Streetsblog Capitol Hill

In 2006, 14-year old Kristen Bowen was killed on the train tracks near her house in the Chicago suburb of Villa Park. She was using a well-worn shortcut across the tracks that cut her residential neighborhood off from the school and the park they used. Four years after Kristen’s death, her twin sister committed suicide by stepping in front of a train near where Kristen was struck. Those tracks are covered with balloon memorials and crosses, commemorating those who have died.

Walter Gaffney holds a picture of his 17-year-old daughter, Mary, along the tracks where she was killed in Hyattsville, Maryland, a hotspot for pedestrian deaths. Photo: Post-Dispatch/David Carson

The Federal Railroad Administration estimates that 500 people die every year walking on railroad tracks [PDF]. But who bears the responsibility of preventing these deaths? Was it Kristen’s responsibility to avoid trespassing where freight trains roar past? Her town’s responsibility to erect a fence before being spurred on by her death? Should planners have recognized that it’s human nature for people to take a calculated risk to reach the amenities they used? Or was it the railroads’ responsibility to identify where these deaths happen and try to mitigate the risk?

A recent series by reporter Todd Frankel at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch makes clear that the responsibility is shared. But he also points a finger at the railroads, which have been obstructionist as others try to address the issue:

A few years ago, when the [Federal Railroad Administration] tried to get a better sense of who was walking on the tracks — by looking at trespassing cases that didn’t end in a casualty — regulators asked the railroads for help. They wanted the railroads’ internal trespassing reports. The railroads refused.

The agency recently was forced to concede defeat, noting that it “failed to garner the necessary support from the rail industry to conduct the study.”

Then there was the issue of where the casualties occurred.

For years, the agency required railroads to report only the county of a trespassing death or injury. Not the city. Not the closest milepost on the railroad system. Having so few details made it hard to identify hot spots for trespassing, said Ron Ries, director of the agency’s Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Safety and Trespass Prevention Division.

We reported in the spring that FRA guidance on pedestrian safety at railroad tracks focused only on approved crossings, ignoring the risks of so-called “trespassing” that occurs outside of those areas.

Only in the last year did federal law require railroads to provide GPS coordinates of the crashes. Before that, their crash reports only listed the county where the crash happened, making it impossible to identify where these crashes are clustered. Now, with better information, some danger “hotspots” became apparent.

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Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland was dealt a setback last week when the legislature failed to approve a revenue package that would have shored up funding for transportation projects.

Gov. Martin O'Malley (D-MD) must convene a special session of his state's legislature in the next 10 weeks. Image: Baltimore Fishbowl

Maryland has been at the forefront of a number of progressive planning issues in recent years, including a trailblazing statewide land-use plan. The difficulty in raising the gas tax is notable not only in relation to Maryland’s smart growth trajectory, but also as a harbinger for other states struggling to maintain and invest in transportation infrastructure absent a long-term federal bill.

Maryland pays for transportation projects through its Transportation Trust Fund, which works pretty much like the federal Highway Trust Fund — it gets money from gas taxes, excise taxes on SUVs, vehicle registration fees, and the feds, then dedicates it to transportation projects. Also like the HTF, the TTF routinely falls short of what it’s supposed to cover.

One reason for the shortfall is that the state’s gas tax has been frozen at 23.5 cents per gallon for the last 19 years. It has never been tied to the rate of inflation or fluctuations in the price of gas. Furthermore, gas is exempt from the state’s 6 percent sales tax.

O’Malley proposed phasing out the exemption over several years, directing the proceeds to the TTF. He claimed that the state could raise some $600 million annually for transportation that way, nearly doubling the amount currently brought in by gas taxes. The state gas tax currently only covers about 20 percent of the state’s transportation budget, according to an MDOT spokesperson — under O’Malley’s plan, it could cover 31 percent.

But even though O’Malley’s party holds a majority in both houses of Maryland’s legislature, his plan never made it out of committee in either chamber. So what happened?

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The state of Maryland took a bold step to rein in sprawl this week, when Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law PlanMaryland, the state’s first comprehensive plan for sustainable growth.

Maryland's developed areas -- 1970. Source: Maryland Department of Planning.

The plan is intended to reverse the steady march of low-density development that has, over the last few decades, swallowed up much of Maryland’s farmland, swelled highway traffic and drained wealth from cities — notably Baltimore.

Under the plan, Maryland will officially designate some areas for development, while other areas will be preserved for agricultural uses or preservation. Designated “growth areas” and established communities will receive preferential funding status for state resources.

