Flickr photo: jovino

According to Thomas Sanchez, chair of the Urban Affairs and Planning Department at Virginia Tech and a Brookings Institution fellow, the FTA's action against BART was unprecedented and perked up the ears of transportation policymakers around the country.

On the other hand, Sanchez said he wasn't necessarily surprised with the action at the MTC because of a previous lawsuit by Public Advocates, Darensburg v. Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which provided significant evidence in his mind that the MPO wasn't fulfilling its Title VI requirements. Sanchez said the commission had been asked numerous times by advocates like Urban Habitat to conduct an equity analysis of its funding practices in general, and had grown quite vocal with OAC complaints.

"I personally think it's a positive from a standpoint of accountability and transparency and holding these organizations accountable for a fair amount of federal money they are getting," said Sanchez.

While Sanchez said the BART OAC case was significant because the FTA withheld money rather than merely exchanging pointed letters, the MTC should have had better mechanisms in place to monitor BART and should have acted on the advocates' complaints of improper equity analysis.

"It's their responsibility, not only that the subcontractor follows through with the work, but the letter of the law," he said.

An FTA official in Washington confirmed to Streetsblog that no other MPO was currently under similar scrutiny and that the complaint by Public Advocates against BART had led to the request of documents from the MTC. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the the first step is always to help the grantee come into voluntary compliance, and that in this particular situation the agency was obligated to follow up to see what the MPO was doing to monitor its subrecipients.

The FTA official also noted that while it might have appeared that withholding the money from BART for the OAC was a sanction, the issue was more about the tight timeline for allocating stimulus funds. The FTA did not believe BART would be compliant with Title VI by the time the money had to be obligated, so it denied the funding request.

The MTC subsequently distributed the money to transit operators throughout the region in accordance with its Tier II spending contingency.

MTC spokesperson John Goodwin told Streetsblog last week the organization would "work with the FTA to meet their deadlines." When contacted for this story he said he had nothing new to add to his comments from last week. Neither MTC Commission Chair Scott Haggerty nor Vice-Chair Adrienne Tissier replied to Streetsblog's requests for comment.

Wynn Hausser, a spokesperson for Public Advocates, said he doesn't believe the MTC has the proper procedural requirements in place to monitor Title VI compliance of subrecipients and the probe will ultimately demonstrate the shortcoming. 

MTC Commissioners Question Governance and Projects

Perhaps surprisingly, several MTC commissioners interviewed by Streetsblog agreed with the advocates and argued the FTA probe could compel the Bay Area to reconsider how it spends billions in federal funds, including past allocations for projects they contend never went through proper equity analysis.

"I think it would be fair to say that was a red flag, that it was alarming," said Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese, an MTC commissioner representing the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). Cortese listed numerous concerns with MTC procedure and representation and called into question several funding decisions in the region, which to his knowledge sailed through the commission without equity analysis.

"I do think there is a lot the MTC should be concerned about," said Cortese. "If the FTA knows the half of it, they should be concerned."

Cortese said he hoped the OAC wouldn't become the only poster child for the region's failure to comply with Title VI and argued there were programmatic issues throughout the region. Cortese listed several other projects where the MTC had moved hundreds of millions of dollars without conducting equity analysis. He said the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) had de-prioritized the Capitol Expressway light rail project, which had undergone equity analysis and would have served low income communities of color, in favor of BART to San Jose.

"[The VTA] defunded a project that their own equity criteria said was needed. That's a $300 million example," said Cortese. "At what point does MTC have an obligation to say that's not right? To what extent does MTC have the tools to do something about it?"

He also noted MTC had moved money from the Dunbarton Bridge rail project to BART's Warm Springs extension without an equity analysis. "I don't remember anyone ever doing that analysis," he said.

"Lots of money gets moved around politically without a lot of analysis on civil rights and equity," added Cortese.

San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, who sits on the commission and has been an outspoken critic of the current OAC project, said fellow commissioners didn't want to consider anything but the nearly $500 million tramway. He said the commission never seriously pushed BART to study other options, such as the bus rapid transit proposal by the transit non-profit TransForm.

"Although the Oakland political machine was able to turn out a large number of people saying build the project, it seemed pretty clear the benefits were not there on the OAC," said Daly. "I think TransForm has done a really good job of debunking that. If your real concern was the economic vitality to the airport, you would run a BRT or other transit option that serves the people of the area."

Daly also complained that MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger had recently supported a $20 million funding swap at the California Transportation Commission (CTC) to make up for the gap that resulted when the FTA didn't give BART the $70 million in stimulus funds it expected. Daly said he wasn't supposed to catch the funding swap issue and when he did, MTC staff was not pleased.

"Obviously Heminger and MTC are moving ahead with trying to figure out how to fund the OAC without all this and that's fine. But to do it under the darkness of night, I thought that was pretty low," said Daly.

Urban Habitat's Bob Allen questioned the funding swap as well. "The level of effort and coordination the CTC is doing with the MTC because this is a pet project is embarrassing," he said. "Where was the level of effort when the operators were bleeding jobs?"

"When a capital project goes over budget by $100 million, there's always an explanation. When a transit operator like AC Transit encounters health care cost increases, they say it's mismanagement. They don't go out of their way to do crap for the operators," said Allen.

Supervisor Cortese also expressed concerns about the representational structure of the commission itself. Despite having 25 percent of the population in the Bay Area, Santa Clara County is not proportionately represented, and East San Jose, which has a strong people of color and low income community population, doesn't have a significant voice on MTC, said Cortese.

Cortese's appointment by ABAG created temporary parity, but when his term ends, he said, Santa Clara County will only have two permanent appointees and neither of them would represent the half million people of East San Jose. "That's a permanent structural failure," he said. 

Impact of the Probe

Source: Tom Sanchez.

