Streetsblog New York City

For years, crosstown bus riders on 125th Street — more than 32,000 per day — have had to put up with a ride that’s slower than walking. After months of planning, fixes are in sight, but State Senator Bill Perkins is objecting to the city’s effort to bring faster bus service to Harlem.

During rush hour, buses on 125th Street crawl at barely more than a third of the already-slow 7.7 mph average pace of other New York City buses. Six out of every ten minutes a bus spends on 125th Street, it’s standing still. A major culprit: double-parking drivers. On the busiest blocks, double-parked cars block at least one traffic lane more than 40 percent of the day, according to a DOT study.

Last fall, after Upper Manhattan transit advocates demanded improvements, DOT began planning better bus service for riders along the corridor. The agency has surveyed merchants, held three Community Advisory Committee meetings, three public workshops, presented before three community boards, and according to DOT spokesperson Nicole Garcia, attended more than 30 private meetings as the plan moved forward.

But that isn’t enough for Perkins, who wrote a letter to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan asking her to delay the plan because of what he calls a lack of consensus [PDF]. “We believe that your proposal is being forced and implemented without our opinions, suggestions and comments taken seriously,” he wrote.

Perkins goes on to claim that the speed increases, ridership gains, sales receipts, and high customer satisfaction reported on other SBS lines aren’t indicative of success. “The feedback that we have received,” he wrote, “indicated dissatisfaction and even failure.”

Perkins, who was the lone committee vote against closing a loophole in the state’s careless driving law last month, doesn’t say what types of bus improvements he and his constituents would like to see implemented. His only demands are that “the agency slow down” and present “alternative plans and proposals.”

In the meantime, outreach for the project continues. On Tuesday, DOT and MTA held a public workshop to gather feedback on the proposal [PDF].

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Four of the Democratic mayoral candidates appeared on MSNBC with Chris Hayes Sunday morning, and for a short while the subject turned to transit. About two minutes into this segment, Hayes prompted former City Council member Sal Albanese to discuss his proposal to band together with other mayors to lobby Washington for more transit funding. John Liu, Bill Thompson, and Bill de Blasio then took turns discussing their various ideas for getting the feds and/or Albany to direct more funding to the city’s transit system.

The funding issue, however, is mainly Governor Cuomo’s problem to solve, not the mayor’s. The one major transit issue that the next mayor can actually control — namely, prioritizing space for transit on NYC’s streets — didn’t come up on the show. Time was limited, of course, but it would have been great to see someone pivot to the issue of improving surface transit.

Select Bus Service has shown that something can be done to speed up New York’s notoriously pokey buses. The next mayor could do much more, by building better bus lanes and by bringing improvements to routes throughout the bus network on a faster timetable. The Nostrand Avenue SBS project, for instance, has been in the public planning phase for more than three years, and the first SBS improvements for Queens are still in development.

New Yorkers make more than 2 million bus trips every weekday. That’s a lot of voters who know what it’s like to ride a bus that gets bogged down in traffic, or to wait forever for a bus that’s been thrown off the posted schedule. So let’s hear the candidates talk about how they’ll make life better by delivering faster, more reliable bus service.

If you live close to a transit station, chances are you’ve weathered the recession better than your friends who don’t.

Your transportation costs are probably lower, since you can take transit instead of driving. Transit-served areas are usually more walkable and bikeable too, multiplying your options. And while home values plummeted during a recession that was triggered by a massive housing bubble, your home probably held its value relatively well – if you live near transit.

The National Association of Realtors and the American Public Transportation Association commissioned the Center for Neighborhood Technology to study the impact of transit access on home values during the recession. For the report, “The New Real Estate Mantra: Location Near Public Transportation” [PDF], CNT looked at five metro regions — Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix, and San Francisco.

