Streetsblog New York City

When it comes to infrastructure improvements that encourage more people to walk or bicycle to transit stations, how long will commuters be willing to travel? The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has officially answered that question, proposing a significant expansion of the rules governing how close bike-ped projects should be to transit in order to receive government funding.

The FTA's new rules, released for public comment on Friday, replace the previous definition of the so-called "structural envelope" surrounding a transit station.

In the past, regulators had tended to use 1,500 feet as the distance which "most people can be expected to safely and conveniently walk to use the transit service." But the Obama administration, stating plainly that the current radius is "too short," has proposed expanding it to a half-mile for pedestrian improvements and three miles for bicycle projects.

In its explanation of the new proposal, the FTA wrote:

The most successful and useful public transportation systems have safe and convenient pedestrian access and provide comfortable waiting areas, all of which encourage greater use.

Distances beyond the walkshed of public transportation stops and stations may in fact be within the range of a short bicycle trip. Providing secure parking and other amenities for bicycles and cyclists at public transportation stops or stations can be less expensive than providing parking for automobiles.

The proposed regulation also codifies a U.S. DOT definition of "livability" that Streetsblog Capitol Hill took note of when it was first mentioned by Transportation Secretary LaHood: "If people don't want an automobile, they don't have to have one."

Public comments on the FTA's proposal can be filed here.

Looks like the City Council is ready to assert itself in the wake of Michael Bloomberg's underwhelming re-election to a third term. They've chosen to draw a line in the sand, apparently, by creating more congestion on New York City's streets.

This morning, the transportation committee, still helmed by Comptroller-elect John Liu, considered bills to create a five-minute "grace period" for muni-meter and alternate-side parking, and to hand out more parking placards to members of the clergy. The Post and AM New York report that both bills will likely sail through the council with enough votes to override Bloomberg's expected veto.

According to Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr. the bills are "an attempt to legislate common sense and discretion." But really, what we have here is old-fashioned pandering combined with a failure to comprehend the consequences of giving away curb space.

The council calls it a "grace period," but what does it really mean to ban parking agents from issuing a ticket until five minutes after the allotted time expires? Well, if you drive somewhere and pay for 40 minutes of metered parking, now you get 45 minutes. The bill gives on-street parkers more bang for their buck -- a subsidy for the minority of New Yorkers who get around by private car.

With less turnover of metered spaces, drivers will double-park more and cruise around longer as they search for open spots. Whether you're walking, biking, riding a bus, or driving, you'll have to contend with more traffic clogging up the streets.

The expansion of parking placards for clergy will have the same effect -- more free curb space for an entitled class of drivers, with less to go around for everyone else. The bill flies in the face of placard-reduction policies that the Bloomberg administration began enacting in 2008 with an eye toward cutting congestion.

City Room reports that Bloomberg, predicting "chaos and enormous increases in contested tickets," is ready to veto the grace period bill. A council override would not augur well for the next four years of New York City transportation policy.

Over the weekend, we came across an article from the Isthmus of Madison, Wisconsin, reporting on a conservative scaremongering campaign against a commuter rail proposal.

It quotes a leader in the Wisconsin Republican Party painting transit-oriented development as a red menace: "This has been done before," Dane County Republican Party spokesman Bill Richardson said on a Madison radio show. "The Soviet Union and in East Berlin and all those places. They built these ... very ugly high-rise apartments, and they jammed people into these."

We were happy to see that Streetsblog Network member The Overhead Wire posted a quick response to this nonsense:

What kind of development is really being forced on Americans? (Photo: co-plex via Flickr)

[E]veryone who reads here knows the histories and the market distortions of sprawl, which has absolutely dominated the market over the last 60 years. If anything, it's they who are forcing everyone to live their lifestyle, a sick distortion of the actual desires of at least some Americans, such as myself, who want to live in an urban walkable environment. By not providing a choice in living, or transportation, the opponents of livable communities are telling us that the actual market doesn't matter and that they know what is best...

