Streetsblog Capitol Hill

We’ve been watching how governors around the country are getting extra “creative” as they try to keep their transportation budgets solvent. Yesterday we witnessed an excise tax on bicycles floated in Washington State.

Scott Walker has plans to spend more than $6 billion on highways in Wisconsin in the next two years, and he's going to get the state's utility customers to help foot the bill. Image: NYPost

But the award for the wildest funding scheme may go to renowned highway spender Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin, who wants to raise $6 billion for the state’s roads by selling 37 publicly owned power plants. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported this week on Walker’s bizarre plan keep the highway money flowing, and send the bill to utility customers:

The move could also have the unexpected effect of linking the prices paid by some utility customers to the financing of the state’s road system. Bonds for the road work would go through even if the state property was not ultimately sold.

What are these projects that are so tremendously important the state’s assets must be sold to pay for them?

Well, Wisconsin is going to blow a considerable chunk of that change on a project called the Zoo Interchange, outside of Milwaukee. This $1.7 billion — yes, billion with a “b” — project would be one of the most expensive interchanges ever built. Walker specifically mentioned that it was one of his two top priorities in an interview with the Journal Sentinel.

Last year a coalition of nonprofit groups in Milwaukee filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state, charging that the project was discriminatory because it does nothing for transit-dependent Milwaukee residents. Dennis Grzezinski, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the Zoo Interchange is “just about the most expensive approach they could have taken.”

This from the same guy who couldn’t stomach passenger rail in his state because it would require a subsidy of a few million dollars a year.

Sad to say, Wisconsin’s plan is not much worse than the ones being promoted in other parts of the Midwest.

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Image: Google Earth/GGW

Earlier this week we looked at the intersection of Route 355 and Shady Grove Road near Rockville, Maryland, flagged by Ben Ross at Greater Greater Washington for being especially hostile to pedestrians, even though it’s the site of a bus stop. We asked if it might be the worst intersection in the country and put out a call for readers to send their nominations for the title.

As some readers pointed out, the Rockville intersection at least has sidewalks on all four corners and some refuges for pedestrians caught mid-crossing, so it certainly can’t be nation’s worst. Several other submissions landed in our inbox where the engineers let the sheer car-centricity of the roads overwhelm the meager provisions for pedestrians even more.

Wouldn’t you know it: We received three nominations from Florida, which Transportation for America has singled out as the most dangerous state for pedestrians. One reader sent us this stunner: State Route 7 and Forest Hill Boulevard in Wellington, Florida. From this satellite picture, it looks like a walk around this intersection would cross 45 lanes, plus — is that a bike lane? Wouldn’t want to be in the middle of that on a Cannondale:

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If everything goes according to plan this election, Kansas City will be on track to build its first streetcar in under five years, from conceptual planning to first boarding. Maybe more impressive still, this relatively sprawling Midwestern town is this close to getting its first rail transportation without even a mild political dustup.

An artist's depiction of the Kansas City Streetcar. Image: Kansas City Business Journal

When you’re a car-centric Midwestern city that hasn’t had rail transportation in 50 years, swaying a general public — the majority of which doesn’t find transit useful or attractive — can be the single hardest obstacle. But as Kansas City’s streetcar project illustrates, you don’t necessarily need to.

This month some 700 voters — members of a downtown special taxing district surrounding the planned line — will determine the fate of this project. They will decide whether to tax themselves and district shoppers — through a combination of sales and property taxes — a collective $10 million per year for 25 years. That amount, plus $18 million in funding the Kansas City Streetcar won from its metropolitan planning organization, will be enough to cover construction and operating costs for this two-mile downtown circulator.

Project sponsors applied for a TIGER IV grant earlier this year, but were passed over. That didn’t stop them, or even slow them down much. The special taxing district will bring in 74 percent of the project’s $100 million cost. Since the project will not rely on direct taxation from the general public, no larger community-wide vote will be necessary.

This election won’t necessarily be full of intrigue. Residents of the special taxing district already voted by a wide margin to support the creation of the district back in August, leading project sponsors to believe they will support the tax as well. David Johnson, president of Streetcar Neighbors, said there have been some general NIMBY complaints, and some members of the taxing district have been vocally opposed, but that’s about it.

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Next month, 19 transit-related measures will come before voters. If the rest of this year is any guide, 16 of them will pass.