The potential problems at MTC are not necessarily novel among MPOs around the country, as Sanchez noted in a paper on democratic governance and demographics in transportation planning. In the paper, he wrote that 88 percent of MPOs are governed by whites, while the regions represented by MPOs are only 61 percent white. He also indicated MPO boards are over-represented by suburban interests because of "one area, one vote" governance structures.

Without better representation by communities that are supposed to be protected by Title VI, Sanchez argued MPOs would not really engage the public and fulfill their responsibility to the law. MPOs should do more than pay lip service to public involvement in decision making:

Community-based groups that assist transportation agencies should be encouraged to improve outreach processes and strategies to identify culturally diverse groups and facilitate their involvement. Such efforts are greatly needed to support information dissemination about transportation and related land-use impacts. Mechanisms are needed that allow formal recognition of coalitions of community representatives on MPO advisory committees and decision-making boards.

"That's really who they answer to, that's who pays the bills, the public," Sanchez told Streetsblog. Sanchez said the MPOs are ultimately public bodies and should be responsive to complaints raised by the public, not just "blow them off," as he said MTC had done previously with concerns raised by advocates like Urban Habitat.

"If the public isn't happy, then your customers aren't happy. What do you do, tell them too bad?" he said. "From a public relations standpoint and a good practices standpoint, that doesn't seem like a good way to do business."

Urban Habitat's Allen hoped the FTA action would ultimately lead the MTC to reconsider how it conducts business in the region, including its adherence to the letter of civil rights law and a reconsideration of its representational governance.

"Changing the structure of MTC would change the investment outcomes," Allen said. He argued transit operators should be directly represented on the commission and it should better reflect geographic equity.

Allen said since the FTA investigation of BART, the staff there has had an open line of communication with the advocates about their overall equity analysis, though he said Urban Habitat disagreed with the sufficiency of BART's OAC equity analysis (the FTA recently sent BART notice that it had complied with the necessary requisites for its OAC fare analysis).

Looking forward, Allen hoped the FTA's probe into the MTC would compel commissioners to take civil rights seriously and not just lead them to "check off the boxes" required by the law. "We want to make sure they're going as far as we think they need to go to comply with federal civil rights compliance."

Beyond the Bay Area

Advocates for transit and social justice are taking cues from the MTC action to influence their regional MPOs beyond the Bay Area. The Los Angeles Bus Riders Union (BRU), which made history in 1996 with a successful Title VI challenge against the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has been closely watching the BART and MTC cases.

"I feel like this is a historic move for those of us who advocate on behalf of the transit dependent, working class communities, and communities of color," said Esperanza Martinez, lead organizer for the BRU. Referring to President Obama and FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff, she added, "It speaks to the real possibilities and opportunities that have been created through the new administration."

"It sets a precedent for agencies like the MTC to tread more carefully in terms of how they make choices on how they spend local, state and federal funding to build projects that have discriminatory impacts," she added.

As California’s big four metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) try to determine how much they can influence growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, significant questions remain. The state’s Senate Bill 375, typically referred to as the Anti-Sprawl Bill, requires planners and policymakers to develop meaningful solutions to curb sprawl, reduce driving, and promote growth in areas that will have the least impact on the environment.

As Amanda Eaken from the Natural Resources Defense Council writes on the Switchboard, the predictions are encouraging. By bringing Californians closer to their jobs and providing better transportation choices, by 2050 SB 375 could:

• Help Californians drive 3.7 trillion fewer miles
• Help Californians save $6,400 per year on transportation and other household costs
• Save the state $194 billion in infrastructure costs with smarter planning
• Save 140 billion gallons of gasoline
• Save more open space than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined

But the models won’t mean much, she argues, if policymakers don’t invest in projects that can bring about the needed change. Without shifting funds away from destructive development and transportation projects, you will only have plans sitting on shelves.

Eakan writes:

In every case there are certain ambitious policies and there are certain areas where we know the MPOs can do more. For example, in every case, we fail to see a shift of transportation funding to support the improved land use patterns every MPO is calling for. This is the thrust of SB 375 – to align regional investments to support a more sustainable land use pattern. The MPOs make assumptions – in certain cases very ambitious and laudable assumptions about the increase in walkable, transit oriented development, but then fail to shift their transportation investments to make sure we realize these better futures.

The challenge for advocates like the NRDC lies in pressuring MPOs to revise their long-term transportation plans to better reflect the targets set by SB 375. Adding capacity to freeways or permitting greenfield development now will only make the laudable targets more difficult to realize in the future.

Elsewhere on the Network, read the latest argument from sprawl apologist Wendell Cox that the demographic shift away from suburbia has been exaggerated. Richard Florida analyzes a new report on attracting the "creative class" to rural areas. And finally The Dirt has a good post describing some of the finalists in the Build a Better Burb design competition.

Rogoff asked how wise it is of the FTA to put money into new transit capacity, particularly expensive rail capacity, when virtually every operator across the nation has raised fares and cuts service because of lower sales tax receipts and ubiquitous cutbacks in city and state transit funding levels.

"At times like these, it's more important than ever to have the courage to ask a hard question: If you can't afford to operate the system you have, why does it make sense for us to partner in your expansion?" asked Rogoff.

He went on to question some rail expansion projects when a bus rapid transit system would be far cheaper and could achieve similar ridership benefits.

"Paint is cheap, rails systems are extremely expensive," said Rogoff.

Buses already account for 21 percent more transit trips nationally than rail and Rogoff said riders can be happy with buses if they meet their expectations for service and cleanliness. "It turns out you can entice even diehard rail riders onto a bus, if you call it a 'special' bus and just paint it a different color than the rest of the fleet."

