Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Chattanooga, Tennessee, was, in a lot of ways, not an ideal city for bike-sharing. It’s a somewhat sprawling city, without a strong culture of cycling and walking. In addition, only a small percentage of area residents use transit to get around, so not many are leaving the car in the garage.

Chattanooga is blazing trails as a small bike-sharing city. Image: Times Free Press

But local leaders didn’t use these challenges as excuses not to act to improve public health. This city of 170,000 launched the Chattanooga Bicycle Transit System last July, with 30 stations and 300 bikes dispersed around a 2.5-square mile area of downtown. In doing so, little Chattanooga beat larger cities like New York and Chicago to the punch.

“Our purpose with bike-sharing was to put a large amount of cyclists on the street in a short time, to change the dynamic, to improve our air quality, our health and active transportation overall,” said Chattanooga Bike Coordinator Philip Pugliese, at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in Kansas City last week.

Chattanooga had studied bike-sharing since as early as 2007. During that time, bike-share supporters surveyed local residents about their interest in cycling, if they had access to a bike. About 75 percent reported some level of interest.

“We felt fairly confident that people would try this,” Pugliese said.

The city was able to secure $100,000 in funding from the local Lyndhurst Foundation to launch the effort in 2009. Partnering with the local transit system, CARTA, the city of Chattanooga won federal air-quality funds the following year to jump-start the system.

In light of the obstacles, Pugliese said the budding program has been a success.

It can be difficult to launch bike-share in a small city with a transportation system that is heavily reliant on car travel, Pugliese said. But Chattanooga’s experience can offer inspiration to other small cities.

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Something tells me we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this in the not-so-distant future.

A rendering of I-69 through Tennessee. State officials have since halted construction due to lack of funds. Image: Tennessee DOT

Last week Tennessee DOT commissioner John Schroer took to the pages of the Memphis Commercial Appeal to explain his decision to halt construction of his state’s portion of I-69. The reason, he explained, is that the state can’t afford the 65-mile, $1.5 billion highway project, between Memphis and Dyersburg.

“The $1.5 billion cost estimate represents more than 100 percent of Tennessee’s annual federal construction funding,” Schroer said. “To spend that on one project — regardless of its location — would not only be a disservice to all Tennesseans, but it would also be downright irresponsible and potentially dangerous. It would leave no money to repair and replace old bridges or implement safety improvements designed to save lives.”

In particular Schroer mentioned the unavailability of federal earmarks as a factor in the decision.

TDOT undertook an examination of its project pipeline last year with Smart Growth America and discovered that it had nine times more projects in its project list than available funding would cover. Determined to change the way it did business, Tennessee has been turning away from bypasses and road widening to concentrate more on integrating land use and transportation. The state wants to build places people want to go to and not just through at high speeds.

I-69 — also known as the NAFTA Superhighway — had received special designation from FHWA in 2007 as a “corridor of the future,” a distinction that was supposed to come with streamlined approval and federal funding. The mega highway was to connect Michigan and Canada to Texas and Mexico. The road has been touted as an economic development boon for the states it bisected.

Tennessee had spent close to two decades on planning, land acquisition and design work for I-69. The state had already spent $200 million, $150 million of which came from the federal government.

But Schroer expressed doubt other states would be able to complete their portions, given the current funding environment.

“Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana and Texas are all facing tremendously expensive I-69 projects, including construction of bridges over the Mississippi and Ohio rivers,” he wrote.

Schroer said he would be happy to take up I-69 again “when long-term funding is identified.”

In the late eighties and nineties, every traffic issue the Tennessee Department of Transportation faced was assigned the same solution: a bypass. But over the years, the department has come around to a new way of doing things, according to 40-year TDOT veteran Ralph Comer. Comer says the current commissioner, John Schroer, wants to become known as the “no-bypass commissioner.” He simply believes there are usually more cost-effective ways of solving transportation problems.

"Context sensitive solutions" preserve main streets like this one in Franklin, Tennessee instead of turning them into high-speed thoroughfares. Photo: Westhaven

This way of thinking led Schroer, Comer, and the department into a conversation with Smart Growth America. They teamed up to examine the state of Tennessee’s transportation system and devise a path forward, bringing together an impressively diverse coalition, from the Tennessee Disability Coalition to the Sierra Club, the public transit association to the road builders association. One irrefutable fact brought them together: The TDOT project pipeline would cost nine times more to construct than available funding would permit. Something had to change.

