On our walk down the memory lane of 2011 so far, we’ve talked about some downers, some inspirations, some triumphs, and some struggles. Check out our first two installments of year-end Streetsie award nostalgia. Here’s some more.

Best Obama Plan That Died a Slow and Horrible Death This Year: How to choose, when there were so many? The president laid out a big, bold, ambitious transportation plan for the next six years but then stayed mum on the all-important question of how to fund it, and so, predictably, it died. His American Jobs Act included $50 billion for infrastructure projects, including at least $13 billion for rail and transit. It, too, went nowhere fast.

Obama's high-speed rail plans took a fast train to nowhere. Photo: America 2050

That wasn’t Obama’s fault, but if you’re looking for a reason to be angry at him, look no further than the ozone pollution rules the EPA was going to strengthen. The president froze at the last minute and decided to hold off another couple years, to give the economy a chance to recover (or business interests a chance to vote for him). The new ozone standard would have saved an estimated 12,000 lives and made transportation reforms essential.

But who could blame the 47 percent of you who awarded the Streetsie for saddest death of an Obama program to high-speed rail? Congress takes every opportunity to yank money away from the program, three Republican governors have very publicly thumbed their noses at federal funds, and the only true high-speed rail line with the potential to be truly transformative is in deep doo-doo in California. So much for 80 percent access in 25 years.

Non-Presidential Vices: Yes, we had our share of letdowns from President Obama this year. But not all our disappointments were related to him. We were also bummed to see plans scrapped for the Woodward Light Rail line in Detroit, and the failure of the Seattle car tab fee, which would have gone to transit, bike/ped and road maintenance. And certainly we were disappointed that the Senate transportation bill, in the end, didn’t keep dedicated funding for bike/ped. But the Streetsie for the biggest letdown has to go to the bait-and-switch the House Republicans pulled about funding their transportation plan.

It was simple enough when they were threatening to cut spending by a third so as not to overspend Highway Trust Fund receipts. Just about everyone hated the idea. But then the GOP said they’d match current levels and it seemed the best of both worlds – reasonable spending levels and a longer-term bill than the Senate was offering.

Hallelujah! So what’s the catch?

Turns out the catch was that it would be funded with oil drilling revenues. Even if it passed, the revenues would be too low and come too late to really pay for the bill, experts agreed. And of course, it would never pass anyway. Republicans have been making absolutely everything an excuse to try to pass oil-expansion legislation lately, and they have to know that the Democrats aren’t biting.

After the hard-fought Senate bill passed unanimously out of committee, with both sides making significant concessions so that they could produce a bill with a chance of passage, it was absolutely insulting for the House to produce something so ludicrously partisan. It made it clear, once and for all, that they had no intention of actually bringing a bill to passage this year.

Sen. James Inhofe: Public Enemy Number One. Photo: AP

Walkers’ and Cyclists’ Public Enemy Number One: What a year it’s been for the whimsical dreamers among us who actually believe we can get around on our own two feet – or two wheels – instead of an automobile. All autumn, Republicans lined up to shoot down the tiny amount of federal funding we get to carve out a little bit of safe space on the roadway.

House leaders staged an a-ha moment in September, in which they realized the parties could find consensus on infrastructure spending if they would just eliminate the “set-aside” for Transportation Enhancements. Then a whole parade of senators got in on the act, starting with Tom Coburn’s attempt to block a clean extension of the transportation bill (jeopardizing 80,000 jobs) unless they went along with his diabolical plot to kill TE in its sleep. Then Sen. John McCain tried to cut back on the program.

And Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky took it to a whole new level of kook when he called TE a fund for “turtle tunnels and squirrel sanctuaries and all this craziness.” Ever hear of bicycle commuting, Mr. Paul? It grew by 137 percent between 2008 and 2009 in Lexington. And Louisville is building a 100-mile Louisville Loop for hiking and biking. Just ask your constituents how crazy active transportation funds are.

But you, dear readers, reserved your greatest ire – and the 2011 Streetsie award – for Sen. James Inhofe. He stayed above the fray as his misguided colleagues engaged in their petty little antics because he had the inside track on killing dedicated funding for bike/ped once and for all. After all, the Senate transportation bill wouldn’t go anywhere if he wasn’t on board, and he made it his solemn duty to strip out the hated “set-aside” for Transportation Enhancements. At least he got the numbers right and acknowledged that TE amounted to less than two percent of the transportation program, not 10 percent as his colleagues falsely claimed.

A.J. Nelson, age 4, was killed while crossing the street between a bus stop and his home with his mother and two sisters.

Most Outrageous Attack on Cyclists and Pedestrians: The attacks didn’t all come from Capitol Hill, of course. Parents in Tennessee and Michigan were threatened with child-endangerment charges for letting their kids ride bikes. And even bike-friendly Seattle showed its dark side in 2011 with the astonishing ignorance of its police department. Cops recently berated an injured jogger by calling him names and telling him, “That’s why you drive a car!” And they’re getting tough on pedestrians and cyclists while letting bad driver behavior slide. In 2010, the department issued just 197 tickets to drivers for failing to yield — and 1,570 citations to pedestrians.

