Streetsblog New York City

Governor Cuomo has the opportunity to build a smarter and more resilient regional transportation network. Photo: Daily News

“Climate change is a reality… for us to sit here today and say this is a once-in-a-generation, and it’s not going to happen again, I think would be short-sighted… I’m hopeful that not only will we rebuild this city and metropolitan area but use this as an opportunity to build it back smarter.”

– Governor Andrew Cuomo

Amen Governor Cuomo. Hurricane Sandy should be the massive bucket of cold water needed to rouse New York’s political class into making the multitude of changes required for New York City to survive the rising ocean, and remain a leading global city.

The inconvenient reality is that the water is rising, and New York is a city built on islands. According to New York City’s Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, New York Harbor has risen about a foot since 1900, and will rise at least another three feet in the next century. If polar ice caps melt — which appears to be happening — harbor waters will rise six feet or more.

There is an enormous amount of work to do. New York needs expansive new flood defenses, including the vast expansion and restoration of storm surge-absorbing wetlands and oyster beds. These “soft edges” will have to be accompanied by some “hard edges,” including sea walls and, possibly, massive surge barriers like London’s Thames Barrier. The debate over the right mix of “soft” and “hard” approaches is now underway, even as some New Yorkers still huddle without power or water in darkened apartments.

Beyond debate is that our vulnerable electrical and transit systems have to be made more resistant to flooding. However, our century-old transit system is creaking along under a huge debt, the next transit capital plan is completely unfunded, and there is no money for flood defenses. Meanwhile, our downstate road network is burdened by a totally backward and unfair toll system that causes costly traffic jams, wastes time and consumes big tax subsidies for bridge and road repairs.

New York can’t have “smart rebuilding” and a dumb, broke transportation system. One of the pillars of Governor Cuomo’s rebuilding plan for the New York City area must be tolling the East River Bridges and access to the Central Business District, and reducing overpriced tolls on outer bridge crossings. New toll revenue from this common sense plan should be dedicated to rebuilding the downstate transit and road system, and toughening it against floods. This “bridge swap” toll plan, first proposed by transportation engineer Sam Schwartz, will also free up hundreds of millions in general tax revenue currently spent on roads for new flood defenses.

Hurricane Sandy was a dire message that New York cannot afford the luxury of political dysfunction and irrational governance. In this crisis, there is a clear opportunity for Governor Cuomo to build a new, smarter, tougher transit and transportation system that can serve as the backbone of his efforts to rebuild the region.

With MAP-21 taking effect today, city and state transportation advocates are calling on Governor Cuomo and the New York State Department of Transportation to devote all of its federal bike-ped funds to walking and cycling infrastructure. The coalition of just over 100 groups is also asking that the state make available millions of dollars, allocated as part of the prior federal transportation bill, to such projects before the funds must be returned to Washington.

MAP-21 decreases overall bike-ped funding by 30 percent, explains the Tri-State Transportation Campaign in a media release, and gives governors the authority to take up to half of the bike-ped pool for highways and bridges. Representing transportation, environmental and health interests, the groups want the state to use 100 percent of federal “Transportation Alternatives” funds for bike and pedestrian projects. A letter to Cuomo and the DOT also asks that localities be granted the opportunity to apply for $30 million in bike and pedestrian funds from the last transportation law, funds that must otherwise be returned.

TSTC reports that, in New York State, total injuries to cyclists from collisions with motorists jumped 12 percent between 2009 and 2010, from 5,405 to 6,058, according to the latest data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Cyclist fatalities increased from 29 to 36, a 24 percent spike. Pedestrian injuries increased from 15,321 in 2009 to 16,090 in 2010, a 5 percent rise.

“High rates of pedestrian and bicycle injuries and fatalities indicate that all available funds must be used by state and local officials to reduce these numbers,” said TSTC Executive Director Veronica Vanterpool. “Our ‘Most Dangerous Roads’ report found that more than 1,200 pedestrians were killed in the downstate region from 2008 to 2010 — that’s 1,200 reasons to use every available dollar to make our roads safer for all users.”

