The Asphalt Sheriff

Kasich says "There's a new sheriff in town"

And that guy is Jerry Wray, a guy who worked as an asphalt lobbyist for the the past 11 years:

...Kasich tapped Jerry Wray as the next director of the Ohio Department of Transportation...

…”We’re going to be looking at the program and making sure it is the right size and trying to review it from the viewpoint of safety, economic development and, of course, congestion relief,” Wray said.

Wray also said the $150 million that current Gov. Ted Strickland in October promised to give to city transit systems in Ohio over the next three years also might be in jeopardy...

…After retiring from ODOT in 1999, Wray became vice president of Flexible Pavements of Ohio, an asphalt industry lobbying association.

Voters in the state are having significant buyers remorse about the results of last fall's election. In a rematch 55% say they would now vote for Ted Strickland to just 40% who would vote for Kasich. -Weigel blog

Cutting the Cincinnati Streetcar funding only transfers federal money to a lower-ranked road project

...John Kasich and ...(ODOT) are making an ill-informed mistake by reportedly denying federal funds to the Cincinnati Streetcar – ODOT’s highest-ranking proposed transportation project. Cincinnati city officials relayed to local media yesterday that Gov. Kasich would likely not approve state funding for Cincinnati's streetcar project due to “shortfalls in state funds.”

....the funds in question are not state funds – they are federal pass-through funds, most likely Federal Highway Administration dollars such as Surface Transportation Program (STP) and Congestion Mitigation Air Quality (CMAQ) funds administered by ODOT. Under federal law, these funds must pay for transportation projects or transportation programs only. They cannot be used for education, health care, prisons or other programs unrelated to transportation.

.... “The streetcar funding has nothing to do with the state's deficit. If it is not used for the streetcar, it will go to a lower-ranked Ohio road project or it will go to another state’s transportation project.”

Funding applications to ODOT’s Transportation Review Advisory Council (TRAC) are ranked using a scoring process by whether a project will achieve a more balanced and integrated multi-modal transportation system, embrace environmental stewardship, promote community economic growth and development, and leverage state transportation investment. These goals are aligned with federal transportation investment programs.

All Aboard Ohio and the Ohio Environmental Council believe that a project may not be denied these funds if the project has met all existing scoring criteria established by and if there are sufficient federal funds available.

Ohio receives about $50 million in federal CMAQ funds each year and many times more in STP funds. The streetcar is seeking $36.8 million in new federal funding.

The first phase of the $129.8 million Cincinnati streetcar earned the highest score (84) of any transportation project, existing or new, anywhere in Ohio being considered by the TRAC (100 is the highest possible score). The second phase, extending the streetcar to the Uptown area for $58.6 million, achieved a very high score of 71.5. The streetcar will be powered by electricity – a clean, affordable and domestically produced energy source.

“Why is our governor against redeveloping Cincinnati’s downtown and Over-the-Rhine areas with the streetcar? Steel rails offer a far superior path to jobs and growth and clean air than yet another asphalt road pitted with potholes,” said Jack Shaner, deputy director of the Ohio Environmental Council.

By comparison, Ohio’s half of the $2 billion Brent Spence Bridge achieved a TRAC score of only 44. And the three components of the $632.2 million project to convert State Route 32 into an expressway in Greater Cincinnati's Eastern Corridor achieved scores of only 34, 39 and 48 (SOURCE).

“The Brent Spence Bridge and State Route 32 are costly, taxpayer-funded projects that will not create more long-term job growth for the region than the streetcar,” Prendergast noted. “In the case of Route 32, it will use taxpayer money only to disperse existing jobs and residents farther out, while weakening the city of Cincinnati's tax base, increasing our dependence on cars and foreign oil and making the region's traffic and pollution worse, not better.”

Two studies estimate that the streetcar will stimulate new Downtown/Over-The-Rhine development worth $1.5 billion, or roughly 15 times the cost of the streetcar.

...TRAC last December recommended awarding $36.8 million of ODOT’s share of federal funds to two phases of the streetcar project. The first phase is slated to receive $35 million of the state’s allocation of federal funding in 2012, on top of $15 million already awarded for 2011. The Uptown phase was recommended to receive $1.8 million.

More Info Here

How Wray sees Ohio, covered in asphalt:

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Moving People vs Moving Cars NYC

"Once you realize that you can use your street to imporve the quality of life, the economic health of your city...I thin that's a transformative moment..." _ Janette Sadik Kahn, Commissioner of NYC DOT

After 3 year of implementing this plan, traffic fatalities are down 20%

Americans Want Transit Options

Americans want more mobility options - biking, walking, and transit should be in the mix

...Four out of five voters--82%--support the idea of an expanded U.S. transportation system. The kind of system that allows people to use their cars if they want to, but also allows easier use of other ways to get from place to place.