While nearly everyone in hard-hit cities experienced some setback from tanking housing prices, transit-served areas were largely insulated from the worst of it, CNT found:

Across the study regions, the transit shed outperformed the region as a whole by 41.6 percent. In all of the regions the drop in average residential sales prices within the transit shed was smaller than in the region as a whole or the non-transit area. Boston station areas outperformed the region the most (129 percent), followed by Minneapolis-St. Paul (48 percent), San Francisco and Phoenix (37 percent), and Chicago (30 percent).

This is consistent with a study released last year by the Center for Housing Policy showing that access to rail transit created a “transit premium” for nearby home values of between six and 50 percent. That study, like CNT’s, looked at Minneapolis and Chicago, as well as Portland. The Center for Transit Oriented Development has also looked at this phenomenon and found transit premiums as high as 150 percent.

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There’s a new global benchmark for rating bus rapid transit projects. Yesterday the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy released the BRT Standard 2013, which lays out the requirements for bus routes to qualify as BRT and scores 50 systems in 35 cities around the world as basic, bronze, silver, or gold based on various criteria. The idea, which ITDP has been refining since a beta release in 2011, is to provide a concrete definition of what BRT is, and a reference for politicians, planners, and advocates who are interested in creating new BRT routes, as well as to rate the quality of existing systems.

The standard rates more than 30 aspects of bus corridor design, awarding points for elements that improve system performance. Dedicated bus lanes, level boarding, pre-paid boarding and signal prioritization are considered basic requirements for BRT. Additional elements that score points include multiple bus routes running on the same corridor; passing lanes at stations; low-emission buses; attractive, weather-protected stations; real-time arrival info signs; integration with bike sharing and more.

Streetsblog recently caught up with ITDP CEO Walter Hook via telephone to get more info on the new guide.

John Greenfield: Congratulations on releasing the BRT Standard. So this is kind of like the LEED [green building rating system] for bus rapid transit, correct?

Walter Hook: Yeah, that’s basically the idea, with the additional caveat that the BRT Standard is also positing a minimum definition for what constitutes BRT at all, which is not really an element in LEED. I mean, LEED doesn’t say, “You’re not a green building if you don’t hit any of these things.” The BRT Standard now has a minimum definition. That’s new from last time.

When the U.S. promoted BRT they didn’t promote it with a very clear definition. So a lot of mediocre bus improvements were implemented that tarnished the brand.

JG: What is your minimum standard for something to be called BRT?

WH: It’s a fairly complicated formula but essentially it has to have a dedicated lane of at least four kilometers. If it’s on a two-way road, it has to run along the central median. If it’s a curb-running bus lane on a two-way street it’s pretty much ineligible. So there are a couple of baseline things, but there are a lot of details and nuances.

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Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley are zeroing in on what irks transit riders so much they stop riding.

The research team — Andre Carrel, Anne Halvorsen and Joan L. Walker — surveyed people in the San Francisco Bay Area to find out what frustrated them the most about riding transit. While the general results of their study are what you’d expect — delays, crowding, and unreliability were top complaints — there are some interesting nuances when you drill down into the specifics.

Above all, they found, transit riders really don’t like to wait in the middle of a trip. These were far and away the top sources of rider dissatisfaction:

1. Delayed on board due to transit vehicles backed up or problems on the transit route downstream.

2. Experienced long wait at a transfer stop.

Carrel told the Canadian Broadcasting Company why the location of the delay makes a big difference to passengers. “Waiting at the origin stop where you first get on, having a delay there is not as important as having a delay at the transfer stop,” he said. “You might be able to wait at home until the bus is close if you have the information and you might also have alternatives. If the bus doesn’t show up, you could take your car to your bike.”

“But if you get stuck at a transfer stop, you get off one bus and the other bus just doesn’t show up, you’re pretty screwed over,” Carrel added. “We found that that was actually much worse.”

Worse than that though, is when people are stuck inside a crowded bus or train. “That is by far the most important event in making people stop using transit,” Carrel said. The researchers added that transit passengers were much more likely to forgive delays caused by weather and other external factors than those attributable to the transit agency.