"Take that paint can and paint a designated bus lane on the street system," he added. "Throw in signal preemption, and you can move a lot of people at very little cost compared to rail."

Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic wrote one of the more impassioned critiques of Rogoff's speech, calling his view naive and suggesting that Rogoff doesn't account for the failure in Congress to commit serious money to transit operations and expansion:

The unfortunate reality for Mr. Rogoff is that the federal government’s steadfast unwillingness to help cover operations spending is the primary reason agencies haven’t been able to maintain service levels during the economic downturn. Meanwhile, while he may be right that transit organizations aren’t doing enough to keep their systems in good shape, he neglects to mention that that problem is a reflection of the federal government’s inability to increase spending levels on maintenance in line with needs.

In the Bay Area, the ramifications of Rogoff's speech could be significant for several key expansion projects, including the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's (SFMTA) Central Subway and BART to San Jose.

SFMTA Chief Nat Ford told Streetsblog that he's not worried the FTA will change its position on funding for the Central Subway, even with the recent 10 percent service cuts at Muni.

"Last year we went through a very vigorous financial audit administered by the FTA to make sure that we had enough financing to run our existing system properly, keep it in a good state of repair, in advance of approving our full funding grant agreement for Central Subway," said Ford. "They gave us a green light to move into final design. That's why we're proposing that the system we operate, we can properly operate from a financial situation."

Unlike the Twin Cities Central Corridor project, which has fully lined up its local funding match, the SFMTA still has to secure $164 million in local funding by the end of 2011 to satisfy the FTA. Rogoff wrote in a January 7 letter that he was concerned about the SFMTA's ability to maintain a state of good repair to the existing system without degrading existing service.

Presumably, if the SFMTA restores some or all of the service it cut this year, which Mayor Newsom and the Board of Supervisors are debating, it will go a long way toward placating the federal administration.

At BART, spokesperson Linton Johnson said his agency doesn't disagree with Rogoff, but argued the FTA was "taking a too simplistic look at the overall picture."

"If an expansion does bring a transit system enough new riders that it both enhances the existing system and gets people out of their cars, resulting in cleaner air, then we can't afford not to do both," said Johnson. "The bottom line is it's not always an either or. Sometimes you have to spend money to make a lot more money."  

BART Board Director Tom Radulovich agreed with Johnson that expansion must be sound and attend to the needs of the core system.

"Sustainable expansion must be built on a sound foundation of reinvestment in existing systems and services, and maintaining service quality while expanding to new markets," said Radulovich. "Expanding service in this new environment of capacity constraints and fiscal constraints calls for planning that is less about delivering trophy projects, and more about delivering value for money."

The car sharing model, however, is predicated on operating in dense urban areas where there is good transit and a large pool of prospective customers who don't want to own a car. On the other hand, it doesn't make financial sense for car sharing companies to operate in suburbs or rural areas. Not yet, at least.

City CarShare is trying to pioneer personal vehicle sharing, where car owners would make their vehicles available to a pre-screened pool of personal vehicle sharing participants during the periods of the day when their car is not in use, which for many vehicles is upwards of 90 percent of the time.

If you drove to work in San Francisco and left your car idle from 8 am to 6 pm, for instance, you could allow a pool of prospective vehicle share participants to use your car, for which you would make enough money to cover the cost of usage. If you consider the cost of owning and insuring your car to already be a sunken expense, this could be a way to "make" money for a commodity that is otherwise depreciating in value.

Of the many challenges to expanding car sharing to privately owned vehicles, the first obstacle is current insurance law. In most states, unless you are commercially licensed or you operate a livery service, receiving compensation from others for using your vehicle voids your personal car insurance coverage.

To this end, City CarShare has been working with California State Assemblymember Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) and Spride Share, a new company started by cleantech financier Sunil Paul of Spring Ventures, to draft Assembly Bill 1871, which would change insurance law to permit remuneration for personal vehicle sharing.

"The idea is to make it possible for people to participate in car-sharing programs," said Assemblymember Jones. "This is part of a package of approaches that look at ways we can engage insurance companies in a positive way to encourage better environmental behavior."

If successful, personal vehicle sharing could expand the car share model to regions poorly served by transit, offering those who don't want to own a car or those who can't afford a car the ability to be mobile. It might even alter the national narrative of personal car ownership, say proponents, shifting the way consumers view cars, so that vehicles are less extensions of one's personality and more about getting from place to place.

"Personally owned vehicles, especially in America, are highly identified with status," said Rick Huthinson, City CarShare CEO. "We're hoping that the perspective of cars as an aspect of status, as something you have to have, is becoming less of an issue."

Personal vehicle sharing services could be administered through an established car-sharing service like City CarShare, or it could eventually be done through personal and professional networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. Participants would be screened by the DMV to assure a good driving record, just like they are for current car-sharing businesses.

Assemblymember Jones echoed Hutchinson's sentiment about the significance of the initiative, saying "I think it's revolutionary. If we can move to a place where people are able and are encouraged to share their vehicles, we will reduce the number of vehicles necessary and will provide for more efficient vehicle use."

Getting to the point where the public accepts the idea of sharing their private cars with the wider community, however, will be a challenge, one Spride Share CEO Sunil Paul thinks can be surmounted with the technology we already have.

"We believe there is a way to dismantle the idea of personal car ownership and turn it into a shared resource," he said. "Our overall vision is to replace private automobiles with private cell phones."

Paul said he hopes the public eventually sees cars as a service and not a commodity and he drew analogies to cloud computing or commercial building leases.

Paul, who made a fortune in anti-spam software, became interested in personal vehicle sharing after completing research for the Gigaton Throwdown, a project that asked whether the U.S. could scale up clean energy solutions and reduce one gigaton of CO2 by 2020.

According to Paul, the Gigaton Throwdown study showed that replacing the entire fleet of gasoline vehicles in the U.S. with electric vehicles was "practically impossible" within a reasonable time frame.  "It's very difficult to scale up solutions to transportation problems around climate and energy security," said Paul. "We started looking for opportunities that could deal with transportation problems without building entirely new cars."

While the current bill introduced in the California Assembly would only allow vehicle owners to cover the costs of sharing the vehicle, including insurance and depreciation, Paul hopes the legislature will alter the language so that vehicle owners could actually make more money out of the venture.

(Image: BART)

"Basically, it's just devastating," BART spokesperson Luna Salaver said about the OAC developments over the last week. "We had a triple-one project, a shovel ready project, and then it ran into this opposition that was using the Civil Rights Act make the region lose thousands of jobs."

To pay for the OAC project, BART had applied for a federal infrastructure (TIFIA) loan of $150 million, which required them to create a risk fund in case the agency later defaulted. BART anticipated using the $25 million TIGER grant for that risk fund, according to Salaver. The loss now has BART staff  scrambling to find more money or risk losing the loan.

"We're looking at different funding sources, but that is not set in stone," said Salaver. "There have been too many years of planning to just give up now."

Opponents of the OAC had consistently warned BART through letters and in public testimony at board meetings over the last year that the agency was not in compliance with FTA standards, but BART staff remained convinced the project would get federal funds.

"This goes to show you when people look at this project objectively, it doesn't pass muster," said John Knox White of TransForm, one of the organizations that filed the complaint with the FTA over BART's Civil Rights Act Title VI non-compliance.

"BART's lack of compliance with Federal Title VI means that all Federal funding is in jeopardy," said BART Board Director Tom Radulovich, who for years had requested that BART staff develop a thorough equity analysis, only to be rebuffed. "The stimulus funding has the most immediate deadline, but BART won't be eligible for either the Small Starts funding or the TIFIA loan without complying with Title VI."

Another concern weighing on BART staff is that the OAC contract bid will expire on March 22nd if funding is not secured, at which point the project would effectively be dead. What's more, FTA's civil rights review of the agency is not finished, as all of BART's policies and practices continue to be under close scrutiny.

"We're confused why this decision was made on BART," said Salaver. "The rejection of funds is usually a last-resort action, not a first-resort action. It seems that it's a different playing field."

Since the Loma Prieta earthquake made the Central Freeway unsafe for travel, leading to its eventual removal and the re-design of Octavia Boulevard, those ramps have been one of the more poignant reminders of a distant vision of San Francisco, with freeways crisscrossing the urban environment, whisking motorists above the unfortunate city dwellers below. 

The new Hayes Valley Farm (HVF) inverts the paradigm and reclaims the space for city dwellers, if only temporarily. "We call it 'freeway to food forest,'" explained Chris Burley, Project Director for HVF and former organizer of My Farm. Burley was joined by nearly fifty volunteers at a HVF work party Sunday. "We're trying to create a successful, sustainable urban farm in the heart of San Francisco."

Burley and several other organizers were approached by Mayor Gavin Newsom's Office of Economic and Workforce Development (MOEWD) last year with the idea to transform the unused lot into a farm. The HVF received a $50,000 grant from MOEWD for the first year of the project, money that comes from the operation of parking facilities along Octavia Boulevard. Burley expected to work the farm for between two and five years, depending on when the economy turns around and the land is developed.

While the city owns the property, the MOEWD has selected Build, Inc, to develop it when they secure their financing. According to Richard Hillis at MOEWD, the site will be broken into ten parcels and built as 50 percent affordable homes, 50 percent market rate.

Because the housing construction market is so bleak right now, said Hillis, the city worked with the neighborhood groups to develop a plan for activating under-utilized lots, starting with this very visible one. In addition to the community benefit of a farmers market and mobile food vending, the city benefits from having the lots used by the farmers.

"It helps us save money on cleaning them and maintaining them," Hillis said.

Opening the fence around the former freeway ramps. (Photo: Hayes Valley Farm)

"A lot of our energy is being spent in creating things that can travel off-site," said Burley. "This is more like a springboard for urban agriculture all over the city."

Burley and other organizers hope to use the temporary farm as an educational resource and are developing a curriculum for schools that are interested in working at the facility. Currently, they are planning to collaborate with John Muir Elementary, the French-American School, and the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Parks Group.

Addressing concerns about growing food on the site of a former freeway, the group has lab tested 64 soil points from the site and found that all parts except for one came back with less than the EPA's standard for lead in soil. The HVF also notes on its FAQs page that using organic soils up to two feet thick generally makes food grown there safe for consumption. Nonetheless, the group will measure lead in the roots and leaves of the food they harvest before it can be eaten.

Though Burley said they were rushing to get plants in the soil and trees in pots while still in the rainy season, the lot will be sustained with water from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which donated a line for the plot to set up a drip irrigation system. While no estimate was available for how much food the facility would yield, Burley said their first priority was demonstrating the prospects for urban farming.

"Our main yield is education," he said. "We’re trying to teach folks about growing their own food on balconies, back yards, open-air parking lots and pavement backyards."

(Image: City-go-Round)

Their new website, City-Go-Round, is an effort to encourage agencies to release their schedules in Google Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), the standard for programmers. With the data, Front Seat expects software developers will continually improve the interface between operators and their riders.

"We're trying to figure out the best way to get transit agencies to open up their data and figure out what the best way is to get customers to use the site and see what apps are there [so they] pressure their transit agencies," said Matt Lerner, Chief Technology Officer for Front Seat.

The website offers lists of all 748 transit agencies around the country, grouping them by those that have open data (96, including many California agencies) and those that have not released their data (New York metro operators are the top four by size). The list of agencies that don't release data is meant to encourage operators to voluntarily comply with open data and the site has a petition that users can sign to help Front Seat reach out to operators and demonstrate the demand from riders.

