Transportation Nation

Senator Barbara Boxer

The chair of the congressional conference committee trying to get agreement on a transportation bill is cheerleading its chances, but she admits negotiators haven’t yet touched the hard stuff.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) took some time Tuesday to tell reporters how optimistic she is that House and Senate negotiators can find common ground on highway and surface transportation funding by a June 30th deadline. The conference kicked off last week.

“The process has been very inclusive and I expect that to produce a result,” Boxer said. The Environment and Public Works Committee Chair said she’s exercising an “open-door” policy with Republicans and Democrats so that everyone feels heard as the conference marches toward its deadline.

That includes, apparently, a meeting with the conference vice-chair Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) scheduled for Thursday, where Boxer says other members are invited to attend.

Still, for all the enthusiasm, Boxer acknowledged that tough, partisan issues like GOP demands to repeal EPA’s new coal ash rules and to include completion of the Keystone XL oils sands pipeline have not yet been discussed.

“We haven’t gotten to the areas of disagreement,” Boxer said. “We will.”

Boxer has set about making her best case for the Senate’s MAP-21 highway bill, which passed with 74 votes back in March. She’s got a lot of Senate Republicans, and probably nearly all House Democrats on her side up against a House Republican position demanding program reforms, lower spending, Keystone, and the coal ash provisions. One big question is whether, in the end, Republican leaders’ price for supporting the bill–likely to include Keystone–can get by Senate Democrats in a politically-charged election-year environment.

“I didn’t hear anybody draw a line in the sand,” Boxer said.

Congress has temporarily extended highway legislation nine times since it expired in 2009.

Follow Todd Zwillich on Twitter @toddzwillich

photo: Armando Trull

(Washington, DC — Armando Trull, WAMU) You’ve heard of Kiss and Ride and Park and Ride, but now Metro has opened its first Bike & Ride facility. At least 100 bikes can be stored in a covered, enclosed and secure location.

It’s secure because there’s steel doors and steel grates. And you can only get in using an electronic card, which is tied to a person’s picture ID.

Deputy General Manager Carol Kissle. “It helps us attract riders to our system in a cost-effective and environmentally-sustainable way. That’s really important for us, to give riders that flexibility in our system.”

By next summer, secured bicycle parking facilities will built at the Vienna and King Street stations. Over the next five years, Bike and Ride will be rolled out in the District as well as more Virginia and Maryland locations.

Rates for Bike & Ride are 5 cents per hour between the hours of 8 a.m. and midnight and 2 cents an hour all other times.

(Photo Andrea Bernstein)

WNYC listeners had questions about New York City’s impending bike share program — and TN’s Andrea Bernstein had answers. Cost? Liability? Docking station locations? Length of ride? She fielded phone calls on Tuesday’s Brian Lehrer Show on all of these topics.

And want to hear her response to Miriam in Greenwich Village, who complained that “bicycle riders are not very good about following traffic rules — they don’t stop for red lights”? Listen to the segment below.

And go to the Brian Lehrer Show web page as well to read the healthy conversation in the comments section.

Oil Drill Rig, Montana

Some 26 million acres of offshore areas currently under lease for oil and gas development are inactive, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Department of the Interior. A DOI press release touts the finding, and pushes oil companies to, um…drill, baby, drill.

The report comes as President Barack Obama pushes his so-called “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, which includes development of alternative fuels but also more vigorous oil drilling.

Here’s an excerpt from the release.

According to the report, more than 70 percent of the tens of millions of offshore acres currently under lease are inactive, neither producing nor currently subject to approved or pending exploration or development plans. Out of nearly 36 million acres leased offshore, only about 10 million acres are active – leaving nearly 72 percent of the offshore leased area idle.

In the lower 48 states, an additional 20.8 million acres, or 56 percent of onshore leased acres, remain idle. Furthermore, there are approximately 7,000 approved permits for drilling on federal and Indian lands that have not yet been drilled by companies.

“These lands and waters belong to the American people, and they expect those energy supplies to be developed in a timely and responsible manner and with a fair return to taxpayers,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. “We will continue to encourage companies to diligently bring production online quickly and safely on public lands already under lease.”

 

 

 

(photo by Kate Hinds)

Transit backers have given up on a comprehensive highway bill this go-around, hoping instead that whatever passes Congress this year lays the table for 2013. And, they say, whatever comes in 2013 must put public transportation on equal footing with roads.

That was the message today on a conference call given by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), which released a report predicting that volatility in gas prices would spur an additional 290 million passenger trips on public transportation this year.

APTA says transit systems nationwide are groaning under the weight of additional passengers and less funding. “More than 80% of our members have had to either raise fares, cut service, or do both as a way to manage their economic challenges,” Michael Melaniphy, APTA’s president, said. “At the same time, we had our second-highest ridership since 1957 last year.”

Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania and a co-chair of the infrastructure group Building America’s Future (which co-sponsored the report), was asked about the likelihood of transportation funding reform in the current political climate.

“I don’t think we’re going to get a five or a six-year bill. I think we’ll get something that will carry us into 2013, and I think the best that we can hope for at this point is to do no harm,” Rendell said. “But in 2013, it seems to me that Congress and the administration have to come to grips with the problems facing not only our transportation infrastructure, but our entire infrastructure.”

Which, he said, “is in desperate shape,” adding that he’s hoping for “a ten year, long-term infrastructure revitalization program.”

Rendell said he had been “horrified by the original proposal floated by the House” that would have stopped gas-tax revenues from being used to fund transit systems. Republicans had said instead that transit funding should come out of a general fund. But that provision was not included in the extension passed in March, which kept things more or less status quo.

