Streetsblog New York City

The last two years have been full of dismal news for transit riders in New York City. Revenue streams for transit have nosedived during the recession, with Albany plundering dedicated MTA taxes for good measure. The payroll tax state legislators passed last year hasn't lived up to expectations, making their failure to enact congestion pricing or bridge tolls even more burdensome for New Yorkers. Sweeping service cuts are going to take effect in less than two months, and discount MetroCards for more than half a million students are on the chopping block.

In the second part of our interview with transportation chair Jimmy Vacca, we discuss these issues and what the City Council can do about them. Read the first installment -- all about street safety -- here.

Ben Fried: In a couple of months the MTA Board is going to vote on student MetroCards. How can the City Council keep this program adequately funded?

Jimmy Vacca: Well, we are willing to help, and we’ve indicated we want to help, and we want to have a discussion with the MTA about how we can help. We also think, though, that Albany has a major responsibility in this, and we’ve lobbied hard in Albany to get the MetroCard issue put on the front burner. We still have hope in Albany, I think, but we do realize that the council may have to do something. It’s hard for us to discuss exact budget numbers in light of the fact that we don’t know what we’re talking about from Albany. But I’m committed to saving the student MetroCards, very, very committed to it, and we’ve been doing everything we can.

I think with the economy we’re in, that this may be a year-to-year situation until things improve. The MTA has stated that in September 2010, the student MetroCards will go to half-fare, and then the year after there will be none at all. So I want to avoid the half-fare of course, but then the year after we have an even greater obligation.

BF: What sort of signal are you looking for from Albany? What would let you know that they’re serious and that you could come to the table with them?

JV: I’m looking to see that they adopt a budget and that both houses agree on something. We hope that they can reconcile their differences, give us a reasonable number, and then I know that my colleagues in the council are willing to do something. We realize we have an obligation too.

You have to understand one thing that happened here in Albany is that we had about $149 million in what was called a ‘lock-box’ for mass transit. People paid more taxes, license registration fees, a mortgage recording tax. They paid these taxes thinking that this money went to a lock-box for the MTA, and then in December when the state had a financial crunch and they did all these one shots, to have that money taken out and put into the general fund only worsened the crisis the MTA was in. It’s also a question of faith. They’re not transparent. It only came out when we started to find that the money wasn’t there.

BF: You voted for congestion pricing two years ago. Do you see road pricing, either congestion pricing or bridge tolls, playing a role in putting the MTA on more solid financial footing?

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This January, Bronx City Council Member Jimmy Vacca took over the transportation committee from outgoing chair John Liu.

Vacca represents an eastern Bronx district where car ownership is higher than the New York City average, and he's come in for some criticism here on Streetsblog for supporting the five-minute grace period for parking violations. But he also has a long history of advocating for safer streets and slower cars, going back to his days as a district manager for Bronx Community Board 10. He will tell you that his number one transportation concern is safety.

In addition to serving as a gatekeeper for legislation, the transportation committee chair can exercise oversight of city agencies and use his bully pulpit to encourage or obstruct street re-designs. Since taking over the committee, Vacca has appeared with Speaker Christine Quinn several times to take positions on issues like transit cuts and making streets safe for seniors. We recently wrote about his performance during a public safety committee hearing, where he chided NYPD for not releasing crash information to the public.

Last week, Vacca and his spokesman, Bret Collazzi, sat down with Streetsblog for a conversation about how the City Council can support safer streets and better transit. We also talked a little bit about parking.

Here's the first part of our interview, with more to come tomorrow.

Ben Fried: When you were a district manager for a community board, you were a big booster of Safe Routes to School, and last week you were out with AARP lobbying for complete streets legislation...

Jimmy Vacca: Yes, twice.

BF: What can the City Council do to support street safety programs like Safe Routes to School, Safe Routes for Seniors, and the growth of the bicycle network?

"Cycling has become a growing thing in New York City, and where individual communities want that kind of support, I want to give that kind of support."

JV: Well, I want to work with the Department of Transportation. I oftentimes think that they respond to citizen requests for traffic calming measures, while I would like DOT to be proactive more and identify where neighborhoods would benefit from street calming measures. If I want a speed bump in my district, I go to DOT and tell them I have a complaint from Mrs. Smith: her block has speeding, can you put a speed bump here? Maybe what DOT should be doing, and we have to see if we have the capacity to do it, is do a network survey of neighborhoods, not just blocks, where we know we’ve had safety issues and see if signage, build outs, painting, speed bumps, whatever, could help.