But the incident we all have burned into our memories – the one that still haunts us as we walk and ride around our hometowns – is the grievous wrong done to Raquel Nelson, She had to suffer the anguish of losing her four-year-old son to an impaired driver and then the injustice of having the blame fall on her. Cobb County, Georgia, gave a slap on the wrist to the driver and, as far as we can tell, no blame at all to the planners of auto-centric street design that makes tragedies like these inevitable. But the county charged Nelson with vehicular homicide.

It still burns us up – and makes us cry – just to think about it. Seventy-seven percent of you agreed, giving a landslide Streetsie to the prosecutors who saw fit to charge her and the jury – all whites who had never gotten on public transportation in their lives – that convicted her.

Sweet, Sweet Victory: It’s hard to see a silver lining in the whole Raquel Nelson tragedy, but more than a third of you agreed that it gave birth to one of the year’s key victories. Streetsblog caught wind of the Nelson trial once the jury had convicted her, and our coverage sparked national media attention, which led to major petition drives and resulted in a barrage of letters and phone calls to the judge. And when it came time for the judge to give her sentence, she offered a light one – or a new trial. Nelson’s lawyer said “a judge, on her own motion, granting a new trial” was “one of the most shocking things” he’d even seen in a courtroom.

Nelson took the option of a new trial, which has seen a number of delays. We hope the county prosecutors will wise up and drop the charges already, but if not, we’re confident another jury will find a different outcome.

Image: The Today Show

The second shocking thing about the case was that it captured so much media attention. Sure, Streetsblog was going to cover it. But the Today Show? Fox News?

As encouraging as it was to see so much mainstream broadcast media focused on Nelson’s case — and all in a sympathetic light — little of that coverage got to the root of the problem: dangerous street design in auto-centric communities.

So we’re glad to see the Washington Post remedying that situation by printing an op-ed by David Goldberg, communications director at Transportation for America. In his piece yesterday, Goldberg said:

Nelson was found guilty of killing her son by crossing the road in the “wrong” place. But what about the highway designers, traffic engineers, transit planners and land-use regulators who placed a bus stop across from apartments but made no provision whatsoever for a safe crossing? Those who ignored the fact that pedestrians always take the shortest possible route but somehow expected them to walk six-tenths of a mile out of their way to cross the street? Those who designed this road — which they allowed to be flanked by apartments and houses — for speeds of 50 mph and more? And those who designed the entire landscape to be hostile to people trying to get to work or carrying groceries despite having no access to a car? Are they not culpable?

This phenomenon is not unique to metro Atlanta. Transportation for America researched 10 years’ worth of pedestrian fatalities nationwide and found this pattern again and again. The bodies line up like soldiers along certain corridors — the first clue that the roadway is not designed for the safety of the pedestrians who are obviously using the road.

Goldberg said that the problem is especially severe in inner-ring suburbs that were designed with the assumption that there would never be a reason for anyone to try to get anywhere without an automobile. But that assumption has broken down. Sometimes it breaks down along income lines, as people like Raquel Nelson can’t afford a car. T4America has brought attention recently to the fact that it can break down along age lines, with the elderly unable to drive and finding themselves with few alternatives.

In some places around the country, these car-dominated suburbs are trying to change. Here in the D.C. area, Tysons Corner is engaged in a decades-long process of trying to increase density, improve walkability, and create an honest-to-goodness street life in an area where people used to drive from shopping mall parking lot to shopping mall parking lot. But these suburban retrofits are the exception, not the rule. And in the time it’ll take to make Tysons a pedestrian-friendly “edge city,” Raquel Nelson’s children will have children of their own.

But that doesn’t let the Cobb County DOT, or any other jurisdiction, off the hook for making pedestrians safer today. As Goldberg writes in the Post, “One crosswalk with traffic signals would save more lives, and in all likelihood cost less money, than this hurtful prosecution cost the taxpayers of Georgia. Fixing thousands of these deadly mistakes across the country would, in the long run, save both lives and dollars.”

Members of Congress are now home for their month-long recess. When they come back, they’ll have less than three weeks to figure out what to do before the current transportation reauthorization — and, coincidentally, the gas tax — expires. The short amount of time means Congress will likely either patch together a solution far too hastily, or they’ll punt, kicking the can down the road till a future, undetermined date when they can consider the question more fully. Let’s hope that they give transportation the time and attention it needs sooner than later — and that when they do, they’ll think about more than just budget deficits and highway revenues. Let’s hope they think about Raquel Nelson’s son and realize that pedestrian safety is a national priority, and that it comes cheaper than inaction.

The last thing the jury heard from Raquel Nelson’s defense lawyer, before they convicted her, was the tape of her frantic 911 call after her son, A.J., was hit by a car. “1-2-3-4-5-6, doing chest compressions on her son, screaming,” recalls attorney David Savoy. “There was not a dry eye in that court room.”

The jury then decided to convict her of vehicular homicide, jaywalking, and reckless conduct.

A.J. Nelson, age 4, was killed while crossing the street between a bus stop and his home with his mother and two sisters.

The jury, as has often been noted, was all white and not transit-dependent. Indeed, Savoy said, the entire pool of 15 jurors they had to choose from was white. And Cobb County jurors are selected for service based on drivers license information.

While certainly many car-free people have drivers licenses – Raquel Nelson included – it’s a symbol, at least, of the auto-centrism of the entire process that convicted Ms. Nelson.

