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Secretary Ray LaHood on the the Daily Show with Jon Stewart

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood was the guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night, and got an easy question right off the bat. When asked by Stewart about how a high-powered CEO could get from New York to D.C. “when it’s foggy out,” alluding to the three Wall Street CEOs who had their plane grounded in last week’s fog, missing a meeting with the President, Ray LaHood gave a simple answer.

“Amtrak runs in the fog,” he said.

Watch to the end for LaHood’s plug for the investments in high speed passenger rail. The applause that follows certainly sounded organic — like a group of people who are excited about one day getting to ride speedy passenger rail from city to city.

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Still time to register for today’s discussion on conservatives and public transportation

What is the conservative rationale for providing efficient public transportation? Some conservatives would likely suggest that the entire concept is an oxymoron. Conservatives William Lind and the late Paul Weyrich believe otherwise.

This is the final post in a three-part series on Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation, the subject of an online debate later today (at 3 p.m. Eastern, register now!) Panelists include co-author Lind, mass transit critic Sam Staley, director of urban and land use policy at the Reason Foundation; John Robert Smith, president and CEO of Reconnecting America and former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi; and Bill Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).

The authors identify four elements to their conservative vision for good public transport: coverage, frequency, ease of connection and a preference for rail over buses.

In a previous post, we noted the community-building element of public transportation and how that exemplified a conservative value few would fault. There is also the element of preserving — or, in some cases, reviving — what has worked in the past. Many of America’s greatest cities not only have a tradition of robust transportation infrastructure, but they also contain a historic built environment with untapped potential.

“As conservatives, we want to revive America’s older, industrial cities,” the authors note. “Older cities have lots of infrastructure that can be built on. Conservatives prefer building on what exists to creating vast systems from nothing (at vast cost).”

While lining up with many traditional conservative principles, the notions of preserving resources, building on existing traditions and making good use of what we have are goals most can support.

As conservatives, Weyrich and Lind do not speak the language of visionary social programs and even say they “desire no new technology.” Yet they reach the same conclusion as others in increasing public transportation investment as a means to achieve both economic and social ends.

We hope you’ll join us at 3 p.m. today.

Pew: “Self-sustaining” highways are increasingly subsidized

-- LA highway Critics of public transportation often cling to the canard that government should not subsidize a transportation option that cannot pay for itself. These naysayers reference “self-sustaining” roads and highways, which receive funding from user-fees – in this case, the federal gas tax.

A new study conducted by SubsidyScope, an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts, reveals that not only are roads and highways not self-sustaining, but the amount covered by gas taxes has been declining — leaving an increasing amount of their massive cost to be subsidized. Pew projections – using Federal Highway Administration numbers – show user fees contributing a slim majority of the revenue to the Highway Trust Fund, with the difference made up through bonds and General Fund dollars. Public transportation does, as the critics assert, operate “at a loss,” but so do roadways (see chart below, courtesy of Subsidyscope).

The researchers wrote: “In 2007, 51 percent of the nation’s $193 billion set aside for highway construction and maintenance was generated through user fees — down from 10 years earlier when user fees made up 61 percent of total spending on roads. The rest came from other sources, including revenue generated by income, sales and property taxes, as well as bond issues.” Forty-years ago, they noted, user-fees generated 71 percent of highway revenues.

Of the 18.4 cent federal gasoline tax, 2.86 cents – about 15 percent – is directed toward mass transit projects, and an additional 0.1 cent toward environmental clean-up, according to the report. That leaves more than 80 percent strictly for highways. Even if we spent 100 percent of gas tax revenues on highways, only 65 percent of their total cost would be covered. There would still be a need for significant outside revenue – in other words, subsidies. Does that mean highways are “government waste?” Or are transportation dollars an investment to provide access to jobs and movement of goods?

One reason for the decline of the user-fee’s contribution is that the gas tax has not kept pace with inflation. Today, there is limited political appetite for a gas tax increase. Americans are also driving cleaner cars than they used to, due in large part of federal action on fuel economy. Less gas purchased means lower gas tax revenues.

So, to the critics who seem to be against all subsidies — unless they’re going to cover highway projects: let’s drop the claim that highways “pay for themselves” and have a debate rooted in fact rather than myth.

highway_funds_chart

Secretary LaHood takes on Senator Coburn’s “stimulus waste”

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood didn’t pull any punches in a blog post yesterday about one senator’s “stimulus waste” list.

Senator Tom Coburn is a persistent critic of transportation “enhancements” and the author of a failed amendment earlier this year to strip bicycle and pedestrian projects from a spending bill. His latest waste list includes two bike paths. Coburn told the Washington Times, “When we run $1.4 trillion deficits, the money we spend ought to be a high priority for the American people as a whole.” To which LaHood retorts: “What he really means is that, because he doesn’t get bikes, no one else does either.”

LaHood goes on to cite an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act project extending a bike trail between downtown Minneapolis and the new Minnesota Twins stadium.

“I guess a better connection to Minneapolis’s central business district doesn’t count as infrastructure to some folks,” the secretary wrote. In fact, projects aimed at improving biking, walking and livability are central to both economic recovery, livability and future prosperity.

“We don’t call that waste,” LaHood concluded. “We call it progress.”

