Streetsblog New York City

Chain stores. A lot of people hate them because they often muscle out local businesses that give a neighborhood character (the excellent film Twilight Becomes Night documents this painful loss in New York City).

But clearly a lot of people vote with their pocketbooks by spending money in chains. And the question of the effects of chains on a given neighborhood is complicated, especially when a recession is creating more vacant storefronts every day. Today, Streetsblog Network member Saint Louis Urban Workshop asks how -- and whether -- communities should limit chains:

Photo by ...-Wink-... via Flickr.

Should business districts limit the number of national chains that can open? Are local stores and restaurants at a disadvantage? Over the past several years a group named Our Town has successfully pushed for limits on new chain stores in San Francisco. As a result, today all chain store applications must be presented to the San Francisco Planning Commission and submitted for public review.

Now longtime Bloomington, Indiana, Mayor Mark Kruzan appears ready to limit chain stores from his idyllic southern Indiana college town...

Of course there's a flip side to this issue as well. Local retailers, boutiques and independent restaurants likely cannot serve all residents. It's wonderful to have $25 parmesan cheese available in the city, but what about those who want Provel? This is especially true with clothing. The recent rumor of an Old Navy opening in downtown St. Louis would be a welcome trend in this way.

The issue isn't simple. We enjoy our St. Louis Bread Company, but now it's a corporate behemoth. Once upon a time the California Pizza Kitchen was the model of a neighborhood start-up. Would you welcome a Peet's, but not a Starbucks? The Foot Locker and Blockbuster stores in the Delmar Loop just recently closed and their departure is being lamented by some who enjoyed their convenience and those who simply had become used to them.

So where do you stand on anti-chain store efforts?…Is it enough to limit signage or require a particular design? Is the issue aesthetic? And what about franchises owned by locals?

Good questions. Should municipalities try to regulate chains, or let the market have its way? It's a been a topic of debate since the 1920s. Your thoughts?

More from around the network: The Transport Politic asks how Los Angeles is going to manage its transit ambitions. Kaid Benfield on NRDC Switchboard looks at retrofitting suburban cul-de-sacs with trails for better connectivity. And Austin on Two Wheels notes the advent of the city's first sharrows.

After the roll call at tonight's full Community Board 8 meeting, the tally for a resolution supporting protected bike lanes on the East Side stood at 38 yeas, 1 nay. Lots of hard work went into this vote -- congrats to all who made it happen. More details tomorrow.

In its most recent installment, the City Room bike column cites the apparently burgeoning popularity of electric bicycles. According to the story, "e-bikes" are favored by delivery workers, the elderly, and at least one 38-year-old Manhattan screenwriter. Thing is, it's illegal to ride them in the city:

[F]or the moment, electric bicycles occupy a nebulous legal lane on the road. Not quite a scooter, not quite a bike, e-bikes are considered "motor-assisted bicycles" under New York State law and are banned from state roads and city streets.

Sellers and riders are hoping state law will be amended soon, but is that a good idea? At the recent Upper East Bike forum, Council Member Daniel Garodnick said he is authoring a bill to increase penalties for riding motorized bikes on sidewalks, which he believes is occurring more often.

Weighing the possible pros (increased mobility for those who can't ride regular bikes) and cons (potentially dangerous pedestrian conflicts), do motorized bikes capable of traveling 20 mph have a place in the city's transportation mix? If so, where do they belong?

Seven months after first trying to re-brand congressional climate change legislation as an "energy tax," Senate Republicans were back at it today with a new report and op-ed that attempts to expose the climate bill as a "$3.6 trillion gas tax."

Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Kit Bond (R-MO) gathered outside the Capitol today, flanked by aides wearing black stickers imprinted with the slogan "CAP & TRADE = GAS TAX," to promote a new report [PDF] that presents their "gas tax" assertions.

How did Hutchison and Bond get to their $3.6 trillion total, which their report calls "relatively simple and straightforward to calculate"? They simply multiplied their estimate of how much fuel the U.S. would consume between now and 2050 by their estimate of the per-gallon gas price increase that would result from an economy-wide emissions cap.

