Streetsblog New York City

Most members of Congress are excited to cut the ribbon for a new stretch of freeway, but it’s a smaller set indeed that will stand up for the removal of a highway, no matter how neighborhood-blighting. As of yesterday, count New York Senator Chuck Schumer among their number.

“Right now, the Robert Moses Parkway stands as a Berlin Wall, with the state park on one side and the city on the other,” Schumer said at a press conference yesterday. “Our message to the transportation secretary is clear: Tear down this road.”

The highway in question is a short stretch of the Robert Moses Parkway in downtown Niagara Falls (the name adds a certain historical sweetness to its removal). The highway, which sits on an elevated berm, would be replaced with a lower and slower two lane “park road” and bicycle and pedestrian facilities. Taking down one mile of highway, said Schumer’s office, would open up 40 acres of the waterfront.

Schumer promised to secure $10 million in federal funds needed to complete the design work for the highway removal and urged Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to fast-track the project through federal review. “For years, this project that would help transform downtown Niagara Falls has been stuck in the mud. Enough is enough; we must tear down this road,” said Schumer in a press release. “Lowering the Parkway would connect downtown with the majestic views of the waterfront park, pumping new life into Niagara Falls. We absolutely have to get this done.”

The Congress for the New Urbanism, the leading advocates of highway teardowns nationally, celebrated Schumer’s support. “CNU’s John Norquist has long argued that freeways like the Robert Moses Parkway are monoliths from a disastrous planning era have no place in cities,” said CNU program director Caitlin Ghoshal. “But federal, state, and local governments are just now better understanding the financial and transportation implications that make teardowns a good decision for taxpayers.”

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Last week’s tragic bus crash in the Bronx, which left 15 dead, has captured the attention of New York’s media and political elite. Since the crash took place nine days ago, the New York Times has published no fewer than seven articles updating its readers on every detail and development.

Much of the attention has centered around whether Ophadell Williams, the bus’s driver, should have been licensed to operate the bus in the first place. Governor Andrew Cuomo took a break from high-stakes budget negotiations to order an investigation of Williams’ driving and criminal records and Senator Chuck Schumer has called for the state DMV to audit every driver’s license held by a tour bus driver. Said Schumer in a WNYC report, “Looking after a crash, or a spot check while the driver is behind the wheel, that’s good, but what would be better is preventing these people who shouldn’t be driving, from getting behind the wheel in the first place.”

Schumer’s focus on prevention must be cold comfort to the family of Peter and Lillian Sabados. The elderly couple were killed in a hit-and-run crash while walking to Thanksgiving Mass in 2009. Their killer, Allmir Lekperic, had amassed at least 29 license suspensions in the three years beforehand. Any attempt to prevent Lekperic from getting behind the wheel in the first place was clearly ineffective.

You’d never know it from watching the news this week, but there are far more Allmir Lekperics in the world than deadly bus drivers. Each year, around 375 people are killed in bus crashes nationwide, according to a 2009 report by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration [PDF]. The bulk of those deaths come from crashes involving school buses and transit buses; charter and tour buses were involved in only 396 out of 2,629 fatalities between 1999 and 2005, around 57 a year.

Compare that to the number of people killed in crashes with improperly licensed drivers. One in five fatal traffic crashes nationwide involves at least one driver without a valid license, according to research by the AAA Foundation [PDF]. Those crashes killed an average of 8,801 people each year.

Crashes involving unlicensed drivers, therefore, killed more than 154 times as many people as all crashes involving charter buses.

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Here’s the piece about the Prospect Park West bike lane that ran on the Channel 11 News last night.

While it would have been great to see more of the data showing the success of the redesign, WPIX Long Island reporter Rob Hoell gets a lot of the good political details into the segment: The role of former DOT commissioner Iris Weinshall and involvement of Weinshall’s husband, Senator Chuck Schumer; the fact that Weinshall and Schumer live on the street that has been redesigned; the connections between Schumer and Jim Walden, the attorney at the white-shoe law firm Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher who is working “pro bono” on behalf of bike lane opponents.

It would have been a cinch to connect all these dots a week ago, before CBS2′s chief political correspondent, Marcia Kramer, filed her latest hatchet job on the PPW redesign. But not one shred of information about the political machinations behind this high-profile bike lane fight has ever made it into a Marcia Kramer segment. Why is that?

Streetsblog has contacted Senator Chuck Schumer’s press office twice asking for comment on the Prospect Park West bike lane and received no reply.

Reports have recently surfaced personally tying Schumer to efforts to reverse the Prospect Park West redesign, which enjoys broad popular support according to a web survey of nearly 3,000 Brooklynites.

Schumer’s wife, Iris Weinshall, is a former DOT commissioner and prominent ally of a group looking to remove the bike lane.

