Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The House has just begun voting on the Senate jobs bill, which includes a $20 billion reprieve for the nation's highway trust fund and an highway expansion of Build America Bonds -- but though the legislation is expected to pass, it won't be headed to the president's desk yet.

Bowing to concerns from two blocs of Democrats, House leaders made two minor changes to the jobs bill. The first modification assuages fiscal hawks by fully offsetting the cost of the bill, The Hill reports, while the House's second tweak answers concerns from the Congressional Black Caucus by requiring that at least 10 percent of the legislation's transportation spending goes to minority-owned or disadvantaged businesses.

House leaders did not fix the provision contested by the House transport committee that would award nearly 60 percent of $932 million in grants to four states while excluding 22 other states. The transport panel's chairman, Jim Oberstar (D-MN), has secured written support from Senate leaders to unwind that language in a future bill.

Practically speaking, the House's changes mean that the Senate would need to hold another vote before the jobs bill can become law.

Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR), Oberstar's top lieutenant, made the case for the bill on the House floor. In addition to extending the 2005 transportation law until the end of the year, DeFazio observed, the jobs bill would allow the highway trust fund to begin collecting interest payments after 10 years of forgoing them to the Treasury.

"We're now going to reclaim that money ... it's going to be a billion dollars a month," he said.

Republicans, led by Rep. Steven LaTourette (OH), countered that the jobs bill's $13 billion in tax credits for new hires would be better used to pay for more infrastructure investment.

Late Update: The House cleared the bill on a 217-201 vote.

If you haven't checked out the ITDP parking report we covered yesterday, it's a highly readable piece of research, walking you through parking policy's checkered past and potentially brighter future.

In addition to describing six cases of innovative parking strategies, the authors draw from a wide-ranging body of evidence about the woeful state of most current parking policy, marshaling revealing facts and figures. We culled some of the ones that leap out the most. Enjoy:

• Ninety-nine percent of U.S. car trips begin and end in a free parking space.
• The average automobile is parked 95 percent of the time.
• Although many businesses today believe they benefit from free parking, curbside parking meters were actually introduced in 1935 by an Oklahoma City department store owner. He wanted to increase parking turnover so that there would always be spaces available for his customers.
• Conventional parking policy counsels providing enough spots to handle car storage on the 30th busiest hour of the entire year, usually the weekend before Christmas. That means intentionally planning for an oversupply of parking the other 8,730 hours of the year.
• At free parking spaces, 40 to 60 percent of vehicles overstay posted time limits.
• Parking typically represents a full 10 percent of development costs. What's more, the people who actually park only pay 5 percent of the cost of non-residential parking, meaning that public subsidies and developer capital pay for the rest.
• In San Francisco, parking requirements have reduced the number of affordable housing units nonprofit developers can build by 20 percent, with each residence costing 20 percent more to build than it would have without parking.
• Seventy percent of Southern California suburban office developments built exactly the number of parking spaces required by law, suggesting that parking minimums are forcing developers to build more parking than they want to.
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The high-water mark for American parking policy came in the early 1970s, when cities including New York, Boston, and Portland set limits on off-street parking in their downtowns. They were compelled to do so by lawsuits brought under the Clean Air Act, which used the lever of parking policy to curb traffic and reduce pollution from auto emissions. This level of innovation went unmatched over the ensuing three-and-a-half decades. Only now are U.S. cities implementing effective new parking strategies that cut down on traffic.

A report released today by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy [PDF] highlights the new wave of parking policy innovation that could pay huge dividends for sustainable transport and livable streets. If your city aspires to make streets safe, improve the quality of transit, and foster bicycling, then your city needs a coherent parking policy.

"There was a 35-year parking coma during which the federal government, cities, and environmentalists forgot why parking was important," said John Kaehny, who co-authored the report with Matthew Rufo and UPenn professor Rachel Weinberger. "This study shows people are starting to wake up and understand that parking is one of the most important influences on how cities work and what form of travel people choose to use."

The early 70s parking limits beat back the cycle of more car storage, wider roadways, and greater sprawl that decimates urban areas. The underlying idea was simple: Manage the supply of parking, and you can reduce the demand for driving. Yet in America this notion has gone largely unheeded, even in cities.

Instead, the authors note, parking policy is typically divorced from transportation policy and goals like reducing congestion or encouraging walking and biking. In most of our urban areas, planners determine parking volumes using suburban standards, drawing heavily on ill-suited recommendations in "Parking Generation," a manual published by the Institute for Transportation Engineers. The product is abundant, cheap parking -- much of which sits unused most of the time.

Fully 99 percent of car trips in America end in free parking, an incentive that crowds out all other modes of transportation. "Even when the price of parking is free," said Weinberger, "it’s far from free."

The resulting congestion impedes the effectiveness of transit. Traffic volumes and double-parking make bicycling less pleasant and more dangerous. Walkable environments give way to curb cuts, dead walls, and land-devouring parking facilities that spread destinations farther apart. The whole vicious cycle is heavily subsidized, with the cost of parking absorbed into the price of everything from housing to movie tickets.

