John Mica and John Boehner would have you believe their bill is a blessing for transit. It isn't.

Republicans are not anti-transit, but we do recognize that the Highway Trust Fund is paid for by highways users, and cities and local governments must look at developing a similar user fee system for transit users.

This bill gives more flexibility to states to fund their most critical transportation needs, and under this bill states can also use the funds authorized under the highway program for transit systems if they so choose.

Because of the struggling economy, changing driving patterns and more fuel efficient vehicles, the Highway Trust Fund is in repeated danger of running dry. The Republican bill stabilizes the Trust Fund for the next five years, ensures states have the ability to fund their most critical transportation needs, and also guarantees transit funding.

Transportation myths die hard, and here the House GOP is trotting out a bunch of them — plus a few new sadistic rhetorical flourishes — to justify what’s quickly becoming known as the worst transportation bill ever. A quick primer on how the Republican leadership is lying about their bill:

1. The House GOP is not guaranteeing transit funding. They’re eliminating guaranteed transit funding.

Ask anyone who works in public transit, and they’ll tell you this bill would wreak havoc as soon as it is passed. By ending the policy begun by Ronald Reagan of funding federal transit programs with gas tax revenue, House Republicans would cast a pall of uncertainty over just about every transit agency in America. The Republican “guarantee” is nothing but a guarantee of more haggling over limited dollars as transit programs go up against other spending priorities in the general fund. Without the certainty that gas tax revenues provide, transit agencies will immediately move to cut service and raise fares, exactly what Americans don’t need while gas prices are rising and jobs are still scarce.

2. Highways are not “paid for by highway users.”

Gas taxes and tolls don’t cover the cost of highways, not by a longshot. In 2007, for example, user fees only covered 51 percent of highway costs, according to Subsidyscope. In other words, roads are subsidized — on a much larger scale than transit.

Photo: @jackNruth/Twitter via @MikeLydon

This Twitter photo of LeBron James biking to American Airlines Arena before facing off against Derrick Rose and the Chicago Bulls last night has gone viral on sports news sites all over America.

There are some interesting sociological currents swirling around LeBron James, bike commuter. While the photographer labeled James a “manchild” for taking to Miami’s none-too-friendly streets on a bike, the prevailing sentiment in the ESPN comments section seems to be that the sight of LeBron riding to work will help rehab his public image.

After the Heat edged the Bulls, James told reporters in the locker room that bike commuting is pretty routine for him. In fact, he seems to enjoy talking about the bike ride more than the basketball game:

Aaron learned the journalism trade at the side of Streetsblog SF founding editor Bryan Goebel. Following Bryan’s departure, Aaron found time in between research assignments at SPUR to step in and keep Streetsblog going, putting together insightful reporting and commentary on issues like the DA’s record prosecuting deadly drivers. I’m looking forward to working with him and watching Streetsblog SF thrive under his stewardship.

I would like to thank the craigslist Charitable Fund, Mike’s Bikes, the Seed Fund, Jonathan Weiner, and the many readers who contributed to Streetsblog San Francisco, without whom we would not have been able to manage this transition. If you value Streetsblog’s work, please consider a year-end donation to help us provide top-notch livable streets coverage in 2012. Your support makes a huge difference.

There are so many promising changes afoot in San Francisco, but many of them seem to crawl along at a snail’s pace. Political inertia dies hard, and the need is as great as ever for Streetsblog’s bread-and-butter reporting:

• Holding Mayor Ed Lee to his promises on transit, biking, and walking.
• Watchdogging the SFMTA and tracking the agency’s progress on improving Muni, making streets safer for walking, and bringing the bike network up to par with leading American cities like New York and Chicago.
• Holding SFPD and the DA’s office accountable for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists on city streets.

Moving forward, we’ll be counting on our readers to help make the case for change. Aaron, after all, can’t be everywhere, and we’ll need many more eyes on the street to capture the dysfunction of San Francisco’s transportation network. Stay tuned for details about the reader submissions we’re looking for.

Happy holidays everyone. We’ll see you back here on January 3.

Before I get to that, congratulations to the winner of last week’s prize: Long-time Streetsblog reader Marc Agger will be taking home a Zero Tweed bag from Rickshaw.

This week’s prize comes courtesy of Levi’s. Make a one-time or monthly gift by Friday at midnight and you could win a jacket and jeans from Levi’s new Commuter line, designed specifically for cyclists.

The jeans

The jacket

I have the Commuter jacket and it’s great for riding in the spring or fall, even in the rain.

