City parking meters are a gold mine, and in Chicago, Morgan Stanley is rolling in parking riches. Secret company documents leaked to reporters show the company will rake in a 70 percent profit margin this year from its $1.15 billion, 75-year lease of Chicago's parking meters. This profit is on top of the millions Morgan paid to buy new, high-tech meters. The good times will keep on rolling for investors: In 2010, after another meter price hike, Morgan expects to make monthly profits of $4.8 million, roughly 55 percent higher than in 2009.

Graphic: New York Times/Chicago News Cooperative.

Streetsblog has been following the Chicago parking privatization closely because it is the poster child for all that can go wrong with Public Private Partnerships, or PPPs. The basic idea behind a PPP is that the government leases public transportation infrastructure -- say a bridge, highway, airport, or parking meters -- that can generate user fees. In exchange for the fees, a private investor pays the government a large upfront fee or assumes the cost of improving the infrastructure. PPPs are popular in Europe, especially at airports.

Sustainable transportation advocates should care about PPPs for a number of reasons. First, politicians and bureaucrats are captivated by the fantasy that PPPs are the ultimate free lunch, generating billions in transportation investment at no cost to the taxpayer. President Obama's euphemism for PPPs is "creative financing."

In New York, state officials have repeatedly presented a PPP as the way to raise billions for the astronomical cost of replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge. This is dangerous thinking. PPPs do inflict a cost, and it's a big one. Huge amounts of revenue that could be directed to public transit, or crucial road and bridge repair, is instead going to Wall Street.

The second concern is that PPPs allow public officials to skew the public planning and review process and put private profit before public benefit. A private investor has tremendous leverage over what gets built if they are the government's main financing option. The investor's goal is to make money, not to produce the greatest public benefit over many decades.

Despite the latest revelation, Chicago is only beginning to recognize the inherent problems with privatizations. According to the Times, Alderman Scott Waguespack introduced a measure that would require an "independent third-party valuation" of major asset lease proposals before any future privatization deal is completed. The legislation would require "a comparison of public retention and private leasing over the life cycle of the agreement." This could serve as an important safeguard, but so far, the measure only has 12 co-sponsors among the council's 49 other members.

Toronto's Post and Ring solution for bicycle parking on old parking meter poles. Photo: David Baker

"This was the last breath of turning your back on cyclists. It was obscene," said East Bay Bicycle Coalition (EBBC) Executive Director Robert Raburn, who admitted that they weren't prepared for the change and the effect it would have on cyclists, so their advocacy was "reactionary." 

The EBBC lobbied the Oakland City Council to retain what meters they could after the process had started. "What we were asking for was to make sure there was some integration between the installation of parking kiosks and bike parking," said Raburn

Jason Patton, Oakland's Bicycle and Pedestrian Program Manager, said that the initial problem stemmed from the fact that two divisions of two separate agencies within the city weren't on the same page about bicycle parking and so the provisional solution was the best they could do.

"The plan for the new parking stations didn't address bicycle parking. Really the only option we had in working on their timeline was to leave meter heads," said Patton.

Over the complaints of the parking division, the EBBC worked with Oakland's bicycle program to develop an interim policy of preserving a minimum of two meter heads per block space in the areas where kiosks were installed. The bicycle division then spent a good deal of time and money surveying bicycle use on every street where the meters were being replaced to maximize the benefit to cyclists. Parking managers removed the "guts" of the meter heads so that drivers were less confused and affixed small yellow stickers that remind cyclists to park their bicycles parallel to the curb.

Still, all sides agreed bicycle parking at meter poles is not ideal. "The problem with leaving the head on is that it's confusing and unsightly and often times the pole location is not an ideal place to park bikes," said Raburn. Through sales-tax funding, the EBBC and the Oakland Bicycle Program have collaborated to methodically add bicycle racks on sidewalks in front of businesses, parks, and other destinations frequented by bicyclists.

Toronto, Canada

Oakland's story is very similar to many other cities, though unfortunately it seems that few city managers are sharing best practice examples with each other.  Toronto, Canada, was an early adopter of multi-space meters and parking managers there learned quickly how to use the old meter poles for bicycle parking.

