines are extremely crowded -- at capacity despite a very high fare by international standards. The 4, 5, and 6, the L -- these trains are packed.  I don't know why Japanese and Chinese cities can roll out 10 miles of new subway line a year, and the richest city in the world has been trying and failing to build the Second Avenue Subway since the 1960s. But I've lived in this town a long time, and I am skeptical. The optimists are telling us that we will have a Second Avenue Subway between 125th Street and 63rd Street by 2015 and only after we spend $4 to $5 billion. So this means we are probably talking about 2018 or 2020, and $10 billion. The Second Avenue Subway would be great, it’s needed, it would have higher demand than almost any other metro line in the country. At those volumes, metros are often a good investment. But will it happen?

Plus, the MTA needs something like an additional $20 billion just to bring the existing system into a state of good repair. If we only talk rail, that puts any mass transit improvements to my neighborhood -- Brooklyn adjacent to the hole in the ground that may one day be Atlantic Yards -- off the radar for two decades, even though they are talking about introducing Manhattan-level densities into my neighborhood in the next few years.

SB: Couldn't light rail get the job done in many cases?

WH: I don’t see light rail as much of a solution to this problem. Light rail has all the problems of a BRT system with most of the cost of a metro system. Surface light rail in Manhattan -- how much would it cost? The Denver light rail line was estimated to cost from $40 to $75 million per mile, and naturally it’s proving to be like double that. That’s less than the billions per mile the subway would cost. But the best BRT system in the world, Bogotá's TransMilenio, when the complete reconstruction of the entire road into a boulevard with bike lanes and beautiful trees is all included in the price, cost about $20 million a mile. It might cost more than this in the U.S., but all things being equal (high quality of all elements, dedicated transitways, specially configured low-noise, low-emissions vehicles, etc.) it's going to be a whole lot cheaper than LRT.

Very good BRT systems have been built for as little as $8 million a mile. With the same capital budget, we could build more than twice as much proper BRT as light rail, probably 5 to 10 times more, with no loss in the quality of service, the capacity, or the speed. Even counting the contribution to total life cycle costs of operating and maintenance costs, BRT is a bargain, something all New Yorkers love.

The engineering for light rail is more complicated: You need electric conduit, ugly overhead wires, tracks -- not to mention rail yards that are nearly impossible to locate in any dense city. What is the operational advantage? If light rail does not have an exclusive right of way, it is even more stuck in traffic congestion and much more accident prone than local bus services. Capacity? The capacity of a light rail system is no higher than a BRT system. The law of physics pertaining to only one object occupying a given space at one time applies to LRT just as it does to buses. The limitations of block lengths and traffic signals apply to both equally. The capacity of LRT with only two tracks (almost universal) is significantly lower than the many BRT systems that have passing lanes at the stations supporting express services just like on the subway here.

Very good BRT systems have been built for as little as $8 million a mile. With the same capital budget, we could build more than twice as much proper BRT as light rail. BRT is a bargain, something all New Yorkers love.

There is one circumstance that I have discovered where light rail might have a higher capacity. If a light rail station has all the same features as a BRT system, including pre-paid boarding from stations with platforms level with the vehicle floor, and there is only one exclusive lane available (no space for a passing lane at the station), so express services are impossible, and the LRT has an ultra-modern signaling system like they have in Zurich, it might be possible to reach capacities of about 20,000 passengers per direction during a single peak hour using LRT, while a BRT with the exact same configuration would only be able to reliably move about 15,000 at a similar speed. But there are almost no corridors in the United States with transit demand above 15,000 at the peak hour per direction that do not currently have a metro or subway line in them, so ultimately, the preference for light rail over a proper BRT system is mostly aesthetics and ignorance of the technical capabilities of a well-planned and implemented BRT system.

In Mexico City, MetroBus has enhanced perceptions of surface transit. Photo: Shreya Gadepalli/ITDP.