Curtis Stitt, the president of the Central Ohio Transit Authority, offered a cautionary tale about general revenue funding — which, he said, is how public transit is funded in Ohio. “Ten years ago,” he said, “the entire state got — for about 42 transit agencies in the state — we got about $43 million.” In the aftermath of the financial crisis, he said, “this year we’re getting $7 million.”

APTA officials urged Congress to look at the transportation system holistically — because that’s how Americans see it. Gary Thomas, who runs Dallas’ transit system and is also APTA’s chairman, said “they view our transportation network as one system. Which is why both public transportation and the road network should continue to receive funding from the highway trust fund.”

 

Top stories on TN:
Poor Pedestrians More Likely To Be Struck by Cars (link)
MTA Fastrack To Expand To Beyond Manhattan (link)
As Cities Compete to Be More Bike-Friendly, List of Bike Towns Grows (link)
Shuster: President Will Sign Transpo Bill In the Fall (link)
Will Citibank’s $41 Million Bike Share Bet Pay Off? (link)
DOT Selects Four More Cities to Get Nonstop Service from D.C.’s Reagan National Airport (link)
Soda Ad Fight Bubbles Up On NYC Transit (link)

Toronto GO train (photo by hypatiadotca via flickr)

The largest cause of fatalities in the oil and gas industry: highway crashes. (New York Times)

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on TSA security breaches in Washington this week. (Star Ledger)

To save $3 million annually, NJ Transit wants to cut five bus lines serving Newark. (Asbury Park Press)

Opponents of a future subway tunnel under Beverly Hills High School have made a video warning that the city’s plans could “turn…the school into a megadisaster.” (Time)

The vast majority of airlines have conformed with European Union rules on reporting carbon dioxide emissions. (BBC News)

A Clipper Card glitch means that an untold number of East Bay transit riders were overcharged. (San Francisco Examiner)

Starting this fall, if a Toronto train is more than 15 minutes late, commuters will be eligible for a refund on their fare. But: the government has built in some loopholes. (Toronto Star)

The Virginia House of Delegates shot down the governor’s attempt to force the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority to immediately accept two additional Virginia appointees to its board or risk losing the state’s contribution to the Dulles Metrorail line the authority is building. (Washington Examiner)

Duluth has the money in place to begin work on a new multimodal transit center. (Duluth News Tribune)

Editorial: NY MTA must taken on the “fare-evasion epidemic,” which costs the system $328 million a year in lost revenue. (Staten Island Advance)

DC’s Metro will open its first secure Bike & Ride facility this week. (TBD)

NY MTA workers repairing subway track during a Fastrack service shutdown. (MTA Photos/flickr)

The NY Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Fast Track program, which shuts down large portions of subway lines entirely overnight, isn’t just for Manhattan any more. Outer borough riders who take the subway late at night will see the pilot program expanded–possibly to their chagrin.

Each Fastrack shutdown lasts Monday to Friday, from 10 at night until 5 in the morning. The program, started in January, allows crews to work for seven straight hours on long stretches of track without stopping to let trains pass by. But that means late night riders have to scramble to find a shuttle bus or trek to another subway to get to where they want to go. The NY MTA website warns they should expect to add about 20 minutes to each trip.

The NY MTA explains the need for the program this way: “Fastrack is a safer and more efficient way to maintain and clean New York City’s sprawling subway — a system that never closes…800 MTA employees are able to inspect signals, replace rails and cross ties, scrape track floors, clean stations and paint areas that are not reachable during normal train operation.”

Originally, the shutdowns were only supposed to take place in Manhattan, and only this year, for a total of 16 weeks of inconvenience. But already the NY MTA has declared it a success because of how much maintenance is getting done. And now spokesman Kevin Ortiz says Fast Track will continue into next year, when it will expand to lines in the outer boroughs and possibly the N, Q and R trains along Broadway in Manhattan.

Fast Track continues this week with the suspension of the B,D,F and M lines between 57th and West 4th Streets, starting Monday night

Copenhagen bike riders signal for a turn. (Photo CC by Flickr user Mikael Colville-Andersen)

(This post by Andrew Zaleski originally appeared in Grist.org)

GUEST POST: Once was that American cities competed to look more like Detroit, with gleaming lanes of highway stretching as far as the eye could see. Now, it’s a race to imitate Copenhagen, the Danish capital where 36 percent of residents commute to work via bicycle.So it seems, at least, when looking at today’s announcementby the League of American Bicyclists of the latest — and largest — round of official Bicycle Friendly Communities in the U.S.

Some of the cities on the list will come as no surprise: Portland, San Francisco, and Chicago are here, as is Missoula, Mont., where 7 percent of residents bike to work, versus the 0.6 percent national average. But so are cities like Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Cottonwood, Ariz. Twenty-five more cities applied for bicycle-friendly status, but were denied. The league hands down its Bicycle Friendly certification with a multi-tier, Olympics-like grading system: Cities can earn bronze, silver, gold, and platinum.The awards, which have been around since 1996, recognize cities that both promote cycling as a means of transportation and actively work to make cycling safer. A panel of national experts brought in by the league and local enthusiasts (bike shop owners, advocacy group leaders) assesses applications along five main criteria: engineering, education, encouragement, evaluation and planning, and enforcement.The best cities, League of American Bicyclists President Andy Clarke says, have action plans in place to ensure that residents have opportunities to ride. They have city-sponsored bike rides, and networks of bike trails, lanes, and sharrows that connect them to where they need to go.Louisville, Ky., is one city that’s done what Clarke advocates. In 2005, then-Mayor Jerry Abramson held the city’s first bike summit and vowed to make Louisville a gold-level Bicycle Friendly City by 2015. The city then set up bike facilities at traffic-heavy locations downtown, installed eight miles of striped cycling lanes, hosted community rides on Memorial Day and Labor Day, and raised $20,000 for bike education classes in 2006. In 2007, the city earned bronze-level certification one year ahead of schedule, and continues its cycling advocacy today.

 

Clarke says many of the winners are beneficiaries of some sort of cycling crusader or organization pushing hard for reforms, enforcement, and acknowledgment of bikers. “Having a champion like a mayor or city councilperson who set outs measurable targets and goals that you can hold yourself accountable to — that seems to make the biggest difference,” Clarke says.

One sticking point for the league is measuring how well local police enforce laws designed to protect cyclists. A recent study [PDF] conducted by Johns Hopkins University researchers found that cyclists in bronze-level certified Baltimore are routinely passed by vehicles traveling within the three-feet buffer mandated by law.

And while the latest round of awards is music to many bikers’ ears, “I will be the first to admit we have a long, long way to go,” says Clarke. Even Portland, Ore., which gets a platinum certification from the league, “would be a pretty crappy Dutch city when it comes to cycling,” Clarke says.

Andrew Zaleski is a a freelance writer and editor, and digital media editor for Urbanite magazine in Baltimore. 

 

Congress member Bill Shuster (House photo)

Congress member Bill Shuster (R-PA), Chair of the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, & Hazardous Materials, predicts President Barack Obama will sign a transportation bill — with a provision to build the Keystone Pipeline included — in September or October.

“Americans support the Keystone Pipeline, 80:20″ Shuster told a gathering organized by the New York University Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management.  (A march Gallup poll actually put that support at 57:29, still a big majority.)

The pipeline has been vehemently opposed by environmentalists, who say construction of the pipeline would mean “game over” for the environment.  And President Obama has said in the past that he would oppose any transportation bill that included funding for the pipeline.

But Shuster predicted presidential politics would force the President’s hand come the fall — though he acknowledged that for most Americans, transportation wasn’t even in their top five issues.

Shuster also pointed the finger at “Leadership and Ways and Means,” who he said pushed the idea of removing transit from the transportation bill, an effort that died after “every Republican in an urban or suburban district screamed bloody murder.”

Shuster also said he thought Congess would achieve a so-called “grand bargain” avoiding steep across-the-board cuts in spending, either late this year if President Obama is re-elected, or after January if Mitt Romney wins the presidency.

Shuster also took a big swipe at California’s high speed rail program, calling it “extortion,” and said the only place America should build “high-er speed rail” was in the Northeast Corridor, where, he said, one in five Americans live.

 

 

 

 

(Photo Andrea Bernstein)

It’s been a long time since the private sector completely took in hand the funding of a public transportation network, and New York’s Citibank is certainly rolling the dice by getting behind one as new as New York’s bike share.

But there’s some anecdotal evidence the bet to associate itself with a hip, new environmentally friendly, healthy form of transport may pay off.

(You can listen to an audio version of this story here.)

On the streets of New York last week, lots of people were already familiar with Citibank’s sponsorship –  “I’m very familiar with it,” said Jason Banks, who works in advertising. “Isn’t it Citibank?” said Erin Goldsmith, who works for a social media company.

Lisa Lipshaw, from London, worked with the company that set up London’s Barclay Cycle Hire.  “They did really well out of the sponsorship,” she said.

At the kick-off press conference, Mayor Michael Bloomberg did his part.   At least four or five times, he said “Citibank” when he meant “citibike,” before he corrected himself.

“The person who I have the pleasure of introducing next hopes everyone confuses Citibike with Citibank,” Bloomberg said, teeing up the remarks of Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit.

Pandit himself was pretty bullish on citibike. “We think this is a very innovative program that makes people’s lives easier, and that’s what we do, that’s what we do as a bank.”

Not everyone was thrilled.   Web designer Antonio Ortiz is uncomfortable with big banks’ roll in the recent financial collapse “It’s like some kind of subversive way of ‘Hey we’re buying PR, we’re being good and we care about the environment and the people of the community.’ Like if it was Patagonia, I’m sure I’d feel a different way.”

But still.  There are exactly zero New York bikes on the street, and already the name is catching on.

Strumming a guitar on a NYC subway platform can find you a bigger audience than weeks on the road playing bars or even some concert halls. So, it makes sense that there is stiff competition for officially sanctioned spots to busk in New York’s transit system.

On Wednesday, musicians will play their best songs in front of a panel of judges in Grand Central terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall in the hopes that they will be selected to be part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Music Under New York program.

TN partner WNYC is asking for submissions of your favorite subway musicians. Send in your suggestions here.

(Washington, DC — WAMU) What was routine a couple generations ago is now relatively rare.  Nearly 50 percent of Americans kids walked or biked to school in 1969.  Today the figure is 13 percent.

The decline in children’s physical activity is blamed on an array of factors, from the design of road systems to accommodate automobiles instead of pedestrians and bicyclists, to poor parenting.

Whatever the reasons, the results are alarming: approximately 17 percent (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents are obese.  Supporters of more walking- and bike-friendly neighborhoods partly blame rising the obesity rates on the drop in the number of kids who walk or pedal to school.

In the greater Washington area, determined parents and advocacy groups are trying to get kids moving again.  The solutions, however, are not as easy as simply telling kids to get up and go.  There are concerns about the safety of streets, including missing sidewalks, heavy traffic congestion around schools during morning rush hour and, in some places, crime.

It’s also a matter of convenience and time.  Some kids live too far from their schools to make walking or bicycling practical; some parents find it more convenient to drop their kids off at school while driving to work.

“Kids just aren’t used to it right now.  They are used to getting bused or being in the car.  It’s really about teaching kids.  That’s the education part,” says Christine Green, the regional policy manager at the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, a group that encourages communities to address this issue by making streets safer.

“My job as the regional policy manager is to bring all the players in the community together.  That’s the school system, the transportation engineers, the planners, the public health folks, and the community advocates,” Green says.  “We bring everybody together under this common mission of not only kids walking and biking but entire communities being able to walk and bike for all their trips.”

Communities apply for federal Safe Routes to School grants.  “You must complete a school travel plan before you do an application,” Green says.  “A school travel plan requires you to look at the infrastructure around your school, it requires you to do some counts about the numbers of kids walking and biking to school currently.”

The entire budget of the Safe Routes to School program covers only seven percent of all schools in the United States, according to Barbara McCann, the executive director of the National Complete Streets Coalition, based in Washington.

“There’s just a tremendous need to change the way we design our roads so that the people who need to use the roads do so, and that includes kids,” says McCann, who organization largely faults road designs over the last half century for the decline in peoples’ physical activity.

“When parents are looking at going with their kids to school they have to think about is there a sidewalk, is there a safe crosswalk, is there a signal?” McCann says.  “It should be a priority of the community to have safe routes to school.  Sidewalks make a tremendous difference in safety.  They can reduce pedestrian crashes exponentially.  In many communities it hasn’t happened and hasn’t been a priority.”

In the Forest Hills neighborhood of northwest D.C., sidewalks are the focus of Robin Schepper, a mother of two young boys and leader of the Safer Routes to School program at Murch Elementary School.  She has successfully fought to have sidewalks built on several streets, but some homeowners have also successfully resisted.

“There are a lot of people who really don’t want sidewalks,” says Schepper.  “They have landscaped all the way to the curb even though the city owns four to five feet up. They don’t want sidewalks because they don’t want to disturb their landscaping.”

Schepper and a WAMU reporter made the 17 minute walk from her home west to Murch Elementary.  On some streets there are no sidewalks on either side.  She accompanies her sons, 6 and 10, on their walk to school every day.

“I was stopped by a police officer about two months ago and she said, “Hey, you got to be careful.  This is not safe for your children.”  And I said, “I know.  I’ve been trying to get a sidewalk here for years,” Schepper says.

Missing sidewalks (and landscaping crews whose trucks make the streets even narrower) are not the biggest concern among neighborhood parents, says Schepper.

“We did a survey at Murch Elementary School when we got a ‘Safe Routes to School’ grant and we did a survey of what were parents’ biggest fears of letting their kids walk and bike to school.  And the number one reason was speeding cars,” she says.

Connecticut Avenue runs north/south through Schepper’s kids’ route to school.  The posted speed limit is 25 miles per hour, but motorists were seen speeding at about 45 or 50 miles per hour during her interview with WAMU.

“We have traffic coming from Maryland so Connecticut Avenue in the morning is like a speedway,” she says.

While Schepper fights for sidewalks in D.C., in Vienna, Virginia Jeff Anderson is waging a different crusade: getting kids on bicycles.

“I started here at Wolftrap Elementary by asking our principle for a bike rack one day,” says Anderson, who has three young kids with whom he bikes to school.

Once a month Anderson organizes a bike train – a caravan of bicycling students – to encourage more kids to eschew the back seats of their parents’ cars for a two-wheeler.

“I usually have between 10 and 15 kids who join me.  We take the back roads and avoid the main roads,” says Anderson, who started the bike trains about 18 months ago.  “There was no bike rack.  We now have four.  The goal is to get them to see that it is easy to do.  Eventually they don’t do the bike train anymore. They just ride on their own.”

Anderson says getting more kids on bicycles or walking is not as simple as he’d like.  Parents are concerned about traffic congestion, and some just want to talk with their kids in the car for those precious few minutes before the busyness of the day takes over.

“Everyone is rushed these days to get out for all kinds of reasons.  People err on the side of convenience and ease versus taking 15 minutes with your child walking to school,” he says.  However, there is a downside to choosing convenience, says Anderson, a member of Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling.

“In the ‘60s, fifty to sixty percent of kids biked or walked to school.  We didn’t have Type 2 diabetes in children.  We didn’t have an obesity problem in children.  And now only 13 percent of children walk or bike to school nationally.  That’s the same number we see here at our school on any given day, too,” he says.

Anderson’s daughter Laurel, 9, is happy to be in the minority.  “I like doing it because we are not using energy, it’s a lot of fun, and I like getting exercise,” she says.  Younger brother Eric, 7, says he feels better at school after he bikes in the morning.  “You can think better,” he says.

Awareness of the benefits of safe streets is not lacking in Kentlands, a community of about 5,000 residents in Montgomery County, Maryland.  A model of ‘new urbanism,’ the Kentlands was designed for walking, not only driving.  Sidewalks are wide and roads are narrow.  Front steps meet the sidewalks.

“Narrow roads calm traffic, keep cars going more slowly, and keep the houses closer together which creates neighborliness.  They also provide for wider sidewalks on each side,” says John Schlichting, the chairman of the Kentlands Community Foundation.