At sentencing, Judge Kathryn Tanksley handed down a relatively light sentence – involving no jail time, at least – but also granted a motion for a new trial before the defense even made a motion asking for a new trial. “We had motion for a new trial ready to file,” Savoy said. “I didn’t even need to pull it out of my briefcase.”

“It’s one of the most shocking things I’ve ever been involved with,” Savoy said. “A judge, on her own motion, granting a new trial.”

He wouldn’t speculate as to why the judge was moved to do so. But he did mention that the jury had made its decision based on the evidence that the judge allowed, indicating that there was other defense evidence that the judge did not allow. Perhaps she regretted that decision, disagreed with the jury’s harsh verdict, and thought a new trial would wipe the slate clean.

Despite the trauma that the case has caused Nelson and her family, Savoy is “pretty certain” she’ll take the option of a new trial. “Three misdemeanors, for crossing the street,” Savoy said. “That doesn’t sit right with her, or with me.”

Given the avalanche of negative attention the case has brought upon the Cobb County court system, the county may decide not to re-try the case at all. Indeed, although judges are supposed to be immune to public opinion, Judge Tanksley must have been aware of the packed courtroom, full of reporters, that greeted her on the day of sentencing. Even if she hadn’t watched the broadcast coverage, seen the petitions, or read the blogs about the case, she must have known the case was attracting major national attention.

“I’ve never understood the power of the blogosphere,” Savoy told me, “and now, I’m humbled.”

Nelson’s lawyer, David Savoy, also contacted me this morning to respond to my inquiries about how people can help. (He wouldn’t answer questions about the case itself until sentencing is over.)

Savoy says that while the petitions that are circulating are an important show of support, what really counts are letters to the judge from residents of Cobb County, Georgia — the judge’s own constituents. He emphasized that people should not contact the judge directly, but if Cobb County residents want to email me at tips@dc.streetsblog.org today, I will send the emails on to Savoy and he will present them by hand to the judge. Time is of the essence, because sentencing is tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. This is your chance to respectfully ask the judge for leniency. And remember, she’s not the one who convicted Nelson in the first place — a jury did that. Please include your address on the letter.

Nelson’s aunt, who appears next to her on the Today Show, is setting up a legal defense fund. Many readers expressed interest in contributing to such a fund. I spoke to Nelson’s aunt myself, in between their appearances on the Today Show and MSNBC. She thanks people for their generosity and says they can send contributions to Chase Bank, 1050 E Piedmont Rd, Suite Y, Marietta, Georgia 30062. You can make the check out to Raquel Nelson Legal Defense Fund.

This photo shows the bus stop on Austell Road and the path taken by Raquel Nelson to get to her apartment complex across the street. No marked crossings are visible in the photo. Source: T4America

Last week, we reported on the horrific story of Raquel Nelson, whose four-year-old son was killed as she attempted to cross the street with him to reach their home. Nelson was convicted of reckless conduct, improperly crossing a roadway and second-degree homicide by vehicle, all for the crime of being a pedestrian in the car-centric Atlanta suburbs. The conviction carried a sentence of up to 36 months, while the driver who killed Nelson’s son — who’d been drinking and using painkillers before getting behind the wheel — got off with six months on a hit-and-run charge.

Many of you responded with outrage. The more information that came out, the more outrageous the charges against Nelson became. From an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story that came out the month after the incident:

On April 10, she and her three children — Tyler, 9, A.J., 4, and Lauryn, 3 — went shopping because the next day was Nelson’s birthday. They had pizza, went to Wal-Mart and missed a bus, putting them an hour late getting home. Nelson, a student at Kennesaw State University, said she never expected to be out after dark, especially with the children.

When the Cobb County Transit bus finally stopped directly across from Somerpoint Apartments, night had fallen. She and the children crossed two lanes and waited with other passengers on the raised median for a break in traffic. The nearest crosswalks were three-tenths of a mile in either direction, and Nelson wanted to get her children inside as soon as possible. A.J. carried a plastic bag holding a goldfish they’d purchased.

“One girl ran across the street,” Nelson said. “For some odd reason, I guess he saw the girl and decided to run out behind her. I said, ‘Stop, A.J.,’ and he was in the middle of the street so I said keep going. That’s when we all got hit.”

Look at all the ways the design of the city’s transportation system failed Nelson and her family. Bus service runs once an hour. There is no crosswalk to connect a bus stop with an apartment building it serves – nor any crosswalk for three blocks. A convicted hit-and-run driver who is half-blind and has alcohol and pain-killers in his system is considered less of a threat to the public than a woman who rides the bus and walks with her kids.

And as Radley Balko wrote in the Huffington Post, the odds were stacked against Nelson from the start.

“During jury questioning, none of the jurors who would eventually convict Nelson raised their hands when asked if they relied on public transportation,” Balko wrote. “Just one juror admitted to ever having ridden a public bus, though in response to a subsequent question, a few said they’d taken a bus to Braves games.”

Indeed, as David Goldberg wrote on T4America’s campaign blog, “Nelson, 30 and African-American, was convicted on the charge this week by six jurors who were not her peers. All were middle-class whites” and did not ride public transit. “In other words, none had ever been in Nelson’s shoes.”

So if you were cautiously awaiting further details before getting really and fully furious about Nelson’s conviction, go ahead: It’s time.

Many readers have asked if there’s any way you can help. Some expressed a desire to contribute to Nelson’s legal fund. Others wanted to know if they could write a letter to someone demanding that Nelson’s charges be expunged.

