Streetsblog Capitol Hill

They call their mission “The Cause.” And they say it’s critical to solving Michigan’s woes. Fortunately, though, the solution they have in mind is a simple one, and their name should make it obvious: “Michigan Needs More Parking.”

This group has taken to the pages of Facebook and the local media to share their vision for a revitalized state finally relieved of its burdensome parking problem.

“Detroit — and Michigan’s — unemployment crisis will only be addressed when we close the parking gap. More parking equals more jobs,” the group’s Chene Park told Model D media last month. “Parking now or poverty later. It’s really that simple.”

Michigan Needs More Parking says the situation is not hopeless, however. They have proposed a series of reforms they say will put the state back on track to financial health. For instance, they re-envision Mackinac Island, the state’s beloved car-free tourist destination, as “series of surface parking lots and decks” connected to the mainland by a causeway.

And in 2014, they’re planning a voter referendum to “defend the right of parking for every man, woman and child,” by enshrining it in the state constitution.

“Remember: we’re never more than one generation away from the end of parking freedom in America,” Park says.

If it all sounds a bit frightening, the really scary thing is that the message from “Michigan Needs More Parking” isn’t all that different than what people in real positions of influence are saying.

We highly recommend reading the whole interview and hooking up with these guys on Facebook.

Streetsblog will be offline Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and will be back publishing on Tuesday.

Grand Rapids, Michigan. Fort Collins, Colorado. Savannah, Georgia.

Mid-sized cities like these are stepping up and demanding many of the same transit improvements as their larger cousins. A new report from Reconnecting America [PDF] offers recommendations for these less populated cities to consider, whether they’re pursuing some version of bus rapid transit or a streetcar.

The mid-sized cities the report focuses on have populations between 50,000 and 250,000. What they have in common, in addition to their modest sizes, is a less dense residential pattern, lower levels of congestion, and greater job dispersion. But in many ways, they face the same issues as bigger cities, report authors Sarah Kline and Sasha Forbes write.

They identify three keys to success for mid-sized cities taking on “second-generation” transit projects:

• key champions and partnerships among relevant stakeholders
• a solid funding package
• an understanding of the role transit plays in the context of local land use

Bus service will be “the backbone” of the transit system in these smaller metros. But if those three fundamentals are in place, adding bus rapid transit or a streetcar system can help boost mobility and promote urban development — just the way they have in larger cities. Kline and Forbes report that streetcar systems in Tampa, Florida and Little Rock, Arkansas have generated $150 million and $800 million in development investment, respectively.

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The current transportation law dealt a few hard knocks to bicycling and walking programs. One big one was the restructuring of the Transportation Enhancements program into something called Transportation Alternatives, which has to fund more types of projects with less money.

The idea is that each state’s TA money will get split in half. Fifty percent gets allocated to Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and Transportation Management Areas (TMAs) based on population. Let’s call that the “Local 50.” Then the state gets the other half – the “State 50” – and is supposed to distribute it via a competitive grant process.

Local 50: It’s not quite 50

The first thing to know is that even the Local 50 isn’t always entirely under local control. The Local 50 gets distributed according to population to whatever entity represents each area. For large metro areas and sometimes even small urbanized areas, there’s an MPO or TMA in charge. But for rural areas, sometimes it’s just the state that run things.

Take Michigan, for example. The state is looking to get $26 million in Transportation Alternatives funds. Of that, $2.9 million comes off the top for Recreational Trails, a separate program with its own money (raised from off-road vehicle fees) that’s administered by the Department of Natural Resources, not MDOT.

That leaves $11.6 million each for the Local 50 and the State 50 in Michigan.

About $6.5 million of the Local 50 will go to the TMAs in jurisdictions of more than 200,000 people. But the rest of the money — over $5 million from that supposedly “Local” 50 — goes to the state to distribute.

That’s before you even get to the half that the state is supposed to control.

This is how the Cardin-Cochran amendment is being interpreted on the ground. The amendment was a creative and hard-fought way to make sure that some TA money actually went to the sorts of projects the old Transportation Enhancements program used to fund – primarily bike and pedestrian infrastructure, plus some safety education.

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Job markets are regional. So in order to serve a metropolitan region’s workers and by extension the local economy, transit must also be regional, seamlessly serving both central cities and their suburbs, whose share of employment has grown. Almost everyone recognizes that.

