Streetsblog New York City

The Post had a short item today, which we've linked to a couple of times, reporting that members of the City Council have sent a letter to Mayor Bloomberg asking for changes in the congestion pricing proposal that would raise fees for New Jersey car commuters or have the Port Authority commit more funds to the MTA.

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.

This year’s Regional Assembly takes an in-depth look at energy and water and how their increasing scarcity impacts the economic growth and prosperity of the New York City metropolitan region. As the presidential election looms on the horizon, discussing these pressing topics of national significance in our region can help lay the groundwork for an enlightened vision of sustainability both regionally and nationally. Speakers include

• 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.

Setting the tone: In its performance report, DOT starts off by measuring how quickly it fixes traffic lights.

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.

Proposed routes for bicycle "superhighways" serving London commuters.

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:

Two news stories came across the wire yesterday that highlight vast differences in the way U.S. cities treat the use of bicycles for transportation. First, there was this story out of Chicago:

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.

Read more...

Mitt Romney at the 2008 North American International Auto Show in Detroit

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.

Read more...

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...

Read more...

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

Mayor Bloomberg delivered his seventh State of the City Address yesterday morning at Flushing Meadows Corona Park. The speech had several nuggets of news and info related to livable streets issues.

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.