I’ve left two messages over the past week with Nelson’s lawyer asking these (and other) questions. Neither message has been returned. So I can’t answer your questions about a legal defense fund. Nelson’s sentencing hearing is on Tuesday.

But there are now two petitions circulating. One, circulating at the Care2 petition site, asks the governor to overturn Nelson’s verdict. At the moment I’m writing this, the petition has gathered 4,369 signatures, on the way to its goal of 10,000. Another, which currently has 1,061 signatures at Change.org, asks not only for Nelson’s release but for the installation of a crosswalk. That petition is addressed to the Cobb County Transportation Department, Cobb County Commissioner District 1 (Helen Goreham), and the Solicitor General (Barry Morgan).

We’ll stay tuned for news on Nelson’s sentence on Tuesday and let you know the minute we hear.

A Google Street View image of the intersection where Raquel Nelson's four-year-old son was killed. There are no crosswalks in sight.

We don’t normally report on vehicle crashes here on the Capitol Hill blog, but this was so outrageous we couldn’t help ourselves.

A 30-year-old woman in Marietta, Georgia was convicted of vehicular homicide this week – and she wasn’t even driving a car. The woman was crossing the street with her three children when a driver, who had been drinking, hit and killed her four-year-old. The driver, Jerry Guy, was initially charged with “hit and run, first degree homicide by vehicle and cruelty to children,” Elise Hitchcock of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. “Charges were later dropped to just the hit and run charge.”

The man has previously been convicted of two hit-and-runs – on the same day, in 1997, one of them on the same road where he killed Raquel Nelson’s son.

Guy will serve six months for killing the boy, but Nelson will serve up to 36 months – just for crossing the street with her child. Yes, it’s true: they were not in a crosswalk. Are there any crosswalks on that street at all?

Hitchcock at the AJC says:

The conviction does not sit well with Sally Flocks, president and CEO of PEDS, a pedestrian advocacy organization.

“Invest the money in safe crossings,” Flocks said. “For the costs of the trial yesterday, they could have made a safe crossing. But they don’t want to do that.”

The Atlanta-Sandy-Springs-Marietta, Georgia metro area ranks 11th in the country for most dangerous streets for pedestrians, according to Transportation for America’s recent report on pedestrian safety and street design. The region had nearly 800 pedestrian deaths between 2000 and 2009.

Despite the fact that Atlanta-area municipalities continue to build roads, like the one where Nelson’s son was killed, with inadequate pedestrian crossings and sidewalks, and despite the fact that the federal government continues to vastly underfund pedestrian safety infrastructure on federally-funded roads and highways, the courts have pointed the finger at Nelson, blaming her for the death of her son on a road that was designed with no regard for pedestrian safety.

H/t to Anne Lutz Fernandez for bringing this story to our attention.

Peter Rogoff, head of the Federal Transit Administration, sent out a letter to local transit authorities last week reminding them of their duty to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits federally-funded programs and services from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”

Transit as a civil rights issue: Suburban bus riders would disproportionally benefit if MARTA brings back the Braves Shuttle after cutting routes that served city residents' daily needs. Photo: CBS Atlanta

The Transportation Equity Network notes that people of color are up to six times more likely to depend on public transportation than white Americans. “As a result,” said TEN’s Laura Barrett in a statement, “the epidemic of service cuts and fare hikes around the country are having a devastating impact on the ability of millions of Americans to access jobs, education, health care, and opportunity.”

TEN applauded Rogoff’s letter, stating that “a budget crisis is no excuse for violating civil rights.”

This issue has been raised recently with respect to the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. MARTA was forced to impose widespread cuts to bus service and raise monthly and weekly fares last fall. Laurel Paget-Seekins of the Atlanta Transit Riders’ Union said the pain was distributed more or less equally, but since then, there has been a call to reinstate the Braves Shuttle, which took mostly-suburban baseball fans from the train to the ballpark. Paget-Seekins said MARTA is being pressured by some business and political interests to bring back the service. Meanwhile, she says her bus route has been folded in with two other routes and is often overcrowded.

“That’s why people are upset about this idea of putting back the Braves shuttles,” she said. “Because those of us who ride every day are still kind of suffering from the cuts that happened last fall.”

MARTA riders are 78 percent black and 14 percent white, she said. In addition, more than 50 percent do not have access to a car and more than 60 percent make less than $30,000 annually.

The Atlanta Transit Riders’ Union watches MARTA and local and state government agencies closely for civil rights abuses. The union has filed a complaint against the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, which runs a commuter bus service that doesn’t serve low-income communities, Paget-Seekins said. The FTA is now performing a compliance review in response.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told Georgians two weeks ago, “If Georgia wants a rail line and wants to be connected to high-speed intercity rail, you can make it happen.” But he warned that they’ll need leadership from the governor’s office.

Separated at birth? The candidates for GA governor look like identical twins. But they have different priorities for transportation. Image: TPM

“Whoever gets elected governor will be getting a phone call from me,’” LaHood said. He wants to know if Georgia’s going to be “in the mix” on high speed rail. “They should be. They’re an important region of the country.”

Today, Georgia decides who will be in the governor’s mansion to answer LaHood’s phone call. It’s a time of transportation innovation in the state. Atlanta was recently awarded a TIGER II grant to build a streetcar line, and the federal government topped that off with $4.1 million for a multistate plan for high speed rail between Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina. But the state of Georgia has many unmet transportation needs, and the two men facing off in today’s election each have their own ideas about how to proceed.