Daniel Egan, Manager of Pedestrian and Cycling Infrastructure for the City of Toronto, said the parking managers were on the same page with his division when they began installing multi-space pay stations in early 2001. "Any time they were taking out a parking meter head, we would review them," he said. "Sometimes they were too close to the curb or to other structures, so they were removed."

For every parking meter the parking authority removed it would pay for a retrofit to old posts, what has been dubbed the Post and Ring. The initial metal rings were $40 a piece and were attached to the existing meter pole with large bolts. The complete retrofit cost was about $80 per post if they were keeping the original post, $125 per post if installing a new post. 

Egan admitted that the original ring design was not as secure as it should be, so that crafty thieves had figured out how to break them off and remove the entire ring, which they would presumably cut off the bicycle when not in public.  "We had a problem a couple of years ago with people breaking them off. So now we put in a double ring, which looks good: two 250 lb guys from our staff couldn't break it."

Toronto currently has 16,000 of the Post and Ring bicycle parking poles, of which about were 8,000 paid for by the parking authority. "They basically agreed to put a ring on every post in the city," said Egan. 

Los Angeles has affixed a small, decorative top to old meter poles as it transitions to new mult-space pay statinos like the one at left. Photo:LADOT

Both Chicago and Los Angeles are trying out small pilot programs to convert meter posts to bicycle parking, though neither have developed a comprehensive policy to address every meter pole being removed.

In Chicago, the city is leaving one or two poles per block as conversions occur.  Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) spokesperson Brian Steele said: "Chicago is working with the bike community to identify high-priority parking locations, and continues to explore locations for permanent bike racks--our bike parking program has already installed more than 11,000 racks citywide."

As for meter conversions, he said they started a program this spring to leave one or two meter poles per block face and more in priority locations. When preparing a conversion, CDOT posts information on its Bike Program web site seeking input from the cycling community.  Additionally, they have a full-time student intern who goes to conversion locations to identify which and how many meter poles to retain for future retrofit as bike racks.

The policy was put in place this spring and further elaboration of it is a priority of the Chicago Bike 2015 Plan, according to Steele. "We are exploring equipment to retrofit the poles with an attachment to allow bike parking. We have received samples from at least two manufacturers and are currently testing them."

In Los Angeles, the city installed 285 new meter heads adjacent to multi-space pay stations two weeks ago, what they call the Meter Hitch Bicycle Rack. The new Meter Hitch racks are in eight neighborhoods along commercial corridors and cost the city $50,000 to install, money which came from sales-tax and property tax increments agreed to in voter initiatives. According to LADOT's primer:

The new bicycle racks take advantage of the work of the Smart Meter Parking Pilot Program and re-use existing meter infrastructure to convert old parking meters to new Bicycle Parking Racks. The Bicycle Outreach and Planning staff has worked very closely with the Office of Parking Management and Regulations, the six different city council offices affiliated with the installation areas, business improvement districts, and local businesses to complete the project.

In New York City, former Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Iris Weinshall embraced multi-space meters in the city's Central Business District, but wasn't so hot on bicycle infrastructure. As a result, much of Manhattan's business districts were converted to the multi-space meters without any consideration of bicycle parking.

When asked if NYCDOT has a policy to convert remaining single-space meters in other business districts in the city that still have them, NYCDOT Senior Policy Advisor Jon Orcutt said, "The ship sailed on that one before anyone looked at the policy. There's not much bike parking left to preserve."

Orcutt said the agency's priority now is installing new bicycle racks as quickly as possible throughout the city. In fiscal year 2008, the agency installed 1,377 racks, up from 320 the year before. They've set a goal to add 5,000 new racks over three years in addition to the current 6,100 racks. 

About retrofits, Orcutt admitted the agency didn't do as much as it could have. "We really should have gotten on that five years ago. When we looked at that universe, it didn't make sense to do retrofits. What we need to do is basically catch up with installing new bike racks and we'll try to be sensitive and coordinated with it."

Bicycle advocates are not thrilled with that response, however. "That's one rack for every 31 cyclists. That's completely inadequate," said Caroline Samponaro, Director of Bicycle Advocacy for Transportation Alternatives, who hopes that San Francisco and other cities look at New York to avoid the same issue. "Lack of bicycle parking is one of the biggest deterrents to bicycle riding in this city."

