Transportation Nation

(Washington, DC - David Schultz, WAMU News) As we've previously mentioned, Ray LaHood is on a roll at the U.S. Department of Transportation. But some people are wondering whether he's on something else entirely.

Since LaHood took office as President Obama's Secretary of Transportation little more than a year ago, he has transformed the way federal highway projects are funded; he's aggressively gone after Toyota for its well-publicized accelerator problems; and now he's changing the way the federal government views cyclists and pedestrians.

In a statement issued last month, LaHood said his department would now work to "incorporate safe and convenient walking and bicycling facilities into transportation projects.". As we reported when he made the announcement, LaHood is saying, in effect, when it comes to transportation policy, bikes are cars, too. More or less. It's a radical change from previous Department of Transportation policy. And it's a change that the automotive industry - along with the Congressmen who represent it - can't believe.

"Is that a typo?" an incredulous Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio) asked recently of Transportation Undersecretary Roy Keinitz during a Congressional hearing. As it turns out, LaTourette isn't a huge fan of the new policy.

"If it's not a typo, is there still mandatory drug testing at the department?" LaTourette asked.

(April 15, 2010 - Bronx, NY)  The Obama Administration's healthcare reform bill will be setting up insurance exchanges, making young adults eligible for coverage and ending things like lifetime caps on coverage and exclusions for people with pre-existing conditions.  But it also offers $15 billion for little things to make communities more livable.  Things like parks, bike paths and sidewalks -- ways to get around, be active and hopefully avoid illness.  Marketplace's Gregory Warner takes a walk around the South Bronx to see what change might look like.

Courtesy: Nc3d Newlands & Company, Inc.

(April 15, Collin Campbell, Transportation Nation) -- Last week, when I visited my home town, the lead story every day in the San Mateo Times -- the newspaper that I delivered as a kid -- cast doubts on California's high-speed rail plans.  Over the last two years, this proposal has been a meteor -- state residents passed a $9.95 billion bond measure in 2008.  In January, the plan got more funding from the Obama Administration than any other high-speed rail route.  The nation anointed the SF-LA train as the white knight of high-speed rail.

Native Californians, or at least the cynical subset I belong to, have seen this storyline before.  And it doesn't always end well.

Land use issues, from NIMBY-ism to environmental reviews are legendary in California.  And the games have begun, in haste.  Today, the San Jose Mercury News is reporting on an effort to repeal state funding for the rail.  It's a long shot, to be sure -- backers would need 700,000 signatures to put something on the ballot, and it's too late to make this happen by November, when Tea Party and anti-Washington spending moods may reach a peak. 

Courtesy WMATA.com

I’m not terribly adept at math, so I double checked this on my calculator to make sure it was right: when something increases by 300 percent, that means it quadruples.

I needed to know this for a story I was doing on transit services for people with disabilities. In the D.C. region, the costs of providing transportation to people who are physically unable to ride trains or buses have increased by 300 percent over the past decade. They have quadrupled.

The bearer of these costs is Metro, Washington D.C.’s public transit agency. The federal Americans with Disabilities Act requires all transit agencies to provide people with disabilities a para-transit service. Metro calls its service MetroAccess.

The bearer of these costs is Metro, Washington D.C.'s public transit agency. The federal Americans with Disabilities Act requires all transit agencies to provide people with disabilities a para-transit service. Metro calls its service MetroAccess. 

(Syracuse, NY - Transportation Nation) On the window sill next to Captain Shannon Trice's desk, there's a toy cop car. Instead of the badge of the Syracuse Police Department, where he's worked for the last 20 years, it has the logo of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Trice is a traffic nerd.  He's worked on a bunch of federal-state-local programs, reads the studies.  The toy car is one of a few awards he's won for traffic safety programs.  He's a modest man, but you can almost get him to brag about how many tickets he's written as part of New York State's "Click It or Ticket" program -- something he does for an hour now and then just to get out of the office.  He has served long enough to see the difference his work has made.

But Trice and the Syracuse PD are now taking on a new challenge.

(New York - WNYC)  The Metropolitan Transportation Authority here is letting go of 450 station agents this spring because of its budget crisis. There are many New Yorkers who wonder what these people were supposed to be doing anyway, considering that they stopped selling tokens years ago and ticket vending machines were installed instead.

