Streetsblog New York City

When Scott Stringer held his first transportation conference five years ago, streets like this didn't exist in NYC. Photo of First Avenue: NYC DOT

Times have changed since Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer hosted a conference on transportation reform in 2006. Five years ago, New York City appeared to be on the verge of shaking off the traffic-first approach to street engineering that had dominated city transportation policy for decades. Whispers were in the air about a push to tame city traffic and fund the transit system by putting a price on congestion-plagued streets. Since then, plenty of innovation has come to NYC streets, while traffic congestion and transit funding remain core challenges.

Last Friday, Stringer’s office organized a sequel, providing an opportunity to take stock of the last five years and recalibrate the transportation reform agenda going forward.

As it happened, former DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall made brief remarks at the outset of the event, hosted at John Jay College, in her capacity as a vice chancellor of CUNY. The moment was ripe with irony. Five years ago, then-commissioner Weinshall made a splash at the first Stringer transportation conference, calling for bus rapid transit, parking reform, safe routes to schools, and new public spaces. In the past two years, Weinshall’s dogged attempts to eradicate the Prospect Park West protected bike lane have, if nothing else, underscored why she had to leave the department before progress could be achieved on all the promises she made in 2006.

On Friday morning, the stage belonged to her successor, Janette Sadik-Khan, who highlighted DOT’s long list of achievements and innovations:

• Select Bus Service: Though the roll-out has been slower than originally anticipated and true bus rapid transit has eluded NYC DOT and the MTA, NYC now has three operating corridors of Select Bus Service, including 34th Street and First and Second Avenues in Manhattan and on Fordham Road in the Bronx, improving transit for tens of thousands of riders each day and attracting thousands more.
• Bicycling: In 2006, the city promised to add 200 new miles of bike lanes, a pledge that has since been fulfilled and surpassed. Now New York sets its sights not only on advancing the number of bike lane miles, but creating innovative street designs that lead the nation in making cycling accessible to a wide array of city residents.
• Parking: The DOT has piloted Park Smart, time-of-day variable pricing for parking spots in Park Slope and Greenwich Village and is on its way to expanding it into other parts of the city.
• Safe routes to schools: The city has a robust program to improve safety near 135 schools in all five boroughs.
• Public plazas: The big public space news of 2006 was that the city would add a ribbon of pedestrian space to the Times Square bowtie. No one could have predicted the city would add substantial public plazas at Times Square and Herald Square by reclaiming lanes from traffic.

For all the reasons to celebrate the progress on NYC streets, the conference also provided some sobering perspective on the state of the transit system.

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Andrew Cuomo won his election yesterday by an enormous margin, racking up 62 percent of the vote. When he takes office, he will be the most powerful man in New York state politics.

During his campaign, Cuomo dodged and pandered on the difficult question of how to fund the state’s transit systems, a policy decision he won’t have the option of avoiding as governor. As Cuomo shifts from candidate to chief executive, will his transportation policies shift as well? We spoke to Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign to find out what he thinks transit advocates should look for in the next few months.

Russianoff said that Governor-Elect Cuomo could start with a quick symbolic gesture. “He could take the M15 SBS to his office, which is on Third Avenue,” said Russianoff, “to show his concern for finding cost-effective solutions to transit needs.” That could bolster the budget hawk image Cuomo created for himself over the past year while taking the edge of his highly public MTA-bashing during the lone gubernatorial debate.

More substantively, Russianoff suggested that transit advocates look to Cuomo’s transition team. Will Cuomo have a group dedicated to transportation? And if so, who will serve on it? Russianoff himself served on Eliot Spitzer’s reformer-filled transportation transition team, which came out in favor of fully funding the MTA’s capital plan weeks before Spitzer even took office. The transition team selections will both reveal and shape the Cuomo administration’s priorities as his staff prepares for day one.

