Streetsblog New York City

The Mark Sanford scandal is a bit off topic for Streetsblog but Sean Roche at the Newton Streets & Sidewalks blog points us to this incredible passage from one of the e-mails between the South Carolina governor and his mistress in Argentina. Sanford writes:

To me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the background, the tranquility that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees and marsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morning clouds — and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt.

How romantic!

And as if this story weren't weird enough already, a profile of Sanford in American Conservative magazine provides another sordid tidbit about the governor's diesel-powered meditation technique:

During Sanford's first gubernatorial campaign in 2002, an 8-year-old African-American girl wandered onto a Sanford family property on Lady's Island and drowned. A source close to the governor said she fell into a "retaining pond." Her family's lawyer, Manning Smith, called it a "pit." Other sources claim that Sanford, who owned a hydraulic excavator at the time, digs holes on his property to unwind.

Ray Bengen, the cyclist who was assaulted by the driver of a Ford Excursion blocking the Ninth Avenue bike lane, will appear tonight on the 6:00 p.m. edition of the CBS 2 local news. Ray just emailed to say the producers have confirmed they'll broadcast a segment featuring him explaining the road rage incident. Let's hope they do the story justice.

Update: If you missed the broadcast, here's the report filed by correspondent Deborah Garcia.

The conflicted state of federal transportation policy-making was on vivid display today, as House lawmakers pressed ahead on a $500 billion bill that still lacks a funding source while the Obama administration scrambled to find $20 billion for a bailout of the highway trust fund.

Members of the famously bipartisan House transportation committee lined up today to criticize the White House for its sudden decision to back an 18-month extension of current law -- effectively delaying a broad overhaul of Washington decision-making until after the 2010 congressional elections.

"I'm disappointed, as many of our colleagues are, in the administration's position," Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) said. Indeed, the d-word was invoked time and again by lawmakers in both parties, all of whom were clearly committed to helping panel chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) push a bill to passage this year.

But Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood kept his eye on the short term, meeting privately with senators ahead of his appearance tomorrow in Barbara Boxer's (D-CA) Environment and Public Works Committee. LaHood also put a price tag on the cost to rescue state-level highway projects from dwindling gas tax revenues: $20 billion in new money.

The contrast between the House focus on a six-year transportation re-write and the administration focus on an 18-month rescue made for a dose of cognitive dissonance, particularly as climate change legislation -- which contains significant transportation provisions -- becomes a key goal that Congress and the president share.

House members invoked the climate fight as well as the economic stimulus law, another top White House priority, in an attempt to re-brand Oberstar's $500 billion measure. "This bill is about four things: jobs, jobs, the environment and jobs," Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-IL) said.

Despite the quixotic nature of the House's quest to pass a new transportation bill without support from the Senate or the administration, today's markup shed light on sticking points that are likely to dominate the policy debate in the coming months.

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A bill introduced in the Senate this month could make New York roads and streets more dangerous while dealing a severe setback to the state's traffic justice movement. 

S5958 would permit drivers to conceal records of traffic violations three years after sentencing. First brought to our attention by a column in the Glens Falls Post-Star, the bill is sponsored by Senator Eric Schneiderman, who represents Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx. We're still parsing the details, but it appears the bill would allow for the sealing of records pertaining to traffic convictions after 36 months, with a handful of exceptions including driving under the influence.

Needless to say, this would be a significant obstacle to keeping dangerous drivers off New York State roads.

"For the countless number of businesses who have employees that regularly get behind the wheel of a car, truck, or tractor trailer, to summarily deny them the opportunity to first check the driving records of their prospective employees for past incidents of dangerous driving makes no sense at all," Transportation Alternatives General Counsel Peter Goldwasser told Streetsblog.

Worse, perhaps, would be its effect on efforts to secure justice for victims of traffic violence. As we have reported, advocates and prosecutors are in the midst of a years-long fight to beef up state codes to punish drivers who injure and kill. Beyond the tangible impact of giving reckless drivers a clean slate, for lawmakers to send the message that traffic crimes are insignificant, even cumulatively, would be a major blow. Says Nassau County vehicular crimes prosecutor Maureen McCormick: "It is a bad piece of legislation that goes directly against what should be happening -- greater transparency in driving records."

If there's a silver lining to be found in Albany these days, it's that S5958 may not see a vote this session. As of this writing it has not been picked up in the Assembly.

Streetsblog has a message in with Schneiderman's office about the reasoning behind the bill.

Following up on the recent series of Bus Rapid Transit workshops, DOT and New York City Transit have posted an online survey to collect more public input on existing and future Select Bus Service routes and amenities. It's a fairly detailed questionnaire with several opportunities to submit comments, so you may want to block out 10-15 minutes to make the most of it. It will be posted until September 4.

You can take the survey here. For more on SBS, including the "Introduction to Bus Rapid Transit Phase II" report, see DOT's BRT web page.