Lerner was proud to announce that since the launch of the website two weeks ago, a number of transit agencies have opened their data to developers, including the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), which had been number four on their list of largest operators.

In addition to the glare of public attention on the operators, Lerner and Front Seat have used the website to highlight the many innovative software applications developers have created in cities where data is open.

"We sort of made the apps the carrot to show what they can get with open data and the wall of shame for those that don't," said Lerner, who speculated that some agencies, like the New York MTA, were holding out for licensing opportunities or other ways to make money off of the data.

Rather than hold onto the data and seek licensing, Lerner thinks the cost savings to the operators would be more valuable to the public than a short-term license fee. "It ends up being a huge cost savings for the agencies. I think it's going to be harder and harder for New York to justify not opening up the data that was collected with taxpayer money."

Agencies like New York City's MTA already provide their GTFS data to Google, which to Lerner's knowledge has made clear it will not pay a fee. If and when they provide the data to everyone is unclear. Other agencies already understand the value of open-sourcing data to eager developers, an arrangement that costs the operator very little and gives riders valuable tools.

As Streetsblog San Francisco has reported, BART sees third-party developers as assets to get data to their customers in a way their limited staff can't. BART Website Manager Timothy Moore said at the time, "We basically can't envision every beneficial use for this public data and frankly transit agencies in general don't have the vision. We don't have the time, we don't have the resources."

Chris Dempsey, assistant transportation secretary for the Massachusetts DOT, echoed that sentiment.

"With transportation budgets stretched thin across the country, we see opening transportation data as a tremendous opportunity for cost savings," he said in a press release. "Enabling software developers to build apps with our data is a huge win for our riders — all at essentially no cost to the agency."

Of the more than 80 applications on the site, several offer very creative options for transit riders. ExitStrategyNYC helps riders of New York City's subway system plan their position within a train based on where the exits are at the stop at which they plan to disembark. A small time savings, but one that regular riders often find themselves figuring out at their most frequented stops.

Across Air, an augmented reality application, uses the iPhone's video capability to give users the nearest line information on a real-time video image of the street. Holding the phone flat in a given city, the app displays transit lines with colored arrows.

By tilting the phone upwards, users see the nearest stations: what direction they are in relation to their location and how many miles away they are. Tilt the phone upwards more and stations further away appear as stacked icons.

The clear next step in development is to create applications that utilize real-time arrival data, such as Routesy and iBART Live in the San Francisco Bay Area, or One Bus Away in Seattle. Very few agencies provide real-time data (TriMet in Portland, OR, BART, SFMTA, CTA, DC Circulator, and Seattle's King County Metro), though with City-Go-Round and the growing field of developers, more should feel the incentive to go in this direction.

"Real-time data totally changes the experience for a rider when you have it," said Lerner, who lives in Seattle and raved about One Bus Away and other real-time apps. "When I don't have my phone on me and I'm riding a bus I feel like I'm riding blind."

Streetlights are an enormous part of any city's energy consumption and cities that wish to cut down on their emissions and their energy bills are getting in line to convert their older street lamps to LED technology. According to Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) and Department of Energy (DOE) data, street lighting costs are one of the biggest components of a city’s utility bill, accounting for 10 percent to 38 percent of the total. With nearly 35 million street lights in the United States, about 1 percent of all electricity is used by street lighting systems.

Like other cities in the Bay Area experimenting with LED streetlights, including San Francisco and Oakland, San Jose has embraced the nascent technology as part of a sustainability platform called Green Vision, which sets ambitious targets for reducing energy consumption and emissions, including an expected 50 percent or more energy and cost savings from the street lamp conversions.

"Our goal has always been to move to a more energy efficient light," said Laura Stuchinksy, Transportation Sustainability Officer at the San Jose Department of Transportation.

Stuchinsky said San Jose intends to replace all 62,000 streetlights throughout the city before the Green Vision target date of 2022. The city implemented a pilot streetlighting project in Hillview North in 2008 that replaced 118 low-pressure sodium streetlights with LEDs and a recent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus fund grant of $2.2 million will offset implementation costs for the next wave of conversions expected later this year.  Further, the city intends to backfill with new renewable energy generated locally and possible purchases through PG&E. San Jose currently spends $4 million annually on street lights, which consumes over 35 million kilowatt hours of electricity, according to Stuchinsky.

In addition to the benefits to the city, the public seems to like the new lights. The Hillview North project, contracted to Echelon Corporation and funded with part of a $200,000 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) from HUD, had received positive reviews from the community. Even though the new streetlights use less energy, the LEDS give off a broader spectrum of white light than the current yellow hue of the low-pressure sodium lamps, which gives neighbors a greater sense of safety, according to Stuchinsky.

LED lights side-by-side with sodium lights. Photo: PG&E

Astronomers at Lick Observatory, 14 miles east of San Jose, are concerned about any increase in city lights, especially LEDS, said Stuchinksy, as they are unable to filter the white light in the same way they do with yellow from sodium lights.  In order to convert more lights and remain Dark-Sky compliant, San Jose has been working with manufactures to develop solutions for dimming lights at night or for motion-sensors that would help reduce overall light when it is not needed. While the technology is not yet perfect, Stuchinsky believes that the possibility of contracting with a large municipality like San Jose is leading vendors to be more innovative.

Another obstacle to expansion of LED streetlights is the rate schedule at large utilities such as PG&E, which until recently didn't break LEDs into a separate category so savings could be quantified. Municipalities like San Jose pay monthly block rates, regardless of how much energy is actually used. With PG&E's recent classification change, the utility has set a national example and will make conversion more bankable for other municipalities who have the incentive to move to a lower billing rate.