The poll results indicate that a majority of voters would like to spend less time in their cars, but 73% said they had no other choice but to drive.

..."In small towns and big cities alike, Americans are saying loudly and clearly that their lives would be better, and their nation stronger, if we had world-class public transportation and more options for walking and bicycling."...

What Happened to US Transit?

From Huffiungton Post:

...The (anti-transit) bias is built into our language. We speak of "investing" in highways and "investing" in freeways and parking spaces. But we "subsidize" trains and buses. Officials criticize bus, rail, and other public transportation alternatives for "losing money." Lost in this language is the fact that public transit is a civic necessity. Buses, railroads, and other forms of public transportation can no more "lose money" than roads and highways.

...Governments at every level have required businesses, as a condition of their licenses and permits, to provide ample parking spaces. What if instead local zoning ordinances required workplaces to be located within walking distance of public transit? -John Robbins

Interestingly, this is developing somewhat in a voluntary way. For example if you want to build a "green" building, part of the LEED analysis will give credit for being within walking distance of different transit options.

Blank Buses

For some reason, all the advertising is missing from the Metro buses. I never really cared for the wrap-around adverts, especially from the inside, as they made the bus riding much less pleasant. I suppose that contract has ended, and now they have to reinstall the old billboard type signs. but in the mean time it is nice to have simple clean buses.

Raise My Taxes, Please!

...For transit that increases value in our city:

This paper uses data from U.S. cities to investigate the incremental costs and benefits of high quality transit service. The analysis indicates that high quality public transit typically requires about $268 annually per capita in additional tax subsidy and $104 in additional fares, but provides vehicle, parking and road cost savings averaging $1,040 per capita, plus other benefits including congestion reductions, increased traffic safety, pollution reductions, improved mobility for non-drivers, improved fitness and health. This indicates that residents should rationally support tax increases if needed to create high quality public transit systems in their communities. Current planning practices tend to overlook or undervalue many of these savings and benefits and so result in underinvestment in transit quality improvements.

From the The Victoria Transport Policy Institute.

Conservative Advocate for Transit

Q and A with Bill Lind, the conservative author of Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation:

...With government involvement in canals and railroads and highways, the federal government has been involved in infrastructure from the beginning. This is consistent with a free market economy, because the markets only work if there is adequate infrastructure.

...most conservatives own cars...which means that if they ride transit they ride from choice, not necessity. Which means they want high quality transit, not just something to get around. So the transit that is relative to conservatives is that which is relevant to people with cars ...

...But high speed is a chimera. ...We want to make trains that are time competitive with the automobile - we’re not interested in competing with air travel. Our fuel dependence is seated on cars, not planes. So we want trains running at speeds of up to 110 miles an hour...

...there should definitely be bipartisan support for bringing back streetcars...And we would like to see an expansion of light rail. We think all of these should be electrified and this is an important part of energy security. We would like to see a national consensus going across left and right. It’s simply a matter of bringing back what we had. We threw it away – we subsidized national highways and taxed electric railways...

FTA to Include Livability in Funding Decisions

Although this kind of policy decision is not very sexy and it will not make the evening news, it is a critical change to the way Federal Transportation dollars are allocated. Via tha FTA website:

Obama Administration Proposes Major Public Transportation Policy Shift to Highlight Livability
Changes Include Economic Development and Environmental Benefits

In a dramatic change from existing policy, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today proposed that new funding guidelines for major transit projects be based on livability issues such as economic development opportunities and environmental benefits, in addition to cost and time saved, which are currently the primary criteria...

“Our new policy for selecting major transit projects will work to promote livability rather than hinder it,” said Secretary LaHood. “We want to base our decisions on how much transit helps the environment, how much it improves development opportunities and how it makes our communities better places to live.”

... “No longer will we ignore the many benefits that accrue to our environment and our communities when we build or expand rail and bus rapid transit systems.”...

Some Chicago Pics

Torsos
 

I didn't even really like this sculpture, but the photos are ok:
torsos 2
 

Planetarium
 

Train arriving
 

Looking out the front of the El Train
 

Frank Gehry, self pleasuring himself:
 

Gehry more restrained
 

walking across the bridge
 

Michigan Avenue Skyline
 

Banking area
 

Chinatown
 

And a few of the suburb of Oak Park:
Business area buildings
 

Great building entry:
 

Kick ass corner building at street level
 

Is Rail a Boondoggle?