Of course, you can mess up a BRT system, and Boston's Silver Line proved that you could waste almost as much money on BRT as you can on a rail system. Many of the BRT systems we've worked on are nowhere near as good as TransMilenio. For mainly political reasons, the risk of BRT being something far from optimal is pretty big, even here in New York City.

It's important to the world that New York City doesn't just build some low-quality bus improvement and call it BRT. This could really damage the already poor reputation of BRT as a serious mass transit option in the U.S. But what if New York were to hit it out of the park, with something amazing? The rest of the world expects no less from the greatest city in the world.

JCDecaux touted Vélib on the cover of its 2007 annual report [PDF].

So is Vélib destined to burn brightly only to flare out after a short time? Hardly. Vélib is here to stay, according to officials and transportation experts familiar with the details of its operations. The BBC's portrayal of a mortal threat, they say, is best understood as a negotiating ploy on the part of JCDecaux. (Note that the JCDecaux representative is the only source quoted in that story.)

"Decaux is using media sensationalism in order to obtain more money from the city of Paris," said Denis Baupin, who as Deputy Mayor for Transportation oversaw the Vélib launch in the summer of 2007.

The basic structure of the Vélib contract works like this. JCDecaux runs the whole system in exchange for the rights to 1,600 outdoor displays, turning its profit from selling that ad space. The city of Paris keeps the revenue from Vélib user fees, so it can claim to provide the service at no taxpayer expense. Now, with the full Paris network of 20,600 bicycles and 1,451 stations completed, penalties for inadequate maintenance are in the process of taking effect. Hence the hue and cry from JCDecaux.

"It's in large part a PR issue," says Luc Nadal of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. Some aspects of the Vélib contract are still in flux, and the sky-is-falling press coverage gives JCDecaux a stronger hand in those negotiations. "Their bargaining position depends on the public's perception."

Not that bicycle abuse is a phantom problem. It exacts a real toll, but much of that cost has been anticipated and accounted for. Last July, the city of Paris agreed to pay JCDecaux 400 euros for every bike stolen in excess of four percent of the total fleet each year. Given the enormous popularity of Vélib -- users have taken 42 million rides since its debut -- the cost of those payments is minimal. Using the BBC's figure of 7,800 missing bikes, the pricetag for the city comes to less than 2 million euros annually, out of 20 million euros in user fees.

"It averages out to about 15 stolen per day, out of 80,000 daily users," says Eric Britton, founder of the Paris-based New Mobility Agenda. Hardly a fatal blow. "It's like skinning a knee."

Not only does the city already pick up a big part of the tab, but JCDecaux reportedly hauls in about 80 million euros per year from its outdoor displays, according to estimates cited by Britton. It's difficult to know the exact figure -- and how much is profit -- because JCDecaux guards the data like a nuclear secret. Even the precise cost of replacing one Vélib bicycle remains unknown to the public. Inquiries we sent to JCDecaux's headquarters in Paris have not been returned.

Public support for Vélib remains unflagging. "Vélib has been totally embraced by Mayor Bertrand Delanoe himself," said Nadal. What politician wouldn't jump at the chance to be identified with a program that enjoys 94 percent satisfaction among constituents?

This is largely a testament to JCDecaux's success in operating the system. According to Baupin's office, however, Vélib maintenance workers report that management has let upkeep slide in order to amplify the perception of vandalism.

JCDecaux's media gamesmanship "is short-sighted," said Baupin, in a statement translated from the French. "One should not lose sight of the remarkable success of this transportation mode due to a slightly underestimated rate of vandalism." 

Then there's the matter of JCDecaux's own self-interest, and whether the rumors and exaggerations will hurt the company's attempts to secure bike-share contracts in other cities. Said Britton: "Why would they run away from a golden goose?"

Take a moment to appreciate how far we've come in the last few years. New York City is being honored tonight in Washington D.C. as the first U.S. city to win the ITDP Sustainable Transport Award. Here is an excerpt from the press release:

New York City has demonstrated that political will, bold leadership and citizen engagement can lead to sweeping transportation reforms. In 2008, the city implemented key parts of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's long-term sustainability vision, PlaNYC 2030. The laudable changes made throughout 2008 have reshaped the experience of walking on New York City streets. The city has embraced biking and walking as investment-worthy transportation alternatives, while the traditional car-oriented mobility model is taking a back-seat....

