Kate Hinds

PHOTOS. Take a peek at the twice annual phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge where the sun sets in perfect alignment with the Manhattan street grid. Named after Stonehenge in England, the city's version comes every May 30 and July 12. On Monday, New Yorkers observed the sunset at 8:17 p.m.

Central Park's Great Lawn (photo by Kate Hinds)

(Kate Hinds, Transportation Nation) Neither New York City Mayor Michael Blooomberg nor City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is getting behind legislation banning cars from Central Park's loop drives -- even on a trial basis.

City Council member Gale Brewer's bill has four co-sponsors. But no hearing has been scheduled, and both the Mayor's office and Speaker Quinn said this week they had no official position on the measure.   The speaker generally controls the council agenda (and most of the votes in the heavily Democratic body), and legislation with her support tends to pass overwhelmingly.

A report on the Central Park Conservancy's website says the presence of cars is one of the most common complaints.

Last week Brewer sent a letter to the mayor asking for a six-week trial closure this summer.  But the Mayor says he won't discuss the matter until there's a hearing, and a spokesman for City Council Transportation Chair James Vacca says there's no room in the schedule for a hearing until September, at the earliest.

Pedestrians perambulating (photo by Kate Hinds)

(Kate Hinds - Transportation Nation) Hey, I'm walking here!

But where? And for how long? And why? That's exactly what a new survey wants to know.

Milczarski, who's a professor of urban planning at Hunter College in New York, is researching a book on pedestrians that he's planning to co-author with colleague Peter Tuckel, a Hunter College sociology professor. "It's all about behavior, attitudes, and motivation of people who walk," he said. So the pair needed data.

The nonprofit America Walks, is co-sponsoring the survey -- which has received about 5,400 responses to date.  It be up on the America Walks website until June 3rd. You can find it here.

We'll keep you up to date on the findings.

Cars heading toward the Holland Tunnel yesterday (photo by Kate Hinds)

Listeners have been texting the price of gas at the pump to The Takeaway. Today, TN's Andrea Bernstein discusses those findings.  (The Takeaway)

While exiting cap and trade program, NJ Governor Chris Christie pivots on Climate Change (WNYC's Empire Blog)

High gas prices won't be affecting holiday travel. (Marketplace)

House Republicans want to takeaway the Northeast Corridor from Amtrak, giving private investors the task of building and operating high-speed rail service between Washington and Boston. (Washington Post)

There may be less car owners in Manhattan, but real estate developers are betting that the wealthy will pay extra for in-house parking. (New York Times)

DC's Metro will be shortening station names. Names like U Street/African American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo or New York Avenue/Florida Avenue/Gallaudet University. (WAMU)

The Los Angeles Times debates the location of future subway stations -- and one participant protests his community's exclusion. "It is inconceivable to many of us who live, work and worship in South Los Angeles that the Crenshaw/LAX line would bypass the heart of the community."

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In case you missed it on Transportation Nation:

-- DC's Metro unveils new LED signs...look familiar, NYkers? (link)

-- the new NY MTA website is easier to use -- unless you're mobile (link)

-- Christie pulls plug on NJ's greenhouse gas initiative (link)

Cleveland's BRT, the HealthLine (photo by tracktwentynine via Flickr)

(Kate Hinds, Transportation Nation) A new study ranking America's top five bus rapid transit systems (BRT) gave Cleveland top marks -- but there's a lot of room for improvement.

That's according to the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP), a non-governmental agency that plans transit systems for cities worldwide.

New York, which has "select bus service" in the Bronx and Manhattan, didn't even make the list. New York's SBS buses have some features of BRT, including off-board payment and designated lanes, but are missing others, including special BRT "stations" and lanes that are physically segregated from car lanes.

The other four cities with the best scores in the U.S. are Eugene (Oregon), Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Las Vegas.

The ITDP's scoring criteria awards more points to systems with off-vehicle fare collection, frequent service, physically separated lanes, lanes that use the center of the road, and platform-level boarding. The systems also earns points for integrating with other transit modes like subways and bike sharing stations.

According to the report, Bogota, Colombia, and Guangzhou, China are the only cities that earn a "gold" level ranking. All five American cities received bronze ratings.

"One problem in the United States is that no one really understands what BRT is," said Dani Simons, a spokesperson for the ITDP, who added that getting consistent a definition is important.

"We’re proposing a scoring system," she said, "along the lines of green building LEED standard." She said that a ranking system would not only help people understand bus rapid transit -- but spur cities to compete for the top ranked system.

The report also listed three BRT systems in the planning stages -- Chicago, San Francisco, and Montgomery County, Maryland -- that it says are worth watching.

