Photo: Department of City Planning [PDF].

We've said it before and it's certainly worth repeating: This zoning change is a good step forward that will bear fruit in the long run; the missing piece -- and it's a big one -- is bike access to existing buildings. To that end, the Bicycle Access Bill (Intro 871) would provide a much more substantial and immediate benefit to bike commuters by allowing them to bring their rides inside the workplace, if their employer consents. The legislation aims to reverse the policies of New York City landlords and property managers, most of whom don't allow bikes inside. By drastically reducing the risk of theft, the bill could boost bike commuting by as much as 50 percent.

After holding a committee hearing on Intro 871 last fall, legislators are currently tweaking the bill's language. We have a request in with sponsor David Yassky's office to determine when the revised bill will come up in committee.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and her city-owned Chevy Suburban. Photo copyright Steven Hirsch.

New bike infrastructure in New York City could be on the chopping block as the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg revise spending projections downward. On Sunday, Speaker Christine Quinn and the City Council released $495 million in proposed budget cuts over the next two years, including an item that would slash spending on bike network expansion in half. DOT's bike network funds would drop from $9.6 million to $4.8 million in 2009, and from $11 million to $5.5 million in 2010. Download this PDF and scroll down to the first item numbered 841, "Reduce Bike Network Development Funding."

A spokesman for Speaker Quinn's office did not specify why the bike network was targeted for spending cuts, saying only that painful steps were necessary to close the city's budget gap. In an interview on WNYC earlier this week, Quinn said that the council's financial staff were charged with identifying programs that are "not necessarily the core function" of city agencies.

The proposals now enter the ongoing budget negotiation process between the council and the mayor's office. In November, Bloomberg released a separate list of budget fixes, which did not include cuts to bike network funding. (Interestingly, the mayor's proposals did include a measure to raise more revenue from parking meters below 60th Street [PDF, page 24].) Yesterday Bloomberg ordered city agencies to identify additional spending reductions by December 22.

If you believe a safer bike network is a core function of DOT, contact information for Speaker Quinn's office and your council member can be found on the City Council website.

We skipped right to the transportation team, of course, and here are the names we found, with biographical info pulled directly from the change.gov website. We'd love to get your intel in the comments.

• Seth Harris is a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Agency Review Working Group responsible for overseeing review of the transportation agencies.
• Mortimer Downey is a self-employed transportation consultant who served for eight years as the Deputy Secretary of Transportation under President Clinton, and was an Assistant Secretary of Transportation during the Carter Administration. He has also been the Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority and held various planning positions at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
• Jane Garvey is the Head of the U.S. Public/Private Partnerships at JPMorgan. In this role Garvey advises states on financing strategies to accelerate project delivery for governments. Garvey was the 14th Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, nominated by President Clinton. Prior to becoming FAA Administrator, Garvey was Acting Administrator and previously Deputy Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration.
  
• Michael Huerta is Group President of ACS Transportation Solutions, a company that provides technology solutions for collecting revenue, enhancing safety and promoting security for the transportation industry. From 1993 to 1998, Huerta served in senior positions at the Department of Transportation. Previously, Huerta served as the Executive Director of the Port of San Francisco and Commissioner of the City of New York Department of Ports, International Trade and Commerce.
• Federal Maritime Commission Review Team Lead John Cullather has worked for the House of Representatives for over 31 years, specializing in Coast Guard and maritime transportation policy.
• NTSB Review Team Lead Carol Carmody currently works as a consultant in international aviation and aviation safety. In 2000 she was appointed by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term on the National Transportation Safety Board.

If the bill makes it through the Senate, the Oval Office figures to be a major hurdle. President Bush has signaled his reluctance to subsidize operating costs for transit, although that philosophy seems not to apply when it comes to subsidizing the habits of America's motorists.

Meanwhile, in places like Louisville and the Denver suburbs, the prospect of service cuts and fare hikes continues to loom at precisely the moment that more people are depending on transit to get around.

Politico is reporting

Some of the facts don't quite seem to add up just yet -- specifically the part about the Novak not knowing he hit someone and an eye-witness saying the victim was "sort of splayed onto the windshield."

"I didn't know I hit him. I feel terrible," a shaken Novak told reporters from Politico and WJLA as he was returning to his car. "He's not dead, that's the main thing." Novak said he was a block away from 18th and K streets Northwest, where the accident occurred, when a bicyclist stopped him and said, "You hit someone." He said he was cited for failing to yield the right of way.

