Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver could make a slew of transportation bills move through his chamber or let them languish as in years past. Photo: Daily News

This year’s legislative session is rapidly coming to a close in Albany. With the state legislature wrapping up its regularly scheduled official business on June 20, the Capitol is entering a period of intense activity as legislators and lobbyists make a final push for their priorities.

Albany has some big items on its agenda this month: rent regulations, a property tax cap, ethics reform, and gay marriage. Somewhat below the radar, the push is on for a number of street safety and sustainable transportation priorities as well. Time is of the essence, as advocacy momentum built up over the year dissipates after the session ends. Bills that falter this time around will have to start over again after the legislature reconvenes in January.

If support gels for any of the following bills, the legislature can act extremely quickly to turn them into law. That’s especially true in the Assembly, where Speaker Sheldon Silver controls a large majority and where most of this legislation is currently stalled or has died in past sessions.

Complete Streets

Complete streets legislation would require planners to consider the needs of all road users when designing a road receiving state and federal funding. Last year, it passed the State Senate but stalled out in the Assembly.

After talking with the legislation’s opponents, complete streets supporters made some revisions to the language, and an updated version of the bill is headed to the Senate Transportation Committee today, said Nadine Lemmon, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s Albany legislative advocate. As now written, the complete streets bill would cover the large set of projects that already need to conduct extensive reviews as part of the federal approval process, which involves filling out thick binders of paperwork. “We’re targeting projects that already have to do a lot of review and we’re just adding two pages to their world,” said Lemmon.

Purely local projects wouldn’t be covered, but Lemmon argued that as towns or counties prepare complete streets plans on some projects, they’d grow more familiar with the concept, leading to what she called a “trickle down effect.”

In the Senate, the complete streets bill is sponsored by both Charles Fuschillo and Martin Dilan, the chair and ranking member of the Transportation Committee, respectively, along with twelve other senators. In the Assembly, however, the companion legislation hasn’t been introduced yet. That said, Lemmon reported that preliminary conversations about the bill with both the governor’s staff and state DOT officials have been encouraging.

Automated Enforcement for Speeding and Red Lights

Using automated cameras to enforce the speed limit would save lives, but local governments need state approval to do so. Legislation to allow New York City to install such cameras was introduced in the Assembly by Manhattan rep Deborah Glick last week, said Transportation Alternatives State Policy Director Lindsey Lusher Shute. The bill is now in front of the transportation committee. Companion legislation hasn’t been introduced yet in the Senate, she said, though she thinks that Brooklyn Republican Marty Golden may sponsor it.

Though the bill currently has 12 co-sponsors, “it’s going to take quite a few more sponsors and attention by the transportation committee to move,” said Lusher Shute, especially “given the reluctance of the chair to adopt more automated enforcement legislation.” Transportation Committee chair David Gantt killed legislation to allow bus lane enforcement cameras in 2008. Concluded Lusher Shute, “It’s not as close as we’d like.”

Another Golden-sponsored bill, to allow New York City to increase the number of life-saving red light cameras in use from 150 to 300, has moved quickly through the Senate. It passed through committee there and now only awaits a floor vote. Again, however, the Assembly version is stuck in the transportation committee.

Transit Funding Lockbox

The broad array of groups supporting legislation to make it harder for Albany to steal dedicated transit funds is headed up to the Capitol today, said Lusher Shute. The coalition includes transit advocates, labor and business leaders.

The bill is currently in front of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee. Assembly sponsor Jim Brennan urged supporters to contact Ways and Means chair Denny Farrell at a press conference last week.

Lusher Shute sounded optimistic about the lockbox’s chances. “There are tons of groups behind it,” she said, and legislators’ memories of recent fare hikes and service cuts are fresh. “It’s very possible that we could move that this session.”

Crossover Mirrors

An effort to require large trucks on New York City streets to be equipped with mirrors that enable drivers to see pedestrians in the blind spot in front of the cab got a big boost last week, in the form of a mayoral press conference supporting the bill. By standing with the bill’s sponsors, Golden and Brooklyn Assembly Member Joan Millman, Mayor Bloomberg showed that the legislation is a top priority for the city.

Yesterday, the bill passed the State Senate, where it was sponsored by Golden. In the Assembly, the bill is still in front of the transportation committee, but the Daily News reports that it could clear the whole chamber as soon as tomorrow.

This clip from yesterday's Assembly Transportation Committee meeting doesn't quite live up to the hype.

If you're puzzled as to why we're even showing this, allow me to set the scene: Two years ago, a bill enabling camera enforcement of New York City bus lanes died in this same committee under cloudy circumstances. In a hastily called vote, several sponsors ended up siding against the bill, and no one could really explain why. At least, no one would tell the press anything other than some variation on "the committee chair made me do it." When the Times asked the chair, David Gantt, why the bill failed, he said, "What do you think, I go around breaking people's arms?" Throughout, Speaker Sheldon Silver got to remain above the fray.

Since then, the State Senate has started recording its committee meetings and posting them online, but not the Assembly. If there was going to be a reprise of 2008, Streetsblog needed to capture it for posterity. So when a bus lane bill reached the Transportation Committee yesterday, our intrepid freelancer Alan Wechsler went to the meeting, camera in hand. This is what he saw: In four seconds, the bus camera bill was introduced, "debated," and reported to the next committee. Wristwatch checking ensues.

You can hear Gantt, seated at the far end of the table, ask for negative votes, then proclaim that the bill is reported. That's it. No grumbling about motorists' privacy. The bus cam bill advances to the Codes Committee. A very promising development for New York City bus riders, a win for transit advocates and local legislators, and a head-scratching installment in this Albany storyline.

Video footage shot by Alan Wechsler

Don't celebrate just yet, but legislation authorizing the use of camera enforcement to keep New York City bus lanes clear of traffic -- a.k.a. the bus cam bill -- just cleared the Assembly Transportation Committee.

Sheldon Silver and David Gantt.

With NYCDOT and the MTA relying on enforcement, not separated lanes, to keep traffic from interfering with transit service on their rapid bus corridors, cameras will be critical to success. After camera enforcement was enacted in London, average travel speeds in bus lanes improved 12.6 percent, according to NYCDOT. For now, the prospects for better bus service on the city's dedicated lanes are looking pretty good. (Successful passage of the bus cam bill could also free up NYPD resources to enforce other traffic violations, like failure-to-yield to pedestrians or bike lane blocking.)

We'll have more information on the committee vote later today.

Update: Our man in Albany, Alan Wechsler, files this bit of color from what appears to have been an utterly bland and uneventful committee hearing:

The bill received no discussion during the short meeting. After the meeting, Chairman David Gantt (D-Rochester) declined to comment about why the bill had been held up before.

Camera enforcement will help bus lanes work as advertised for hundreds of thousands of riders. Image: NYCDOT

With only a few weeks left before the legislature goes home for the year, time is running out to get something done. There are two options: convince Sheldon Silver and the Assembly leadership to adopt bus cameras in their budget, or pursue a separate bill that will have to go through Rochester Democrat David Gantt, the chair of the Assembly transportation committee who shot down bus cams in 2008.

Bus cam supporters have recently made some progress on both fronts. The State Senate has agreed in principle to include the governor's version of the bus camera program in their budget, according to a source in the capitol following the negotiations. (At first, the Senate had proposed a watered-down version of the program.) That still leaves the Assembly, where leadership has yet to indicate any change in their position.

If bus cams don't make it into the Assembly budget, there appears to be extensive support for a standalone bill among rank-and-file Assembly members.

Bus cam legislation sponsored by Manhattan rep Jonathan Bing now has 47 sponsors. Several veteran members of New York City's delegation, including Manhattan Democratic Party chair Keith Wright, have signed on. A companion bill in the State Senate was recently introduced by Brooklyn rep and transportation committee chair Martin Malavé Dilan. While Dilan's committee has scheduled a vote on the bill for June 8, Gantt's committee in the Assembly has not scheduled a vote.

To complicate matters even more, Albany also needs to receive a "home rule message" from the New York City Council to move forward with a bus camera bill. The council will have to hold a vote quickly. The last transportation committee meeting in the Assembly takes place in less than two weeks, on June 7. There may not be another chance to advance the bus camera bill this year.

