Streetsblog New York City

Following the death of Dashane Santana, the transportation committee of Community Board 3 will hold a special meeting this Wednesday to address conditions on Delancey Street, where drivers are aggressive and crossing times are short. Responding to media coverage and pressure from residents and electeds, DOT is scheduled to present its plan to make Delancey safer for pedestrians.

Also on the calendar this week:

• Monday: Join Manhattan Community Board 2, local residents and business owners at a roundtable planning workshop to help decide how bike share should work and where stations should be sited in the West Village, Tribeca and and SoHo. Street-savvy participants are needed for this key meeting, which starts at 6 p.m.
• Also tonight: The transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 6 will take up the DOT proposal for crosstown bike lanes on East 29th and 30th streets from 1st to 8th avenues, as well as a request from the 13th Precinct for an eastbound left turn lane marking on East 20th Street at 1st Avenue.
• Tuesday: The Manhattan CB 2 transportation committee will discuss how to mitigate “congestion, noise and hazardous conditions from intense vehicular traffic on the Kenmare-Lafayette-Broome Street section of the route from the Williamsburg Bridge to the Holland Tunnel.”
• Thursday:  NYC DOT will present its Classon Avenue traffic calming proposal to Brooklyn Community Board 8. 
• Also Thursday: DOT and electeds will hold a public workshop to discuss the future of Fourth Avenue between 15th and 65th streets.

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

Well, the cards are on the table now, as far as national transportation policy is concerned.

The House transportation bill passed committee on solidly partisan lines. It would reverse decades of reforms that promote safer streets, sustainable transportation, and urbanism. Photo: The National Journal

The Senate managed to put together bipartisan support for legislation that weakens biking and walking programs while including a few progressive reforms to transit policy. House Republicans, meanwhile, have lined up behind a draconian vision for highways-only transportation policy that would reverse decades of pragmatic reforms.

Crystallized in the House bill is a strident position that seeks to undermine any form of transportation beside the private automobile, one that rejects cost-saving reforms while cloaking itself in the pretense of fiscal rectitude.

This position — clearly a favorite of industries that profit from highways and sprawl — has even become a talking point among Republican presidential contenders this primary season, reports Yonah Freemark at the Transport Politic. Advocates for green transportation and urbanism have no choice but to fight, says Freemark:

As I have documented, density of population correlates strongly and positively with the Democratic Party vote share in Congressional elections; the result has been that the House Republicans have few electoral reasons to articulate policies that benefit cities. Those who believe in the importance of a sane transportation policy need to make more of an effort to advance a sane transportation politics to residents of suburban and rural areas, who also benefit from efforts to improve environmental quality, mobility alternatives, and congestion relief, but perhaps are not yet convinced of that fact. Doing so would encourage politicians hoping for votes outside of the city core — Democratic or Republican — to promote alternatives to the all-highways meme that currently rules the GOP in the House.

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Eddie Solis leaves the Metro Red Line, which serves as one part of his hour-long commute from his day job in Hollywood to his home in Boyle Heights. Much of the inspiration for his band It's Casual comes from his observations as a car-free bus and subway rider, and a skateboarder. Photo courtesy of Eddie Solis

A few weeks ago, the hardcore band It’s Casual posted “The Red Line” music video on Youtube and quickly caught the attention of local and national blogs for it’s simple yet creative critique of Los Angeles freeways. A resident of Boyle Heights, guitarist and vocalist Eddie Solis sat down with Streetsblog to talk about how his car-free lifestyle inspires his music and how he encounters the smell of Boyle Heights tortilla factories on his morning walks.

You do a lot of music that’s very transit oriented; can you explain why you went that route?

Sometimes I think there’s a lot of content out there that’s too, I want to say, too fiction. Kind of make believe. And I notice all my favorite music that hits home to me in my heart and that I kind of step back and see these bands still going… are bands that write timeless music with timeless contact that basically come from the truth of actual events and someone’s perspective. So I said I really want to find an avenue and report on it. And I go, wait, you know what, my daily commute. I see LA different because I take the bus and subway everywhere. And the freeways are just sitting there, and people are in their cars just frustrated about it, but I’m just like sightseeing everyday. So I took that concept and said, “You know what, I’m basically going to report on what I see and interpret it.”

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The Weekly Carnage is a Friday round-up of motor vehicle violence across the five boroughs and beyond. For more on the origins and purpose of this column, please read About the Weekly Carnage.

