Streetsblog New York City

Looks like the conference committee made quick work of the stimulus bill, with Harry Reid announcing that a deal has been reached much sooner than expected (perhaps a bit too prematurely). We'll have the specifics on transportation funding later tonight or early tomorrow. For now, relive the stimulus saga with StreetsWiki. Contributor DianaD has added some nice narrative chunks to the entry. Remember stemming the tide of Asphalt Age amendments in the Senate?

Senators DeMint and Inhofe were two of the more brazenly backwards policy makers during the stimulus debate.

There were a number of discouraging setbacks for green transportation during the crafting of the Senate bill. First, the Senate version allocates more than $3 billion less to transit compared to the House version. Transit's future was looking even worse when Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Senator James Inhofe+ (R-OK) proposed an amendment to direct another $50 billion to highway projects. But several Democratic senators refused to support the amendment unless a significant proportion of the funds was shifted to public transit and clean water infrastructure; the amendment never passed. Furthermore, Senator Barbara Mikulski+ (D-MD) offered up an amendment that would give a tax break to new-car buyers to bring more people into dealer showrooms. This amendment passed 71-26.

Those car buyer tax breaks, by the way, appear to have shrunk in conference committee.

This is an important story to tell -- one we'll want to refer back to when the big multi-year transportation bill starts taking shape later this year. If you've got something to add to the entry, type it up while it's fresh in your memory. To write for StreetsWiki, all you have to do is sign up with the Livable Streets Network.

Excellent StreetsWiki use by Streetsblog regular ddartley, who added the pic you see below to the entry on 20 mph zones. From author Andy Hamilton:

In July 2008, the British Medical Association called for the application of 20 mph zones throughout residential neighborhoods, not just in the vicinity of schools, where they are commonly applied. Stockport public health director Dr. Stephen Watkins stated that "a child hit at 20mph has a 5% chance of dying compared to 50% at 30mph." He noted the difference between a two mile journey at 20mph and a two mile journey at 40 mph was just three minutes. "We are killing our children for the sake of a couple of minutes," he said.

And since we're in stimulus mode, here's another excerpt:

The UK study of best traffic practices across the Europe and the U.K. concluded that 20 mph streets also increased pedestrian activity, bicycling, a sense of safety among residents, and economic activity.  The study cited evidence from the city of Horsham, U.K., where 20 mph speed limits, along with a bypass road, public arts, gardens, and other pedestrian amenities have lead to the opening of new shops and restaurants, and a higher level of overall economic activity.

Okay, I'm convinced. Let's get some shovels in the ground on those ped safety plans.

We know plenty of states want to use stimulus funds to expand highway capacity, but how many are looking to jolt their economies with a much-needed freeway teardown? So far as we can tell, the answer is none. Perhaps they should reconsider and take a page from this week's StreetsWiki entry on highway removal:

Streetfilms on Highway RemovalSan Francisco:  Removal of the Embarcadero Freeway

During the 1960's and 70's, federally-subsidized elevated highways were built through the middle of every major U.S. city. For better or worse, these roadways provided quick access to the surrounding countryside, facilitating suburban expansion. But in the words of the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU), these structures:

"cut huge swaths across our cities, decimating neighborhoods and reducing quality of life for city residents. This massive concrete infrastructure had devastating effects on urban economies. It blighted adjacent property and pushed access to basic amenities further out. With the Federal and State Departments of Transportation confronting shrinking budgets and cities looking for ways to increase their revenues, it is an ideal time to offer less expensive, urban alternatives to the reconstruction of urban expressways."

CNU President John Norquist, formerly the mayor of Milwaukee, made the case for highway removal-as-economic development after releasing a list of 10 "Freeways Without Futures" last September. Since then, the top target on the list, Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct, looks like it's headed for demolition, but not to make way for a less-expensive, traffic-mitigating alternative. A group of state and city officials agreed in principle earlier this month to replace the elevated highway with an underground highway. Number two on CNU's teardown list, the Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx, is considered a candidate for removal by the state DOT, but plans to preserve the "highway to nowhere" may still prevail.