If you have been listening to the sound bites in favor of Issue 9, the anti-passenger rail amendment, you have heard the word boondoggle bandied about a lot. In fact, taking a lesson from the wording of the ballot initiative, I would say ad infinitum.

So when I saw a recent tweet linking to the article High Speed Rail: A No-Brainer, I was amused by reading this at the beginning of the article:

“‘Boondoggle‘, ‘Loss-making whim‘, ‘Monument to bad territorial planning’. . .

Such are the arguments of high speed rail critics, as the United States finally gets on board the passenger rail revolution that is sweeping the world.

I thought to myself that they must surely be referring to the sound bites bouncing around Cincinnati, but I was wrong. Turns out they are actually the words of Spanish conservatives railing (pun intended) against the Spain's passenger rail plans.

I also appreciated this passage:

Shielded behind overly simple, short-sighted, cost-benefit analysis, critics complained with those arguments against high-speed projects over years, until the success of each one of the new corridors proved them wrong and showed that in troubled economic times, the best investments for a society are the ones which improve equality.

History has proved rail’s critics wrong in Spain, as economic development and rider enthusiasm followed it everywhere it went.

To be fair, the article is focused on the high-speed rail effort in the US. However, I think most folks understand that Issue 9 goes beyond streetcars in scope. I think it is a great read, and well worth the time to look at it. Thanks to @recycledbin for the link.

Accessibilty vs Mobility

Here is an article that discusses two concepts in transit:
Mobility = how fast can the system get you different places
Accessibility = How accessible are the places you want to go.

Many people automatically think transit should equal mobility. Think fast cars, fast trains connecting distant places. Mobility is a fine measure as far as it goes, but really what we want in our daily life is accessibility. And some forms of transit inherently change how cities operate and they therefore increase access.

For example. Train stops often are hubs of commercial activity where daily purchases can be made. Bus stops, not as much. Density hubs are essential to walkable urbanism.

When these hubs develop, many of the daily needs can be satisfied with short walk: to the convenience store, the coffee shop, a place for lunch with friends, and the two trips to school with the kids every day etc..., even if you still commute to work for example. Studies have shown that walkable urbanism reduces car trips by 40%. For example a household in Green Township may have start their car 8 times a day. But that same family living in an walkable urban area may only start their car 4-5 times. Food for thought.

Update:
Amory Lovins and the other authors of “Natural Capitalism” cited a study’s estimate that reinstating the corner grocer would by itself reduce gasoline consumption by 6%.

Stupid O'Toole Quote

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/07/15/15climatewire-a-son-of-portland-ore-tries-to-puncture-the-52412.html
Randall O'Toole is given a fair write-up in the NY Times since he was called by Congress to testify on transit funding. But he cannot avoid sticking his foot in his mouth when he speculates that the smart growth movement is just a reaction of the upper classes against the working class moving into the suburbs. What kind of crack is this guy smoking?

...Smart-growth advocates see another flaw in O'Toole's argument. They say he focuses narrowly on transit's carbon footprint but never considers how transit can reshape communities.

... vast research shows that if transit serves a dense area where people can meet many of their daily needs by biking and walking, the whole "transportation system" shrinks its carbon footprint. ....

Other cities see something in the hype. According to the American Public Transportation Association, light-rail systems or extensions have been proposed in 37 cities, among them Phoenix, Atlanta and Jacksonville, Fla.

O'Toole, of course, sees another force behind the movement -- class warfare.

"I think a lot of the anti-suburban sprawl crowd is made up of middle-class people who resent the fact that working class people have adopted their lifestyles," he said. "Many of them have moved into their neighborhoods, and they don't want to see those kind of people in their neighborhoods, because they have different lifestyles. Maybe they drink more, maybe they're noisier. I don't know."

But it it not just about shrinking carbon footprint either, it is about building places that people want to be. Building places for people, not for cars.

Building Museum Video of Columbia Heights

In the third installment of Great Green Places Washington, D.C.'s Office of Planning's Harriet Tregoning takes us on a tour of Washington, D.C.'s Columbia Heights neighborhood to explore how transit and mixed-use facilities help make for greener neighborhoods.

Adding Roads Can Slow Traffic

I was watching a video about the uncovering of the Cheonggyecheon river in Seoul. In the 1960's it was completely covered with a 12-lane double-decker highway. Here it is today:

The video is very inspiring and I encourage you to watch it. Could we similarly re-connect to some of our industrial waterways?