David Seifman at the Post reported earlier this month that Schumer has spoken to City Council members about his displeasure with the bike lane.

Jim Walden, an attorney with the high-powered law firm Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher, has given his services free of charge to bike lane opponents, who have been threatening to sue the city to remove the lane. Walden is a top Schumer contributor and was on the Senator’s shortlist for a U.S. Attorney nomination in 2009. The anti-bike lane group he’s representing pro bono is based out of 9 Prospect Park West, one of the most exclusive properties in Brooklyn and the same building where Schumer and Weinshall reside.

Schumer, however, has not taken any public position on the redesign and his office has remained silent on the issue.

Hey, have you seen Marcia Kramer’s latest segment about Prospect Park West? It’s at least her third piece on a single Brooklyn bike lane in the last year. You can tell she’s had some practice — take a look (sorry about the minivan ad you’ll have to sit through first):

If you only got your news from CBS2, after watching this piece you’d think the people who bike on PPW are against this new street design. You’d never know that most of the neighborhood wants the bike lane to stay. You’d be in the dark about the data collected that shows no discernible difference in travel times. You’d have no idea that injuries are down on Prospect Park West, and so is speeding.

But you would know that Brooklyn Borough President and noted defender of pedestrians and cyclists Marty Markowitz thinks the lane is “putting lives in jeopardy.”

Marcia Kramer is CBS2’s “chief political correspondent,” so maybe she’s just too busy with her other stories to find sources who know what they’re talking about when it comes to street safety. When she’s not waging campaigns of misinformation against pedestrian refuges, public plazas, bike lanes, and congestion pricing, she has state budget battles and congressional scandals to cover. She’s important and her resume shows it. She’s gone on junkets to Israel with Senator Chuck Schumer and she did one of the most memorable interviews from Bill Clinton’s days as a presidential candidate.

So here’s a hot tip for Marcia Kramer — the Prospect Park West bike lane is a great political story! You know the group mentioned at the end of the segment — the one that’s suing the city because they don’t like a popular and effective street redesign? They call themselves “Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes,” but they actually just want to remove this bike lane. Interesting, no?

What really makes the story pop, though, is that this group has some first-rate political connections.

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United States Senator and Prospect Park West resident Chuck Schumer opposes the two-way, protected bike path in front of his home and has spoken privately with City Council members to discuss “what they’re going to do about [this and other] bike lanes,” the Post’s David Seifman reported this weekend.

The Seifman report is the first news account to provide details of the Senator’s involvement in efforts to eradicate the popular PPW redesign and have the street revert to its old form, with three traffic lanes, two parking lanes, zero bike lanes, and rampant speeding. Other members of Schumer’s family, including his wife Iris Weinshall, the former DOT commissioner, were already known to oppose the project.

The news about Schumer’s opposition came the same weekend that WNYC’s Andrea Bernstein reported that PPW opponents including Weinshall and former deputy mayor Norman Steisel have arranged for the white-shoe law firm Gibson Dunn to represent their interests. Randy Mastro, head of the firm’s litigation arm and a former deputy mayor under Rudolph Giuliani, referred the anti-bike lane group to attorney Jim Walden, who took it as a pro bono case. (Walden made the maximum contribution to Schumer’s re-election campaign in 2010.) A lawsuit is expected as soon as this week.

So what happens when a traffic-calming street redesign, which originated from community-based planning workshops and enjoys broad public support, encounters opposition from the most powerful politician in the state? Here’s a timeline of the highlights.

2006

Community groups including the Park Slope Civic Council and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition convene a series of public workshops to discuss traffic, street safety, and public space issues in Grand Army Plaza and the vicinity. The need to redesign Prospect Park West to reduce speeding and improve the neighborhood’s bikeability emerges as a high priority.

2007

In June, as part of its resolution approving the 9th Street bike lane, Brooklyn Community Board 6 asks DOT to study the implementation of a two-way protected bike lane on Prospect Park West.

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Independent auditors at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have just released the results of their lengthy investigation of the Railroad Retirement Board, the federal agency that evaluates disability claims by commuter railroad workers -- and has historically approved more than 99 percent of them.

The New York Times obtained an early copy of the GAO report and quoted the Retirement Board's general counsel as admitting that internal reforms had not succeeded in slowing the growth of disability applications and approvals by rail workers, specifically employees of MTA's Long Island Rail Road.

A Times investigation revealed that LIRR workers -- even white-collar managers who had little active role in running trains -- had won approval for approximately $250 million in taxpayer-funded disability payments since 2000.

In fact, the GAO found that LIRR employees have filed Retirement Board claims at a rate 12 times higher than the other seven railroads covered by the agency (a list is available after the jump). Meanwhile, LIRR riders are facing yet more fare increases amid a massive budget gap at New York's transit authority.