The bicyclist was David Bono, a partner at Harkins Cunningham, who was on his usual bike commute to work at 1700 K St. N.W. when he witnessed the accident.

As he traveled east on K Street, crossing 18th, Bono said a "black Corvette convertible with top closed plowed into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed onto the windshield."

Bono said that the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a "Walk" signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and that Novak then made a right into the service lane of K Street. "The car is speeding away. What's going through my mind is, you just can't hit a pedestrian and drive away," Bono said.

Apparently, Novak's got a rep as an "aggressive" driver, Again, from Jonathan Martin and Chris Frates at Politico:

In 2001, he cursed at a pedestrian on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 13th streets Northwest for allegedly jaywalking. "'Learn to read the signs, [bodily orifice]!' Novak snapped before speeding away," according to an item in The Washington Post's Reliable Source column.

Novak explained to the paper: "He was crossing on the red light. I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don't run the country, all I can do is yell at 'em. The other option is to run 'em over, but as a compassionate conservative, I would never do that."

Two years later, the same column reported that Novak had gone to a racing school in Florida. "I've wanted to be a racecar driver all my life, and anyone who has watched me drive can tell you that," Novak said.

Two recent road rage incidents are all over the news in Portland. Earlier this month, a drunken man on a bike became aggravated when a driver, himself a self-described bike advocate, reprimanded the cyclist for blowing a stoplight. The cyclist threatened the driver, picking up his bike and hitting the car with it. Then this week, a driver struck a cyclist and continued to drive as the victim, who escaped without serious injury, clung to the windshield.

The aggression on display is hard to fathom, but does it merit front page coverage? The breathless headlines pitting cyclists against drivers have led BikePortland's Jonathan Maus to critique the local press for exacerbating the us-versus-them mentality.

There's no excusing dangerous behavior on the road, no matter how you choose to get around, but the level of violence people are capable of when they're driving is, by the nature of the vehicle, quite considerable. As one commenter on the Oregonian's web site put it, "A drunk cyclist is clearly a menace, but a drunk driver can be downright deadly."

And then there's this story (via Tom Vanderbilt) out of Seattle last Wednesday, when a man was killed for setting up orange cones while he gardened in a traffic circle near his house, showing that people don't always have to be behind a wheel for their entitlement to the road to turn fatal.

Here's a question for Vanderbilt, whose new book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us), will be released later this month. What is it about automobiles or the road or human psychology that makes people behave like sociopaths at times?

Last December Streetsblog noted that a new park planned for Governors Island would include a bike-share fleet, scheduled to debut in 2012. Turns out the wait for free bikes will be a lot shorter. Starting this week, 250 bikes at the island's rental outfit, Bike and Roll, will be available to visitors at no charge on Fridays, thanks to sponsorship from Transportation Alternatives.

While it may not measure up to Vélib, "Free Bike Fridays" is vying with a new NYU student program for the distinction of launching New York's first bike-share. The Governors Island initiative may also have a lasting impact on the rest of the city. According to a press release, the results will be watched intently by DOT:

"Spaces like Governors Island serve as great training areas for the next generation of New York City cyclists," said City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. "This summer the Island will also serve as a great testing ground -- we'll be evaluating the bike share program to see if it is something that may be successful in other parts of the city."

Today, Governor's Island. Tomorrow, the East Village?

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg signed into law Intro 199, a bill requiring New York City's Department of Transportation to collect and monitor data specifically aimed at helping the city "to reduce automobile traffic and encourage more sustainable means of transportation vital to combating congestion, pollution and improving the City’s long term economic health." The new law could signal a significant change for a city agency that has typically measured its own performance based on how many potholes it fills, street lamps it fixes and how well it keeps motor vehicle traffic flowing through the city's over-burdened street grid. 

"You measure what you care about," said Transportation Alternatives executive director Paul Steely White, an architect of the new legislation. "Traditionally DOT has not cared enough about bus riders, cyclists, and pedestrians. The bill is really seeking to understand more about how much bicycling there is now, how much walking activity, and to look at bus ridership and bus speeds. Armed with this information, DOT can set targets for improving those modes."