In 2008, New York City took 49 acres of road space, traffic lanes and parking spots away from cars and gave it back to the public for bike lanes, pedestrian areas and public plazas. Protected on-street bike lanes were part of the 140 miles (255 kilometers) of bike lanes implemented. Bike ridership increased by 35 percent from the past year. The city planted more than 98,000 trees, implemented a select bus service and introduced car-free Saturdays. The NYC Department of Transportation recycles 40 percent of the asphalt used to repair streets.

Photo: Walter Hook, ITDP

Throughout 2008, the city continued to implement PlaNYC 2030, its comprehensive long-term sustainability vision. The city took 49 acres of road space, traffic lanes and parking spots away from cars and gave that space back to the public for bike lanes, pedestrian areas, and public plazas. Protected on street bike lanes were part of the 140 miles (255 kilometers) of bike lanes implemented. Bike ridership has increased by 35 percent over the past year. Over 98,000 trees were planted, a select bus service was implemented, car free Sundays introduced. As part of its standard operations, the city’s Department of Transport also recycles 40 percent of its asphalt. Although not successful, the city pushed for congestion charging, a first for [a] US city and now other cities are considering it.

The winner will be announced tomorrow in Washington, DC.

The mayor of a global metropolis, elected to his first term in 2001, set out to reduce driving and promote greener modes of transportation in his city. Congestion pricing turned out to be unfeasible, because influential political forces in the suburbs believed, rightly or wrongly, that charging people to drive into the urban core was regressive. Undaunted, the mayor found other means to achieve his transportation agenda.

The mayor is Bertrand Delanoë, and the city is Paris, where private auto use has dropped 20 percent in a few short years.

As Mayor Bloomberg and the team at DOT chart a way forward without London-style congestion charging, it's worth noting that for all the differences between New York and Paris, Delanoë also confronted a vocal car culture while winning huge victories for pedestrians, bikes, and transit. To get a better sense of how New York can apply the lessons of Paris, Streetsblog spoke to Luc Nadal and Aimée Gauthier of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy about the hurdles faced by Delanoë and his deputy mayor for transportation, Denis Baupin.

To begin with, congestion pricing was considered completely untenable from a political point of view. Paris proper is not much larger than the proposed congestion zone in New York, and like Manhattan it is increasingly seen as the domain of the prosperous. Levying a fee perceived mainly to affect the working-class suburbs "would be very difficult to sell politically," said Nadal. "Mayor Delanoë put that solution aside from the beginning."

Delanoë and Baupin decided instead to rethink how the public right-of-way was divvied up on Paris streets. In 2002, they launched Quartiers Verts ("Green Neighborhoods"), an initiative to improve pedestrian space and reduce traffic in residential areas. The administration anticipated especially strong opposition to the parking policies in the plan -- higher rates, a reduction in the amount of on-street parking, and the elimination of free parking altogether. To counteract the expected outcry, the city tied those reforms to the introduction of residential parking permits, which are now available for a nominal yearly fee. With RPP still fresh in New Yorkers' minds following the congestion pricing debate, could permits be an effective carrot in a similar overhaul of parking policy here?

Delanoë's next major initiative -- Espaces Civilisés ("Civilized Spaces") -- took aim at Paris's most car-friendly boulevards. The first such project, on Boulevard de Magenta, trimmed a six-lane road down to two traffic lanes and two bus lanes, with the remainder going to sidewalks and street trees. This substantial redistribution of space did not happen overnight. Launched in 2002, Espaces Civilisés yielded its first finished boulevard in 2005. About half a dozen such transformations have been completed so far, with plans for another on the way.

Separate bus and bike lanes on Boulevard Rochechouart, one of Paris's new "civilized spaces."