The Cuomo administration hasn’t shown much interest in traffic safety. Last week, the Department of Motor Vehicles announced a new policy to permanently revoke licenses of motorists with five or more DWI convictions — or three or more DWI convictions in 25 years, as long the motorist has also committed a serious driving offense, such as killing one or more people. Two days later, Cuomo unveiled his “Drivers First” program, which will “prioritize the convenience of motorists and ensure that disruptions are as minimal as possible to drivers at highway and bridge projects across the state.” These initiatives are fairly representative of an administration whose signature transportation project is a multi-billion dollar mega-bridge with no provisions for transit.

“With the stroke of a pen, Governor Cuomo can save lives and improve the health and quality of life of all New Yorkers,” said Brian Kehoe, executive director of the New York Bicycling Coalition. “This is money that gets spent locally, improves the safety of our roads and sidewalks, and creates trails, making our communities better places to live. Leadership is needed to adapt our community infrastructure to 21st century needs.”

This afternoon, Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Barbara J. Fiala announced new policies to make it tougher for repeat drunk or drugged drivers to get behind the wheel.

Until now, New York did not normally strip lifetime driving privlieges from repeat drunk or drugged drivers. Presently, if a driver is convicted of DWI three times in four years, his license could be suspended for as little as five years, after which he could reapply for a new license. A driver is only likely to have his license revoked if he has DWI convictions from two separate crashes resulting in injury.

Under the new policy, DMV will deny a license if the driver has five or more DWI convictions in a lifetime, or three or more DWI convictions in 25 years, plus another serious driving offense, such as a fatal crash. For those drivers without another serious driving offense, DMV could apply restrictions, such as a mandatory ignition interlock device or limitations on when and where the applicant can drive.

Currently, repeat drunk drivers who have licenses revoked or suspended for up to a year can either wait for the full term of the suspension, or get their licenses back in as little as seven weeks by completing a remedial education program. DMV will now require those drivers to wait until their full suspension or revocation term has ended.

The new policies closely match the goals of Charlotte’s Law, a bill that would set standards for revoking the licenses of repeat drunk and dangerous drivers. In April, Assemblyman James Tedisco, one of the bills co-sponsors, asked Cuomo to administratively implement the bill’s provisions. By June, the bill had stalled in both the Senate and Assembly.

Because the DMV’s new policies apply only to drunk or drugged drivers, instead of all repeat dangerous drivers, they fall short of more comprehensive reform proposed by Charlotte’s Law.

Despite the limitation, Tedisco welcomed today’s announcement, calling it “a good first step” in defining serial dangerous drivers and revoking their licenses. “We are still calling for permanent revocation of serial dangerous drivers who do not face any DWI/DUI offenses,” he said in a statement, “but are just as reckless on the roads.”

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When measured by their impact on road wear-and-tear, trucking companies are not paying their fair share on the New York State Thruway.

The New York State Thruway Authority’s proposal to increase truck tolls by 45 percent is getting a lot of pushback from lobbyists and politicians in Albany, including Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. But not only do the Thruway’s truck tolls fall in the middle of the road when compared to tolls in other states, trucking companies in New York are paying a disproportionately low cost for the damage their vehicles cause to roadways.

The level of Thruway tolls matters to all New Yorkers because transit funding has a history of being diverted to plug holes elsewhere in the state budget. If the owners and operators of the heaviest, most damaging vehicles on the Thruway don’t pay their share for system maintenance, straphangers could be left indirectly footing the bill.

Today, the operator of a typical 18-wheeler pays $6.78 for every dollar a car driver pays on the Thruway in Orange, Rockland and Westchester counties. Across the entire Thruway system, trucks get an even better deal, paying ”only five times the rate of the average passenger vehicle,” according to Thruway Executive Director Thomas Madison Jr.

Under the toll increase, which would not apply to cars, trucks would pay $9.89 for every dollar in auto tolls. That might seem steep to most drivers, but consider the costs that go unpaid.

Although adding more axles to large trucks blunts their impact on the road, the average 18-wheeler weighs twenty times more than a two-ton automobile.

This is important because the damage inflicted on the road surface doesn’t increase linearly along with vehicle weight. In fact, wear-and-tear increases exponentially as vehicle weight increases. According to a report by Jacobs Civil Consultants for the Thruway Authority [PDF], an 80,000-pound, 18-wheel truck creates the same amount of damage as 9,600 passenger vehicles.

