We met McCormack at the June traffic justice forum for Manhattan district attorney candidates. Here, he talks about crash investigations, the "rule of two," and the difficulties that can arise in obtaining and using vehicle "black box" data.

Brad Aaron: What were your general impressions of the Manhattan DA forum? In your opinion, were the pledges for increased prosecutions following pedestrian and cyclist deaths and injuries feasible under current law?

Joseph A. McCormack: I thought the forum was fantastic. Clearly, any of the candidates invited will be aware of the importance of pedestrian and cyclist safety issues and the need to back up concern with resources. I don't know if they pledged increased prosecutions as much as increased awareness and investigation which is certainly feasible under the current law.

BA: There was a lot of discussion on Streetsblog, following our write-up of the forum, about the "rule of two." How prevalent is the "rule of two" standard in determining whether to prosecute drivers involved in crashes resulting in death or serious injury? Who normally makes these decisions -- the police on the scene, an ADA on the phone?

JAM: The rule of two was explained in the Maureen McCormick interview and by [Transportation Alternatives General Counsel] Peter Goldwasser on the comments following your story on the forum. It is a rule of thumb used by most members of the criminal justice system from investigators to judges. Your education on it is helpful. I teach prosecutors and police officers in NYC that it can be used to understand some of these crimes but they must be aware that one factor, if egregious enough, standing alone, may impute criminal culpability. Cases such as Cabrera [Editor's note: People v. Cabrera is discussed in the Maureen McCormick interview linked above] make both understanding and prosecuting these cases more difficult, making the real lesson to be learned even more important. These cases are fact-driven and so the single most important rule at the outset is to be sure to fully investigate and gather the facts.

BA: Is the "rule of two" standard more likely to be applied in cases where a pedestrian or cyclist is the victim, rather than a driver or vehicle passenger? In other words, is it considered more difficult to prove negligence when a vehicle hits a person, rather than another vehicle?

JAM: There are no separate "rules" for investigating and prosecuting pedestrian or cyclist crashes versus car crashes. The only difference I can think of at all is sometimes, in the absence of witnesses, we can figure out more from the resultant damage to a vehicle but in some cases we are also able to figure out how a crash occurred when it involved a pedestrian or a cyclist from evidence gathered at the scene. I feel they are treated the same both by investigators and legally. The so called rule of two certainly makes no distinction and I don't feel there is one in practice.

JAM: The police department has protocols that are constantly being updated and examined in the hope of making them the most effective. I am sorry, but I can't speak directly about cases I have no actual knowledge about.

I would like to explain a little about "black boxes" and what they are and what we do about them. The forum and the questions posted on your blog seemed fairly confused about them.

Every crash, no matter who or what is involved, is scrutinized for Electronic Data Recorder evidence.

Every crash, no matter who or what is involved, is scrutinized for Electronic Data Recorder (EDR) evidence. By the way, the so-called "black boxes" in cars are actually silver. Quite a few years ago the NYC STOP DWI Program run by the DOT paid for training by the national expert in EDR recovery. Once I had the funding, we had all of the NYPD Detectives and many of the Highway Patrol Unit Techs assigned to investigate crashes trained for two weeks. We also got funding to purchase the equipment to download the EDRs. In the years since we have upgraded this equipment as needed with recurrent funding from STOP DWI. So, New York City is right at the cutting edge with EDRs.

Still though, these EDRs are not an automatic cure-all. First off, they may not record any data if the vehicles airbag system doesn't deploy. A car can crash or strike a pedestrian or cyclist and not set off its airbag. We then get nothing. Also, the kind of car involved is a significant factor. Some makes and models are capable of being downloaded and some are not. Some manufacturers maintain that their vehicles do not have EDRs. Some manufacturers refuse to help police download their cars. And some manufacturers have EDRs that do not record information useful to a crash investigator. If a car has a readable EDR sometimes there are other problems that prevent the data from being retrieved such as crash damage, power loss or if the EDR resets itself before the information is gathered. The one thing I can assure you of is that we try.

Brady Street, which boasts some of the best street life in Milwaukee, has flourished thanks in part to the defeat of a nearby freeway spur and the redevelopment that followed. Photo: Steve Filmanowicz.

In the second part of our interview (read the first part here), Norquist discusses these victories and setbacks, and how federal policy can help cities and towns do the right thing.

Ben Fried: Expanding the transit system in Milwaukee has been a very long, protracted process. You wanted to build light rail. What sort of resistance did you meet from other public officials?

Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland -- the regional planning commissions they have really aren’t looking out for city interests, they're looking out for the exurban interests.

It’s frustrating, because Milwaukee was always ranked by the Federal Transit Administration as one of the best places to put in a light rail, because it was built around the street car system. There was over 350 miles of street car in Milwaukee at the end of the war, 200 miles of inner urban. We had a really, really good transit system and by 1958 it was all gone. But the land use patterns were all built around street car lines. Now I think my successor, Tom Barrett, has got himself some clout with this. They put an earmark in the budget bill that just passed that gave him control of a nice big chunk of money, so he might be able to get that street car going.

BF: So the dispute between you and the county executives, is that emblematic, would you say, of the basic problem with MPOs?

JN: It depends on who runs the MPO. New York and Chicago have their MPOs under control. We have enough clout in Chicago that the local regional planning commission -- CMAP -- they're not going to turn around and screw Chicago. Chicago has a lot of representation on CMAP’s board. In New York, basically New York runs its own regional system -- sometimes the metro system has too much interference from the state, but basically New York City can call its own shot when it comes to planning. And that’s not true in a lot of cities. Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, the regional planning commissions they have really aren’t looking out for city interests, they're looking out for the exurban interests.

BF: We’ve got a potential freeway teardown project here in New York, the Sheridan Expressway, it was number two on CNU’s list of the top teardown candidates. Could you walk us through what you had to go through with your freeway teardown in Milwaukee -- who did you have to win over to achieve that?

JN: The Sheridan is ready to go. It has a nice low traffic count, so it’s hard to argue that it’s really necessary. But what did I go through? Well, the first thing was, it’s so counterintuitive to do these things that the first reaction was from very reasonable people -- ordinary citizens, the traffic engineers, neighborhood people, even very progressive people -- “You want to do what? You want to tear that -- what?” You know, it doesn’t compute, it sounds like a wacky thing to do. You have to have patience and spend a lot of time in meetings letting people beat the living hell out of you. And then you get to a certain point where people say, “Hey, wait, I think I understand what you mean. You’re saying the freeway’s a blighting influence.” And you just go through all the arguments against it, but the biggest argument for it is it just makes the place function a lot better and add more value and be a place where people actually want to be.

In the mid and late 70s a whole bunch of legislators were elected who were against freeways, people who organized and went door to door. If we hadn’t won those battles Milwaukee would have been devastated.

So you go through all these value calculation fights, and then finally you need to play your political cards. In Milwaukee the anti-freeway movement began in early 70s, and in the mid and late 70s a whole bunch of legislators were elected who were against freeways, people who organized and went door to door, they won the battles. If we hadn’t won those battles Milwaukee would have been devastated, but we’ve killed about half the freeways they had planned on building. And that saved the city really from being in a very similar situation to what Detroit is in right now.

BF: Are some of the freeway projects the Wisconsin DOT is planning now, are those in metro Milwaukee?

JN: We have several on there, they're all unnecessary, they're all dead weight loss. It’s really disgusting and it shows you how hard it is to get them to look at it in a different way. The I-94 widening -- it’s already six lanes, they want to make it eight lanes from Milwaukee down to the Illinois border. And they want to do a new interchange, called the “Zoo Interchange,” which will cost close to $1 billion. A lot of these stimulus projects are completely unnecessary and they don’t make sense. To route your grade-separated traffic through the most expensive real estate in the state of Wisconsin? It’s insane. They don't do it in Europe. They have freeways, but they're between cities, not in cities. They go around the outer edge with belt lines, but they don’t jam up through the most built-up places, because it just concentrates traffic and creates more congestion at the nodes.

A lot of these stimulus projects are completely unnecessary and they don’t make sense. To route your grade-separated traffic through the most expensive real estate in the state of Wisconsin? It’s insane.