We know that not all in their circle believe this way, and ultimately building cities shouldn't be a partisan issue. The road towards transit and walkability is a sustainable one from a fiscal and environmental standpoint. I think many times we overlook the power of fiscal arguments for the movement at our own peril. The research on sprawl is not good, and people are starting to get it, a bit late, but at least they are starting to see how value is created by cities and urbanism is a fiscally responsible choice.

It will be interesting to see how the division over transportation policy among conservatives develops in the next few months. Will the ideology of fear trump more evidence-based economic analysis? What do you think?

More from around the network: Hugeass City wanted a coffee, but needed to be in a car to get served at one Seattle Starbucks. Copenhagenize reports on bicycle theft and insurance profiteering in the Danish cycling paradise. And Tucson Bike Lawyer has a dispatch on biking in Bogotá.

If you're into bikes-in-buildings and community boards -- and really, who isn't -- there are two deadlines coming up for events to be held next Monday. A cycling PSA film fest, bike rack siting and a couple of pedestrian events round out the week.

• Monday: Register today if you wish to testify in favor of the Department of Buildings' rule change [PDF] to clarify language in the Bikes in Buildings bill. That hearing is next Monday, Nov. 23.
• Tuesday: At 6:30 p.m., the New York Bar Association hosts a panel discussion on the new ped-friendly Broadway and what it means for the future of NYC streets. The panel will include Kyle Wiswall of TSTC, Jeff Zupan of the RPA, and Tim Tompkins of the Times Square Alliance. At 7:00, TA's Biking Rules film festival showcases the best of the many public service announcements that were submitted to promote the Biking Rules safe cycling campaign.
• Wednesday: NYCDOT holds an open house on the Downtown Brooklyn surface transportation circulation study, involving how all modes of travel interact. 5:30 p.m. And today is the deadline to RSVP for TA's Community Board Jammy Jam, to be held Nov. 23.
• Thursday: Speaking of how community boards can improve our city's public spaces, today Bronx CB 2 and NYCDOT present the Longwood Pedestrian Improvement Workshop. 6 p.m.
• Sunday: The Open Planning Project, Livable Streets Initiative, and Neighbors Allied for Good Growth bring you the Williamsburg and Greenpoint Bike Rack Roundup -- a lively competition with cool prizes to help "verify" potential bike rack locations. 2 p.m.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

Want to channel your anger over pedestrian and cyclist crashes into productive action? Livable Streets member BicyclesOnly has a plan for you.

BicyclesOnly has launched a working group for Traffic Justice FOIL Requests. Like the federal government and most other states, New York's Freedom of Information Law requires state and municipal agencies to make a wide range of internal documents and information publicly available upon request. BicyclesOnly's Freedom of Information Requests for Traffic Justice StreetsWiki article is an easy how-to for the whole process. He explained to us why FOIL requests are so crucial:

While police declare most crashes to be "accidents" within hours, the details that bear on responsibility for the crash are usually kept from the public for months. By that time, most journalists  and their readers have lost interest. The crash will forever be an "accident." But the detailed information from FOIL requests makes it possible to show that many "accidents" have real and preventable causes, and that police, prosecutors and traffic engineers are failing in their responsibility to address those causes.

He pointed out that Charles Komanoff's seminal work on traffic justice, "Killed by Automobile," would have been impossible without data obtained in this manner. For more information on FOIL requests, follow this link to a video featuring Robert Freeman, executive director of the New York State Committee on Open Government (Windows Media Player required).

The FOIL requests group is a place for people to gather information about crashes, track the progress of requests, and use this information in campaign work, like this letter to DOT Manhattan Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione. Says BicyclesOnly: "Any Streetsblog reader can help foster balanced, meaningful coverage of traffic deaths by devoting two hours and $5 or so to making a FOIL crash request."

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: We love transit. Love love love.

But that's why we hate it so much when transit infrastructure and transit riders are neglected. And they are. The nation's buses and trains and light rail are too often underfunded, dismissed, vandalized and disrespected.