Walkscore innovators turn to improving public transportation

Front Seat, the civic software company responsible for the massively popular Walkscore service, launched a new project today aimed at encouraging public transportation ridership. The project makes transit agency schedule data available, accessible, and open to developers so they can create applications to make it easier to ride. CityGoRound.org is a new portal where you can find the many applications developers have created to ease and increase the convenience of riding transit. Their mission, outlined on a newly launched site today, is very simple:

Our mission is to help make public transit more convenient. For example, an app that lets you know when your bus will arrive is way better than standing outside waiting for 20 minutes. If we can make public transit more convenient, more people will ride public transit. More people riding public transit equals less driving. Less driving equals a healthier planet.

To accomplish that, they’re doing three things: cataloging the hundreds of smartphone/web applications people have created to make riding public transit easier, putting pressure on agencies across the country that have not released their public data, and raising awareness of the need for government agencies to open up their data.

By typing in your zip code at CityGoRound.org, you may find, for example, apps that have taken publicly available transit agency schedule data and turned it into a slick iPhone or web app you can check on the go to find out when that next bus is coming, or when the next train will be headed your direction. One major barrier to riding transit is the learning curve that comes with unfamiliar schedules or service. If you’ve never ridden the bus home from work, are you going to wait in the snow at 8 p.m. for your first try, hoping you understood the posted timetable correctly?

The openness of government data might sound like something that only techies need to worry about, but more openness in government both increases accountability to the people and makes services more available and convenient for the public. Just this week, President Obama announced a new comprehensive open government plan, establishing parameters for all federal agencies to open up their operations — and their taxpayer-funded data — to the public.

“We are calling on transit agencies nationwide to open their data and follow the lead of the Open Government Directive issued this week by the White House,” said Mike Mathieu, Founder and Chairman of Front Seat. “City-Go-Round’s transit apps are a concrete example of how open data can improve citizens’ lives on a daily basis.”

Go check out the site today. If your city’s agency doesn’t provide open data for public transportation, they have a petition there you can sign to find out how to get involved in making that happen.

Front Seat created the service with the Transit Developers Group, generously supported with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Conservatives and public transportation — join us on Monday the 14th

Conservatives and Public Transportation book cover

UPDATED: This session has been rescheduled for 12/14. If you already signed up with the link below, you won’t need to do a thing, and should get an email from us.

“As conservatives, our first principle is the reality principle,” wrote William Lind and the late Paul Weyrich in Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation. “Public policy must be based on reality, not on the fairy-tale wishes so beloved by liberals.”

Left-leaning transit advocates need not be insulted.

The authors are simply trying to talk about public transportation in ways that appeal to right-of-center allies. If your interest is piqued, you’ll definitely want to join us for an online debate next Monday, December 7, December 14th in which a handful of experts, including co-author Lind, will discuss — and debate — the ideas contained in the book. Register for the debate here.

Reality-based planning can find appeal across political persuasions because everybody relies on America’s transportation system in one form or another. Even people who don’t use public transportation on a regular basis receive numerous benefits from its expansion, the authors point out. The reason? More rail passengers means less traffic congestion and faster commute times, a win-win.

In Salt Lake County, Utah, for instance, supporters of a referendum on light rail developed a campaign aimed at non-transit riders with the simple message: “even if you don’t ride it, you use it.” One ad focused on an automobile wheel moving along faster because of less crowded roads, while another emphasized the advantages of less traffic congestion, the authors noted.

They offer three concrete reasons in the book for why transit is good for non-riders. The first is the reduction in road gridlock. The second is “the big football game” or the car being in the shop or some other circumstance that creates the need for an alternative. The third reason is that lower congestion and better transit access actually raises property values and improves quality of life.

The authors make several peripheral points as well, such as the influence of heavy subsidies and market distortions on the prevalence of auto-oriented, low-density growth — a concept getting some notoriety in the last week.

“Every urban and suburban area should offer two alternate building codes, one the current ‘sprawl’ code and the other a code that allows traditional neighborhood design, where living, working and shopping are all close by each other,” the authors argue. “Which code will prevail? Let the market decide!”

Weyrich and Lind also reject the oft-prevailing wisdom that the “obvious” solution to traffic congestion is building more roads or lanes. When more lanes are made available, people who would not have driven otherwise make additional trips, inducing demand and resulting in yet more gridlock — the exact problem that the lanes were supposed to solve.

There is no unanimity about public transport among conservatives. One right-leaning mass transit critic is Sam Staley, director of urban and land use policy at the Reason Foundation. He will appear alongside Lind in Monday’s debate, along with John Robert Smith, president and CEO of Reconnecting America and former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi; and Bill Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).

We hope you’ll join us too. Register today.

TIME Magazine features Dangerous by Design report on pedestrian safety, culminating three weeks of coverage nationwide

This week’s issue of TIME Magazine topped off three weeks of nationwide coverage of Transportation for America’s Dangerous by Design report ranking communities according to the risk for pedestrians.

The excellent TIME piece opens with the tragic story of Ashley Nicole Valdes, “a smart, pretty 11-year-old girl” who was killed while crossing the street in Miami earlier this year and became “a heart-wrenching symbol of South Florida’s notoriously reckless car culture.”

Florida was identified in the report as being the most dangerous for pedestrians. “You see all these people getting run over,” said Ashley’s mother, Adonay Risete, “and you ask yourself: What’s happened to us as people here? We need to get tougher and change attitudes.”