Look at it not just from a big city standpoint, look at it from a medium- or small-sized city standpoint. Let’s say you were in New York wine country and you come to Ithaca. In the old days, instead of a bypass they’d have a truck route around the outer edge of the street grid. You might go a little bit faster, 35 miles an hour instead of 25, but it’s a little longer distance, so it’s pretty much an equal choice whether you drive through the middle of town or you go on the outer edge. And if you're driving a truck and you're going on through-traffic you take the truck route.

Well, now they don’t even have that option anymore, all they have is a Mercedes-Benz test track, a highly-banked, grade-separated freeway that routes all the traffic around the city and then you get the inevitable death of any retail in the middle. You end up with antique shops and empty buildings. And then you get the big boxes out on the beltway.

These small towns, they don’t need beltways. Give them another option and they might choose it. If they still want to build a beltway and they want to help pay for it, fine, but the feds should give them the kind of options that allow urban real estate development, job development, walkability, connectivity, all these things. Higher economic performance, higher environmental performance. Those are all possible when you create a wide variety of choices, instead of just going right to grade separation. That’s basically saying, "We only fund through-traffic -- if you want to go a long distance, we’re into funding it."

The feds don’t look at it in terms of the economics. Traditionally, there’s three purposes for a road: movement, economic and social interaction. Those are the three things that traditionally a thoroughfare in an urban area did for thousands of years. That’s what it was. And then in the last 60 years it’s all dumbed down to just one thing -- vehicle movement -- and the other stuff doesn’t matter. Well that’s really stupid. The federal government collects a lot of taxes from hardworking people in the United States, and they shouldn’t just think that the only purpose of investment in transportation is through-traffic.

How can federal policy encourage walkable street networks instead of highways and sprawl? Image: CNU

At the moment, however, the scene on the ground shows how far we have to go before the reality catches up to the rhetoric: State DOTs flush with federal stimulus cash are plowing ahead with wasteful, sprawl-inducing highway projects. Ultimately, you can't end car dependence or create livable places without enlisting the very people building those roads -- the metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), state DOTs, and other entities that shape local policy. How can the feds affect their decisions?

The Congress for the New Urbanism has some intriguing answers. During the stimulus debate, CNU proposed a new type of federal road funding that would help to build connected grids -- the kind of streets that livable communities are made of. The proposal didn't make it into the stimulus package before the bill got rushed out the door, but the upcoming federal transportation bill will provide another chance. CNU President John Norquist -- a four-term mayor of Milwaukee who first got into politics as an anti-freeway advocate -- was down in DC last Thursday to share his ideas with Congress. Streetsblog spoke to him afterward about what's broken with national transportation policy and how to fix it. Here's the first part of our interview.

Ben Fried: During the stimulus debate you sent a letter to James Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and among other things you said that discussion of national transportation policy often presents a "false dichotomy" between transit funding and road funding. What did you mean?

They are taking this stimulus money and using it for roads that people really don’t even want.

Freeways don’t work in rush hour; they're slower. Like in Washington, DC, Connecticut Avenue is faster at rush hour than the Potomac Freeway. The Potomac Freeway goes down to about two to six miles an hour during the peak hour, whereas Connecticut Avenue goes down to about eight to thirteen miles an hour. So you're really talking about the federal government investing billions and billions of dollars in stuff that reduces the value of the economy. How bad is that?

BF: So say they do implement some good metrics that get at street network connectivity…

JN: What would that be? Let me tell you. Right now the metrics are minimums -- you need at least 12 feet for a highway lane, whereas in Vancouver no lane can be bigger than three meters, which comes out to nine feet ten inches I think. Their biggest lane can be nine feet ten inches…

BF: These are federal requirements?

JN: No, but they all feed into the same system. The feds don’t even do the requirements directly -- in the federal highway program they reference the AASHTO Green Book. These are rules, they're just not stated as rules… On the interstate system you can’t have a lane that’s less than 12 feet wide, so that actually is a rule there. You have all these metrics that make everything bigger -- turning radii and ramps, the length of ramps -- all these things designed to have the vehicles move faster without having to slow down when they get off the freeway, that sort of thing.

Right now the system is biased towards trying to make everything like Brasília, where all the arterial street intersections are grade-separated. It’s the most lifeless city in the world.

Look at the Embarcadero Freeway. When it was torn down, the trips actually got faster, because people were able to enter the street grid of northeastern San Francisco without having to overshoot the mark or undershoot where they want to go and then go in a direction they don't want to go. So by removing the freeway and re-enriching the street network, it actually made traffic distribute better. Then it was a better setting, obviously, for real estate and job development, because the views of the bay were restored and streets are better.

So what are the metrics? The metrics would be intersection density, block size -- you would reward intersection density. And the feds can do that, they can say that states could draw federal money and add to the density of a street network, creating more mobility that way.

And the metric we use is 150 intersections per square mile, which wouldn’t just be like Manhattan or Philadelphia. In Wausau, Wisconsin, which is the home of the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Dave Obey, we counted 158 intersections per square mile. That’s counting alleys. You look at all these places that have high intersection density and they're very likely to be valuable settings for jobs and real estate, and they're also very good for distributing local traffic.

Freeways don’t work in rush hour; they're slower. Like in Washington DC, Connecticut Avenue is faster at rush hour than the Potomac Freeway.

BF: It seems like there also has to be some sort of system of incentives in place, because there’s so many MPOs that are just going to be stuck in their old habits…

JN: Are you talking about MPOs or DOTs?

BF: Let’s say both.

JN: I would argue in the majority of cases the MPOs just function as an arm of the DOT. There’s this myth that some of the regional planning commissions are out there trying to do what's right. And that’s true in some cases, but in the vast majority it’s just this same mind frame that they have at the DOTs. Some DOTs are more progressive than others. My current favorite is New Jersey where they're really exploring these ideas of funding more urban streets, like replacing the freeway in front of Trenton, along the river, and putting in a boulevard instead.

BF: So how do you get the state DOTs to embrace this?

JN: Right now they're encouraged not to even think about doing this stuff. Like in Wisconsin, there’s really no projects in Milwaukee, because Milwaukee is built out with streets and so forth, so all the money goes to brand new roads. Or expanding existing roads like I-94 between Milwaukee and the Illinois line, a total waste of money. They’re saying it’s $250 million to widen it, it’s probably three or four times that. Here they are, taking this stimulus money and using it all for roads that are really the kinds of things that were considered good back in the 1960s and 70s, but now are pretty much discredited. A lot of these road projects are controversial -- local groups that aren’t connected to government contracts are resisting them -- and all of a sudden the feds come along and fund roads that people really don’t even want. It’s pretty bad. In southeastern Wisconsin the MPO is the biggest supporter of building all these giant roads. Sometimes the smart growth movement says, "Well, we should give the MPOs more say." I’m not sure that’s a good idea.

If you need to have a stick, you have to know what you're going to hit, or if you have a carrot, you have to know what you want to fund, that’s why you get right back to metrics. The first step is to allow federal funds to be used to bring street networks up to a standard of 150 intersections per square mile. So if you have a suburban sprawl kind of situation where the intersection density is like at 40 per square mile, if you have a project that’s going to bring that intersection density up to 150, then the state would be eligible for getting federal funding to go in and do that.

You need to have standards that engineers can respect and if you have standards that they respect, they’ll do wonderful stuff.

If the feds say, "That’s okay, that’s good, that’s just as good as the other method," that would be a big step forward. I don't know that we can get it to say, “You must do this the more urban way.” I think that would be a little bit harder to do and I don’t even know that it’s necessary. Especially young traffic engineers that are just coming in to the field, I think they’re kind of eager to look at some different models. And if you look at ITE now, which is a very traditional group, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, they're really getting more and more excited about the idea of networks.

Even the ones that aren’t on the program yet, they're still interested and they kind of want to know what everything is about. So that’s where the metrics come in, then they respect it. Look at the 1920s, if you were a civil engineer and you're going to Purdue, you’re going to learn the two rod street -- two rods from the center lane to the building line, 50 feet of pavement with eight foot sidewalks. Add it up, it’s two rods in each direction, four rods altogether. That’s what you find all over America and particularly in the midwest. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Mattoon, Illinois. Frankfort, Kentucky. You're going to find these exact same streets. And it’s a great street for retail, for a downtown main street. It is Main Street -- and the engineers did that, they were trained to do it, they obeyed orders and they did it. If they go to traffic engineering school now they're going to learn minimum 72-foot arterials, three moving lanes in each direction with a turn lane, and then they blow out the sides with 100-foot setbacks -- you can widen the street later, you know -- and big parking lots.