The children of the Kentlands were raised as walkers.  Their schools, friends, and favorite hang-outs are close by.

“I always cross in the crosswalks, and there are lots crosswalks and sidewalks in the Kentlands, so it’s not like you’re walking in the middle of the street.  But if I were somewhere else I might not feel as safe,” says Elena Dietz, 11.  Here sister Hannah, 13, says she notices a big difference between the way she lives compared to friends from other towns that rely on their parents for transportation.

“They have to get parent permission for everywhere they go, everything they do.  Whereas I can be like, mom, I going to walk three doors down and go to my neighbor’s house,” Hannah says.

Another child of the Kentlands, Sebastian Zeineddin, 8, says he is lucky to live there.  “I like walking to school because I also have friends that I can walk and talk with, too.”

Sebastian’s observation raises an issue any parent can relate to: no responsible adult would let their child walk to school, especially alone, if they believe the roads aren’t safe.  Thirty percent of traffic deaths for children up 14 years old happen when they are walking or bicycling.

In the Kentlands no child has to walk by himself.  The close proximity of neighbors produces camaraderie among the kids.  Thus, advocates like Barbara McCann and Christine Green believe that the effort to get more kids walking and bicycling cannot succeed without major changes to the design of their neighborhoods and towns.

At the Montgomery County Department of Transportation, engineer Fred Lees is in charge of improving the ‘walkability’ of roads.  The head of the traffic engineering section, Lees is working on creating walking routes to the county’s schools.

“One of the biggest problems we have with schools in general is parents dropping off kids, buses, and kids walking, all converging in the same fifteen minute period,” says Lees.  In fact, 20 to 30 percent of morning traffic is children being driven to school, according to the Safe Routes to School National Partnership.

“We’ve found that along some of the designated walking routes some of the crosswalks are not there or are in bad condition, so we will certainly go out there and mark those and remark ones that are faded,” says Lees.

Getting half of all American school kids walking or biking to school again may seem like an improbable task, but advocates say it is possible through a multi-pronged effort to improve the design of communities, educate parents and children, and encourage physical activity.

In D.C. Robin Schepper is determined to make a difference one street at a time.

“The proudest moment I have in doing this type of work is that when [my kids] point to sidewalks, they say that’s mommy’s sidewalk,” she says.

New York City has made live its draft maps of bike share stations.  The stations dot all of Manhattan south of Central Park,  Long Island City,  Downtown Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant,  Fort Greene,  and Clinton Hill. (See here, for why they won’t be in other neighborhoods.)

The full maps are here and explanation of costs here.

The bike share docking stations will extend the reach of the transit system to the far East and West sides of Manhattan, as well as  northern Williamsburg and Greenpoint, which are currently underserved by the subway system.

In those neighborhoods, riders will be able to take a bike share to the 7 train in Long Island City or the L in Williamsburg.   Now, those riders have to take an impossibly long walk, or take the G to either of those trains.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show that bike share is designed to  expand the transit system — not for recreation. “So you rent a bike, go to work, leave the bike when you get to work, pick it up when you get out of work, leave it when you get home,” the Mayor said.

Neighborhoods that currently have no transit connections could be accessed through bike share.  The growing population center of  Williamsburg will be connected now to  and Downtown Brooklyn, as well as Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Still unconnected: Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Windsor Terrace, Carroll Gardens, Crown Heights, and Prospect Heights as well as the Upper West & Upper East sides.  Those neighborhoods will have to wait until 2013.

“I’m extremely proud to release this plan for the Citi Bike network . New Yorkers created this plan during the past six months, contributing time and expertise in workshops, on-line and in dozens of meetings to discuss and plan the City’s newest transportation system,” said New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

Meanwhile, a new poll shows New Yorkers approve of bike share by a more than two to one margin.  Support has slipped slightly since the program was first announced last October.

The DOT says the “draft maps are the product of hundreds of meetings with community boards, elected officials, members of the public and stakeholders in each district, as well as from some 70,000 station location suggestions and comments on DOT’s bike share Web site,” adding that the maps have been presented to local council members and “DOT is currently in the process of reviewing the maps with local community boards in the service area.”

For the most part, community board leaders say they’ve been delighted with the siting process.

The locations are on “wide or underused sidewalks,” as well as road space that is current “No Standing” or “No Parking.”

Citibike will launch in July, and will cost $95 a year or $9.95 a day to join.  Annual members can ride any bike they want for up to 45 minutes a ride, then usage fees kick in, starting at $2.50 for up to 75 minutes and $9.00 for up to 115 minutes.

Daily members get 30 minutes of free riding, with an hour costing $4 and 90 minutes costing $13.

The DOT cautions:  “Citi Bike is transportation, not recreation. It is designed for short trips and encourages users to return bikes quickly so that others can use them…Think of Citi Bike as a taxi cab: Get one, get there, then dock it. See attached maps for indications of the kind of rides Citi Bike can be used for.”

New York’s transportation department has had safety bragging rights — reducing traffic fatalities to their lowest level ever.

But Chicago wants to go one better.  In a sweeping action agenda (.pdf), Chicago’s DOT Chief, Gabe Klein, is promising to eliminate all traffic fatalities within a decade, and to reduce bike and pedestrian injuries by 50%.

Klein says this can be done through improved design, more vigorous enforcement, and safety education.  Among the proposals are a 20 mph speed limit in residential neighborhoods and more clearly marked crosswalks.