"In a time of economic distress, we can’t afford to continue these policies,"  said ITDP's Michael Replogle. "Continuing to subsidize parking is very costly for all of us."

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Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon is on her way out of office, thanks to a deal with prosecutors pursuing a corruption case against her, but she's leaving something positive in place for local transit riders.

The city's new free bus line, dubbed the Charm City Circulator, started rolling through downtown yesterday after some delays, with plans to add two new lines as soon as this spring.

Baltimore, often viewed as the front lines in U.S. cities' battle with blight, chose to fund its bus with a move that would raise hackles in some of its Eastern seaboard neighbors: an increase in the parking tax.

Could Baltimore's bus rollout, coupled with the change of administration, boost the city's chances of winning federal aid for its proposed Red Line light rail project? Time will tell.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has snagged some high-profile support for his nascent California gubernatorial bid, but he may have some trouble with the transit-riding, congestion-weary constituency. My colleagues Matthew Roth and Bryan Goebel have the story over at Streetsblog San Fran:

Mayor Gavin Newsom has been quietly pressuring MTA Chief Nat Ford to delay or prevent proposals to extend parking meter hours on weeknights and Sundays, despite a looming mid-year MTA budget deficit and studies that show it's good policy, Streetsblog has learned. ...

"The Mayor thinks it's the wrong time to make these moves," said Nathan Ballard, Newsom's communications director. "Right now, with the economy where it is, the burden on ordinary people for city services is already stretched to the max, and so he hasn't seen anything that convinces him otherwise. He's open to arguments, but he's still where he was."

The "we can't change policy in a bad economy" argument is familiar to Capitol Hill transportation watchers, who saw the Obama administration use the recession to rule out a gas tax hike or per-mile vehicle fee earlier this year.

But in Newsom's case, as Matt and Bryan point out, San Francisco is lagging behind its fellow major cities when it comes to charging for parking. In Los Angeles, where voters will soon be looking at Newsom's credentials, meters remain on until 2 a.m. New York City keeps meters on until midnight, and Washington D.C.'s stay on until 10 p.m.

And with the city transit authority facing possible fare hikes or service cuts in the wake of a budget deficit, it's tough to see how not extending parking meter hours doesn't hit non-car-owning voters where it hurts.

Looks like New York legislators aren't the only ones willing to pass up big money for transportation improvements if it means putting a fair price on private auto use.

Back in April, the feds withdrew a $354 million grant to New York City because Albany failed to pass congestion pricing. Chicago would have received $153 million of that for BRT pilot routes, but as Crain's reports, the city failed to hold up its end of the bargain:

The administration this week quietly pulled back a pending ordinance that would have hiked fees and taxes for off-street parking in garages and on surface lots downtown by as much as $8 a day. The measure was supposed to be the stick for a big carrot: a $153-million federal grant announced last spring to begin a pilot express transportation system known as bus rapid transit.

But the measure, which arrived in the wake of large hikes in parking-meter fees, drew strong opposition from business groups. And even if the mayor had put down the opposition, the ordinance was not approved by the Dec. 31 deadline mandated by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

With only a few days left in the Bush era, U.S. DOT Secretary Mary Peters, who initiated the Urban Partnership Agreement to spur initiatives like this, has indicated that she won't cut Chicago any slack. Which means this story could turn into an early test for incoming secretary Ray LaHood. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley still hopes to get the new parking policy through City Council, and if LaHood continues the urban partnership program, the city may not lose the federal funding after all.

Potential residential parking permit stickers, curbside regulations, and David Yassky.

Here are some more details about the residential parking permit program proposed today by Mayor Bloomberg and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan:

• A residential parking permit (RPP) plan will be included in the congestion pricing legislation that will be introduced in the City Council and State Legislature.
  
• Though details still need to be worked out by the legislators, neighborhoods and Community Boards will have the choice to opt in to the program and propose their own curbside regulations and zone boundaries. Borough Presidents, Council members and DOT will also be involved in the process. "Community Boards will make the determinations and balance the various interests to form the most reasonable plan," DOT Commissioner Sadik-Khan said.
• The proposed community-driven process would look something like this, according the Mayor's press release: "Beginning in the fall of 2008, residents can petition for the establishment of an RPP zone in their neighborhood by submitting a request to their Community Board on a form that will be available on the DOT web-site. The Community Board will then be required to hold a public meeting. The Community Board's approved plan will be submitted to the Borough President and the local City Council member, who will both be required to approve the plan before it is implemented."
• Curbside regulations will vary from neighborhood to neighborhood but would likely be limited to very specific times and places. So, for example, if a neighborhood is worried that they'll become a park-and-ride location, only vehicles with permits would be allowed to park during a specific period of time during morning rush hour. For example:

• The RPP program will specifically be aimed at discouraging park-and-ride activity and to help residents secure parking in "neighborhoods that face pressure from large facilities like sports arenas," Bloomberg said.
• There could be "a small fee" for permits to help cover the administrative costs of running the program but the Mayor said that would be up to the legislators. "With oil at $108 a barrel and gasoline approaching $4 a gallon, $10 a year for parking isn't going to make that much of a difference to most people who can afford to have a car in the first place," Bloomberg said.
  
