Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Last June, Transportation for America brought the nation’s attention to the fact that older Americans are increasingly stuck in the suburbs without adequate transportation options, leading them to see family and friends and even doctors less. That same month, the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on transportation access for older Americans.

Not all mobility improvements for seniors involve getting in a car. Photo by Dan Burden via Transportation for America.

The debate raged: Was transit expansion the answer to the mobility crisis? Or should seniors be moving to more walkable neighborhoods? Could resource-starved local transportation authorities support more paratransit services? Or would driverless cars save the day, as proposed by Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute?

Now, a transportation research group known as TRIP has teamed up with AASHTO to produce a new report on how to keep baby boomers mobile as they age [PDF]. Their solution: brighter signs and wider lanes.

TRIP and AASHTO also mention designing and operating roads to accommodate all users – “when appropriate.” They throw a few bones to pedestrians, like refuge islands and countdown signals. But they must not have been thinking about the safety of those pedestrians when they suggested widening lanes, adding left-turn lanes, and making roadway curves more gradual. As David Burwell of the Carnegie Endowment’s climate program says, those changes would just create “more pavement for those pesky walkers and bicyclists to cross.” TRIP also suggests adding rumble strips to alert drivers when they’re leaving the lane – and, of course, to leave cyclists riding on the shoulder miserably saddle-sore by the end of their ride.

And as for “clearer, brighter and simpler signage with larger lettering, including overhead indicators for turning lanes and overhead street signs” – the number one recommendation in the report? “Great idea,” said Burwell. “And how about the pedestrians, bicyclists and other road users — maybe we all should be required to carry bright signs in large letters saying ‘Please don’t hit me!’”

Read more…

The GOP transportation proposal is now online.

Here are some early reactions.

Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), chair of the Senate Banking subcommittee with jurisdiction over public transportation: “It used to be that Republicans understood that transportation investment was necessary to spur economic growth and create jobs. Now, I guess they think if we give the rich enough tax breaks they will get off the golf course, get in a bulldozer, and start building roads.”

Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), chair of the full Senate Banking Committee: “Transit systems are one of the most efficient and reliable forms of transportation… Proposals to cut public transportation funding, as contemplated in the House, won’t just make it harder for Americans to get to a job interview or the grocery store; cuts will also slow job growth at a time when we need it most. Construction workers, mechanics, employees of bus manufacturers and rail car suppliers, and many other hard-working Americans will lose their jobs if these cuts occur.”

Caron Whitaker, campaign director of America Bikes: “The Mica bill is short-sighted; it focuses on cuts rather than return on investment. The bicycling industry supports over a million jobs and brings in over $17 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. That’s a great return for the $700 million federal investment in biking and walking facilities.”

James Corless, director of Transportation for America: “Chairman Mica’s proposal to give states broader latitude needs strong provisions for accountability on national goals, such as economic prosperity, energy independence, equal access to opportunity and environmental stewardship. However, this emphasis on the state level cannot come at the expense of the places that are feeling the brunt of our inadequate investments to this point: local communities in both urban and rural locales. We are particularly concerned at the proposal to eliminate dedicated funding that helps provide more safe options for walking and biking. While Chairman Mica indicated an intent to preserve the historic share of 20 percent for transit, the overall effect is a devastating cut that leaves us well short of the amounted required to meet rising demand for transit service, especially in this time of severe fiscal constraints.”

Read more…

In recent months, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials has circulated a new roadway design guide that incorporates more bicycle facilities, though still leaving out many designs that are embraced by cities around the world for their improved safety outcomes. Separately, AASHTO recognized that it was putting its foot in its collective mouth last month when it objected to federal guidelines requiring “due accommodation” for cyclists — it retracted that position. The organization is also producing a best-practices guide for states to implement SRTS projects.

Is this a new AASHTO we’re seeing, a change from its car-centric ways? Indeed, we can add a new bike-friendly accomplishment to the growing list: AASHTO’s Special Committee on U.S. Route Numbering has approved six new bicycle routes – the first official bike routes to be established in nearly 30 years.

The Adventure Cycling Association says securing route number approval from AASHTO is a required step for all U.S. Bike Routes and that AASHTO’s support was “crucial in earning the support of federal and state agencies, and provides a major boost to bicycling and route development for non-motorized transportation.”