That’s what they’re taught, that’s all they're taught. They're not taught the other model, because the regulations don’t even mention the other model for the most part. You need to have standards that engineers can respect and if you have standards that they respect, they’ll do wonderful stuff. They’ll create Market Street in San Francisco – new! -- if they had a standard that said it was okay to do that.

*****************

Stay tuned for the second part of our interview with John Norquist, in which we discuss the problem with "shovel-ready" projects, what it takes to win a freeway teardown fight, and how to build your way out of congestion.

In the coming months Streetsblog will turn increasing attention to Capitol Hill and the 2009 federal transportation reauthorization bill. With hundreds of billions of dollars up for grabs, organizations are mobilizing to influence the outcome of the debate. One thing many of the groups pushing for mass transit, smart growth and livable streets have in common is funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. The old adage says “Follow the money,” so Streetsblog spoke with foundation Managing Director Nicholas Turner.

Aaron Naparstek: What kind of work is Rockefeller Foundation doing in the transportation sector right now?

Nick Turner: We’ve undertaken an initiative that’s focused on trying to advance a more equitable and sustainable transportation paradigm in this country. When you look at the cost of transportation for low-income families, you see this is the second highest cost for working Americans. Then if you look at the slice of those who earn twenty to fifty thousand dollars a year, it’s the highest cost. Having to own and operate a car eats up 30 percent of household income.

The second thing that made us alight on transportation again was the climate impact. With transportation accounting for 33 percent of emissions in this country we thought it was essential to look at the lever of federal policy and funding as a way of reducing that impact.

The third thing, and it’s smaller than the other two, is when we look at this country and other developing countries we see an increasingly tattered social contract. Investing in sustainable and equitable transportation, and the building of that infrastructure, is a source of good jobs and increases access to good jobs for lower income Americans.

Transportation should be seen as a tool to achieve a variety of social benefits and ends. Transportation is not an end in and of itself but it should be a tool to enhance quality of life for people.

We see an increasingly tattered social contract. Investing in sustainable and equitable transportation, and the building of that infrastructure, is a source of good jobs and increases access to good jobs.

In this exclusive Streetfilms interview, The Open Planning Project's Executive Director Mark Gorton talks with Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan about how her agency is redefining public space in New York City.

As the two take a walking tour of recently revamped streetscapes designed to encourage car-free movement and foster social activity -- including Broadway Boulevard, Gansevoort Plaza, Meat Market Plaza and the Ninth Avenue cycle track -- Sadik-Khan explains how she sees the city grid evolving from "utilitarian corridors" into civic amenities.

Too much of the time I think pedestrians have been seen as guests in this space. Putting a prime role for designing for people -- designing for pedestrians, designing for cyclists, designing for buses, designing for better mobility, designing for a more sustainable city -- is all part of the package.

In 2004, after John Kerry and John Edwards conceded a second term in the White House to George W. Bush, the editors of Seattle's liberal-tarian weekly The Stranger published an essay entitled "The Urban Archipelago," calling on urban Democrats and their political candidates to unite on issues relevant to cities, where the majority of Americans live. Though an enjoyable read, most of the essay isn't suitable for print on a family blog, but here's a representative passage:

With all the talk of the growth of exurbs and the hand-wringing over facile demographic categories like "security moms," you may be under the impression that an urban politics wouldn't speak to many people. But according to the 2000 Census, 226 million people reside inside metropolitan areas -- a number that positively dwarfs the 55 million people who live outside metro areas. The 85 million people who live in strictly defined central city limits also outnumber those rural relics. When the number of city-dwellers in the United States is quadruple the number of rural people, we can put simple democratic majorities to work for our ideals.

According to the New York-based Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, those ideals include funding for police, health care, housing, utilities, transit and other infrastructure -- and, for the most part, still aren't being talked about in the heart of the 2008 presidential primary season by either dominant party. So DMI, in association with The Nation magazine, launched MayorTV, a series of interviews with mayors from coast of coast, in which they talk about why cities matter and challenge White House hopefuls to make urban America part of the national discussion. (Mayor Michael Bloomberg has so far not participated.)

In addition to being "an ATM for the major presidential candidates," said DMI Executive Director Andrea Batista Schlesinger in a recent TV interview, "If cities aren't functioning, being the economic engines for their regions, then it becomes the problem of suburbs and exurbs, and it becomes the problem of the country."

Video: Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, via MayorTV/YouTube

This quarter's Journal has stories on the benefits of regular "programmed" fare increases, Seoul, South Korea's successful bus rapid transit system and the future of transportation in the northeast corridor. That last one is somewhat awesomely titled, "From Megalopolis to Megamodal" and includes some interesting charts comparing the CO₂ intensity of different passenger and freight transportation modes, and U.S. petroleum use by sector. (Wasn't "Megamodal" the name of a big heavy metal band in the '80s?)

Also, U. Penn professor Rachel Weinberger, one of the authors of Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC, interviews MTA Chief Elliot "Lee" Sander, who worked as the Director of the Rudin Center before his appointment to the MTA. Sander discusses the challenges facing the MTA and lays out his seven-part "strategic focus" for the agency. On December 12, The Rudin Center is hosting a breakfast with Lee Sander. If you would like to attend, RSVP online by December 7.

Below are some excerpts from the interview, which you can download in its entirety here:

RW: Looking forward then, what do you hope to accomplish in the next four years?

ES: I would like the MTA to be the best in class of large, older public transportation agencies in the world. I have identified seven areas of strategic focus that we will be working on aggressively to help get us there.

First, I want to dramatically improve workforce development at the MTA. That includes our formal relationship with organized labor, how we interact with our workforce, and how we deal with issues such as succession planning and executive development.

Second is institutional reform. There's a need for significant institutional reform at the MTA. We have seven different agencies that have essentially been run as independent organizations. This is incredibly inefficient. In a 21st Century world where the objective is to break down boundaries and create value through synergy, the MTA, as currently constituted, is the antithesis of a well-integrated, "flat" organization.

The third area is customer service. A new initiative that Howard Roberts has begun to implement is a rider report card. This is something he and I talked about when we were running the NYCT Bus System in the '80s. Howard then implemented it fully at SEPTA, and he found it to be very helpful. He actually was able to increase the grade in Philadelphia.

The fourth piece is system expansion, system improvement and planning. We have a huge agenda both in terms of the mega-projects and in terms of implementing the new technologies that will enable us to have better public information, better real-time control of our trains, and faster movement of our buses...

RW: Speaking of sustainability, how does the Mayor's sustainability plan affect you?

ES: I'm very supportive of the Mayor's plan. I worked very closely with the Mayor and Deputy Mayor Doctoroff when the Mayor released PlaNYC, especially the congestion pricing component because I feel strongly that the concept of congestion pricing is critical to the city and to the region. I'm pleased to have been named by the Governor to the Congestion Mitigation Commission. The MTA worked very hard, standing shoulder to shoulder with the City, on the Urban Partners application to seek federal support for the MTA's operating and capital budget.

"It seemed to me that what was significantly undermining the ordinary daily happiness and health and economic life of both me and my fellow New Yorkers was the private car."    -- Randy Cohen, "The Ethicist"

Open Planning Project Executive Director Mark Gorton recently interviewed New York Times Magazine's "The Ethicist," Randy Cohen, on the ethics of urban automobility. The result has been condensed into a nine minute StreetFilm touching on a multitude of topics ranging from congestion pricing to parking policy.

Here is The Ethicist on congestion pricing:

It would be misleading to say that wise policy decisions never restrict individual freedom. They do. What civilization is is the restriction of individual freedom. We have for instance fire codes. You can't build your apartment out of kerosene-soaked cardboard because it endangers other people. We have a thousand laws that restrict what an individual can do because it is singularly destructive to the larger community.