That’s why for decades, the nation’s cities have been combining agencies and expanding tax districts to create regional transit systems. It’s gotten to the point now where the only major city in the country that still lacks a regional transit system is Detroit — and officials from the Federal Transit Administration are leaning hard on state and local officials to remedy that.

Which is why a handful of Balkanizing ballot initiatives in suburban communities in Ohio, Michigan and Maine this election were so alarming. Voters in four suburbs in these states were asked if they wanted to opt out of regional transit systems in greater Toledo, Ohio; Grand Rapids, Michigan and Portland, Maine.

Luckily, voters saw through those proposals. All four of those communities rejected the proposals, choosing to remain a part of their regional transit systems — and all by fairly wide margins.

In Walker, Michigan, 73 percent of voters weighed in in favor of remaining in Grand Rapids’ bus system. A similar referendum in Falmouth, Maine failed, with 70 percent of voters electing to remain part of Portland’s METRO.

Meanwhile, in the Toledo, Ohio suburbs, Sylvania and Spencer Townships rejected the idea of withdrawing from regional transit by about a 60-40 margin. That was very good news for Toledo’s regional transit system, TARTA, which lost the suburb of Perrysburg to an identical ballot measure this spring.

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The overwhelming sentiment that greeted our story on the gas consumption maps the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club put out last week went something like this: These are almost useful. Just about everyone agreed that looking at total fuel consumption per county wasn’t very informative without weighing that number against population.

There were problems with doing per-capita fuel comparisons, but after hearing from several sources (including Streetsblog) that it was needed, NRDC’s Deron Lovaas has put out a follow-up post with new maps and charts that have, in my opinion, much more useful information.

First, the map of per-capita fuel consumption:

As Lovaas mentioned last week, there are problems with this map too. Some of these places are so rural and lightly populated that massive per-capita fuel consumption just isn’t a big enough problem to worry about, since there are few capitas there. Plus, there’s the problem of through-traffic — in many rural states, most traffic neither originates nor ends up there. So, since NRDC and the Sierra Club designed these maps, in part, to help them strategize where to focus their efforts, this per-capita map is of limited value.

This chart is where it starts getting good. It shows the counties with the highest total gasoline usage and ranks them by per-capita gas usage, showing where there are a whole lot of people using a whole lot of gas:

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Transit and bike activists are creative folks. More and more young, car-eschewing millennials are making their case in amateur music videos. The result is funnier and more imaginative than anything you’ll find on basic cable.

Check out this one from the University of Michigan. Production value, casting, script — this video is almost too good. Extra points for creative use of puppets and originality in drawing on the tradition of the Broadway musical:

More than Broadway, however, the active transportation advocacy music video genre tends to draw its inspiration from hip hop. Who could forget this Legoman rap video promoting center-running light rail for Detroit? This was also produced by some wildly talented folks at the University of Michigan.

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Tuesday morning, a group of intrepid high schoolers in the western Michigan city of Walker got onto their bikes and into a heap of trouble.

The Kenowa Hills High School students, eschewing a tradition of senior pranks that often destroy school property (spray-painting lockers and super-gluing doors, for example), opted to ride their bikes to the last day of classes in an impromptu parade.

They called the police department, which routinely accompanies similar events. They called the mayor of Walker, Rob VerHeulen, who rode along with the cops and even brought donuts. It was a “beautiful morning,” VerHeulen told WMXI, nearby Grand Rapids’ Fox affiliate.

But they neglected to call the school (it was a senior prank, after all). So when the convoy arrived — on time — they were greeted by Principal Katie Pennington, who promptly sent some 64 participating students home and informed them that not only would they be suspended for the last day of school, but they would also be prohibited from walking in the school’s graduation ceremonies. Cue the parental outrage.

One media mini-firestorm later, enough dust had settled for the school administration to rescind their suspensions and reschedule exams and commencement. A local radio host even convinced the Grand Rapids Cycle Company to donate a bike to the school, delivering it in person at a district board meeting to resounding applause.

“Did I overreact? In retrospect, of course I did,” Pennington said in a statement posted to the high school’s website yesterday. “My first response to learning of our high school seniors riding bikes to school on busy roads was to fear for their safety, and I responded in kind.”

