Category Archives: issues

NYC congestion charges: an update

Robert I. (aka Neat Engine), New York native and former Seattle grad student, sent me this update (from the Times City Blog) on the city/state discussion about congestion pricing in Manhattan:

Journalists, advocacy groups and residents on both sides of the issues have been struggling to make sense of the congestion pricing agreement reached in Albany on Thursday.

On one hand, the deal at the very least seems to keep Mr. Bloomberg’s idea of charging drivers in Manhattan alive. It may even allow the city to begin taking steps to begin putting such charges in place.

On the other the plan hardly means congestion pricing is a done deal. A 17-member commission of city and state representatives will study different ways to mitigate traffic — not limited to congestion pricing — and act by March.

Streetsblog‘s take:

Congestion Pricing: What’s the Deal?

Nobody knows whether the convoluted and difficult congestion pricing “deal” reached by political leaders yesterday will actually result in anything. The deal is complex even by Albany standards. A few things, however, are clear:

1. Mayor Bloomberg does not have a “green light” to move forward with congestion pricing, nor has he been granted any new powers. The deal denies him the authority to impose a pricing charge until approved by the City Council and state legislature.

2. The feds may still yet give New York City congestion pricing start-up funds despite the missed Monday deadline.

3. The deal mandates a very specific timeline by which the process will move forward and a 17-member commission that may become an important forum for the congestion pricing and and broader transportation debate, good things could emerge.

4. Transportation policy and livable streets issues have moved to the top of New York City’s civic agenda and will remain in the political spotlight for some time to come.

5. There are a ton of things that could still derail congestion pricing.

Meanwhile, London, a congestion-pricing pioneer, is raising some of its charges. According to Carbusters magazine, SUVs (called “4x4s” and, occasionally, “Chelsea tractors,” in England) might soon have to pay as much as 25 pounds per day to drive into the city.

NYC: the congestion-pricing debate continues

Mayor Bloomberg is still pushing hard for congestion-pricing in New York. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the state legislature will approve his plan in time for the city to receive a $500 million federal traffic-reduction grant. From the Associated Press:

The U.S. Department of Transportation plans to choose up to three cities for pilot programs to combat traffic and pollution, providing up to $500 million for each winner to implement the plan… New York state Senate leader Joseph Bruno, a Republican, says Monday is the federal government’s “drop-dead date” for New York to commit itself to Bloomberg’s proposal.

[…]

Supporters of Bloomberg’s plan argue that hard choices are required for New York City’s future. They also cite the immediate benefits: Clearing the air in “hot spots” that threaten children’s health; reducing traffic congestion in a choked Manhattan striving to remain the world’s financial epicenter; and the lure of up to $500 million in federal funds. The Bloomberg administration predicts that street traffic would decrease by 6 percent in lower Manhattan during the three-year pilot project as more people use public transit.

But approval of Bloomberg’s plan in Albany will likely require deft diplomacy, bipartisan cooperation and a thick skin in a Legislature long criticized as slow, dysfunctional and ruled absolutely by each chamber’s majority party: Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in the Assembly.

It would be a shame for the city to lose out on that money, especially since, according to Bloomberg, $300 million of it would be used to fund immediate transit improvements.

New York Legislature: Take it from a resident of a city that’s lost it’s share of federal transportation funds: You want this money.

To charge or not to charge (or, “Pay as you leave, pay as you enter, or pay… never?”)

At a time when high fuel costs are causing many transit agencies to consider fare increases, a couple of agencies in rural Washington are making fare-free policies work. From a recent article by Larry Lange:

[Island Transit] is one of only two transit agencies in the state that don’t charge for rides, and one of only a handful nationwide that don’t. Others tried no-fare buses, but returned to charging customers.

No-fare service attracts more riders and can eliminate payment disputes, speed up bus travel and get cars off the road, eliminating pollution and appealing to those seeking green living.

Of course, rural systems don’t have the ridership or frequency of service of larger, urban systems. Despite the–from where I sit (on the 4)–all-too-frequent incidents resulting from passenger-driver fare disputes, free service isn’t really on the table at Metro. Given the funding climate for transit, and the fact that 22% of Metro’s revenue (target: 25%) comes from fares, it hardly seems possible.

“A fare-free policy might be appropriate for smaller transit systems in smaller communities, but is ill-advised for larger transit systems in major urban areas,” a 2003 University of South Florida study concluded. It said fare-free service increases maintenance and labor costs and in some cases led to criminal activity that “drove away existing riders.”

Then again, San Francisco’s considering it:

San Francisco leaders are considering making that city’s transit system fare-free. Mayor Gavin Newsom recently noticed that many riders don’t bother to pay fares and has asked his controller’s office to study the idea of eliminating them. Results are due in late August. San Francisco would lose about $145 million in revenue each year by dropping fares, almost a quarter of its system revenue, but could rid itself of the expense of managing its fare system.