In San Francisco, the MTA is debuting its much heralded SFPark pilot program, which will affect more than 6,000 metered spaces. Though many of those meter poles will lose their heads or be removed completely because the agency doesn't think they are aesthetically pleasing and doesn't want to confuse motorists with pockets full of change, they will keep a number of meter poles for SFPark and simply retrofit the single space meters with radio technology.

MTA spokesperson Judson True said they are committed to providing better bicycle parking than what exists, but that they don't have a policy on meter pole retrofits. "We have all these strategies for bike parking that don't rely on meters. It's not to say we won't have an official policy, but we're not developing one now."

True added that they aren't rushing out to cut off the heads of all the meters. "It's going to be a while before the meters are gone."

True wanted to focus instead on what his agency could do to try more dynamic bicycle parking options, such as converting vehicle parking spaces to bike parking on street, which has been successfully implemented on Grove Street in front of the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library.

Advocates said they have been discussing the issue with the agency for over two years and they've been given assurances that the MTA will not allow a decrease in available bicycle parking citywide. SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum agreed with True that more innovative parking like bicycle corrals in vehicle spaces is where they would like to focus.

"On-street corrals are the prize," said Shahum, who also noted that cleaning up clutter from sidewalks was important for her group and for pedestrian advocates. "One of the sub goals is to remove clutter from the sidewalk.  There's a goal of having more efficient bicycle parking and better parking management, but in terms of the clutter challenge, I think there's not enough consideration to the ramifications on bike parking in the city."   

She also said businesses were anxious to convert the vehicle parking spaces in front of their stores to bicycle parking to target their bicycle-riding patrons and maximize the number of customers that could park in the space. "Over a dozen businesses have expressed interest in removing the car space and replacing it with bicycle corrals," she said.

Continuing the Streetfilms tour of envy-inspiring bike parking garages, Clarence Eckerson files this report from the McDonald's Cycling Center in Chicago's Millennium Park, operated by Bike and Roll on behalf of the city. Says Clarence:

It's enough to make bike commuters in many cities drool. The center boasts state-of-the-art showering facilities, secure bicycle parking for 300, a repair station, towel service, is temperature-controlled, and features the constant presence of the Chicago Lakefront Police bike patrol, which shares the facility and maintains its bikes on site. The station is extremely popular, with 500 members at a time and a waiting list of eager riders ready to join. But even if you aren't a member you can still take advantage of the free bike parking, and mechanics are on duty to repair anyone's bikes seven days a week.

Flickr photo: JaimeAndreu

Only weeks after hiring Kit Hodge to direct the GSP, this event marked the first step toward building a constituency that clamors for turning over more street space to people and improving the quality of the public realm.  According to Hodge, agency heads sat down with community organizers and all discussed ways to improve streets, to effectively manage new public spaces, and to locate areas throughout San Francisco that are ripe for transformation.

Hodge explained the GSP as "a catalytic and short-term effort to enhance the livable streets projects in San Francisco and institutionalize them in city government."  She said she will create an online database of best practice examples and tools intended for professional planners, engineers and agency personnel so they can easily reference the work of their counterparts in other cities.

Currently, the GSP is a collaboration between the SFBC, Project for Public Spaces (PPS), and the Livable Streets Initiative (produced by Streetsblog SF's parent company, The Open Planning Project), and Hodge expects many more groups to sign on in short order. 

"I have tremendous respect for the many groups that have been working on this for many years, but we want to broaden the conversation by talking to other organizations that don't focus on transportation issues," said Hodge.

The GSP will focus on three principles that have proved successful in cities such as New York:

• Bring experts from around the country and around the world to demonstrate best practice examples and offer instructive advice to San Franciscans
  
• Help organize communities around trial projects on the ground that test livable streets ideas.  GSP will use independent analysis to determine the effectiveness of the projects and encourage wide public feedback
  
• Reach out to more stakeholders and broaden the tent of people involved, particularly those who are not already part of the conversation, including the business community, neighborhood leaders and under-served communities.