Anyway, in the video they interview some professorial type engineers who study traffic flow. And they figured that even though they removed a very busy highway, the traffic still moved quickly. In the end, it even sped up a bit.

And this is a concept that is hard for people to get there heads around. I've talked about it with people, and they think I am flat out wrong. But it is proven to be true that widening roads and adding lanes does not solve congestion, but often increases it. One person in the video says a good analogy is that people think traffic is like liquid in a tube, and that if one part is squeezed, then the other arteries clog or fatten. But the analogy is false. Traffic is better thought of as a gas in that it can compress and expand to fill whatever is built.

Below are a few links I found that try to partially explain this phenomenon:

The Road Paradox:
Did you know that adding a road to a road network can actually slow traffic? We've all had our suspicions that new roads don't always help, but it can actually be shown mathematically.

Induced Demand:
Motorways and bypasses generate traffic, that is, produce extra traffic, partly by inducing people to travel who would not otherwise have done so by making the new route more convenient than the old, partly by people who go out of their direct route to enjoy the greater convenience of the new road, and partly by people who use the towns bypassed because they are more convenient for shopping and visits when through traffic has been removed.

Externality:
When car owners use roads, they impose congestion costs on all other users.

Downs Thomson Paradox:
...states that the equilibrium speed of car traffic on the road network is determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent journeys by (rail-based or otherwise segregated) public transport.

It follows that increasing road capacity can actually make overall congestion on the road worse. This occurs when the shift from public transport causes a disinvestment in the mode such that the operator either reduces frequency of service or raises fares to cover costs. This shifts additional passengers into cars. Ultimately the system may be eliminated and congestion on the original (expanded) road is worse than before...

The Braess Paradox

Subsidy of Drivers Redux

From Streetsblog:

....Road space is scarce -- that is, not unlimited. It therefore has a positive value, which should be reflected in a market price. If it isn’t -- if prices are fixed at zero (as is the case with most roads) -- then a shortage will result. This is well understood; if the president attempted to fix the price of any other good at a below market rate, libertarians would cry foul and immediately argue that shortages would result. Yet when free roads produce congestion, they conclude that the best solution is to spend taxpayer money on more roads.

...backdoor subsidies to driving have been rampant. An example -- most communities have rules establishing minimum parking requirements for new construction. Cheap and plentiful parking is a significant subsidy to driving, and such parking requirements make it difficult or impossible to build more compact and walkable streetscapes.

... government has intervened heavily to create the road network so beloved by libertarians, and the country continues to bear heavy costs as a result. Any clear-eyed examination of costs and benefits will indicate that the time to rebalance investments away from highways and toward transit is long overdue.

Transportation Bill in Congress

...The transportation system our country invests in this year will define our nation for generations, just as the highway system we envisioned more than 60 years ago still defines us today.

Congress is working on a bill right now worth nearly a half-trillion dollars in transportation investments over the next six years. If we continue with business as usual, there will be nothing in the legislation to ensure we're investing in the best projects - those that can build communities, make neighborhoods safer, and move people in the cleanest and most efficient ways.

America in the 21st century needs a complete National Transportation System - one that is safe, well-maintained, and efficient for all users. One that connects our highways with our rail lines and public transportation. One that is friendly for those walking as well as those driving and cycling.

Tell your congressman.

Roads Are Subsidized Too

...with their taxes. All transportation is subsidized by taxpayers:

...no road pays for itself in gas taxes and fees. For example, in Houston, the 15 miles of SH 99 from I-10 to US 290 will cost $1 billion to build and maintain over its lifetime, while only generating $162 million in gas taxes. That gives a tax gap ratio of .16, which means that the real gas tax rate people would need to pay on this segment of road to completely pay for it would be $2.22 per gallon.
...
So that’s a 16% cost recovery ratio for your basic non-toll highway. For constrast, Metrorail recovers about 81% of its costs (operating only; not construction).

Carbon Free Central City

"Chris Smith, well-known (in Portland, OR) for his work as a streetcar and bike advocate and for his run at a City Commissioner spot last year, stopped by our office yesterday to share more about what he calls a Carbon Free Central City Mobility concept..." Read more here.

Conservatives Should Care About Transit

"Public transit and walkable neighborhoods are necessary for the creation of a country where families and communities can flourish." - by David Schaengold

Transit Users More Fit

A new study ... suggests taking public transit may help you keep fit.

..."The idea of needing to go to the gym to get your daily dose of exercise is a misperception," ... "These short walks throughout our day are historically how we have gotten our activity. Unfortunately, we've engineered this activity out of our daily lives."