The phenomenal response to Dangerous by Design is a hopeful sign that change may be under way.

More than 150 newspapers, 300 TV broadcasts and 50 radio programs have covered the report, co-authored by the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, since its release three weeks ago. The report’s findings speak to the need for action: America has a pedestrian fatality rate equivalent to a jumbo jet full of passengers crashing every 31 days. This decade alone, 43,000 Americans – including 3,906 children under 16 – have been killed while walking or crossing the street.

We could make great strides on pedestrian safety by adopting “complete streets” policies, ensuring that roads are designed to be safe and accessible for everyone who uses them, whether motorist, bicyclist, transit rider or pedestrian. You can help by asking your member of Congress to support the pending national Complete Streets Act.

Meanwhile, more than 100 communities and states have adopted such policies, and more are coming. One of the report’s greatest success stories was the swift action of officials in Southwest Florida’s Lee County, who adopted a resolution in support of Complete Streets within 48 hours of the report’s release, and just one day after the local Ft. Myers News-Press editorialized in favor of the policy.

Dangerous by Design was covered extensively in both national and local media, including National Public Radio, TIME Magazine, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, Baltimore Sun, Houston Chronicle, Consumer Affairs, Orlando Sentinel, Detroit Free Press, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and dozens more.

The Kansas City-Star wrote that the Kansas City metropolitan area’s “widely dispersed population and auto-oriented development are doing no favors for pedestrian safety.”

The Minnesota Daily wrote: “With the implementation of Complete Streets…streets wouldn’t be something we simply drove through, but the destination itself.”

And, the Billings Gazette in Montana drew on the experience of T4 America partner Dr. Michael Vlases to link transportation safety and health. “Bringing walking back into daily urban life is not just about aesthetics,” Vlases told the Gazette. “It’s a matter of public health.”

The “room for improvement” designation easily goes to Harris County, Texas, which according to the Houston Chronicle, “has a policy of not installing sidewalks when it builds a new road, unless a group or city provides the extra money. ‘It’s an expense that doesn’t have to do with transportation,’ said Mark Seegers, a spokesman for Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia. ‘The county does not do sidewalks; it’s not what gets cars from point A to point B.’”

Harris County serves as a reminder of how much work there is to be done.

The steering committee for Dangerous by Design included the American Public Health Association, Smart Growth America, AARP, America Bikes, America Walks, the Safe Routes to School National Partnership and the National Complete Streets Coalition. T4 America is indebted to these partners for their work helping create and release this report.

Conservatives and public transportation; join us for an upcoming debate

UPDATED: This session has been rescheduled for 12/14. If you already signed up with the link below, you won’t need to do a thing, and should get an email from us about the change.

Everyone has to get from point A to point B at some point each day. Though most people don’t rate it as one of their most important issues, transportation is something that affects everyone, whether we realize it or not.

If you are not convinced that the need for transportation reform is an issue that transcends labels and partisanship, you’ll definitely want to join us for what should be an interesting online debate/discussion on Monday, December 7 December 14. A handful of experts from differing perspectives are going to discuss the viewpoints shared in a recent book by William Lind and the late Paul Weyrich called “Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation.”

William Lind, one of the book’s co-authors, will be expanding on the arguments made in his book; that public transportation is something conservatives should embrace, because it can protect national security, promote economic development, support tight-knit communities and reduce congestion; and how many libertarians and conservatives often ignore the fact that our interstate highway system has been a massively subsidized project, made possible only through heavy government intervention.

Sam Staley, a critic of mass transit who serves as director of urban and land use policy at the libertarian Reason Foundation, will provide an alternative perspective to Lind. We’ll also have John Robert Smith, president and CEO of Reconnecting America and former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi; and Bill Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).

Join us online for the debate on Monday, December 7 December 14 at 3:00 p.m. (Eastern)

The tone of the book by Lind and Weyrich, published jointly by the Free Congress Foundation and Reconnecting America, is perhaps best captured by former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, a Republican, who writes in the forward: “why do academic conservatives seem to believe that all transit is bad, when as a real-world conservative, I know it isn’t?”

Weyrich and Lind do a thorough job of knocking down myths peddled by some right-wing groups, like the “decline” of bus and light-rail. Many of these numbers are attributable to policy choices that gave preference or hefty subsidies to the automobile. Building codes and tax policy, for instance, have effectively subsidized auto-oriented growth for decades.

The authors are also unafraid to take a jab or two at some of the libertarian think tanks that regularly oppose funding for public transportation. Many of these critics decry support for light rail and bus systems as “subsidies,” but when offering their own proposals, often ignore the evidence that building more interstates or highways requires massive government support as well.

While critics like to label light rail projects as social engineering, it is hard not to look at our current transportation system without coming to the same conclusion, Weyrich and Lind argue.

“In no other society in history have places to live, places to work and places to shop been separated from one another, separated so widely that you need a car to get from one to another.”

There’s a old argument that transit must be a waste of money, because it carries only a small percentage of all trips. As Lind points out in the Streetfilms video below, the critics are disingenuously comparing apples to oranges. 1/2 of all Americans have no access to transit. And of the half that do, 1/2 of those say that the service is inadequate or unsatisfactory. If you break it down to a corridor where transit is available as a viable option to automobile travel (“transit competitive trips, as Lind calls it”), public transportation may be carrying a number closer to 40% of the total trips.