Two passengers, including a pregnant teenager, were killed when a driver crashed into a concrete pillar on the Major Deegan Expressway. The driver also died and two others passengers were seriously injured. Photo: Daily News

Fatal Crashes (5 killed this week, 16 this year, 3 drivers charged*)

• Grant City: Colleen Mallon Dizeo, 48, Dies From Injuries After Truck Driver Runs Her Down; Police: Death Appears Accidental (Advance)
• Major Deegan Expressway: Daniela Abreu, 16; Jose Henriquez, 22; Eduardo Nunez, 30, Killed, Two Others Critically Injured in High-Speed Crash (News, Post)
• UES: 31-Year-Old Passenger Killed By Hit-and-Run Driver on FDR Drive (DNA)

Injuries, Arrests and Property Damage

• Sunset Park: Hit-and-Run Driver Critically Injures Pedestrian; Driver Later Turns Self In (News 1, 2)
• Jamaica: Pedestrian in Serious Condition After Driver Hits Him (DNA)
• Hudson Square: Cyclist Seriously Injured After Hitting Lane Divider Near Holland Tunnel (DNA)
• Forest Hills: Several Injured in Two-Car Crash on Jackie Robinson Parkway (Times Ledger)
• Williamsbridge: Pedestrian Struck Near Bronx River Parkway (DNA)
• Bulls Head: Driver Hospitalized With Life-Threatening Injuries After Crashing Into Pole (Advance)
• Greenpoint: Photos: Another Crash on McGuinness Blvd. (NY Shitty)
• SI: Police Arrest Four for DWI, One After She Crashed Into Fence, Parked Car (Advance)
• Lower Manhattan: Van Catchs Fire in Foley Square (DNA)

A 47-year-old pedestrian was seriously by a hit-and-run driver in Sunset Park and fled. The driver later surrendered to police and is charged with leaving the scene. Photo: Daily News

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The House has finished marking up its transportation bill in what shaped up to be a very Groundhog Day-esque ordeal of unending, repetitive partisan theater (if you missed it, follow coverage on twitter).

Spoiler alert. Photo: TruckinWeb

The centerpiece was yesterday’s/last night’s/this morning’s Transportation & Infrastructure committee markup, where members debated more than 80 amendments for over 18 hours before finally approving Chairman Mica’s bill, 29-24, at about 3:00 a.m. Not one Democrat voted for it, and only one Republican — Tom Petri of Wisconsin — voted against it. Energy and financing titles were also approved by their respective committees.

Streetsblog has already pointed out that there’s plenty to dislike in the bill, especially for pedestrians, cyclists, city-dwellers, transit riders, and the environmentally-conscious. But believe it or not, there are a few groups out there who still like this bill a whole lot. In fact, at today’s markup in the Ways and Means Committee, Chairman Dave Camp submitted for the record a letter of support from over 50 organizations.

It’s worth noting that the list of supporters is getting smaller. The T&I bill may have enjoyed the support of AASHTO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but both have now opposed the Ways & Means committee’s financing title. In fact, over 600 organizations have voiced their opposition to that particular bill. However, there are still some hold-outs.

For starters, there’s trucking. Bill Graves, the American Trucking Associations’ CEO, called the bill “a major step forward, not just for trucking, but for all users of our transportation system.” Graves was disappointed when new rules allowing longer, heavier trucks were put off pending further study, saying, “We hope that Congress will see that wasting taxpayer money on further study is not necessary and as this legislation moves forward, enacts these long overdue reforms.”

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In case you’re just tuning in, all that taxpayer-subsidized parking built for the new Yankee Stadium has failed beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

Yankee Stadium parking in its natural state. Photo: Daily News

In today’s Daily News, Juan Gonzalez reports that Bronx Parking Development Company LLC is expected to default this year on the $200+ million in triple-tax-exempt bonds issued by the New York City Industrial Development Agency, the financing arm of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Since the threat of default has loomed for some time now, let’s look at the more recent developments cited by Gonzalez.

The promise of jobs to be created by the garages was never that grand to begin with — 12 full-time and 70 part-time positions, with an average wage of $11 an hour. But Bronx Parking LLC is so desperate for cash, writes Gonzalez, that “the company plans to slash the salaries of a handful of full-time garage employees and to reduce the number of game-day parking attendants from 76 to 57.”

“The people who continue to pay the price for this thing are the kids who lost their park space, and now the handful of people who got jobs and are going to lose them,” says Bettina Damiani, project director of Good Jobs New York, an NGO that has tracked the stadium project from its inception.

On top of that, a proposal to lure a hotel to complement or replace the garages has apparently cratered after four developers who expressed interest in the deal wanted “major city subsidies.” Gonzalez reports that Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., who inherited the stadium parking disaster from his predecessor Adolfo Carrion, “has been pressing City Hall to come up with an emergency plan to restructure the bonds, tear down some of the garages, and replace them with low-income housing.”

How bad is it for Bronx Parking LLC? According to Gonzalez its garages are 38 percent full on Yankee game days. When the stadium is idle, they have a total of 70 regular customers for 9,000 spaces.