PG&E spokesperson Joseph Molica said the utility was very excited to assist cities throughout the state with LED conversions. "There are two types of incentives for city customers: a lower rate schedule and they are eligible for energy efficiency rebates," he said.

He hoped Bay Area cities would embrace the new technology as thoroughly as Los Angeles, where the city has committed to replace 140,000 existing street lamps with LEDs over the next five years, the largest conversion anywhere in the country. Molica added that ARRA stimulus funds had enabled smaller municipalities like Danville and El Cerrito to initiate trials and that the DOE grants are "coming in almost daily."

Molica said PG&E pilot programs in San Francisco and Oakland over the past two years were excellent test cases for the utility, which realized energy savings from different vendors between 50 to 70 percent [for more analysis: Oakland PDF, San Francisco PDF]. Molica also stressed that the LEDs last many years longer than current sodium lighting, so savings over the long run add up significantly. PG&E has also partnered with the CCI to reach out to more cities across the state to make conversions.

Molica echoed Stuchinsky's assertion that customers approve of the new lights, saying that PG&E conducted outreach before trials in San Francisco's Outer Richmond neighborhood and has sought continuous feedback subsequently. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom earlier this year touted a new pilot near City Hall that incorporates remote dimming technology. At the press conference, Newsom turned the lights up and down with his cell phone (Molica said Newsom used an encrypted code for accessing the system controls, but it does lead one to wonder if the savvy kids at Black Hat might try hacking the city's lights).

The Congress for the New Urbanism will meet in Portland, Oregon, in early November for the annual Project for Transportation Reform, a summit to further define and clarify emerging urban transportation policies that embrace entire networks, rather than interdependent transportation segments, and that seek to balance modal transportation splits and reduce overall vehicular miles traveled (VMT).

Summit attendees and partners, including Streetsblog, will participate in discussions on emerging network planning and develop a strategy for informing the national transportation infrastructure debate, of particular significance as the climate and transportation bills move forward. As the draft CNU Statement of Principles on Transportation Networks notes [PDF], climate change and infrastructure problems in the US continue to intensify:

The US now has the world’s highest level of VMT per capita, while simultaneously experiencing the highest traffic fatality rates of any developed nation. Per capita traffic delay has more than doubled in the United States since 1982.3 This deterioration in transportation system performance has occurred in spite of an ongoing public investment of more that $200 billion per year in transportation infrastructure."

CNU President John Norquist said the current focus by transportation professionals on road capacity gives us cities like Detroit, where consistent spending to widen roads has destroyed communities.

"Federal and state DOTs don't understand how cities work. They still want to take rural forms and jam big roads into cities." he said. "Rather than measuring projected traffic flow, they should be measuring how much value it adds to a neighborhood. The US can't afford to be energy wasting and spending money on projects that destroy the value of neighborhoods."

U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer will kick off the summit and representatives from Oregon Metro will showcase the many innovative transportation and design policies they have implemented in the region that have given Portland one of the highest walking, transit, and bicycle mode shares in the country.

Summit organizers hope to develop the language around network-wide transportation reform so the CNU can persuade lawmakers in Washington DC to incorporate this new urban vision into upcoming climate and transportation legislation.

Marcy McInelly, co-chair of the CNU's transportation reform initiatives and principle of Sera Architects, said, "Reform is about giving more latitude to use highway funds for pieces of the network that may not be for highways. Right now the federal funds have to increase vehicular mobility, which raises VMT. If you had a funding formula that allowed you to count benefits to cost, it would almost always [result in] the other modes besides cars coming out more beneficial.  It would balance consideration of other modes."

Norquist said the CNU is working with the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE), the most significant body of professional transportation engineers in the county, to develop transportation standards that ennoble urban streets alongside rural roads and freeways in guides like AASHTO's Green Book for highway and street design.

According to Norquist, reform initiatives should focus on altering "the functional classification system.  The current regulatory framework tries to feed future traffic demand, instead of trying to facilitate the network." 

Referring to the traditional advocacy position that tries to chip away at the 80-20 funding formula (80 percent of federal funding for freeways, 20 percent for transit), Norquist said a more fundamental change is needed.

"We're completely for the idea of changing the 80-20 split. But even if the environmental community wins and gets 25-75, you're still spending 75 percent of the money on road capacity. The should focus on creating roads that are useful and pleasant and create a place where people actually want to be."

The dealer, whose motto is "God, Guns, Guts and American Pick-Up Trucks," one-upped himself after last year's offer of pistols or petro and said that sales have doubled since the promotion started. Declaring his dealership a recession-free zone, he also had some choice social commentary in various interviews:

• "There's a bunch of evil in the world and people need to protect themselves."
• "I'd personally like to have a sporting chance, instead of just becoming a victim."
• "Without guns, we are subjects. With guns, we are citizens."
  
• "The only 911 call I need is chambering a round."
  

Fortunately, you can't just walk out of Max Motors with an AK; Muller provides you with a voucher for $450 redeemable at a local gun dealer, where you still have to go through a background check. Maybe I haven't been to a gun show in a while, but doesn't that seem like a lot of gun for so little coin?

No matter what your moral leanings, you have to admit Muller's plan is ingenious marketing, given that, outside of iPhones, guns are about the only thing selling well in this economy under this presidency. He has even given interviews to Al Jazeera and Russia Today.

Two of the more entertaining interviews follow after the jump.

Today, however, the bloggers over in DC are hoping you'll let them know about your bicycle commuting habits, presumably so they can, umm... count up the total number of commenters and see which ones ride to work and which don't and make a green bar graph, like last year, so that "maybe one of these days" one of their employees at Public Affairs will ride to work?

Anyway, join the "Greenversation" here. And pardon my Monday morning humor.