No one in New York is even thinking about an exponential increase in truck tolls, but the outsized impact of heavy trucks on road maintenance shouldn’t be forgotten as the toll hike, which only needs the consent of the Thruway Authority board to proceed, draws closer. If approved at this month’s board meeting, it could go into effect as soon as September 30.

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In addition to two shoulders in each direction, plans for the new Tappan Zee Bridge include "emergcncy access" lanes, an unheard of feature on new bridges. The Cuomo administration now says the emergency lanes can be used for rush hour bus service. Click to enlarge.

Last night Hudson Valley commuters got their first taste of good news when it comes to building transit across the Tappan Zee Bridge. As reported by the Journal News’ Khurram Saeed, the Cuomo administration now says it will allow buses to use the “emergency access” lanes it intends to build on both spans of the new Tappan Zee Bridge, though only during rush hour.

Letting buses run in the emergency lanes would be an easy and essentially cost-free way to make bus rides across the bridge a little faster. The emergency lanes will be built in addition to full-width shoulders on both sides of traffic, a feature unheard of on other major new bridges. All that space is primed to be converted either into bus lanes or more room for cars.

Advocates for Tappan Zee transit applauded the decision, but said it isn’t a substitute for real bus rapid transit along the corridor. “It’s an important step in the right direction,” Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef told the Journal News. Vanderhoef had previously proposed running buses in the extra lanes.

In a statement Tri-State Transportation Campaign Executive Director Veronica Vanterpool said this should be the start of further accommodations for transit from the Cuomo administration:

This is an important first step, and a small victory, to improve bus commutes for hundreds of existing daily bus riders who idle in gridlock along with cars and trucks. Disappointingly, the dedicated bus lane will only be in operation on the bridge itself, not within the I-287 corridor, and only during rush hour…

Modern buses, new signal technology, off-board fare collection, and dedicated bus lanes—the key elements of a bus rapid transit system—speed bus commutes and incentivize people to ride the system. Without these combined amenities, bus riders will not benefit from an improved system, only brief congestion relief while crossing the bridge. Commuters and residents have indicated they want more.

Streetsblog has been corresponding with the governor’s press office about the use of these emergency lanes for transit service, the possibility of extending bus lanes on either side of the bridge, and a number of other design issues. Next week, we hope to be able to provide more information about how allowing buses to use these lanes fits into the broader goal of building a full bus rapid transit system.

One of the more pernicious shortcomings of New York State’s slapdash traffic justice system is its failure to keep dangerous drivers off the road. As long as repeat offenders pay their fines and don’t get caught driving drunk, they can for the most part count on holding on to a drivers license, no matter how many tickets they receive, even if they cause a fatality.

Peter and Lillian Sabados of Staten Island were killed in 2009 by a driver who had a history of reckless driving and dozens of license suspensions.

A bi-partisan group of state legislators is pushing to terminate — permanently — the licenses of New York motorists who habitually break the law. Assembly Member James Tedisco, Republican from Schenectady and former minority leader, last week called on Governor Cuomo to get behind Charlotte’s Law, which would apply the “three strikes” principle to traffic code violations.

In January 2010, Schenectady pedestrian Charlotte Gallo was fatally struck by a driver who, according to the Times Union, had 23 prior citations for traffic offenses and had been involved in 10 crashes. His penalty for killing Gallo: a $100 fine for failure to yield and a one-year license revocation. Charlotte’s Law would permanently take away the licenses of those convicted of any of these offenses three or more times in 25 years: DUI or DWI; a violation of VTL 1146, which includes the state’s vulnerable user laws; or vehicular manslaughter.

“We have a lot of rights,” said Tedisco at a May 24 Capitol press conference. “[But] one of those rights isn’t the privilege to have a license to drive a car. It’s an important privilege, but it’s not a right. And when you take that irresponsibly, and you take that over and over and over again, to get in that vehicle and make it a two-ton weapon because you’re under the influence or you just don’t give a damn and you’re reckless … there comes a point where we just have to say ‘enough is enough.’”

Under the proposed legislation, a person caught behind the wheel after a permanent license revocation, regardless of the reason behind the traffic stop, would be subject to a felony charge and a jail sentence of up to four years.