Democrat Roy Barnes declares on his campaign website, “The days of only big road projects are gone.” In a section called “Unclog Atlanta,” he says:

Instead of simply pouring more concrete, we must implement a mass transit plan that addresses Metro Atlanta’s tremendous population growth and unique problems. MARTA is convenient for Atlantans who want to travel short distances within the city, but it is completely unusable for suburban and exurban commuters. An elevated light-rail system running over metro Atlanta’s interstates, rail lines, and existing rights-of-way would move commuters to outlying suburbs more efficiently, unclog our interstates, and reduce our reliance on foreign oil, all while putting Georgians back to work.

Republican Nathan Deal is giving up his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for a chance to replace Sonny Perdue as governor. In Congress, he voted against federal funding subsidies for Amtrak and an increase in emissions standards.

Barnes and Deal both support the recent passage of a bill allowing jurisdictions to raise the sales tax to help pay for transportation projects, including transit. Lee Biola of the Atlanta-based Citizens for Progressive Transit says the flaw in that new tax law is that it only allows a region to raise the tax for 10 years, while in order to get federal matching funds, you need to show that you have a source of operating funds for at least 20 years from the date the project begins running, meaning you really need about 30 years of revenue.

Neither support a hike in the gas tax, despite the fact that Georgia’s is one of the lowest in the nation and was lowered by 4 cents two years ago. They both favor dedicating all gas tax revenue to transportation – currently, a portion of it goes to the general fund. Currently, the gas tax is for roads and bridges only – not transit.

A big issue for both candidates is the deepening of the Savannah River to accommodate the larger ships that will be coming up from Panama once the canal widening there is finished in 2014.  But they differ on how to get goods upstate from the port. Deal is in favor of a new interstate highway linking Savannah to Augusta and all the way up to Knoxville, Tennessee. Barnes is concerned about the environmental impact on the mountains of North Georgia.

Barnes, who served as governor from 1999 to 2003, pushed new highway construction but also started a new commuter bus service from the suburbs. Since then, he’s been hoping for an expansion of passenger rail.

And he’s got his sights set on not just commuter rail, but high speed. He says both would “encourage growth, tourism and economic opportunity.”

Deal is in favor of rail but doesn’t want to commit state money until the local governments get on board.

The numbers, you ask: what do the numbers say? All recent polls show Deal with a single-digit lead over Barnes, but outside the margin of error.

NOTE: Biola of CfPT said one of their top priorities for today is the passage of a nonbinding ballot referendum in Clayton County. It would show residents’ desire to raise their sales tax to pay for inclusion in the MARTA system. The county lost its bus service earlier this year, and the sales tax increase would pay not only to get the buses running again, but to extend the commuter rail as well. Barnes is in favor of the rail extension.

An artist's rendering of Atlanta's streetcar project, which just got $47 million from the feds.

Atlanta scored about eight percent of the TIGER II total for its streetcar project. Rep. John Lewis got confirmation of the award this morning.

Atlanta had applied for $56 million for the $70 million project. Some observers had hoped the city would apply for its “beltline” project — a circumferential transit line — instead, but the streetcar will be a big step toward a transit-oriented, complete-streets vision for Atlanta.

Noah Kazis reports on Streetsblog New York that $1.5 million in TIGER funds will go to a planning study to determine what could replace the Sheridan Expressway, “which could provide a big boost for efforts to replace that little-used highway with housing, jobs, and parks.” And another $10 million “will go toward the redesign of Fordham Plaza, one of the most important spaces for transit and pedestrians in the city.”

Also leaked so far:

Maine — $10.5 million — To repair and improve the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA) line in Aroostook and northern Penobscot counties.

Maine and New Hampshire — $20 million — To replace the 87-year-old Memorial Bridge between Kittery, ME and Portsmouth, NH.

Providence, Rhode Island — $10.5 million — To purchase cranes that will transform the Port of Providence into a modern marine cargo center and diversify shipping options in the region.

Bridgeport, Connecticut — $11 million — To fund road and infrastructure improvements at Steel Point.

New Haven, Connecticut — $16 million — To convert part of Route 34 from a limited-access highway to an urban boulevard.

Ann Arbor, Michigan — $13.9 million — To reconstruct failing bridges on East Stadium Boulevard.

Peoria, Illinois — $10 million — To support the narrowing of Washington Street in the city’s Warehouse District.

Moline, Illinois — $10 million — To complete the Moline Amtrak train station.

Lake County, Tennessee — $13 million — To complete the Cates Landing riverport project.

South Dakota — $16 million — To rebuild a state-owned railroad branch line from Mitchell to Chamberlain.

Seattle, Washington — $34 million — To reconstruct the South Park Bridge.

Huge thanks to Michael Wojnar for compiling and passing along this information.

A week of protests against local transit cuts and fare hikes began today in Atlanta, where union members painted large red Xs on buses and rail cars that would go out of service under a plan to end service on about 30 percent of the city's rail and bus networks.

The series of rallies in eight cities was organized by the Transportation Equity Network (TEN), an alliance of local advocacy groups working to increase transit funding and highlight the perilous fiscal straits that have put service cuts and fare hikes on the table at more than eight in 10 transit agencies.