We have phone calls in with several city and state legislators to see where they stand on the bus cam bill. With the state Democratic convention in full swing today, it's been difficult to get people on the line, so stay tuned for updates later this week.

In the meantime, if you want to show your support for better bus service in New York City, you can join this Facebook group. (And call your representatives, of course.)

S5711, a.k.a. the Complete Streets Bill, would mandate that new and reconstructed public roads "accommodate all users," specifically pedestrians, cyclists and "individuals of all ages and mobility capabilities." Sponsored by Brooklyn Senator Martin Malave Dilan, the bill has broad support from a coalition of interests, including transportation advocates, public health groups, and AARP.

A 2008 report from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign found that pedestrians aged 65 years and older in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are at much greater risk of being killed than their younger counterparts, and that the senior pedestrian fatality rate is higher in the tri-state region than in other parts of the country.

Bill Ferris, legislative representative for AARP, said getting complete streets legislation adopted this session is a priority for his organization. "We firmly believe our roads need to be designed for all users," Ferris told Streetsblog, "not just automobiles." Ferris is "very hopeful" that S5711 will be passed by the full Senate.

At the behest of bill supporters, the version that cleared the transportation committee included the addition of "sidewalks" to the definition of complete streets, and tightened previous exemptions. For example, the bill now specifies the grounds on which a town could deem the cost of a complete streets project "excessively disproportionate," explained Lindsey Lusher Shute of Transportation Alternatives. Senator Catharine Young, a Republican from Olean, voted against the bill, saying it would impose undue costs on rural localities.

As complete streets legislation moves to the floor of the Senate, there has been no action on its companion in the Assembly, where it sits in the committee of transportation chair David Gantt, who is also the sponsor. Said Ferris: "Our hope is that the Assembly will take notice of the movement in the Senate and start pushing their version of the bill shortly."

"We anxiously await Assembly Member Gantt's introduction of the updated language in the Assembly and the coalition is ready to help bring his colleagues along," Shute said. "It would be an incredible victory to pass this legislation in a tough budget year, and a testament to the value of complete streets for the environment, public health and the economy."

Shelly Silver let better bus service fall by the wayside in the Assembly's budget proposal.

"Right now, bus lanes are routinely violated by many vehicles, resulting in chronic delays for hundreds of thousands of bus riders," said Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign. "Using enforcement cameras in city bus lanes could turn that around, making bus service more reliable and helping to reduce congestion."

Two years ago, bus cams died in the Assembly transportation committee, chaired by Rochester representative David Gantt. This time around, they were stripped out in the Assembly's opaque budget process. One advocate in Albany told Streetsblog that rank-and-file Assembly members were unaware that the bus cam provisions had been slashed from the budget resolution as late as yesterday afternoon, hours before the resolution was unveiled and voted on.

Gantt has no veto power in the Assembly budget process, which the Speaker himself exerts enormous influence over. The budget resolution only had to clear a vote in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Upper Manhattan representative Denny Farrell, before the Speaker brought it to the full floor last night. "It's our view that Silver maintains pretty tight control over the budget process," said Laura Seago, a research associate at the Brennan Center for Justice and co-author of the 2009 report on Albany dysfunction, "Still Broken" [PDF].

Neither Silver nor Gantt's office has returned Streetsblog's requests for comment at this time.

Restoring the bus cam program in the final budget now hinges on negotiations between the Assembly, the State Senate, and the governor's office. Those talks, which happen behind closed doors, are expected to heat up sometime after the official budget deadline of April 1.

In the Senate, which included a watered down version of the governor's original bus camera proposal in its budget resolution, several representatives say they'll be pushing to restore the full bus cam language. Senator Eric Adams, whose Brooklyn district would be served by Select Bus Service slated for the Nostrand Avenue corridor, said he believes camera enforcement is a critical tool to keep buses moving. He expressed surprise that the Assembly had stripped bus cams from its budget and said he'd ask Senate negotiators to make them a high priority. "The resolution is just phase one," he said. "Now we're going to start drilling down on the issues that matter to us."

In a letter to Senate transportation committee chair Martin Malave Dilan, Krueger urged the adoption of a robust bus cam program, which she called "altogether imperative for this system to succeed."