This one [congestion pricing] is an interesting policy in that so many members of the community so overwhelmingly gain. And the unfortunate consequences are the restrictions in freedoms that are so tiny.

Here is the fourth and final installment of Streetsblog's congestion pricing Q&A with Rohit Aggarwala, New York City's Director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. Click these links to find Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Add your questions to the comments section and we'll see if we can get Aggarwala or someone else in city government to try and answer them for you.

Aaron Naparstek: Should the mayor's congestion pricing plan be submitted to an Environmental Impact Statement process?

Rohit Aggarwala: I don't think so. And the reason is simply that an EIS would be no more valuable for the decision of whether or not to go forward with congestion pricing, and what to do to mitigate its impacts, than the analysis that we've already done, and the analysis that the commission will be doing. The problem with traffic congestion is that it is so difficult to model.

That's why we've proposed a three year pilot. The pilot itself effectively will be the Environmental Impact Statement. Keep in mind congestion pricing is very different from building something you can't tear down. We can turn this system off whenever we want. If it turns out that the environmental impacts are negative, then by all means we'll want to turn it off. We're pretty convinced that the impacts will be wildly positive, and any specific impacts that might take place that are negative are things that we would be able to adjust.

AN: What exemptions do you foresee or would you like to have or not have?

RA: The mayor's plan has a few exemptions. First of all, yellow cabs and radio cars. Second, handicapped license plates. Third, mass transit and emergency vehicles. The reason for the third is kind of obvious, As for the handicapped, although we have Access-a-Ride, if you have a disability but you can still drive, there are large parts of the transit system that don't really work that well for you.

The reason for yellow cabs and radio cars is that we believe those pretty much function as an extension of the transit system. If you take a subway into Manhattan and you're going to the far west side, you may want to take a taxi or you may want to have the option to take a taxi home at the end of the night if you work late or something like that. Similarly, because it can be difficult to find a yellow cab, particularly parts of the outer boroughs, we want to keep the ability for people to use radio cars. I don't think we want to force people out of taxi cabs. A taxi is actually very efficient use of the street. It never circles for parking and, particularly at rush hour, you have very high utilization of taxis, as we all know since it's hard to find one that's unoccupied.

Black cars and limousines would be charged in the mayor's plan. Frankly, those are corporate trips that, number one, can bear the cost, and number two, we want those people to think, "Well, couldn't I just take the subway it would be faster and cheaper?"

AN: Would you be open to adding more exemptions if that comes up during the commission discussion?

RA: I think the real challenge with exemptions is that they are a slippery slope. You don't want government to be in the business of making the decision over who is driving for a good reason who is driving for an unacceptable reason. If you get into that business you wind up with all sorts of problems about how you judge. If it's not based on, say, a handicapped license plate or some pre-existing handicapped permit, does that mean we have to establish a whole new bureaucracy for assessing who's really in need of driving or not?

I know there was a proposal to exempt Rockland County residents because the transit options from Rockland County aren't as good as other parts of the region. But if you do that, well, there are also parts of Brooklyn where the transit options aren't as good. You wind up almost having to go down to the individual level to measure how long it takes someone to walk to the subway and take the subway into Manhattan. I don't know how you do that.

AN: How will it work inside the pricing zone when people need to move their cars on street cleaning day?

RA: We will want to talk to technology vendors about the specific metrics or the specific decision rules and the billing system for how you'd do that. But there are any number of ways you could do it. Since we know by neighborhood, in fact, we know block by block when people are likely to have to move their cars to deal with alternate side parking, you could build that into the billing system.

Likewise, you could do something where you have to drive a certain number of blocks before you get charged. There are any number of ways you could do that using camera placement or billing logic. We don't have a good proposal yet, but we have enough different ideas that we're pretty confident we can make it work.

AN: If you keep a car inside the pricing zone and want to move the car either within or outside of the zone, how does the charging work?

RA: They pay. The rules are that if you are only moving within the zone during the 6:00 am to 6:00 pm period, you're only going to pay $4 not $8. And that's true wherever you live. If, for example, you drive in from Brooklyn or New Jersey at 5:30 in the morning and you're driving around in the zone at 7:00 and you keep your car parked until 6:00 pm when pricing turns off, you're only going to pay $4. You're not going to pay $8 because you were only driving within the zone during the charging period.

So, a resident who lives in Hells Kitchen, say, and owns a car and decides for whatever reason that he's going to drive down to City Hall during the day is only going to pay $4. But if that person drives out of the zone between 6:00 am and 6:00 pm, our proposal is they pay $8. The reason for that is that if they choose to drive out at 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon when everybody else is also driving out, they're making a significant contribution to congestion.

AN: I promised this interview would be about the policy not the politics but what do you think is the key to moving congestion pricing forward?

RA: Educating people about what congestion pricing really is, and what it isn't. There are a lot of myths out there, some of which have been perpetuated by the opposition. We need to make sure people are aware of what the proceeds could be used for and what the benefits would be. We need to ask New Yorkers to start thinking about what alternatives we have for reducing congestion and improving transit. The answer is we don't really have any good alternatives. The 17 member Congestion Mitigation Commission and the timetable that we've agreed to with the legislatures and the governor allows us a little more time to make our case and explain this to people.

AN: Speaking of timetables, I see we're out of time. Thanks for doing this. Are you sick of answering these same questions over and over again?

RA: I'm kind of used to it at this point.

Rohit Aggarwala, New York City's Director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, sat down to answer some of the more frequently asked questions about Mayor Bloomberg's proposal for a three-year congestion pricing pilot program. Below is the third part of our four part interview. Here is Part 1 and Part 2.

Aaron Naparstek: Mayor Bloomberg's plan proposes that all of the congestion pricing revenue would go to a new public authority called the SMART Fund. Why not let the MTA receive the funds? Why is it a good idea to create a new bureaucracy?

Rohit Aggarwala: I think that's one of those things that has to be discussed and worked out. Our proposal was to create the SMART Fund. Roughly half of its revenue would come from congestion pricing, the other half would be a joint contribution from the city and state. By devoting the revenue to a new financing board that would make regional decisions about transportation investment priorities, that would be one way that you can prevent the money from disappearing.

There are a variety of other ways you can do it. I think the commission and the state legislature and the governor are going to wind up weighing in on whether the SMART Fund is the right way. But I think there is near universal agreement that congestion pricing revenue should be dedicated to transit investment.

AN: What transit enhancements will the City undertake prior to the launch of congestion pricing?

RA: The proposal that we submitted jointly with the MTA and the State to the U.S. Department of Transportation envisioned a number of things, the most important was the roll out of more than 300 new buses. The buses would be used for increasing the frequency of bus service, new express routes, and some enhanced express bus service to specific areas within the suburbs.

What's particularly important in terms of making those buses move quickly are some of the Bus Rapid Transit improvements that the City will do, like signal prioritization, automated bus lane enforcement, and some of the incremental improvements that, for example, could facilitate easier transfers from certain bus lines to certain subway stations, things like that.

AN: If congestion pricing is so successful that it removes 112,000 daily car trips from the streets, will the subway system have the capacity to handle all of the new riders?

RA: Yes. On those few lines where there's truly no more capacity during rush hour, the plan takes that into account and creates new capacity on the bus routes that would allow people who use those crowded subway lines to switch over to buses. We think that we can enhance bus service so that it's faster and more attractive.

I think one of things that most people miss is that it's not like all 112,000 drivers are going to switch over to the 7 train or the Lexington Line during rush hour. There are lots of subway lines that, even at rush hour, have the capacity for more frequency or more cars and a lot of the people who will switch will actually be riding during the middle of the day. That is a time when the river crossings are not at capacity, but the street grid in Manhattan is at its most congested. So, that's a time when it's very easy to switch somebody onto the subway system because the subways are by no means at capacity at lunchtime.

AN: Will congestion pricing funds be used for public space, bicycling, and pedestrian improvements?

RA: We envisioned congestion pricing partially funding the completion of the city's Bike Master Plan. The Bike Master Plan is, of course, a tiny about of money compared to the Second Avenue Subway. But because bicycling contributes to a reduction in auto-based transportation, bike projects are something that I think should be eligible. We didn't include pedestrian plazas or things like that in the financing but we made a commitment in PlaNYC to do those projects. There's a lot that DOT is already beginning to work on. The concrete changes do take time but it's a new regime over there, and I think they are really pushing that kind of thinking as quickly as it goes.