Hutchison and Bond got their numbers from the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), a business group that released projections on the cost of the House climate legislation at around the same time it joined the official astro-turf lobbying campaign against the bill. The NBCC's analysis, produced by consulting firm CRA International, is one of many competing cost estimates for the climate bill, each of them relying on different assumptions and models that claim to predict the future price of carbon under the pending legislation.

In fact, the NBCC analysis states (in Appendix C) that it has assumed higher CO2 allowance prices than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) analysis of the same House climate bill, thus resulting in higher estimates for the plan's impact on real-world carbon prices.

What does the EPA say about the House climate bill's likely effect on fuel prices? Its analysis found a 25-cent per-gallon increase by 2030, or less than three pennies per gallon per year -- small potatoes compared to the oil price swings of recent years, as the Pew Center on Global Climate Change pointed out.

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We've received a few reports in the past week about construction work on the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge. DOT's press office says six bike ramps are being installed, and we hear from observers on the ground that construction is largely complete as of this morning: The bridge approach at Delancey and Clinton Street has three new curb cuts, as does the raised median at Suffolk Street. Now cyclists can get on and off the bike path without having to dismount or hop the curb.

The volunteers at Adopt-a-Bike-Lane have been pushing for a safer ride to the Willy-B since last fall. Together with Allen Street's ongoing livable streets makeover, this new, smoother approach is bound to whet appetites for a protected connection to points west.

There are two opportunities tonight to get behind livable streets efforts in Manhattan.

Among the items on Community Board 8's October agenda is a resolution in support of protected bike lanes on the Upper East Side. As we heard from Transportation Alternatives yesterday, neighborhood involvement has propelled this once-unlikely measure to this point, and friendly voices will be needed to bring it home. The CB 8 meeting starts at 6:30 at the Ramaz School Auditorium, 125 E. 85th Street.

Tonight in Upper Manhattan, Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets will hold a regular meeting to discuss, along with other topics, the proposed Dyckman Street Greenway Connector. Thanks to the consistent work of its core members, this group is starting to get attention from local electeds. A good showing tonight can only help build momentum. Meeting details and other discussions can be found on the IWHLS Livable Streets Community page.

“In London, you carry nearly twice as many people in the bus system as you do on the Underground.” In New York, the opposite is true. “We must close the gap and make more of the bus system.”

-- Jay Walder, MTA chairman, as quoted in the New York Times

In the transit landscape inherited by Jay Walder, the MTA’s new chairman, buses are a rare potential bright spot amidst an otherwise dismal world of funding shortages, fare hikes, labor unrest, stalled mega-projects, and feckless politicians. Judging from recent remarks, Walder seems to recognize this and is poised to make better bus service a major focus.

While it may seem obvious that the chair of the MTA should devote considerable energy to buses, this is rarely the case. The head of the MTA is typically consumed by planning, funding, and managing mega-projects and the capital plan. Historically, the MTA has been heavily oriented toward subways and commuter rail. On the average weekday, the agency's subways carry 5.2 million trips and its buses 2.4 million.

But these are not normal times at the MTA. Walder has one year to make a big impression. After that he will almost certainly have a new boss as governor, who will have two options: fire Walder or rehire him. Bus improvements can be done relatively quickly and cheaply, and by reducing delays can actually save money while resulting in better service and higher ridership.

Buses are also attractive to Walder because the mayor and DOT are already aggressively pushing bus corridor improvements. DOT and the MTA have launched a successful Select Bus Service route on Fordham Road in the Bronx, with new routes planned and funded for First and Second Avenues in 2010. The mayor is a good friend to have. He controls streets, parking enforcement and seats on the MTA board.

But Select Bus Service only helps a handful of the MTA's 250 bus routes. Also needed are system-wide improvements. Walder has identified three of these as priorities.

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Next Tuesday's legal symposium on vehicular homicide, presented by Transportation Alternatives, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, will feature a prominent special guest: presumptive Manhattan DA-elect Cy Vance.

Vance will deliver opening remarks at the symposium, set to convene at 9 a.m. at the Cardozo School, 55 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan.