You can read the ITDP's full report here or see it below.
ITDP Report

The DOT told California that it can't postpone the deadline to start construction of that state's $43 billion bullet train project --  or make changes to the route. (Los Angeles Times)

NYC's bus ridership is down, subway ridership is up; MTA says traffic congestion may be partially to blame. (Wall Street Journal)

Any officer suspected of ticket-fixing in the Bronx is being asked about it on the stand -- whether it's on a related case or not. (New York Times)

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a hearing today on how to boost rail service in the Northeast Corridor through private investment. (The Hill)

Jalopnik reports that one Austin resident found a baby owl perched on his bicycle tire.

Here's a good excuse for being late to work (photo by Adam Norwood via Jalopnik)

A New York City Councilman wants delivery bikes to have license plates. (NY Daily News)

KPCC chronicles efforts to make Beverly Hills bicycle-friendly.

Good writes that Texas is spending $4.4 billion to widen a 28-mile highway at the same time it's preparing to lay off 100,000 teachers.

Vancouver says it's on track to reach its goal of 45% of all trips into town being made by bike, foot or transit by 2020. (Vancouver Sun)

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In case you missed it on Transportation Nation:

-- thinking about taking your bike on a NY-area commuter rail this holiday weekend? Think again. (link)

-- as gas prices go up, so does ride sharing and transit use (link). And car sales go down (link).

-- the feds unveiled new fuel economy stickers (link)

-- the NY MTA's new website highlights transit apps (link)

The New Fuel Economy Label is different for Gas, Electric and Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles

(Kate Hinds, Transportation Nation) This just in from the Department of Transportation.  TN has reported in the past on the quest for a new label, and it looks like the government has finally settled on one. The Department of Energy has posted an interactive image that let's you see the new label, which is different for electric, plug-in hybrid, and gas vehicles.

More analysis later; the press release from the DOT is below.

Keep scrolling to the bottom of the release for bullet points on what the new label offers.

[UPDATED] Below the release we've added a critical response from the Institute for Policy Integrity calling for letter grade labels.

__________________________________________________________

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today are unveiling new fuel economy labels that will help consumers take advantage of the increased efficiency standards achieved under the Obama Administration that will save families money at the pump starting this year. The new labels, which are the most dramatic overhaul to fuel economy labels since the program began more than 30 years ago, will provide more comprehensive fuel efficiency information, including estimated annual fuel costs, savings, as well as information on each vehicle’s environmental impact. The new labels underscore the benefits of the historic, bipartisan passenger car and truck fuel economy rule adopted under this administration by the EPA and DOT in 2010.

Boston cabbies, resistant to accepting credit cards because of a processing fee, might be placated by taxi payment smartphone apps. (WBUR)

The New York Daily News reports that the odds of having to swipe a MetroCard more than once to get through the turnstile are one in five.

DC's city budget might not be that bad for transit. (Greater Greater Washington)

NYC police are writing 48% more bike tickets this year than they did last year. (NY Post)

Nick Rahall (a Democrat on the House Transportation Committee) wants to see an increase in the gas tax. (The Hill)

The Washington State city of Federal Way is considering legal action after the transit agency reneged on a promise to build light rail there. From Federal Way's Mayor: "When you're the largest city in King County not to have rail at the end of the day, and yet your city was asked in the Growth Management Act to take the most residential growth of King County and fewer jobs, people are starting to say 'where is the equity?" (Seattle Post Intelligencer)

Richmond began removing asphalt from a parking lot that had paved over a burial ground for slaves and free blacks. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Want to ride in a bike lane, but there isn't one available? Create one via projection. (Video below via FastCompany.) Note: the embedding of this video in no way means that TN endorses riding your bike on sidewalks or on subway staircases.

The backlash to the Brookings' study on the best and worst places for transit has begun. (Atlantic)

Lebanon needs an efficient transit system, not subsidies for cabbies and truck drivers, argues one man. (The Daily Star)

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In case you missed it on Transportation Nation:

-- in Florida, it's 'walk at your own risk.' (link)

-- just how dangerous is walking in your neighborhood? (link)

-- In honor of Bob Dylan's 70th birthday, a list of his 10 best infrastructure songs (link)

(photo by Jeremy Chan/flickr)

(Kate Hinds, Transportation Nation)  Few things make a writer happier when two seemingly disparate -- yet favorite -- subjects collide, and Eric Jaffe over at the blog The Infrastructurist achieved that today.  In honor of Bob Dylan's 70th birthday, Jaffe has put together a list of what he says are the singer's 10 best songs about infrastructure. Highways, levees and trains, oh my!