This is the second segment of a four-part interview with New York City's Director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, Rohit Aggarwala. We're talking about Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal for a three-year congestion pricing pilot project in New York City. Part 1 of our interview can be found here.

Aaron Naparstek: Why does the mayor's congestion pricing plan designate 86th Street as the northern boundary rather than 60th Street, which is traditionally considered the top of the Central Business District?

Rohit Aggarwala: There are a couple of problems with 60th Street as a boundary for congestion pricing. The CBD traditionally ends at 60th Street, but on the west side up in the 60s you've got Lincoln Center, ABC TV, and other big office buildings. On the east side, you've got the hospitals, the buildings to the north of Bloomingdale's and the museums. There are lots of non-residential destinations for drivers well above 60th Street. That's the first issue.

Second, if you look at traffic patterns, it's not as if the traffic immediately dissipates as you cross 60th Street going northbound. Depending on the time of day, depending on which avenue you're looking at, the traffic really changes in the quality of the congestion and delay somewhere between 72nd and 110th Street. And so while that doesn't dictate 86th as exactly the right line, it suggests that the boundary should be somewhere north of 60th Street.

Finally, some people have argued that people are going to drive in and park in Greenpoint or park on 87th Street and take the subway the rest of the way in and, frankly, we don't see that as being a big risk. Compared to a round trip subway ride, you're only saving $4 and you're adding a lot of time to your trip, both because the parking itself is scarce and because the subway trip will add time. So, it's unclear to us why anybody really would do that.

But if somebody is going to Bloomingdale's on 59th Street, certainly, if you charge $8 to drive south of 60th Street they're going to park on 61st and walk. And if somebody is going to Columbus Circle or Carnegie Hall, or any of the many businesses and offices in the 50s, you are more likely to have that parking problem.

So, those three reasons combined suggested to us that the boundary ought to be somewhere between 72nd and 110th Street. We picked 86th Street as a place that we thought made sense but as the mayor has said many times, we're open to conversation about that.

AN: Wouldn't it be far less expensive and nearly just as effective simply to toll the East River bridges?

RA: Not really. The largest vector through which cars enter the Central Business District is not the East River, it's 60th Street. More cars are coming south from upper Manhattan, the Bronx and Westchester than are crossing the East River. So, you would get some of the benefit by only tolling the bridges but you wouldn't get all of it.

Furthermore, we believe that it's very important to toll traffic inside the zone. You would never want to have the situation where you're charging people who are driving in from places that have lesser transit access while inadvertently encouraging Manhattan residents to buy cars and drive around Manhattan for free. That would be a complete mistake.

AN: Won't the current plan send a lot of excess traffic congestion onto Manhattan's East and West side highways since there will be no charge to drive on them?

RA: I don't think so. Frankly, with the congestion you have on the Manhattan street grid, it would be a bit of an irrational if your destination is Harlem or the George Washington Bridge and you come across the Brooklyn Bridge, why would you drive up Broadway rather then just getting on one of those highways? What we don't want to do is charge to drive on the East and West side highways and wind up pushing the traffic that's currently on the FDR Drive onto the BQE. That doesn't necessarily benefit anybody.

AN: If New Jersey commuters are only paying an additional $3 atop the tolls they already pay to cross the Hudson, is that really enough of a price increase to prevent them from driving?

RA: It's going to have an impact. It might have a lesser impact because it's a lesser increase in the costs that they are currently paying. One of the reasons that we went with the credit and made every crossing the same price is to make sure that you reduce the instance of, say, people driving down Flatbush Avenue to cross a less expensive Manhattan Bridge when the more direct ride takes them through the Battery Tunnel.

Keep in mind, the credit doesn't only apply to New Jersey commuters. It's the same thing with people who currently drive in through the Battery Tunnel and the Midtown Tunnel. They will have a lesser price increase under the mayor's proposal. The fact is they are already paying something. They're making the decision that driving is worth the cost. And that's all we want to do is make people make that decision.

The goal here is not to force people out of their cars, the goal is to encourage people who have good transit options to take transit and to reduce the perverse incentive we've currently got, which is that for some people it may actually be cheaper to drive than to take transit.

AN: Why not feather the fees at the start and the end of the charging periods as was done in Stockholm so, say, driving in at 6:00 am is cheaper than driving in at 8:00 am during the absolute rush hour peak?

RA: It's a concept we're open to. As with so many things, the issue is creating a balance between precision and simplicity. The most precise thing you could do would be to have variable fees that depend on the actual level of traffic at a given time. The challenge here is that a price signal only works if people understand it. So, you need some level of simplicity. We went with a very simple approach that's just kind of binary but I think we're open to the idea of feathering or any other variation that might make it work better as long as we're all convinced, and eventually the commission itself will have to be convinced, that people will be able to understand it.

Among New York State Assembly Democrats, that has been one of the most frequent criticisms of Mayor Bloomberg's proposal for a three-year congestion pricing pilot project in New York City. Last month, Lower Manhattan Assembly member Deborah Glick said that she and her colleagues were "confronted with a dearth of information regarding the Mayor's proposal." Bronx Assembly member Jeffrey Dinowitz made similar complaints in an editorial to the Riverdale Press a couple of weeks ago. 

In an attempt to get answers to some of the more frequently asked questions about congestion pricing, I did what I assume any state legislator could do just as easily, if not more so. I called Rohit Aggarwala and asked him for a meeting to talk about congestion pricing. He agreed.

Aggarwala is New York City's Director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and the lead author of Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030. We met for about 45 minutes on a Monday afternoon in August in a conference room at the Mayor's Office of Operations. I've divided the interview into four parts. Here is the first part:

Aaron Naparstek: How are you enjoying the job? It's been what? A year?

Rohit Aggarwala: Fourteen crazy months, actually. It was June 12th when I started.

AN: A lot has happened since then.

RA: It's been amazing. It seems like only yesterday but it's been a lot of work.

AN: I bet.

RA: Had we just written the plan, that itself would have been a lot of work, but to do so with the input that we got from the advisory board and the town hall meetings -- all of the input makes the plan better -- but it meant a lot more work too.

AN: Having gone through that public input process, what is your impression of how New Yorkers view transportation issues and the idea of congestion pricing?

RA: New Yorkers are keenly aware of the problem that we have in terms of transportation congestion. Whether it's on the roads, on your daily subway commute or just walking through Time Square, we all know that mobility is a challenge. Everybody wants to solve the problem. The challenge is that nobody really wants to pay for it. Everybody thinks that the other guy shouldn't be driving, but I'm driving for all the right reasons. Everybody says, sure, I want more people on transit, but not on my train because I want to get a seat. And, yeah, we need more money for transportation investment, but don't take it out of my wallet.

But thinking back to the town hall meetings, far more people were in favor of congestion pricing than anybody would have thought just a year ago. If you told a politician a year ago that when asked point blank, "Should we have congestion pricing in Manhattan," without even being told that the money would go to transit, that nearly 40 percent of New Yorkers would say, "Yes," nobody would have believed that high a number was possible.

AN: A Wall Street Journal opinion piece was forwarded to me recently that said, "Their goal isn't easing congestion at all, it's raising money. The city's plan foresees only negligible improvements in traffic density and speeds, less than 8 percent, but millions for the city to spend on other priorities." Is the congestion pricing just about raising money?

RA: If all the mayor had wanted was additional revenue, there would be far easier ways to get it than to engage in the congestion pricing debate. It would have been so much easier for us to find the money in a different way.

That quote that you just read completely misses the fact that this money isn't going to be for the city to spend. Our proposal was that the revenue goes to the SMART Fund, which the city would have only a 50% voice in. Others have proposed the money goes to the MTA. The bottom line is congestion pricing revenue is not going into the city's budget, it's going towards transit.

It's misleading to say that we're only doing this for the revenue. The reason that congestion pricing is such a powerful concept, and the reason that the mayor, who was initially skeptical about it, warmed to it and now has obviously embraced it and believes in it quite strongly, is that it solves multiple challenges at once. It reduces traffic while raising money for transit. And it gets people to think more about the personal choices they make.