On the Assembly side, Manhattan rep Jonathan Bing, who sponsored the bus cam legislation that Gantt shot down two years ago, said he's organizing a contingent of legislators to restore bus cameras. He urged Streetsblog readers "to contact their legislators to encourage the leadership to include this in the final budget.”

If New York were allowed to install bus lane enforcement cams, bus riders wouldn't be slowed so much by illegally parked delivery trucks.

New York can't install bus lane cameras without authorization from Albany. So far, the legislature hasn't bestowed it, despite wide-ranging support. Two years ago, Assembly transportation commmittee chair David Gantt killed an earlier version of bus camera legislation, leaving New York City bus riders stuck in traffic. 

The new budget amendment would actually be an improvement over that bill. The old legislation limited bus-mounted cameras to the city's five Select Bus Service routes, while the current version allows camera enforcement on up to 50 miles of bus routes -- exactly the length of the city's current bus lane network. "It's saying that all bus lanes are important, in every borough," said Lindsey Lusher Shute, Transportation Alternatives' director of environmental campaigns.

The cameras would either be stationary or mounted on buses, recording the license plates of motorists parked or driving in bus lanes. Fines would be set at a maximum of $125.

Camera enforcement would be a real game-changer for bus riders. Dedicated lanes can mean much faster trips, but in New York, all sorts of other vehicles constantly violate bus lanes. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's office conducted a study last summer which found more than 350 vehicles parked in Midtown bus lanes over a 40 hour period. The police, meanwhile, are at best too thinly stretched to spend sufficient manpower on keeping bus lanes clear, and at worst they're the source of the problem.

Because NYCDOT and the MTA appear loath to install physically separated lanes for their big-ticket bus improvements on First and Second Avenues, camera enforcement will be critical to achieving better performance. 

"The most effective way to provide faster and more reliable bus service is to enforce bus lanes by cameras," said Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign. "Sporadic and limited ticketing by police just doesn't keep bus lanes moving, free of illegally stopped cars." 

For the bus camera legislation to emerge intact from the budget process, both the Assembly and the State Senate will also need to include it in their budgets, which are expected to be released in about three weeks. The Senate is fairly likely to include bus cameras in its budget, said Shute, so the question is whether Gantt will keep it in the Assembly version.

If not, bus camera legislation would have to be passed as a stand-alone bill. Assembly Member Jonathan Bing is already sponsoring one such bill. Advocates will be in Albany on Wednesday, making the case for cameras.

On the merits, the texting "ban" is weaker than another bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, which the transportation committee never brought up for a vote. Under the Gantt bill, a driver could be fined, but not pulled over, for texting behind the wheel.

"While we certainly support the intent of the bill, we have questions about specific language which would seem to greatly restrict its actual application," said TA's Peter Goldwasser in an email. "In short, unless an individual is committing another, different violation in the first place, then he or she is not subject to receiving a summons for violating this new offense."

In 2007, there were nearly 10,500 crashes in New York where the contributing factor was driver inattention or distraction, Goldwasser noted. Shouldn't that be enough reason to make distracted driving a standalone violation?

On balance, this bill would be a step forward for street safety in New York, but with the State Senate in the midst of its epic breakdown, the odds of it becoming law -- during this session, at least -- are vanishingly small. (So far, there's not even a version of this bill in the Senate.) This will be something to keep an eye on in the next legislative session. The speaker, the transportation committee chair, and the whole Assembly are on record supporting this bill, so there's no reason it shouldn't pass again when the opportunity arises.

Sheldon Silver. Photo: Daily News.

When we contacted Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's office, a spokesperson told us that it's up to the committee chair to move the bill forward. That would be Rochester Democrat David Gantt. But why should one person have such power when the overwhelming majority of his members disagree? And is Gantt really the guy making that call -- or is it Sheldon Silver?

To get a sense of the dynamics at work here, Streetsblog called Laura Seago, a researcher at NYU's Brennan Center for Justice and co-author of the aptly titled report on Albany dysfunction, "Still Broken" [PDF].

"I would be surprised if Sheldon Silver wasn't involved," Seago said of the texting ban. "This is something we see all the time, unfortunately, which is that the speaker controls everything that comes to the floor."

