Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Members of Congress worked all day Friday, until 4:42 Saturday morning, to finish voting on hundreds of amendments and, finally, the final HR 1 bill to set spending levels for the rest of 2011.

In the end, the budget bill they passed included 400 amendments and cuts $61 billion out of everything from Planned Parenthood to border security, public radio to foreign aid. And yes – transportation. The House cut funding from Amtrak, TIGER, the DC metro system, high-speed rail, rail safety programs, and the New Starts program for transit expansion.

Colin Peppard at NRDC took a look at how the loss of New Starts would affect transit, using the Bay Area as an example. Despite a half-cent tax hike Santa Clara residents voted for in 2000 to pay for transit expansions, Peppard said, federal assistance is almost always required to help with the big upfront costs. Transit doesn’t get nearly as much federal help as highways, which often have 80 percent of their costs paid for by the feds. The federal match for transit is as little as 50 percent.

Still, that match is essential for many transit expansions to proceed, and Peppard notes that “we won’t see many new transit projects in America if the House Republicans get their way.”

But will Senate Democrats and the president allow them to get their way? Once both chambers come back from their President’s Day recess, they’ve got one week to see eye to eye on spending and get the president to sign off on the budget. Otherwise, they can either pass another “clean” extension of current spending levels – which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says is necessary, but which House Speaker John Boehner has refused to do – or the government will shut down.

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In Pittsburgh, elderly para-transit riders get automated phone calls with the precise arrival time of their vehicle. Bus priority lanes and preferential traffic signals in the Twin Cities are improving on-time service. Here in Washington, DC, stored value on SmartTrip cards pays for Metro parking, train and bus, and it can sync with pre-tax employee transit benefits. In San Francisco, dynamic pricing varies parking rates based on supply and demand, reducing traffic and helping people find available parking spaces.

All of these transportation improvements are happening already – they’re examples of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) that are being heralded in a new report as a way to set the bar higher for transportation efficiency. Transportation for America, ITS America and other groups have teamed up to urge Congress to include technological enhancements in its transportation policies. They’re hoping these changes can help us get more out of our streets without building sprawl-inducing highways.

ITS is a catch-all phrase for the ways digital technology can be applied to all modes of transportation. There are familiar forms of ITS on highways. E-ZPass has been around for about 15 years already. Electronic highway signs warning of delays or detours are becoming commonplace. Now, Google traffic maps supplement radio reports to help drivers pick more efficient routes. Add to the mix Zipcar and other car-sharing services, or vanpools with real-time tracking, and ITS becomes not just a method to move cars more efficiently, but to make streets more efficient by taking cars off the road.

“The technologies already exist,” says Lilly Shoup, the report author at T4A. “Now it’s a matter of being more strategic in integrating them throughout the transportation network.”

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The long-term impacts to transportation funding as a result of the Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) civil rights compliance probe of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) won't be clear for some time, but the action by the federal administration has transportation policy circles buzzing. Experts in civil rights and regional planning policy couldn't point to another instance of a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) like the MTC being required to submit to similar scrutiny from the FTA, while social justice advocates felt vindicated for their longstanding contention of discrimination in transportation funding.

The FTA probe stemmed from a complaint by Public Advocates, a civil rights law firm in San Francisco, over BART's failure to properly analyize the equity impacts of its fare policy for the controversial Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) as required under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As a result of the complaint, the FTA denied BART $70 million in federal stimulus funds for the project. Because the MTC channels significant federal funds to BART and because it continually approved motions to send stimulus funds to an agency that ultimately failed its responsibility to comply with Title VI, the FTA turned its eye on MTC.

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

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

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

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Ed Glaeser is a very good economist, and his papers are indispensable reading for those interested in the workings of urban areas. But he is also a strident conservative, whose popular writings frequently challenge conventional progressive wisdom (and my own views).

I was interested, then, to read that he would be writing a three-part examination of the economics of high-speed rail (HSR) at the New York Times' Economix blog. I understood that Glaeser would not approach rail from a position of overwhelming support, but I imagined he would provide a fair and rigorous analysis, worth taking seriously.

I hate to pass judgment just one part into the three part series, but so far his effort is highly disappointing.

Let's begin with the first and most obvious complaint -- Glaeser chooses to examine a potential link between Dallas and Houston.

This strikes me as a worthwhile link to have, but it is is notably not part of the administration's announced plan for a first go at construction of HSR systems around the United States. And it is manifestly not one of the top priority corridors for creation of true HSR, running at speeds of at least 150 miles per hour.

Why would he choose this corridor to examine? Why not begin with the most natural place to construct true HSR -- the Northeastern Corridor -- or the state moving fastest toward building its own true HSR network -- California?

Well, Glaeser was able to use Dallas' low share of commuters taking transit to knock the corridor's estimated ridership down by half. Transit's share of commuting in Los Angeles is nearly three times that in Dallas. In San Francisco, transit's share, at 32.2 percent, is more than seven times larger than in Dallas. Presumably this difference had something to do with his choice.

This is a bad beginning for Glaeser, but it actually gets worse. He presents a formula for determining whether the direct benefits of rail are worth the costs:

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The nation's largest metropolitan areas -- which account for 63 percent of the U.S. population and 73 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) -- have received less than half of the surface transportation money allocated so far underthe Obama administration's economic stimulus plan, according to a new report compiled for the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The transportation stimulus report was released over the weekend during the mayoral conference's annual meeting, which lost high-profile attendees to a firefighters' strike in the host city of Providence, Rhode Island.

