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.

Is this really all you want out of your street life, Dallas? Photo: Texas-Dallas.org

Where to even begin?

St. Louis’ problems didn’t begin this year, but 2011’s Urban Mobility rankings showed just how far that city has to go. Despite having wide-open highways with very little congestion, commute times are among the longest in the country. Why? Because the city is emptying out and the sprawling suburbs just keep on expanding. Sounds like an unsustainable growth plan, huh? Indeed, the metro area grew over the last census, but it’s all because of suburban sprawl. The city lost eight percent of its population.

Houston bet it all on car infrastructure this year, earning itself honorable mention for intentional sprawl. And we expected more from the Portland metro area than highway mega-projects, but the Columbia River Crossing appears to be on its way.

But Dallas really won the day with its bans on everything good about cities. Like shady sidewalk cafés on a hot Texas day. Or any sidewalk cafés at all, it turns out. Or street performances. Or sidewalk vendors. Or – I kid you not – flowers. Once you start banning flowers on the sidewalk you know you’ve gone over to the dark side.

Thanks for all you do to suck the life out of your city, Dallas. Consider yourself Streetsie’d.

Popular Overthrow of Bad Decisions: Whether it’s the city or the state that’s pushing forward unsustainable growth practices, our favorite stories are the good old-fashioned showdowns where good triumphs over stupid.

This $500 million project would have saved the average commuter a scant 36 seconds while decimating rural areas and creating more traffic in Charleston. Photo: Post and Courier

Like in Cincinnati, where the City Council and Ohio Governor John Kasich conspired to kill the streetcar project, but voters at the ballot box kept it alive and TIGER III swooped in with the funds to make it happen. It’s a happy ending on a bruising battle that showed just how far Ohio’s leaders are willing to go to sabotage forward progress (and that they still won’t win).

Charleston, South Carolina, also came back from the brink of a rotten idea when county officials unanimously voted down a highway bypass being pushed on them by SCDOT. The Coastal Conservation League had worked hard educating the public about the negative impacts of a road that would cost half a billion dollars and save half a minute off commute times.

It’s not over yet, though. SCDOT and the state infrastructure bank are still insisting that the county take “Alternative G” instead of the “no build” option the county council opted for in April. The county may be forced to pay back $12 million in spent state funds if it rejects the project in the end.

More Streetsies coming up!

Transit Saved the Day (But Who Will Save Transit?): There’s no two ways about it: 2011 was a rough year. And 59 percent of you said the roughest part was watching the tumult roiling our transit agencies.

The laws of supply and demand went haywire this year, when it came to transit. Photo: AP

In 2011, the low economy and high gas prices helped showcase the need for affordable transportation options, and people flocked to transit – only to find troubled systems facing budget cuts, fare hikes, and service reductions.

The American Public Transportation Association reported a bump of nearly 86 million transit trips over the first six months of the year. Did Congress respond by thanking transit agencies for doing yeoman’s work to keep American households above water during a time of economic hardship? Not on your life! Congress kept flailing and bickering over a transportation bill that keeps slipping further and further out of reach while hardworking transit agencies withered on the vine. According to APTA, more than half of U.S. transit agencies have raised fares or reduced service in the past year, and many more are planning to do so soon.

Somehow, increased ridership didn’t translate into more robust funding or even a little begrudging respect.

If the People Lead, the Leaders Will Follow: But we didn’t flee the country and the whole political / economic / cultural / transportation mess here, did we, Streetsblog readers? We may have wanted to hightail it to Copenhagen when times got tough, but we stayed because we were inspired by a few little beacons of hope.

We cheered on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s quick work reforming Chicago’s transportation network, with his plans to add 100 miles of bike lanes, implement “congestion parking” fees, upgrade commuter rail and start the country’s most ambitious new bus rapid transit system. And we perked up considerably when a day without cars in Los Angeles turned out to be no disaster at all, and bicyclists beat an airplane to its destination.

But the real evidence that the tide was turning came from voters from Alpena, Michigan, to Clark County, Washington, agreed to pay more in taxes to support transit service. In those ballot initiatives, transit won 79 percent of the time, saving Dial-A-Ride service, bus routes, bus stop upgrades, operations, and more. For 46 percent of you, this was the most hopeful, most inspiring thing that happened this year.

Shades of Gray: The year wasn’t all black and white. There were some real double-edged swords — like the positive news of high transit ridership, offset with the dismal news of cutbacks.

Then there was the high-speed rail brouhaha, with three governors returning their share of federal funds to great fanfare. It gave Ray LaHood a lot of ‘splaining to do, which he ably did, but most of all, it freed that money for more appreciative states to improve their own rail systems. A good chunk of the returned funds went to the Northeast Corridor, everyone’s best bet for successful high-speed rail.

Calls to expand transit out to the suburbs – to improve access for seniors or to reach far-flung employment centers – were also met with some serious ambivalence. Obviously transit is a better option than continued automobile reliance, but does transit expansion reward terrible planning and job sprawl at the expense of the urban core?

Streetsblog readers also did some serious thinking about the impact of private money on public infrastructure projects and realized that public-private partnerships – while often necessary or at least extremely useful in getting projects off the ground – can also carry their share of risks.

But the most double-edged of all double-edged swords of 2011 was the fact that absolutely nothing got done on transportation and infrastructure. We saw more extensions of the current transportation bill and more proposals for infrastructure spending go down the toilet. It’s hard to see time wasting like this when the need for reform is so urgent. But at the same time, we’ve seen so many awful proposals – to tie infrastructure spending to oil drilling, for example, or to spend lots more money building lots more roads – that it just might be better to wait for consensus on a good idea, rather than swallow a bad one.

Looking Forward to That Recall Election in Wisconsin: What is it that fascinates state DOTs so much about ribbon cuttings on big highway projects? The state-level love affair with roads — at the expense of bicycle and pedestrian safety infrastructure and public transportation — continued in 2011. Three governors chose Tea Party politics over the needs of their states and rejected federal high-speed rail funds. Texas kow-towed to oil companies and went ahead with plans for a needless outer beltway in Houston. Florida and Maine chose sprawl over smart growth, despite overwhelming evidence that their choices were costing the states dearly.

But nothing was half as outrageous in the eyes of Streetsblog readers as Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker’s big show of fiscal discipline when it came to rail, only to turn around and go into debt for highway projects. The mind-boggling hypocrisy earned him a Streetsie award for Getting It All Wrong (the State Edition).

Coming up tomorrow: Cities that got it all wrong, Letdowns of the Year, Annoying Distractions From Real Problems, and more.

But still, we saw bike-share popping up all over the country, we had more evidence that people were driving less and using transit more, and some visionary leaders led the way toward a better 2012.

Here’s where we cheer the bests and jeer the worsts of the year. Cast your vote for the 2011 Capitol Hill Streetsies by midnight Tuesday night. And don’t forget to donate to Streetsblog, so we can have more bests and fewer worsts next year.

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Meanwhile, I’d like to introduce you to Ben Goldman. You may have noticed his byline popping up over the past few weeks. Among his innumerable other achievements, Ben is allowing me to take off for a few months of baby time with the peace of mind that if big transportation news breaks, it’ll be ably covered on Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

Ben just finished a graduate program in urban planning, with a focus on sustainable transportation, at the University of Pennsylvania. Rail transportation, in particular, is sort of his thing, having worked with OnTrackAmerica, Inc. and co-authored a set of recommendations to federal officials on how high-speed rail should be implemented on the Northeast Corridor.

If you have questions, comments, warm welcomes, tips, breaking news, or holiday gifts for Ben, you can reach him at bgoldman@streetsblog.org.

You might not be hearing a whole lot more from me for a while, so Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and have a great first few months of 2012! I wish you health, happiness, and robust performance measures in all federal transportation decisions.

- Tanya

Virginia House Delegate Jim LeMunyon wants to make highways and congestion reduction the centerpiece of transportation policy in Northern Virginia. Photo: LeMunyon.com

House Bills 1998 and 1999, put forward by Delegate Jim LeMunyon (R-Fairfax), have been dubbed the “Anti-Livability” bills by local transportation reformers. HB 1998 seeks to mandate that congestion reduction be used as the primary criterion for evaluating transportation projects. HB 1999 would require that highway construction take priority in all funds flowing from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority.

Dan Malouff, a transportation planner with the Arlington County Department of Transportation, said his organization has been watching the bills with concern, particularly HB 1999, which employs the more hard-line inducement of the purse strings.

“If 1999 passed, we would be very strictly reduced to spending money only on a few key highways,” Malouff said. “It means we can’t think about local growth. It means we can’t think about local streets. It means we can’t think about transit.”

