Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Congratulations are due to Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Minnesota; those four states took home top rankings this year in the League of American Bicyclists’ annual Bicycle Friendly States appraisal. The winners were announced this morning.

Washington has held the top position for six years running. But there were a few shake-ups further down the list.

Delaware was one of the main up-and-comers, jumping from number ten to number 5. The Bike League’s blog praised Governor Jack Markell, along with the state legislature and advocacy organizations.

“The benefits of biking are countless, and that’s why I’m proud to support dedicated federal funding for biking and walking infrastructure,” U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) told the Bike League.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, meanwhile, said his state is not satisfied with second place.

“An important part of making Colorado the healthiest state is encouraging people to be more active in their everyday routines,” Hickenlooper said. “We’re proud that our bicycle-friendly policies have skyrocketed Colorado’s rank up 20 places in just five years, and we are committed to being No. 1 in the near future.”

Among the other most-improved states were Illinois and Arizona.

Michael Sanders, the Arizona Department of Transportation bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, said his state has been studying bike collisions and developing ways to reduce them.

These testimonies from high-ranking political officials prove how effective the Bicycle Friendly State program is at incentivizing a little good-natured competition to make cycling easier, safer, and more convenient for everyone. 

Here’s a preview of the top 15:

Read more…

Not one to back away from a terrible argument, CNN’s Anderson Cooper is sticking with his series exposing the “boondoggle” of federal high-speed rail funding. In a segment aired Monday night, he and reporter Drew Griffin hammered away yet again at their argument that high-speed rail has been a waste of money. Under the tagline “Keeping Them Honest,” Cooper and Griffin hope to raise public ire about the taxpayer money “dumped” into a program sold as high-speed rail but is really just moving slow trains “a little faster.”

After four years and $12 billion poured into high-speed rail, Griffin says it’s nothing but a pipe dream held by those who “stand to make money” from it. After all, “not a single piece of rail has been laid.”

Griffin and Cooper made essentially the same arguments as their last segment, which cast hellfire and brimstone on a successful little project in Vermont that came in on time and under budget, cutting trip times and improving performance. And Streetsblog’s response is essentially the same.

Still, I can’t help calling out a few notable points that surfaced in this week’s story.

This time, they’re focused on improvements between Portland and Seattle, which, Griffin said, cut 10 minutes off a three hour, 40 minute trip. He doesn’t say how much the improvements cost, but he does mention that Washington state got $800 million of stimulus high-speed rail money, “mostly” for these rail improvements. (A small portion of those funds were actually appropriated in 2010, separate from the stimulus.)

If it makes him feel any better, the rest of Washington’s stimulus money for transportation was spent like this:

Read more…

Another day, another parking atrocity. Eight cities have already faced off in Parking Madness, where we attempt to find the worst parking crater in an American downtown. Milwaukee, Tulsa, Dallas and Louisville emerged victorious in the first half of the first round.

But there’s still a good number of cities with parking wastelands yet to be sufficiently ridiculed. On the agenda today, two formidable contenders: Cleveland, Ohio vs. Spokane, Washington.

First, let’s look at Cleveland’s Warehouse District:

This animated gif, which uses images from the urbanism blog I run in my spare time, Rust Wire, shows the neighborhood in the 1970s versus today.

These days, the Warehouse District is actually a pretty happening part of Cleveland. The area has been redeveloped with nice restaurants, coffee shops, a specialty grocer, and hundreds of apartments. Close to 3,000 people currently live in the Warehouse District.

But this parking expanse creates a no-man’s land between two of downtown Cleveland’s most popular areas — the Warehouse District and East Fourth Street — discouraging walking between the two districts and thus weakening downtown Cleveland immeasurably.

Meanwhile in Spokane, we have a special kind of parking disaster: the convention center parking crater. Here’s the before and after:

Read more…

In transportation circles, all eyes are on Rep. Bill Shuster, who was just tapped to head the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the House. And you may have heard about how GOP leadership appointed a climate change denier to head the House Committee on Science. But on the Senate side, there’s some good news for advocates of sustainable transportation coming out of the appointment process this week.

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) is set to take over the top role on the powerful Senate Budget Committee.

“Senator Murray is a strong supporter of transportation investments (including ports and rail infrastructure), livability programs, enhancements, and the TIGER program in particular,” said David Burwell, director of the Energy and Climate Program at the Carnegie Endowment. He added that the budget chair position “will put her in a very powerful position to craft the entire federal budget.”

Ben Schiendelman of Seattle Transit Blog said the 20-year Senate veteran is known for winning appropriations for local transportation projects. The blog has endorsed her in the past.

“She seems to be a strong transit supporter,” said Schiendelman. “She’s landed us $1.8 billion in transit funding that I can think of in the last decade.”

Bike advocates in her home state also seem to have had a receptive audience in Murray. ”She’s generally supportive and coming from a state with strong state and local advocacy, in the form of Cascade Bicycle Club and the Bicycle Alliance of Washington,” said Darren Flusche, of the League of American Bicyclists.

Her record isn’t without its blemishes, however. Murray has been a big supporter of Portland’s $3.2 billion Columbia River Crossing project, a highway bridge boondoggle, which is designed to speed commutes for residents of the Portland suburb of Vancouver, Washington, according to the Oregonian. One of the major hurdles to that project is funding, both federal, state, and local. Murray as budget chair could play a large role in deciding the project’s future.

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.

Read more…

Out of 12 transportation-related measures that were voted on Tuesday, seven represented a victory for transit, three were losses to learn from, and two more aren’t really a win one way or another but are worth noting. According to the Center for Transportation Excellence, these numbers bring the year’s total to an impressive 79 percent win rate for transit. Especially impressive is the fact that most of these measures involved a tax of some sort, and people were willing to pay it if it meant better transit service – even in tough economic times.

