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Gary Toth is director of Project for Public Spaces' transportation program and an influential voice for transportation as a tool for making communities more livable. In this piece he tells us how state DOTs are taking cues from Washington as the stimulus bill takes shape. It's going to be more of the same unless Congress starts sending different signals -- immediately. The names of DOTs have been altered (State DOT A, State DOT B) to protect the identity of sources. Check out PPS's social network site for more from Gary.

I spent last week working with 30 engineers and planners at State DOT A while teaching a transportation and land use course. In a phrase, the politicians are driving them nuts over the stimulus. Yesterday, I met with a planner from an MPO who said that she was ready to put a bullet in her head as a result of the disruption that the stimulus has created in her job.

This is consistent with what I find when I talk to people at State DOT B. Congress's dangling of billions in front of the politicians has created a feeding frenzy, with the people at the top desperately trying to prove that they can spend every penny, and imposing on staff to create list after list without ever knowing what the rules of the game are. All sense of standards and reason is out the window.

People are already investing resources in hurriedly putting together projects that they think the bill will call for. If Congress wants to steer them to, say, bike/ped or maintenance, legislators have to get the word out now. Alternately, they have to be more pragmatic about this and recognize that they may have to give the DOTs 90 days to gear up to what Congress wants them to spend the money on, then 180 days to spend the money. Otherwise, the DOTs will have no choice but to pick business-as-usual projects, because that is all they have in the pipeline.

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The massive federal stimulus package -- expected to direct hundreds of billions to infrastructure projects over the next two years -- enters a critical phase this weekend as congressional leaders and the Obama team hammer out the bulk of the bill. For transportation policy, the options are clear: This bill can either perpetuate a system geared toward more driving, more pollution, and more dysfunction on our streets, or it can signal that the nation is turning the page on 1950s-style mobility, embracing green transportation, and placing greater value on the public realm.

The folks at Transportation for America are urging supporters to call their representatives in Washington and give key decision makers a push in the right direction. 

The shape of the stimulus will have major consequences for Obama's domestic agenda. "The economic recovery package should send a strong signal on the rest of the legislative priorities that are coming up," said Robert Puentes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a prolific author of infrastructure and transportation policy recommendations. "We know that after this legislation passes, we have a ticking clock with respect to the climate bill, energy legislation, and the next transportation bill. It's critical that the economic recovery package support a new way forward that's being promised with those other pieces of legislation."

The bill is expected to deliver up to $100 billion to transportation projects, or about two years' worth of typical federal spending. One of the big risks is that too much leeway will be given to states, which have an unhealthy appetite for highway expansion. "The big highway projects are eating up the majority of the money in many of the states," said David Burwell, a strategic consultant with T4A.

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In his storied career at New Jersey DOT, Gary Toth played an indispensable role changing the culture of the agency, promoting a place-based ethic instead of the auto-centric transportation planning dogma. Today Toth heads transportation initiatives at Project for Public Spaces, where he has written "A Citizen's Guide to Better Streets." The book, which will be published by AARP, serves as a how-to for working constructively with your local transportation and planning agencies. (It is not yet available for purchase.)

Streetsblog Editor-in-Chief Aaron Naparstek sat down with Toth last week for this interview. Anyone interested in how the American landscape has become so dominated by cars should watch. Toth's insights about the compound effects of transportation and land use policies are invaluable.

On Friday, Streetsblog looked at how northern Virginia can't get enough road widening. As a follow-up, Gary Toth of Project for Public Spaces directed us to another example of how smart growth faces hurdles in the places that need it most -- in this case, the Trenton suburb of Bordentown, New Jersey (right: the main drag).

Residents in the village of 4,000 recently voiced their opposition to a proposal that would encourage mixed-use and infill development, reports the Burlington County Times:

The ordinance would allow for the addition of up to 100 dwellings downtown. It would allow developers to put apartments or condominiums above storefronts and would increase the allowable height for buildings. Currently, developers have to obtain variances to do such things.

The rejection of the zoning changes was stoked by fears that the town's historic character would be threatened, among other things:

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Suburbanites in northern Virginia are finding their streets more clogged with traffic than ever, and, as the Washington Post reported earlier this week, they aren't about to get bailed out by road-widening projects. Here's the crux of the problem, told from the Post reporter's decidedly windshield perspective:

Thoroughfares like Rolling Road are the blood vessels that connect suburbia, the secondary roads that carry commuters to interstates, residents to supermarkets and children to school. They include Braddock Road in Fairfax County, Colesville Road in Montgomery, and even such larger highways as routes 7 and 50. They are the roads that Washington area residents traverse every day, sometimes several times a day.

