This is part one of a two-part series on where candidates for president stand on transportation issues, authored by Streetsblog Los Angeles correspondent Damien Newton. Damien currently runs the blog Street Heat, which is soon to become Streetsblog L.A., our first foray into foreign territory. Damien was New Jersey coordinator for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign before relocating to California last year. Here, he examines the platforms and records of the Republican presidential candidates.

For Republicans vying for the White House, transportation reform isn’t couched in terms of fixing the environment or cutting carbon emissions, but in reducing dependency on foreign oil. Promoting alternatives to car culture is not something any of these candidates want to take up.

The closest thing to an exception is John McCain. The senator is the only Republican candidate who recognizes climate change as an issue worthy of space on his web site. Recently, McCain resisted the knee-jerk reaction of promising to subsidize or prop up the auto industry, and he has been an advocate for higher fuel economy standards for automobiles -- two positions that may have cost him the Michigan primary. However, McCain’s recognition of the environmental and economic effects of auto dependency has not translated into a platform of transportation reform. Senator McCain made a name for himself as an outspoken critic of Amtrak. While the agency could doubtless be more efficient, McCain’s fear of government waste led to setbacks of high speed rail expansion and his supporting of the Bush Administration’s plan to segment Amtrak into several local rail agencies. The senator did stop short of calling for the agency to be shut-down completely.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt "cars in my blood" Romney, meanwhile, has a mixed record on transportation spending, all "Big Dig" jokes aside. He changed spending patterns from expansion to "Fix-It-First," purchased more fuel-efficient and clean transit buses, and used smart growth funds to increase bike-ped access to transit. At the same time, he pushed an MBTA fare hike and slashed funding for parks, even as he used conservation funds to hail the New England Patriots. Romney’s administration also earned the scorn of cyclists for vetoing legislation that "called for training police to uniformly enforce laws covering both bicyclists and motorists." (At least his kids are avid cyclists.) Candidate Romney can be somewhat baffling on transportation related issues. Take global warming, where he frames his plans to reduce emissions in terms of foreign oil, refers to the debate about man’s role in climate change, and promises to maybe reduce greenhouse gas emissions all in the same article. Romney is also an outspoken advocate of drilling for oil in Alaska’s ANWR region.

A couple of months ago, I couldn’t even find a mention of transportation on Rudy Giuliani’s web site, despite his most recent position as mayor of the transit capital of America. Giuliani’s web team now has a section on energy independence, which amazingly manages to avoid mentioning transportation except to note that "Every gallon of gas and electricity we do not use is energy we do not import and pollution we reduce." While candidate Rudy may be trying to avoid transportation talk, he has a notable history on the issue. Though his administration dabbled with alternative transportation initiatives, occasionally embracing traffic calming or opening new bike lanes, the overall record was not a progressive one. Ideas such as his temporary ban on pedestrian crossings or his appointment of no-show political cronies to the MTA board led to continually failing marks from transportation reformers. But he did earn praise from one transportation advocate on his way out of office when, in the aftermath of 9-11, Mayor Giuliani banned single passenger vehicles from the streets of New York to temporarily ease congestion.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee proposed using the $150 billion that will be spent on the most recent tax rebate plan to build "two new lanes of highway on I-95 between Maine and Florida." Huckabee has a long record of pushing road expansion. He claims that his highway expansion projects earned the praise of "Trucking Magazine," who labeled Arkansas’ roads the "worst in the country" at the start of his term and then labeled the same roads "most improved" by the end of his term. This claim was examined by the St. Petersburg Times, which found the statement to be partially true. The most obvious problem is that there is no such magazine as "Trucking Magazine," but Huckabee was probably referring to Overdrive, a magazine that reports on truckers’ surveys. While the vast majority of Huckabee’s transportation record was centered around adding road capacity, he does earn some points by making drivers pay for their own improvements by increasing the state’s gas tax. Maybe because he wasn’t an early front-runner, Huckabee’s web site has even less on transportation than that of other Republican candidates. He does promise that "the first thing I will do as President is send Congress my comprehensive plan for energy independence." Unfortunately, I couldn’t find details on what that plan actually is.

All in all, it’s not a very encouraging picture from the Republican side of the field. Each candidate has something in his past that could offer reason to hope that he wouldn’t be a disaster for transportation reforms, but overall the records aren’t exactly a promise of "Morning in America" for alternative transportation.

This Thursday, January 31, NYU's Wagner Rudin Center will host a transportation and infrastructure forum, moderated by "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz, to which all Republican and Democratic candidates have been invited. 

Photo: GM Blogs/Flickr 

Following up on his tour of the smelly swath of plastic turf the Yankees installed in the South Bronx after turning actual park land into a stadium construction site, Neil deMause reports in the Village Voice that a clause in the Yanks' lease agreement with the city -- initiated by Mayor Rudy Giuliani and extended by Mayor Bloomberg -- allows reimbursements for stadium "planning" expenses. As of 2005, deductions include apparent write-offs for food, alcohol, and thousands of dollars in schwag, like caps and souvenir crystal baseballs.

Seems the Yankees haven't been spending enough on stadium "planning" to take full advantage of the rent break, so to justify additional deductions, the club began handing over loads of receipts to the Parks Department.

[W]hereas the earlier receipts were limited to stadium-related expenses -- although questionable ones, like the $700-an-hour lobbyist bills and restaurant tabs for engineering consultants -- by late 2005, the files had begun to look like those of an organization hastily trying to spend down its account by billing the public for everything but the kitchen sink.

Here's a sample itemized list, courtesy Good Jobs New York:

• $31,364 in food and bar tabs at Yankee Stadium for two nights of the 2005 post season
• $1,978 for a dozen crystal baseballs
  
• $8,600 in "rivalry" wool caps for home games against Boston and Toronto
• $1037 for 550 logo baseballs for an annual sales meeting
• $2,037 in gifts for corporate clients like Sony, Ford and Continental Airlines
• $25,000 for office space near Newark Airport
• $10,145 for press room rental
• $1,948 for party for Verizon
• $78 to ship batting helmets from Yankee Stadium to Tropicana Field

Images of actual receipts are here, here and here.

GJNY has issued a media release calling for an audit by City Comptroller (and potential mayoral candidate) William Thompson -- something the city has not done since 2004, when it examined the Yankees' stadium planning costs from 2001 and 2002.

"Considering the impact the new Yankee Stadium has had on the taxpayers and the neighborhood," reads the GJNY statement, "Good Jobs New York calls on Comptroller William Thompson to bring up to date all audits of the team to ensure no improper expenditures were in fact borne by the taxpayers."

In the early 1990's three and a half miles of the Grand Concourse, a major arterial roadway in the Bronx, was closed to cars every Sunday from July through November (kind of like Bogota Colombia's Ciclovia). The closures provided residents with much-needed open space to bike, walk, play and develop a sense of community with neighbors. Despite its popularity, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani killed the program in 1996.

Last summer, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion and Transportation Alternatives revived Car-Free Sunday's on a trial basis. This year, the program is back again for five or six Sunday's between June and October as a part of Bronx On The Move, a series of family fitness events.

Check out the StreetFilm from last year's Car-Free Sunday on the Grand Concourse: