Atlanta-area transit system 14 days from shutting down, 2 million rides disappearing
March 17, 2010By Stephen Lee Davis
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| Flyer from the Clayton County C-Tran website, which advertises their service as “Tomorrow’s Transportation Today.” |
Clayton County, one of metro Atlanta’s five core counties — Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport is partially in Clayton — will terminate all transit service in 14 days. The transit service, which provides over 2 million rides each year on buses “full to bursting” with riders, according to MARTA CEO Beverly Scott, will shut down service entirely, leaving the 50% or more of C-Tran riders with no regular access to a car stranded.
Public transportation (or anything that provides people with mobility) is really about access. It gives people access to opportunity, access to daily needs, access to a job, access to life — and maybe even the means to improve the quality of that life.
One story highlighted in October in this piece from the Atlanta Journal Constitution shows the vital connection that C-Tran makes for one Clayton County resident:
Twenty-year-old Bridget Milam takes Clayton County’s bus system, C-Tran, wherever she goes. She takes it to Brown Mackie College in Atlanta, where she’s getting an associate’s degree in early childhood education. She rides it to her job at a day care center. She has never had a car and can’t afford one now. C-Tran is her lifesaver. Not for long.
…[she] may have to put school and her day care job on hold. “It means I have to find a job closer to home, in walking distance,” she said. “It would probably be fast food.” …Milam expressed frustration that she will “have to settle rather than doing something that could further my career.”
Access to the opportunity that public transit provides can mean the difference between becoming a teacher one day — or a future of asking customers if “they’d like fries with that?”
Despite a proposal to raise fares dramatically, the deficit was still at $1.3 million, and the 5 county commissioners voted 4-1 last year to shut the service down completely, asserting in a statement that “paving roads is a primary duty of the county. Public transit isn’t.”
The Georgia Regional Transportation Authority disagreed strongly with that view. “In Georgia, local roads are a local responsibility, and local transit is a local responsibility,” GRTA Deputy Director Jim Ritchey told the AJC.
Unfortunately for Bridget Milam and thousands of others in Clayton County who depend on C-Tran each day to get to work, class, the doctor or pretty much anything else, Clayton County leaders don’t see it that way — leaving them stranded at the station come April 1.
Speeding up, cleaning up freight movement in the U.S.
March 17, 2010By Lilly Shoup
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| Container trucks on an American highway Originally uploaded by futureatlas.com |
Since Chairman Oberstar introduced the Surface Transportation Authorization Act (STAA) last summer, we’ve increasingly heard that addressing freight congestion is going to be a major component of any national transportation policy.
Projections of the increase in freight movement in the next few years are huge — total freight movements are projected to increase by 92% in the next 30 years, according to a comprehensive congressional study. Congestion on the railroad network is also forecast to spread — by 2035, thirty percent of the rail network, or 16,000 miles, will experience unstable flows and service break-down conditions.[i] Considering the strong efficiency advantage of freight rail, that’s very bad news.
We face a choice in how the nation will step up to meet the coming demand for moving goods — and how clean those solutions will be. The upcoming reauthorization of the federal transportation bill is a great opportunity to help achieve a smarter, greener freight system. The innovative freight projects highlighted in this week’s “Good Haul” report by the Environmental Defense Fund demonstrates the practical solutions that are economically smart, protect us from harmful air pollution, and provide jobs for American workers. We have a golden opportunity to focus investments on projects that use the existing freight system more efficiently and grow the economy, while improving air quality and meeting big-picture national goals.
We need to recognize the connections between goods movement systems and public health and fast track the innovative solutions that tie transportation investments that improve efficiency with those that also improve air quality. The Good Haul report demonstrates that there have been innovative projects to address both these concerns and that some regions around the country are leading the way — but none of the practices in the case studies reflect current accepted standards or federal policy.
It’s time for the nation as a whole to refocus on options to invest in clean green freight.
Here’s a glance at a few of the 28 case studies highlighted in the report:
- In Chicago, the CREATE program aims to reduce congestion and improve air quality by streamlining four major rail lines. Chicago handles 30% of rail freight revenue and expects to see an 89% increase in rail traffic over the next 30 years. The program will result in $1.12 billion in health care savings from improved air quality and will generate economic activity valued at more than $525 million. The program expects to create 2,700 annual jobs.