The document also promised to increase the number of under 5-mile trips taken by bike to 5% of all trips, and to “make Chicago the best big city in America for cycling and walking.”

That’s a distinction NYC DOT Chief Janette Sadik-Khan and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have tried to claim for New York, which has added hundreds of miles of bikeways in the last five years, and tripled the number of cyclists.

The Chicago document also promises more transit options including BRT, better on-time performance by the CTA, and more real time transit information.

Top stories on TN:
What Bike Share Costs — A Comparison (link)
Financial Plan for Tappan Zee Bridge Probably Won’t Come Until August (link)
Companies to Offer Rides to Private Space Stations (link)

(photo by Stephen Murphy via flickr)

Who will run the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee when Rep. John Mica is term-limited out? Early signs point to Rep. Bill Shuster. (Politico)

And: Mica says he’ll meet with Senator Barbara Boxer next week for a one-on-one about highway bill negotiations. (The Hill)

Ray LaHood tells California legislature: don’t wait for next fall’s vote — approve high-speed rail now. (Sacramento Bee)

Police in Fort Lee, New Jersey, are ticketing jaywalkers in an attempt to reduce pedestrian deaths. (AP via NJ.com)

Los Angeles’s Metrolink commuter rail service plans to increase fares this July. (Los Angeles Times)

A coordinated smoke bomb attack shut down Montreal’s subway system. (Toronto Star)

Car designers, who need to lower to vehicle weight meet stricter gas mileage standards, have CD players in their crosshairs. (Detroit Free Press)

The nine bar cars on Metro-North Railroad’s New Haven line aren’t going anywhere. (Wall Street Journal)

Cars of the future will be computers on wheels. (USA Today)

Meanwhile, the collector car market has increased 33% in value since 2009. (Los Angeles Times)

Behind the scenes at the 2012 International Bus Roadeo. As one Chicago bus driver put is: “to make it here is like making it to the NBA finals.” (Story — and video — at Atlantic Cities)

Bigelow's Genesis II Space Habitat, launched in 2007 (Photo Courtesy of Bigelow Aerospace)

The private space companies Space Exploration Technologies and Bigelow Aerospace are planning to offer rides to international customers to private space stations.

The California based SpaceX is developing a reusable space craft and rocket, while Bigelow, which has offices and manufacturing plants in Nevada and Maryland, is working on an expandable space station which it says will be lighter and cheaper than rigid metallic structures traditionally used in space station design.  Bigelow’s  BA330 habitat will be able to support a crew of six, and the company says it could be used by national space agencies, private companies and universities.

Mike Gold, Bigelow’s Director of DC operations and business growth, says the plan is to lease space on the station much like a lease on a terrestrial building.

“Too often we treat space as something absolutely unique or different,” says Gold.

“The business principles we’ve used here on earth for centuries apply just as well to space, and we’re looking forward to bringing traditional business practices to space.”

Gold says it’s too early to tell what it would cost to lease one of the company’s private space stations. “Until we know exactly what the cost of the rockets and the capsules we use for transportation are, I wouldn’t want to say what the pricing will be.”

Bigelow and SpaceX plan to begin a marketing campaign in Asia. Company representatives will travel to Japan to meet with officials after the upcoming SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch, which is scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral to the International Space Station on May 19th.

The Dragon capsule packed with cargo for the mission is designed to eventually carry astronauts into orbit. As part of its commercial crew program, NASA is providing funding and technical expertise to help  SpaceX develop its rocket and capsule.

The launch has been delayed several times while technicians work to refine computer software for the mission.

During the mission, the  space capsule will complete a series of maneuvers including docking with the ISS before returning to earth.

Bigelow’s Mike Gold says he’ll be watching the mission closely.

“There will certainly be a lot politically that occurs from this launch in terms of how much funding the commercial crew program receives, and therefore how quickly we can move forward with our own business plan.”

Gold says he believes there could soon be a commercial station in orbit along with the International Space Station.

 

 

The Tappan Zee Bridge, which crosses the Hudson and connects Rockland and Westchester Counties (photo by Patsy Wooters via Flickr)

Thomas Madison, the head of the New York State Thruway Authority, knows the $5 billion-dollar question is how the state will pay for its planned replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge. But he’s able to maintain a sense of humor about the uncertainty.

Speaking Thursday morning at a breakfast sponsored by the Citizens Budget Commission, Madison pointed to his presentation about the bridge and said: “I’m going to go through these slides fairly quickly, because I understand there’s a lot of questions on how we’re going to finance the project that I can’t answer –  so I will hedge those after the presentation.”

But he did impart some information about how the state will fund what is expected to be a $5 billion to $6 billion cost: “The principal way — and the predominant way — will be toll-backed Thruway bonds. There’s been talk about pension funds, or some other private equity introduction into the process. Those discussions continue, but ultimately this will be a publicly funded project.”

Madison said the “hard target” for a financial plan is August, when the federal government is expected to sign off on the project, but it could come sooner.

Other details:

• New York continues to pursue federal funding for the project and will reapply for a $2 billion federal loan

• While the state is “confident” it will get that loan, it’s also exploring other federal grant possibilities

• Any private money won’t come in the form of a public/private partnership, because the state lacks that legislative authority.

• There’s “no intent” to raise tolls — but it’s the state’s goal to be consistent with other area crossings. And “the bridge itself and the New York State Thruway system generally is the biggest bargain in terms of toll roads in the Northeast.” (Currently, the undiscounted toll for crossing the Tappan Zee is $5; the cash toll for the George Washington Bridge is $12.)