While Gantt makes a convenient target, and it's conceivable, in Seago's words, that he was "acting freelance" on this one, the fact remains that Silver could easily move the texting ban forward if he chose to do so.

In a legislature that functions democratically, the members of the transportation committee could also override the objections of their chair or the leader of their chamber. But that's not how things work in Albany.

"Most state legislatures make committees the place where legislation is robustly debated and made," said Seago. Next door in Connecticut, she notes, bills introduced in committee are required to have a hearing and a vote, but in New York, "we just don’t have that." Here, the leaders of each legislative chamber -- Sheldon Silver in the Assembly, Malcolm Smith in the State Senate -- maintain control over the committee process, and there’s no viable way for the rank-and-file to force a vote on a bill.

The Assembly, says Seago, is a "democracy of one."

If you're wondering why Sheldon Silver would choose to block a popular measure to reduce the public safety risk posed by distracted drivers, it may be instructive to look at the long battle to ban driving while talking on a cell phone. That fight lasted several years, and when the state legislature finally passed a bill, in 2001, it did not include any restrictions on hands-free cell phones -- to the delight of the telecom industry and its lobbyists in Albany, and despite studies showing that hands-free phone calls pose just as big a risk as those on handsets.

As a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, I'm pretty much required to hate Tom Brady. However, two Super Bowl wins in the last four seasons (that'd be six all told, but who's counting?) have salved the wounds of those AFC championship losses at the hands of Brady in 2001 and 2004. And hey, the man rides a bike.

Here's Brady with son Jack and dog Vida, photographed in Boston after a Patriots practice session earlier this week.

Also to Brady's credit: Unlike certain Albany legislators, he and the Patriots are big believers in camera technology.

One in four American motorists text and drive, despite the fact that distracted driving is implicated in 80 percent of all crashes. Photo: Switched.

Buffalo Assembly Member Mark Schroeder called Gantt's office last Wednesday seeking clarification on the chairman's plans for the texting-while-driving ban. The bill needs Gantt's blessing to get on the transportation committee calendar, and Schroeder wanted to know the deal. Would Gantt allow the bill to come up for a vote? Like us, Schroeder is still waiting for an answer.

Bill sponsor Felix Ortiz, a Brooklyn Democrat who has pushed legislation to deter distracted driving for more than a decade, was able to get a few minutes of face time with Gantt last week. In classic foot-dragging style, the chairman told Ortiz that he would prefer to address distracted driving with a more "comprehensive" bill that penalizes all forms of inattentiveness behind the wheel. Seems reasonable enough, right? Well, not quite. As Ortiz told Streetsblog: "This is how things die here."

Gantt's gambit is a tried-and-true Albany maneuver, deployed to kill bills softly by offering an alternative that can be spun as an acceptable substitute. But how plausible is Gantt's alternative?

The chairman has his own bill, no. 786, that would create a new class of traffic infraction called "inattentive driving," defined loosely as any non-driving activity that "unreasonably interferes with the free and proper use of the public highway" or "unreasonably endangers other people who are using the public highways." That may sound good in principle, but the language leaves too much unspecified to serve as effective legislation, or to garner the support needed to become law in the first place.

"Texting needs to be addressed by itself," Ortiz said. "It doesn’t make too much sense to have a comprehensive piece of legislation."

Compared to Gantt's bill, the texting ban gets to the point much more directly. It would simply extend the prohibition against cell phone use while driving to include all texting activity.

If the proof of a bill's legitimacy is in its co-sponsors, then Gantt's bill is pure smokescreen. Introduced more than four months ago, it has no co-sponsors and no corresponding version in the State Senate. The texting ban, by contrast, enjoys the support of 48 co-sponsors. A Senate version has already cleared that chamber three years running.

Given the strong rank-and-file support for the texting ban, it's remarkable that one member of the Assembly can effectively halt its progress. While press reports hint that proponents of the bill may somehow skirt Gantt's stonewalling, the way forward is murky at best. A spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said that it's up to the transportation committee chair to bring any bill up for a vote, and that there are no plans to consider any distracted driving legislation outside the normal committee process. The Speaker's office did not answer requests to comment specifically about chairman Gantt's position on the proposed texting ban.

Red-light running "events" have declined dramatically where cameras have been installed. Source: NYCDOT.