Transit riders deserve better.

We asked you to send in photos of crummy transit conditions from around the country, and once again, you stepped up. Here are some of the indignities you've witnessed:

Many thanks to our contributors, including the indefatigible Richard Masoner of Cyclelicious, BicyclesOnly, dirtycrumbs, Streetsblog's own Ben Fried and Brad Aaron, and Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson.

Check out our previous slide shows of bike traffic, space hogs and bikes at work.

For our next show, we're looking for something a lot happier -- kids on bikes. We've already received many pictures on this theme, but we want more. Kids on their own bikes, kids in cargo bikes, kids on trailer bikes -- show us what you've got. Send JPEGs to sarah [at] streetsblog [dot] org, or tag your photos with "streetsblog" and "kidbikes" in Flickr. Get them to me by Tuesday, November 24.

And as always, thank you.

A quick update on the status of bike infrastructure in the city's plans for the East Side. We asked DOT whether the agency is considering protected bike facilities as part of the Bus Rapid Transit corridor planned for First and Second avenues. The press office says:

We have been considering ways to incorporate bike facilities and expect to be reporting back to stakeholders soon.

Not a whole lot to go on there, but it's good to hear that DOT is looking into the possibilities. The recent organizing around this issue has been formidable. Community Board 8 passed a resolution last month favoring protected bike lanes for the East Side. And last week, Transportation Alternatives delivered more than a thousand letters to transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan asking for protected bike lanes on First and Second.

A brief follow-up to our earlier story on Inwood's disappearing Dyckman Street bike shelter. According to DOT, while it was located near a bike shop (two, actually, though one now appears to be closed) as well as the Dyckman A train station, the shelter was not widely used, and was removed as DOT looks for another site in the area.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the shelter was popular among local and visiting cyclists -- and we referred before to the symbolic significance of the Dyckman site. But, assuming it will in fact be installed elsewhere in the neighborhood, what locations might be better?

The Weekly Carnage is a Friday round-up of motor vehicle mayhem across the metro region. For more on the origins and purpose of this column, please read About the Weekly Carnage.

Fatal Crashes (12 Killed This Week, 255 This Year*, 25 Drivers Charged**)

• Brooklyn: Memorial Set for Eliseo Martinez, Cyclist Killed in September (Ghost Bikes)
• Greenburgh, NY: Cycling Advocate Killed by Bus; Driver Back on the Job (LoHud 1, 2)
  
• Bohemia, LI: Man Thrown From Back Seat in Crash, Body Not Found for Hours (Newsday)
• Truck Driver in Last Week's LIE Collision Dies From Injuries (Newsday)
  
• Newark: Unidentified Pedestrian Hit, Killed (S-L)
  
• Roselle Park, NJ: Pedestrian Dies in Hit-and-Run; Police Looking for Killer (S-L)
• Old Bridge, NJ: 14-Year-Old Cyclist Killed by 17-Year-Old Driver (S-L)
• East Amwell, NJ: Man Killed Walking Home From Work; No Charges Expected (Hunterdon CD)
• Montvale, NJ: Minivan Driver Strikes 75-Year-Old Pedestrian (S-L)
  
• East Orange, NJ: 2 Men Attending to Stalled Vehicle Hit by Passing Driver; 1 Dead (S-L)
  
• North Brunswick, NJ: SUV Driver Dies After Colliding With School Bus (S-L)
• Hamilton, NJ: Speeding Driver Killed in One-Car Crash (S-L)
• Bethel, CT: 85-Year-Old Dies After Rear-Ending Pickup (CT Post)

Continue...

Earlier this week DOT and the MTA showed plans for Bus Rapid Transit on the east side of Manhattan to the Seaport/Civic Center committee of Community Board 1. With implementation scheduled for next September, the question of how to allot space on First and Second Avenues is increasingly urgent. Robust bus improvements paired with protected space for biking on this corridor could become a model for sustainable street design in New York.