"I am pleased to be invited to next week's event," Vance said in a statement to Streetsblog. "This seminar will address very important public safety issues facing Manhattan and our entire city."

The presence of the candidate who in all likelihood will be Manhattan's next top prosecutor (Vance, a Democrat, faces no Republican opposition in the November 3 general election) again gives safe streets advocates reason to believe that long-awaited progress in the fight for traffic justice is at hand.

"Mr. Vance’s actions continue to indicate that, if elected, his office will give vehicular crimes the attention they deserve," said TA’s Peter Goldwasser.

The October 27 symposium is free and open to the public. Further details are on the TSTC web site.

Today on the Streetsblog Network, a couple of very thought-provoking posts.

First, Living Car-Free in BigD calls jaywalking an indicator of livability, connected to the idea of the woonerf, or shared street space. Car-Free's author notes how in his city -- where jaywalking is not the norm -- a good traffic day for pedestrians is one where the signals aren't working at all. That's when drivers are forced to negotiate each intersection as human beings rather than as machines:

Taking to the streets in Midtown Manhattan. (Photo: nydiscovery via Flickr)

Have you ever noticed how much safer and more polite Dallas drivers are when traffic lights are out, operating as blinking reds and the drivers are left to their own devices, responsible for their own safety. Interesting how they begin to cooperate with other drivers, no? Well, I have noticed.

Similarly, four-way stops are drastically much safer than any other form of regulated intersection. One reason is because of reduced speed in areas where stop signs are utilized rather than signals. The other primary contributive factor, is that (although not necessary due to literally written protocol for who goes first at 4-way stops) there is a necessary communication to some extent between the drivers: eye contact, a slow roll to indicate that "I'm moving. Hold back buddy," maybe even a honk or two...or this.

Over at The Urbanophile, Aaron Renn takes on the always difficult topic of race in a post called "The White City." Renn writes about how Midwestern Rust Belt cities need to engage their African-American citizens in any move toward more progressive transportation policy, and that successful policy change must arise from the local community, no matter what color it is:

What's needed in places like the Rust Belt are a mixture of indigenous solutions and imported ideas that are tailored to the local community. It can't just be trying to buy urban widgets from elsewhere like some sort of "public transit in a box" solution. The Midwest would do well to consider developing an indigenous urban R&D program to mitigate this.

Race aside, Renn has a point. What we see every day across the Streetsblog Network is the incredible variation in regional experience. What's right for Portland won't necessarily be right for Atlanta. What's exciting is that people around the country and the world are learning from each other as never before.

Clarence recently dug up a few unused nuggets from last year's junket to Melbourne, Australia. Watch and see how curbside space in residential neighborhoods has been repurposed for plantings that double as traffic calming treatments. Whatever red tape they had to hack through to plant trees in the roadbed, not just on the sidewalk, they've hacked through it in Melbourne. Have to say, though, the trees planted in the bike lane (or the bike lane painted around the trees) had me scratching my head.

Earlier this month, Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported on the fallout from Congress' failure to prevent an $8.7 billion "rescission" -- fancy legislative talk for the cancellation of funds -- from taking effect on September 30. Though media coverage focused largely on the rescission's impact on road projects, the lost money has hit clean transportation hard.

Existing law required the rescission to affect all funding categories proportionally, meaning that state DOTs would have to take back a share of highway money equivalent to the share of canceled funds for bicycle and pedestrian paths (a.k.a. "transportation enhancements" or TE) and Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ), which allows road money to be used for transit.

But some states had already obligated all of their available funding in certain transport programs, and so DOTs were given flexibility to cancel more than a proportional share of money for TE, CMAQ, and Recreational Trails, another federal outdoors program.