I had Commissioner Sadik-Khan come to my district two weeks ago. We’re looking at two specific stretches, both near schools. And we came up with a plan where we’re going to be doing painted center medians so that cars have a narrower girth, so to speak, and hopefully that will slow them down. We’re going to see if that is going to work, and if not, I have to come back to the table with more stuff. So I’m very much committed to the pedestrian safety issues. It rings true in my neighborhood, and throughout the city. I think that we’re going down the right path.

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Last December, John Samuelsen was elected president of TWU Local 100, the union that represents 38,000 subway and bus workers in the New York City region. He assumed the leadership from former president Roger Toussaint at a troubled time for the transit system. With transit tax revenues in free fall and state lawmakers raiding MTA coffers to plug holes in the general budget, transit riders and transit jobs were under threat.

The package of cost-cutting measures approved by the MTA Board last month -- including the elimination of two subway lines and dozens of bus routes, reduced service across the city, and laying off 500 station agents -- didn't signal the end of the crisis. The MTA is still facing a budget gap in the hundreds of millions of dollars that's poised to grow even larger.

Streetsblog readers often ask about the role New York's biggest transit union is playing in tough legislative fights over issues like road pricing and bus lane enforcement. Under Toussaint, the TWU was quiet in the campaigns to win transit funding in Albany by enacting congestion pricing or bridge tolls. Recently, Samuelsen has perhaps been most visible on the national scene, joining social justice and environmental advocates to push for increased federal funding for transit service.

Last week we got on the phone with Samuelsen to talk about what his union is up to at City Hall, Albany, and Capitol Hill, why you seldom see Local 100 teaming up with MTA management to lobby lawmakers, and what his membership thinks of congestion pricing and bridge tolls. Here's an edited transcript of our conversation.

Ben Fried: The big transit story of the year is the service cuts that are on the table and which the MTA Board has voted to enact. Lets start by outlining how the TWU is responding to the cuts.

John Samuelsen: There are significant lobbying efforts going on in Albany with some bills in the mix that have the potential of stopping the whole thing. First of all let me backtrack. [MTA Chair Jay] Walder and the MTA were given a billion dollars in federal stimulus money in 2009. Out of that billion dollars they could have used roughly $100 million to pay down the service cuts and to use for the operating budget.

So Walder, who had that money in the bank, and probably still has that money in the bank, refused to use that $100 million, and instead enacted $93 million in cuts across the board, Long Island Railroad, Metro North, and New York City Transit, and MTA bus. So that’s the first thing I wanted to say, because that sets the tone for a lot of our reaction.

"There’s a recognition by the union that we don’t want to hurt middle or working class people that have to drive their cars into Manhattan, or small business owners. But there’s also a recognition on our part that that’s an excellent funding mechanism for mass transit, and that it’s green, it’s good for the economy."

And one thing we’ve done is we’re working on a bill in Albany that’s being carried by Joan Millman in the Assembly, and by Bill Perkins in the Senate, that will force the MTA to use 30 million of that available 100 million. It’s essentially the state legislature directing Jay Walder to use available funds that he has in order to stop the service cuts. That’s the first item in Albany.

The second item in Albany is the bill that’s being carried by Keith Wright in the Assembly that would put a two year moratorium on any kind of service cut that the MTA proposes that could have a potential negative impact on rider safety in the subway. And it’s being carried by Dilan in the Senate. Those are two items that we’re working on heavily now in Albany.

In addition, working with the transportation committees on both sides, and the authorities committees to come up with enough budgetary cash in order to give the MTA the savings equivalent that they would make from laying off the 500 or so station agents. Also bearing in mind that a lot of the statutory funding that is earmarked for the MTA was confiscated by the state and put into the general budget.

BF: Has the TWU conveyed concerns to the legislature about the way they confiscated those funds? Could you share your thoughts on how to ensure that transit taxes actually go towards transit?

JS: We certainly have conveyed to the legislature, the Senate transportation committee, as well as folks on the Assembly side, are working on getting that money back for the MTA, right now as we speak. And the union has explored and is still exploring the potential for acting against the New York State government for taking money that’s ours that we’d earmarked towards mass transit, and using it elsewhere.