Weyrich and Lind make a thorough economic case for public transportation, offering superb guidance for making a compelling case to a conservative for supporting public transportation. But they also introduce a cultural element that is equally compelling. To them, reviving downtown streetcars or beefing up bus service does more than bring people to their destination and fuel development. It adds “flavor” and lifeblood to urban centers, spawning community. This may be a conservative sentiment, but it’s one that appeals to a broad audience.

Streetfilms had a chance to interview William Lind at the recent Rail~Volution conference in Boston about his book and produced this terrific short video that is a must-watch.

Stephen Lee Davis contributed to this post.

Secretary LaHood receives your message loud and clear, responds in kind

DSC_0348 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Secretary Ray LaHood holds the petition from Transportation for America and thousands of supporters while flanked by T4 America campaign director James Corless, left, and Barbara McCann of the National Complete Streets Coalition Monday afternoon at USDOT

Just a week after the release of Dangerous by Design, our report on the epidemic of pedestrian deaths, Transportation for America and six of our key partners had the opportunity to meet with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. During the meeting yesterday, we delivered a petition with thousands of signatures urging him to make pedestrian safety and complete streets a USDOT priority.

He responded with resounding support, telling T4 America, “the right of way doesn’t just belong to cars — it belongs to pedestrians and bicyclists as well.”

He added, “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.”

After Dangerous by Design was released last Monday, we asked for your help sending a strong message to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that safer, complete streets must be a priority at USDOT. The response was fantastic. In just five days, we received more than 4,100 signatures from people in 47 U.S. states on a petition to Secretary LaHood.

Due in part to the massive media coverage that Dangerous by Design received last week from coast to coast, we were able to set up this meeting with the Secretary and three of his top deputies to present him with the petition, talk about the report and discuss the urgency of pedestrian and bicycle safety. With the petition and a copy of Dangerous by Design in front of him, LaHood listened intently as T4 America’s James Corless and others talked about the epidemic of preventable deaths — and what we can do to turn the tide and keep pedestrians safe.

DSC_0334_2 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Secretary LaHood was hopeful that federal transportation policy can better accommodate all users and keep them safe, and that now is the right time to make that change.

“I think this Congress gets it now,” Secretary LaHood told us. “Certainly in part because of advocates like you.” He acknowledged that making the streets in our communities safe and accommodating for everyone dovetails well with the Obama administration’s focus on livability.

He stressed that safety is the top consideration for everything they do at USDOT and urged T4 America to take the report directly to Congress as they continue discussions on the full six-year transportation bill. He also asked for more copies of Dangerous by Design (on their way, Mr. Secretary!)

Transportation for America was joined in the meeting by partners from America Bikes, the American Public Health Association, AARP, the National Complete Streets Coalition, the Safe Routes to School National Partnership and Smart Growth America.

View the entire set of photos from the meeting in our Flickr stream, and check back here later today for some more comments on the meeting.

DSC_0376 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Barbara McCann of the National Complete Streets Coalition, right, tells Secretary LaHood a story from Cary, Illinois about Nate Oglesby, a young man who was killed in 2000 on his bicycle because he was crossing the only bridge over the Fox River — one that had no safe lanes for pedestrians. (Two other teens had died there previously.) Lanes were eventually added to the bridge at significant cost, but as McCann noted, “it would have saved money and lives to have just done it right in the first place.” Complete Streets policies would ensure that the needs of all users are considered during the planning phase of a project.

Rural Senators focus on heartland transit

--Amtrak How could a new transportation bill revitalize rural and small-town America? That was the focus of a Senate Democratic Steering Committee briefing on “Issues and Innovations for Small Towns and Rural Communities” in the Capitol Visitors Center last Friday.

Transportation for America co-chair and former Meridian, Mississippi Mayor John Robert Smith shared his perspective as chief executive of a mid-sized city in a rural area. During his tenure, Smith initiated a renovation of Meridian’s historic train station, sparking growth and economic vitality in the downtown corridor that is now the “life of Meridian.” The improvements that he championed resulted in $135 million in capital investments around the station, and property values quadrupled in an area previously devoid of residents. More importantly, a vital aspect of mobility was restored for all residents of the area. Knowing firsthand how vital Amtrak service was to Mississippians, especially many traveling on fixed budgets, he helped lead the fight to restore the train route between Atlanta and New Orleans, and has continued his advocacy for passenger rail travel ever since.

Rural and small-town residents throughout the country are seeking more transportation options and want to ensure that they’re not left behind. Briefing panelists emphasized that transportation reform, far from leaving the heartland in the dust, can actually encourage growth and improve quality of life.

For one thing, improving rural transportation helps seniors. In 2000, 23 percent of older adults in America lived in rural areas, and as they age, they risk being isolated in their homes in the absence of adequate transportation infrastructure. Broader accessibility is a challenge as well due to long distances some rural Americans must travel to reach employment, groceries and health services. And, intercity mobility remains limited in many parts of the country, cutting people off from friends, family and economic opportunity. During the briefing, Mayor Smith spoke not only about the economic benefits of revitalizing the area around the train station, but also about the transit service that connected low-income residents in Meridian’s HOPE VI housing development, ensuring their access to essential destinations.

