Streetsblog New York City

A Brooklyn woman was killed Thursday by a driver trying to make a light on Atlantic Avenue, according to reports.

At approximately 4:48 p.m., Maria Tripp was crossing Atlantic at Ralph Avenue with five other people, including her daughter and nephew, when she was hit by the driver of a Chevrolet Impala. The driver was identified as a Secret Service agent.

The Daily News account reads as if the agent’s car was operating of its own accord:

When they spotted the vehicle heading west and trying to make it across Ralph Ave. before the light changed, the nephew pulled the girl out of harm’s way but Tripp did not escape, witnesses said.

Patch reports that “Tripp realized she might not make the light at which time she decided to try turn around and try to run back to the sidewalk and was then struck by a car.” A witness told the News that the driver “got out, stood over her and said, ‘I’m on the job, I’m on the job.’”

As with the April 29 crash that killed Dan Fellegara, in this case we have a motorist fatally striking an adult pedestrian (not a “darting” child) while driving straight ahead. Unlike Fellegara, Tripp was killed in broad daylight while walking with a crowd of people. Reports and pictures from the scene indicate that the driver was moving with such speed that he jumped a curb after impact, blowing out two tires. A witness told the News that the victim was thrown high into the air.

The Post says that Tripp, 47, was a custodian with the Parks Department. She was pronounced dead at Interfaith Hospital.

Despite indications of excessive speed, no criminality was suspected, according to NYPD.

Maria Tripp was at least the twelfth pedestrian or cyclist killed in the city in the last 30 days, and the 33rd known New York pedestrian or cyclist fatality of 2012. According to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Atlantic Avenue, one of the city’s most dangerous streets, was the site of seven fatal pedestrian crashes between 2008 and 2010.

There’s a new sheriff in Washington, at least when it comes to parking.

New DC parking czar Angelo Rao has all the trappings of a real reformer, according to John Hendel at TBD on Foot, and his selection by Mayor Vince Gray could be telling.

For a few years now, Washington has taken some important steps toward a smarter parking system. Among them: a pilot project in performance parking began in 2008 under then-mayor Adrian Fenty, and the City Council voted this week to let the pilot expand citywide. Gray’s recently stated goal of making three out of four trips car-free by 2030 also presumably carries major implications for parking policy.

Rao seems like an apt choice if Gray is serious about parking reform, Hendel reports:

Parking in particular will play a crucial role as D.C. struggles to manage its gridlock and transportation priorities. Mayor Vince Gray identified parking as one of the short-term priorities in his Sustainable D.C. plans, which call for three out of four trips to be car-free within 20 years. Of the two short-term actions the city needs: “Reduce building parking minimums and increase the availability of on-street parking through citywide performance parking districts.”

Luckily Angelo Rao’s sensibilities seem to fit right into the direction that D.C. is heading — although they have apparently provoked controversy in the past.

Read more…

In the midst of a 2004 petition drive and campaign, Transportation Alternatives hired me to produce a mini-film called “The Case for a Car-Free Central Park.” It featured interviews with many prominent New Yorkers, like Columbia professor Ken Jackson and author Roberta Brandes Gratz, along with dozens of everyday park-goers testifying about how they felt about cars in the park.

The film was the centerpiece of a TA rally attended by nearly 700 people. Just a few weeks after the rally, the city took substantial action. From TA’s chronology of cars in Central Park:

2004:  Speed limit on the loop drive reduced from 30 mph to 25 mph. West 90th and East 102nd Street entrances and exits closed to cars. West 77th and East 90th entrances closed to cars. West 72nd street slip-ramp closed to cars. People reclaim overnight and early mornings in the park. Cars get to enter 7 am to 10 am and 3 pm to 7 pm. HOV 2+ rule on West drive during morning rush hours.

It’s an absolute honor that “The Case for a Car-Free Central Park” was selected as a featured element for “Activist New York,” an upcoming exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. Beginning May 4, the program will examine social activism from the 17th century to the present. We’re glad the curators realized the significance of this video in New York’s history.

Make sure to check out what surely should be an excellent exhibit. For now, you can watch the entire 20-minute film, available for the first time ever on Streetfilms!

The shortcomings of the current gas tax are well-known. The federal rate (18.4 cents/gallon) has not been raised in nearly twenty years and is not tied to inflation, yet it remains the primary source of funds for federal transportation spending. The problem is exacerbated by improving vehicle fuel economy. And as electric cars roll off the assembly line in greater numbers and become the vehicle of choice for more drivers, relying on the gas tax as the primary source of transportation funding makes even less sense.

This perfect storm suggests the time may be right to adopt vehicle miles traveled (VMT) fees — charges based on how much people drive — to pay for the nation’s surface transportation system. Congress is unlikely to pass a multi-year transportation bill anytime soon, and current stop-gap funding is due to expire at the end of June. But the results of a two-year University of Iowa VMT national field study offer a path forward for sustainable funding of surface transportation.

Preliminary findings from the federally-funded field study (the full report has not yet been released by the Department of Transportation) show that the system could work on a nationwide scale. The results, contained in a Transportation Research Board Journal paper authored by University of Iowa professors Paul Hanley and Jon Kuhl, also show that the public would accept the concept of paying a fee for road use based on distance traveled instead of gas consumed.