Know the ground rules before you read. From Jaffe's article: "Only those songs with direct titular and lyrical links to infrastructure were considered. So a number like “On the Road Again,” though nominally related to traveling, failed to crack the threshold because the song has everything to do with a repulsive household the narrator wishes to flee, and nothing to do with the course of the fleeing; similarly, a tune like the incomparable “Mississippi,” despite strong thematic ties to movement, fell outside the lines as well."

Read the story here.

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A sign at an intersection in Queens, NY (photo by wallyg/Flickr)

As Congress takes up transportation reauthorization, advocates are pushing for more safety for cyclists and pedestrians -- particularly older ones. (NPR)

WNYC's Jim O'Grady will be on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning to talk about his reporting on the barely used -- yet city-subsidized -- Yankees parking garage. Tune in at (about) 10:05 am -- FM 93.9, AM 820, and streaming live on wnyc.org.

A Congressman Nadler opinion piece in Politico about infrastructure funding calls on the federal government to "reverse the decline of their mass-transit systems."

NJ Governor Christie's transportation plan -- which borrows over $4 billion for roads, rails and bridges -- is vexing state Democrats. (AP via The Star-Ledger)

The US Attorney's office has opened an investigation into whether the lack of wheelchair-accessible taxicabs in New York City amounts to a violation of parts of the Americans With Disabilities Act. (NY Times)

Today is "payoff day" for Chrysler, as the automaker will wire the billions in loans that it owes to the governments of the US and Canada. (Detroit Free Press)

'Black boxes' may soon be mandatory for automobiles. (Wired/Autopia)

The NYC DOT will start studying Chinatown's parking this summer. (DNA Info)

Which country has the highest -- and lowest -- gas prices in the world? A Marketplace quiz reveals some surprises.

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In case you missed it on Transportation Nation:

-- a church on Long Island is giving away bicycles to undocumented immigrants (link)

-- the New York State Senate passed a bill that would require some trucks to have special safety mirrors (link)

-- Maryland's Purple Line faces safety challenges (link)

-- the census says people move for housing (link)

Select Bus Service on Manhattan's East Side (photo by Kate Hinds)

Bus rapid transit systems are on the rise, but not everyone is a fan. (Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail)

Amtrak is seeking private investors for its Northeast Corridor high-speed rail line. (The Hill)

California's high-speed rail authority is disputing bills from Caltrain that are worth more than $108,000. (San Francisco Examiner)

Rep. John Mica's opinion piece in today's Politico: "Congress must act now" on transportation reauthorization legislation.

San Francisco's cabbies want their fares in cash instead of credit cards (Bay Citizen via New York Times). Meanwhile, NYC livery cab owners are fighting the city's outer-borough medallion plan (WNYC).

New York City Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson, a supporter of the city's bike lanes, gives a reporter a taste of his two-wheeled commute. (New York Times)

Maryland's governor signed a bill forbidding a French government-operated company from competing to run that state's commuter trains, because of the company's activities during the Holocaust. (Washington Post)

The NY Daily News blames Mayor Bloomberg for not doing enough for the city's transit.

Boston unveils three electric car charging stations today. (Boston Herald)

Riders at two Brooklyn F and G train stations have their stations back -- for now. (WNYC)

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In case you missed it on Transportation Nation:

-- the Yankees' parking garage is losing money, plus it displaced a public park (link)

-- cab sharing on tap for this year's US Open (link)

-- bike commuting in Houston? You betcha. (link)

-- carpooling in Houston? Yep, especially as gas prices fluctuate (link)

Bike to Work Day, 2010 (photo by greenperalta/Flickr)

Today is Bike to Work Day.

Atlanta's suburbs may finally be ready to embrace mass transit. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

China halted work on a high-speed rail line due to environmental concerns.  (Wall Street Journal)

The Guardian has an enormous amount of data about Britain's train stations. (The Guardian)

GM will increase Volt production, and plans to close a plant for a month to prepare. (AutoBlog)

Hear TN's Andrea Bernstein talk about how gasoline prices are affecting driving behavior on The Takeaway (and don't forget to participate in our survey on how gas prices affect YOU.)