How could the Retirement Board get away with sending disability payments to rail workers who the Times found well enough to spend most days golfing? By setting the bar for claims much lower than the Social Security system, which administers disability requests for most American employees.

The Retirement Board requires rail workers claiming a disability to have 20 years of work experience at any age level or 10 years, for those who have already turned 60. Social Security, by contrast, requires 20 quarters of participation in the system during the 10 years prior to the claim.

Once that standard is met, the Retirement Board asks workers to prove that they are prevented from working in their regular railroad position due to a permanent mental or physical condition. Most LIRR claimants provided their medical evidence of disability from one of three doctors, which the GAO deemed "an indicator of fraud or abuse."

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The New York Times today endorsed a bill from Senator Chuck Schumer, and its companion in the House, co-sponsored by Long Island Democrat Steve Israel, which would offer up to $4,000 in vouchers to drivers who give up their gas guzzlers (averaging 18 miles-per-gallon or worse) in exchange for "a new or used car that exceeds the corporate average fuel economy for vehicles in its class by 25 percent."

According to the Times, the Schumer-Israel bill -- the Accelerated Retirement of Inefficient Vehicles Act (ARIVA) -- is superior to an alternative proposal from Rep. Betty Sutton of Ohio, whose Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act (CARS) would authorize up to $5,000 in vouchers to drivers who swap their old cars for "new ones that are assembled in the United States and carry a minimum fuel-efficiency rating of 27 m.p.g." Beginning in 2010, Sutton's bill would offer $7,500 toward domestic hybrid models averaging 100 mpg or more.

The Obama administration likes the "cash for clunkers" concept. CARS has the backing of the UAW and, not surprisingly, is favored by Detroit. "But because more than half the cars in showrooms today already meet the 27 m.p.g. standard set by the bill," write the editors of the Times, "the measure would provide fewer environmental benefits than the more ambitious Schumer-Israel proposal." ARIVA, on the other hand, would "guarantee considerable oil savings and significant reductions in carbon dioxide."

Or not. In a recent New Yorker article, David Owen sums up the argument against a CAFE-based cure-all.

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Senator Chuck Schumer has unveiled an amendment to the Senate stimulus bill that would increase transit funding by $6.5 billion -- to $14.9 billion overall. This would direct $2.9 billion more to transit, in total, than the House stimulus bill that passed last week. For the wonks out there, transit funding would break down like so, if the amendment is adopted: $10.4 billion for capital grants, $2 billion for rail modifications, and $2.5 billion for new starts. From the press release issued by Schumer and Congressman Jerrold Nadler:

Schumer and Nadler said the capital pot must grow to reflect out-of-control capital costs for transit systems, “rail mod” is important for aging rail systems, of which New York has many and more money for New Starts is important to projects like East Side Access and 2nd Ave subway, as well as NJ ARC.

This amendment would be a significant improvement over the current bill; we'll keep you posted on how you can support it. And it's good to see Schumer, whose standing in his party has grown considerably thanks to his years helming the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, make transit funding an issue in the stimulus debate.

One thing that's missing here is operating assistance, which got shot down in the House when an amendment proposed by Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio stalled before reaching committee. The additional funding from Schumer's amendment would ease some pressure on strained transit agencies, but with service cuts looming in dozens of cities across the country, straphangers need more direct assistance to stave of fare hikes and keep their buses and trains running.

Last night's news about the denial of Rep. DeFazio's amendment to fund transit operations left us wondering whether parliamentary issues were really the deciding factor. In general, it appears, the Democratic leadership is coming down hard against any add-ons to the recovery package. "There's a desire to keep the bill at the size it is currently," said one House staffer involved in the negotiations who wished to remain anonymous. "Pelosi's office and the Appropriations Committee are resistant to amendments that increase the size of the bill."

Now it's up to the Senate to get this provision into the stimulus bill. Bus and subway riders all over the country need Chuck Schumer and rookie Kirsten Gillibrand to earn their keep on this one. New York's Senate delegation has to come out strong for transit operations if American cities are going to stave off a wave of fare hikes and service cuts.

And wouldn't it be nice to see MTA chief Lee Sander ride the train down to Washington and make the case for transit operations? This seems like a golden opportunity for the MTA CEO to campaign on behalf of straphangers and save the fare.

Meanwhile, as Sarah mentioned last night, the focus in the House now shifts to Jerrold Nadler's proposal to add $3 billion for transit capital investments. The people to call today are Nancy Pelosi (202-225-0100) and Appropriations Chair David Obey (202-225-3365). The Speaker, especially, should be trying as hard as she can to make more room for transit investment if she wants to do right by her San Francisco district.