• This is a roads project, not a transit one. “The Thruway Authority does not own or operate or maintain any transit systems today and we’re not in the transit business.” The bridge will be built so as to “not preclude” a bus rapid transit or rail line in the future. But as it stands today, “we can’t afford to incorporate a full transit system beyond the bridge itself.”

• The MTA is giving the state information about loading capacity to make sure that’s included in the design of the new bridge.

• But what will the new Tappan Zee look like? “We will know the design of the bridge when we receive the proposals from the four teams (currently bidding on the project); right now that is slated for the end of July.”

• Even though the bridge is being expanded significantly, “capacity will still be an issue… so we’re going to incorporate some intelligent transportation systems to manage the traffic better.”

• No news on what might happen to the existing bridge when the new one is operational. Madison said the contract calls for its demolition (which will cost $150 million). And the state is exploring “repurposing it,” the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers have some “serious reservations.”

Meanwhile, preliminary work on the new bridge is in full swing on the Hudson. And Madison said starting Friday, “they’re going to start driving these ten-foot-in-diameter, 180-foot-long piles down into the riverbed, and then they actually weld another 180-foot pipe on top of that, and continue driving it down.”

This, he said, will give the companies bidding on the project information they need on the bedrock and substrate.

You can see Thomas Madison’s presentation here.

Top stories on TN:
What Bike Share Costs — A Comparative Chart (link)
Europe Slow to Warm Up to Electric Cars (link)
United Battles Southwest To Maintain Hold On Houston (link)
For Montanans, Federal Highway Bill Hits Home (link)
Report: Signal Problems Cause Most Delays in NYC Subway (link)

A train in NJ (photo by Bikes on Transit via flickr)

Virginia’s transportation secretary: we’ll spend $150 million on the Silver Line if pro-labor incentives are eliminated from the next construction contract. (Washington Post)

The recession isn’t over for public transit agencies — even though ridership is increasing. (Washington Post)

New Jersey’s transportation head is floating the idea of having NJ Transit pick up passengers at Manhattan bus stops. (Asbury Park Press)

And: NJ Transit may adopt a more bike-friendly policy on trains. (NorthJersey.com)

More tolls = less carpoolers on the Bay Area’s seven state-run bridges. (San Francisco Examiner)

Some DC residents are not happy about the city’s plans to erect a memorial in their neighborhood to the people who died in a 2009 Metro crash. (WAMU)

Salt Lake City broke ground on its new streetcar line. (Salt Lake Tribune)

The head of the New York State Thruway Authority says he can’t rule out toll hikes to help pay for the Tappan Zee Bridge. (Journal News)

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood blogs that NYC’s Moynihan Station is “sure to become one of America’s great train stations.” (FastLane)

Sam Schwartz: one reason NYC needs my traffic plan is because Robert Moses’s legacy means “18 wheelers are plowing through the surface roads of Brooklyn, and every year, a few kids die because of it.” (Observer)

Brilliant yet overlooked feature on modern cars: a dashboard arrow indicating what side of the car the gas tank is on. (Slate)

An eight-year-old pit bull was seriously injured after saving a woman from being struck by a train in Massachusetts. (Boston Globe)

Most pedestrian accidents in Vancouver involve cars making right or left turns — not people jaywalking. (Vancouver Sun)

A&E will air a reality series about gentrification in South Boston. (Color Lines)

 

CORRECTED POST There’s been not a little controversy about the cost of New York’s bike share since the program was unveiled this week — much huffing and puffing about how an afternoon’s ride would cost you a C-note. The city Department of Transportation notes that bike share is not intended for four-hour rides, any more than a taxi ride should last four hours. If you need a car for four hours, you can rent one. If you need a bike for four hours, you can rent one too — just not a bike share.

Also responding to the critics: Matt Seaton takes a comparative look in the Guardian Wednesday.

Their point is: this is transportation, not recreation.

But still, New York’s rates are among the highest in the world , as far we can tell. The annual fee is $95 — a bit above most other annual rates, which range from $70 to $80.

The usage fees for annual members, in the chart above, are also high, although NYC annual members get 45 minutes of free riding, unlike riders in Washington, DC, London, Boston, Chicago, Denver, and Minneapolis, who only get 30 minutes of free riding.

And the usage fees for daily members are the highest of all – $4 for the first hour, $13 for the first 90 minutes, compared to a $2.00 and $6.00 fee for most other cities.

Here’s a look other annual fees (& daily membership fees) around the world:
New York: $95 ($9.95)
Boston $85 ($5) CLOSES IN WINTER
Denver $80 ($8) CLOSES IN WINTER
Montreal $80 ($7) CLOSES IN WINTER
Washington, DC $75 ($7) — there’s also an $84 annual fee that can be paid out monthly.
Chicago $75 ($7) TO BE LAUNCHED LATE SUMMER
London $72 ($1.60)
Minneapolis $65 ($6) CLOSES IN WINTER
Paris $50 ($2.20) — this level of annual gives you 45 minutes free riding
Mexico City $23 (daily rate N.A.)

The New York bike share annual membership is still cheaper than a monthly MetroCard, as the NYC DOT likes to point out. And with it, you can ride anywhere, anytime, as many rides as you want — for free, so long as those rides don’t exceed 45 minutes. That grace period exceeds the grace period in most other cities. With the exception of Paris, Montreal and Mexico City, charges in all the above cities start at minute 31. (In Paris you can chose between a deluxe membership, which costs about $50, or a regular which costs about $36, and gives you just 30 minute free riding)

NY officials say 97 percent of rides in DC are under the 30 minute free ride there. But if you keep the bike past the grace period, the charges escalate rapidly. The $2.50 cost for the initial usage fee in New York is the highest we could find.