Passed by the City Council in a 48-0 vote on May 15, Intro 199 creates a framework for DOT to set goals for traffic reduction and the growth of cycling and bus ridership. A version of the bill was first proposed in 2006, but was quashed early last year in the waning days of DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall's administration. It was revived with the support of Council Member Gale Brewer, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, and Transportation Alternatives.

Though the new legislation is light on detail and lays out no specific transportation policy goals, it codifies the emphasis on alternative modes of transportation seen in DOT's strategic plan, Sustainable Streets. "The new DOT regime has recognized that the bill is really an opportunity to lock in a lot of the change that they've been making happen," said White. "This is part and parcel to Commissioner Sadik-Khan's stated intent to change the DNA of the agency."

In a written statement, the mayor said:

Introductory Number 199-A advances the goals of PlaNYC by requiring the City's Department of Transportation to take a macro-view of traffic in our City. The Department will collect and make available performance indicators that are relevant to reducing traffic and promoting higher performance traffic modes. Such indicators will include, for example, information on bicycle usage, ferry ridership and vehicle speed data.

Streetsblog has a request in to DOT to find out if the new metrics will be incorporated into the Mayor's Management Report, the document released each year that tracks the performance of city agencies. In the past, the MMR has focused on output measures like fixing traffic signals and potholes. Metrics like pedestrian and cyclist fatalities are tracked in the report, but no targets are set. White believes that might change: "If you look at what's in 199 and Sustainable Streets, there are a lot of really good metrics in both documents that should be incorporated into the MMR."

In referring to "higher-performance traffic modes," the bill sets another precedent. "For the first time," said White, "the city is recognizing that biking and walking are not just good for the city's air quality, but make the most efficient use of our scarce street space." By acknowledging that there is a "spatial dividend" to these modes, he added, the city is setting the stage for quality-of-life improvements that result from a re-allocation of space, like wider sidewalks, which would help make PlaNYC and other green initiatives more palpable for New Yorkers.

Speaking at Tuesday's Fit-City Conference, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced that a Ciclovía-style car-free street event is in the works for this summer. New York is not alone. According to a story published earlier this week on RedOrbit, several other American cities are considering the same thing:

Others are planning ciclovia, or "bike path," programs in which networks of streets are temporarily closed to driving and open for non-motorized play. Last summer El Paso, Texas, staged the first ciclovia in the United States, and now Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Portland, Ore., are working on similar events.

Details of the New York Ciclovía have yet to be revealed. Streetsblog will fill in the blanks as this story develops.

Photo: themikebot / Flickr 

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person briefed on the federal investigation.

The wiretap recording, made during an investigation of a prostitution ring called Emperors Club VIP, captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a room. The person briefed on the case identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.

The governor learned that he had been implicated in the prostitution probe when a federal official contacted his staff last Friday, according to the person briefed on the case.

The governor informed his top aides Sunday night and this morning of his involvement. He canceled his public events today and scheduled an announcement for this afternoon after inquiries from the Times.

Spitzer's brief announcement, delivered around 3:15 p.m., expressed remorse for betraying the trust of his family and the public, but did not acknowledge any involvement in prostitution. Nor did the governor immediately resign, as some pundits speculated.

The implications here extend far beyond the livable streets corner of the universe, obviously, but since it's our beat, consider this an open thread to discuss the potential fallout. Item one: congestion pricing.

The Daily Politics got hold of the letter [PDF], which appears below in full, including the names of its 20 signatories -- some of whom, like David Yassky and Melissa Mark-Viverito, are pricing supporters.

Dear Mayor Bloomberg:

We are writing to urge you to correct an unfairness in the "congestion pricing" policy proposed by the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, prior to the upcoming votes in the City Council and the State Legislature.

We are concerned that the burden of paying for congestion pricing will fall too heavily on New York City residents - and in particular on residents of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island - while commuters from outside the City will remain unaffected.

Under the current proposal, bridge and tunnel toll payments would be credited against the $8 congestion charge. This means that commuters who currently pay tolls to use the Port Authority and Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority river crossings will pay no additional congestion fee. The bulk of these drivers live outside of New York City. At the same time, drivers who enter Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge or the Williamsburg Bridge will pay the full $8 congestion charge. Most of these drivers do live within New York City.

This is blatantly unfair.