Angie has profiled the victory in Durham and the loss in Seattle. Here are the rest of the results:

In Montcalm County, MI, a proposed property tax hike to fund bus service failed 39-61.

A terrible idea failed to catch on in Cincinnati, but the closeness of the final tally showed there’s still work to be done. The proposal to ban any forward movement on building a streetcar system lost, but the vote was 49-51. Still, this loss was a big win for transit.

Bad news for residents of Trumbull County, Ohio: the property tax increase that would have saved their transit system failed 36-64. If the county is to be believed, this means the transit system will shut down entirely, a huge loss, especially for the county’s most vulnerable residents. According to a local paper, “In 2010, the transit provided 64,249 trips: 18,922 for senior citizens, 21,013 for the disabled, 16,131 for students, and 8,183 for other residents.”

The 54-46 passage of Proposition 1 in Clark County, Washington was a big win for transit. Residents of the Washington-side suburbs of Portland will pay another 0.2 percent sales tax in order to stave off harsh cuts to their transit service. Even the normally anti-tax local paper said the vote was essential to maintaining quality of life in the county.

The counting of the statewide initiative 1125 in Washington went into the next day, but we can say definitively now that this bad idea has lost – at last count, it had 48.44 percent of the vote. The measure would have put serious restrictions on tolling at a time when tolling is one of very few funding mechanisms available to states. Even worse, it would have codified a pro-roads bias by insisting that tolling revenues could only pay for roads. It also singled out light rail, banning it on the I-90 bridge.

* The proposal to increase the Lorain County sales tax failed pretty spectacularly — 32-68. Transit advocates took note of this one but aren’t counting it as a loss, since the primary focus of the campaign – and the primary destination of the tax revenues – was the criminal justice system, not transportation. The loss does, however, mean that the county will cut its contribution to the transit system in half, in order to have more money to pay for prisons.

Here are a few we didn’t mention Tuesday:

Read more…

If you live in Durham County, North Carolina, Montcalm County, Michigan, Cincinnati, Ohio, or anywhere in Washington state, today is Election Day – and you’ve got decisions to make about transit.

There are six ballot initiatives up for a popular vote today that will determine the future of transit service in these areas. They follow two referenda last week in Colorado on sales taxes to pay for transit service. One, to implement a new 0.35 percent sales tax increase in Avon, CO to pay for bus replacements, bus stop improvements, and other expenses, was voted down 38 percent to 62 percent. But another measure, in Sterling, CO, that merely sought to extend indefinitely a 0.1 percent sales tax increase to fund the transit system, was approved 70 percent to 30 percent.

So how will transit-related measures fare today? Here’s a rundown of what’s on tap (thanks to the Center for Transportation Excellence for collecting this important information):

A “Candy Store” for Buses and Bikes in Seattle, WA: Seattle’s going right to the source in proposing a $60 increase on the vehicle license fee. The allocation of the $204 million in expected revenues (over a decade) is supremely civilized: 49 percent to transit, 29 percent to road maintenance and safety, and 22 percent to bike/ped infrastructure. Opponents say it’s a “candy store” for special interests. The campaign chairman of “Citizens Against Raising Car Tabs” takes a page out of the Tom Coburn/Rand Paul playbook by blaming bike/ped spending for crumbling bridges, too. Proponents of the measure say it corrects mistakes of the past, when the city declined to make necessary investments and got “four decades of political paralysis and gridlock” as a result. They say revenues from the “car-tab” fee would improve transit, double the annual investment in sidewalks and repaving projects, and expand “family-friendly bicycle infrastructure.” More on other Washington state measures below.

Streetcar Bans for Cincinnati, OH: Cincinnati is voting on a different kind of measure. This is a city charter amendment to deny funding for transit, not provide it. The amendment would prohibit the city from spending or borrowing money to move forward the streetcar project planned for downtown. The ban would last until 2020. It’s the second time in two years Cincinnati voters have gone to the ballot to decide whether the city should continue with its plans for a streetcar. Transit advocates call the measure “disastrous” because it would keep the city from taking advantage of new technologies and potential funding sources to build commuter and light rail, in addition to the streetcar, and it could “undermine the city charter… by usurping the lawful functions of elected officials.” As of about a week ago, streetcar advocates had raised about 800 times more money than Citizens Against Streetcar Swindle, which had raised a total of $116. CASS is trying to tie streetcar money to layoffs for police officers and firefighters.

Read more…

How long do you have to wait for a bus in your city? How much does it cost? Does every family on your block have two cars? And tell us about your bikeshare program…

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has been asking questions like these to determine their list of 15 Smarter Cities – places with shorter, cheaper, and more efficient commutes.

They split the list into big, medium and small cities. Have a look:

2011 Smarter Cities for Transportation

Large (population > 1 million)

Boston, MA/NH
Chicago, IL
New York, NY
Portland, OR
Philadelphia, PA/NJ
San Francisco, CA
Washington, DC/MD/VA/WV

Medium (pop. between 250,000 – 1 million)

Boulder-Longmont, CO
Honolulu, HI
Jersey City, NJ
New Haven, CT

Small (pop. < 250,000)

Bremerton, WA
Champaign-Urbana, IL
Lincoln, NE
Yolo, CA

Philly got bonus points for its transit initiative to connect people to fresh food. Boulder scored high for its brand-new Transportation Master Plan, which incorporated the public in the planning process and indicates “a serious commitment to responsible travel within the county.” And Yolo, California boasts a higher degree of transit access – 91 percent of households – than any other similarly sized metro region.

It’s innovations like these that are going to light the way to a future of cleaner air, financially stable households, and healthier cities.