The TEN effort got backup from the infrastructure reform coalition Transportation for America, which updated its August report on cash-strapped transit agencies and converted the data into an interactive map of local cuts.

The rallies are aimed in part at state-level officials who can help stem the tide of red ink at the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) and other agencies, but TEN and its partners are also hoping to seize Congress' attention.

“Service cuts and fare hikes are hitting low-income people, people of color, students, retirees and the disabled especially hard, and they're robbing all of us of a proven engine of economic growth," TEN executive director Laura Barrett said in a statement on the rallies, asking lawmakers "to keep America moving by letting our transit agencies use federal funds for operating expenses.”

But Barrett's groups are facing an uphill battle to move the needle on more federal recovery funding for rail and buses. Despite the Obama administration's infusion of $8.4 billion in stimulus money and public goodwill, transit budgets remain stretched to the breaking point amid no sign of Senate movement on the second round of infrastructure spending that the House approved in December.

Meanwhile, a financial regulatory overhaul and an upcoming climate change bill continue to dominate the upper chamber's schedule, leaving some of the capital's leading transportation policy players to abandon hope of a new jobs bill before November's midterm elections.

Yet the long odds in Washington did not stop hundreds of protesters from turning out in Atlanta today. For a gallery of images from the event, check out the local Journal-Constitution.

Even in traffic-choked Atlanta, denser residential neighborhoods had positive health effects. (Photo: MSNBC)

Frank, Steve Winkelman of D.C.'s Center for Clean Air Policy, and Michael Greenwald of the Seattle-based firm Urban Design 4 Health used data from Atlanta's SMARTRAQ survey to map the amount of calories burned by various blends of walking, transit, and car use. That calorie-burning factor was dubbed the "energy index."

The "energy index" of Atlantans increased significantly as their neighborhoods grew denser, according to the study, and the number of calories they used on motorized travel shrank in denser, more walkable areas.

But interestingly enough, the study's density factor only examined residential properties -- and in neighborhoods where mixed-use development grew, bringing housing closer to commercial property, the energy used for driving and walking decreased, leaving Atlantans' "energy index" unaffected.

"This result likely demonstrates that the energy required to travel in a very mixed land use pattern is lower for both walking and driving — with no real impact on the relationship between the two modes," the study's authors wrote.

The authors also noted the significance of a documented link between dense residential development and public health in a city known more for its grinding traffic jams and struggling transit:

The Atlanta region is relatively skewed in terms of walkability, with a low proportion of survey participants actually walking and limited variation in urban form. While this presented some difficulty, the large sample size and oversampling of residents of walkable neighborhoods allowed for reasonable estimates of association. The fact that these results emerged in the auto-oriented Atlanta region is an indication that relationships are robust; associations are expected to be stronger in regions with higher overall variations in walkability and/or transit access.

Urban areas have a lot to contribute to the congressional climate change debate. (Photo: SDOT Blog)

The takeaway, for me at least, was a clear sense that technology is dramatically changing the lay of the land for local urbanists. Better data (and access to data) are helping to identify potential targets for planning improvements and easier navigation of cities and transit systems. Blogs and social network technologies have allowed urbanists to better communicate with each other, inform the public, and influence local governments.

Rare is the big American city that lacks a vibrant urban blogospheric community.

But there was an odd disconnect at this conference whenever a national policy figure took the podium. Speakers came across as detached and awkward where the web's potential was concerned (Adolfo Carrion) or warm and interested but fundamentally unsure of the best opportunities for engagement (Raphel Bostic).

Whereas New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan's talk to the gathering was invigorating because it was clear to all involved how speaker and audience could help each other be effective in achieving common goals, speeches from federal figures landed with the hard thump of uncertainty.

However promising the speakers' expressed goals were, it was less than obvious to all involved how the web might support or influence policy, and how the federal government might deliver tangible results.

I thought of this disconnect as I sat in a meeting on climate policy last night with Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley (D). In that discussion, it quickly became clear that the messages that are resonating with voters are not related to the economic consequences of warming or the moral case for reducing emissions. The messages carrying the day have very little to do with climate at all.

What works with the American people? A focus on ending dependence on oil and on generating clean energy jobs. Those are the priorities that convince voters to support the passage of a climate bill even after being confronted by an opposition message on the cost, real or exaggerated, of proposed plans.

What these goals translate into, in the mouths of most politicians, and policy wonks, and journalists, is an emphasis on what can be done about the automobile. Merkley, who represents a state containing perhaps the most transit-friendly city in the country and which is home to a company now producing the first American-made streetcars built in decades, didn't mention transit at all until asked about it -- he focused instead on the economic potential in hybrid technologies and electric cars.

Obviously, cars aren't going away any time soon, and it is important and necessary to keep improving the efficiency of the nation's automobile fleet. But this national blind spot where transit is concerned is distressing.

Yes, any climate bill that passes will likely include funding for transit and rail. But given that the biggest selling points of a climate bill are the likelihood that it will reduce American dependence on oil and create green jobs, a major new investment in rail, transit, and cities generally should be given a starring role.

This isn't rocket science. Transit investments are no longer the provenance of the big, old, and dense eastern cities. Metro areas from Norfolk to Charlotte to Houston to Denver are embracing transit. Funds for such investments are oversubscribed.