The field study was based out of 12 sites, monitoring more than 2,600 volunteer participants who drove a total distance of 21 million miles throughout the United States (except Alaska and Hawaii), for an average of roughly 9,000 miles per driver.

The study deployed a prototype mileage-based charging system with an on-board unit installed in each participant’s vehicle. The unit computed mileage-based user charges for federal, state and local jurisdictions and periodically uploaded accrued charges via a cellular link to a central billing center. The center subsequently created monthly billing statements that were sent to participants.

Privacy concerns, often cited as an argument against VMT-based charges, were taken into account in the study’s design. While the onboard unit in each vehicle used a GPS receiver to determine driver location for the purpose of assessing state and local charges, the system did not retain or transmit any specific information regarding vehicle location or routes travelled.

The results of the field test showed that a nationwide system of mileage-based fees is completely feasible using existing technology. Early misgivings on the part of drivers faded as they gained more experience with the system: At the outset of the study, only 42 percent of participants held a positive view of GPS-based mileage fees; approval increased to 70 percent by the study’s end.

Read more…

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Tappan Zee Bridge bears all the hallmarks of a Robert Moses project. Cuomo stripped popular transit elements from the original, publicly-conceived plan, leaving only a massive highway. Cuomo has shut down the public outreach process for the bridge entirely. He’s even moving to sign the contracts to build the bridge before answering basic questions about its design and funding. (Cuomo’s less-than-transparent answer about how the state will pay for the bridge today: “We’re working on a number of funding options.”)

Still, while we’d accuse Cuomo of Moses-style transportation planning, we wouldn’t have expected the governor to proudly own the label. But unbelievably, that’s what he did today at a press conference, implicitly comparing his bridge project to those of Moses in response to an on-point question about the New York Works Task Force from Capitol Confidential’s Jimmy Vielkind.

Said Cuomo:

There are ways for government to get things done without using a ramrod, obviously. Your characterization, that Mr. Moses used a ramrod, other people would disagree with that characterization, but it’s yours. My point is that government can function efficiently and effectively, I said with due process, with an open process, with consultation. But the consultation and the process shouldn’t be paralyzing. You know, government needs to work, society needs to be able to replace a bridge.

Talk about it, discuss it, analyze it, argue it. Look at different styles, look at different financing options, but ultimately, you have to decide if you’re going to get anything done.

So if you think the Cross-Bronx, Sheridan, Bruckner and Major Deegan Expressways reinvigorated the South Bronx; if you think the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge is better off without its once-proposed inter-borough transit connection; if you still shake your head at those in Greenwich Village who had the nerve to speak up against a freeway through downtown, then you’ll love Andrew Cuomo’s transit-free Tappan Zee Bridge.

Don’t take our word for it. Andrew Cuomo said so himself.

After two crashes in six years that caused 13 fatalities and an outcry from an indignant press corps suddenly obsessed with traffic safety, the New York State Department of Transportation has turned its attention to the Bronx River Parkway.

The concrete barriers planned for the parkway seem designed to facilitate speeding, but the state DOT says it will work with NYPD to slow drivers down. While it’s obvious that change is needed, it remains to be seen if those measures will prevent Bronx River Parkway motorists from injuring and killing themselves, their passengers and others.

The terrible events of last Sunday, when seven members of a single Bronx family died in what is believed to have been a high-speed crash, sparked a wave of media coverage. The Daily News in particular has taken up the cause with zeal, all but blaming state DOT Commissioner Joan McDonald for the catastrophe.

Yet other streets where people are hurt and killed every day largely escape media attention. From 2008 to 2010, 13 pedestrians died on Broadway in Manhattan, according to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which compiles data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for its annual report on the region’s most dangerous roads. Seven pedestrians were killed on Broadway in the Bronx, seven on Kings Highway in Brooklyn, seven on the Henry Hudson Parkway/West Street in Manhattan, and seven on Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue during the same period. Most of the 250 traffic fatalities in New York City every year happen on local streets, not highways, and state agencies could be doing more to prevent these deaths.

“NYS DOT could bolster and expand its funding for the Local Safe Streets and Traffic Calming grant program,” says Tri-State’s Ryan Lynch. “They have repeatedly cut this funding in recent years [though it] works to calm streets and enhance pedestrian safety for streets on Long Island. If it was expanded and better funded it could be beneficial to NYC streets as well.”

Tri-State has called on states to designate additional federal funds for bike and pedestrian safety projects. Allowing large cities that get federal transit funds to receive federal road allocations directly, rather than having them funneled through state governments, could also help, says TSTC Executive Director Kate Slevin.

But you won’t find the editorial writers at the Daily News pressuring state and federal agencies to help make neighborhood streets safer for people who walk and bike. You won’t see them demanding that Ray Kelly’s NYPD keep New Yorkers alive and in one piece by enforcing traffic laws and investigating serious crashes. That’s because aside from sensational horror stories, transportation coverage from outlets including the Daily News, the Post, and CBS 2 tends to be limited to attacks on bike lanes, pedestrian plazas and other measures — basically any change to the streetscape intended to reduce injury and death. That is, when those same reporters and editors aren’t blaming the victims themselves.