High-speed rail is one of the Obama administration's most prized policy goals, with $13 billion getting earmarked in the coming year alone to help break ground on up to 11 proposed regional corridors. But what will the U.S. get for its money? A lively Senate hearing yesterday attempted to answer that question.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), the co-chairman of Building America's Future and an unabashed high-speed rail evangelist, urged senators to shrug off their post-bailout reluctance to approve large spending projects. The White House's $13 billion commitment, Rendell argued, is only a down payment on a workable system.

"We can't do infrastructure on the cheap," Rendell said. "We have to find the political courage to find a way to pay for it."

Building high-speed rail along the California coast, he added, is estimated to cost as much as $40 billion. A northwestern network is projected to cost $25 billion. Similar long-term funding problems, as it happens, are also haunting lawmakers who aim to overhaul federal transportation policy.

Rendell suggested that a national infrastructure bank, independent of the government, should be tapped to direct money to high-speed rail proposals without political concerns influencing the process. "The public wants that," he said. "The public doesn’t want transportation dollars authorized through [the existing] system."

That outcome is highly unlikely, however, given that the federal DOT already has released its guidelines for an internal ranking of regional rail plans. And Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo was on hand to defend the administration's methods.

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Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Tuesday struck a deal ahead of Friday's make-or-break vote on climate change legislation to give greener transportation a place at the table.

The climate bill gives the states 10 percent of its carbon emissions allowances, the total worth of which is projected to hit $70 billion by 2010, to invest in energy-efficiency projects such as solar power or "smart" electricity grids.

Today's agreement allows 10 percent of those state allowances -- yes, 10 percent of 10 percent -- to help pay for transit expansions, new bike trails, or any other transportation efficiency project.

The climate bill already asks states and localities to meet targets for transportation emissions cuts, so the funding pact would back up that mandate with new money.

Energy and Commerce chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) just announced the change alongside transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Doris Matsui (D-CA) and Anthony Weiner. Here is Oberstar's statement:

I commend Chairman Waxman for working with me to ensure that a portion of allowances are available for projects that will expand options for public transportation, bicycling, walking, and other green transportation alternatives for our citizens.  This legislation provides only a small portion of the funds needed to address surface transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions, but is a very good first step.

Excited about the prospect of high speed rail in America? Lots of people have been. But as Yonah Freemark reports on The Transport Politic, yesterday the General Accountability Office threw a bit of a wet blanket on the growing enthusiasm. The GAO is saying the Obama administration has so far failed to provide clear goals and a comprehensive plan for a high speed rail system:

Want trains like Spain's? We need a plan. Photo by dewet via Flickr.

[A]t a [June 23] hearing in the U.S. Senate, General Accounting Office Director of Physical Infrastructure Susan Fleming described her concerns about the government’s distribution of high-speed rail funds. She focused on the Federal Railroad Administration’s unwillingness thus far to lay out specific goals for American fast train strategy and argued that the Department of Transportation must establish a coordinated, long-term plan for providing funds. Meanwhile, Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman and Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo continued to mistakenly argue that U.S. plans match those of European countries.

Ms. Fleming's statement comes three months after the release of GAO's major report on high-speed rail, which advocated a major federal investment in the transportation mode. Emphasizing that that report pushed the DOT to pinpoint specific goals for rail improvement, Ms. Fleming argued that the Obama Administration’s actions so far were little more than a “vision,” rather than “a strategic plan.”

The U.S. must “define goals for investing in high speed rail,” she said, and describe “how these investments will achieve them, how the federal government will determine which corridors it could invest in, [and] how high speed rail investments could be evaluated against possible alternative modes in those corridors.” Ms. Fleming said that the FRA largely agreed with her opinions. In fact, DOT has been planning to release a draft national rail plan by mid-October; however, that is a month after the FRA will release initial stimulus bill grants to applicant projects for rail investment.

Meanwhile, Greater Greater Washington looks at Metro's safety systems in the wake of Monday's crash. Complete Streets Blog reports they're rallying for complete streets in Topeka, KS.  And Hard Drive writes about a study that shows that for the first time, more people in Amsterdam are making trips by bicycle than by car.

The Manhattan DA's office is filing charges of criminal mischief against a cyclist, Ray Bengen, because he allegedly caused property damage to a multi-ton SUV in the process of getting doored by the driver. Too ridiculous to be true? Sadly, no. Here's how it happened.

Bengen, 63, was riding down the Ninth Avenue bike lane on May 21 when he encountered the Ford Excursion you see in this photo (curb weight: 7,190 lbs). A long-time city cyclist, Bengen had a green light and wasn't quite sure what to make of the vehicle in front of him. The car wasn't moving and its brake lights were off.

The bike lane on this stretch of Ninth Avenue is part of the city's first on-street protected bike path. At the 20th Street intersection, where Bengen came across the car, there's a left-turn bay for vehicles and an exclusive green phase for cyclists. The Excursion, as you can see below, was in the bike lane, not the left-turn bay.