Charlotte’s Law has two Assembly Democrats as co-sponsors: Peter Rivera of the Bronx and Fred Thiele from Suffolk County. The Senate version has two sponsors, both upstate Republicans. The Times Union reports that similar legislation, introduced by Brooklyn Republican Marty Golden, cleared the Senate in 2011.

A separate bill, introduced by Republican Assembly Member Nicole Malliotakis, would revoke a driver’s license and vehicle registration for 10 years following a third drunk driving conviction. That bill also passed the Senate last year.

In a letter to Cuomo [PDF], Tedisco asked the governor to use the power of his office to crack down on lawless driving.

“In addition to seeking your support for this measure,” wrote Tedisco, “I would respectfully ask you to do everything in your power, administratively, to implement the spirit of this legislation and permanently terminate driver’s license privileges of serial drunk and dangerous drivers.”

Andrew Cuomo is now holding up Robert Moses as the model for his transportation policy. Image: Wikimedia

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Tappan Zee Bridge bears all the hallmarks of a Robert Moses project. Cuomo stripped popular transit elements from the original, publicly-conceived plan, leaving only a massive highway. Cuomo has shut down the public outreach process for the bridge entirely. He’s even moving to sign the contracts to build the bridge before answering basic questions about its design and funding. (Cuomo’s less-than-transparent answer about how the state will pay for the bridge today: “We’re working on a number of funding options.”)

Still, while we’d accuse Cuomo of Moses-style transportation planning, we wouldn’t have expected the governor to proudly own the label. But unbelievably, that’s what he did today at a press conference, implicitly comparing his bridge project to those of Moses in response to an on-point question about the New York Works Task Force from Capitol Confidential’s Jimmy Vielkind.

Said Cuomo:

There are ways for government to get things done without using a ramrod, obviously. Your characterization, that Mr. Moses used a ramrod, other people would disagree with that characterization, but it’s yours. My point is that government can function efficiently and effectively, I said with due process, with an open process, with consultation. But the consultation and the process shouldn’t be paralyzing. You know, government needs to work, society needs to be able to replace a bridge.

Talk about it, discuss it, analyze it, argue it. Look at different styles, look at different financing options, but ultimately, you have to decide if you’re going to get anything done.

So if you think the Cross-Bronx, Sheridan, Bruckner and Major Deegan Expressways reinvigorated the South Bronx; if you think the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge is better off without its once-proposed inter-borough transit connection; if you still shake your head at those in Greenwich Village who had the nerve to speak up against a freeway through downtown, then you’ll love Andrew Cuomo’s transit-free Tappan Zee Bridge.

Don’t take our word for it. Andrew Cuomo said so himself.

It's great that Andrew Cuomo granted the MTA a reprieve from the state's absurd practice of charging it to borrow money. But it'll take more than nickels and dimes to restore bus service, including cuts in Staten Island. Image: The Eyes of New York via Flickr.

It’s not often that Andrew Cuomo is willing to spend a dime in support of mass transit, but the governor did offer the MTA a small respite yesterday.

Currently, the state steals money from transit riders in one particularly insulting way. First, Albany leaves the MTA capital plan drastically underfunded, forcing the authority to take on tens of billions of dollars in debt. Then, for every bond the MTA issues, the state charges it a fee for the privilege. Since 2006, the state has taken $100 million from the MTA in “bond issuance charges.”

Thanks to sustained lobbying from transit advocates, most notably MTA Board member Allen Cappelli, a Staten Islander appointed by David Paterson, Cuomo has agreed to waive the bond issuance charges for the next two years, though only on bonds being used to refinance old debt. Given the enormous amount of borrowing required by Cuomo’s own refusal to fund the rest of the MTA capital plan, even that limited reprieve will amount to $50 million more for the transit system.

“If we are to hold the MTA accountable for their spending practices, state government must do its part to solve the problem as well,” said State Assembly Member Nicole Malliotakis, who had pushed for the elimination of the fee, in a statement. “This policy was completely counterproductive as it was bleeding the MTA dry and contributing to the agency’s chronic failure to maintain adequate bus service and keep tolls and fares at a reasonable level,”

As an editorial by the Staten Island Advance notes, a partial waiver of the charge is only a small first step. “We urge the governor and the Legislature to grant a permanent exemption that will cover all of the MTA’s bonds, not just those used to refinance old debt,” wrote the Advance today. “There was never any rational justification for the state to claim a cut from bonds used to pay for public transportation. The state should be funding mass transit even more than it does, not appropriating a portion of the beleaguered MTA’s revenue.”