Until last week, no routes had been approved since the 1982 designation of one in Virginia and North Carolina and another one in Virginia, Kentucky, and Illinois. In 2003, AASHTO started to get serious about creating a National Corridor Plan – an ambitious map of proposed bike routes criss-crossing the country. These six routes are the first concrete gain to come of that process.

Of the six routes approved last week, four are in Alaska. “We are excited to be able to promote bicycle tourism in the state of Alaska. We have fabulous vistas and low-traffic highways that beg exploration,” says Bob Laurie, transportation planner and bicycle and pedestrian coordinator. “Connecting to Washington State via the ferry system and collaborating with Canada is next on our list.”

The other two new bicycle routes: Bicycle Route 1 in Maine and New Hampshire and Route 20 in Michigan.

This is certainly good news for long-distance cyclists. Is it also a sign of a sea change within the country’s principal highway lobby?

For decades, dueling camps of cycling advocates have feuded about how to best accommodate riders. Some have pushed for the construction of Dutch-style cycle tracks, arguing that separated lanes make bicycling safer and less intimidating, while others have insisted such infrastructure isolates riders and makes cycling more dangerous than simply remaining within the flow of traffic.

Why is Montreal outshining every U.S. city on cycle tracks? Photo: Richard Layman/RPUS

Though the debate has grown bitter at times, neither group has had much in the way of rigorous peer-reviewed research to argue their case through the years. However, in the last decade a small but energetic group of academics has started to publish regularly on the topic.

The latest salvo, published online in February and in the current edition of Injury Prevention, comes from Harvard University researcher Anne Lusk. Her study compares crash rates at six cycle tracks in Montreal to nearby streets that had no bicycle facilities, and bolsters the argument that cycle tracks are safer. Lusk found that relative risk of injury was 28 percent lower on cycle tracks compared to the on-street routes.

In addition, she found that about 2.5 times as many cyclists used the cycle tracks than the on-street routes. The finding agrees with the conclusions of a number of other recent studies that show protected bicycle lanes improve safety and help attract new riders.

While cycle tracks are common in European countries, they remain rare in America due to institutional inertia. That inertia was not countered effectively enough by a bicycling movement divided over anti-cycle track arguments made by vehicular cycling advocate John Forester, author of Effective Cycling, in the 1970s and 1980s.

As Jeff Mapes recounts in Pedaling Revolution, Forester helped codify and popularize the idea that cyclists fare best when they are treated as “drivers” of vehicles. He encouraged riders to take the full lane when needed, avoid riding on sidewalks, and move with the flow of traffic.

He also vigorously opposed bike infrastructure, fearing that bike lanes and cycle tracks would give authorities an excuse to ban recreational riders from the road. And he argued cycle tracks and other types of bike infrastructure were more dangerous than on-road riding.

Read more…

The Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials is withdrawing its opposition to an important federal policy change that puts cyclists and pedestrians on a more equal footing with motorists.

Should infrastructure like bike lanes come standard on transportation projects that receive federal funding? AASHTO is reconsidering its opposition to an FHWA policy that makes accommodating bikes and pedestrians the rule, not the exception. Photo: Agit Corp

Active transportation groups were outraged earlier this month when AASHTO requested that the FHWA revert to an old standard that required state DOTs show only that “due consideration” had been given to the needs of cyclists and pedestrians in federally financed transportation projects. A newer requirement increased the standard to “due accommodation,” shifting the burden on transportation agencies to demonstrate that extreme circumstances prevent the inclusion of bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

In his statement Friday, AASHTO Executive Director John Horsley said the agency’s request was meant “to streamline the effort and paperwork required to justify why bicycle or pedestrian facilities may or may not be appropriate on a given federal aid project.” But he added that the group would withdraw the request in light of opposition that emerged after the League of American Bicyclists, this blog and other bike advocates took up the issue.

Horsley said that since that time several state DOT chiefs also came out against the request, including Matthew Garrett of the Oregon DOT.