As DOT embarks on a roughly similar project for 34th Street, Paris offers some insight about what to expect from the public and the press. "There’s been widespread satisfaction on the part of the public at large, and the local communities," said Nadal. "However, there’s been a lot of media activity around the congestion that some of these projects have caused during construction and after." The media fixation on slower traffic flows was picked up by Delanoë's political opposition, though Nadal notes it didn't find much traction. "They tried to use it as best they could," he said, but Delanoë was re-elected to a second six-year term last fall, garnering 58 percent of the vote.

The construction of physically separated lanes for buses and bikes also set off concerns about business deliveries. The great majority of new bus lanes are curbside, so the city identified places to reserve for delivery parking, Nadal said. A new type of permit was issued for store owners, contractors, and other businesses who need short-term parking for trucks and vans. Vehicles with the delivery permit can park in the special slots for up to 30 minutes at no charge.

A delivery zone set off from a separated bus lane. At four meters wide, the lanes are designed to allow buses to pass bicycles and half-parked delivery vehicles (photo: Luc Nadal).

The Quartiers Verts and Espaces Civilisés initiatives helped generate a 50 percent increase in bicycle modeshare, but the boost wasn't visible enough to justify the expense of the bike infrastructure. Then came Vélib, the city's ambitious bikeshare system. Part of the motivation behind Vélib, said Gauthier, was to make better use of existing bikeways. Providing public access to more than 10,000 bikes that anyone can ride for a pittance has doubled the number of bike trips made on Paris streets. Bicycle modeshare now stands at about three percent.

This transformative leap has come at a minimal perceived cost to the city, thanks to a deal with JCDecaux, the outdoor advertising giant. "The Vélib program was a really innovative way of packaging a deal so it didn't cost a lot of money," said Gauthier. "They worked with Decaux to implement the whole system. Total investment and operation costs are covered by Decaux. In return they get the right to do public advertising. That way it doesn't feel like it's taxpayer expense." While Decaux retains the revenue from billboards, bus shelters, and other advertising in public spaces, the city pockets the fares paid by Vélib customers, estimated to exceed 30 million euros per year (even though the first 30 minutes of bike rental are free). For more details on the Vélib contract, fee structure, and other aspects of the Paris mobility plan, see the 2007 edition [PDF] of ITDP's magazine, Sustainable Transport.

The Vélib station on Rue Louis Blanc. Most stations have replaced on-street parking spaces, adding up to thousands of fewer spaces for cars by the time of full implementation.

"Vélib has been a smashing success politically and in the media," said Nadal. After seeing Vélib in action, Paris's inner-ring suburbs -- the rough equivalent of New York's outer boroughs -- clamored for their own piece of it. Already, a few municipalities have partially implemented some form of bikeshare. The Paris experience suggests that, in New York, launching an intensive pilot program with stations clustered in a dense network in one part of the city -- the band between 14th and Houston, say -- could set the stage for an incremental but steady buy-in from other neighborhoods.

The expansion of Vélib has not come without challenges. For one, Paris's suburbs have their own contracts with outdoor advertising firms. To integrate with the Paris system, each would have to reach an agreement with JCDecaux, raising legal questions of unfair competition. Putting aside the vagaries of French anti-trust law, the pertinent issue for New York is that Paris and its metro region must also cope with problems of disjointed jurisdiction and bureaucratic silos. Nowhere is this more instructive than in the case of the Mobilien, the BRT-esque system launched by Delanoë and Baupin.

Paris has built dedicated busways for the Mobilien. Expanding enhanced bus service region-wide will require complex negotiations between the regional transportation authority and different municipalities.

Featuring dedicated bus corridors, signal priority, and raised stations, the Mobilien required the city to make significant changes to the infrastructure of Paris streets, including the conversion of on-street parking to bus right-of-way. At first, of course, there was an outcry. In the neighborhood of Montparnasse on the Left Bank, the locals held a funeral procession for the neighborhood and flew flags that read, "Le Mort de Montparnasse" ("The Death of Montparnasse"). The owner of the famous Café Select worried that the loss of parking space would kill his business. Now most of his employees have a reliable bus to get them to work, and it's nicer to sit at a sidewalk café on a street that isn't choked with traffic. "We've come to love it," he said.