Maryland's developed areas -- 2010

It is estimated that the program will save $29 billion in road and school construction as well as preserve 300,000 acres of farmland and forest over the next 25 years.

Governor O’Malley, former mayor of Baltimore and a leading proponent of the plan, has shown an impressive amount of courage and conviction, even as the plan has been attacked by some rural interests as ”a socialist plot,” or “a war or rural Maryland.”

The plan was enacted without legislative approval, based on a 1970s state law that requires Maryland to create a “development plan.”

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White Flint, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC, should be a shining example of transit-oriented development. It’s centered on a metro station on the busy red line, sandwiched between the bustling suburban downtowns of Bethesda and Rockville.

Developers and the public are together preparing to turn White Flint's Rockville Pike from this...

... into this. Images: MontCo Planning Director's Blog (above) and White Flint Partnership (below).

But instead, it’s “sprawling suburbia,” covered in surface parking lots and lacking a true road network. “Community members say they’re within spitting distance of White Flint Mall but they have to drive to get there because of the road network,” says developer Francine Waters, who manages the transportation and smart growth program at Lerner Enterprises.

Seeing the wasted potential of the area, Lerner and five other developers that own much of the land in White Flint came together to figure out how to make Rockville Pike, White Flint’s main artery, a destination and not just a thoroughfare. Waters told the story this week at Rail~Volution to an audience eager to learn how public-private partnerships and value capture strategies could work in their neck of the woods.

Not only are the White Flint developers looking to include more mixed-use development in the community, they want to build new local streets to fill in a viable street grid and redesign the eight-lane Rockville Pike into a “21st century boulevard” with wide sidewalks, bike lanes, six rows of trees, and dedicated transit lanes. They want to fill those lanes with bus rapid transit to take short-haul commuters off of the at-capacity red line.

The infrastructure total is estimated to cost $601 million – and the federal government isn’t picking up a dime of it.

White Flint is at the forefront of a new kind of infrastructure financing – one which involves the private sector more than the government. As federal funds dry up, all eyes have turned to public-private partnerships, but the topic is still often the subject of much head-scratching and hand-wringing in Congress. Indeed, some have rung the alarm bell about over-reliance on the private sector when it comes to building high-speed rail, saying the public often bears too much of the risk while the private developers carry off all the profit.

Through an extended series of community consultations, White Flint’s developers appear to have gained the public’s trust, and now they’re charging forward with ambitious plans to remake an auto-centric suburban sprawl zone. And by bypassing federal aid, they’re also bypassing the reams of paperwork and bureaucratic processes that come with it, which often add years and millions of dollars to total project cost.

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Last month Streetsblog asked whether President Obama would select transportation projects that reduce congestion, improve air quality, and create jobs when he picked several infrastructure investments, among those recommended by agency officials, to fast-track. The selection of these projects, intended to help spur short-term job creation, could avoid the mistakes of the 2009 stimulus program, which funneled billions to “shovel-ready” projects that will also promote sprawl. Leading up to the announcement, the president’s rhetoric seemed to indicate that the administration would opt for road maintenance and transit projects rather than newer, wider highways.

The Tappan Zee bridge overhaul is supposed to include transit facilities, but some fear that those may get dropped later on. Photo: SamuelWantman / Wikimedia

Today the administration announced its list of 14 projects, and at first glance, it seems like most of the transportation-related projects take transit, bicycling, and walking into consideration. Some of them will induce sprawl nonetheless, because they expand traffic capacity.

These projects won’t get more federal funds, but they will get federal help in expediting the process. The president promised that this fast-tracking won’t shortchange environmental reviews. The projects were highlighted by officials in several agencies and final selection was done by the White House.

Here’s the list of surface transportation-related projects, most of them recommended by the Department of Transportation:

Tappan Zee Bridge, New York: The bridge is rated structurally deficient as well as functionally obsolete, meaning that in addition to carrying more traffic than it was designed for, the structure is unsafe to carry vehicles. Constant repairs have made the bridge into a money pit, and a significant overhaul could produce long-term savings on maintenance. Notably, this project is not close to “shovel-ready” status, so its selection seems to indicate that the administration had long-term goals in mind, in addition to short-term job creation. There are plans to include a Bus Rapid Transit lane and a commuter rail line on the bridge, as well, but some advocates worry that all that widening could happen without the transit components coming through in the end.

Crenshaw/LAX, California: LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has become a champion for federal loan programs because of his zeal to expand transit in his city. The Crenshaw/LAX project is a cornerstone of his efforts and will provide a critical transit connection to the airport. The city has done a good job attracting federal interest and assistance, and the FTA is already helping them shorten the approval time for the project.

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