Great Streets Project's Kit Hodge

Hodge is no stranger to organizing in communities to fight for better public space and better streets.  She was the co-founder of the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign five years ago while working for Transportation Alternatives, then moved to Chicago and worked with the Metropolitan Planning Council to create a Placemaking Guide intended to facilitate the improvement of neighborhoods. She also worked to develop a regional congestion pricing model, helped with implementation of the Chicago Central Area Plan, and the use of Parking Improvement Districts (think Don Shoup) in transit rich areas.

Hodge subsequently started and ran The Neighbors Project, a non-profit organization working in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City to improve neighborhoods and enhance communication between the multiple generations that create the fabric of a community.

Hodge lives in the Lower Haight and is the vice president of her neighborhood group, the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association, where she is leading a traffic calming project that will expand and improve pedestrian and bicycle space.

We wish Kit and the GSP great success and look forward to covering their work on the blog.

Thanks all for reading and commenting on our non-motorized honeymoon travel series (see parts 1, 2, 3 and 4). Below is a table Susan put together to briefly summarize some of our observations on the cities we visited.

For those of you who want some more U.S. transit-oriented travel stories, check out Twin City Sidewalks' visits to Chicago and Washington, Babylon, L.I., Savannah, Ga. and Durham, N.C., and also visit Dave KCMO, who liveblogged his 8,789 miles on Amtrak and VIA Rail Canada.

In between all that fun Amtrak travel I described yesterday, my wife Susan and I stopped on our honeymoon at six great cities with an eye toward observing their built environments and transportation systems (but mostly just being plain old tourists). Below are photos and brief observations from the first three, in the order we visited.

Chicago 

The railroading capital of the United States is a great, great town, loved by New Yorkers for generations. We love it too, right?

Chicago had a lakefront exhibit of great big globes encouraging people to adopt environmentally friendly but inoffensive habits, like setting one's washing machine to cold or switching to compact florescent light bulbs. But next to the exhibit, when we tried to hail a pedicab to take us downtown, we were told that pedicabs are not allowed in the Loop. Ouch. Our recently imposed pedicab restrictions were bad enough, but this takes it to a whole new level. On the plus side, Chicago has the coolest-sounding train-related terminology that we found: the Metra Electric District.

Seattle

We had hoped not to get into a single automobile on the whole trip, but in Seattle (and only in Seattle), that broke down, mostly because we had a friend in town who owned a car and was putting us up at his place. This city has what seems like hundreds of bus routes, but the one we needed never came, even though two drivers on other routes and other passengers all swore it was running on the Sunday we arrived. After we got off the train we waited and waited for our bus. Then we took a different bus to a more central stop to try our luck there. Then our friend Matt offered to pick us up from the bus stop. We accepted because he said he completely understood our motivating principle, but was downtown anyway and would be burning the same amount of gasoline either way. He drove us again a few more times, including to Lake Union go kayaking, which was worth it.

However we still wanted to explore Seattle on foot, so we walked through downtown, adjacent Belltown, where new condos are going up like mad, and residential Queen Anne Hill. Somewhere in there we noticed the signs all around Seattle encouraging people to ride transit. They have sayings like "Take the monorail, Abigail," and "Take the bus and relax, Max." Slogans aside, Seattle already had what Ted Kheel knows is a better incentive. At least downtown, its buses are free.

Portland

Like Seattle's downtown buses, Portland's downtown light rail does not charge a fare. Our hotel was in the free zone, and we felt a little guilty riding so much for free, so we vowed to spend our extra money in various Portland businesses, like the worker-owned bicycle cooperative where we rented bikes. The bikes were great, as they allowed us to really see the city and its nearby bike trails up close and personal. As I stood watching cyclists pass by on a fully-separated bike lane next to a light rail line and a aerial tram depot, I realized why it is said that Portland has the most diverse multimodal transportation network in the country for a city its size. One of those modes is the automobile, which in places is catered to as much as any suburb. On the way to the rail, we'd pass curb cuts used by cars and SUVs in the drive-thru restaurant and drive-thru Starbucks across from our hotel, engines idling as their occupants awaited their morning venti mocha frap. Portland leads the nation in many ways, but hey, it's not perfect.

And even in Portland, we learned, bike and transit networks are under attack. This newspaper article described the efforts of one Craig Flynn, a local activist and one-time city council candidate who "thinks city transportation funds should go toward relieving congestion on freeways and other main roads, specifically adding lanes or building new freeways." He told the paper: "I feel like honking my horn going over a speed bump to irritate the people who want them there."