And with that, whether or not it was their intention, the Walker 64 have helped draw attention to the sad state of bicycle infrastructure in many areas with considerable pent-up demand for cycling.

“The idea that a group of kids riding bikes to school constitutes a ‘prank,’ and a life-threatening one at that, raised eyebrows among more than a few cyclists, including myself,” said Ken Paulman, writing for Midwest Energy News. “But thanks to the magic of Google Maps, we can see that Pennington has a point.”

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Last month it looked like Southeast Michigan would be the site of yet another embarrassing transit failure, after City Council of Detroit suburb Troy voted to reject $8.5 million in federal funds for a transit center, citing Tea Party talking points.

But this near-disaster now has a happy ending thanks to a smart compromise and admirable leadership by the local business community. Troy’s City Council last night voted 4-3 to continue the project, in reduced, $6.2-million form.

Credit is due to Troy’s Chamber of Commerce, a strong, consistent supporter of the project, which helped negotiate the compromise to draw down costs by about $2 million while maintaining the station’s status as a “gateway” center. The chamber even went so far as to assume operating costs for the center, which will serve an Amtrak line, the suburban bus system, taxis, and will even include bike infrastructure.

Michele Hodges, president of the Troy Chamber of Commerce, said, political considerations aside, the transit center was important to her members. Businesses in Troy, one of metro Detroit’s most important job centers, believe the project will help retain young professionals, improve employee mobility, create jobs and attract investment. Chamber businesses, Hodges added, view the transit line, which is undergoing improvements to shorten trips to Chicago, as the transportation corridor of the future — this century’s Interstate-75, she said.

“We’re not looking at this through a political lens,” said Hodges. “Really change the dialogue to one of productive problem solving.”

When the transit center funding was struck down in a 4-3 vote last month, the chamber was immediately critical. But it didn’t let a “no” vote, which was thought to be the final word on the project, end its campaign.

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Intercity rail dreams in the Midwest have certainly seen their share of  setbacks — with federal funds being returned in Ohio, Wisconsin and, more recently, Michigan. But all is far from lost.

Yesterday, U.S. DOT announced a $186 million grant to Illinois DOT to upgrade the line between Chicago and Joilet — about 40 miles southwest of Chicago — one of the final segments to be built in the 284-mile Chicago to St. Louis line.

The project will allow trains to travel up to 110 miles per hour and, when completed, will save travelers about an hour, U.S. DOT reports. That’s good news for the about 35 million people travel the corridor annually. According to the Illinois Department of Transportation, about 90 percent of those trips end at either terminal: St. Louis or Chicago.

Michigan, Minnesota and Indiana are all in the midst of upgrading intercity rail lines as well, although it might not be accurate to describe many of these projects as true high-speed rail. (True HSR runs at an average speed of 110 miles per hour, as opposed to a maximum of 110.)

Michigan has funds for line upgrades between Kalamazoo and Dearborn — just outside Detroit. Meanwhile, Amtrak will be completing the remainder of the Detroit-Chicago link west of Kalamazoo to Chicago. The line will top out at 110 mph, said Richard Harnish, Executive Director of Midwest High Speed Rail Alliance.

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The Cato Institute’s resident transportation pundit Randal O’Toole is best appreciated as a comedian.

A forestry expert with a penchant for 19th Century neckwear, O’Toole’s latest gag, published in The Michigan View, warns that Detroit is poised to repeat the transportation mistakes of — get this — Portland and Denver.

Let that sink in for a moment. O’Toole is warning Detroit that if the city invests in light rail it could turn out like two of the healthiest, most attractive cities in the country. Heaven forbid.

“Light rail is sooo last century,” says O’Toole (an expert in prior centuries, as you can tell from his tie). Residents of metro areas keep on voting to tax themselves and build light rail, he continues, only because of “a giant hoax perpetrated on the taxpayers of the United States.”

Light rail is expensive, he explains. Denver’s going to spend $7 billion to build its light rail system over 10 years. Classic O’Toole. He doesn’t like to complicate his arguments with superfluous nonsense like comparison to alternative scenarios, or even — this is really a stretch — the concept of externalities. Nope, when O’Toole’s on the case we get a statement of project cost and then, “Gee, that’s a lot of money.”

Here’s where it gets really good though. In what is sure to elicit belly laughs, O’Toole argues that light rail doesn’t lead to development.

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