Once Cuomo is in office, he’ll have the ability to make appointments to the MTA Board, another way of making a quick mark on the transit system. Russianoff urged Cuomo to retain Jay Walder as MTA CEO and board chair. (He was one of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign board members who signed a letter to the gubernatorial candidates to that effect.) While Walder’s appointment lasts until 2015, as the New York Times wrote last week, “few chairmen survive long under a new administration.”

“We clearly have our differences with Jay over some issues,” said Russianoff, “but he’s a transit professional and it’s all on the merits.” Russianoff praised Walder’s ability to find administrative savings, install countdown clocks, and implement Select Bus Service in particular.

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The headlines this morning were sobering for everyone who depends on New York City's transit system. Half-baked alternatives to the Ravitch plan are popping up left and right as bridge toll opponents dig in their heels, despite the whopping service cuts and fare hikes that loom for their constituents. With Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith bringing talks to a standstill, Streetsblog asked Gene Russianoff, senior lawyer for the Straphangers Campaign and veteran of many a fight over MTA financing, about what comes next.

Smith's latest gambit -- calling the MTA's March 25 deadline into question -- carries a lot of risk. "The deadline seems real to us," said Russianoff, noting that there may be some wiggle room, but not much. "The concern would be if the legislators say, 'We can wait a while.' That's a recipe for inaction."

There's been some speculation that the Ravitch proposals might get folded into the state budget, but that would face similar political hurdles to a stand-alone rescue package. All 30 Republican state senators are expected to vote against the budget, said Russianoff, meaning Democrats will have to vote as a single, 32-member bloc to gain passage.

If the Gang of Three and other Democratic obstructionists fail to realize that their constituents need a well-funded transit system much more than free bridges, there is a potential solution that might garner support from elements of both parties. "One thing with promise is to do the highway and bridge program at the same time as MTA financing," said Russianoff. "That gives Republican senators a reason to vote positively on the bill." The state's highway and bridge program faces its own funding shortfall, and like the MTA, it needs new revenue streams. Some of the bridge toll alternatives that pols are floating -- such as higher gas taxes and vehicle registration fees -- make more political sense as revenue for a road program, because, Russianoff says, "the highway people think it's theirs."

The panel headed by former MTA chief Richard Ravitch held its first public hearing yesterday at NYU's Kimmel Center. Representatives of advocacy groups, local government, think tanks, trade associations, and unions gave the commission a variety of proposals, including but certainly not limited to road pricing, to help the MTA navigate its funding crisis.

Streetsblog observed the afternoon session, which did not yield headline-grabbing ideas like the morning session (a media favorite: selling bridges to the MTA for a dollar and then tolling them) but did provide a good overview of which options the commission is likely to take seriously before making its recommendations in December.

It would be an exaggeration to say that a consensus emerged from the testimony. (The one thing everyone could agree on was that the collective well-being of the city and the region depends on the MTA.) However, several themes surfaced repeatedly over the course of the afternoon. Here's a brief rundown:

Responsibility for adequately funding the MTA should fall on those who benefit from its services. This encompasses a fairly broad swath of people, including straphangers, the real estate industry, and car commuters (who get less traffic on the street when more people use transit). Many of these "stakeholders" already contribute something to the MTA in the form of fares or dedicated taxes, and could be asked to pay higher rates going forward. Several people testified that some form of road pricing or bridge tolling would be an additional stream of revenue consistent with this philosophy.

The MTA needs more consistent and reliable revenue streams. Congestion pricing fits the bill in this regard, too. The need for predictable revenue also led speakers to suggest more broad-based taxes, unlike the targeted taxes mentioned above. (Taxes collected from the real estate industry have proven especially fickle recently.) Kevin Corbett of the Empire State Transportation Alliance recommended both road pricing and a payroll tax, saying that "if you have multiple parties sharing in the pain, it's easier to do a deal." He added, "Looking at the enormity of the task, we suspect it will be a combination of the various taxes [and] fees."