Carrel, Halvorsen, and Walker said there are some clear lessons for transit providers here.

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As driving continues to stagnate in America, transit ridership keeps rising. Last year saw the second highest annual ridership since 1957, despite the fact that the nation’s busiest transit systems had several days of blackout due to Superstorm Sandy.

The numbers still haven’t topped 2008, when gas prices spiked above four dollars a gallon for the first time. But last year, riders made 10.5 billion trips on U.S. transit systems — 154 million more than 2011, according to a new report from the American Public Transportation Association. APTA said it was the seventh year in a row that more than 10 billion trips were taken on transit systems nationwide.

“Every mode of public transportation showed an increase in ridership,” said APTA President and CEO Michael Melaniphy. “Public transit ridership grew in all areas of the country – north, south, east, and west — in small, medium and large communities, with at least 16 public transit systems reporting record ridership.”

Overall, the 1.5 percent increase in transit ridership over 2011 outpaced the 0.3 increase in vehicle miles traveled.

Light rail (including streetcars and trolleys) and paratransit both saw ridership jump 4.5 percent. Heavy rail and commuter rail saw more modest increases of 1.4 percent and 0.5 percent respectively. Large bus systems reported an increase of 1 percent. Check out APTA’s full 2012 ridership report here [PDF].

The impact from Sandy — and the blizzard that hit the same area the following week — was significant, costing transit systems an estimated 74 million trips. That probably wouldn’t have been enough to push 2012 over 2008. But the fact that 2012 was in the running despite such a major setback is impressive.

Melaniphy credits high and volatile gas prices with the ridership jump, as well as the economic recovery. But he notes that there is a deeper shift going on — a “sea change,” he said, in how people look at transportation. “Americans want travel choices,” he said, and they also want to live and work in places where transit is a sensible and viable option.

Friday’s transit forum hosted by Transit Workers Union Local 100 and a coalition of rider advocacy groups offered an opportunity for a more more detailed discussion of transit policy than this year’s mayoral race has seen so far. While the candidates offered few specifics about how they would improve transit for the millions of New Yorkers who depend on trains and buses, clear differences emerged, especially on the question of how to increase funding for the debt-ridden MTA.

Five Democrats — former City Council City member Sal Albanese, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Comptroller John Liu, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and former comptroller Bill Thompson — were on hand, as were former Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrión, running on the Independence Party line, and Manhattan Media publisher Tom Allon, running as a Republican. Conspicuously absent was Republican Joe Lhota, whose resume includes a recent one-year stint as MTA chair.

The transit issue that the mayor can control most directly is the allocation of street space. How much real estate should be dedicated exclusively to transit, so riders don’t get bogged down in traffic? More than anyone else, the mayor has the power to decide.

Albanese had the most specific proposal, calling for 20 new Select Bus Service routes by 2018. De Blasio said he wants more Bus Rapid Transit outside of Manhattan, citing a JFK-to-Flushing route as an example. When Streetsblog asked after the forum if the Bloomberg administration has been implementing the SBS program quickly enough, de Blasio said he didn’t know enough to say if implementation was going slowly, but that the implicit answer is “yes” because his vision calls more more BRT in the outer boroughs.

Carrión, who called for a new goal of providing 30-minute commutes from the city limits to the CBD, cited the Select Bus Service route on Fordham Road as a successful transit enhancement, noting that it has won over merchants who were initially skeptical. Quinn and Thompson, meanwhile, spoke about improving bus service, but not specifically about SBS or BRT. And Liu said that Bus Rapid Transit should be part of the city’s transit mix, but didn’t get more specific than that.

On the issue of funding the MTA, the mayor has far less direct control than the governor and the state legislature but still commands a powerful bully pulpit that can set the agenda.