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Watch here without subtitles.

After sponsoring Streetfilms of the first two CicLAvias, the open streets festival in Los Angeles based on Bogota’s Ciclovia, Streetsblog LA faced a dilemma: How can we continue to cover this event that draws over a hundred thousand Angelenos to the streets?  The answer: Make a Streetfilm that was accessible to Southern California’s large Spanish-speaking population.

¡Viva CicLAvia! consists of two parts. First, narrator Mara Corina Arellano Colin explains the history and concept of Los Angeles’s amazing open streets party, including footage and photos from similar festivals in Bogota, Guadalajara, Mexico City, Brussels and Miami. While the narration is a great explanation of the benefits and culture of CicLAvia, the soul of Social Impact Consulting’s efforts are the interviews with participants.

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The House Ways and Means committee has just passed a bill that would kick transit out of the Highway Trust Fund, casting aside a 30-year history of providing a dedicated funding source for federal transit programs. Transit instead would be funded by a transfer from the general fund, which would have to be offset by cuts elsewhere to avoid raising the deficit. As US PIRG’s Dan Smith said yesterday, this is like saying that transit funding will come from the Tooth Fairy.

House Ways & Means members Dave Camp (R-WI) and Sander Levin (D-MI) do not see eye to eye on funding transit. Photo: Zimbio

The attack on transit has drawn opposition from an unprecedentedly broad coalition of over 600 groups, including many that do not often find themselves on the same side of an issue. Opponents of the bill include noted transit advocates APTA and T4America, and traditionally pro-highway groups such as AASHTO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The conservative Club for Growth has even gone so far as to make the entire House transportation package a key vote, meaning members will be rewarded for opposing the bill. Rep. John Campbell has already said he has changed his position on the package, and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) laughed at the prospect of getting a positive rating from the Club for Growth for “the first time in a while.”

An amendment proposed by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, which would have removed the provision altering transit’s revenue source, was defeated along party lines during mark up this morning. However, two Republicans — Erik Paulsen of Minnesota and Vern Buchanan of Florida — broke ranks with their party and voted against the underlying bill. The bill passed anyway by a vote of 20-17.

Despite repeated attempts by Republicans to present the bill as placing transit funding on surer footing, the bill drew vocal opposition from Democrats such as ranking member Sander Levin, who said it “undermines the very structure of the Highway Trust Fund.” Blumenauer said the bill relied on “fantasy accounting” to justify a $40 billion transfer from the general fund to cover transit, and McDermott bemoaned the lack of long-term thinking behind the bill.

Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York even asked Chairman Dave Camp if there is a precedent for the Ways and Means Committee to demand a complete restart of transportation authorization efforts. When informed that there was not, Rangel responded, “Well, you can be a leader, then.”

The letter from coalition members opposing the Ways and Means bill is after the jump.

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Today’s Jim Dwyer column in the New York Times is a nice little encapsulation of everything that can go wrong when NYC’s press corps turns its attention to matters of transportation.

The slug for the story on the metro section homepage reads: “New York often resorts to revenue-raising expedients like a lucrative new campaign to keep drivers on Broadway below Houston Street from venturing into the bus lane.”

Dwyer’s piece then uses the enforcement of the Broadway bus lane in lower Manhattan as a kind of poster child for what he sees as an excessive reliance on fines and fees in the city budget. He writes: “Whatever the virtues of bus lanes, and there are many, this one is a trap — a lucrative one.”

Dwyer’s source for claiming that the Broadway bus lane is a “trap”? Well, he doesn’t quote any transit planners with the MTA or NYC DOT, which implemented bus improvements on Broadway in 2007. He doesn’t quote any bus drivers familiar with the route. He doesn’t turn to any of the 41,000 or so passengers who ride the New York City Transit buses that ply Broadway every weekday. Instead he cites a cop who “concedes that traffic would be backed up to 14th Street if some drivers did not make their way into that Broadway bus lane.”

The other expert who turns up at the tail end of Dwyer’s piece is an anonymous state official who, “as it happens,” was pulled over for driving in the bus lane and “managed to wiggle out of the ticket.” A member of the placarded class who got busted but didn’t have to pay. Exactly the type of credible source Times readers should trust to render judgment on transportation policy. The official says of the Broadway lane: “It goes against the intent of bus lanes because it causes congestion.”

And here I thought the intent of bus lanes was to help bus passengers reach their destinations quicker. But who needs transit planners, bus drivers, and bus riders to weigh in on a bus lane when cops and anonymous state officials who drive in the bus lane are so generous with their expertise?

Go back a few years in the Times’ archive, and there’s a great explanation for why Broadway needs bus lane enforcement. From a Willie Neuman story in 2007:

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