Just like you get charged every time you decide to take the subway, and that makes you think about whether you want to use this scarce resource that costs money to provide, you also want a price on making the decision to drive into one of the most congested and transit-rich areas in North America. That's the goal.

I've heard time and time again, that the 8 percent increase in vehicle speeds is a negligible difference. But that's 112,000 cars a day off of the streets. That's hardly a negligible difference. What people often don't understand is that a reduction in 6.3 percent of vehicle miles traveled, or an increase in speed of 8 percent -- those are averages. Those changes make a big difference because the bulk of that speed improvement isn't going to come at 5:00 in the morning, or on one of those few streets that you can find during rush hour that isn't crowded. Those improvements are going to be concentrated on the streets that currently have the worst congestion.

But what really counts to the driver is the reduction in delay -- the reduction in the amount of time you're stuck in traffic. London found that the increase in average speed translates to a reduction of driver delay by at least a factor of two. So, an 8 percent increase in average vehicle speed translates to a 15 to 20 percent reduction in driver delay. That is sizable.

AN: Many say they are concerned that congestion pricing will hurt New York City's poor, middle class, and small business people. How do you respond to that?

RA: I think its fundamentally not true. If you look at New York City as a whole, if you look at every class of people, however you want to define class, the majority of New Yorkers rely on transit far more than they rely on automobiles. Are the relatively small percentage of New York's middle class that drives into Manhattan everyday going to be hurt by congestion pricing? Potentially. But in exchange for $8, those who continue to drive are going to get a more reliable drive, a more comfortable drive, a faster drive.

When it comes to transportation, the best thing we can do for New York City's middle class has nothing to do with what goes on on the roads, it's what we can do in the subways. That's why it's so important to use the proceeds for transit improvements.

As for small businesses, I think it's exactly the same kind of thing. Even if you assume that small businesses do rely on driving, the efficiency gains from reducing traffic by 6.3 percent translates into greater productivity. So, for a cost of $8, a van delivering flowers can make one or two extra deliveries a day with the same vehicle and the same labor costs. The reduction in traffic congestion has more than made up for the incremental increase in transportation cost. As for bigger trucks, most of them are already paying tolls.

AN: Still, if it costs more for trucks to transport goods, won't that translate to price increases for all New York City consumers across the board?

RA: London has seen nothing to indicate that that's the case. Stockholm, in some very detailed analysis of what goes on downtown, has actually seen an increase in customers to local businesses because the pedestrian spaces are that much more attractive with fewer cars clogging the roads. So, Stockholm has actually seen small business directly benefiting from congestion pricing.

Really, how much inflation can you create on an entire truckload of goods by adding $21? There were some outrageous numbers being thrown around about how congestion pricing will cause all groceries to go up by 10 percent or something. When these claims come up, do the math. If a $21 charge on a truckload of milk translates into a 10 percent increase in the cost of a gallon of milk, that means they are using an entire truck to deliver something like 10 gallons of milk per day.

There's so much misinformation that people are putting out there to scare people.

Janette Sadik-Khan: Four days.

Streetsblog: Left in the legislative session?

JSK: Yeah, well, maybe four days left, maybe more days. August in Albany. What can be better?

SB: (Laughing) So, let's start with something other than congestion pricing. How was your trip to Copenhagen to meet with Jan Gehl? Had you ever been before?

JSK: Never been.

SB: What did you think?

JSK: I thought it was spectacular. The experience of riding a bicycle in a city in which the car is not the priority was really inspiring. One piece that was a bit of a surprise was how well behaved people were in Copenhagen. I didn't see a single person break a single traffic law while I was there which is certainly a little different than the experience that we have here.

SB: I noticed the same thing when I was there last fall but every Copenhagener I asked insisted they were just as rude and unruly as New Yorkers.

JSK: Gehl went through the historic trajectory of how they've reclaimed public space bit by bit, one street at a time. Today, they've reached a tipping point where 36 percent of the people commuting to work are on bike and they're looking to get that mode share up to 40 percent.

The other thing that amazed me is that there are all of these bikes parked all over the place and it appears that none of them are locked. They all have these small black handcuffs on the rear wheel. You turn the key and this steel rod comes through and locks it up. How long do you think that would last on the streets of New York City? Ten minutes?

So, there are definite cultural elements that make Copenhagen Copenhagen and need to be adapted to work in New York. But the design of the streets and their approach to the streets are really interesting and I'm hoping to bring Gehl over at the end of next month to help us work on a pedestrian and public space strategy much like what he did for London.

SB: Would you have him work in a specific location or citywide?

JSK: We need to be able to show what can be done in all five boroughs with a variety of different techniques. But not everything needs to be a massive capital project. I'm looking to see what we can do on a shorter term basis to have some immediate impact in reclaiming streets and coming up with different designs for roadways and sidewalks.

SB: Are you looking at reclaiming on-street parking space for other uses?

JSK: That is something we're looking at. In fact, we're talking about removing a lane of parking on Broadway next to City Hall. Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia has been really great about looking for ways to reclaim street space. He's been helping me identify where these different places can be. The other question is once we reclaim it what do we do with it? You have to do it in a way that leaves a meaningful public space.

SB: So, let's talk about congestion pricing. There are a lot of negative signals coming out of Albany and Sheldon Silver. What's the status?

JSK: We're very hopeful. It's a heavy lift, certainly. The Mayor's working very hard and all of us are working very hard to see the legislation and authorization come through by Thursday, which is when the session ends. The Senate has been terrific. Bruno's been really good. The Assembly is open and we continue to do briefings. The governor has been very supportive, so that's a big help. We'll see what happens when the chips fall on Thursday.

SB: If congestion pricing doesn't pass do you have a Plan B? Are there traffic reduction measures that the city can implement if this plan falls through?

JSK: Everyone is shooting for Thursday but the promise of a special legislative session later this summer is still out there. So, Plan B is the special session. We are not giving up hope at all. We are fully committed. We need to get this legislation passed. It needs to pass now. It would be ridiculous to throw away hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds. That's our plan and when the plan passes we're looking to institute a series of immediate short term improvements before the switch is flipped on congestion pricing, including increased express bus service, ferry service and a variety of other initiatives. So, our emphasis is on making sure this congestion pricing program passes. On the transportation side, we don't think there's anything more important for the future of New York than getting this plan through.

SB: Is it a given at this point that no new "SMART" authority will be created and the MTA will administer the congestion pricing program?

JSK: That is still in negotiation. On the governance side I think that they are looking at a model that includes both the city and the state much along the lines of the Capital Program Review Board which handles the MTA's money. There are four votes on the CPRB: the City, the State, the Assembly and the Senate. Four people in a room. It takes a unanimous vote of the CPRB to pass the MTA's capital program. So, I think people are moving towards that kind of a governance model. But the negotiations continue.

SB: The City's proposed Bus Rapid Transit system will be dependent on camera-based enforcement of the bus lanes. Is the legislature going to give us the cameras? Is that sort of issue even on the radar in Albany right now?

JSK: It's definitely on the radar. It's part of our plan. We're hoping it is also addressed in the next four days. Keep those phone calls going to your legislators.

SB: The Hudson Yards rezoning on the west side of Manhattan requires developers to include over 20,000 new parking spaces. We recently did a story about this on the blog that generated a lot of response. People don't understand how these parking requirements fit with the Mayor's long-term sustainability and traffic reduction goals of PlaNYC.

JSK: In Copenhagen I was joined by City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden. We spent a lot of time talking about the success of cities like Portland and Chicago that have revised their zoning codes with lower parking ratios and how that has led, in a lot of instances, to a renaissance for pedestrian space and transit without any apparent downside.

SB: Towards the end of his private consulting career, your new Deputy Commissioner Bruce Schaller put forward a study suggesting that pedestrianizing Prince Street in SoHo, say, on weekends, might be doable and even desirable. Can we expect to see you move on this type of project?

JSK: We're looking at all sorts of treatments to improve the streets of New York. Bruce being here is going to help us. A lot of people have interesting ideas. It will be exciting to have Jan Gehl here because he will help us identify some of the places where we can do urban acupuncture and specific interventions, much as he's done in other cities.