Marc Shaw, former chair of the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, caused something of a stir in the local press on Friday, when he predicted that congestion pricing would "rise again" as a proposal to toll East River bridges and a cordon across 60th street. Speaking at a panel discussion at the RPA's Regional Assembly, Shaw said he had been told by Richard Ravitch, the one-time MTA head who's been asked by Governor Paterson to devise ways to shore up the agency's finances, that pricing is "on his agenda."

With the MTA staring at a $17 billion hole in its next capital plan, pricing or new tolls may well be on the table, but the crystal ball is very cloudy at this point. Many variables are still in play. It's not clear yet, for instance, when the Ravitch panel will make its final recommendations, what form the proposal will take, or even who else will serve with him.

Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign said a likely scenario would be for the Ravitch panel to release its recommendations after the elections this fall. In a brief phone interview yesterday, he speculated that a pricing variant, if proposed, would be one of multiple options the panel presents. "They’re going to have to come up with a menu," he said, "because if they put all their eggs in one basket it’s going to be difficult."

Gene Russianoff, senior attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, talks to Streetsblog about the future of transit funding without congestion pricing. Direct quotes are in quotation marks.

Streetsblog: Without pricing, how will the MTA get funded?
Russianoff: They currently have a proposed $29.5B capital plan. The vast majority is for stuff that absolutely has to be done -- rehabbing 44 stations, buying buses, signal and track work, and so on. There is a $9B projected deficit plus $4.5B that will not be coming from pricing bonds, plus $4B that won't be coming in additional city and state money that was promised if pricing passed.

"Traditionally the MTA has raised funds from broad-based taxes -- corporate income tax, mortgage recording tax, real estate transaction tax, sales tax, gas tax -- and through fares and tolls. With tolls, excess from upkeep of bridges and tunnels is given to the MTA, and a large chunk of that is used for capital projects. Now [without pricing], we can do what [former MTA chief Peter] Kalikow said five years ago and increase all of them a little bit."

But these are all subject to fluctuation, as we're seeing now with the dip in real estate tax revenues, which had previously allowed the MTA to run surpluses.

"So one solution is the traditional one, which is to raise one or more of those taxes." Richard Brodsky has said relying on a broad-based tax is what he prefers.

On balance, speakers at last night's traffic mitigation hearing in Brooklyn delivered a pro-pricing message -- a strong one if you discount the politicians who said their piece and left the auditorium before their constituents got to the mic.

About 60 people came to Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights and weighed in on the five options presented in the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission's interim report. It quickly became clear that the evening was really a referendum on the two pricing proposals in the report; none of the other options were viewed as viable. By the time it was over, half the audience had testified before commission members Elizabeth Yeampierre, Andrea Batista Schlesinger, and Gene Russianoff. (Richard Brodsky, who came to the Brooklyn hearing instead of the one closest to his Westchester district, left before it ended and missed several pieces of testimony.)

Most encouraging for pricing advocates: Several residents without any group affiliation testified, expressing a unanimous desire for better transit, cleaner air, and safer streets. Congestion pricing, they said, was the surest means to achieve those objectives. (Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives emailed us to report that pro-pricing speakers out-numbered anti- in the Bronx and Queens as well.)

But first the elected officials spoke, leading off with Congressman Anthony Weiner. In his allotted four minutes, he repeated the canard that congestion pricing is a conservative ploy to enact a "radical change and reduction in the amount of [federal] transit funding we receive." Then Council Member Lew Fidler and Assemblymen Hakeem Jeffries, Vito Lopez, Alan Maisel, and Alec Brook-Krasny each took a turn to bash both pricing proposals (their most common refrain: "too Manhattan-centric").

The one semi-exception among electeds was Council Member Tish James...

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Reactions were mixed to yesterday's MTA fare hike approval. That is to say -- with the exception of the New York Post -- there was enough criticism to go around as to generally avoid repetition.