Indeed, the Final Report of the Congestion Pricing Commission itself appears to recognize the unfairness when it states: "The Commission recommends that the State Legislature consider the concerns raised by some Commissioners regarding the contribution of commuters from west of the Hudson River to the MTA Capital Plan."

We ask you, as the primary architect of the congestion pricing plan, to act to remedy the unfairness, either by amending the plan to require commuters from outside New York City to pay a congestion fee in addition to bridge and tunnel tolls, or by forcing the Port Authority to agree to devote a significant portion of their revenue from Hudson River crossings to funding mass transit in New York City (as suggested in the sentence quoted above from the Commission Report).

One proposal for addressing the unfairness would be to give drivers a full credit for bridge and tunnel tolls only if they reside in one of the five boroughs; under this proposal, drivers from outside the City would be given partial credit for toll payments but would still be required to pay some fee for entering the congestion zone. This would improve the existing plan in three ways. First, it would treat New York City residents more equitably in comparison to New Jersey commuters; while City residents would still bear the brunt of the new charges, the unfairness would be lessened. Second, it would raise substantially more revenue than the current proposal, with no additional cost; this revenue would enable more significant expansions in mass transit service than are envisioned in the Commission proposal. Third, it would make the policy more effective in reducing congestion by giving New Jersey commuters an incentive to choose mass transit.

We have been told by members of your Administration that a concern has been raised as to the constitutionality of a plan that provides a different toll credit to City residents than is provided to non-residents. After consulting with constitutional law scholars, we are confident that our proposal is constitutionally valid - just like, for example, the current practice of allowing Staten Island residents to pay a reduced fare for using the Verrazano Bridge.

As an alternative to adjusting the toll credit, another way to address the unfair burden on City residents would be to require the Port Authority to contribute a significant portion of its revenue from tolls on the Holland Tunnel, the Lincoln Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, for use in funding system improvements within the City. We note that in expectation of the congestion pricing policy, the Port Authority cynically raised the tolls on the crossings it controls, so that those tolls will be exactly the same as the $8 congestion fee - thus ensuring that revenue generated from drivers who use those crossings will be spent by the Port Authority rather than on mass transit. Either of the two proposals discussed in this letter - capping the toll credit, or requiring a Port Authority contribution to the MTA - would ensure that more of the revenue generated from driving commuters goes to mass transit, and would help force the Port Authority to be a more responsible partner in planning and implementing the region's transportation network.

Finally, we note that some of the signatories to the letter support the idea of congestion pricing; others do not, or have concerns beyond the unfairness of the plan's burden on City residents in comparison to non-resident commuters. All of us, however, believe strongly that this unfairness must be corrected.

Sincerely,

Council Members,

Yassky
James
Mark-Viverito
Garodnick
Brewer
Koppell
Jackson
Gioia
Seabrook
Felder
Vacca
White
Mendez
Liu
Gentile
Lappin
Stewart
Vallone
Rivera
Dilan

• The Honorable Elliot L. Spitzer, Governor of the State of New York
• The Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
• The Honorable Shirley C. Franklin, Mayor of the City of Atlanta.

A preliminary version of the 2008 Mayor's Management Report was released last week [PDF], and the Department of Transportation section is déja vu all over again. Ten months after the end of the Iris Weinshall regime, DOT is still grading itself almost entirely according to how well it manages traffic flow, keeps highways looking tidy, and other car-oriented metrics.

Even the few new livable streets metrics in this year's MMR, like the number of speed humps installed near schools, fail to provide meaningful information. The MMR is legally mandated by the City Charter to serve as "a public report card on City services affecting the lives of New Yorkers." Yet, it tells us nothing about how the 101 new speed humps installed in 2007 have affected speeding and pedestrian injuries around schools or if more kids are walking and biking to school because of them. Rather, the report depicts a city agency that is more concerned with its own, internal bureaucratic activity than the outcomes of its policies.

The contrast with London couldn't be sharper. That city's transportation agency, Transport for London, sets targets and measures public policy outcomes, like reductions in carbon emissions, noise, particulate matter pollution, and traffic congestion -- as seen in it's detailed, 279-page, annual monitoring report on congestion pricing [PDF]. The report even goes so far as to gauge the effect of pricing on London's employment growth and economic trends, sector by sector, beginning on page 74. TfL's report does exactly what the MMR is supposed to do: It provides a treasure trove of data on how city transportation policies are affecting the lives of Londoners.