The "Transportation Penny" in Richland County, South Carolina will fund some pedestrian improvements, along with roads and transit, if voters approve it November 6. Image: Richland County

Despite a high-profile loss in Atlanta a few months ago, transit referenda have an 86 percent success rate so far this year, according to the Center For Transportation Excellence.

It strikes some as counterintuitive: During an economic downturn, in a virulently anti-tax climate, why are voters deciding time and time again to tax themselves to support transit?

CFTE Director Jason Jordan says the lousy economy is one reason so many of these measures keep popping up — more this year than any other since CTFE started counting in 2000. With states crying poverty and the federal government, for the first time ever, passing a transportation bill that was no bigger than the one that preceded it, local governments have had to take matters into their own hands.

Jordan says the most unique of all of next month’s ballot initiatives is a gas tax measure in Memphis. Almost all the initiatives we see are sales taxes or property taxes, with a handful of bond measures and vehicle fees. Most cities don’t have the authority to raise gas taxes independent of the state — but Memphis does, and it’s trying to increase the tax by one cent to raise $3 million to $6 million for the transit authority. “Here we have an example of communities being pushed to be as creative as possible,” Jordan said.

No other local gas tax measure is on the ballot. Indianapolis has a citywide income tax hike in the works, which will also be novel, but they didn’t make it happen for this year.

Another one to watch is the half-cent sales tax in Orange County, North Carolina, which includes the city of Chapel Hill. If it succeeds, the three counties of the so-called Research Triangle will likely join together to improve their regional transit system. If it fails, the whole thing falls apart.

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Before and after: Sidewalk on Marshall Avenue, St. Paul. Source: Bike Walk Twin Cities

If you ever doubted whether a small investment in biking and walking could have a large impact, here is your proof.

The last transportation law, SAFETEA-LU, provided four communities with four years of funding to build an infrastructure network for nonmotorized transportation (a fancy way of saying “sidewalks and bike paths”). It wasn’t a lot of money — $25 million each to Columbia, Missouri; Marin County, California; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Sheboygan County, Wisconsin.

The program built 333 miles of on-street biking and walking routes, 23 of off-street facilities, and 5,727 bike parking spaces in the four municipalities — not to mention some outreach and education. Not bad, especially when you consider that $100 million would only buy about five miles of new four-lane highway in an urbanized area [PDF].

Total two-hour bicycling and walking counts for all pilot communities, fall 2007 and fall 2010. Source: FHWA Report to the U.S. Congress on the Outcomes of the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program

FHWA summed up the results in its report on the outcomes of the pilot program [PDF]:
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St. Louis' Arch grounds will get better pedestrian connectivity across I-70, thanks to a $20 million TIGER grant. Image: NextSTL

If you live in Stamford, Connecticut and your walk to the train station gets safer next year, you can thank USDOT’s TIGER grant program. Or when your hometown of American Falls, Idaho suddenly gets complete streets downtown, accommodating people on foot, on bikes, on buses, in cars, and in wheelchairs, encouraging local shopping. Or when you realize that traffic congestion between Olympia and Tacoma, Washington has eased, not by adding lanes but by installing intelligent technology to manage traffic and encourage ridesharing.

All 46 of the TIGER III award grantees have been announced now, and there are sure to be more communities disappointed than excited, given that there were 828 applications totaling $14.1 billion and USDOT had only $511 million to give. The money went to 33 states and Puerto Rico. USDOT was careful to include many rural projects, though those tend to be the smallest grant awards. Twenty of the 46 projects are in rural areas, but they only amount to about 30 percent of the total outlay. (Check out Transportation for America’s fantastic interactive map of grantees from all three rounds of TIGER.)

All in all, 48 percent of the projects fund roadwork, with about a quarter of those funds paying for complete streets treatments like the one in American Falls. Another 29 percent goes to transit – a far better shake for transit than generally comes of the normal Congressional appropriations process. Twelve percent went to ports, 10 percent for freight rail, and two percent for passenger rail.

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In Missouri last year, a 19-year-old driving a pickup at 55 mph sent or received 11 texts in the 11 minutes immediately before he caused a deadly crash.

A deadly pile-up involving two school buses, a tractor-trailer, and a pickup truck was caused, in part, by texting by the pickup driver. Photo: Jeff Roberson/AP

The ensuing collision killed the texting driver as well as a 15-year-old student who was on a high-school band trip to the Six Flags amusement park in St. Louis. Thirty-eight others were injured.