New money for transit systems could significantly speed the construction of projects currently in the works, thereby pushing forward the time at which development around those systems, perpetually in short supply, can be built. Create more opportunities to build transit-oriented development -- the one kind of housing not oversupplied at the moment -- and you put people back to work.

Additional transit funding allocation could reduce the inclination among city planners to scale back system plans based on current economic conditions. And lest we forget, budget shortfalls amid the recession continue to affect service and threaten transit system jobs. This problem won't go away until something like strong economic growth returns.

Meanwhile, demand for high-speed rail funds is high around the country, and the amounts allocated so far -- while generous relative to what has come before -- are small compared with what it will take to bring functioning systems online. Money for street improvements and new pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure could put people to work almost immediately, in ways that would help reduce transportation costs and emissions.

The obstacle to a greater role for these approaches is largely one of perception. Smart growth and transit are seen as niche solutions -- not something which is likely to be accepted or used by most Americans, who will remain dependent, as ever, on the automobile. But this is where the urban blogging community can be of use.

When you have vibrant communities dedicated to transit investments and better planning in places like Phoenix, Atlanta, and Austin, you have the basis for convincing legislators that these are not fringe policy tools, but rather priorities which should be championed and supported, heavily, at the federal level.

But while urban leaders in cities traditionally wedded to the car are beginning to understand that there is a constituency for a different approach to urban design and transportation, the congressional delegations in those states aren't hearing the message.

To them, the climate bill simply isn't about transportation or urban planning. They're not thinking about improving the bill by increasing the funding for those priorities, and they're not making a decision about whether or not to support the bill on the basis of what they're hearing from local urbanist groups.

I think there has been frustration among urbanists at the way their issues seem to have been sidelined in the Obama administration's first months. With the stimulus law on the books and a federal transportation bill delayed indefinitely, it hasn't been clear to urban advocates how their ideas might be important to the national discussion.

The climate bill is the answer. This is where urbanists can become relevant. The audiences for urban advocacy blogs -- and legislators -- need to hear some important messages. Urban investments can help get us off oil while creating thousands of jobs. A climate bill should make these investments a priority. And passage of the climate bill should be a major priority.

People care about these topics, but for some reason the important connections -- between better urban planning, a greener and more vibrant economy, and climate legislation -- aren't clicking. It's time we made them click.

Rosenthal attributes much of this difference to behavioral factors relating, it seems, to Europeans' unique tolerance of inconvenience. She writes:

But even as an American, if you go live in a nice apartment in Rome, as I did a few years back, your carbon footprint effortlessly plummets. It’s not that the Italians care more about the environment; I’d say they don’t. But the normal Italian poshy apartment in Rome doesn’t have a clothes dryer or an air conditioner or microwave or limitless hot water. The heat doesn’t turn on each fall until you’ve spent a couple of chilly weeks living in sweaters. The fridge is tiny. The average car is small. The Fiat 500 gets twice as much gas mileage as any hybrid SUV. And it’s not considered suffering. It’s living the dolce vita.

She later adds:

Also, in Europe, the construction of most cities preceded the invention of cars. The centuries-old streets in London or Barcelona or Rome simply can’t accommodate much traffic — it’s really a pain, but you learn to live with it. In contrast, most American cities, think Atlanta and Dallas, were designed for people with wheels.

What makes this particularly remarkable is that she opens the essay by discussing an experience she has in Stockholm, in which she insists on taking a taxi from the airport, which ends up being much slower and more expensive than the train.

Brad Plumer frames the piece as a fascinating read in light of the "lifestyle taboo," writing:

It's not considered the height of political savvy here in the United States to point out that European lifestyles are greener than our own. Don't expect that line in an Obama speech anytime soon. Too many facets of European life—the cramped apartments, the clotheslines for drying laundry—would likely strike suburbanites as inconvenient, burdensome, or even downright primitive...

Rosenthal wonders whether similar measures could fly in the United States: "I believe most people are pretty adaptable and that some of the necessary shifts in lifestyle are about changing habits, not giving up comfort or convenience." Maybe so, but this sort of talk still tends to be taboo in mainstream U.S. green circles. Josh Patashnik wrote a terrific piece for TNR last year on Arnold Schwarzenegger's brand of "pain-free environmentalism" in California—it's all just peachy to talk about swapping out coal-fired plants for solar-thermal stations, but ixnay on trying to rein in suburban growth or coax people into smaller homes.

I see several problems with Rosenthal's essay and with Brad's framing of it. One is that it's not really correct to attribute the huge gap in per capita emissions between America and Western Europe to the charming European habit of drying their clothes on clotheslines.

As Brad notes, power sources play a major role, whether one is talking about greater use of natural gas, the French nuclear industry, or Iceland's geothermal capacity.

Climate is extremely important. Western Europe is fairly temperate relative to much of America (and especially compared to the dirtiest parts of the country). In the same way, Californians are much greener than Texans, thanks to the moderate conditions along the heavily populated Pacific coast, which reduce the number of days on which home heating or cooling is needed.

But there are lifestyle issues involved, particularly where transportation and land use are concerned. And contrary to Rosenthal, it isn't that Europeans have opted for inconvenience. Rather, they have chosen different conveniences, as her Stockholm air train anecdote makes clear.

It is incorrect to say that an overabundance of land drove America to sprawl, and to drive. The Netherlands is dense of necessity, of course, but in Britain and France and Germany there is ample countryside, which might easily be home to sprawling subdivisions.