Graphs from TfL's Fifth Annual Report on congestion pricing.

Next to TfL's rigorous measurements and focus on actual policy outcomes, New York City's Mayor's Management Report looks laughably inadequate.

"There's nothing there on mode shift, nothing on reduction of VMT," says Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives. "The other thing that's missing is traffic fatalities -- there's no target there. There's still a reluctance to really lead on that, and that's unacceptable."

Instead of setting a goal for reducing traffic fatalities, the MMR measures differences year-to-year. True, this is the first year the MMR has tracked pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities separately from motorist fatalities, but compare that small step to TfL's safety goals, spelled out in its Five-Year Investment Programme (page 37 of this PDF):

• A reduction of 40 per cent in numbers Killed and Seriously Injured (KSI) by 2010 compared with 1994-1998 overall
• Separately for pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, a reduction of 40 per cent in killed and seriously injured by 2010
• A 50 per cent reduction in the number of children killed or seriously injured
• A reduction of 10 per cent in the slight casualty rate per 100 million vehicle kilometres

London is not the only city to set such targets. Ottawa, Ontario, for instance, has adopted the goal of reducing VMT per capita. But in New York, even though PlaNYC has funneled more money to bike infrastructure and pedestrian improvements, the gears of city government apparently grind too slowly for the MMR to reflect new priorities at DOT.

The situation could have improved last year, with the passage of Intro 199. That was the bill City Council Member Gale Brewer proposed in April 2006, which would have given DOT a mandate to reduce traffic and to measure, among other things, how many people switch from driving to biking and transit. Instead, then-commissioner Weinshall helped torpedo the bill right before leaving DOT.

Better performance measures still could have been introduced after the bill failed, without legislation. "Traditionally, the way these targets have been changed is the Mayor sitting down with the agency," says White.

Now, Brewer is in talks with DOT to bring a successor to Intro 199 before the City Council later this year. "Ideally what's happening is that the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability is working with Council Member Brewer to codify PlaNYC in the MMR," says White. That needs to happen if New York intends to narrow the transportation accountability gap with London.

New Yorkers already envious of London's congestion pricing system have a fresh reason to look wistfully overseas. A few hours ago, London Mayor Ken Livingstone unveiled a £500 million ($940 million) program to build extensive new bike networks and launch a Velib-style bike-for-hire system. Bike Biz has the scoop:

With the introduction of a central London bike hire scheme with 6,000 bikes available every 300 metres, cycling will be accessible to many more Londoners and will become a fully-funded part of the public transport network for the first time. This is not quite a Velib scheme, but it's a start.

There will also be new commuter cycle routes from inner and outer London and cycle zones around urban town centres.

In a statement released this morning, Livingstone cast the program as part of a historic shift away from automobile use, and cited Paris as inspiration:

The aim of this programme is nothing short of a cycling and walking transformation in London. We will spend something like £500 million over the next decade on cycling - the biggest investment in cycling in London's history, which will mean that thousands more Londoners can cycle in confidence, on routes that take them quickly and safely to where they want to go.

The cycle hire scheme in Paris has proved a huge success, and I have now instructed Transport for London to work with the London boroughs and interested parties to develop and implement a bike hire scheme in central London, accessible to all Londoners. By ensuring that Londoners have easy access to bikes in the centre of the capital, as well as making our city a safer and more enjoyable place to cycle, we will build upon London’s leading position as the only major world city to have achieved a switch from private car use to public transport, cycling and walking.

The Independent, Bike Radar, Reuters, ePolitix, and This is London all have coverage of the plan.

There are five components described in the Mayor's announcement:

• A Central London bike hire scheme, similar to the recently launched Paris scheme, with up to 6,000 bikes located across docking stations every 300m so Londoners and visitors have quick and easy access to a bike. This will be supported by a series of easily navigable routes so that people can enjoy London’s sights by bike.
• Around a dozen radial Cycling Corridors for commuters to provide high-profile, easy to follow cycling streams into central London.
• The creation of a series of Bike Zones for shoppers and the school run in Inner and Outer London, with cycle priority streets, 20mph speed limits and quick, clear and simple routes that link key local destinations and open parks and waterways for cyclists.
• The expansion of the Legible London signage system to help people make short trips around the capital on foot, rather than driving, or taking the bus and tube.
• Working with the London Boroughs on the establishment of 200 Streets of Gold – urban makeovers which link key local destinations like stations, schools and shops in inner and outer London with high quality walking facilities, delivering improved pavements, seating and crossings alongside regeneration measures.