“It essentially forces us to spend money only applying Band-aids instead of addressing real problems.”

Reporting on the progress of HB 1998, David Alpert of Streetsblog Network blog Greater Greater Washington said:

This bill is, in essence, the exact opposite of the USDOT’s “livability” push. That agency has been retooling the formulas for federal transit funding to move away from only favoring projects that move the most people the longest distance.

HB 1998, was passed out of committee with bi-partisan support on Tuesday for wider consideration in the House. HB 1999 remains in the Appropriations Committee.

According to sources in Arlington, a local pro-roads lobbying group, the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, has been pushing the measures. The group is made up of construction, real estate, business and transportation interests.

Greater Greater Washington is encouraging Virginia residents to contact their local representatives and express opposition to the bills.

This is your chance to decide. The Streetsie awards are a Streetsblog tradition, offering the bests and worsts of the year, determined by Streetsblog readers.

Voting opens now and stays open till December 30. We’ll announce the winners January 3.

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(you can find a PDF with a complete list of TIGER I grantees here and TIGER II grantees here)

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All the yuletide spirit you can fit on one D.C. bikeshare bike. Photo by pablo.raw

You’ll be too busy spreading holiday cheer to read Streetsblog for the next couple weeks, so we figured we’d take some time off too. We won’t be posting much content until Congress comes back and the relaxing holiday break screeches to a halt on January 3.

We will interrupt our break, however, to post nominations for the 2010 Streetsie awards – a time-honored Streetsblog tradition to determine who made this a great year and who tried their best to screw it up.

Check in with us after Christmas to vote on the 2010 Streetsie nominations for the bests and worsts of the year, plus some New Year’s resolutions for 2011. Winners will be posted New Year’s Eve.

Have a great holiday! May your travels be safe and sustainable!

Before joining Streetsblog, Tanya covered Congress for Pacifica Radio’s Washington Bureau and for public radio stations around the country. She worked as a reporter and editor for WTOP, the Washington area’s most listened-to radio station, and pioneered some changes to their transportation coverage, weaving in bike and pedestrian issues on the same station bringing readers traffic updates “on the 8′s.” When Tanya first approached me about the national reporter position, she said that livable cities are no abstract issue for her — as a bike commuter who’s never owned a car, her own safety and mobility depend on complete streets.

With the Obama administration finally getting serious about a long-term re-authorization of the national transportation bill, Tanya and Streetsblog’s national team will be covering developments on Capitol Hill and also — this is critical — why reforming the current highway-centric system matters.

In addition to introducing Tanya, a warm welcome is way overdue for Angie Schmitt, who’s been bringing you daily updates from the Streetsblog Network, the national coalition of bloggers and advocates dedicated to sustainable transportation and livable streets that’s now more than 400 members strong. Angie is an urban planner and journalist who reported for the Toledo Blade for three years. She’s also a founder of Network member Rust Wire.

Our ongoing national coverage at Streetsblog Capitol Hill and the Streetsblog Network is possible thanks to a grant from the Surdna Foundation and support from Transportation for America.

In the next few months, we’ll be trying out some new things with Streetsblog’s national beat. We’re going to need your help, so here’s what we’re thinking.

The legislative stories unfolding inside the Beltway have a very real impact on the local fights for transit funding and safer streets that Streetsblog Network members write about every day. But sometimes it can be hard to connect the dots. To bring home what’s at stake in the transportation re-authorization, Streetsblog is going to plumb the ins and outs of local transportation reform stories. Transit funding in Seattle. Smart growth in northeast Ohio. Potential highway teardowns in New Orleans and St. Louis. All over the country, people are fighting for a greener, more equitable transportation system on their home turf. We’ll make state and federal policy more engaging by linking it to these local opportunities for reforming our transportation system.

Add that to the Beltway beat, and it’s a lot of ground for one reporter to cover. We’re plotting out the best way to do it, so stay tuned, but there’s no doubt we’ll be asking Streetsblog readers and Streetsblog Network members to pitch in. For now, if you have a transportation reform story you’d like to see tackled on Streetsblog, drop Tanya a line at tanya [at] streetsblog [dot] org.

You can also get in on the ground floor of Tanya’s Streetsblog Twitter feed: Follow her @StreetsblogDC.