Bengen rode slowly by on the left. Then he sensed the car start to move as he was passing. Alarmed, he slapped the side of the car with his palm in an effort to alert the driver as to his presence. A witness, who Bengen says has agreed to testify in court, snapped three pictures of what happened next. We'll let Bengen describe it:

The driver then went berserk. Talk about road rage. He threw open his door forcing me and my bike to the ground giving me some awful bruising down my leg. As I was now on the ground yelling at him that he's in a bike lane and was just about to run me over, he started to scream at me "Don't even think about it, don't even think about it." I'm still not sure what he meant by that. With me lying on the ground quite shaken, he suddenly stopped his assault and did something very unexpected. He moved away from me, picked up my bike where it was nearly underneath his truck. He then stood it up on its kickstand, and got back in the truck and drove away left into 20th street.

If the episode had ended then and there, one might assume that the driver, who remains unidentified, had counted to ten and wrestled his anger under control. But it looks like the guy may hold a grudge.

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Mere hours after the Washington Metro system suffered a shocking accident, two senior senators released a letter to their colleagues asking for $50 million in grants to improve rail safety technology.

The letter was sent by two chairmen with a central role in transportation policy -- commerce committee chief Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and environment committee chief Barbara Boxer (D-CA) -- to the two senators who shepherd the annual transportation budget, Patty Murray (D-WA) and Kit Bond (R-MO).

Rockefeller and Boxer noted that a $50 million investment in technology improvement grants was authorized last year when Congress passed a new rail safety law. That law favored rail safety upgrades that implemented "positive train control," a computerized program to prevent crashes that safety experts said might have averted last year's deadly California Metrolink crash.

As Rockefeller and Boxer wrote to their fellow senators:

More commuters are turning to commuter rail today than ever before. In these tough economic times, with many commuter rail agencies facing budget cuts, funding for the railroad safety technology grants is vital to ensure that important safety measures continue to be implemented.

We now have in our hands the 775-page Surface Transportation Authorization Act, which was released yesterday by James Oberstar (D-MN), chairman of the House transportation committee. It is, in many ways, a remarkable bill -- a blueprint for how transportation planning and infrastructure construction might undergo a significant shift away from the mindsets that have dominated for the past half-century. There is a lot to like in the bill.

Current spending levels, to say nothing of the increases proposed in the bill, will be impossible to sustain in the absence of a new source of revenue. This is a huge obstacle to passage.

As currently written, STAA would significantly strengthen the Office of Intermodalism and work toward making DOT planning "mode neutral" -- that is, not operating under the assumption that highways will always get first priority in planning and funding.

It would create an Office of Livability, focused entirely on seeking balance in mode choice by boosting transit ridership, bicycling, and walking. The bill seeks to streamline the process by which new transit projects apply for funding, and it allows federal officials to consider likely changes in land-use from transit construction in considering whether a project deserves funding.

STAA aims to empower metropolitan planning organizations. It seeks to depoliticize funding decisions and support private investment in infrastructure by creating national and metropolitan infrastructure development banks. It lays the groundwork for significant new investments in high-speed rail in America (though it cuts the definition of high-speed to 110 miles per hour or higher).

The bill includes a push to support "complete streets" and a national bike route network. It establishes increased transit ridership and reduced carbon emissions as explicit goals. And of course, the bill is targeted to allocate a lot more money than in previous reauthorizations, with a lot more money for transit (though transit's share increases only modestly).

But as Elana noted yesterday, what's missing from the bill is as telling as what's included. The 775-page length may suggest excessive comprehensiveness, but in fact much of the bill is little more than placeholders. "[To be supplied]" is in ample supply, as is "[$]." Ideally, actual numbers would follow immediately after the dollar sign.

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DOT contractors are putting down new bike lane markings on Park Slope's Fifth Avenue this afternoon. In addition to refurbishing the original bike lane laid down in 2004 and the sharrows installed in 2006, the crews are adding reinforcements, like the chevron markings through the intersections pictured below.

It would be entirely fitting if these improvements were DOT's response to the recent complaints from a small number of merchants and the idiotic editorial that ran in the Brooklyn Paper claiming that these pavement markings -- and the cyclists who use them -- are somehow interfering with deliveries and parking on the avenue. But this is probably just regularly scheduled maintenance. Winter snow plows really do a number on these bike lanes.

Last week, DOT presented plans for short-term changes that should make Brooklyn's Park Circle more welcoming to those on foot, on bikes and on horseback. The proposal [PDF] comes after a February public workshop on the gateway to Prospect Park raised speeding drivers and inadequate facilities for other users as major concerns.

Among other improvements, here's a breakdown of what's in store: 

• For pedestrians: new, direct and shorter crosswalks;
• For cyclists: Class 1 bike path around the circle; connection to the Ocean Parkway Greenway; Class 1 bike path on Ft. Hamilton Parkway;
• For equestrians: Protected bridle path within the circle;
• For motorists: Park through-traffic will be consolidated to one access point.
  

DOT further plans to revamp the Ocean/Ft. Hamilton Parkway ramp as a "city street," and to appropriate unused asphalt for new markings and plantings, reducing the size of the circle. The new design is intended to cut down on speeding and congestion.

According to Stable Brooklyn, Community Board 7 passed a resolution in support of the project on June 17. Work is scheduled to be implemented this fall.