Image: This is London

Chicago bicyclists, Mayor Daley (pictured right) knows your pain.

The mayor introduced an ordinance Wednesday that would slap fines ranging from $150 to $500 on motorists who turn left or right in front of someone on a bicycle; pass with less than three feet of space between car and bike; and open a vehicle door into the path of a cyclist.

Daley, an avid rider, said he personally has been involved in unhappy encounters with motorists, providing them with "a few choice words" and "salutes" that he said were delivered "in the Chicago way."

Then, on the other end of the spectrum, there's Los Angeles:

Last night, a group of cyclists from throughout the LA area delivered the Bicyclist Bill of Rights to the Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee and asked the members to deliver it to the Mayor and City Councilmembers.

After leaving the meeting (10:30 pm) the cyclists were riding on Virgil and approaching Melrose when four cyclists executed a "vehicular left turn" on the approach to a red light. The car to the rear and left continued to accelerate toward the red light and only yielded to the cyclists in control of the lane at the last moment, causing him to stop suddenly. The cyclists were riding in pairs throughout the left turn maneuver. Behind the cyclists was an LAPD Sgt. who looked at the incident and decided that the cyclists were impeding traffic, all on the approach to a red light.

He pulled over the cyclists, let the motorist go, called for backup and tied up an additional three squad cars and a helicopter while he lectured the cyclists on everything from "impeding" to pedal reflectors to the difference in weight between a bicycle and an automobile....

...As Enci told the Committee members, "I was born in a Communist country with limited freedoms and rights. When I moved the United States of America, I set foot on this ground and I immediately took possession of basic rights and freedoms. Why is it that when I climb on a bicycle I become a 2nd class citizen and get treated as if I have no rights? Those days end now and I'm claiming my rights!"

Photo: Chicago Mayor Richard Daley unabashedly takes a spin on a Velib public bicycle in Paris, France.

 
This is part two 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. Yesterday he examined the platforms and records of the Republican presidential candidates; today, the Democrats.

For the Democrats, the race for the nomination has been about one thing: change. Each of the Democratic candidates offer some vision of change for how our government views and funds transportation. Streetsblog noted in one if its first posts of the new year that Senator Barack Obama is the only Democrat that promotes cycling as part of his platform. Back in November, I noted on my blog that Obama has also pledged to force states and municipalities to include energy conservation in any transportation plan that involves federal funds, and says he would equalize tax benefits received by car and bike commuters. While Obama is strong on stopping sprawl and promoting walking and biking, he doesn’t mention transit anywhere on his web site that I could find. However, a look into Obama’s record shows a strong history of transit activism. As a U.S. senator, Obama worked with fellow Illinois Senator Dick Durbin to get financial help for Chicago’s L-Trains. As a state senator, he worked with community groups to increase access to transit for the disabled and underprivileged. As first lady, Michelle Obama could emerge as a vocal supporter of urban transportation projects; Mrs. Obama served as chair of Chicago Transit Authority’s Citizen Advisory Board.

New York Senator Hillary Clinton is the only candidate to offer a specific proposal to improve transit: an annual increase of $1.5 billion in urban rail funding. The plan also offers specific information on fighting sprawl and increasing development density. As a candidate for the Senate, Clinton preached the value of "leaving cars in their garage," and has since acted to support transit measures. Recently, her Senate office released a statement on the potential Amtrak strike. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, an outspoken supporter of her campaign, often notes that more funds were available for urban transit projects when her husband was president.

Senator John Edwards’ energy plan pledges to promote policies that will slow sprawl and reduce vehicle miles traveled. However, Edwards only mentions transit as a tool for "restoring economic fairness." The former senator and Democratic VP nom has received support from a New York based transit union, but that seems to have more to do with his odds of being elected than his transit advocacy. At least when Nevada’s UTU endorsed Clinton, it managed to mention transportation related issues. Edwards’ one term in the Senate didn’t produce a strong record either for or against any major transportation plans. He even skipped a vote on the Highway Transportation Funding Bill.