Enhancing transportation safety, relieving highway congestion by shifting goods movement to freight rail, investing in public buses and paratransit services and increasing intercity and multi-modal connectivity are some potential solutions for small cities and rural regions. T4 America staff have partnered with National Association of Counties and the National Association of Development Organizations, both of which were represented at the briefing, to help promote these solutions as vital parts of the upcoming transportation bill.

Far from leaving rural America out, a much-needed overhaul to our nation’s transportation policy can in fact provide a needed lifeline and help rural areas and smaller towns succeed as vital, livable places for all.

Rochelle Carpenter of Transportation for America contributed to this report.

Last week’s elections a net plus for public transportation

Last Tuesday’s election results were a win for public transit, although high-profile state and national races stole most of the headlines. According to the Center for Transportation Excellence, 72 percent of transportation ballot measures received voter approval on November 3.

November’s ballot included seven measures in five states – Colorado, Indiana, Maine, Michigan and Ohio. Voters ultimately approved $74 million for transportation and rejected measures to delay transit projects, most notably a measure in Cincinnati aimed at blocking a planned streetcar line. The pro-transit incumbent in Cincinnati, Mayor Mark Mallory, was re-elected and voters in Charlotte, North Carolina elected transit advocate Anthony Foxx over an opponent who has been less supportive of transportation choices.

Two states – Maine and Washington – rejected initiatives known as TABOR measures. If passed, these would have imposed harsh spending limits on state governments, potentially forcing deep cuts to public transportation.

Starting tomorrow, the Center for Transportation Excellence is launching a free, six-part webinar series aimed at helping transportation organizations and advocates get measures on the ballot and win. The first part, scheduled for Friday, November 13 is themed “Election Trends: Learning from the Past and Looking to the Future.” Future webinars include “Building a Winning Coalition,” “Making Your Message Better” and “Silencing the Naysayers.”

CFTE maintains comprehensive records of transit politics throughout the country. Their website, http://www.cfte.org is a terrific resource.

Help us send a message to Secretary LaHood and the USDOT

As our new Dangerous by Design report illustrates, pedestrian safety is a matter of life or death for thousands of Americans each year. With a loss of life equivalent to a jumbo jet going down roughly each month, it is a tragedy that simply does not get enough attention at any level of government. Tragic, because these are preventable deaths, largely on roads that are not safe for walking or biking.

As a follow-up on the release of the report, Transportation for America is working to arrange a meeting with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, perhaps as soon as next week. At this meeting, we plan to deliver the message from our hundreds of partner organizations and thousands of supporters across the country that safer streets must be a priority!

Sign our petition today and help us send a strong message to the USDOT!

Secretary LaHood has already demonstrated a strong interest in safety with a distracted driving initiative and the creation of a new Safety Council, and we have praised his vocal commitment to livability in our towns and communities. Because the Department of Transportation holds the purse strings, if Secretary LaHood adds Complete Streets to his list of safety priorities, we can ensure that every road project facilitates safe travel for everyone — including vulnerable pedestrians.

So if you have not yet signed the petition, go and sign it now so we can take an enormous stack with names from across the country to Secretary LaHood soon. This is our chance to make a big impression and to let him and the DOT know how many of you care about making our streets safer for everyone.

If you have signed the petition already, be sure to post it to Twitter or Facebook with the links below, or tell a friend about it.

Post about this action on Twitter!

Post a link to your Facebook profile

New York City sees biking go in one direction — up!

All of the videos from Streetfilms are certainly worth watching, but we wanted to call out special attention to this one, especially on the heels of the Dangerous by Design release yesterday morning. With nearly 5,000 people dying every year on our roads while walking or biking, some cities are working hard to bring those numbers down by making biking (and walking) safer and more convenient.

New York City is one of those places. If you looked at the detailed rankings of the largest 52 metro areas in Dangerous by Design, you might have seen that New York is already one of the safest metros in the country when measured with the Pedestrian Danger Index. Part of the reason for that is the relatively low number of fatalities when compared against the high percentage of people who walk to work in the metro area. But that doesn’t mean it’s inherently safe. New York City has the largest share of pedestrians dying in traffic accidents in the country, with pedestrians making up a whopping 31% of all traffic fatalities.

So for the last few years, the City has been committed to making the public realm and their streets safer for walking and biking, and the numbers are bearing it out in a positive way. Watch this encouraging video from the gang at Streetfilms chronicling the huge rise in the numbers of people bicycling in the Big Apple.

Mayor John Robert Smith on urgency and the upcoming transport bill

Aaron Renn of the Urbanophile interviewed T4 America co-chair Mayor John Robert Smith at the Rail~Volution conference a few days ago in Boston, Mass., and shot this short video highly worth watching. Mayor Smith was the longtime mayor of his hometown of Meridian, Mississippi, where he worked tirelessly to open the state’s first multi-modal transportation hub in downtown Meridian along the Amtrak line that travels through. He gave an inspiring speech at our platform release earlier this year before coming to Washington, D.C., to serve as the T4 America co-chair and president of Reconnecting America.

Aaron says:

I was able to catch up with John Robert Smith, CEO of Reconnecting America, and he recorded a short two minute video for me. If you only watch one of the videos I post, make it this one. He makes two incredibly important points that are too often overlooked when it comes to the livable cities agenda. The first is that we need to build an urban-small town-rural coalition around a new transportation policy. The other is that these issues are, or should be, non-partisan.