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Just hours before her final State of the City address today, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn released a report on the challenges facing middle-class New Yorkers. But her vision has a conspicuous blind spot: the transportation costs consuming more than one in ten dollars of the average NYC household budget.

Quinn’s report talks a lot about housing policy, but if she is serious about making New York an affordable place, she can’t ignore the other half of the equation by failing to mention transit and the city’s role in ensuring that it remains affordable.

The average NYC household spends 12 percent of its income on transportation, according to the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Housing and Transportation Affordability Index. That’s 5.5 percentage points lower than the regional average, due in large part to the city’s robust transit network.

But transit fares have gone up in four of the last five years, and the added costs hit New Yorkers who have no other options the hardest. And City Hall is still a powerful bully pulpit from which to tackle New York’s transit funding problems, even if the mayor doesn’t have direct control of the MTA.

Additionally, the mayoral candidates could land a one-two punch against household budget busters by linking housing and transportation policy. The Department of City Planning’s move to eliminate parking requirements for affordable housing developments, for instance, will help drive down the cost of some new housing. There’s an opportunity for the next mayor to extend these cost-saving measures to all apartments and houses.

Even if Quinn doesn’t have the stomach to talk parking policy in an election year, attention to bread-and-butter transit issues – like getting the buses to run on time — could go a long way with voters who put up with long commutes. So far, though, Quinn has stayed true to form and ignored the transportation concerns of transit-riding New Yorkers yet again.

London Mayor Boris Johnson, whose entertaining quotes about Mike Bloomberg have been ricocheting around New York’s political circles today, could teach a thing or two to the candidates running for mayor here in NYC. Yesterday, “Boris from Islington” called in to a radio talk show with a recorded question for Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg about Parliament’s profligate spending on cars for political leaders. It’s a question New Yorkers can appreciate.

“Get all those government ministers out of their posh limos and on to public transport like everybody else,” Johnson said. “How can we possibly expect government to vote for increases in infrastructure spending, which we need in this city in upgrading the Tube, which we all need, when they sit in their chauffer-driven limousines payed for by the taxpayers?”

Imagine, for a second, if any of New York’s crop of mayoral contenders stood up for transit riders like this. Instead, the NYC hopefuls are driving around the city, trying to convince New Yorkers, most of whom depend on transit to get around, that they feel their pain.

Although residents outside Manhattan struggle with long commutes on pokey buses, the candidates vying for votes in Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island have yet to mention Bus Rapid Transit on the campaign trail. At the same time, streets where you can walk or bike without fear of getting run over by a speeding driver have apparently become something to campaign against.

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Civic pride, attachment to community — what does that have to do with how you get around? According to a recent study commissioned by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, possibly quite a bit.

A survey of more than 800 residents from the 10-county Atlanta area found those who use MARTA reported a stronger connection to their community. A total of 51 percent of MARTA riders reported they felt a strong connection to the Atlanta region, compared with just 23 percent of those who do not use the transit service. In addition, 72 percent of MARTA riders said they had a strong connection to their neighborhood, compared to 65 percent of drivers.

It’s easy to imagine how daily strolls to the transit station and riding around the city in the shared space of a train car could inspire feelings of community — even in a town like Atlanta, which isn’t known as a transit haven.

Many of the newspaper’s interviewees testified to that effect:

Some MARTA riders say riding the buses and trains exposes them to more people and places, as opposed to the isolated transport of riding in a car.

“I meet people from everywhere — Ethiopia, Jamaica, Canada, Michigan,” said Angel Lemond, 23, who commutes from Riverdale to classes at Georgia Perimeter College. “I talk probably every day with somebody just to pass the time on the train.”

But the paper said there was still a question of cause and effect. Does MARTA make people more civic-minded or do more civic-oriented people gravitate toward MARTA?

Either way, the AJC said strengthening the “social fabric” might be one more benefit transit provides to the region. Unfortunately, MARTA customers are now facing a third fare increase in just four years.