Thanks again to all our dedicated supporters. If you haven’t donated yet, please pitch in and help make 2012 a great year for livable streets coverage.

If you haven’t contributed yet, here’s a little extra incentive. Give between now and the end of the week, and you could win a lovely, sturdy, functional Zero Tweed Bag courtesy of the fine San Francisco-based manufacturers at Rickshaw Bags. Feast your eyes on the prize:

Donate between now and Friday at midnight and you’ll be entered to win one of these puppies. We’ll announce the winner next week.

Whether you claim the prize or it goes to someone else, you’ll come away with a warm feeling after making a contribution to your online voice for livable streets.

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming…

With a mayoral election next week and fresh possibilities for change on the horizon, we’re looking for a talented journalist to manage Streetsblog San Francisco’s coverage of sustainable transportation and livable streets in the Bay Area.

We welcome applications from engaging writers who share our vision of Streetsblog as a respected, influential source of information and commentary on transportation and planning issues. The ideal candidate will have a firm grasp of local politics and a keen sense of how Streetsblog coverage can help advance transportation policies that reduce traffic congestion and car dependence while improving conditions for transit, cycling, and walking.

Responsibilities

Streetsblog combines a distinct advocacy bent with newspaper-quality journalism. Toward that end, we are seeking a reporter to craft a well-rounded beat full of original content, interviews, event coverage and engaging commentary. Applicants should be enthusiastic about the notion that journalism can be conducted with integrity and fidelity to the truth while retaining a point of view. Knowing how to effectively impart a message without overwhelming your writing is an essential skill for this position.

The editor will:

• Create a daily stream of news and content that builds Streetsblog SF’s audience
• Research and write enterprise pieces about developments in transportation and planning policy happening around the city and elsewhere in the Bay Area
• Track ongoing stories, such as pieces of legislation or specific street redesigns, and build narratives around them
• Conduct interviews and cultivate relationships with lawmakers, public officials, advocates, and policy experts
• Produce commentary that holds officials to account for their decisions, and corrects errors and misperceptions that surface in the media
• Pinpoint opportunities for transportation improvements and reforms, and explain what has to change to enact them
• Mix in short posts and photo-based content
• Manage and edit freelance contributors

Qualifications

• Previous reporting experience, ideally covering transportation or planning issues.
• Passion for and knowledge of progressive urban planning, transportation, and land use topics
• Excellent writing and research skills, as evidenced by clips
• Experience with Word Press or other blogging/content production platforms is a big plus

To Apply

Send a resume, cover letter, and relevant clips/links to Ben Fried: ben@streetsblog.org.

Streetsblog is produced by OpenPlans, a New York City-based non-profit that improves cities using journalism and open-source software. The San Francisco editor position is full-time, and will report to the editor-in-chief in New York. 

The Washington Metro system keeps hundreds of thousands of cars off the streets a day, and is responsible for hundreds of millions in tax revenues and household savings per year. Photo: thisisbossi/Flickr

At the heart of the region’s success is, of course, the Washington Metro, which has shaped development for more than three decades. In fact, so much of the land near Metro stations has been developed that ridership is projected to reach the design capacity of the current system within the next 20 years. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is currently mapping out how to respond.

At a panel this morning, Nat Bottigheimer, an assistant general manager at WMATA, shared some results from an internal study the agency conducted as part of this process. The core question he investigated: “What is it you’re actually getting from a transit investment?”

The agency’s research and modeling produced some intriguing numbers demonstrating how the creation of Metro — its 86 stations and 106 miles of track — has benefited the region:

• Since the system was created, $212 billion in real estate value has been added within a half-mile of Metro stations.
• Land value near Metro stations generates $2.8 billion annually in property tax revenues. $195 million of that is directly attributable to transit.
• Households in the region reap the equivalent of $705 million per year in time savings thanks to Metro.
• Households save $305 million per year on costs related to owning and driving cars.
• Every day Metro riders walk 33,000 miles.

On the other side of the coin, there’s everything that Metro has prevented from happening. Without Metro…

• Commuters would have to put up with commutes that take 25 percent longer. This would effectively curtail people’s access to jobs and employers’ access to the workforce.
• The region would see more than a million additional auto trips per day.
• This traffic would require 1,000 additional lane miles to accommodate, the equivalent of two Capital Beltways’ worth of asphalt.
• Four to six more traffic lanes across the Potomac would be necessary.
• The downtown core would be eviscerated by parking. To store all the extra cars would take 200,000 parking spots, the equivalent of 170 blocks filled with five-story parking structures.
• All that car infrastructure would cost nearly $11 billion to build, and impose huge maintenance costs every year.

Bryan is leaving Streetsblog at the end of the month, and on behalf of the editors and reporters who’ve worked with him, I’d like to say a few words of praise and appreciation.

On a personal level, Bryan has made me a better reporter and editor. His professionalism and experience in the news business seeped in to the way we run every other part of Streetsblog. Under Bryan, Streetsblog SF started breaking stories and landing interviews with influential policymakers at a prodigious rate. I’m still kind of blown away by the fact that he got a sit-down interview about street safety with the police chief. That’s something I still aspire to do.

From my vantage point in New York, the value of Bryan’s work at Streetsblog San Francisco is immediately apparent. Streetsblog’s presence in each city helps serve as a conduit for innovation – highlighting improvements in one city that can be adopted in the other. What started out as “parklets” in San Francisco became “pop-up cafes” in NYC. And Streetsblog SF made it impossible for then-Mayor Gavin Newsom to ignore the fact that NYC DOT was putting his city to shame when it comes to preventing pedestrian injuries and deaths. The mayor announced San Francisco’s pedestrian safety directive not long after Streetsblog’s Matthew Roth called on him to step up and match NYC’s commitment to pedestrian safety.

The list of Streetsblog SF’s successes under Bryan could go on. And it’s critical that the blog’s impact does go on after he leaves at the end of the month. There is still so much more to accomplish to ensure that San Francisco lives up to its “transit-first” promises: Muni routes that must be improved for transit riders, streets that must be made safer for walking and cycling. Streetsblog will continue its role as an online nerve center for the community working to achieve these changes and overcome the inertia that too often prevents progress. With a new mayor entering office next year, the need for Streetsblog to raise the standard for local electeds is as great as ever.

Bryan has been the bedrock of Streetsblog SF since its inception, and his departure is setting in motion a period of transition. There are two needs we have to meet to ensure that Streetsblog SF navigates the transition successfully: Funding and talent.

Streetsblog SF readers stepped up in a big way when we first asked for contributions to sustain our work in the Bay Area. We’re deeply grateful to all our donors, who’ve funded a lot of great livable streets coverage. Thanks to your donations, the support of sponsor Mike’s Bikes, and contributions from institutional funders, we have a good baseline to build on. Now we need to grow these revenue sources and make them more predictable.

I have been working with Bryan and our director of development, Christa Orth, to survey the funding landscape and develop a long-term revenue plan. Right now, this is the question I would like you to ask yourself: How much is Streetsblog San Francisco worth to you? What are you willing to contribute each year to keep informed about livable streets issues in your community and hold politicians’ feet to the fire on transit and street safety policy? We’re not asking for checks or donations at this point. What we need to know, to plan for the future of Streetsblog SF, is the level of reader support we can count on.

If you want to help personally, or you work for a local business who would like to support Streetsblog by placing an ad or sponsorship, you can email Christa: corth [at] streetsblog [dot] org.

When it comes to talent, running a full-fledged Streetsblog operation day in and day out requires journalistic skill, subject matter expertise, and passion — a rare combination. But I know that the quality of Bryan’s work has inspired many talented people, and we’ll be combing the Bay Area for the right person to take over the blog. Over the past three years, Streetsblog SF has thrived with as many as three full-time reporters and as few as one. For now, we are looking for one editor to serve in a capacity similar to Damien Newton at Streetsblog Los Angeles, producing most of the content and managing a stable of other contributors.

We’ll be posting the editor’s job description soon, but if you already know you want to throw your hat in the ring, you can email me your resume and cover letter: ben [at] streetsblog [dot] org.

In my experience, it takes about 12-16 weeks to conduct this kind of search and know you are making the right choice. There will probably be an interim phase on the blog, between Bryan’s departure and the hiring of a new editor, during which we’ll rely on freelance contributors and volunteers to produce content. We’ll continue to publish daily during this period and to syndicate our national stories from Streetsblog Capitol Hill and the Streetsblog Network.

If you would like to write for Streetsblog SF on a freelance basis – by compiling the daily headlines or writing original features and commentary – then show us what you’ve got. Drop me a line and describe how you want to contribute.

To our Bay Area readers — thank you everyone for making Streetsblog SF the community that it is, for supporting our work, and for working toward more livable streets. And thank you Bryan for giving it your all. Can’t wait to see what you write these next three weeks and what you accomplish post-Streetsblog.

Ben Fried
Streetsblog Editor-in-Chief

Posting on Streetsblog gets the word out about your job opening to a national audience of professionals and advocates who are committed to moving cities toward a more sustainable future.

Each month, nearly 200,000 unique visitors come to Streetsblog, making us the most watched transportation and planning news source in America, according to the web analytics site Alexa.com. A job listing posted on Streetsblog will reach a targeted and educated audience:

• 41 percent of our readers have advanced degrees
• We have a strong following among professionals in the public and private sectors who specialize in bike and pedestrian planning, transit planning, urban design, parking management, and the intersection of transportation and technology
• We’re widely read by non-profits working for safer streets, smart growth, and more sustainable transportation
• Our readership ranges from students and professionals at the outset of their careers to top executives and experienced managers

The price for a job listing on Streetsblog, which will be highlighted on all of our sites, is $50. Early adopters get a 100 percent discount: Our first 40 listings are free.

If you’re searching for a job, it’s easy to browse our database for openings in your field. (We have ten listings in five cities — and counting — as we go to press.)

As an independent, not-for-profit news source, we’re also excited about the jobs board as one more way to diversify the way we fund Streetsblog and support the work we do. Try it out and if you have any feedback on how we can improve it, please drop us a line at tips@streetsblog.org.

In ITDP's BRT rating system, the SDX route in Las Vegas eked out a bronze-standard rating, one of only five American routes to pass the threshold of "true BRT." Image: ITDP

Attempts by U.S. cities to build Bus Rapid Transit systems tend to get stymied by a Catch-22: Most Americans have no experience riding great BRT, so mustering the political will to build full-fledged systems — and reallocate the necessary street space from cars to buses — is often fiendishly difficult. The results — incremental bus improvements sold to the public as BRT — are too watered down to showcase the full extent to which bus-based systems can attract riders and get people to switch from driving to transit.

In Boston, for instance, bus speeds for one route on the Silver Line Waterfront corridor actually decreased despite the project’s $619 million pricetag. Meanwhile, cities in Latin America, Asia, and Africa are rolling out new, high-capacity BRT systems at a rapid clip, leaving American transit networks behind.

Cities can get away with calling half-measures “BRT” in part because there are no standards in place to define what truly qualifies as BRT. If all it takes is pre-paid boarding and longer spacing between stops, then the term loses meaning. In a new report, “Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit” [PDF], the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy sets out to fill this void with BRT standards that American cities can shoot for.

ITDP is proposing a scoring system to grade bus-based transit corridors, which would work much like the LEED certification system for green buildings. The authors say their scorecard has yet to be perfected, but it already spits out results that make intuitive sense — like the fact that no U.S. city has ever built a first-rate BRT corridor. While American attempts to build bus rapid transit systems have shaved travel times and attracted new riders to transit, ITDP concludes that every single one has failed to meet the highest standards for BRT design.

“Based on what we’ve seen in our work in cities around the world, we think there’s still more that could be done,” ITDP director Walter Hook said in a statement accompanying the report. “Getting at least one truly world-class BRT system built in the U.S. could inspire cities around the country to rethink the way they use buses in the fight against increasing traffic congestion and rising fuel prices.”

More than 20 American bus projects have claimed the BRT mantle, the authors report, but only five even qualify as true Bus Rapid Transit: Cleveland’s HealthLine, Los Angeles’s Orange Line, Pittsburgh’s East Busway, Eugene’s EmX, and Las Vegas’s SDX. Those corridors all distinguished themselves by running buses in the center of the roadbed and physically separating them from regular traffic — two characteristics that factor heavily in ITDP’s 100-point scale.

Even the best American systems barely make the cut as “true BRT.” The top-rated bus line in the states, the HealthLine, scores a 63. That’s good enough for what ITDP calls the bronze-standard BRT rating, but far short of the gold-standard systems in Bogota (a 93) or Guangzhou (an 89) that use BRT infrastructure for several routes and carry tens of thousands of passengers per hour. Boston’s Silver Line and New York’s Select Bus Service, meanwhile, scored below the 50-point threshold ITDP has set for projects to qualify as BRT.

To break free from the BRT Catch-22 in the United States, some city will have to go out on a limb and build a gold-standard system that other American cities can look to as a model. With Rahm Emanuel’s recent pledge to build BRT with a full complement of features, Chicago might be that city. ITDP also identifies upcoming bus projects in the Bay Area and Montgomery County, Maryland as candidates to raise the standard for American BRT. (The full report goes into tremendous detail about the hurdles that stand in the way of building these projects as robustly as possible, including antiquated engineering guidelines that prioritize traffic flow.)