Thanks to Aaron for the video.

Dangerous by Design

What would the national reaction be if a jumbo jet full of passengers went down with regularity every 31 days or so? How loud would the calls be for a fundamental change in airline safety? It’s easy to imagine the shock and outrage if such a thing happened. Yet that is essentially what happens every year with preventable pedestrian fatalities on our nation’s streets and roads.

Every year, nearly 5,000 Americans die preventable deaths on roads that fail to provide safe conditions for pedestrians. This decade alone, more than 43,000 Americans – including 3,906 children under 16 – have been killed while walking or crossing a street in our communities. With more than 76,000 Americans dying in the last 15 years, it’s the equivalent of a jumbo jet going down roughly every month, yet it receives nothing like that kind of attention.

A new report from Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, Dangerous by Design: Solving the Epidemic of Preventable Pedestrian Death (and Making Great Neighborhoods), ranks metropolitan areas based on the relative danger of walking.

Download the full report, see the comprehensive rankings and view all of the companion tables of data online right here: https://t4america.org/resources/dangerousbydesign. After you’ve taken a look, ask U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to make pedestrian safety a priority for the administration. Pedestrian deaths are preventable, and we demand safer streets!

Many of these preventable deaths are occurring along roadways that are dangerous by design, streets engineered for speeding cars with little or no provision for people on foot, in wheelchairs or on a bicycle.

YikesPedestrian Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Look carefully in the turning lane above the center of the photograph. There’s a pedestrian trying to cross this 7-lane urban arterial road. See any crosswalks anywhere on the road? Photo courtesy of Dan Burden.

Over the last several decades, many of our cities and communities have seen the same shift of daily business from walkable, downtown Main Streets to wide, fast-moving state highways. These “arterial” roads are the new main streets in most communities, drawing shopping centers, drive-throughs, apartment complexes and office parks. Unlike the old walkable main streets, however, the pressure to move as many cars through these areas as quickly as possible has led transportation departments to squeeze in as many lanes as they can, while disregarding sidewalks, crosswalks and crossing signals, on-street parking, and even street trees in order to remove impediments to speeding traffic.

As a result, more than half of fatal vehicle crashes occurred on these wide, high capacity and high-speed thoroughfares. Though dangerous, these arterials are all but unavoidable because they are the trunk lines carrying most local traffic and supporting nearly all the commercial activity essential to daily life.

Before the top 10 most dangerous city rankings, here are just a few facts you might like to know:

Inadequate facilities. Of the 9,168 pedestrian fatalities in 2007-08 for which the location of the collision is known, more than 40 percent were killed where no crosswalk was available.

Spending disparity. Though pedestrian fatalities make up 11.8 percent of all traffic-related fatalities, states have allocated less than 1.5 percent of total authorized transportation funds to projects aimed at improving safety for pedestrians (for funds spent under current transportation bill.) No state spends more than 5 percent of federal transportation funds on safety features or programs for pedestrians or cyclists, despite a 30 percent increase in total federal transportation dollars beginning in 2005.

Complete streets save lives. Providing sidewalks, crosswalks and designing for lower traffic speeds saves lives. Only one in 10 pedestrians deaths occurred within crosswalks, while six in 10 occurred on arterial-type roads where speeds were 40 mph or higher.

The danger is not shared equally. Older adults, disabled and low-income Americans are being killed at disproportionate rates. African-Americans, who walk for 50 percent more trips than whites, and Hispanic residents, who walk 40 percent more, are subjected to the least safe conditions and die disproportionately.

Aging in place, yet unable to leave the house on foot. An AARP poll of adults 50 years and older found that 40 percent reported inadequate sidewalks in their neighborhoods and nearly half of respondents reported that they could not safely cross the main roads close to their home.

Rank	Metropolitan Area	2007-08 Pedestrian Danger Index
1	Orlando-Kissimmee, Fla.	221.5
2	Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla.	205.5
3	Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, Fla.	181.2
4	Jacksonville, Fla.	157.4
5	Memphis, Tenn.-Miss.-Ark.	137.7
6	Raleigh-Cary, N.C.	128.6
7	Louisville/Jefferson County, Ky.-Ind.	114.8
8	Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Texas	112.4
8	Birmingham-Hoover, Ala.	110.0
10	Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Ga.	108.3

	See the full rankings and download the report

Bay Area bridge shutdown puts transportation network in the spotlight

San_Francisco-Bay_Bridge01 Even in the San Francisco Bay Area, a renowned transit hub with higher than average rates of walking, biking and transit ridership, more than 280,000 vehicles cross the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge every day. It’s a critical artery connecting downtown San Francisco with the thousands of residents who live in Oakland and the surrounding suburbs.

It is thus understandable that panic ensued after a part snapped off in high winds and fell onto the roadway, resulting in a complete shutdown of the Bay Bridge early Tuesday. Thankfully, though at least two vehicles either ran into or hit the fallen part, no injuries resulted. As of this morning, the bridge remains closed without a date certain for re-opening.

The Bay Bridge was last closed down over Labor Day weekend, during which engineers discovered an unexpected crack. This structural flaw nearly delayed the bridge from reopening on-time, but crews received the needed materials in just enough time for the post-weekend morning commute.