Notably, Rochester Assemblymember David Gantt, who has consistently blocked automated enforcement measures from his position as chair of the transportation committee, signaled yesterday that he won't stand in the way of this one, reports Gannett:

Gantt said Wednesday he will no longer object to the measure and sponsored legislation this week to let Rochester have the cameras, which take snapshots of vehicles that run red lights.

Gantt said he still has reservations about whether the cameras invade privacy and increase safety. But he said legislative leaders and Gov. David Paterson have been pushing for the measure, so Rochester should be included.

Gantt's openness to new automated enforcement programs is welcome, but the fact that he still harbors reservations about safety benefits suggests he's not keeping up with the growing body of research on the subject. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in a report released last May, found that red light cameras yielded a 68 percent drop in the number of front-to-side collisions involving injuries. New York City's own camera program has reduced red-light running at camera-equipped locations by as much as 72 percent. (Both stats are cited in this NYCDOT report [PDF].)

Automated enforcement also figures heavily in plans for Bus Rapid Transit in New York, since planners are counting on bus-mounted cams to help keep exclusive BRT lanes clear of private vehicles. Similar cameras in London have improved bus speeds significantly. The last time bus-cam legislation came up in Albany, civil liberties groups did not raise objections, but Gantt spiked the bill citing worries about Big Brother.

Sheldon Silver and David Gantt

Gantt is also responsible for holding back automated enforcement measures like red light cams and speeding cams, which would save lives and deter the reckless driving that prompted Silver to call for zero tolerance traffic enforcement a mere two weeks ago.

After the bus cam vote, the Times editorial page exhorted Silver to remove Gantt from the chairmanship, citing his years of "micromanaging New York City's traffic from afar and for bewildering reasons." Gantt's standard anti-enforcement rationale -- privacy concerns -- was even more perplexing given that the bus cam bill had garnered the blessing of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Nevertheless, Silver just re-upped for two more years of Gantt at the helm of the transportation committee.

We asked the speaker's office why Silver made that call. We're waiting for a response, but a spokesman said the speaker does not usually comment on committee appointments.

So what does an Assembly member have to do to lose a committee chairmanship (and the hefty salary perk that goes with it)? Get caught asking for $500,000 in kickbacks from undercover federal agents. After Queens Assemblyman Anthony Seminerio was nabbed soliciting cash in exchange for favors in Albany, Shelly declined to re-appoint him. Making life more difficult for New York City bus riders, unfortunately, doesn't rate.

Biggest Setback: After being approved by an unprecedented civic coalition, the mayor and New York City Council, congestion pricing -- the one policy measure that simultaneously reduces traffic congestion while raising money for mass transit and livable streets -- died in an Albany backroom without even a vote.

Lobbyists of the Year: Walter McCaffrey and the Committee to Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free (below). It turns out New York City government is controlled by a handful of Queens Democrats, suburban state legislators and the Automobile Club of New York.

How Not to Lobby a State Legislator: Brooklyn State Senator Martin Malave Dilan's car is towed during a congestion pricing meeting with city officials.

Most Sociopathic Elected Official: Bronx State Senator Jeff Klein nearly crushes a cyclist with his black Mercedes and then tells him, "Get your hands off my car, you f*#king a55hole." Unfortunately for Sen. Klein, this particular cyclist happens to run a pretty robust media operation.

Most Disappointing Elected Officials: During the congestion pricing debate, three State Assemblymembers stood out for their enormous potential to exert leadership and their utter inability or unwillingness to do so. Deborah Glick, Joan Millman and Hakeem Jeffries all represent districts that would have overwhelmingly benefited from New York City's congestion pricing plan. Yet, Glick could only find reasons to oppose it. Millman decided she supported it -- two hours after the proposal was killed by her Democratic Assembly colleagues. And Jeffries had the gall to demand increased subway service on the G line three weeks after helping to eliminate the revenue source that might have paid for it. If only New York City were represented in the state Assembly by an aggressive, attentive, self-aggrandizing politician like...