- In Southern California, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach launched the Clean Air Action Plan in 2006, which cleans up all areas of port activity: ships, trucks, cargo handling equipment, locomotives — even tug boats. The plan has already taken 2,000 dirty diesel trucks off the road and has created more than 3,000 jobs at the Port of LA, alone.
- In Seattle, BNSF Railway installed four electric wide-span, rail-mounted gantry cranes at the Seattle International Gateway (SIG) intermodal facility. The cranes’ wide footprints allow them to span three tracks, stack containers and load and unload both trucks and railcars. The cranes produce zero onsite emissions and have increased throughput by 30% at the facility.
- In the East, the Port of Virginia’s Green Goat hybrid yard switcher, a rail locomotive that moves short distances within a rail yard, provides fuel savings between 40-60% and is predicted to reduce nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions between 80-90% annually.
- Along the Gulf, SeaBridge freight, a coastal shipping service between Port Manatee, Florida and Brownsville, Texas avoids an average of 1,386 miles of congested highways. Compared to trucking, one SeaBridge barge has the capacity to remove 400,000 truck highway miles on a single one-way voyage.
[i] Association of American Railroads, National Rail Infrastructure Capacity and Investment Study prepared by Cambridge Systematics, Inc. (Washington, DC: September 2007), figure 4.4, page 4-10.
Today’s Headlines – 3/17/10
March 17, 2010By Sean Barry
The Senate easily passed a jobs bill that included a one-year extension of federal transportation law and $20 billion for the highway trust fund. (WP)
With fierce political resistance to a gas tax, a key House chairman proposed a federal loan to fill future trust fund gaps. (DC Velocity)
Despite supporting deep transit cuts in the past, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to veto a Democratic cuts package today. (LA Times)
At the same time, an Orange County legislator attempted to kill funding for California’s high-speed rail. (OC Weekly)
And, the right-wing Club for Growth launch radio ads attacking pro-rail legislators in Wisconsin. (Journal-Sentinel)
U.S. Transportation Department makes good on promise to ensure our streets are made safer
March 16, 2010By Stephen Lee Davis
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood issued a exciting new directive yesterday that officially shows DOT’s support for improving safety for walking and bicycling and the importance of integrating them into transportation systems — treating them as equal modes of transportation.
Last fall we released a report chronicling the tragedy of 76,000 preventable pedestrian deaths over the last 15 years. “Dangerous by Design” took a hard look at our often unsafe streets that are engineered for speeding traffic with little or no provision for people on foot, in wheelchairs or on a bicycle.
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| DSC_0376 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America |
When that report was released, we asked supporters like you across the country to sign a petition to Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood asking him to support Complete Streets at DOT, and more than 4,100 of you responded. We took that petition directly to Secretary Lahood back in November of 2008, and afterward, he told T4 America, “the right of way “belongs to pedestrians and bicyclists as well. The DOT Safety Council is going to look at this report and work with advocacy groups to ensure our streets are as safe as possible.”
Yesterday, Secretary Lahood and DOT responded by turning his words to us from November into official DOT policy with the release of a DOT “policy statement.”
The DOT policy is to incorporate safe and convenient walking and bicycling facilities into transportation projects. Every transportation agency, including DOT, has the responsibility to improve conditions and opportunities for walking and bicycling and to integrate walking and bicycling into their transportation systems. Because of the numerous individual and community benefits that walking and bicycling provide — including health, safety, environmental, transportation, and quality of life — transportation agencies are encouraged to go beyond minimum standards to provide safe and convenient facilities for these modes.
Or as he described it more simply on his Fastlane blog yesterday, “This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”
We applaud the Secretary’s work on this issue and are especially thankful for the thousands of you who wrote a letter to Congress or signed our petition to Sec. Lahood urging him to use all the powers at DOT’s disposal to make safe, complete streets the norm all across America. Your voices were heard, and policy has changed.