Tennessee is in better fiscal shape than most states and is one of a small handful of states with zero debt – meaning it pays zero percent of its budget toward debt service, leaving a lot more for infrastructure. That’s a luxurious position in today’s economic context. So if a close examination of cost-effective transportation strategies can be transformative for Tennessee, just imagine what it can do for states even more desperate to get costs under control.

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Yesterday, we started our year-end 2011 round-up. We lamented transit cuts in places where transit is more important than ever, cheered the successful ballot initiatives that will fund transportation lifelines, took a moment to explore the nuances of some difficult issues, and called out Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin for some hare-brained ideas about the best way to spend money.

Now we continue with the second installment: What cities shone a little brighter and what cities lost their luster?

Let’s start with the good.

Cities That Led the Way: Bike-share caught on in 2011 like never before. New York City announced a system to dwarf all others, complete with 10,000 bikes. Boston had a great first season. DC and Arlington expanded Capital Bikeshare. Chicago got a TIGER grant to go full-tilt on its system. And bike-share is popping up in places you wouldn’t necessarily expect it – most recently, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. All those cities deserve credit for investing in active transportation options for their residents.

Minneapolis took the Greenway to a more sustainable future. Photo: Micah Taylor / Flickr

Meanwhile, in the DC area, suburban retrofits in White Flint and Tysons Corner started transforming these into urban, transit-rich communities with vibrant daytime and nighttime populations.

And Salt Lake City showed the country how to solve some of the most vexing geographic, political, cultural, and ecological challenges of urbanism. The city got behind a set of growth principles that champion walkability, density, transit options, and land conservation. The city’s new, sustainable developments are wildly popular and incredibly successful at encouraging active transportation.

But it was Minneapolis that stole our hearts this year. The city rocketed to the top of the Bike-Friendliness charts with its Nice Ride bike-share system and its beloved Midtown Greenway, which transformed an old industrial railroad trench into a major cyclist thoroughfare connecting key parts of the city. And that’s not all – Minneapolis has gone through the whole complete streets shopping list, from road diets to bike parking to improved crossings to bike boulevards.

Perhaps even more significantly, the Twin Cities aren’t just tacking some nice cycling amenities onto an otherwise roads-heavy transportation program. They’re actually divesting from road infrastructure, tabling 14 planned highway expansions and improving transit options instead. They’re maximizing existing highways by adding bus lanes and priced shoulder lanes, and they’re investing in transit-oriented development. As one city transportation planner said, “We couldn’t keep going on acting as if we were going to get money to build our way out of congestion.”

Cities That Lagged Behind: We at Streetsblog aren’t shy about calling out state leaders who make bad decisions in favor of sprawl and against smart transportation options. We talked about some of those yesterday (we’re looking at you, Scott Walker). But sometimes it’s not the state but the cities themselves that have a special knack for making bad decisions. And this was a big year for it.

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It seems nowadays you aren’t truly a bike-friendly city until you’ve had your first civic dust-up over bike lanes. And by that standard, Memphis, Tennessee has arrived.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton wants to install 55 miles of bike lanes in the city in just two years. Photo: Skyscraperpage.com

Last month, this mid-sized Southern city fought back challenges by business owners to install a bike lane on one of its main major commercial thoroughfares, Madison Avenue. That street was just the latest in Mayor A C Wharton’s ambitious plan to add 55 miles of bike lanes in just two years.

Business owners along Madison were firmly against it; some 65 signed a petition opposing the change and a small group even held a news conference to air their concerns. But Wharton held firm after a engineering study of the 1.5-mile thoroughfare said the road diet would only add a few seconds to car travel times.

While indicating that he was sensitive to the business-owners’ concerns, Wharton said, “As we’ve seen throughout Memphis and all over the country, bike lanes are encouraging people to be healthier, more environmentally friendly, and more supportive of locally owned small businesses.”