Saturday will mark two months of non-stop acclaim for Gridlock Sam’s traffic-pricing plan. The accolades kicked off on March 5 with a gushing op-ed, “Meet Sam Schwartz,” by New York Times emeritus editor Bill Keller, and they haven’t let up. The Wall Street Journal, Transportation Nation, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, Channel 13, and Crain’s New York (a profile plus an editorial) have extolled Sam’s plan to overhaul New York’s tolling network and generate $15 billion over the next decade to improve roads, bridges, subways and buses across the city. By now, any New Yorker who professes ignorance of the plan has either been hiding under the proverbial rock or is flummoxed by its political implications.

Such an outpouring of support is unprecedented for congestion pricing proposals anywhere, and is virtually unheard of for any serious policy proposal in New York. I’ve spent a good deal of time pondering it from my vantage point as a long-time traffic-pricing proponent; as an exponent of rival but complementary pricing plans, first with Ted Kheel and more recently with the Move NY coalition; and currently as a modeler helping Sam quantify his plan’s traffic and revenue benefits. (That work is supported not by Sam but by the Kheel family’s Nurture Nature Foundation.)

So how do I explain the overwhelmingly positive press reactions to Gridlock Sam’s Fair Plan, as he calls it?

First, the plan feels inclusive, far more so than any prior traffic-pricing plan.

Consider what it offers residents of Queens, the city’s most car-dependent borough after Staten Island: dollar fares on MTA buses in subway-less areas; Bus Rapid Transit service on the Long Island Expressway; and, most spectacularly, a halving of current tolls on the borough’s five MTA bridges, from the Throgs Neck in northern Queens to the Gil Hodges and Cross Bay Blvd. Bridges in the Rockaways. These benefits are palpable — the MTA bridge discounts alone will save Queens residents $100 million a year — and they are integral to the plan, in accordance with the precept of charging premium tolls to drive into the congested heart of the city. Other boroughs are slated to get similar discounts and benefits including BRT on the Belt Parkway and the Bruckner Expressway, a widened Staten Island Expressway, and highway expansions intended to take trucks off Brooklyn streets.

Second, Sam’s plan feels egalitarian.

Read more…

It’s hard to imagine a street in more dire need of a safety upgrade than Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Lined with schools, senior centers, subway stations, churches and stores — and situated in one of the city’s top walk-to-work neighborhoods — the street is a magnet for pedestrians of all ages. It’s also a speedway for motorists. Now it looks like this part of Fourth Avenue will get a safety-minded makeover as soon as this fall.

With six lanes of moving traffic, plus left-turn bays, Fourth Avenue is wide and dangerous to cross. From 2006 to 2011, seven people were killed while walking on the stretch between 65th Street and 15th Street. Dozens more were seriously injured. Pressure to reduce the death toll has been mounting in recent years, and Borough President Marty Markowitz’s Fourth Avenue Task Force has helped raise the profile of the street’s shortcomings and its potential.

Earlier this week, NYC DOT staff presented a package of safety improvements [PDF] for this two-and-a-half mile section to Brooklyn Community Board 7′s Fourth Avenue working group. The recommendations would essentially slim the street down from six lanes to four lanes and add pedestrian space in the median using low-cost materials like paint, epoxy, and gravel.

DOT has been holding workshops on Fourth Avenue with CB 7 and local organizations since last year, and the recommendations were well-received by the working group. “These workshops with the DOT have been very good, and they’ve listened to us,” said CB 7 chair Fred Xuereb.

Currently, outside of rush hour, most motorists speed on the wide expanse of Fourth Avenue, and in the evening the figure is as high as 80 percent of southbound drivers, according to DOT. By expanding medians (some of which are now only a meager two-feet wide), adding left turn restrictions and slimming down the right-of-way for traffic, the project would shorten crossing distances, reduce conflicts between pedestrians and motorists, and at least partially remedy the street’s out-of-control speeding problem.

Read more…

Looking to hire a smart, qualified person for a position in transportation planning, engineering, IT, or advocacy? Post a listing on the Streetsblog Jobs Board and reach our national audience of dedicated readers.

Looking for a job? Here are this week’s listings:

Senior Graphic Designer, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco, California
The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is looking for an experienced graphic designer to advance our work promoting the bicycle for everyday transportation. The graphic designer will be responsible for all print and digital design projects for the 12,000-member nonprofit, and work closely with the Communications Director to increase the visibility and strengthen the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s brand. This is a part-time in-house position.

Event Planner, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco, California
The SFBC Event Planner will be responsible for successfully designing, organizing and coordinating large and small events for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. Large scale events include Bike to School Day, Bike to Work Day, Golden Wheel, Tour de Fat, Family Day and Winterfest. Smaller events with under 500 attendees include Love on Wheels, summer donor bike rides, donor luncheons, house parties, and neighborhood mingles. The Events Planner will be responsible for leading the organization’s work to raise the bar of these already-successful events and ensure that the attendees leave with a positive experience and good feeling about the work of our organization.