“In response to the concerns expressed by several members of AASHTO’s Board of Directors, President [Susan] Martinovich has directed AASHTO for the time being to withdraw its request that FHWA rescind its guidance on the meaning of ‘due consideration’ of bicycle and pedestrian needs,” said Horsley. “This will give AASHTO an opportunity to meet with bicycle and pedestrian advocacy groups on May 19 to discuss this issue.”

Read more…

For years, state DOTs have exploited a loophole of federal government policy that allowed them to build massive, publicly funded projects without accommodating non-motorized users as long as they could show that “due consideration” had been given to bicyclists and pedestrians.

But last year, USDOT gave that requirement some teeth. USDOT issued a directive specifying that “due consideration” should include “the presumption that bicyclists and pedestrians will be accommodated” in project designs paid for with federal government dollars.

AASHTO's John Horsley has complained that a new USDOT directive would make it too hard for state DOTs to ignore the needs of cyclists and pedestrians. Photo: Flickr, Commission for Environmental Cooperation

Well, surprise! State DOTs aren’t happy about it. In a supplement [PDF] to a letter [PDF] to USDOT yesterday, John Horsley, executive director of the Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, urged federal officials to reconsider the requirement. “This regulation presents an undue burden on states to justify exceptional circumstances when not including provisions for bicyclists and pedestrians in a project,” he said.

Someone should tell Horsley, that was sort of the point. USDOT is trying to make it hard for state DOTs — using money from both taxpayers who drive and those who don’t — to completely ignore the needs of non-drivers.

In its directive, USDOT states that walking and bicycling should be considered equal to other modes.

Read more…

A powwow between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, President Obama, and House Speaker John Boehner last night failed to yield a compromise that would put a budget in place before the government shuts down at midnight tonight. The failure of yet another attempt to negotiate makes a government shutdown all but inevitable.

A government shutdown could empty out the D.C. metro system. Photo: Examiner

Just a month ago, AASHTO sounded the warning that the transportation sector could lose up to $100 million a day in case of a shutdown. However, Congress’s extension of SAFETEA-LU through the end of the fiscal year (September 30) has put their minds at ease. Now, AASHTO spokesperson Tony Dorsey says spending for federal highway programs will continue unabated, despite a shutdown. “At this point,” Dorsey said, “we’re not anticipating any issues.” Still, he said, they’re hoping that “should there be a shutdown, it will be a very, very short one.”

But that’s not the whole story. According to a detailed DOT shutdown plan, the vast majority of the Federal Transit Administration would shut down, keeping only 54 out of 575 positions working. Already-awarded stimulus grants would continue to receive oversight and the Lower Manhattan Recovery Office would continue to function. The $270 million that the FTA normally remits to transit agencies every week would cease.

Jeff Rosenberg, government affairs director for the Amalgamated Transit Union, says the SAFETEA-LU extension only continues government’s authority to pay for transportation programs. But “if the FTA isn’t authorized to open the door,” he says, those payments will cease. That could be especially damaging for smaller metros that receive operating assistance, not just capital funds, from the feds. However, he’s hopeful that a potential shutdown would only last a couple of days and would just be “a blip on the screen.”

What else can you expect to happen if the government does shut down as of midnight tonight?

• At least 800,000 federal employees would be furloughed immediately. That would cause a massive drop in transit ridership, especially here in D.C., where Metro is predicting a five to 20 percent drop in case of a shutdown. Michael Perkins of Greater Greater Washington estimates that this would result in a loss for Metro of a quarter million dollars a day.
• Amtrak’s federal subsidies – up in the air for months now anyway as Congress debates whether to eliminate them, reduce them, or maintain them – will stop. However, Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman recently assured employees that the rail operator can keep going on ticket revenue alone in the short term.
• The Federal Highway Administration will stay open, with no positions furloughed, according to the DOT shutdown plan. The FHWA is funded with contract authority and has enough funds available to operate in that way for about a month.

Read more…

The National Association of City Transportation Officials’ Urban Bikeway Design Guide was 20 years in the making, and already it’s having an impact, says the organization’s Mia Birk.

Bringing together transportation officials from 20 major cities to discuss progress on bikeway designs in the U.S. produced quite a few “aha moments,” said Birk. For one, transportation officials learned that many of the bikeway innovations they had been adopting from Europe aren’t as innovative as they had thought.