While we're on the topic of portmanteaus, the good folks over at the much-more-tasteful Inhabitat also want your input on biking, though you might get more than a green bar graph for your efforts. If you can convince them that your current ride is so beat that it's cramping your style and making you a social undesirable, they may gift you a new Strida folding bike, though I'm not sure Xzibit will be dusting the dirt off your shoulder at the end of the show.

Specifically, the Dems wouldn't support the amendment unless at least two significant criteria were met:

• Allocating a minimum of 30 percent of the total to clean water and public transportation/passenger rail. Of the total funds allocated to highways and bridges, 10 percent would have to be set aside for Transportation Enhancements, i.e. bicycle and pedestrian improvements.
  
• Giving the Secretary of Transportation discretion to redirect funds from states that were not adhering to certain criteria to states that were adhering to them. The criteria Dems and enviros wanted to see, for example, would not have allowed states to receive funds by showing that a project improves vehicular Level of Service.

In other stimulus news, Senator Kit Bond's amendments, which would have funneled billions to highway spending at the expense of rail and other modes, are not expected to reach the floor either.

Specifically, enviros are trying to get a "green screen" put in place, so that USDOT can pick from the priority projects presented by the state DOTs.  Theoretically this would mean that the Obama administration would make better decisions about how to spend the money than the states and would redirect funding to priority transit projects.

Boxer appears responsive to appeals to revise the amendment. The Senator is 'working in good faith' to improve Inhofe's original proposal, according to a source who wished to remain anonymous. Based on the current language, though, the amendment still gives precedence to the states to load up their road building projects.

Here are the highlights of the draft circulating as of yesterday:

• The amendment Senators Boxer and Inhofe have been working on would increase highway, transit and water (clean water and drinking water) infrastructure funding in the stimulus by up to $50 billion if other funding provided for in the bill is not used quickly.
• This amendment would redirect up to $50 billion of funding that would otherwise expire at the end of Fiscal Year 2009 in addition (if necessary) to unobligated balances from slower-spending programs appropriated throughout the stimulus package that have not been obligated within a full year after enactment.   
• A maximum of $50 billion would be redistributed by the President to states for use on highways, transit and water projects, based on a priority list of shovel ready projects within 120 days, as determined by states.  This list would be provided by each state and certified by the Governor, based on priorities that are the product of ongoing state and local planning programs.
• Eligibility has been expanded far beyond highways alone.  A broad array of projects beyond highways and bridges can be funded including transit and environmental mitigation for example.  States and localities should give special consideration to projects that will bring the conditions of roads, bridges, and other transportation system elements up to standard, that will result in immediate employment, that will increase the energy independence of the United States, and that will provide long-term economic benefits.
• This amendment would provide additional funding for the clean water and drinking water state revolving funds and would maintain the 15% set-aside for green infrastructure included in the underlying bill.  This ensures that states will be able to implement green projects to reduce energy consumption and improve water efficiency with any funding provided through the amendment.                     
• This amendment takes money that is otherwise not going to quickly stimulate the economy and moves it to a program that can get people working faster.
• Funds are moved to highway, transit and water infrastructure investments under this amendment because they improve our nation’s infrastructure and can be under contract in an expedited manner.
  

The amendment is expected within the hour, according to Kate McMahon of Friends of the Earth. Inhofe press director Marc Morano didn't deny the number, but said "a lot is going on today and I'll confirm with you shortly."

Both Friends of the Earth and Environmental Defense are sending action alerts to their activists, the first suggesting calls to Boxer, the second urging constituents to contact their own Senators to demand a "No" vote on the amendment.

Stay tuned for more information.

EDF action alert here.

Friends of the Earth action alert:

The U.S. Senate is working on its economic stimulus package today. Already, the bill includes $27 billion that can be used to build unnecessary new roads, despite the fact that such spending will create fewer jobs than investments in clean transportation projects. New roads will also lead to more global warming pollution and oil consumption.

Last week we had a victory in the House of Representatives when we increased funding for clean transportation by $3 billion. Unfortunately, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is threatening to undo that progress.

Senator Boxer is planning to propose an amendment today that would add another $50 billion in new road funding to the stimulus. Such an amendment would undermine President Obama's goal of a "green" stimulus and represent a huge setback in the fight against global warming.

We need your help to change Senator Boxer's mind. Please call her office NOW at 202-224-3553 and ask her to NOT offer this amendment.

A rendering of the Transbay Transit Center with a 5.4 acre park on its roof.

Pointing to the renderings on a projection screen behind him, with a 5.4 acre park atop the terminal, 2600 units of housing (with a pledge of 35% affordable homes), the construction of the tallest building in the West, and a terminal expected to serve 100,000 daily riders, Mayor Newsom added: "Eat your heart out, New York City."

If the city manages to find the $2 billion necessary to complete the project, San Francisco's transit hub would be finished in 2014, 101 years after Cornelius Vanderbilt opened the doors to New York's Grand Central Terminal.

The Transbay Transit Center, a public-private partnership headed by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA), will replace the existing Transbay Terminal with a multi-modal transportation hub that would serve nine transportation systems in the same complex, including the potential California High Speed Rail route through San Francisco.  

Mayor Newsom and several other speakers stressed the economic significance of a large-scale construction project as the overall economy sours and the city makes budget cuts.  

Nathaniel Ford, Sr., Chairman of the TJPA and head of MUNI, argued that "without projects like this, we will not be able to provide mobility for the growing population of California, and bring together the fractured public transportation system in San Francisco."  

Mayor Gavin Newsom, former Mayor Willie Brown, and board members of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority

Though the project design is impressive, funding remains a daunting obstacle. As outlined in the excellent feature story by Steve Jones in the San Francisco Bay Guardian yesterday, the TJPA has not found the money to pay for the entire project and may be relying on state funding that won't materialize, especially with California's ballooning budget deficit.