It was one of those last minute repair pieces that broke off Tuesday, although engineers could not say whether the Labor Day rush had anything to do with it. Heavy winds are another potential culprit — hardly an uncommon occurrence in the Bay Area, however.

Once the bridge was closed, the immediate focus shifted to the Wednesday morning commute. Prognosticators were predicting mass chaos and never-ending gridlock as far as the eye could see on Wednesday morning.

Officials with the BART subway system arranged for extra train cars and personnel to accommodate the expected surge in passengers, leading to a record day of ridership that crushed the previous high water mark. Ferry agencies across the Bay ramped up service and Amtrak is providing a shuttle. MUNI, AC Transit, and other local agencies also stepped up rates of service and frequency to meet the demand.

“When the Bay Bridge closed we saw a 49 percent spike in transit use. Thank goodness we had that transit option there.”

– Federal Transit Adminstration Administrator Peter Rogoff today at the Rail~Volution Conference

Despite similar predictions of chaos and gridlock, commuters, transit agencies and officials effectively coped with the collapse of a major overpass near the Bay Bridge in April 2007. Many drivers quickly developed alternate routes or shifted their schedule, BART was effective at expanding capacity and major thoroughfares were crowded, but not gridlocked.

Media accounts accounts for this week indicate Bay Area officials have handled the shutdown relatively smoothly, especially considering how many vehicles use this bridge every day. BART trains were filled to capacity and the Richmond-San Rafael and San Mateo-Hayward bridges — both adjacent to the Bay Bridge — were jammed with cars but still moving, albeit at a sluggish pace.

As far as we can tell, California Department of Transportation officials have been responsive and responsible about safety and structural integrity. It is important they be given the time to get this right.

But even if the time crunch during Labor Day weekend did not contribute to the problem, it should be cause for concern. In too many transportation projects, safety is shelved in favor of speed and grandeur. Part of the Bay Area’s ability to cope is the investment they’ve made in a variety of transportation options and modes. Which begs the question, how would metropolitan areas that lack these alternatives fare if a similar incident occurred?

Diversity of options isn’t just about cutting emissions or reducing fuel consumption. A complete network is one that can continue functioning when a few parts go down. A city dependent completely on cars and interstates (or 1 or 2 transit lines) is a vulnerable city.

Across America, children, seniors, the disabled and people who do not or cannot drive are at risk due to unsafe streets and crumbling sidewalks. We cannot afford to spend untold billions on new projects if we cannot keep old ones from crumbling. Including strong “fix-it first” language in the transportation bill re-authorization would ensure that existing roads and bridges get the upgrades they need to keep commuters and all users safe.

In addition, the Critical Asset Investment Program proposed in Chairman Oberstar’s transportation bill would create a substantial, dedicated funding stream for maintaining roads and bridges, preventing states from diverting those funds to more political popular highway expansion projects. This program would also require transit agencies to show how they are maintaining their systems and keeping them in “a state of good repair.”

The Bay Area will get through this. But the incident is a reminder that transportation policy cannot be a piecemeal, crisis-to-crisis endeavor.

Bay Area business leaders push the Senate for clean transportation

Carl Guardino 1 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Carl Guardino, president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a T4 America partner, addresses a gathering at a recent reception hosted by T4 America that brought together administration officials and supporters.

An organization representing more than 300 elite Silicon Valley businesses from Apple to Yahoo! sent a letter last week to Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, urging her to make sure the Senate climate bill adequately invests in clean transportation alternatives to reduce emissions in their region while keeping it mobile and competitive.

The Silicon Valley Leadership Group, made up of mostly tech-focused organizations in Silicon Valley, works to enhance economic competitiveness and maintain a high quality of life for the region. SVLG members employ more than 250,000 people in the Valley and generate more than $1 trillion worth of business each year. (SVLG is a partner of Transportation for America.)

Started in the 1970’s by the founder of Hewlett Packard, they recognize that investments in transit and safe, accessible, walkable neighborhoods are keys to their continued economic success and ability to lure smart and talented workers to the region.

In the letter, president Carl Guardino thanked Chairman Boxer for her leadership on the issue of climate change, and pointed out that California will need to make a large investment in cleaner transportation options if they are going to have any chance of meeting the ambitious reductions proposed in the climate bill:

Transportation represents the fastest growing source of national greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and the largest single source in California, accounting for 40% of emissions. In Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, that number is higher still – 51% of GHG’s.

House bill, H.R. 2454 (Waxman/Markey), recognizes the importance of reducing transportation emissions by requiring states and metropolitan areas adopt new planning requirements and GHG reduction goals. However, the bill provides virtually no allowances for this purpose. Without adequate funding to address transportation’s increasing contribution to climate change, we will not be able to rise and meet this challenge.

The debate over the Senate’s climate bill is expected to heat up in the next few days as Chairman Boxer’s Senate committee releases the numbers showing where the allocations from the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act will be directed.

Transportation for America, our 28,000 supporters and 350+ partners like SVLG have been calling on the Senate to direct 10 percent of the funding to clean transportation alternatives.

The Senate bill will require states and cities to reduce emissions from transportation. Giving them 5-10% of the revenues will give them the tools they need to make investments in clean transportation alternatives, like public transportation and passenger rail, affordable neighborhoods around transit stops and neighborhood projects that increase safety for cyclists and pedestrians.