Once someone decides to build world-class BRT in the United States, it shouldn’t be long until Americans see what it can do. The ability to move quickly from design to implementation is one of the chief advantages of BRT. If an ambitious new Midwestern mayor set his mind to it, the nation’s first gold-standard BRT system could be up and running by 2014.

We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled Streetsblog Network round-ups next week.

We’ve probably benefited from some vote splitting among readers of the green car sites, but Streetsblog still trails the current frontrunner, EcoModder, by a little less than 100 votes. (EcoModder covers how to modify your car or motoricycle to achieve greater fuel efficiency.) Voting ends at midnight tonight, and I think a final push from our readers could put Streetsblog over the top, like a last-minute bid on eBay.

Senators Chuck Schumer and Barbara Boxer on the return leg of their journey this morning. Photo: Carly Clark

Senator Chuck Schumer broke his long public silence on the redesigned Prospect Park West in New York City in dramatic fashion this morning, leading members of Congress on a two-wheeled tour of the physically separated bike lane that runs past his Brooklyn home. Schumer used the occasion to announce that he’ll be introducing new legislation to promote investment in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

“I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this bike lane, and I just wanted to wait until this moment to say, ‘What’s not to like?’” Schumer told a press gaggle at Grand Army Plaza. “There’s much less speeding and more people feel safer riding their bikes to get around the neighborhood thanks to this new design. America needs more streets like this.”

Schumer’s bill, the Livable Streets Act of 2011, would make $3 billion available to states and cities each year for investment in walkable street networks and improvements to bicycle and pedestrian safety. The bill is intended to be part of the upcoming long-term reauthorization of the nation’s transportation law.

At the presser, Schumer was joined by California Democrat Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee and will shepherd much of the transportation bill through the Senate. Schumer said he’s been waiting since the redesign was installed last summer to show it to Boxer as an example of what bicycle and pedestrian investment can accomplish.

“Nothing beats a nice, long Brooklyn bike ride with my friends from Congress, but it used to scare them to death getting passed on this street by traffic going 40 miles an hour,” he said after leading a leisurely round-trip ride, in a light drizzle, to the opposite end of the bike lane and back. “Now you can start off comfortable and relaxed, and you see so many other people out biking. They’re going to work, they’re taking their kids to school.”

“You know, the President talked about ‘winning the future’ in his state of the union speech this year,” he added. “Well, we’re winning the future right outside my front door. This is what progress looks like.”

After the ride, Boxer said she looked forward to working with Schumer on incorporating his legislation into the final transportation bill. “You really get incredible bang for the buck out of projects like this, which make a whole lot of sense when you consider that 40 percent of all the trips we make in America are within two miles of home,” she said. “Factor in what you save from having fewer crashes and injuries and less wear-and-tear on the roads, and this is going to pay for itself.”

Invoking his policy muses, the imaginary Massapequa couple he calls the Baileys, Schumer noted that smarter zoning and safer streets could make bicycling a viable transportation option even if you have creaky knees and live in the suburbs. “These days the Baileys are getting squeezed at the pump,” he said. “Gas costs $4 a gallon. They can’t afford to make every trip by car. If we think we can drill our way out of this situation like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and the other extremists who get marching orders from Big Oil, we’re kidding ourselves. We need better choices for getting around, and transit and bikes have got to be part of the mix.”

When asked about the lawsuit filed last month by opponents of the bike lane, Schumer defended NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and called the plaintiffs’ campaign against the redesign “a cynical concoction of distortions and lies.”

“Janette is taking it on the chin from what I call the culture of inertia, this small group of self-appointed people,” he said. “Here we have kids, families, and grandmas who finally feel safe biking on this street, and people want to sue it out of existence? We can’t give in to this shameless bullying. If we do not change, we will die.”

Disqus is a popular commenting platform and you’ve probably seen it on other sites already. If you’re new to Disqus, here’s how it’s going to change things at Streetsblog San Francisco.