“It’s complicated to administer, so there’s some appeal in the city not having to manage that,” said Peg Stevenson, San Francisco’s chief services auditor.

I’ve only been to one (small) city that had free bus service: Aspen, Colorado, of all places. You wouldn’t expect folks in Aspen to focus on transit. Then again, with the tax base in that city, they can probably afford to provide lots of great public services.

My Godson, Isaac (aka Zaky), getting on a free bus in his hometown of Aspen

But I digress.

If the funding were available, I’d like to see free buses (etc.) here–first of all, because I believe that transit is a democratizing force (the cheaper, the more democratizing), and secondly, because I think it would encourage more people (of all economic circumstances) to ride. Besides, fare policies are difficult to administer, make buses later than they need to be, and create hardships (and sometimes anger management issues) for drivers.

What do you think? Are free buses a good idea?

Transit in the news

1) An ad against buses–on a bus.

The political ad shows a Rapid transit bus that has morphed into a pig. It’s eating money and spewing pollution.

“This pig stinks!” it reads in bold letters.

What is most surprising is the venue — it soon will appear on the back of a Rapid bus.

A group paid $290 to place the 21-by-72-inch ad on the bus for a month to show its opposition to a transit system millage campaign.

(Source: Grand Rapid Press, via Mass Transit magazine)

2) Chicago businesses request higher taxes to increase investment in transit.

The state must give the Regional Transportation Authority the power to raise additional revenue, including increasing the sales tax and levying a gasoline tax of up to 5 percent per gallon, the business-backed civic group Chicago Metropolis 2020 said.

“This is a group of business people standing up and saying, ‘We’re willing to push for additional taxes, including a gas tax.’ This is very significant,” said George Ranney Jr., Chicago Metropolis’ president and CEO.

[…]

“Action is needed this legislative session to prevent further damage to the region’s economy and global competitiveness,” the group’s executive council said in the letter and position paper, which were obtained by the Tribune.

(Source:Chicago Tribune, via Mass Transit)

One more reason to love New York

Ever since my little brother moved to New York, I’ve started paying closer attention to what goes on there. What’s going on right now is worth sharing.

Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a series of measures that would accommodate growth (a million more people expected by 2030) and reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. The most promising of the measures? A congestion charge.

Under the plan, the city would charge $8 for cars and $21 for commercial trucks that enter Manhattan below 86th Street from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays. The charge would be $4 for drivers within Manhattan, and several exemptions would apply. No one would be charged on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive or the West Side Highway. There would be no charge for moving cars to comply with alternate side parking, and there would be no charge for taxis.

[…]

Later, Mary E. Peters, the United States secretary of transportation, issued a statement praising the plan as “the kind of bold thinking leaders across the country need to embrace if we hope to win the battle against traffic congestion.” The Nassau County executive, Thomas R. Suozzi, who has many constituents who commute by car to Manhattan, also was enthusiastic. “People’s first reaction is they don’t want to pay,” he said. “But getting them to switch to mass transit benefits us all.”

(Source: New York Times)

The congestion charge is also, for obvious reasons, the most controversial of the measures. NYC’s Streetsblog (easily my favorite transit blog) details some of the objections:

Representative Anthony Weiner:

While I applaud the mayor for focusing on a long-term sustainability plan for the city, in this case the cure seems to be worse than the disease. We must look at innovative ways to face the challenges created by the city’s own success, but a regressive tax on working middle-class families and small-business owners shouldn’t be one of them.

My take: The fact that this conversation is taking place at all is huge. If New York manages to move the issue beyond conversation, my Christmas wish might come true sooner than I expected.

If Seattle got cheaper, the planet might get cooler

Yesterday, BeyondChron had an interesting piece about the connection between climate change and affordable housing. Some excerpts:

Despite the media focusing largely on climate change strategies like ethanol and composting, combating sprawl appears to be one of the efforts offering the most bang for the buck. For starters, cars produce almost a third of the carbon emitted in America. Allowing people to live close to their jobs, grocery stores, parks and schools means dramatically shortened commute times and significantly reduced carbon emissions.

In addition, increasing density means taking advantage of public infrastructure already in place. Rather than extending sewer, water, road and electric [and transit!] systems farther and farther away from the city center, using the already existing systems increases their efficiency and reduces the need for more resources to expand them.

[…]

As demand increases for urban housing, costs go up, often dramatically in many places in recent years. While cities may have won the battle in bringing people in, they’ve also succeeded in forcing people out. Low-income and working-class people in cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and New York keep moving farther and farther away from their jobs, making sprawl worse, not better.

This article is right on time. Growth management must include a strong focus on in-city, affordable housing. Without it, we’ll never create a transit- (or, for that matter, people-) friendly region.

Sonics lost, but Seattle won

Tonight, in keeping with our annual tradition, Bus Nerd and I attended the Pistons/Sonics game. My team lost (Pistons: 101, Seattle: 97), but since the Pistons are my second-favorite team (and Tayshaun Prince is my favorite player), I wasn’t too disappointed. Aside from a return ride on one of the funkiest of funky buses (both of us smelled skunk), fun times were had by all.