Indeed, this $50 million doesn’t even come close to making up for Cuomo’s past attacks on transit funding.
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This item slipped under the radar late Friday afternoon: The New York State Republican Party is calling out Governor Andrew Cuomo for abandoning transit on the Tappan Zee Bridge.

After the feds declined to invite New York to apply for a low-interest loan to finance construction of a transit-less TZB, the state GOP sent out this statement (hat tip to Nick Reisman at Capital Tonight’s State of Politics blog):

County Executives Astorino and Vanderhoef have implored the Governor to include mass transit into any new Tappan Zee Bridge as a way to ensure that the bridge is not obsolete on day one and protects the environment going forward. Governor Cuomo, who has acknowledged the importance of a new bridge, has been conspicuously silent and woefully inert.

The cause of rebuilding New York’s infrastructure will only succeed if it has a champion, and New York’s two U.S. Senators and Governor are the only elected officials with the political capital to get the job done. Today’s news makes clear that they have neither the will nor the ability.

As Reisman notes, even though Cuomo is a Democrat, the state GOP is not in the habit of criticizing him this sharply.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, state legislators Andrea Stewart Cousins, David Carlucci, Amy Paulin, Tom Abinanti, and Ken Zebrowski all signed on to a coalition statement last December which, like the state GOP, calls Cuomo’s TZB plan “obsolete from day one” [PDF via Tri-State Transportation Campaign]. The coalition also includes labor unions and environmental organizations.

So it seems that the Cuomo administration’s current TZB plans are so shortsighted and plainly unpopular in the Hudson Valley (where residents participated for years in a public planning process envisioning transit on the bridge), that both ends of the local political spectrum feel compelled to oppose them. Whether you’re approaching this issue from the left or the right, building a superwide, cars-only Tappan Zee Bridge is a lousy idea.

In a major rebuke to the Cuomo administration’s plans for a transit-less Tappan Zee Bridge, the federal government rejected New York State’s application for a low-interest federal loan yesterday. The loan, which would have been made under the popular TIFIA program, was an important component of Cuomo’s plans to finance the new Tappan Zee.

The longer you examine Andrew Cuomo's plan for a Tappan Zee Bridge without transit, the worse it looks. Photo: Angel Franco/Newsday

Demand for TIFIA loans was high; 26 letters of interest were submitted requesting a total of $13 billion, far more than was available. Excluding a pie-in-the-sky submission for a “pod train superhighway,” New York’s application for $2 billion to help build the new Tappan Zee Bridge was the largest request.

Even so, many expected the project to get a nod from the feds. After all, the Tappan Zee was one of only 14 infrastructure projects nationwide to be chosen for expedited review by the Obama administration, a sign of special favor.

Instead, five projects were invited to move forward in the TIFIA application process. Notably, some of the projects chosen include bus rapid transit components, as in Colorado’s US 36 project, or joint carpool/toll lanes, as in Northern Virginia’s I-95 project. In contrast, the Tappan Zee replacement project would double the width of the existing bridge and open all that space to single occupancy vehicles.

New York could reapply for next year’s round of TIFIA loans, said U.S. DOT spokesperson Bill Adams, but won’t receive any this year. Without credit assistance from the feds, financing the Tappan Zee Bridge gets that much more difficult. TIFIA loans currently offer a 3.15 percent interest rate. Thruway Authority loans, according to analyst Charles Komanoff, average about 4.5 percent. On a $2 billion loan, that’s a sizable increase in the price tag for the project.

The difference would likely have to come from higher tolls, either for drivers crossing the Tappan Zee or for those on the rest of the Thruway system. According to Komanoff’s calculations, the difference in toll prices without the low-interest loan will be sizable. In the best-case scenario — one without any cost overruns and in which high tolls don’t scare off drivers — the TIFIA rejection will push tolls from $10.90 to $12.30. In a case with higher construction costs than estimated and lower traffic levels than projected, tolls would rise from $18.40 with the TIFIA loan to $20.50 without.

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