Elected Official of the Year: You've got to hand it to Westchester Assemblyman Richard Brodsky -- he works hard for his constituents and supporters. Unfortunately for New York City's traffic-choked neighborhoods, beleaguered transit riders and asthmatic kids, his constituents are the metropolitan region's wealthiest car commuters and his supporters own a bunch of parking garages in Manhattan. While New York City's legislators rolled over and played dead, Richard Brodsky worked his butt off to make sure that New York City's congestion pricing plan -- a plan approved by the Mayor, City Council and a state commission -- died a quiet death in the Assemly's Democratic conference. Brodsky did incredible damage to New York City in 2008 but he also showed us what effective representation in Albany might look like.

Worst Elected Official: Rochester Assemblyman and transportation committee chairman David Gantt continued his decade-long effort to deny New York City the ability to deploy automated traffic enforcement systems on its streets. He loosened up a little bit though. This year he introduced legislation that would allow counties outside of New York City to use red light cameras -- as long as they purchased the technology from a Swedish firm represented by one of his cronies. Shocking? Not really. Just another day in Albany.

Most Opinions Fewest Solutions Award: From now on, this will be called the Anthony Weiner Award.

Most Moronic Idea From Albany: State Senators Jeff Klein and Eric Adams put on their serious, fighting-for-the-people faces and proposed suspending tolls on New York City bridges and tunnels and giving drivers a $200 gas tax rebate ahead of Memorial Day weekend. Not planning to burn lots of gasoline for your summer holiday? These two have nothing for you.

Red light cams have been proven to increase safety on New York City streets. Photo: mwilkie/Flickr

Red light cams are a proven life-saving technology, but one that is circumscribed by Albany. Previous attempts to expand automated enforcement measures -- including cameras to monitor red lights, speeding, and bus lane violations -- have been blocked by Rochester Assemblyman David Gantt, who chairs the transportation committee. That won't necessarily be the case this time around. "Putting it in the budget says the governor is firmly behind it," said Russ Haven, legislative counsel with NYPIRG. "That may mean it's more likely to happen."

It's still unclear how much New York's program would expand, but if the proposal survives the budget negotiating process, the final version will almost certainly extend the current red light camera "demonstration," which is due to sunset in December 2009. Advocates also hope that new red light cam programs proposed for Buffalo, Syracuse, Long Island, and yes, Rochester, will build more of a constituency for automated enforcement measures throughout the state.

Big questions remain about whether the expansion proposal will emerge intact from the Albany sausage grinder. As the state legislature works on passing a budget, members of the Assembly and Senate could try to sabotage the cams by substituting other measures. "If the governor's proposal is going to raise revenue then legislators need to come back and find other ways to replace that revenue if they don't like the idea," said Haven. The negotiation process is famously opaque, taking place largely behind closed doors.

Gantt, who ran for re-election unopposed this year, could still play the role of obstructionist. "He’s a formidable guy, he’s been around for decades," said Haven. "Unless he has a change of heart or unless he starts to see things in a different way, the governor and speaker may be the only figures who can move him."

Here is the budget language in question, in all its glory.

• Provide New Local Revenue and Financing Flexibility for New York City. Along with substantial mandate relief savings, the budget will authorize an expanded red light camera program and a range of local fee increases such as fees for birth certificates and marriage licenses worth $109 million in total. To enable New York City to better manage its finances during the current credit crisis, the City will be allowed to fund more of its capital program through the Transitional Finance Authority instead of general obligation debt, and Bond Anticipation Note (BAN) financing terms will be lengthened consistent with those allowed for the state.
• Provide Additional Targeted Revenue Flexibility for Municipalities Outside New York City. The cities of Buffalo, Yonkers, Rochester and Syracuse, as well as Nassau and Suffolk counties, will be authorized to establish red light camera programs to enhance public safety, while generating an estimated $48 million in local revenue. Cities outside New York City, as well as villages, will also be permitted to levy a gross receipts tax on cellular phone services similar to that currently charged by New York City, thereby raising up to $12.5 million in new revenue.

If drivers don't acknowledge the risk of speeding, street designs and enforcement practices have to do it for them.

When it comes to speeding, many American motorists don't worry about safety. They just worry about getting caught.

Those are the findings by researchers from Purdue University who surveyed nearly 1,000 motorists about speed limits and driving habits. They found that many drivers are cynical about the safety benefits of driving within speed limits, and many think they can drive safely while speeding as long as they won't get caught, according to the report in Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour.