BF: What form would that legal action take?

JS: We’re exploring the possibility of a lawsuit against the state for redirecting funds that are earmarked to the MTA, and putting them to use elsewhere.

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Last week Streetsblog spoke to walkability expert Dan Burden about how new design guidelines for urban streets can replace the suburban, car-oriented standards that have become the norm throughout America (read the interview here).

Burden has been advocating for walkable neighborhoods for more than 30 years, including 16 as the bike and pedestrian director for Florida's Department of Transportation. He's traveled to over 2,700 communities across the United States and Canada to help them figure out how to build safer, more sustainable transportation systems. So while we had him on the phone, we wanted to pick his brain a little more.

In the second part of our interview, we discussed why transportation reformers shouldn't recoil from public process, as long as that process is well-designed. Burden has faced more than his share of what he calls "the screaming meanies" over the years, and here he talks about some of his experience building a base of support for livable streets that can withstand the inevitable opposition.

Noah Kazis: A lot of your work focuses less on generating the content of planning, but on getting people to collaborate. What is the role of public process in designing walkable communities?

Dan Burden: In about 1978, after I’d been out trying to promote bicycling, I realized that there is a huge pressure just to keep doing the same thing that others did. When we got to a public meeting, we couldn’t get enough people to show up. I realized that everything that we want to do to change America had to revolve around good quality public process. The product, the technical side of things we did, was the easy side; it was the public process side that’s the real tough ingredient. 

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To get an idea of what police think about pedestrians, cyclists, drivers, and maintaining peace on the streets, who better to ask than a cop?

Peter Moskos is a former Baltimore police officer and an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is the author of "Cop In The Hood" -- the book and the blog. In this Streetsblog Q&A, Moskos discusses why cops hate traffic enforcement, why someone else should do it, and how jaywalking is good for New York.

Brad Aaron: In an interview with Transportation Alternatives' Reclaim Magazine last year, you pointed to the thankless nature of traffic duty as one cause of lax enforcement. Can you talk a little more about that?

Peter Moskos: Police work can basically be divided into two categories: work that assists the public and work that obstructs the public. Like all public servants, police are loved when they do the former and hated when they do the latter.

But police work, more so than other jobs, needs the support and cooperation of the public to be effective. People love police when they catch criminals and maintain order. People hate police when they tell you what you can't do and write tickets. Crimes get solved when people talk. And people won't talk to police if they hate the police. So from a police perspective it makes sense to define police work in a way that maximizes the good and minimizes the bad.

"Police don't like always being the bad guy. But that's what traffic enforcement is. Nobody thanks you for an accident that didn't happen."

Police already do enough thankless work. And while it makes sense that criminals don't like police, there's no good reason for the general public to have unpleasant interactions with the police. Police don't like always being the bad guy. But that's what traffic enforcement is. It's shit work and people hate you even when you do a good job. Nobody thanks you for an accident that didn't happen.

It's interesting that when cars first appeared on our roads, there was debate about whether traffic was a police matter at all. Leading police figures of the early 20th century, such as August Vollmer, called the "father of American policing," argued against it. But Vollmer lost this battle.

You don't really have to be a police officer to write a ticket. It's better for the police to contract the hate out to others. While somebody needs to enforce traffic regulations and write tickets, it doesn't have to be the police. In the 19th century, police stations used to be homeless shelters. Then we decided that wasn't a job for police officers. We could expand the authority of traffic enforcement agents ("meter maids" for the politically incorrect) to cover traffic stops. This would free up police to focus on something other than cars.

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One of the foundational documents in our country's history of car-centric street design is what's known as the Green Book. These engineering guidelines, which have been published in various editions by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) since the 1930s, are only "green" if you're looking at the cover.

"We should take control of our streets. If 85 percent of our motorists are driving faster than we want them to, then we need to redesign the street."

Inside, the Green Book codifies an anti-urban design approach that transportation engineers have followed to disastrous effect in American cities and towns, creating wide streets where cars rule, speeding is the norm, and the greenest modes of travel have no place. While its recommendations are only advisory, the Green Book is often treated as gospel, implanting ideas like the "85th percentile" standard, which dictates that streets should be designed to "forgive" the 15th-fastest driver out of every hundred on the road. In the words of former Maryland transportation chief James Lighthizer, this is like building streets as though "everyone on the road is a drunk speeding along without a seatbelt."

