Transportation Safety: Pedestrians and Texting

In eighth grade Mr. Chomskey made my class memorize parts of The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. The poem begins:

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

I can still hear that click-clack rhythm of hoofs beating in some recess of my memory.  For those of you familiar with the poem, the tale of two Revolutionary War era lovers torn asunder by King George’s Army, you know that the Highway Man comes to an untimely end on the road in the glow of a midnight moon.

This was my first literary exposure to the danger of transportation, but we all grow up knowing that transportation is an inherently dangerous activity.  Transportation will always be dangerous as long as human actors are making decisions about rapid movement and operating fast-moving and heavy vehicles.  However, there should be an imperative to make transportation as safe as possible.

Two pieces of news strike this chord.  First, Britain has outlawed texting while driving.

Britain’s new guidelines state that using a hand-held phone when causing a death will “always make the offense more serious” in terms of punishment and lead to prison time. Texting is given special treatment.

I hope that Britain’s action is a lead for federal US legislation.  Some states have already begun down this path, but the feds can outlaw texting while driving as easily as they create a national drinking age of 21.  Simply connect federal transportation (namely highway) money to laws banning texting while driving.  That certainly passes constitutional muster.

Second, Transportation 4 America has reported that 76,000 Americans have died in the last 15 years while walking in or along a street.  The FDA wants to ban summer oysters because 15 people (largely people with liver problems) a year die from food poisoning but this nation has yet to take pedestrian and road safety seriously.

This report also analyzes state and regional spending of federal transportation dollars on pedestrian safety, finding that many of the metropolitan areas in greatest need of improvement are spending the least amount on pedestrian safety projects. Nationwide, less than 1.5 percent of funds authorized under the federal transportation law, SAFETEA-LU, have been allocated for projects to improve the safety of walking and bicycling, even though pedestrians comprise 11.8 percent of all traffic deaths and trips made on foot account for almost 9 percent of total trips. SAFETEA-LU created a new safety program and changed regulations to make it easier to use what were once “highway funds” on a wider variety of transportation projects, including public transportation and pedestrian facilities.

At the state and local levels, no state spends more than 5 percent of federal transportation funds on sidewalks, crosswalks, traffic calming, speed humps, multi-use paths, or safety programs for pedestrians or cyclists. This is in spite of a more than 30 percent increase in total federal transportation dollars to states with the passage of SAFETEA-LU in 2005. The 52 largest metro areas averaged annual spending of federal funds on bicycle and pedestrian projects of just $1.39 per person. The average metro area spends 2.2 percent of their federal transportation funds on projects to improve conditions for walking and bicycling.

I’m not really sure when we will wake up to the fact that we are a multi-modal nation and that our culture of depending on cars to get us everywhere actually gets us nowhere.  The number of deaths to pedestrians is downright unacceptable.  It is a sign that we do not encourage walking enough, that we subsidize driving to an unhealthy degree, and that our development and growth has poorly prioritized the types of communities where people can travel safely without turning on a motor.

Transportation is about getting people from one place to another, and all people should have the right to expect to arrive at their destination safely.  That should especially apply to those taking the least dangerous means of conveyance, their feet.  Or else we may end up metaphorically like the highwayman:

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i’ the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

 

Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses

Howard Husock wrote a book review in the latest issue of City Journal discussing Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City, by Anthony Flint, and Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Glenna Lang and Marjory Wunsch.

Jane Jacobs was the great self-taught urban philosopher and activist who wrote the Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which she took the lessons she learned from Greenwich Village to expound upon the value of organic urban life, where planning and government have  a limited but instrumental role.  This stood in direct contrast to the most powerful man in New York, the unelected Robert Moses, who built many of New York City’s highways and housing projects.

Husock makes many notable points, including this one:

But good cases can make bad law, and the successful defense of Washington Square Park and the West Village can lead too easily to the conclusion that neighborhood preservation, by whatever means necessary, is always correct—and that opponents of development, by definition, occupy the moral high ground. Thanks partly to their efforts, New York City has not opened a new subway line since 1942, has no easy transit link to its airports, and enforces a system of legally dictated rents that allow affluent tenants to stay forever in cheap apartments and insulate themselves from neighborhood change. Some would even extend such rent controls to commercial properties, thus interrupting the cycle of decline and rebirth that marks dynamic cities.

Neither Moses nor Jacobs had a perfect philosophy.  Any transportation advocate recognizes the need for eminent domain at some minimal level and that good transit can help organic growth.  Think about how commercial and residential centers grow around particular subway stops or how other areas decay when city planners choose to move a bus line or close a light rail stop.  In this day and age there is no such thing as truly organic transit.  The days of paving over old walking and cow paths are over and transit now is a matter of government and the community working to make transit systems and routes that work with and for the community.

Moreover, Moses and Jacobs stand as historic examples of the long-lasting effects of making (or not making decisions in planning).  Moses radically changed the city and Jacobs prevented some of his other attempts and set the tone to make sure that other Moses-like projects would never occur.  In this day and age of 24-hour media we forget that our policy decisions have a longer lasting effect than the day or week they are put into place.  A policy decision, especially one as large as where or whether to build a highway or subway can have ramifications for decades if not centuries.

As we finally begin to give transportation infrastructure its due in the 21st century, we are best served to remember that any decision on transit–whether it is high speed rail, improving our highways, investing in more subways, efficient cars or something else we are bound to imagine–those decisions do not solve only current problems.  Those decisions will have ramifications today and for centuries to come.  Transportation grants should not be handed out for efficiecy’s sake or for mere stimulus effect, but to establish and preserve productive, creative, economically thriving centers of American life.

 

Blogroll Introduction: The Transport Politic

As of now my blogroll has been kept intentionally small.  Links of government transit agencies at the federal, state and local level can be found on the links in the upper right hand corner.

I would like to introduce the Transit Pass readers to The Transport Politic, a blog about the role of the political process in building new transportation as well as thoughts on the economy and efficacy of proposed transportation ideas, whether those ideas originate in government or elsewhere.

One of my favorite features of the website are his pages on projects under construction and proposed projects.  For example, how cool is Honolulu Rail Transit or a K Street Rapid Bus link in Washington DC (think of all the awesome potential nicknames, like the “lobbyist express” or the “pork roller”).

All-in-all I am excited to have the Transport Politic on my blog roll and occasionally tipping my hat to its fabulous posts, including this one on the relationship of the transportation lobby to the roads lobby and how the transport lobby depends on the road lobby (via a blackmail-esque relationship) for its livelihood.

 

Hopstop.com vs Google Maps Transit

This morning’s Boston Globe features an article that Boston’s MBTA has finally been included on Google Maps Transit.  It apparently took a while to make the MBTA’s trip planning system technologically capable of working with Google.

Google Maps Transit offers an amazing array of locations around the world to search for public transit options, 421 of those locations to be exact.  Google spans the spectrum from large systems such as in San Francisco and New York to places you would not expect, such as Flagstaff, AZ and Norman, OK.

However, those from the New York area, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia may also be familiar with the great site hopstop.com.  While hopstop offers far fewer cities in its coverage list the service it offers for each city is far more comprehensive.  Among the features:

• Point to a location on a map
• Estimated taxi fare and time
• Preferences in mode of transportation like subway only or more transfers/less walking
• Lists of attractions, hotels, restaurants and bars, including rankings of what sites are most searched for.

Google on the other hand tends to offer simply a route as an option compared to walking or driving in its map service.  Overall, I recommend hopstop for the variety of features it covers if you are in one of the cities it is available for.  Google is good, but in reality I think your local transit agency’s website is your best bet over Google because through that site you can learn about the variety of options offered as well as where public transit goes throughout a metropolitan region.