As important as it is to do these interventions, it is also important to ensure that we have policies and programs in place that will set the direction for the agency for years to come.

On Memorial Day, I had a chance to speak with Micah Kellner, the Democratic Party's candidate for the New York State Assembly seat left vacant by Pete Grannis who was such a strong environmental advocate Gov. Spitzer elevated him to the head of the Department of Environmental Conservation. I asked him to clarify the report in the New York Sun that he opposed Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan, despite supporting the plan "in concept." He said:

The purpose of congestion pricing is to reduce traffic and congestion, not just shift congestion to a different neighborhood. I believe having the border at 86th Street will be a disaster for the people living between 86th and 96th Streets. It will create gridlock there and turn the area into a parking lot. I think the border should be at 59th Street. I also want the mayor to commit to incentives for night deliveries and to support the cross-harbor freight tunnel, which he continually flip flops on.

When I challenged him on his vision of Carmmegedon in Yorkville and Carnegie Hill he responded with a few ancedotes of comments he's heard on the campaign trail: People looking for parking on 88th Street would not be able to look below 86th Street. People working near 86th street would exit the FDR at 96th street, park and walk the rest of the way.

I told Kellner that my greatest concern was that the bickering over where to draw the line would delay or sink the whole plan. He was not worried. "I think we will see congestion pricing of some type get implemented. There will be a vote and it will pass."

Gene Russianoff, Senior Attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, has been New York City's leading transit advocate for decades. Streetsblog recently spoke with Gene about the MTA's impending fiscal crises and other transit issues.

SB: How real is this predicted fiscal crises? How does it compare to past crises?

GR: Start with the numbers. They have huge problems with their operating and capital budgets (download pdf). The MTA has an operating budget of roughly $9 billion. Three years in a row they have huge projected operating deficits: $800 million in 2008, $1.4 billion in 2009 and $1.8 billion in 2010. This is the deficit after state and city subsidies. The reason that the deficit is so big is because the interest is coming due on the $32 billion the MTA has borrowed over the last 25 years. By 2010 about 20% of the MTA budget will be debt service, which most experts believe is the upper limit of what public authorities can manage. It's not possible to raise the fare enough for three years in a row, even if they callously wanted to put all of the burden on the riding public. Former MTA director Katie Lapp used to joke that they couldn't use the credit card anymore.

SB: Is this the day of reckoning?

GR: The problem is how to pay the current bills and still do capital plans for the future. The thing that's gotten them through the past couple years is this unprecedented windfall from the sky-high real estate market and the MTA's mortgage recording tax. In 2006 they had a $1 billion surplus. This has masked deep problems and made it hard to raise fares. The public doesn't understand the deficit. They think the MTA is raking in the dough through the fare box. But the surplus is coming from these taxes, not the fare box. What's not understood by the public is that it's a roller coaster. If the economy is doing poorly then the subsidies from taxes go down.

SB: Is the MTA's top leadership more worried than it typically is before a fiscal crisis?

GR: The new leadership wants to deliver a good product and they are ambitious. They resent being saddled with the bill for someone else's expenditure. It makes it hard for them to balance their budget and meet new needs. They are concerned about their ability to do that.

SB: The city is perceived as being very flush right now. How does the mayor escape a bigger responsibility for the MTA budget problems?

GR: The average person thinks when it comes to subways, the mayor is the Sun King who decides what MetroCards cost. But mayors don't feel responsible. The mayor has only 4 of 21 votes on the MTA board. On the capital side, Koch contributed $200 million a year to the MTA, Dinkins and Giuliani reduced it to $100 million a year, and Bloomberg cut it to $70 million. The city contributes only about 3% of the capital budget and 3% to the operating budget.

SB: Can congestion pricing help?

GR: We wouldn't support congestion pricing if its only function was to reduce congestion. That's an important goal. But it really needs to be a source of revenue for better transit. You can't relieve congestion without providing a decent transportation alternative -- a safe, reliable transit system. There should be more express buses and BRT. The city should have been building subways decades ago like our global competitors were. In trying to win popular support for congestion pricing you have to tell people the money is going to improve transit, especially bus service. London improved bus service with congestion pricing. The fee paid for new buses and the reduced congestion resulted in faster, better bus service. They made travel easier for the vast majority of people traveling in the central business district.

SB: You've put a lot of work into improving bus service. Are you worried about cuts to the bus system since it is more flexible and has a higher operating cost per passenger?

GR: I'm not especially worried about cuts to buses. Bus service has grown 50% since free transfers between bus and subway. There are 2.5 million bus riders, about half of subway ridership. It's hard to cut a growing service. The new president of the Transit Authority, Howard Roberts, used to head the bus division, and the head of the whole MTA, Lee Sander, was head of the Bronx and Manhattan buses. There is real interest in the top managers there in improving bus service. I'm hopeful there will be dramatic improvements.

SB: Does big business have a big role to play in the upcoming fiscal crises?

GR: I give good marks to the business community. When the transit system was at death's door, they were there. There is a reason we spent $53 billion in 25 years. There is a long history of business support for transit. I've worked closely with the Partnership for New York City over the years. They have been willing to sustain major taxes, because they know they need to be part of the solution.

SB: So what can be done to solve the fiscal crisis?

GR: There is a limited repertoire of things they can do. In 2005, MTA chair Peter Kalikow recommended across-the-board increases in the taxes that support the MTA to the Republican tax-cutting governor who was his boss. It's logical that the current crew at the MTA would do the same.

SB: You actually sound pretty optimistic that this can be worked out.

GR: There is every reason to despair. But I've been in this exact situation several times before, and by some miracle -- not always the prettiest miracle -- like borrowing all of this money, we came through. I've come to believe that people really care. Transit is what makes the city move. The net result is that the political system just can't ignore the subways. We've had five or six capital programs since 1982 and things have gotten better. It would be a total bummer if it was still completely graffiti-covered and those 35 watt dim light bulbs were still down there. But crime is down 75%, the fleet is all new or rehabilitated, and 40% of stations fixed. I'm not supposed to say that the MTA is doing well [laughs] but if you were around in the 50s, 60s and 70s, you would have seen a continual downhill slide. So there's reason for hope.

"I don't see why people have to pay market rents to live in a neighborhood but the cars should live rent-free. In New York you have expensive housing for people and free parking for cars. You've got your priorities exactly the wrong way around."

Renowned as one of the world's top authorities on parking policy, UCLA Urban Planning Professor Dr. Donald Shoup is the author of The High Cost of Free Parking, a publication so popular among scholars and devotees that he attracts groupies known as Shoup-istas at book signings.

According to Shoup, free parking is the root problem of many of the ills that face our biggest cities. He posits that reforming parking policy will lead to a better pedestrian environment, cleaner streets and air, safer downtown shopping districts, and -- yes -- even fewer headaches for drivers trying to find that ever elusive curb space.

In March 2007, Shoup paid a visit to NYC to enlighten city leaders with his research. Here's part of a taped chat with the Open Planning Project's Mark Gorton.

Streetsblog: The City just released a major bicycle safety study and announced a plan for "unprecedented" bike infrastructure improvements. What does today's announcement mean for cyclists?

Ryan Russo: In the past, we were doing about twenty-five miles of bicycle facilities a year. Right now we are on pace to build forty miles in the current fiscal year (Editor: New York City's fiscal year starts July 1). Next year we're going to pick up the pace and build seventy miles. In 2009 we're going to build ninety miles. So, we are, essentially, quadrupling the output of our bike facilities. That is unprecedented and will create a dramatic change in the city's bicycle network.

SB: Do you see bike lanes as a critical safety feature on New York City streets? Do they really help make cyclists safer?

RR: I think bike lanes are very helpful. I'm a cyclist myself. I bike to work. I bike for my errands, I don't own a car and am very bike dependent. In fact, sometimes I bike too often. I don't want to take the subway and I'll get stuck in the rain a lot. Bike lanes help with safety in a lot of subtle ways and not-so-subtle ways. For motorists they help create the expectation that they are going to find cyclists on the roadway. And they help to make the movements on the roadway more predictable in terms of where the cyclist is expected to be and where the motorist is expected to be. Bike lanes are also useful for laying out the core network. They help aggregate cyclists onto particular routes so that they all end up on the same street rather than dispersing throughout the network. This helps motorists on those corridors get used to the cyclists. There is a lot more to bike lanes but the bottom line is, yes, I think they are very useful.