• Threaded comments: You can now reply directly to someone else and have your reply appear indented below the original comment, instead of adding your thoughts at the bottom of the thread. The idea is to make it easier to track different discussions within a single comment thread. To reach a happy medium where the discussion doesn’t get too fragmented, we have the system set up to allow one level of replies, but not more than that. (So we won’t have endlessly indented threads delving into ever-more-off-topic digressions.)
• Your identity: Disqus has some nice features that allow you to link your identity on Streetsblog to your accounts on social networking sites. You can now create an account with Disqus or use your Facebook, Twitter or Google accounts to identify yourself when you comment here. Your photo from this account will be pulled in beside your comment and other readers will know where they can look you up online. If you want to post anonymously, you still can. We have never and will never share your email or IP address with anyone else.
• No more LivableStreets.com: Now that we have these better ways for commenters to identify themselves, we are going to finish shutting down livablestreets.com, where we’ve been hosting personal accounts for readers to share a little bit about themselves. A number of readers use those profiles to post comments here, but this is largely redundant given the integration between Disqus and other social networking platforms. If you have a livablestreets.com account, you will be receiving more information on this shutdown before it happens.
• Adding images: You can now insert images into your comments. Once you start typing, you’ll see the “add image” button appear on the bottom left corner of the comment text box.
• Liking and flagging: If you think another reader’s comment is spot-on, or is a nice addition to the discussion, you can now “like” it. The new system also lets readers help moderate the comments. If you read a comment that you believe should be removed, click the flag icon and a site editor will be notified. We do not want this feature to morph into a way to negatively rate comments that people disagree with, so here are three questions to ask before you flag a comment: Is it spam? Is it a personal attack? Is it hopelessly off-topic? If it falls into any of those categories, go ahead and flag it. If not, please leave it be.
• Sorting: Streetsblog’s comment threads have always shown the oldest comments first. That will still be the default setting, but now you can choose to organize them so that the newest ones, or the most “liked” ones, are the first ones you see.

Since Streetsblog New York launched Disqus earlier this week, there have been a few changes based on reader feedback.  There are bound to be more hiccups as we settle in to this new system. Please report any bugs to tips@sf.streetsblog.org.

If you’d like to give us feedback on the new system and how you think Streetsblog can make the most out of the Disqus features, please leave us a comment below.

A little weekend viewing from the west coast of England. Since the summer of 2009, neighbors in Bristol have organized “Playing Out” events on seven streets, setting aside car-free hours for kids to play in the street without constant parental supervision. Watching this video immediately brought to mind Clarence’s Streetfilm of the 78th Street play street in Jackson Heights.

The Bristol moms behind “Playing Out” have put together a stellar web site laying out the case for car-free time on residential streets. I especially like their answer to the question: “Why do children need to play in the street when there are parks nearby?”

Parks are great for family outings and for older children who can get there independently but, unless you happen to live right next to a park, it usually involves a special trip, escorted and supervised by adults. Street play is very different. Firstly, it is literally on the doorstep so children can play ‘semi-supervised’ whilst parents get on with other things. This allows for more free, unstructured play, without being under the constant gaze of adults. Secondly, it is a step towards greater independence, giving both children and parents more confidence to gradually extend their ‘freedom to roam’, leading to children eventually being able to get to parks and other local places by themselves.

Martin Erzinger, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney wealth manager. Photo: Treehugger

Over in Vail, Colorado, the new rule seems to be that you don’t even have to stay at the scene, if you’re sufficiently rich and well-connected. Manage a billion dollar portfolio, and you can do whatever the hell you want with your car and get away with no felony charges.

Vail Daily reported last week that Martin Erzinger, a wealth manager for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and local resident, will not face felony charges stemming from a July 3 collision in which he reportedly ran down New York City physician Steven Milo, causing severe spinal injuries, and drove away. Over Milo’s objections, District Attorney Mark Hurlbert won’t pursue anything stronger than a misdemeanor charge for the hit-and-run. The decision has little to do with justice or deterrence and much to do with money:

“Mr. Erzinger struck me, fled and left me for dead on the highway,” Milo wrote. “Neither his financial prominence nor my financial situation should be factors in your prosecution of this case.”

Hurlbert said Thursday that, in part, this case is about the money.

“The money has never been a priority for them. It is for us,” Hurlbert said. “Justice in this case includes restitution and the ability to pay it.”

Hurlbert said Erzinger is willing to take responsibility and pay restitution.

“Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger’s profession, and that entered into it,” Hurlbert said. “When you’re talking about restitution, you don’t want to take away his ability to pay.”

Blogger Felix Salmon says the decision amounts to Erzinger buying his way out of a felony charge. Over at Cyclelicious, Richard Masoner is calling for a Vail tourism boycott and points to other reactions around the web, including this petition to Hurlbert at Change.org.

Adding a few more lanes should do the trick. Photo of the 405: Atwater Village Newbie

After yesterday’s electoral drubbing, the Obama administration will have to deal with a starkly different Congress when they make their expected push for a multi-year transportation bill early next year. We know that some influential House Republicans, like John Mica, don’t necessarily believe that bigger highways will solve America’s transportation problems. And we know that some pro-transit voices in Washington originate from the right. But no one expects the GOP ascendancy to make transportation reform any easier.