Click the jump to read through the entire letter from the SVLG.

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Local regions serve as laboratories for transportation reform

Salt Lake City's light-rail line. A “comprehensive, but bottom-up approach to transportation” may sound like an oxymoron, but to a panel of regional planning experts on the frontlines of reform, it sounds a lot like common sense.

Tuesday’s briefing, titled “Planning for a Better Future: Lessons from the States on Regional Sustainability Planning” featured experts from three regional laboratories on transportation reform – Sacramento, CA; Salt Lake City, UT (right); and Minneapolis, MN.

The American Planning Association and LOCUS, an association of pro-reform real estate developers, co-hosted the event at the Capitol Visitors Center on Tuesday afternoon.

Regional blueprints, or plans, outline a long-term transportation vision for a region. Metropolitan Planning Organization, or MPOs, typically have jurisdiction over this process, alongside partners at the county and municipal level. One objective of these plans is to lower greenhouse gas emissions through measures like increased transit use and building new homes near jobs.

“Comprehensive, but bottom-up” is how LOCUS President Christopher Leinberger, the event’s moderator, describes a potential direction for federal policy. In essence, the federal government would provide the funding and set the benchmarks, while regional planning authorities make allocations and are expected to achieve significant reductions in emissions.

Panelists stressed that their primary focus is on increasing choices – in transportation and housing – for all Americans. The recent economic recession was fueled in part by an over-supply of single-family homes on large lots. And while ample demand exists for mixed-use development on smaller lots, a combination of lagging infrastructure and policy restrictions have prevented the private sector from moving to meet that demand.

That is why the engagement and support of the business community is so critical.

Natalie Gochnour is the Chief Operating Officer for the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce. Her group’s seat at the table and engagement with a strategic and sustainable vision for the Salt Lake City area led to championing a sales tax increase to pay for 70 miles of light-rail for seven years.

“My message is this: don’t underestimate business community support for new ways of seeing and new ways of doing,” Gochnour said.

Michael McKeever, Executive Director of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, cited a similar dynamic in his area, where the Sacramento Area Chamber of Commerce helped push the blueprint concept in its early stages and has hailed the region’s long-range plan as a signature accomplishment.

Both Sacramento and Salt Lake City have seen substantial increases in transit usage and decreases in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) since beginning to implement their blueprints.

Commissioner Peter McLaughlin of Hennepin County in Minnesota addressed successes in his region as well.

T4 America Director James Corless emphasized that there was no “silver bullet” in regional sustainability planning, but that providing benchmarks and the required funding would result in substantial leaps.

Communities should be asking, “what do we want to look like in 25 years?” Corless said. “That’s the fundamental question.”

T4 America health fly-in participant meets Senator Barbara Boxer

Julia Lopez meets Sen. Boxer Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Fourteen-year-old Julia Lopez, right, a childhood wellness advocate from Los Angeles, CA, met California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer in the Capitol yesterday. Lopez is in Washington, D.C. to participate in Transportation for America’s “health fly-in” to speak with Congressional representatives about the link between and health and transportation. Lopez will address her own advocacy against childhood obesity during Congressional meetings and this morning at a briefing in the Capitol Visitors’ Center.

DC helps out area commuters with new Bike Station

100_8726 Originally uploaded by BeyondDC and appeared in this post

Washington D.C. took another great stride towards making bicycling easier and more attractive with the grand opening of Union Station’s BikeStation almost two weeks ago. With the opening of the stunning facility at Union Station, Washington’s most visited destination and travel hub can now connect commuters using trains, buses, cars, subway, or bikes.

(As Ray LaHood said, it’ll help address that “last mile” problem of commuting.)

The BikeStation offers a brand new option for commuting. A train or metro rider can now leave their bike at Union Station without it being stolen, stripped for parts, or damaged by weather. Thus, any commuter who can get to Union Station can now pick up their own, well-maintained bicycle and use it for commuting around Washington.

In New York City, the DOT found out that a safe and secure place to lock up bikes was the number one obstacle preventing more people from biking to work.

A joint project funded by Federal Highway Administration and District of Columbia transportation dollars, the project was built by the D.C. Department of Transportation. Bikestation, which operates 6 other facilities like this one, and Bike and Roll, which rents bikes and leads bike tours for tourists, share responsibility for operating the station.

It is a first for DC, and a totally unique structure designed by Donald Paine of KGP Design Studio to evoke both a bike wheel and helmet. The glass covered arching spine is a striking contrast to the classical Beaux Arts style of Union Station behind it.

The cost per year is $96 as an intro rate, a sum easily covered by the Bicycle Commuter Benefit (available from participating employers). According to Andrea White-Kjoss of BikeStation, they had already sold 40 annual memberships before the station opened. In the days since it opened, the station has already sold 30 annual memberships and Bike and Roll has been renting as many as 20 bicycles a day. Both figures far exceeded initial estimates.

Combined with the existing SmartBike bike sharing system, BikeStation effectively extends the radius in the region from which a citizen can commute within the region without needing to drive. A bike commuter can bike to Union Station, leave their bike, hop on a Metro train or a commuter train, and head out for points beyond without having to drive.

It’s all about increasing transportation options, and BikeStation is a great one for the city.