“This is an issue that has been ignored far too long, even as thousands have died or been injured unnecessarily just by doing something as simple as trying to cross the street,” said T4 America director James Corless.
“We thank Secretary Lahood for his leadership at DOT and for elevating this urgent issue to the level of prominence that it deserves. Americans deserve have a safe route for walking to the store, walking their kids to school, or walking to the bus stop at the end of their block to get to work. Taking these simple steps to consider the needs of everyone who uses a street — bicyclist, pedestrian, or wheelchair user — is exactly what we were hoping for when we took our message into Secretary Lahood’s office last November. It can help us stay healthier by giving us one more option for travel, and Secretary Lahood is spot-on when he says that it’s a key part of making livable neighborhoods.”
This certainly doesn’t mean that the issue is over. As Barbara McCann with the National Complete Streets Coalition reminds us, there is still no official federal requirement for complete streets on projects the feds spend money on. And only a fraction of states, cities, and towns have rules on the books requiring them to ensure the safety of all users when they build or retrofit a street or road.
DOT is saying all the right things in this statement, but they need the legislative authority and money from Congress to line up with their excellent intentions.
So we’ve taken a first step. A big, important leap into a safer world for everyone who uses our streets. But there is more left to do.
Obama’s livability programs help rural America too
March 16, 2010By Sean Barry
Is “livability” a valid proposition for big metropolitan areas alone? Some in Congress seem to think so, but we suspect that arises from a misreading of the term.
We’re talking, of course, about the Obama Administration’s initiatives for livable and sustainable communities. The President’s proposed budget allocates a modest amount of the transportation, housing and environmental protection budgets to promote planning and projects that integrate the three areas.
The idea is that investments in one should help promote goals in the other. So, for example, highway investments in a small town should have the effect of strengthening the existing Main Street rather than undermining it. Similarly, federally supported affordable housing investments should be linked up with affordable transportation, in areas served by public transit. You get the idea.
Recently, some members of Congress have expressed concern that this initiative applies only to urban areas. The truth is that rural towns and smaller cities have just as much – and very likely more – need for funds to help create smart plans and to fund innovative projects than metro areas.
Senator Mark Begich of Alaska said he worried that his small communities would be left out, and Representative Tom Latham of Iowa labeled livability programs as “boutique.” Senator Kit Bond of Missouri declared: “I’ve got a lot of constituents for whom livability means having a decent highway.”
It is certainly true that a decent highway could be a critical connection for a small town, but whether the highway makes the place more livable is very much determined by where that highway goes, the kind of development it promotes (or thwarts) and whether it is safe for older residents and children as it moves through town. These factors may determine whether the heart of that town lives or dies – as has been the case in countless towns across America.
If any place is in need of resources to make strong, smart plans and implement them well, it is rural America.
Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari said it well at a recent hearing: “it’s clear that livability really applies to rural areas as much as it does anywhere else,” adding that the standards would prioritize a revival of “the quality of life that many of us enjoy in small towns.”
No one is saying we should stop funding highways. In fact, one of the goals of livability programs and others like it is making sure we’re smart about which highways to build and which ones are in need of repair. That remains a top priority for the DOT and is reflected in the President’s budget.
We need more than one tool in the toolbox to give rural America the lift it needs. Many low-income Americans lack access to a car or have to share one with a relative. Seniors who are not longer able to drive need a means to reach groceries, health services and social events. Americans from both dense metros and wide plains struggle with long commutes and gridlocked roads that keep them away from their families.
Livability programs instruct transportation officials to look at the whole picture. Is this new road close to where people live? Does it help them get to work faster? Does it facilitate recreation and better quality of life? These are considerations that matter as much to rural Americans as anyone.
Senator Begich, Senator Bond, Representative Latham and others want what is best for their constituents. A focus on livability can help facilitate that. And one thing we do know is that the status quo no longer will.
Photo courtesy of Smart Growth America.