Taking the Mobilien across city limits, however, is proving trickier than winning over public opinion. The bus network is planned by a regional authority that negotiates routes with each municipality. "Decisionmaking can be protracted and political," said Nadal, especially since some suburbs are much more car-oriented than Paris. In last year's local elections, candidates debated whether to streamline this process by creating a new municipal jurisdiction that would include the first ring of suburbs. By comparison, some of the inter-agency cooperation that would most benefit New York -- like having the MTA agree to let DOT's BRT routes cross East River bridges -- looks like a walk in the park.

Along with expanding Vélib, the Mobilien, and a new network of tramways ringing the city, Delanoë plans to use his second term to launch a system of car-sharing, or, to use the French term, "autopartage." Renting a public car will cost significantly more than a Vélib bike, though regular use would add up to much less, of course, than maintaining a car of one's own. While the network of car-sharing stations -- located mostly in existing garages -- is intended to actually reduce car ownership, the administration has cannily pitched it as proof that Delanoë is not out to get motorists. "He can say that he is not anti-car, but for a rational use of cars when there's really a need," said Nadal.

Appeasing and outfoxing the auto lobby in one fell swoop -- that's the kind of deft maneuver Delanoë has relied on more than any innate Parisian antipathy to the car. Something to keep in mind the next time someone says they can do it Paris but never in New York.

Photos: Top two - Ben Fried; Delivery space - Luc Nadal; Vélib station - xtof/Flickr; Mobilien - Aaron Naparstek.

The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy has chosen Paris for its 2008 Sustainable Transportation Award. In a letter from the ITDP Board of Directors to Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, the Institute praises the French capitol's recent transportation policies, most notably the Vélib project:

Under your leadership, Paris has implemented a range of innovative mobility solutions with vision, commitment and vigor. Vélib, the boldest bicycle share program to date, makes the city a leader in the implementation of a new form of individual mass transit. Programs such as Quartier verts, Espace civilisés, 'Réseau vert' shared streets, and the growing network of quality cycling facilities have made strides in reclaiming street space for people. The new 'Mobilien' Bus Rapid Transit, and 'Traverses' Microbus neighborhood loops have increased transportation service and scope. All these achievements stand as new symbols of the priority of walking, cycling, and riding public transportation over private cars in urban space.

It is because of these innovative efforts that we wish to award Paris the 2008 Sustainable Transport Award. London will also be receiving the Award in recognition of its expanded congestion charging zone, implementing a low emissions zone, and t2025, the city's 20 year transport plan.

Photo: Pascal Lemoine/Flickr

We've been hearing a lot about Velib, Paris's new public bike-sharing program. But that is just one of many new transportation and public space programs initiated by Mayor Bertrand Delanoe. 

Paris is also building new "microbus" lines that circulate through neighborhood streets delivering commuters to subways, trains and major bus lines. "The toyish vehicles," Nadal says, "are almost as fun as the old street cars." The have low floors and wide sliding doors that allow simultaneous boarding and alighting. The microbuses hold up to 22 passengers, 10 seated, 12 standing and room for one wheelchair. They run on diesel-electric hybrid engines and they are testing a system that reportedly saves up to 20 percent in fuel and emissions by automatically shutting down the engine when the bus is not in motion. The buses cost 85,000 Euros each.

The microbuses stop at 15 cm high platforms for easy loading and unloading.

This particular bus stop in the working-class, ethnically diverse Porte de la Villette neighborhood was built along with widened sidewalks, a physically-separated bike lane, new trees, and reduced motor vehicle traffic. On the other side of the street -- not visible in the photos -- is a neighborhood park recently built on a former railyard. 

Here is a new two-way bike lane.

And here is an older bike lane, tucked between sidewalk and parked cars.