According to the Downtown Express, the presentation depicted "off-set" bus lanes -- a configuration that puts the buses in an exclusive lane between other traffic and curbside parking. The bus station would be constructed on a sidewalk extension, so that buses don't have to pull into and out from the curb. The effectiveness of this design depends in large part on keeping the bus lane clear of other traffic and double-parked vehicles. Bus-mounted enforcement cameras, which require Albany's approval but were rejected by state lawmakers last year, would be absolutely necessary. A physically separated busway, however, wouldn't need cameras to deliver significant improvements for bus riders.

I checked in with DOT to see if the off-set design has indeed been finalized, and the answer is "No." The agency is still considering different bus lane configurations. "An image we presented to the board on Tuesday night did show an offset lane," said a DOT spokesperson, "but this is a baseline design, one which we've used in presentations for the last six months."

An off-set configuration would give bus riders on the East Side a faster ride, but without a physically-separated busway, there are few certainties. Off-set bus lanes would have to be paired with camera enforcement to deliver the full potential benefits, said Walter Hook, director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. Hook has advised several global metropolises on the implementation of Bus Rapid Transit.

If everything lines up and Albany does pass a law enabling the use of bus-mounted cameras, then, Hook estimates, total travel time on the M15 corridor could be reduced from 70 minutes to 48 minutes during peak hours using off-set lanes. Hook projects that a physically separated busway would cut that time to 42 minutes. No permission from Albany necessary.

Today on the Streetsblog Network, we've got a powerful demand for safer streets in Florida. Transit Miami has posted an open letter to Florida Governor Charlie Crist and the state's DOT, calling them to account for the lamentable showing the Sunshine State makes in Transportation for America's recent report on pedestrian fatalities, "Dangerous by Design." Here's a taste of what they had to say:

A pedestrian signal in Winter Park, Florida. (Photo: quite peculiar)

Florida has managed to take the top 4 spots [for danger to pedestrians] nationally; this clearly is not a great achievement. The common denominator for all 4 metropolitan areas is the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), which is responsible for designing most of the roads within these urban environments.  We believe that (FDOT) should be held accountable for poorly designed roads within our state that result in hundreds of preventable pedestrian deaths each year.

The decades of auto-centric culture within FDOT needs to come to an end. A major paradigm shift has to occur within FDOT from designing roads for cars to designing them for people. There is no simple solution, and it will take a leader who is capable of changing an organization whose sole focus seems to be moving more cars faster, rather than considering pedestrians and bicyclists.

More from around the network: In Texas, Michael Lindenberger at Dallas Transportation digs into the TexPIRG report on the links between campaign money and how transportation dollars are spent, and comes up with his own conclusions. David Daddio at The City Fix asks if we are really looking at the end of the American exurbs. And Bike Portland puts the funding for bike infrastructure into perspective.

Here's another case of dangerously uncivil servitude, via Gothamist's John Del Signore, who came upon an Access-A-Ride driver parked in the elevated Sands Street bike lane. It's no surprise that Del Signore's complaint to the driver was answered with a shrug (or, more accurately, a "What's the big deal? Just go around."). But when he sent the photo to NYC Transit for comment, here was the response:

"Access-A-Ride drivers are instructed to observe all restrictions on parking and standing. However, due to traffic, drivers are often challenged to find safe locations to either pick up or drop off customers."

How many holes in that statement do you count?

Gothamist is taking submissions for an end-of-year photo gallery of egregious bike lane blockers. Here are a couple of recent candidates that leap to mind.

At last month's Rail-Volution conference in Boston, Streetfilms was able to grab a few moments with William Lind, a politically conservative transit advocate. Lind aims to provide "liberal transit advocates" the language to build support for public transportation (okay, just rail) in terms that conservatives can relate to. Some of Lind's arguments don't reflect our views here at Streetfilms, especially his disdain for buses (which we don't cover in this video), but he makes a thought-provoking case for transit investment. Streetsblog readers won't want to miss his critique of highway spending as a massive government intervention.