But Western Europeans have largely chosen not to encourage such growth, opting instead to tax gas at high rates, invest in transit, and protect center cities from the threat of urban freeways.

I think it is very difficult, objectively, to demonstrate that their choices have produced ways of life that are clearly less convenient than American lives. It is clear that Europeans tend to have better health outcomes than us, and they die in car accidents at much lower rates, and of course they're enjoying levels of wealth similar to our own while producing half as much carbon.

The obvious retort to this line of thinking is that perhaps that's all true, but like it or not America is now sprawling, and any effort to make the country greener by pursuing European land use and transportation options would be very difficult. In a similar vein, it is argued that attempts to push Americans into such a life via gas taxes or carbon prices would wind up being very painful.

But this is not quite right. As I have pointed out before, America will more or less need to build itself all over again by 2050 in order to accommodate population growth. Just because most of America is currently sprawling doesn't mean that most of the America built between now and mid-century has to look the same.

It's also not clear that increasing the push factor on households has to be especially painful. Taxes on drivers can be levied in a progressive fashion, if some revenues are used to fund transit options while others are refunded to lower and middle income households to help offset the added cost of driving.

Congestion tolling would mean higher government revenues and reduced driving, but it would benefit rich and poor alike. As with tax revenues, tolls could be used to provide a cushion against the increased cost for lower income families and increased investment in transit. Higher income households (which will tend to place a greater value on work hours lost to congestion) would enjoy a speedy ride into the office.

If the federal government worked to address limits on urban growth in green cities like New York and San Francisco -- limits which also serve to make housing in such places extremely expensive -- then America could grow denser and greener by improving access for middle-income households to some of the most dynamic metropolitan economies in the country.

Perhaps not all of the policy changes needed to reduce America's carbon footprint will be a walk in the park, but efforts to improve land use and transportation decisions are likely to be some of the most benefit-rich aspects of the climate change fight (as you'd think most people would realize, given the obvious pain of congestion, high gas prices, driving fatalities, and isolation among those unable to drive, among other things).

This storyline -- that changing lifestyles to enhance walkability will be painful -- makes it harder to pass good metropolitan policies and easier for politicans to fall back on the lame argument that Americans simply won't tolerate anything other than the sprawling suburban patterns which have dominated new development in recent decades.

And by reinforcing the idea that some of the most promising and least painful policy changes that can be made are unlikely to "work" here in America, writers and politicians alike ensure that more of the hard job of cutting emissions will fall to the parts of the economy where there are no good alternative options, and where change will be painful for households.

Rosenthal's essay is odd yet revealing. She instinctually attributes European greenness to practices Americans would dub backward, while pretending that the very convenient and green transport options she finds are built, and presumably used, by Europeans based on some peculiarity in their culture that we lack.

But we could build trains! In any given legislative sessions bills are introduced that would move the country toward the level of convenience Rosenthal enjoyed in her train ride to the Stockholm airport. It's just that they don't pass, because "it's not considered the height of political savvy" to embrace those policies, because Americans seem to think that their American-ness will render such conveniences inconvenient.

"Trains won't work here," because "Americans love their cars," and so high quality rail lines aren't built, and so Americans continue to drive. And then we sit around wondering what it is about the European character that makes them enjoy using clotheslines so much.

Stuck, like most of the city's legions of conventioneers, in the area around the Peachtree Center, I was astonished by the bleakness of downtown Atlanta's streetscape. The looming sandstone-colored skyscrapers contained almost no street-level storefronts. OK, there was a Hooters and a Hard Rock Café and a McDonald's and a few other things, but most of the businesses were either underground or in the massive, often windowless towers.

No matter which way you turned, there was a parking lot or parking garage, and more likely three or four, within sight.

Almost all the streets were one-way and built for speed. The day I got there, the air was so smoggy that my eyes started stinging and I had trouble breathing within minutes of getting off the MARTA train (it turned out that it was the city's most smoggy day of the year so far).

But most surreal were the pedestrian walkways, tubes that connected tower to tower to parking structure, everywhere you looked. A friend who has lived in Atlanta for six years told me the city encouraged these walkways to protect tourists and convention-goers like myself from panhandlers and street thugs.

Now, there are a lot of lovely things about Atlanta, and I don't want to imply that I think the Peachtree Center area is all there is to this city. The Little Five Points and Virginia Highland neighborhoods, which I visited briefly, seemed like eminently walkable and lively places (though there's no way you would walk to them from downtown). I spotted what looked like a really nice cycling trail in a Little Five Points park. While I only used MARTA to get to and from the airport, it worked perfectly for that, and it was clean and timely and inexpensive. There's a vocal pedestrian activism group, PEDS, fighting for improvements. And the city, which is full of unusually friendly people to begin with, also has what it calls an "ambassador" program downtown -- roving uniformed folks who will give tourists directions or just a kindly hello. They'll escort you to your destination if you feel menaced by those who rove the streets after dark.

It wasn't anything human that felt menacing to me, however. It was the ponderous architecture, the windswept, empty plazas, the planned environment in which nothing is on a human scale and in which no organic human interaction can easily take root. How sad that this is the face Atlanta's civic leaders have chosen to show to out-of-towners.

Photos: Sarah Goodyear, March 2006