Streetsblog New York City

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.

When reports surfaced last week that Assembly Member David Gantt intends to block a statewide texting-while-driving ban (again), we were curious: What does the chairman of the transportation committee have against a common-sense measure to discourage dangerous driving habits? After placing a call to Gantt's office yesterday morning, we're still waiting to hear back. The Rochester representative is famously circumspect when it comes to explaining his decisions, so the lack of a timely reply came as no surprise. After all, he doesn't return calls to members of his own committee, either.

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?

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New York City's red light cam program is on track to expand by 50 percent, pending legislation currently winding through Albany. Since 1994, the city has run a red light camera "demonstration program" -- with proven safety benefits -- which has to be renewed this year to continue. The bill would extend that program for five years and increase the number of cameras from 100 to 150 (here's the legalese).

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.

On Thursday, Sheldon Silver re-appointed Rochester's David Gantt to chair the Assembly Transportation Committee (Excel spreadsheet via Daily Politics). Gantt is the chairman who engineered the defeat of bus lane enforcement cameras last June, when six co-sponsors of the bill wound up voting against it in his committee. With the city's bus rapid transit plans relying on bus-mounted cameras to help keep BRT lanes free of auto traffic, the committee vote dealt a big setback to New York City bus riders.

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.

Dig deep enough into Governor Paterson's austerity budget and you'll actually find a few pieces of good news. Case in point: One provision would allow New York to expand its red light camera program, currently limited to 100 cameras, and a second would authorize other cities to launch their own automated red light enforcement programs (see page 65 of this PDF, or follow the jump).

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.

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New research from Purdue University highlights the futility of controlling drivers' speed with signs. The Times' health blog has the story:

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.

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As the Ravitch Commission's first public hearing on how to fix the MTA's budget woes gets underway, this paragraph from today's Times story on the Rochester Regional Transit Service (annual budget: $62 million) bears mentioning:

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:

Plot the Pork. What would you like to add to Sheldon Silver's Google map?

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.

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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.