Its data suggests that cities, while they remain economic engines and shoulder much of the environmental cost of congestion, are getting the short end of the stick from state DOTs that have control over a significant share of stimulus money.

The top 85 American metro areas have received $8.8 billion, or 48 percent, of the $18.6 billion in stimulus aid given to state DOTs by the Federal Highway Administration, according to the mayoral conference's report.

The report found several cities that generate a large amount of economic activity for their states getting a comparatively small share of transportation aid. Los Angeles, for example, contributes 39 percent of California's GDP but received 25 percent of its stimulus money. Indianapolis fared even worse, netting just 4 percent of Indiana's transportation stimulus money while generating 39 percent of the state's GDP.

Using congestion estimates from the Texas Transportation Institute's (TTI) most recent Urban Mobility study, the mayoral conference's report also found that urban areas have not received stimulus money to match their traffic burden.

New York City pays 9.4 percent of the nation's congestion costs, according to the TTI, but has received 3.6 percent of the nation's road-repair money. San Francisco's congestion costs are 3.1 percent of the national total, but its share of FHWA stimulus aid was 0.4 percent.

Whether road-repair money should be distributed primarily on the basis of economic production or congestion remains open to debate. However, the mayoral conference concluded simply that state DOTs "should take into account" the economic production of cities in order to maximize the impact of the stimulus' transportation dollars.

"To do so would prompt states and federal decision-makers to increase their funding commitments to the nation's metro economies, raising the productivity level of their investments," the report concluded.

At a groundbreaking ceremony for the long-awaited Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco yesterday, Mayor Gavin Newsom asserted the project will be "so much more extraordinary than Grand Central Station."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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It's a good day in a city's urbanist evolution when Jan Gehl comes to town, and now San Francisco can add itself to the growing list of cities around the world that have embraced his people-first approach to urban design and planning.

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

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

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Ahead of this week's National Bike Summit in Washington, DC, syndicated columnist Neal Peirce wonders if 2008 will be "bicycling's best year since the start of the auto age." He writes about developments promoting the bicycle as a legitimate form of transportation around the world, many of which have been featured right here on Streetsblog:

First the trends: oil costs are surpassing $100 a barrel, global warming alarm calls are mounting, polluting autos and trucks increasingly clog city streets, and health concerns about a sedentary and fattening society are mounting.

And now the developments: Handy bike-for-hire stations are proving instant hits in Paris and other European cities and seem poised to invade urban America. Moves to add painted bike lanes along city roadways are being eclipsed by proposals for entire networks of "bike boulevards" -- roadways altered radically to accommodate cyclists and pedestrians. And a companion "Complete Streets" movement -- making roadway space for cyclists and pedestrians, not just cars and trucks -- is gaining traction nationwide.

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Part 3 in a series on rail and transit-only travel across the United States focuses on the final three cities of our journey. Part 2 looked at the first three and Part 1 presented an overview of our travel. 

San Francisco

Fully restored streetcars, cable cars, buses with and without pantographs, submerged and at-grade light rail, a regional subway and two commuter rail lines all make for a dizzying array of often very scenic public transportation. (Although, with a $5 fare, the cable cars seem more like a tourist draw and less like a form of public transit.) But even in a city that like New York derives much of its appeal from having a walkable, pre-automobile environment, we read about how pro-traffic forces are trying to reshape the city to accommodate more cars. There's apparently a big vote coming up in November on whether to continue transit-first policies or build a lot of parking garages (which would seem to counteract the $159 million San Francisco just won for congestion pricing).

Los Angeles

Making fun of Los Angeles car dependency was already a cliche decades ago. We didn't want to fall into that trap. We arrived in L.A. with open minds, hoping that it just might pleasantly surprise us. It did and it didn't.

L.A.'s Amtrak station is spectacular, way better than ours (not that that says anything). High ceilings, wide corridors and open concourses with a warm, inviting feeling and soft armchairs for waiting. (Wikipedia's photo does it justice.) It was also busier than we expected, serving morning commuters when we arrived but still busy in the afternoon. It's Amtrak's fifth busiest station (scroll).

Then we exited the station and found ourselves feeling like second class citizens walking with our luggage along wide, busy boulevards and buildings that were distant from one another. Pedestrians are actually forbidden from crossing the street right in front of the station, so we had to take some kind of circuitous route to get back to the station, crossing extra streets unnecessarily. Because of a little bit of a snafu that I'll describe tomorrow, we spent less time in L.A. than we had planned: just five hours. We spent most of it struggling with a crossword puzzle outside a Starbucks three blocks from Union Station.

New Orleans

New Orleans is recovering from Katrina. We stayed across the street from a monument to General Robert E. Lee in the Central Business District, three blocks from Amtrak. This area, like the French Quarter, was never flooded and the Quarter was bustling as always on the weekend we were there. Most of the many cyclists we saw in New Orleans were riding one-speed coaster bikes, which is a trend we didn't see anywhere else. There was also a fair proportion of trikes used to haul stuff. But the transportation highlight was definitely the streetcars, which have friendly drivers, friendly fellow passengers, and tall, wide windows that allow you to see the great panorama before you. Their grassy right-of-way does its little part at reducing the portion of our country paved with the impervious surfaces like asphalt, which are so harmful to drinking water supplies. The oldest and longest streetcar line in NOLA, along St. Charles Avenue, is now running as a short downtown shuttle until the rest of the line can be put back into service. Because I love them so much: two more photos of New Orleans streetcars below the jump.

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