Toronto's mayor is set to unveil his bike lane plan. (The Star)

New York City approved an increase in fines for cab drivers who break a wide range of rules — from being caught using a cell phone while driving to refusing to accept a credit card. (WNYC)

Food trucks -- so popular on the coasts -- are hitting legal roadblocks in the Midwest. (Changing Gears)

The DDOT won't be available to fill potholes after Saturday's 'Rapture.' (Fox News)

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In case you missed it on Transportation Nation:

-- The Yankees paved paradise and put up a parking lot -- with public money (link)

-- it's not gas prices you have to worry about in Montana, it's snow...even in May (link)

-- NYC's dollar van program, meant to replace cut bus lines, is a total bust (link)

-- SF wants to make its taxis more efficient (link)

-- public transportation: it's good for you (link)

(Kate Hinds, Transportation Nation) If New Yorkers took fuller advantage of the city's public transit system, bike lanes, and sidewalks, they'd be healthier. That's the message behind a report released today by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Health Benefits of Active Transportation in New York City states that "one in eight deaths annually among New Yorkers aged 30 and over could be prevented with more physical activity." While the report covers the personal health benefits of "active transportation" (defined as "self-propelled" methods like walking, bicycling, jogging, and in-line skating), it also underscores the importance of public transportation. Some highlights:

• On average, people who walk or bike to work get more than an hour of active transportation time daily.
• New Yorkers who walk or bike to work get more than 40 minutes more combined transportation and recreation physical activity per day than those who use a personal car or taxi.
• New Yorkers who take public transportation for most of their commute get almost half an hour more daily combined transportation and recreation physical activity than those who use a personal car or taxi.

Thomas Farley, the commissioner of the city's Department of Health, said how you commute can make a big difference. "If you simply walk to work, run errands 20 to 30 minutes a day," he said, "you can reduce your diabetes risk by 30%, and reduce your risk of premature death by 20%."

You can read the report highlights here (pdf), or see the full report below.

Pr 009- 11 Active Transportation

Oil Rigs near Huntington Beach (Aaron Logan)

The Senate rejected Republican-backed legislation intended to speed up and expand offshore oil and gas drilling. (The Hill)

One card to rule them all: Clipper card users can now refill their cards at BART ticket vending machines. (San Jose Mercury News)

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said plans for high-speed rail systems were moving ahead and that he was confident of their long-term prospects. (Wall Street Journal)

Counterpoint: a Washington Post editorial says that California's high-speed rail is going off the rails.

Pennsylvania's environmental regulator has told natural gas drillers not to dump waste into rivers used for drinking water. (Marketplace)

Internal Affairs will be monitoring NYC's traffic courts for evidence of ticket fixing by police. (New York Times)

Wealthy Chinese are stealthily -- and illegally -- flying helicopters. (NY Times)

Chennai (India) eyes bus rapid transit. (The Hindu)

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In case you missed it on Transportation Nation:

-- The Takeaway wants to know: how are higher gas prices affecting you? (link)

-- Florida lawmakers take on gas price gouging (link)

-- DDOT makes Terry Bellamy official (link)

-- proceedings start in Brooklyn bike lane lawsuit (link)

-- a new report says transit only works if it takes you to work (link)

Terry Bellamy, the new director of the District Department of Transportation

(Kate Hinds, Transportation Nation) DC mayor Vincent Gray today officially appointed Terry Bellamy the director of the District Department of Transportation. Bellamy, who has been with the agency since 2008, had been acting as DDOT's interim director since Gabe Klein departed the office a few months ago.   WAMU's David Shultz reports that Bellamy says his priorities will be roughly the same as his predecessor's.  "Many of the programs and activities that we've been doing have been planned for over 20 years and we'll continue to carry that forward," Bellamy says.

From the mayor's official press release (which also covers another mayoral appointment):

From the docket taped outside the Brooklyn courtroom (Kate Hinds)

(Kate Hinds, Transportation Nation) Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes/Seniors for Safety, a group that's brought suit against the city over Brooklyn's Prospect Park West bike lane, had their first appearance in court today.  Among the plaintiffs who showed up for the largely procedural hearing were former Deputy Mayor (nder David Dinkins) Norman Steisel, who's now a private consultant living near the bike lane.

But after huddling for a few minutes before the judge, the only resolution was that both sides are scheduled to meet again in court in a little over a month.

The parties spoke before the judge but out of earshot.  Jim Walden, the attorney for the plaintiffs, explained outside the courtroom that he was asking for a ruling on a motion for expedited discovery -- he wants the city Department of Transportation to provide more information on the bike lane, including safety data and internal emails.  The attorney for the city, Mark Muschenheim,  responded  "we've already provided much of what they wanted through FOIL."

When the case was called, both sides huddled before Justice Bert Bunyan, who questioned them for a few minutes -- and then adjourned the case until June 22.

The New York City Law Department released the following statement:

(Andrea Bernstein and Kate Hinds, Transportation Nation) We were swamped last week, and didn't have a chance to dig into the heroic Brookings Institution report "Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metro America."

(The head of Brookings said doing the report meant looking at  "literally billions of daily trips in the United States, 500 gigabytes of data, 100 metropolitan areas, 371 transit agencies, two staff hospitalized").