The Daily News, which has pounded the transit agency with its "Halt the Hike" series ("Even as the MTA is poised to stick straphangers with a fat fare hike, Chief Executive Lee Sander went shopping for a new necktie yesterday"), called the fare increase "the great train robbery of 2007," and characterized Sander and new Chairman H. Dale Hemmerdinger as puppets of Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Spitzer.

There was a time when MTA bosses were independent, standup people who represented the riders, even if only in losing battles with governors, Legislatures and mayors. Men like Dick Ravitch and Peter Kalikow come to mind.

At this point in their relatively young tenures, Hemmerdinger and Sander pale in comparison.

They are order takers, dictated to by Spitzer and Bloomberg, who have assumed full personal ownership of this fare hike.

New MetroCards should come bearing photographs of the governor and the mayor, like on wanted posters, including their records.

Also in the News, Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign, while critical of the hikes, says transit customers have reason for hope in the promises made by Spitzer and other pols, including Assembly Member Richard Brodsky, that more state aid is forthcoming. Russianoff also thinks further hikes will be politically infeasible for the next several years.

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In today's Daily News, Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign and State Senator Eric Schneiderman examine how the MTA ended up the most debt-ridden transit system in the United States, and urge state leaders to chart a new course.

The governor must prevent next year's state budget from being a carbon copy of the budgets offered by his predecessor, which drove the Metropolitan Transportation Authority more deeply into debt than any transit system in U.S. history. But he can only do this if the MTA first commits to delaying all proposed fare hikes until after the 2008 state budget is put to bed in April.

Most straphangers will remember the chants of elected officials railing helplessly against the MTA every time the authority proposed to raise fares or cut service. What they may not remember is that, year after year, the Pataki administration submitted - and the Legislature passed - budgets that decimated the MTA's funding.

In 1982, the MTA started a series of five-year capital programs to restore our regional transit system to a state of good repair. We are now enjoying the fruits of these investments: a system that is in dramatically better shape than it was at the beginning of the 1980s, with ridership at a 35-year high. But the state did not maintain its commitment. It cut its share of the system's capital program from 19.6% in the MTA's 1982-86 plan, to 10.8% in the 1987-91 plan, to less than 1% during calendar years 1992 through 1999. The state provided zero direct funding for the 2000-04 capital plan.

That abandonment forced the authority to steadily increase its reliance on debt to finance repairs and improvements. Over 60% of the 2000-04 plan was financed with debt, up from about 40% for the previous plan.

As a result, the MTA is now "in hock" for $23 billion, Russianoff and Schneiderman write. They say freezing the base fare at $2 is "a first step" toward shifting reliance from MTA customers to the state for support.

Spitzer has a lot on his plate, but ending Albany's systemic abuse of our 7.5 million straphangers should be at or near the top of the pile. He must work with the Legislature and the MTA board, both to avoid a fare hike in 2008 and to set a new agenda for our state's mass transit program - an agenda that breaks with the unsustainable and inexcusable policies of the last 12 years.

Photo: peterkreder/Flickr

The slowest bus in New York City is... Manhattan's M23, crosstown at 23rd Street.

Remind me again why New York City hasn't eliminated private automobiles on its major crosstown streets and established dedicated rights-of-way for buses, special loading  zones and times for delivery trucks?

CityRoom has the details:

“Nearly one in three of its buses have big gaps in service or are off schedule, the worst record for the 42 key local routes for which M.T.A. New York City Transit calculates reliability measures,” the Straphangers and Transportation Alternatives announced in a news release.

In addition to ranking the M23 the slowest bus route in the city, the annual survey identified these routes as the slowest by borough: the B63 in Brooklyn (4.9 m.p.h.), the Bx19 in the Bronx (5.0 m.p.h.), the Q56 in Queens (6.1 m.p.h.) and the S61 on Staten Island (11.7 m.p.h.)

“Our awards highlight what bus riders know from bitter daily experience: New York City has the pokiest and schleppiest buses in the nation,” said Gene Russianoff, the staff lawyer for the Straphangers Campaign.