This entry also features something new on StreetsWiki -- videos from Streetfilms. Tell us what you think of the execution.

Today we've got a work in progress started by Livable Streets member Adina Levin, who's tracking the status of transit funding in the stimulus bill. The entry's a little skeletal at the moment, but once it fills out, this should be one of the more significant additions to StreetsWiki. Keeping up with the twists and turns of this bill -- its different iterations and the people behind those changes -- could make this a valuable reference as the current legislation takes shape, and as debate ramps up over the big transportation reauthorization later this year.

Thanks to Adina for taking the initiative and kicking things off. If Streetsbloggers want to add a bit of narrative about how we got to this point -- a draft bill that shortchanges transit and imposes little oversight on highway spending -- any member of the Livable Streets Network can edit the entry, and joining is a cinch. There should be plenty to add soon enough. The House Transportation Committee meets at 10 tomorrow morning, and transit funding in the stimulus figures to be high on their agenda.

Robin Urban Smith's "Daylighting" Streetfilm is on the fast track to blockbuster status, with more than 2,500 views since Monday. She follows up with a StreetsWiki entry about this simple, effective safety measure:

Visibility and eye contact are essential to avoiding conflict at a crossing, but visual communication between different street users is greatly impaired when parked cars crowd an intersection (see diagrams above).

Daylighting clears away this visual obstacle and improves safety, especially for children, who have difficulty seeing and being seen at intersections. Daylighting also shortens the crossing distance at intersections, which reduces pedestrians' exposure to traffic. For seniors and other street users with longer crossing times, this is particularly important.

This strikes me as a good opportunity to put StreetsWiki's collaborative power to use. When Robin posted the film, we heard from readers about variations on daylighting -- in the UK and in Queens. It would be great to work that information into this entry and start building a portfolio showing how different cities have implemented the technique.

In related news, on top of Clarence's preferred term, "Pedestrian Peek-a-Boo," we now have a bunch of alternate names for daylighting, including: pedestrian 20/20, exposed crosswalk, curb-sighting, wide-angling, and ped surprise. Got a favorite yet?

StreetsWiki author Andy Hamilton files this entry on an idea from our very own Federal Highway Administration: the Pedestrian Safety Action Plan.

The concept includes a step by step methodology to identify and correct pedestrian safety hazards, as well as to plan a more walkable community from the ground up. FHWA developed a how-to guide, and contracted with pedestrian design experts to provide 2-day or 3-day trainings to state and local transportation departments around the country. This federal effort was initiated when it was recognized that most traffic engineers receive inadequate professional training to effectively address pedestrian safety concerns.

From 2005 to 2007, FHWA conducted 77 trainings in the 14 states that ranked highest in pedestrian crashes. In some states, the trainings resulted in almost immediate pedestrian safety improvement projects or evaluation efforts.

Implementing a Pedestrian Safety Action Plan is not usually a high priority for traffic engineering departments, and require consistent advocacy from neighborhood organizations or elected officials.

Here's something to chew on. These trainings began more than three years ago and have probably led to the creation of some actual safety plans, which can get off the ground quickly. Shouldn't a federal stimulus package fully fund all of these projects before giving highway-addled states like Texas a dime for anything else?

This week's StreetsWiki entry highlights an intriguing storyline that our colleagues at Streetsblog San Francisco will be covering in the months ahead. The Better Streets Plan aims to establish a citywide template for street improvements:

The Plan describes a set of policies for the City and County of San Francisco to follow to achieve a more livable streetscape environment. It creates a street typology system for making streetscape improvements, and describes appropriate standard and optional elements for each street type. For each element, there is a set of guidelines for appropriate location and design. Finally, the Plan will describe ways that the City can fund, maintain and enforce Better Streets improvements.