The top line -- some 70 percent of Americans have access to transit, but only 30 percent can reach their jobs within 90 minutes.   There are several reasons for this, Brookings says, beginning with the fact that  America's transit systems were primarily laid out on the spoke-and-hub model.  Think about New York City.  It's relatively easy to get to your job in Manhattan on the subway  if you live in Park Slope in Brooklyn, Elmhurst, in Queens, or Mott Haven, in the Bronx.  But what if you live in Bushwick and work in Queens, an increasingly common pattern in New York City? (This phenomenon was also documented in a recent Center for an Urban Future report.)

In the Bay Area, you can get to downtown SF more or less easily on BART or the Cal Train, but if you live in Oakland and work in Redwood City across the bay, you're not so lucky -- even where there's express bus it may be so difficult to get from your house to the bus, and then from the bus to your job, that it feels not worth it.

And those are the cities with the good transit systems.  There are other problems, the report says -- more people live and work in the suburbs, which were built only with automobile transport in mind,  and as poverty continues to move out to the suburbs, poor people find themselves increasingly reliant on cars, or on shrinking bus systems.

"You can have lots of transit, and still fail to reach a lot of regional jobs within a reasonable amount of time," writes Alan  Berube, senior fellow and research director of Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program. "Conversely, you can have modest, unsexy transit and deliver workers from their homes to a majority of regional job centers efficiently."

The report is a sobering bucket of icy water at a time when the rising price of gas is causing people to look for transit options -- at the same time many localities have cut transit entirely because of budget constraints.  And as Monday's Urban Land Institute report showed, budgetary pressure mean more of these cuts are in store.

It also comes as the federal government is expressing an anti-spending mood.

One note on the Brookings methodology -- the institution famously considers metro areas, as defined by the U.S. Census.  So New York includes a number of suburban counties with little transit (Rockland, Orange, parts of NJ, even eastern Pennsylvania).   Ergo New York ranks 13th in connecting people to jobs via transit -- while Honolulu ranks first

The report calls for making job access a key factor in transportation decision making -- as well as integrating land use, housing, and infrastructure decisions. Coinciding with the release of the report, Brookings brought together some key stakeholders -- including  Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan -- to discuss these issues. (See the video, below). And you can download a pdf of the full report here.

Senate Democrats want the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the oil industry is fixing gas prices. (Marketplace). Meanwhile, their proposal to strip oil companies of tax breaks failed in the Senate yesterday (New York Times).

Politico writes: "Republicans have a messaging problem on gas prices. More Americans actually believe in UFOs and ghosts than blame President Barack Obama for causing their pain at the pump."

Montreal's Bixi bike share program, losing money and in debt, needs financial backing from the city. (The Globe and Mail)

Auditions for NYC's "Music Under New York" program were held yesterday; WNYC stopped by to take pictures -- and audio -- of the would-be subway performers. Take a listen!

CNN Money profiles the president of Alta Bike Share, the company behind the bike share programs in Boston and DC.

Workers move closer to their jobs, take transit, buy less, as a result of gas prices:  (New York Times)

Loudoun County officials are exploring what would happen if they withdrew funding for the Metrorail extension to Dulles International Airport. (Washington Post)

The Congressional Budget Office floated a mileage tax at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on “Financing 21st Century Infrastructure.” (The Hill)

Meanwhile, at the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing for the Federal Railroad Administration's budget request, Amtrak president Joseph Boardman said the Gateway Tunnel is "critical" to high-speed rail service. He added:  "I think we're out of capacity in the Northeast Corridor...we have no place to put the New Jersey Transit trains that come into Penn Station." (Video below via Senator Lautenberg, YouTube)

The Freedom Rides turn 50 this year, and two original freedom riders talk will about that activism on today's Brian Lehrer Show. (WNYC)

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In case you missed it on Transportation Nation:

-- high fuel prices squeeze Montana agencies (link)

-- DC wants to impose fees on intercity bus industry (link)

-- DC's mayor will announce new DDOT head today (link)

Overturned construction carts outside of a construction site on West 83rd Street where two workers died on February 8 after falling down the elevator shaft from the fifth floor of a church while installing steel.

(Washington, DC -- David Schultz, WAMU) DC's Department of Transportation has not had a permanent director since Gabe Klein resigned five months ago.  (Klein is now Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Director of Transportation.) And as we reported last week, other top officials have also recently left the agency. But a change may be on the horizon: the mayor's spokesperson, Doxie McCoy,  says in an email that Mayor Vincent Gray will announce a new director for the DDOT tomorrow. Stay tuned!