How many states took the opportunity to cancel a bigger slice of TE, CMAQ, and Trails money? The folks at advocacy group America Bikes have crunched the numbers, and here's what they found:

• 46 states, in addition to Washington D.C., canceled more than a proportional share of transportation enhancements money: AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MI, MN, MS, MO, MT, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, WI, and WY.
• 34 states, in addition to Washington D.C., canceled more than a proportional share of CMAQ money: AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, GA, HI, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MO, MN, MT, NH, NC, NM, OH, OK, OR, RI, SC, TN, TX, UT, WA, WV, WI, and WY.
• 31 states, in addition to Washington D.C., canceled more than a proportional share of Trails money: AZ, AR, CA, CO, DE, FL, GA, HI, IL, IN, IA, KY, ME, MA, MD, MI, MS, MO, MT, NY, NJ, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, UT, VT, WV, and WI.
• 4 states opted to send less than a proportional amount of transportation enhancements money back to the U.S. DOT, making extra cuts elsewhere: AL, AK, MA, and UT.
• 14 states opted to send less than a proportional amount of CMAQ money back to the U.S. DOT, making extra cuts elsewhere: AL, FL, ID, MA, MI, MS, NE, ND, NV, PA, SD, VT, and VA.
• 16 states opted to send less than a proportional amount of Trails money back to the U.S. DOT, making extra cuts elsewhere: AL, AK, CT, ID, KS, MN, NE, NV, NM, NC, ND, TN, TX, VA, WA, and WY.

No matter how you slice it, however, the rescission took a serious toll on clean transportation funds as well as those for roads. Meanwhile, Congress has yet to come to decision on how to approach the Oct. 30 deadline for extending the 2005 infrastructure bill one more time.

Editor's note: The above data has been updated to reflect current reporting as of Tuesday, Oct. 20.

Transportation's effects on public health are rarely discussed by policy-makers, but they remain very real -- and the National Research Council (NRC) put a number on them Monday, reporting that cars and trucks have about $56 billion in "hidden" health costs that are not reflected in the price of oil or electricity.

In its report on the "unpriced consequences of energy production and use," the NRC was acting under a congressional mandate to map the health impacts of various energy sources. Climate change was not factored into the NRC's conclusions, but the report nonetheless had a grim tale to tell about transportation fuel consumption.

The NRC found that the manufacture and burning of fuel for U.S. cars and trucks produced $56 billion in external costs in 2005, the year that the report was requested. That hidden cost averaged between 1.2 and 1.7 cents per vehicle mile traveled, depending on the type of fuel used.

In discussing the relatively small difference between the external costs of conventional gas-burning autos and the costs of hybrids or electric vehicles, the NRC wrote:

Although operation of the [electric vehicles and grid-dependent hybrid vehicles] produces few or no emissions, electricity production at present relies mainly on fossil fuels and, based on current emission control requirements, emissions from this stage of the life cycle are expected to still rely primarily on those fuels by 2030, albeit at significantly lower emission rates.

In other words, hybrids and electric vehicles are still likely to consume serious amounts of coal -- at least until the nation adopts an effective renewable electricity standard. The NRC notes that "further legislative and economic initiatives to reduce emissions from the electricity grid could be expected to improve the relative damages from electric vehicles substantially."

Given that cleaner electricity is a significant priority for transit and freight rail as well, perhaps it's worth mentioning: transportation reform is also electricity and energy reform.

The Community Board 8 committee vote this month in support of protected bike lanes for Manhattan's Upper East Side was nothing short of momentous. Wednesday's full board decision presents an even bigger hurdle, though by no means an insurmountable one. The reason, says Caroline Samponaro, director of bicycle advocacy for Transportation Alternatives, is community input.

"This past month at CB 8 has really been all about neighbors convincing neighbors," Samponaro says. "Residents of all stripes came out to support protected lanes at the last committee meeting, and it made a big impression on the board."

Turnout will be crucial for tomorrow night's meeting, when board members should be reminded of the benefits of protected bike lanes for all street users, including reduced crossing distances for pedestrians and fewer conflicts between sidewalk users and cyclists who don't feel safe riding in street traffic. Longtime UES advocate Glenn posted salient talking points earlier today.

If you've ever made the case for safer streets to Community Board 8, or if you've been waiting for an opportune moment, now's the time to follow up or follow through.

WHAT: Community Board 8 Full Board Meeting
WHEN: Wednesday, October 21, 6:30 p.m.
WHERE: Ramaz School Auditorium, 125 E. 85th St.