Today’s Headlines – 3/16/10
March 16, 2010By Sean Barry
Following an appearance at the National Bike Summit, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood declared an “end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.” (DOT Blog)
The Senate jobs bill that includes infrastructure bonds survived a Republican filibuster yesterday. (AP)
Auto commuters will switch to available and convenient transit in response to changes in gasoline prices. (TNR)
A Texas news station reports that light-rail has been more successful in Dallas compared to Houston. (ABC)
And, one of California’s longest high-speed rail advocates defends the state’s groundbreaking bond measure. (San Jose Mercury-News)
Today’s Headlines – 3/15/10
March 15, 2010By Sean Barry
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a Republican and former Congressman from Illinois, weighed in on behalf of health-care reform. (Chicago Tribune)
Air pollution in California contributes to $193 million in hospital costs, according to a Rand Corporation Study. (Green Inc.)
The San Francisco Bay Area could serve as a test case for using local fuel fees to fund transit. (NYT)
A proposed ban on Congressional earmarks toward for-profit companies would not reach many district-level transportation projects. (Hill)
And, the Washington Metro faces more tough budget choices in the weeks ahead. (WP)
Today’s Headlines – 3/12/10
March 12, 2010By Sean Barry
Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley introduced a companion bill to the Active Community Transportation Act, and he joined the Congressional Bike Caucus too. (BikePortland)
Officials in the San Francisco Bay Area want statewide transportation funding restored. (Chronicle)
There is a lot to like about a potential compromise on climate legislation, but where the revenue goes remains a key sticking point. (TNR)
Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, would “rather have my bill,” but is open to an alternative. (MotherJones)
Build America Bonds, meant to jump-start infrastructure projects, could be extended an additional 18 months. (BusinessWeek)
And, Transportation for America Director James Corless co-authored an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee today, making the case for a broad national transportation vision. (SacBee – subscription only)
Join us TODAY for a national call-in day for walking and biking
March 11, 2010By Stephen Lee Davis
| Tell your Rep to support this bill: Make a call |
Monday, we told you about a new bill in Congress from Rep. Earl Blumenauer that would help cities large and small begin to build complete active transportation networks, making it easier and more attractive to get around on foot or on bike, and most importantly, helping stem the tide of the 76,000 preventable pedestrian deaths over the last 15 years. We asked you to send a message to your Representative, and you didn’t disappoint, with thousands of messages going to offices representing districts from coast to coast.
Today, along with numerous other partners like Rails to Trails, League of American Bikers, America Bikes, and America Walks, we’re asking all of our supporters to make a phone call to your Representative to support this new bill — the Active Community Transportation Act.
With the National Bike Summit in town this week, more than 700 advocates for safe walking and biking are visiting the offices of their congressional delegations today, asking them to sponsor this bill and letting them know about all the benefits of making it easier to safely get around on foot or on bike. We want to back them up and have all of our voices heard loud and clear in the halls of Congress today.
Increasing the number of people who can safely walk or bike will reduce congestion, help cut emissions, keep Americans healthier and keep those people out there already walking and biking safe. Let your representative know that you think this bill is a great idea for your community, and for America.
Today’s Headlines – 3/11/10
March 11, 2010By Sean Barry
The White House is reviewing tougher vehicle mileage targets and tailpipe standards. (Hill)
DOT employees could be compensated for this month’s unexpected furlough days. (WP)
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told the airline industry to “get on-board” with high-speed rail. (WSJ)
“Your street is fat,” one planner says of too many non-human-scaled Southern California roadways. (Grist)
And, in a reversal from previous legislation, a new House jobs bill is dominated by direct aid to America’s cities. (Streetsblog)
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- Atlanta-area transit system 14 days from shutting down, 2 million rides disappearing
March 17, 2010 - U.S. Transportation Department makes good on promise to ensure our streets are made safer
March 16, 2010 - Obama’s livability programs help rural America too
March 16, 2010 - Transit grants out the federal door, but what about the cuts?
March 8, 2010 - Transit riders in Atlanta face massive cuts, “wholesale restructuring” of service
March 5, 2010
- Atlanta-area transit system 14 days from shutting down, 2 million rides disappearing
The United States of Transit Cutbacks
Driving is down and transit ridership is at record highs. Yet transit agencies across the country are considering layoffs, service cuts and fare hikes. Find out more and learn what you can do to help at t4america.org/transitcuts
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