SB: So, now I've got to ask: What kind of bike do you ride?

RR: Laughing. I ride a model of a Giant bicycle. It's called the Bowery. It's a messenger-style bike although I replaced the drop bar with a straight bar because I prefer a more upright position on my bicycle even though it's less hip.

SB: Does your bike commuting inform your job? Are you riding around the city looking at design issues and thinking, "I'm going to take care of that when I get back to the office?"

Ryan's bike.

RR: Absolutely. My design perspective and my idea of what makes sense on the streets are informed by my experiences on the road and my interactions with motor vehicles. My learning as a designer evolves and is an iterative process and I'm always looking for opportunities to make improvements.

SB: What is your advice to advocates and community organizations who are working to make New York City's streets better for cyclists, pedestrians and mass transit users? What would be the most productive way for the Livable Streets Movement to work with DOT?

RR: That's a really interesting question. The reality on the ground right now is that cyclists are a minority street user. On most corridors cyclists don't outnumber pedestrians or vehicles. When we install bike lanes we give cyclists a disproportionate percentage or roadway space relative to their numbers. Some communities have had a problem with that given all of the competition there is for different uses of our valuable street space. So, I think that the Livable Streets Movement can help educate people who might see bike lanes as a less-than-worthwhile use of street space.

SB: Other advice?

RR: I'd like to see a more cooperative relationship. I think there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of common ground in many of the things that we all want to accomplish. So, let's find that common ground and make things happen.

SB: Towards that end, what are your goals in your new job? What are you trying to accomplish?

RR: I'd like to improve the interconnectedness of the bike network and make sure the network works at key connections like we did on Tillary Street and we'll be doing on Sands Street in Brooklyn. I'd like to make sure we have good connections to popular bicycling facilities like the Hudson River Greenway, Prospect Park, and Central Park. And obviously, safety is something we'd like to see improve.

Before and After: Tillary Street in front of the federal court, Downtown Brooklyn.

Before and After: The plan for Sands Street beneath the Manhattan Bridge.

SB: In a recent letter to the Times you noted that the City's plans for bike lanes are sometimes voted down by community boards. Why does DOT even allow community boards to vote on whether to improve important safety measures? Why not treat bike lanes as a kind of non-negotiable design element, like crosswalks?

RR: Well, how do you think we're going to get 200 miles built in three years!?... Look, what I said in the letter is that we have to work harder to get community board support for these projects which is why I suggested that Livable Streets advocates give us a little hand. At the end of the day the street is ultimately DOT's purview. But we're not going to stop working with communities. We're keeping them in the loop and advising them of our plans and listening to their feedback and we're going to take it into account. But we're also going to try to meet our targets and make these improvements to bike facilities. If you want to see how difficult this can be do a background search on the local newspaper articles that were written when we installed bike lanes on the Shore Front Parkway (pictured below) and Commonwealth Boulevard in Queens .

SB: Those weren't popular with the community?

RR: That's an understatement.

SB: But you went in and put them in anyway?

RR: Yeah. In August.

SB: What kind of complaints do you hear in communities like those when you come in with a bike lane?

RR: If I had to boil it down into three categories of complaints, first there's the worry that bike lanes might somehow slow down traffic. Second, there are concerns about the impact of double parking during street cleaning operations and the higher fine for a parking ticket in a bike lane. Finally, there are negative perceptions of cyclists themselves.

SB: I know we've got to wind up here, so the big question is, do you read Streetsblog? And do you love it?

RR: Laughing. You know, I think there are a lot of people here who read it but I've got a new job and I'm very busy with a big commitment to pedestrians and schools and I'm just not finding the time.

What are the committee and board demanding in the wake of Derek Lake’s death?
The Board is going to be requesting, for starters, a full contingent of Traffic Enforcement Agents during construction on Houston. According to the contract it is six agents, I think near and about the area of construction. And those six agents have been placed there for the first time as of July 5. It is an interagency issue between NYPD and the Department of Design and Construction. We’re going to urge that NYPD help monitor the safety of the project whenever possible. Obviously the police force is stretched pretty thin. This is something Councilmember Gerson has been advocating from the inception of the project.

Was it an emotional meeting?
It’s interesting. There’s a sense among people who live around Houston Street that DDC has been doing a relatively good job — granted, they’re not responsible for the design — but community outreach has been pretty consistent. They publish a newsletter, for God’s sake. We think the safety lapse was extremely unfortunate, but we have reason to be positive.

Did Lake die because of a misplaced metal plate?
There’s an investigation going on. The community relations rep, Sybil Dobson, said that if members of the community see imminent danger, such as a metal plate having been moved to expose a hole, they should call 911.

How do you move forward and deal with the design?
We’re interested to know how many summons have been issued in connection with the project and we’re going to work with Councilmember Gerson’s office on that. On the final design, it’s for many of us an old issue. It’s ironic that Houston Street is in the City’s Bicycle Masterplan and we hope to convene a meeting with DOT and some of our elected officials to see if a bike lane can get into the plan.

To what degree is DDC absorbing body blows for DOT?
They implement the design, so in any on-the-job issues, they are the responsible agency. We’re in a Catch-22 position because the community weighed in negatively on the reconstruction plan. DOT views that as a closed issue, but that doesn’t mean that the community can’t seek improvements to the final design and we think the top priority should be a bicycle plan.

Hugh Hardy's Greenwich Street South Study

"The greatest achievement of New York is the streets," says architect Hugh Hardy. And he says we can achieve richer public places -- if New York's citizens can persuade officials to make those places serve people rather than cars.

Hardy, who designed 42nd Street's New Victory Theater and the Atlantic Terminal in downtown Brooklyn, has made a career of designing urbane buildings near generic schlock. As you might expect, he loves the contradiction that defines New York's streets.

The Village Alliance, a business improvement district promoting pedestrian safety and retail mix between Astor Place and the 6th Avenue subway hub, invited Hardy to speak last month on changing forms of public space. Hardy reprised this talk for his staff and StreetsBlog on July 12. His premise: outdoor activity defines New Yorkers' lives and should expand beyond traditional sidewalks and plazas. "You can't live here and not walk around," he said. But you can walk around on new kinds of public space.

In the talk, Hardy noted that "the world is changing" how New York imagines citizens' capacity to share places: extended sidewalks and green patches under highways can be part of our urban vocabulary if the government will invest in them.

He saw heartening signs that many city officials share his view.

Even Queensboro Plaza, which became a car cluster, is due for new landscaping and increased bike use. This change, Hardy says, argues that "we're learning that you can succeed in making new places for people." Ditto for the profusion of sidewalk cafes from Washington Heights to Bay Ridge. Restaurateurs, planners and even transportation officials seem to be learning "to create public places that people can respond to," Hardy said.

But he warned that economic pressures can thwart this progress, especially on retail corridors. "How you can cultivate the diversity of street flow in new buildings is troublesome," he said. "The cost of construction is so enormous that a developer has to build something enormous. People who rent it have to be wealthy. That means they live in their hot tubs or they are a chain retailer." The profusion of national brands along Rockefeller Center and other shopping streets, he said, has made the "scale of the city bigger and more empty."

He warned against over programming public parks with too much entertainment and sought to contain the Las Vegas-style importation of mass culture that now defines 42nd Street. As an alternative, he said, space now allotted to cars should become lawn or sidewalk. Planners obsessed with making visual corridors tidy should preserve quirks like the Washington Square Park fountain. And places like 55 Water Street, which converted its roof to a rustic meadow with a shimmering sculpture, should dot every office-tower cluster. Where we now see hubs for shuttling goods and shuffling money, he stressed, we should encourage people to meet and move freely. 

Already, Hardy said, sidewalk cafes and community-based activism are pushing this change in Lower Manhattan and elsewhere. "It's happening all over town," Hardy said of the new push for public life. "It's such fun to see that on the weekend, [when the cars are gone], you can see a different attitude than you see during the business day."