• New York City's RPP plan is being modeled on successful programs up and running in Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and London.
  
• The RPP program will not go forward if congestion pricing is not passed.
  

The Mayor's full press release can be found after the jump:

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During his State of the State address, Governor Spitzer claimed that his administration is "turning Stewart Airport into an economic engine for the Hudson Valley and an environmental model for the world: the very first carbon-negative airport." In this morning's New York Times, we see the Port Authority, touting SIA as an air congestion reliever for metro NYC, making similar claims about the airport's green credentials.

Though there is talk of "terminals, baggage equipment, offices, stores and restaurants that do not produce greenhouse gas emissions," and even "produce or support enough green energy to begin to offset the emissions generated by the planes," the one attraction to be confirmed so far is ease of parking:

''Stewart can be kind of a beacon for a lot of things,'' said Anthony Shorris, executive director of the Port Authority, which has a 93-year lease on Stewart and runs the other three airports. ''An anchor for growth in the Hudson Valley, a major reliever of the other airports, a cargo and job-generating facility for a new economic growth pattern, and a demonstration of the potential for sustainable development in aviation.''

Change is already unmistakable: A new exit off Interstate 84 and wide new access roads now lead to the airport. A 350-space parking lot went up in three weeks and new chairs abound in the baggage claim area.

Shorris foresees 3 million annual passengers using Stewart within a few years. The attractions will include an easy trip to the airport, plenty of parking, comfortable terminals and flights taking off on schedule, he said.

Dan Hurwitz, a 60-year-old math teacher at Skidmore College, recently drove 100 miles to Stewart from his home in Saratoga Springs because a flight to Sarasota, Fla., was cheaper from Stewart than from the Albany airport closer to his home.

''Parking was really easy in the credit-card lot,'' he said. ''They told me to be here two hours early but everything's fast. I could have come an hour later.''

Another DOE employee not abusing a parking placard, courtesy Uncivil Servants

Following United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten's "deeply troubling" letter to Mayor Bloomberg earlier this month protesting the city's directive to reduce parking placard issues by 20 percent, this week UFT chapter leaders and delegates approved a resolution not only demanding an exemption from placard reform, but calling on the city to increase the number of placards and parking spots reserved for motoring teachers.

This in and of itself is not terribly surprising, except that in December UFT members passed another resolution condemning America's avaricious consumption of fossil fuels, dependence on foreign oil, lack of interest in alternative energy, and production of greenhouse gases.

Hmm... where have we seen this before?

Here are the two rezos in their entirety, first from December:

Resolution on Protecting the Environment -- Reducing Dependence on Fossil Fuels

Whereas, it is a well established scientific fact that greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming, resulting in great dangers to our environment; and...

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Congestion pricing advocate Carolyn Konheim and consulting partner Brian Ketcham are advising the Bloomberg administration to drop its resistance to a congestion pricing Environmental Impact Study.

The two say a study is needed to head off "likely 11th hour litigation" aimed at stopping the three-year pilot program from taking effect, a possibility Streetsblog alluded to following the first meeting of the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission late last month.

"[D]ecision-makers need to know that the selection of the system to be tested has considered all reasonable alternatives to achieve the Mayor's admirable goals," reads a press release announcing Konheim and Ketcham's open letter to Mayor Bloomberg.

The most promising alternative to be examined in an environmental assessment is "charging at the real chokepoints in roadway capacity -- our river crossings and highways," according to Ketcham, a traffic engineer who has regarded bridge tolls as the premier congestion pricing strategy since he introduced them in his landmark Clean Air plan for New York City in 1973. Tolling the four free East River bridges equal to all MTA crossings and across 60th Street, river to river, he calculates "would be at least as effective as PlaNYC in reducing congestion and would generate far more funding for transit."

The independent Brooklyn-based planners estimate that a pricing cordon that crosses bridge and tunnel spans and 60th Street would require E-ZPass monitors on about 50 inbound lanes, whereas the charging network necessitated by PlaNYC's complex avoidance of tolls could require detectors and cameras on1,000 to 2,000 lanes. Based on London's operating costs for a simpler single cordon, they foresee that the charging grid in PlaNYC would consume most of the congestion pricing revenue, leaving little funding for transit -- a major goal of the mayor's plan and the long-term aim of transit advocates.

Mr. Ketcham and Ms. Konheim suggest numerous strategies as alternatives to or companions of congestion pricing, particularly, the kind of comprehensive parking control and parking pricing program instituted in London before road pricing, and measures to reduce taxi cruising, a "major source of New York's congestion."

The full text of the letter appears after the jump.

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