In tomorrow's installment, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New Orleans.

My wife and I were married last month in Brooklyn. For our honeymoon, we wanted to see as many great American cities as we could. In 19 days of travel, we visited Chicago, Seattle, Portland (Ore.), San Francisco, Los Angeles and New Orleans (and also stopped briefly in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia).

How could two people as obsessed as we are with minimizing our transportation carbon footprints possibly justify taking so many flights for leisure travel? We didn't take any flights. We also didn't rent any cars or even set foot in a single taxi. We learned that thanks to the magic of transit-oriented hotel development (often inadvertent), it is entirely possible to travel this great country from sea to shining sea without any of those carbon-belching modes of travel -- and still have a fantastic time.

Our intercity travel consisted of 33 miles on Metro-North (because we couldn't allow ourselves to depart for such a historic trip from Penn Station), 48 miles on CalTrain, and 7,840 miles on our underfunded national railroad, Amtrak. To travel about in town, we rented bikes in Portland but mostly used an amazing variety of light rail, bus and subway transportation, including trips on Chicago's El, Portland's TriMet light rail, San Francisco's Muni and BART and New Orleans' streetcars. All of which worked perfectly well for our purposes.

Despite the large number of transit providers, it was Amtrak that did the heavy lifting and made our vacation possible. Amtrak employees are painfully aware of the railroad's reputation as habitually late. They desperately wanted to provide an on-time, high quality service, but were demoralized when the trains ran late and frustrated because it was almost always for reasons beyond their control.

We took six Amtrak trains more or less through the entire length of their routes: The Lake Shore Limited, the Empire Builder, the Cascades, the Coast Starlight, the Sunset Limited and the Crescent. All of these trains left their departure stations on time to the minute. It wasn't until we got moving that delays occured, and these were caused by chronic underinvestment in rail infrastructure that has left many lines with just a single track. The lines are owned by freight railroads, which Amtrak pays for the rights use. The freight railroads are in increasingly intense competition with one another for customers, and have a habit of having passenger trains wait at a siding while freight trains roll through. Despite this, the Empire Builder managed to travel 2,206 miles from Chicago to Seattle and still arrive 38 minutes ahead of schedule. If our national government invested in rail improvements just a fraction of the billions of dollars it spends annually on highway maintenance and widening, Amtrak would run on time and more people would ride it.

As gasoline prices have gone up and congestion at airports has increased, Amtrak has had record ridership for multiple years in a row, despite being starved by the Bush administration, which wanted to disband the railroad, and the Republican-led Congress. Many threats remain. On the day we rode rode the Sunset Limited across Texas, a Republican congressman from Texas introduced legislation that would have eliminated the Sunset Limited. (It was defeated with the help of our region's congressional delegation by a vote of 299-130.)

But the trains are still running and we had the time of our lives on this trip. Even if its running late, and even if they've replaced the chefs in the dining car with microwave ovens, there remains something inherently enjoyable and relaxing about riding on a train across vast distances. You have time to yourself to sit and watch the world roll by, completely stress free, and sleeping in a real honest-to-God bed while rolling along through the undulating darkness is just incomparable to anything else experienced in travel. Now with the addition of laptop computers, you can watch a DVD or play tetris to pass the time, but I prefer to leave the screen off and look out the window.

This is the first part of a five-part series on our travels to run this week. Parts two and three will focus on the cities we visited, with brief updates on their struggles for livable streets. Part four will describe in greater detail the trains we rode and the sights we saw. Part five will compare the cities to one another in terms of livable streets, pedestrian-friendly development and intermodal transportation.

The great American poet Robert Hunter has written that he and the other members of the Grateful Dead had the greatest time of their lives aboard a train across Canada that carried themselves, Janice Joplin, The Band and many other musicians. That's high praise from people who spent their lives rocking out. The trip inspired Hunter to write some lines that became the motto for our honeymoon:

No big hurry
What do you say
Might as well travel
The elegant way

UPDATE: Here are the other entries in this series:

• Part 2: Chicago, Seattle, Portland
• Part 3: San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans
• Part 4: The Trains
• Part 5: Wrap-Up