The protected bike lane on New York City's Ninth Avenue.

For example, Birk said, 20 American cities use bike boxes, one of the design features that isn’t specifically endorsed by the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and the American Association of Highway Transportation Officials’ design guide.

“It’s not like it’s some fringe thing anymore,” Birk said.

She added: “There’s a comfort in knowing that your colleagues are on the same wavelength.”

Conversations throughout the course of the NACTO guide development process also revealed that federal officials aren’t as unfriendly to new bike treatments as many city-level transportation officials had expected. Federal transportation officials have indicated that many of the 20 bike treatments recommended by NACTO are allowable within federal guidelines — while not explicitly endorsed — and therefore eligible for federal funding, Birk said.

“They’ve basically green-lighted a few of them a yellow-lighted a few others,” she said.

Birk described the conversations with federal transportation officials as “really effective and positive.”

Read more…

Better bicycling infrastructure could be coming to a city near you thanks to an initiative of the National Association of City Transportation Officials. NACTO’s Cities for Cycling committee today released its anticipated Urban Bikeway Design Guide, a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in bicycle infrastructure that is intended to advance state and national policy. Created for a profession that prizes design standards, the document has the potential to spur widespread adoption of bike infrastructure that makes many more people feel safe riding on the street, leading to big increases in cycling for transportation, as well as gains in pedestrian safety.

This bike box in New York gives cyclists more visibility at intersections -- a design treatment recommended by NACTO's new Bikeway Design Guide. Photo: Cities for Cycling

The guide is the result of months of study by engineers, planners and academics from fifteen major U.S. cities. It offers comprehensive design instruction on the latest in cycling infrastructure innovations from Europe and stateside, such as bike boxes, bike signals and separated cycle tracks.

“NACTO’s Urban Bikeway Design Guide gives American planners and designers the tools they need to make cycling accessible to more people,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City transportation commissioner and president of NACTO. “These guidelines represent the state of the art and should be adopted as the new standards around the country.”

Planners hope their recommendations will be incorporated into the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials’ design guidelines. Design manuals by these standard-bearing organizations thus far ignore some of the cutting-edge bike treatments that have been adopted in cities like Portland and New York, as well as European cities. As we reported earlier this week, this makes funding and planning for these potentially life-saving projects difficult and time consuming, particularly for smaller cities, NACTO officials said.

In the meantime, Cities for Cycling is encouraging local communities to adopt its recommendations. Already, the states of Washington and Texas are looking to make NACTO’s standards official, sources say.

Read more…

The National Bike Summit begins tomorrow, bringing together an estimated 750 cycling advocates. They’ll hear from NYCDOT Chief Janette Sadik-Khan, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and they’ll descend on Congress in droves, plastic bike pins fastened to their lapels, to deliver a message about safe cycling access.

Don't look to AASHTO's manual for advice about bike boxes. The organization's guide, which often dictates whether projects get federal funding, does not incorporate the latest developments in cycling infrastructure. Photo: World Changing

We’ll be covering the Bike Summit like other Washington reporters cover the State of the Union. For people who care about sustainable transportation, this event is a high point of the year.

As bicycling infrastructure improves, advocates refine their demands. These days, the call is not just for bike lanes, but separated bike lanes. Bike Summit attendees are sure to be talking about it. Yesterday, Streetfilms released a new video about floating parking and separated cycletracks. And last month, Harvard’s School of Public Health released a study about the superior safety of separated bike tracks.

So why does the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials still advise against cycle tracks on safety grounds? AASHTO’s design manual is the “bible” used by traffic engineers and planners around the country, along with the FHWA’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, and it can be hard for localities to get approval — or funding — for projects that deviate from the prescriptions laid out in these guides.

A group of urban transportation officials, called Cities for Cycling, has been working to update AASHTO’s Bikeway Design Standard Manual and the MUTCD for years to include better cycling infrastructure. Eric Gilliland, executive director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials, the sponsoring organization for Cities for Cycling, says the Harvard study confirms the benefits of separated bike lanes. “The trend, it seems, in bikeway planning is to provide more of a buffer between bicycle traffic and main street traffic, from a safety standpoint but also from an encouragement standpoint,” Gilliland said.

Read more…