Fortunately, these engineering standards are shifting. One important step is a new report co-authored by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). "Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach" aims to define a more humane engineering language for streets. The report is intended to supplement the Green Book by laying out a set of design standards that make sense in places where people can get around by foot or on a bicycle.

If, as U.S. DOT Secretary Ray LaHood recently pledged, walking and biking are going to have equal standing with motorized transport, more enlightened engineering guidelines will have to play a significant role. To better understand how the CNU/ITE report can influence state DOTs and the way they shape streets, we spoke to one of the experts who helped develop it, Dan Burden.

As the founder and executive director of Walkable Communities, Inc., Burden travels the country helping people plan and develop more sustainable neighborhoods. In 2001, Time Magazine named him one of the six most influential civic leaders of tomorrow. Burden spent 16 years as bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the Florida Department of Transportation, so he was able to share with us his experience as both an advocate and an administrator.

Here's the first part of our interview:

Noah Kazis: Let's start with that new ITE and CNU report that you participated in. What's its significance?

Dan Burden: A couple of big breakthroughs occurred with that publication. One where we struggled hard, but finally broke free, is setting a target speed for roads. Before, there was always the driving speed, which had to be higher than the posted speed to provide "forgiveness" to drivers. Of course, drivers totally figured that one out, and they'd drive faster than the posted speed. In these guidelines, they're supposed to design the road for the speed that we want to elicit from the driver.

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Continuing our series of interviews on the topic of traffic justice, today we hear from Joseph A. McCormack.

McCormack is chief of the Vehicular Crimes Bureau of Bronx District Attorney Robert T. Johnson's office. Designated by the Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee as New York State Traffic Resource Prosecutor, McCormack is responsible for statewide trainings of prosecutors and law enforcement personnel. A frequent national lecturer on vehicular homicide, he is chair of the New York State District Attorneys Association Vehicular Crimes Legislation Subcommittee.

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.

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As mayor of Milwaukee from 1988 to 2004, CNU President John Norquist made urbanism and livability top priorities. Some of his most notable achievements centered on the redevelopment of highway corridors with street grids and infill, culminating with the demolition of the Park East Freeway in 2002 -- one of the largest voluntary highway removal projects undertaken in America. Other projects, like the introduction of a light rail system, never reached fruition.

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.

John Norquist: Any time I had to fix a problem at one level of government, there was another one that would pop up. We had a Democratic governor, but then we had a county exec who was against light rail. The mayor wasn’t really for light rail. When I got elected mayor, I was for light rail but the county exec was still against it, that was Dave Schultz in 1988. And then we had Tommy Thompson as governor who wasn’t for it. He said he was open to it at the beginning when Schultz was against it. And then once Schultz left, then Thompson became more against it. The right wing talk shows went after it and so he followed their lead, you know the local Rush Limbaugh types. And then it just seemed like every step of the way, we get one group that had to be for it on the other side. The county runs the transit system, so it’s kind of hard to do it without them. If the city had run the transit system we would have been able to do it right away.

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.

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The news coming out of Washington last week jacked up expectations for national transportation policy to new heights. Cabinet members Ray LaHood and Shaun Donovan announced a partnership to connect transportation and housing policy, branded as the "Sustainable Communities Initiative." The second-in-command at DOT, Vice Admiral Thomas Barrett, told a New York audience that "building communities" is a top priority at his agency.

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.

John Norquist: Well, maybe "false" is the wrong word for me to have used, but it’s a dichotomy that’s very limited. If the debate is about transit versus roads -- and currently the battle lines are drawn at 20 percent funding for transit, 80 percent for roads -- it’s a really limited debate. It leaves out the whole discussion of what kind of roads to build. So if you have a city with boulevards and avenues and no freeways, it’s going to be a lot more valuable. You look at Vancouver, they have no freeways whatsoever, and they have a fabulously intense and valuable real estate and job market. And then you look at the places that have invested all the money in the giant road segments and they tend to be degraded. It's not roads versus transit -- it's good street networks-plus-transit versus mindless building of out-of-scale roads. I mean they're basically putting rural roads into urbanized areas and it’s counterproductive, it reduces the value of the economy, it destroys jobs, destroys real estate value. For what, so you can drive fast at two in the morning when you're drunk?

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?

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