For a taste of the right-wing line against transportation reform, check out the election week issue of the Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard. Inside, editor Fred Barnes (under fire recently for accepting speaking fees from the GOP) mounts an attack on just about every federal transportation policy other than highway spending. There’s nothing really conservative about Barnes’s screed — it could have come straight from the pen of an asphalt industry lobbyist. Wondering what a transportation bill would look like if it were reshaped according to what highway boosters believe should be the “core program”? Read Barnes and find out.

He starts by ridiculing Ray LaHood’s speech at the 2010 National Bike Summit, where the transportation secretary said that Americans “want out of their cars, they want out of congestion, they want to live in livable neighborhoods and livable communities.” Barnes disagrees:

LaHood was half right. People hate traffic congestion. But they want to get out of their cars about as much as they want to get stuck behind a bicyclist who rides at a donkey’s pace before running through red lights and stop signs. What people mainly want is to stay in their cars and have LaHood do something to reduce congestion.

Like finance the construction and maintenance of highways and bridges to facilitate the flow of autos and trucks. That, rather than promoting “livability” or “the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of nonmotorized,” is the job of the Department of Transportation. Always has been.

This is, basically, his entire argument: People just want to “stay in their cars.” We have zero interest in getting around any other way. According to Fred Barnes, we are perfectly content to drive and drive and drive, as long as we don’t have to put up with all the other people driving. If you believe that, then his cheerleading for highway construction makes a lot of sense.

If being inside our cars is what we’re really all about, by all means lets throw more money down the sinkhole of highway expansion. That will guarantee more quality time inside our cars. Then, a few years later, when we’re in our cars but not enjoying it so much because the new lanes are jammed with traffic again, we’ll repeat the whole expensive process.

But if we’d rather spend more time with our families and loved ones — or, you know, doing actual work instead of commuting — maybe we should try a different way of building our transportation system. According to public opinion research by Transportation for America, 57 percent of Americans would like to spend less time in their cars. Even with our highway-centric system, we’re already voting with our feet: These days, Americans are driving less and opting to walk, bike, and ride transit more than we were at the beginning of the decade.

A cursory internet search reveals that, when Barnes says the job of U.S. DOT has always been to build highways and only highways, he’s just making stuff up. The U.S. DOT mission statement does not mention any particular mode. The department’s job is, in fact, to “serve the United States by ensuring a fast, safe, efficient, accessible and convenient transportation system that meets our vital national interests and enhances the quality of life of the American people, today and into the future.”

So there’s some flexibility here. Now, consider that the Pentagon is under the impression that climate change poses a risk to national security. Or that public health experts peg the annual medical costs imposed by traffic and pollution at more than $200 billion. Or the mounting evidence that car dependence begets obesity and higher medical costs. Or that, according to research by CEOs for Cities, travel times are longest in sprawling metro areas, while areas that pursued smart growth and livability strategies have actually reduced commute times. All of which points to the conclusion that at this moment, the U.S. DOT’s job — providing an efficient transportation system that meets our vital national interests and so forth — is indeed to advance livability and stop promoting motorized transport.

Back to the Barnes highway-building argument. Maybe you’re worried that fighting congestion by building more roads that generate more congestion is a bad way to spend money. But Fred Barnes isn’t. He is, however, highly concerned about spending on rail:

The stimulus included $8 billion for high-speed projects, again not “paid for.” Now the administration is taking “the next step toward realizing its vision for high-speed rail,” the Department of Transportation said in June, handing out “$2.1 billion in grants to continue the development of high-speed intercity passenger rail corridors.”

On top of that, there’s talk in Washington of spending $50 billion more on high-speed trains. Where the funding would come from is anybody’s guess, but LaHood is fully on board. High-speed rail between cities is needed “so people can get out of their cars,” he said in an interview last month with Grist magazine. “They can take a train ride to see Grandma rather than doing it in a car.”

You know what else we haven’t figured out how to pay for? Highways. According to Subsidyscope, gas taxes and other fees have never covered the costs of the highway system. In 2007, fees collected from highway users barely covered half the costs of building and maintaining highways. That year, about $70 billion in highway funding came from other sources. (Even in New York, which, more than any other state, uses fees on driving to support public transit, drivers cover only 65 cents of each dollar spent on highways [PDF].) Meanwhile, the bicycle and pedestrian projects that Barnes moans about received all of $1.2 billion in federal funding in 2009, a record-setting year.