As for next increment: it’s $9.00.

NYC DOT spokesman Seth Solomonow says that’s still misleading — because in New York, you can ride for an hour an a quarter for $2.50, and for an hour and three quarters for $9.00.

“These rates are not so easy to compare to each other,” Solomonow said. “Some trips are cheaper or more expensive, depending on the specific city, type of membership and length of trip. Some rides are cheaper or more expensive depending on whether they lasted 59:59 or 60:00.”

Many, many of you have commented below about whether New York’s bike share should ever be used for 90 minutes (mostly, you say no.)

For most one-way rides that people will make after the initial roll-out in Manhattan below 59th Street and parts of Brooklyn and Long Island City,  it shouldn’t be a problem to stay under 45 minutes for a one-way trip. You should be able to get most places around that district in under 45 minutes.

New York’s transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan says the pricing arrangement is a necessary way to keep trips short and bikes in circulation. Here’s how she explained it in an email:

“The system is the first unsubsidized bike share system and it is designed to incentivize people to return bikes promptly so there will always a be a bike available for any user who wants one. There is no other system of this size and structure that compares, and instead of costing tens of millions of dollars to implement as budgets are being cut, the system will actually provide a new transportation option and revenue for the city.”

“As we have seen in other cities, users primarily use the bike share bikes no longer than the free period. The system works when people return their bikes promptly and incur no additional charges at all. It breaks down if users go looking for a bike but find only empty docking stations because all the bikes are checked out on long rides.”

However, when the system expands to Park Slope, Crown Heights,  and the Upper West Side, one can easily imagine a one-way commute of an hour and a quarter. Alta officials have said one-way commutes are frequent in Washington, DC. When it’s raining in the morning but nice in the afternoon, a user might want to ride home from, say, Lincoln Center to Crown Heights.

No word yet on whether the system’s pricing could be adjusted — though in Washington, officials have created low-income payment plans and other discount schemes.
[CORRECTED POST: Our initial post inadvertently compared New York's usage rates for daily and short-term members to the usage rates for annual members in other cities. The chart above has the correct rates. We regret the error.]

A charging station in Berlin (photo by Kate Hinds)

Europe is home to expensive gas, a growing wind farm industry and aggressive carbon reduction goals.  But so far, when it comes to electric cars, il n’y a pas d’amour — pas encore.

Transportation ministers and industry leaders, speaking last week at the International Transport Forum in Leipzig, Germany, said government subsidies and ever-increasing numbers of charging stations aren’t yet enticement enough to convince European consumers.

Case in point: Sergio Monteiro, Portugal’s Secretary of State for Public Works, Transport and Communications, said his country is laying the groundwork for EVs — but so far his fellow citizens aren’t buying.

“We have more than 1,300 charging points,” he said, adding that Portugal is also financially incentivizing the purchase of EVs. “The average cost (of an electric car) is around 35,000 euros in Portugal, and we have a reduction of five thousand euros subsidized by the state.”

But, said Monteiro, “we only managed to sell 200 vehicles last year.” And 60 of those went to government administrators.

Monteiro dusted off a phrase uttered by the Irish transport minister earlier that day.  “It was like the field of dreams,” he said. “You have the infrastructure, then services would come. That was not the case.” He added that it was “living proof that infrastructure can only do so much — you need to break a number of barriers.” And chief among them is cost. Even with a 5,000 euro reduction, Monteiro said, EVs are too expensive for the average Portuguese citizen navigating austerity measures.

The wait for lower prices may be a decade away. Nissan vice president Mitsuhiko Yamashita said it usually takes ten years to reduce the price of new technologies by half. He used airbags as an example, saying it now cost automakers as much to put six airbags in a vehicle today as it did to include two a decade ago. “We can do the same thing for the EV, but…it takes maybe five to ten years, ten years on average. But during that time frame, I’d like to expect some type of support from the government.”

While some European countries offer subsidies to purchase EVs, not all do.

Another issue hampering EV adoption is standardization. Europe is home to multiple electrical grids, and different EVs have different plugs. Pat O’Doherty, the CEO of Ireland’s Electricity Supply Board, said “I should be able to drive my electric vehicle from Dublin in the future, down through Britain and charge it, down through France and into the South of Spain.” He added that even the technology governing payment systems at public charging stations differs from place to place.

Yamashita later said ruefully “that’s my headache at this moment.”

Nissan launched the all-electric Leaf at the end of 2010, but so far sales have been underwhelming. Yamashita tried to put a good face on it. “We already sold more than 27,000 vehicles worldwide as of the beginning of April,” he said. “Thirteen thousand in Japan, 11,000 in the U.S…We just started sales in Europe but we’ve sold 3,000.”

Those are stark numbers, and it doesn’t look much better when you read reports that Nissan wants to sell 20,000 to 25,000 of them in Europe in 2012. The company is trying to boost sales by moving production to the U.K., which will lower costs, and also redesign it in order to appeal to European tastes.

One bright spot for the Leaf, though, can be found in Norway, where 1,000 of them were sold in six months.

But on a large scale, “it will only work if the customer benefits financially,” said O’Doherty. He said the Nissan Leaf had been selling better in Ireland since Nissan had knocked 5,000 euros off the price.

Watch a video of the conversation at the ITF summit below.