The folks at local advocacy org Livable City say the street types in the plan are a step up from the traditional, car-centric classification system, but caution that the current draft lacks critical components:

Important tasks, like identifying which streets are of what type, and creating standards for essential elements of successful streets (street lighting and pedestrian-friendly building fronts, for example) are missing so far. The Better Streets project also shied away from addressing the speed and volume of traffic, two critical elements for creating safe and livable streets. Governance (how city agencies plan and coordinate street projects) and a strategy for funding and implementation also need to be addressed.

Starting in January you can read about the evolution of Better Streets in the cyber pages of Streetsblog SF. In the meantime, members of the Livable Streets Network familiar with the plan should feel free to dive in and flesh out this wiki entry.

Streetsblogger rex commented earlier today that we may be headed for what he termed a "Grapes of Wrath kind of economy" -- one in which businesses prosper by paring down inventories to bare essentials while doing what they can to make themselves more accessible to the car-free masses.

Another key element to such an economy could be locally-grown food, available at farmers' markets -- the subject of this week's featured StreetsWiki article. In this entry, Streetsblog regular Susan Donovan writes:

By reducing the distance that food travels, fewer fossil fuels are used and fewer greenhouse gases are released. On average, an American meal travels 1,500 miles to reach the dinner table. Farmers' markets also avoid some of the costly packaging found in some stores. Many farmers' markets are accessible by foot or bicycle, providing another way to reduce your carbon footprint.

Ironically, as demonstrated in Upper Manhattan earlier this year, easy access can be a double-edged sword in neighborhoods where some consider parking more precious than fresh food. After all, Tom Joad didn't walk to California, now did he?

As a kid I used to periodically raid my grandparents' stash of National Geographics. Not for photos of women in scant native dress, but for the way cool maps, with which I would wallpaper my room.

Ironically, the maps did eventually give way to Paulina Porizkova posters, and the years have also seen them outmoded -- in function, if not aesthetically -- by amazing advances in cartography. (If you haven't seen it, this New Yorker piece from 2006 is an excellent primer.)

The latest and greatest innovations have brought about a renaissance in community mapping, the subject of this week's StreetsWiki entry.

Community Mapping is the creation of a map via a community-driven process, usually done to map non-traditional features, such as safe biking or walking routes, local trees and parks, and other aspects of community life. Community mapping has existed for hundreds of years, but recent advances in technology, such as GPS's and online mapping portals like Google Maps, have allowed the creation of better and more detailed maps, and have expanded their reach beyond small groups.

OpenStreetMap, for instance, functions like a Wikipedia for maps. Unlike proprietary services like Google Maps, OpenStreetMap operates under a Creative Commons license, and allows users to add and edit information collaboratively. Google Maps is of course also widely used for community mapping, Transportation Alternatives' CrashStat and the burgeoning Boston bike network being two examples.

Other projects employ more conventional means -- the still-viable, highly-mobile print product -- from Bay Area watershed mapping to New York's official cycling map (now available in PDF form).

If the United States is in fact on the verge of a transit renaissance, transit-oriented development will have to be part of the mix. In this week's StreetsWiki entry, slinkp writes:

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) grew popular in the 1980s and 1990s as a response to suburban sprawl and a means of regenerating economic growth in central cities. The development is likely to include housing and/or offices as well as retail stores. A TOD also usually has relatively easy access for people on foot and bikes, while cars and other vehicles are discouraged from parking too close to the station. As a result, TODs are often friendlier to pedestrians and bicyclists than other forms of land development, and they encourage people to ride trains and buses rather than drive. The concept was slow to take off in the United States, but has gained strength in the first decade of the 21st century as fuel costs rise and traffic causes many Americans to rethink where they want to live and work.

Despite evidence that "drive 'til you qualify" sprawl presents an unsustainable drain on financial and natural resources, planners have been reluctant to abandon it. Even in relatively transit-rich metro NYC, TOD has been slow to catch on beyond the realm of private-sector advocacy, though recent remarks indicate the concept is at least on the radar of state-level officials in Connecticut and New York.

Photo: RACTOD/Flickr