Memphis’ progressive campaign for bike-friendliness began with Wharton’s election in 2009. Sustainability issues had been a focus of Wharton’s in his previous role as the first African American chief executive of Shelby County, which includes Memphis. Upon throwing his hat into the mayoral race, Wharton made bike-friendliness a key platform of his campaign, according to the city’s Bike and Pedestrian Coordinator Kyle Wagenschutz.

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It’s back-to-school time, and along with it, the requisite crackdown over kids getting to school by bike. A few years ago, we highlighted cases from Mississippi to British Columbia where authorities stopped kids from walking alone.

There's no Google street view of the intersection where Tryon's daughter was stopped for riding her bike, but here's the same street, close to the school.

And now, we have the case of Teresa Tryon of Tennessee, threatened with criminal charges for letting her child ride a bike to school.

Bike Walk Tennessee highlighted the case on its blog, saying it was “crazy” to threaten a mother with arrest for doing more or less what all parents should be doing: encouraging active lifestyles for our kids.

“On August 25th, my 10-year[-old] daughter arrived home via police officer,” Tryon said. “The officer informed me that in his ‘judgment’ it was unsafe for my daughter to ride her bike to school.”

Bike Walk Tennessee says Tryon’s daughter’s route to school was reasonably safe, and Tryon herself said Monday that she “passed a total of eight cars in the four times” she was on that road that day. Observers say it is an un-striped, residential street. Police say it’s one of the busiest streets in town, connecting public housing units and subdivisions to the downtown area.

Nonetheless, when Tryon complained to the police, she was reportedly told that until the officer can speak with Child Protective Services, “if I allow my daughter to ride/walk to school I will be breaking the law and treated accordingly.” She asked what law she would be breaking, and was told the answer was “child neglect.” The officer acknowledged Tryon’s daughter wasn’t breaking any laws.

Columnist Lenore Skenazy regularly writes about giving children the independence to make their way around their neighborhoods freely and unsupervised. In a recent post, she points to a child development book from 1979, when six-year-olds could be expected to be able to “travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend’s home.”

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Connecticut state senators just voted to increase the state gas tax by three cents. The New Hampshire House Speaker has proposed cutting theirs by five cents – but only for two months, to help drivers bear the pain of high gas prices. In Georgia, the gas tax jumps every time gas prices go up by 25 cents. And at least one U.S. Senator is suggesting that more states start taking transportation funding into their own hands.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) listens to mayors' concerns about federal funding for transportation. Photo: Alan Spearman / Commercial Appeal

After a meeting with mayors in his home state of Tennessee, where he listened as area mayors expressed concerns about the federal budget, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander said, “State and local governments will have to decide whether to have an increase in the gasoline tax.” He delivered the bitter news to the mayors that they may be getting even less money from the federal government over the next few years.

For many Republicans, that’s just as it should be. They think the federal bureaucracy is too big and more government functions should be left to the states. Alexander said that when he was governor in the eighties, he was able to fund and complete several state road projects without federal dollars.

But the mayors he spoke to were concerned. According to the Commercial Appeal, they explained that most transportation projects get 80 percent of their funding from the feds with just a 20 percent local match. They count on those federal dollars.

Alexander didn’t specify how much the state should raise the gas tax, but he indicated that tourists and truckers would “pay for a big share of it,” perhaps as a way to help local politicians sell the idea of a higher state gas tax to constituents.

Tennessee has one of the lowest gas tax rates in the country, taking into consideration the fact that sales tax is exempted on gasoline. The state gas tax is 15 cents a gallon (on top of the federal levy of 18.4 cents) but drivers essentially get back two-thirds of that cost (10 cents) since gas is exempt from sales tax. Tennessee dedicates its entire gas tax to highway-building.

Mayor Stan Joyner of Collierville, a Memphis suburb, told the Commercial Appeal he didn’t see a state gas tax hike as a solution to the funding problem. “Jiminy Christmas,” he said. “Gas is high enough and is taxed enough… If there are cuts or if they [federal officials] keep more, it puts a greater burden on us. It means we have an aging infrastructure with no funds to do anything about it.”

Donna Cooper, former secretary for policy under Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, says state gas tax increases may be warranted in states that have not been able to meet local road repair needs. “But they should not be substitutes for the continued federal role,” she said, “in collecting gas taxes sufficient to ensure that our interstate highway system and transit systems are in good repair and have sufficient capacity to meet America’s transportation needs.”