An investigation into the crash led the National Transportation Safety Board this week to issue a call for all states to ban all cell phone use by drivers, except in emergencies. Currently, 35 states and the District of Columbia ban texting while driving, and 30 states ban all cell phone use for new drivers. Only nine states and DC have overall bans on hand-held cell phone use.

“Distraction-affected” crashes killed 3,092 people last year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The NTSB isn’t recommending a federal ban but rather identical state bans everywhere in the country. Some speculate that the Interstate Commerce Clause precludes a federal ban, but I haven’t heard any of the agencies explain the legal basis for pursuing only state laws.

It was widely (mis)reported last week that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood had gotten behind a federal ban on cell phone use. In fact, LaHood is supportive of state bans but hasn’t gotten behind a federal ban. He has talked about passing “good legislation in Congress” to do for texting what the .08 blood alcohol threshold did for drunk driving, but nothing that would amount to a ban.

The NTSB recommendations aren’t binding, but they’re raising the profile of the dangers of all cell phone use, not just texting or calling from a handset. The NTSB doesn’t distinguish between hands-free technology and other use of portable electronic devices. They consider it all distracting, as does Focus Driven, an organization devoted to ending distracted driving.

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Charles Marohn is the critic the transportation engineering field desperately needs.

Over and over again, this former traffic engineer and head of the engineering reform nonprofit Strong Towns has made himself the voice of reason to a field gone mad on automobiles.

His latest coup is a sardonic verbal takedown of a nightmare “complete street” interchange that Missouri engineers are calling “progress.” But the design is less than revolutionary, preserving the field’s allegiance to almighty car capacity. The project’s real triumph is in finding ways to satisfy the most basic elements of complete streets while completely missing the spirit of the movement.

Says Marohn of the video:

Did we need more proof that the engineering profession is insane than this video of the “diverging diamond”? If we had infinite resources (we don’t), this would still be crazy, but the fact that we’re broke just shows you how insulated from reality so many of them are.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m shouting into the wind with the engineering profession. This may just be more of that. If nothing else it was therapeutic to me.

Word went out in a press release early last month: The Missouri Department of Transportation would be eliminating 1,200 jobs, closing 135 facilities and selling 740 pieces of equipment.

“This is about survival,” said MoDOT spokesman Jorma Duran. “This is about making sure our roads and bridges continue to be maintained and operable.”

Drastic times call for drastic measures. And outdated gas tax rates, state operating shortfalls and a lack of foresight are combining to create a crisis for state DOTs in Missouri and beyond. In the last two years, Virginia DOT let go of 1,000 employees and New York DOT eliminated 100 positions.

The Virginia Department of Transportation made 1,000 layoffs in 2009, the biggest reduction in the history of the agency. Photo: Richmond Times-Dispatch

“We just ran out of money,” Reta Busher, VDOT’s chief financial officer, told the Richmond Times Dispatch.

State transportation agencies are adjusting to a “new reality,” said John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. And there will be widely felt impacts.

“It’s terrible,” he said. “Because of these economic crises, you’ll see projects put off. States will not do as much as they recognize is absolutely essential.”

Horsley said the most vulnerable employees are rural maintenance crews. “If you go to rural Missouri and just about any rural place, the state maintenance facility is one of the most important employers,” Horsley said. “That’s a real blow to rural economies all over Missouri. Those paychecks were very important to those regions.”

How did states get into this mess? Well, stagnant gas taxes are a big part of it. States depend on gas taxes — federal and their own — for an average of 24 percent of their budgets, according to Smart Growth America. But since the federal gas tax was last raised in 1993, inflation and greater fuel efficiency have greatly diminished its purchasing power. In addition, many states have not had the political gumption to take on gas tax hikes themselves (Georgia and Connecticut being a few notable exceptions).

Rising fuel prices have also forced gas tax receipts downward, as consumers curb nonessential driving. Where in headier times, states might have subsidized their transportation agencies out of the general fund, few states are in the financial position to do so at the current time.

To make matters worse, many states have been pouring their increasingly scarce transportation resources into projects of dubious merit. According to a report by the Brookings Institution, states do a poor job ensuring their transportation investments are strategically targeted to aid economic growth. Transportation investments are not properly coordinated with land use considerations. States were also found to be underinvesting in maintenance, a recipe for long-term financial disaster. The problem in a nutshell: Building sprawl is expensive.

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