 

Boston Bicycles

I currently live in Boston and when I first got here I was discouraged by the meandering streets and their incredible lack of logic.  Streets truly do go the path of the cows as one may start going east-west and end up traveling north-south.  This lack of thoroughfares and streets with rational routes makes bicycling challenging, on top of the heavy traffic and frequently narrow streets.  The New York Times points out today that Boston is trying to make its streets more bicycle friendly and create a bicycle sharing program.  The Boston Globe ran a similar article last week.

While getting people to ride bikes in theory gets cars off the road there are many challenges with trying to get more people to ride bicycles in an older city without roads designed for bikes.

• bike lanes are meant for one bike at a time and do not accomodate riders going at different speeds
• many streets simply cannot accommodate a bike lane
• bicycle parking downtown or in other areas

However, I adore the idea of bike sharing, especially if they come equipped with a basket to carry small items like groceries or a purse.  Bicycle sharing occurs at unattended stations where people can rent bicycles for a period of time.  It works much in the same way car sharing programs like Zipcar and PhillyCarShare do.

The other way of making bicycles more integrated into city life is making transit hubs like subway stops and commuter rail lines equipped to be bicycle commuter friendly.  That is shelters or simple racks must be around for commuters to park their bikes at before hopping on other forms of public transit.

Overall, I applaud Boston’s efforts and hope to see many more riders cruising down Commonwealth Avenue in the none-too-distant future.

 

Public Transit Should Not Finance Construction

There is some nasty and brutish politicking going on in Boston regarding the leadershi of the MBTA, as Governor Patrick’s team tries to force out Romney appointee, General Manager Daniel Grabauskas.  I am in no position to make any meaningful commentary on the politics of the moment, but I am struck by how much of the controversy revolves around T financing.

The Authority has over $5 billion in debt, most of it loaded on from the Big Dig.  One third of the T’s annual $1.5 billion budget goes to debt payments.  That is insane.  Debt has caught up to the organization and now the T is “considering” levying a 19.5% fare increase and service reductions.

Here is where my opinion begins; it is ridiculous for public transit organizations to have to finance their own construction projects.  Public transportation organizations have a hard enough time financing day-to-day operations based on public subsidies and low-cost fares.  Government pays for road building without expecting car drivers to be saddled with debt.  The transit riding public and the organizations it trusts should not be saddled with this debt either.

When building new rails,  constructing new stations, investing in brand new types of vehicles, the financing should come from the state, not from the transit institution (that is without a dramatic change in how agencies are financed).  Maintenance, repairs and general upkeep and improvements should intelligently be paid for by agency budgets.  However, to burden our transportation agencies with billions of dollars in debt from construction and new projects serves neither the agency nor the ridership and the greater areas and economies that depend on such transit adequately.

 

True Costs of Roads

In my last post, rebutting Edward Glaeser, I mentioned the hidden costs of roads that he was not accounting for and the fundamental problem with assuming that any means of transportation has to be profitable in itself. Stephen B. Goddard does an admirable job of listing several of the costs we forget about that are assumed in driving in his book Getting There: The Epic Struggle between Road and Rail in The American Century.

patrol highways

clean polluted air

insure that foreign oil flows freely to U.S. shores

subsidize downtown park for millions of commuters

dispose of millions of junked cars, tires, and batteries

cover higher health-care costs associated with the breathing of gasoline fumes

deal with fuel wastage and time lost in traffic jams

cope with losses of life and human capacity in traffic accidents

pay courts and judges to handle personal injury lawsuits

pay auto insurance premiums.

Each of these bullet points deserves its own blog post.  My general point is that no amount of taxes on cars or gasoline covers all of these costs to the country and the American consumer.  Rail is not perfect and roads cannot be done away with.  However, communities that depend more on rail for more of their traveling needs will also lower many other costs including auto insurance, health-care costs, patrol costs (including state police and ambulance duties), the pace of car and car part disposal, and the epic loss of life at the hands of highways.

The most dramatic of these costs for me is the human cost. 37,261 people died in vehicle accidents in 2008 and 41,259 in 2007.  To put that in perspective, 58,228 American servicemen died in the Vietnam War.