While the TJPA has suggested that it hopes the Transbay Transit Center will catch the eye of President-elect Barack Obama's team, as it expedites construction projects for the fiscal stimulus package early next year, it will be only one of many transit projects competing with the road and bridge lobby, which is already circling the wagons nationally and in California.

"It's exciting to see the first shovel in the soil for the new terminal and there are still real concerns about how we raise the additional $2 billion or so for the project," said Dave Snyder, transportation policy director for San Francisco Planning and Urban Research. "But this is a perfect public works project for the new century."

Below are the various renderings of the proposed terminal as presented by Mayor Newsom and the TJPA at the groundbreaking:

The Natoma Street facade

The center light column from below...

... and above.

The view from Mission Square

Photo: Matthew Roth

"When I was a visiting professor at Berkeley in the 1980s, I used to come to Fisherman's Wharf and walk around," Danish urban designer Jan Gehl said Wednesday night, to more than 100 San Franciscans at the Pier 39 Theater near Fisherman's Wharf. "Now it's like deja vu; it's exactly like I remember it 25 years ago."

The Wednesday event was part of the ongoing public outreach effort for the Planning Department's Fisherman's Wharf Public Realm Project, which seeks to greatly enhance the quality of the public spaces around the famous tourist destination (nearly 13 million annual visitors, or roughly one-fourth of all visitors to New York City). Having been recruited by the city to impart his internationally-renowned vision locally, Gehl urged San Franciscans to consider best practices from cities throughout the world that have transformed waterfronts from failing public spaces into the vibrant heart of the public realm. He argued that the spirit and principles that have made Oslo, Copenhagen, and Melbourne so successful could work in San Francisco.

Gehl presented the preliminary findings of his study of the area [PDF], asserting that the most interesting places in a city are "where the water and the streets come together." He said smart city leaders around the world have reversed the trend of abandoning their waterfronts to so-called "undesirable elements," and instead have developed integrated parks and promenades that appeal to the various needs of every demographic. Successful cities have recognized the changing interests of city dwellers who often congregate in public spaces not out of necessity, but out of an interest in being near other people.

He was adamant, however, that quality public space was not the same as commodified public space, or the "Rouse-fication" of waterfronts so that they resemble theme parks or festival markets (think South Street Seaport in New York or the Bayside Marketplace in Miami, projects of the Rouse Company). These, he said, are "based on getting people down to the waterfront and then skinning them in different ways... getting them to buy things they don't want."

While Fisherman's Wharf already has a number of gimmicky shops that local residents loathe, Gehl believes that much can be done to improve the quality of public space with simple amenities, such as more benches and movable furniture. He was shocked that the area didn't have more places to sit and watch people pass by.

Gehl's study notes that the volume of pedestrian traffic to Fisherman's Wharf is already higher than some other prominent walking cities, including London and Copenhagen. Much like the "ped-lock" in Times Square, in Fisherman's Wharf there are far more pedestrians than cars, though the city has made greater relative concessions to the latter. While Jefferson Street's 60-foot width is equally allotted between pedestrians and cars, during peak periods there are 15 times more pedestrians using the space.

During the sometimes contentious question-and-answer period after the presentation, the audience voiced support for preserving (and in some cases renewing) the area's historical maritime traditions. Several commenters suggested developing a fish market to attract local residents to the area, while one woman, a captain of a fishing vessel, invited Gehl to sail the harbor to better understand the perspective of those who still make a living from the sea. A large round of applause went up when one audience member recommended closing Jefferson Street entirely to private cars.

Jeffrey Pollack, Proprietor of Nick's Lighthouse restaurant and the head of the Fisherman's Wharf Restaurant Association, said his organization hoped that the city would alter zoning laws to improve the retail environment, specifically supporting local businesses as opposed to chain stores. "We're the second largest tourist draw in California behind Disneyland," he said, "but we don't want to be Disneyland."

Photo: Matthew Roth

Hoping to keep pace with the progress in New York City over the past two years, the San Francisco Planning Department has commissioned Gehl Architects to transform several prominent streets and public spaces in the city, starting with one of the busiest tourist attractions in the U.S., Fisherman's Wharf. 

On Tuesday night, in front of a standing-room audience of special guests at Pier One's Bayside Room, Gehl presented his general vision for improving San Francisco's public realm. The event, sponsored by Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR), the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Livable City, and Walk SF, was the first in the new Great Streets Campaign Speakers Series, which will bring some of the world's most remarkable urban visionaries to the Bay Area in the coming months to share their successes and offer San Francisco models for instituting its own vision for a sustainable and healthy city. 

Gehl is in town for a week of presentations to the public, to city agencies, and to merchants' associations. On Wednesday, he will present the results of his firm's Fisherman's Wharf study to the public for the first time. The Planning Department is hopeful that his work will stimulate a larger discussion of the quality of public space among the stakeholders in the area.

John Rahaim, director of the Planning Department, noted that Gehl's work around the world brings a cachet to San Francisco and helps "set the stage to implement pedestrian improvements and demonstration projects on our streets." Rahaim is optimistic that Gehl's work will "start a process to implement the principles of [San Francisco's] Better Streets Plan," the comprehensive new pedestrian and public space plan that is awaiting completion of environmental review.

Gehl was cagey when asked about what San Francisco should do to be more like Copenhagen or Paris, arguing that the study his firm has completed for the Fisherman's Wharf project is only a preliminary analysis and not a proposal. Nevertheless, he argued that if San Francisco wants to be a "lively, attractive, safe and sustainable city [it must] be sweet to its pedestrians, sweet to its cyclists."

Photo of Jan Gehl and SPUR Executive Director Gabriel Metcalf by Matthew Roth