"So the faster you think you can go before getting a ticket, the more likely you are to think safety's not compromised at higher speeds," said Fred Mannering, a professor of civil engineering at Purdue, in a press release. "For whatever reason, respect for speed limits seems to have deteriorated."

The case for traffic-calming and automated enforcement is already strong. This makes it even more airtight. Drivers are basically ignoring posted limits on roads designed to accommodate speeding. (Traffic author Tom Vanderbilt wrote a great post last month about the multi-pronged wrongheadedness of this approach to street design.) Since drivers respond more to the threat of tickets than the inherent dangers of speeding, automated devices like red-light cams and speeding cams are essential to thoroughly deter this behavior.

In New York, the design part of the equation is improving while the enforcement component lags, thanks in large part to a police department that seems more concerned with moving traffic than reining in reckless driving.

Effective traffic enforcement would be more manageable for NYPD if it weren't for Albany. David Gantt, the Rochester Assemblyman who killed bus-lane enforcement cams this June, has stifled red-light cameras for New York and other cities for years. Evidence like the Purdue study has yet to sway him.

The fact that this story was picked up by health reporters is an encouraging sidenote. Livable streets advocates will have powerful allies if public health authorities recognize unchecked speeding as the catastrophe that it is.

Just four years ago, the Rochester authority was in financial straits and facing large deficits. Since then, it has lobbied successfully for increases in state aid, receiving $32.8 million this year, up from $16 million four years ago. It helps that a local assemblyman, David F. Gantt, is chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee.

With more than half of its budget covered by the state, the RTS now runs surpluses consistently and, seemingly alone among local transit agencies, just cut its base fare. Meanwhile, David Gantt won't even let New York City put enforcement cameras on buses.

How does state aid to the MTA measure up to what the RTS receives? Comparing Rochester's transit budget to the MTA's is not exactly apples to apples, but this graphic from a recent Independent Budget Office report [PDF] gives a sense of Albany's direct contribution:

With New York City's mostly uncontested primary elections less than a week away, attention turns to the 64th State Assembly district in Lower Manhattan, where New York Times-endorsed insurgent Paul Newell is running a long-shot campaign against Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Facing his first Democratic challenge since the coining of the word "cyberspace," the decidedly analog Speaker has joined us here in the Information Age with a fancy new campaign web site, ShellySilver.org. It features an eye-catching Google map illustrating "What Shelly's Doing Near You" with some of the $3 to $7 million in member items he distributes annually.

Apparently, Silver hasn't caught on to the whole web 2.0 user-generated content thing because there's no way to drop your own pins on his Google map. If, for example, you wanted to stick a pin on Canal Street to make note of Silver's complicity in maintaining that street's never-ending traffic jam and Chinatown's third world-level childhood asthma rates, you'd be unable to do that. If you wanted to point out that Lower Manhattan enjoys some of the city's slowest buses and most dangerous streets, thanks, in part, to Silver allowing Rochester Assemblyman David Gantt to deny New York City the use of red light and bus lane enforcement cameras, you wouldn't be able to do that either. And given that the Speaker is known more for the projects and policies that he's stalled and killed (the commuter tax, New York City's Olympic bid, congestion pricing...) than the projects he's made happen, it seems like there ought to be a map showing all the things that don't exist in New York City thanks to Sheldon Silver's handiwork.

So, here it is. To help create a more complete picture of Shelly Silver's citywide footprint, Streetsblog went ahead and built a more interactive "What Shelly's Doing Near You" map. If you've got a contribution, go ahead and add it to the comments section here on Streetsblog. Pin it on Shelly.

Streetsblog's Brad Aaron -- on vacation in exotic, uh, Midtown -- sends this pic of a newly-striped 34th Street bus lane, looking east from Eighth Avenue. Red lanes on each side of 34th are part of the first phase of improvements to what is intended to become the city's first "transitway." Another witness says the bus lane on the north side of the street hasn't been striped yet.

Seeing bus-only territory marked off like this is bittersweet. If it weren't for the intransigence of Rochester Assemblyman David Gantt, there's a good chance these red lanes would not only be highly visible, but adequately enforced with bus-mounted cameras too.