You could say that these massive subsidies for the highway system affect our behavior and induce driving. But Fred Barnes has different ideas about what affects our transportation decisions:

Last year, George Will zinged LaHood as the “Secretary of Behavior Modification” for his fervent opposition to cars. LaHood all but pleaded guilty. Steering funds from highways to bike and walking paths and streetcars, he said, “is a way to coerce people out of their cars.” His word, coerce.

But it’s hardly an answer to traffic congestion. Most people, most of the time, aren’t going to ride a bike to work or walk. They’re going to drive, even in the face of disincentives erected by LaHood.

LaHood will wear “coerce people out of their cars” around his neck forever. Which is ironic, because if anything, the Obama DOT has assiduously avoided erecting any “disincentives” to driving. The gas tax rate has been untouchable under LaHood. A mileage tax has been a non-starter. The last time U.S. DOT encouraged cities to pursue policies like congestion pricing or performance parking, which do affect driving behavior, George W. Bush was president.

The Obama administration, with its priority on ejecting people from their cars and its embrace of an environmental ethic that regards highways as evil, is unlikely to champion a higher gas tax. Any other tax increase you can imagine, yes. This one, no. That means Republicans will have to step up. They can insist the revenues be used solely for highways and bridges. Local governments would then be free to spend on bikeways.

A lobbyist for highway builders could hardly have said it better. The gas tax is theirs — it belongs to highways. This is the mentality that advocates for transportation reform will face off against in the months ahead, when the administration moves forward with its infrastructure push. Every dollar for transit, bicycling and safer streets will be contested. Be prepared.

Between Chris Christie’s decision to wind down construction on the ARC tunnel and the fare-hiking aftereffects of Albany’s political malevolence/incompetence, it was a rough week for sustainable transportation in the New York City region. Governors and legislatures may call a lot of the shots when it comes to transportation policy, but thankfully not all of them. Case in point: All the great changes in New York documented by the fine team at Embarq in this stunning video, the first in a series called “Cities in Focus” which will also showcase innovations from Curitiba, Istanbul, Mumbai, Los Angeles and Mexico City.

Watch this installment and see Michael Bloomberg, Janette Sadik-Khan, and Streetsblog originator Aaron Naparstek all appear within a few seconds of each other. And check out City Fix blogger Jonna McKone’s report on the video premiere earlier this week. (NYC DOT Senior Policy Adviser Jon Orcutt dropped a few intriguing bits of info about how the city is developing bike-share plans.)

We’ll see more results of NYC innovation this Sunday, when Select Bus Service and the re-designed First and Second Avenues officially debut.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NYCDOT
will build out at least 20 miles of "intensive" safety improvements
each year to reduce pedestrian injuries and fatalities on the city’s
most dangerous streets. Graphic courtesy of NYCDOT’s Pedestrian Safety Study & Action Plan

Mayor
Michael Bloomberg, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Transportation
Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, and NYPD transportation chief James
Tuller were all on hand for the press event in Queens where the
initiative was announced.

“We’ve made historic gains in reducing traffic fatalities, and this
year we are seeing pedestrians fatalities decline again,” Bloomberg
said in a statement. “But we still see too many families devastated by
traffic accidents. The report and actions detailed today, including the
installation of pedestrian countdown signals across the city, will make
our streets even safer, especially for the pedestrians who, year in and
year out, account for the majority of New York’s traffic fatalities.”

The report, which you can download here,
analyzes crashes that caused 7,000 serious pedestrian injuries and
deaths in New York City. Among the findings: Driver inattention is the
most common cause of crashes that seriously injure or kill pedestrians;
failure to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk is responsible for 27
percent of such crashes; speeding is a factor in more than 20 percent of
such crashes, but most New Yorkers don’t know the citywide speed limit
is 30 mph.

DOT has outlined a range of actions to meet the agency’s goal of
cutting pedestrian fatalities to half the 2007 level by 2030, a target
set in its strategic plan, known as Sustainable Streets,
in 2008. Each year, the agency will re-engineer 60 miles of streets to
improve safety. Along these corridors, at least 20 miles of streets will
receive "intensive" safety improvements, such as sidewalk widenings or
pedestrian refuges, that alter the geometry of the street. DOT will also
launch the city’s first 20 mph zone in a yet-to-be-selected
neighborhood in 2011, part of a pilot program intended to "slow traffic
on an area-wide, rather than individual street, basis." The citywide
roll-out of 1,500 pedestrian countdown signals, which Bloomberg referred
to, comes after a DOT pilot showed that they reduce injuries and that
pedestrians prefer them to regular signals.

The investment in designing safer streets will be paired with several traffic enforcement and education measures.