So it appears that each of the leading Democratic candidates does embrace the notion of some sort of transportation reform, but wholesale "change" doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

Tomorrow, 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.  

Video: YouTube via Street Heat, which offers analysis from an L.A. perspective

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 

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...

who skipped the meeting but had an aide read a statement that in order to curb asthma rates, "residential parking permits are an absolute necessity" for any areas immediately outside the congestion zone. Many of the community board reps and neighborhood association members who followed echoed that argument, offering support if a permit plan was attached to pricing, because they feared a park-and-ride spillover effect.

The non-profits in attendance came out strongly in favor of the commission's alternative pricing plan (which would raise more money at a lower cost than the Mayor's plan), countering the assertions of previous speakers with hard numbers. Here's a snippet delivered by Wiley Norvell of TA:

Congestion pricing will benefit the entire city, not just Manhattan. Nearly three-quarters of the congestion reduction from pricing will take place outside Manhattan. 40% of traffic in the neighborhoods of Downtown Brooklyn is from Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge-bound motorists avoiding the Battery Tunnel toll. Congestion pricing, by equalizing tolls, will cut congestion and finally give traffic relief to neighborhoods adjacent to the free bridges. It is estimated that pricing will reduce traffic by 29% in Downtown Brooklyn and by 24% in North Brooklyn. That is staggering.

Personal note: While the pricing advocates were testifying, I was in a politician sandwich, sitting between two pairs of electeds, and could overhear their snickering and backslapping.

When the "ordinary people" got their chance to speak, they also endorsed the alternative pricing plan by a wide margin. The politicians had already left at that point, a fact that wasn't lost on Sunset Park resident Kay Young. "I have to note the seeming disconnect between our elected officials and everyone else," he said.

They haven't done their homework. They cite no statistics, just general specters. The fact that they left is unbelievable. They didn't even stay to listen to their constituents.

The eight-and-a-half foot long, 1,800 pound smart fortwo has arrived in the US, with the first American owner taking delivery here in New York. As it happens, he's a friend of the folks at car blog Jalopnik, who took it for a drive. Here's some of what they had to say.

We do need to change the way we think about the Smart. It is safe. Bookended by crumple zones, a steel roll cage surrounds the occupants.

It feels safe, too. The size defines the driving experience, but not in the way you might expect. Rather than feeling intimidated in traffic, you feel empowered. Gone is the need to take responsibility for an acre of SUV on a crowded road. Present is the freedom to move down that crowded road as you see fit. Congested urban streets and crowded highways stop feeling claustrophobic and start feeling easy.

It's not Green. The problem is, the Smart isn't that smart. The 1-liter, 70bhp engine has to work hard, so it only averages about 38mpg. Less if you drive fast.

So the Smart is a more complete, practical car than most people assume it to be - but that's also its biggest problem. It'll still get caught in traffic jams. Look at the Smart as a practical car that's easier to use in an urban environment than anything else, and you'll be happy. Look at it as fundamentally altering the way Americans think about transportation though, and you'll be disappointed. 

Photo: Jalopnik

Touting the good news from 2007, the Mayor noted that New York City's streets are getting safer:

In 2007, we made the safest big city in the nation safer than it has been in generations. The fewest traffic deaths in nearly a century. Historic lows in jail violence. Historic lows in fire fatalities. And the fewest homicides recorded in modern history. This is New York City today.

And, in a roundabout admission that more can be done to improve safety, Bloomberg mentioned a new initiative aimed at making the city more livable for senior citizens (like his own 99-year-old mom), taking a page from Transportation Alternatives' Safe Routes for Seniors program:

Today I'm announcing a major effort called 'The All Ages Project.' In collaboration with the City Council and the New York Academy of Medicine, this project will completely re-envision what it means to grow old in New York... For instance: How can we ensure that more seniors are cared for in their own homes, rather than in institutions? And how do we make our city easier to get around in? Next month, we will begin to address that second challenge with traffic engineering improvements at 25 high-accident areas which are especially problematic for seniors.

He wrapped up with a lengthy push for PlaNYC initiatives, including a brief pitch for congestion pricing:

With the State's blessing, we'll also use technology to create a system of congestion pricing -- something no other American city has done. It will help us achieve four critical, inter-connected goals: reducing traffic congestion; raising money for mass transit; improving our air quality; and fighting climate change.