We returned home to this fabulous news:

“No and no: Voters rejecting both viaduct options”

“Mass transit may end up as biggest winner”

Transit + Streets is still alive, baby! Now, let’s see how much clout this “advisory vote” actually has.

Viaduct day

Thanks to Adam Hyla and Tim Harris (my boys over at Real Change) for this very real editorial about today’s viaduct vote:

If we continue to act as though our car-dependent present is the only imaginable future, progress toward an environmentally sustainable future will come too little, too late. Adopting a Transit + Streets solution begins the process of meeting the 2012 Kyoto Protocol goal of cutting emissions back to 1990 levels, the equivalent of getting 130,000 cars off the road.

We are amazed that tunnel proponents and viaduct rebuild advocates who all claim to be looking out for future generations don’t see the writing on the wall. Our days of auto-dependence are numbered.

Yep.

If we keep using the (unacceptable) status quo as an excuse to perpetuate our car-centric infrastructure (everyone drives, therefore we must continue to accommodate driving as the primary mode of transportation), we will never see change. Well, we will, but it won’t be the kind of change most of us are looking for.

The new transit advertising debate (or, Bus wraps: “so last year.”)

Because I’d like to see more and better public transportation in this region, I’d also like to see more–and better–sources of public transportation funding. In my ideal world, we’d fund transit with gas taxes, parking taxes, tolls, and congestion charges–instead of just sales tax. For now, I’ll settle for advertising as a source of revenue.

Which brings me to my point…

In December, the King County Transit Advisory Committee, “an appointed County board drawn from King County Metro Transit riders,” sent a letter to Seattle City Councilmember Jan Drago encouraging the city to allow “tasteful” advertising in bus shelters. (Apparently, this is currently not allowed.) An excerpt from the letter:

The King County Transit Advisory Committee respectfully requests that you and your Seattle City Council colleagues study the potential for Seattle to join with Metro Transit in placing revenue-generating, tasteful advertising panels on Seattle-area Metro Transit bus shelters.

Our committee has researched the use of bus shelter advertising in municipal locations within the United States and internationally. We have learned that municipalities can tightly control advertising content and images, while striking revenue deals that greatly enhance the ability to provide shelters and another important customer amenity, signage. Given the urgent need to upgrade customer service and amenities during the coming decade, the King County Transit Advisory Committee strongly favors the use of such advertising-enhanced revenue to increase the number, cleanliness and quality of bus shelters, adjacent lighting and informational signage within the City of Seattle.

(Full disclosure. I was recently appointed to the TAC. I attended my first meeting as a member on February 13th.)

I’d love to see more shelters and better signage, but I’m afraid it will be difficult to come to consensus about how we define “tasteful.” I was all for bus wraps (which, in case you missed it, are going away) until I saw McDonald’s-wrapped buses and Fox-News– and Mercedes-Benz- wrapped People Movers in Detroit. I also hate the idea of corporations having that kind of access to our public spaces. (Anyone seen the monument to Starbucks at Powell Barnett?)

That said, I’ve seen bus shelter ads in other cities, and they actually looked nice. Here are a few examples I found in my own photo archives:

Paris shelter ad

Vancouver shelter ad

The TAC’s letter also has a few.

Bottom line: We need more transit funding, and we definitely need more shelters and better signs. I support the shelter ads, but I’ll continue to raise my voice (and vote) for more public funding of public transit.

Your turn.

This week in transit blogs

On Friends of Seattle: A discussion of Neal Pierce’s December 4th column. An excerpt from the column:

Yet, as expensive as new and expanded transit may be, the ultimate question isn’t money (indeed the federal government’s “New Starts” fund is swamped with 200 applications and shrinking dollars). Rather, it’s whether we have the will to reshape urban America in more compact, livable, energy-conscious ways. That means organizing regionally on multiple fronts …

On Cars Are Evil: A thoughtful analysis of L.A.-style sprawl:

If we are to believe that Southern California’s great triumph is giving people exactly what they want, then the region is the mirror by which we can view our true selves. Like the drunk who takes a hard, cold look at himself the morning after another night of overindulgence, we can’t like what we see. The crowded, unsightly landscape of Los Angeles is the logical conclusion to notion that everyone can have room to escape to their own private Eden. Add in the massive inefficiency and destruction caused by congestion, the untenable dependence on other people’s water, and the city’s role in the demise of the ubiquitous streetcars throughout the country, and the triumph of Los Angeles is as hollow as the sappy ending in a Hollywood movie.

On Streetsblog: Shocking news! Seoul got rid of a highway and improved (among many other things) traffic.

As the debate over traffic relief heats up in New York City, take a look at how the demolition of an elevated highway motorway the center of South Korea’s capital and the restoration of a river and park in its place shows how taking space away from cars and trucks can lead to less traffic congestion, a better local economy, and a healthier, more livable city.