Roads cannot and should not be demolished, but rails (high speed or not) are necessary to alleviate many of the costs, environmental and beyond that our country currently subsidizes by depending so heavily on our cars.

 

Radical Cartography Urban Transit Systems

The above image comes from the fantastic website Radical Cartography.  The project artists there create wonderful maps of everything from subway systems (including Boston) to North American rail to census data.  The above map is of North American Subways, and the creators explain thus:

At a glance, many metros seem to be comparable in scale, but what separates New York from Baltimore is density: station-to-station distance, line overlap, and linkages.

Most systems are organized as a hub with spokes; the two notable exceptions are New York and Mexico City, both of which are more like nets.

This particular map is telling because, as the creators point out most systems work to funnel workers toward city centers but do an abysmal job of getting people from one place to another on the periphery without going through and back out of the center of the core.

The map is fascinating as it is telling about how people not only get into respective cities but what life is like once they are there.  My bias is to believe that subways are a sign of an active downtown and that people potentially live in the urban core.  This clearly true of New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago and an interesting sign about life in Houston or Cincinnati or Phoenix.

However, cities without transit will not improve their downtown areas just by building subway lines (though it certainly cannot hurt).  Cities like Phoenix and Vegas were built around highways and an automobile driven life, and do not have the urban density necessary to support a strong subway system.  It is no coincidence that New York and Mexico City lead the pack of urban transit systems, they are both incredibly dense cities.   In order to make subways or elevated lines or lightrail lines work again it must be part of a comprehensive urban planning project, where areas are rezoned to produce dense urban centers for both residential and commercial purposes and where people have incentive to live their lives relying on public transportation first and automobiles second.

(H/T to my partner at eartotheground for the link)

 

White Transportation Vehicles

Today’s New York Times has an article on the white roof movement, pushed thoroughly by Secretary of Energy Chu.  I first read about white roofs on the Infrastructurist (a great blog for all things infrastructure and on my blogroll).  The basic premise was explained on their website thus:

By reflecting back huge quantities of sunlight that is now absorbed by dark surfaces, whitening our roofs and roads could offset 44 billion tons of carbon emission, calculates Arthur Rosenfeld of the California Energy Commission and two colleagues. It may be one of the cheapest and most effective ways humanity can seriously address global warming in the near term.

Whitening our roofs and roads would also cut demand for air conditioning by as much as 15 percent on the hottest days of summer, which would also have the benefit of making our electrical grid more stable.

My question is what would happen if we similarly painted all of our public (and private) transportation vehicles white or other light colors.  The new Seattle light rail system (Sound Transit, see picture above) has the right idea with its fleet of white vehicles.  Given how much space is covered with our vehicles I would have to imagine we would save a ton of energy by having white roofs on our cars, buses, trucks and trains, or other similar light colors.  Perhaps we can just have the roofs of our vehicles white so that we still provide for colorful dynamics on the roads, which should also be whitened.

Some infrastructure greening projects are difficult.  Getting zoning regulations to require white roofs is easy.  Perhaps having public transportation agencies paint their vehicles white or their roofs white could be similarly easy.

 

Say “Thank You” to Your Bus Driver …

She just might save your house.  A bus driver in St. Petersburg Florida stopped his bus to put out a fire in a burning tree and potentially save a house in the process.  The PSTA (Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority) serves the Tampa area and offers the colorful Suncoast Beach Trolley.

The story should remind each of us to thank our public transportation operators whenever possible.  We would certainly thank our taxi drivers and friends for a ride.  Driving a public transportation vehicle can be more taxing than it first appears.  There are a lot of pressures that go along with operating vehicles that can cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, filled with dozens of passengers (who can be loud and unruly), all while observing the rules of the road/rail.  A “thank you” can go a long way.  Operators are frequently stressed out and passenger interactions can be difficult, to say the least.  A sign of appreciation and recognition of the driver as another person can help ease stress all around.

After all, you never know, the driver might put out a fire for you!