Just months ago, Northern Virginia residents and elected officials were expecting hundreds of millions of dollars in improvements to such roads. Now, because of budget cuts and state lawmakers' failure to reach a deal on regional transportation funding, drivers can expect only more misery.

The Virginia Department of Transportation recently announced a 51 percent cut in the region's road-building program. Dozens of projects have been eliminated or postponed indefinitely. And rising maintenance costs are eating away at what little remains.

The Post assumes that expanding road capacity is the only answer, and casts the problem as purely a budgetary shortfall. It neglects to mention the role of land use in bringing about this state of affairs. The pattern described in the article is similar to what regions all over the country are facing, as past decisions to separate housing from other land uses come back to haunt them in the form of ever-mounting traffic.

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It's official: We're a franchise.

The Open Planning Project is proud to announce the launch of Streetsblog Los Angeles, our first new edition beyond the borders of the five boroughs.

LA.Streetsblog is edited and run by Damien Newton, formerly the New Jersey Coordinator for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and a recent LA transplant. With his New Jersey experience, Damien is well versed in the policies, politics and problems of suburban sprawl. He's also got a pretty good sense of the solutions. New Jersey, it so happens, is fortunate to have one of the most progressive State Departments of Transportation in the nation. Thanks to people like Gary Toth, currently working for Project for Public Spaces, New Jersey is way ahead when it comes to smart growth, context-sensitive design and viewing transportation policy as something more than just a way to move cars and trucks. 

You'll probably notice that LA.Streetsblog's archives go back a few months. Damien actually started blogging back in October as Street Heat LA. In just a few short months Damien has done a great job of networking and making himself a meaningful part of the local transportation policy scene out there. In the coming months, as the 2009 federal transportation funding campaign heats up, we expect LA.Streetsblog to emerge an important part of the push for sustainable transport, smart growth and livable streets policies on the federal level.

In the meantime, if you know anyone out on the west coast who is interested in these issues, point them Damien's way and wish him good luck in his new job. In his own words:

For this blog to work, I'm going to need your help with story ideas, comments and events... If you see or hear something you think I should write about, let me know! Even if I can't make the event, I can at least put it in the calendar section or even solicit a post from the event organizers.

Oh, and if you already write about or work on the kinds of issues we cover and you're interested in opening up a McStreetsblog franchise in your own city, drop us a line.

Park(Day) co-organizer Jen Petersen and Robert Cipriano lounge at No Impact Man's spot in front of Whole Foods at 7th Ave. and W. 24th St.

Project for Public Spaces and Open Planning Project set up at Third Ave. and St. Marks.


NYU students planted a garden in this parking space at E. 9th and Stuyvesant.

Open Planning Project's Nick Grossman chats with author Tony Hiss as Livable Streets luminaries Ethan Kent, Paul White, Gary Toth and Phil Myrick enjoy the shade.

Enjoying lunch at 7th Ave. and 24th St.

On-street Park(ing): The best deal in Manhattan.

People are starting to kick around the names of potential successors to outgoing DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall. This morning, Crain's Insider reports:

Insiders believe that Mayor Mike Bloomberg will look inside his administration for Iris Weinshall's replacement as transportation commissioner. But because Bloomberg will be out in 2009, top transportation people may favor state jobs: state transportation commissioner, Long Island Rail Road president or New York City Transit president. NJ Transit is seeking an executive director.. Two private-sector candidates could be Janette Sadik-Kahn of Parsons Brinckerhoff, who lost out to Weinshall for the job, and former MTA chair Bob Kiley, who implemented congestion pricing in London. Weinshall is leaving for CUNY in mid-April.

Sadik-Kahn was Mayor David Dinkins' Transportation Advisor. In addition to setting up London's congestion charging system, Kiley was chairman of the MTA in the 1980's.

Here are some other names that are flying around:

• Emily Lloyd
• Sam Schwartz
• Gary Toth
• Jack Lettiere
• David Woloch
• Michael Primeggia
• And then there's this one. It's not quite a "name" per se. More a question: Isn't there some deputy commissioner from London we could call?