An unstaffed booth, like many more to come. (Photo: Stephen Nessen)

But they are invaluable for parents who want to take their strollers through service gates, for tourists who need directions, and for subway riders who don’t want to use their credit cards in machines.

The people that station agents now serve are outliers who need a human touch in an increasingly mechanized transit system. But in a city of 8 million, it turns out there are a lot of outliers. They are slowly learning to adapt—but they aren’t happy about it. WNYC brings us a report from Matthew Schuerman and a photo essay from Stephen Nessen.

(Houston - KUHF News Lab)  We reported last month on Houston's high ratings as an affordable place to live.  But what goes into an equation like that, from housing prices to work salaries to taxes, is fluid.  A new group is challenging traditional views of those ratings, and adding transportation costs to the mix.  From the KUHF NewsLab, Melissa Galvez reports.

The Metro Bus map, showing service to SE Washington

(Washington, DC - WAMU) Metro is the affectionate nickname for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. It operates the network of buses and subways that course throughout the District of Columbia and its environs. If you've ever lived in or visited the nation's capital, you're probably a Metro rider.

It would be an understatement to say that Metro is undergoing a difficult episode in its nearly 40-year history. In June of last year, two of its trains collided during rush hour, killing eight passengers and the operator of one of the trains. In the nine months since, there have been a handful of high-profile accidents, several of which resulted in the deaths of Metro employees. Metro riders' confidence in the system as a whole is not terribly high right now.

That makes this a horrible time to propose a laundry list of fare increases and service cuts. But Metro, like other transit systems across the country, was hit hard by the recession. To balance its budget for the fiscal year starting in July, Metro must shrink by nearly $200 million dollars.  So propose it did.

(Collin Campbell)

(Chimney Rock, VT - Transportation Nation) - Many people who live around Lake Champlain remember where they were when they got the news.

For Tim Kayhart, it was 2 p.m. on October 16th.  He was chopping corn in a field next to the Champlain Bridge in Addison, Vermont. A neighbor pulled over, walked up to him in the field and told him the span had just been closed for good; scheduled for demolition.  "It felt like a brick wall," Kayhart said.

Tim Kayhart and his brother have 1,7000 acres split between New York and Vermont. The livestock, feed and fertilizer they once shuttled over the bridge will now have to go by ferry across Lake Champlain.

Kayhart’s mother and father bought the dairy farm that he and his brother now work on in 1979.  Their collection of cows and a handful of red barns sits about half a mile from where a bridge used to be. As the business grew, the Kayharts shopped for more space in New York. The land was cheaper, the soil was better and they settled on a property four miles away, across the lake. The two farms came to work so well together that they trucked manure from the cows in Vermont to fertilize fields in New York.

On October 16, the New York State Department of Transportation said a recent inspection of piers that supported the bridge found they were no longer structurally sound.  The bridge would be closed immediately.  In that instant, the distance between Kayhart's farms went from four miles to 150 miles, via a long drive around the southern end of the lake. 

(Houston - KUHF News Lab)  Houston's traffic is stuck in the top 10 worst metro areas.  In the search for alternatives, eleven thousand commuters have been drawn out of cars and into a Park and Ride bus system.  It's a quiet, cheap ride that has those using it asking for more buses and weekend service.  KUHF's Wendy Siegle steps aboard a service in high-demand.

(Houston - KUHF) - Triple-digit temperatures and summer storms make biking tough in Houston.  But the city is still pressing forward with a decades-long plan for bike trails and roadside amenities to encourage car-loving Texans to consider other ways to get around.  With Google Maps expanding its popular online directions to bike routes, KUHF's Melissa Galvez took to two wheels on her way to work, and took a microphone along for the ride.

(Washington, DC - WAMU) In the political parlance of our times, a contentious public policy problem is called a "third rail" issue. Like a railway's electrified third rail, if you dare touch these issues, you're going to get hurt. Think abortion, Social Security, health care, et. al.

But this metaphor takes on new meaning when talking about public transit, perhaps the ultimate third rail issue.

Dozens of people rallied against DC Metro's proposed budget cuts and fare hikes at a church in Capitol Heights, MD. (Photo: David Schultz, WAMU)

At this moment, cities and states across the country are having to make painful decisions about the future of their trains, buses and trolleys. A cursory Google search of the words "transit budget cuts" shows how widespread the pain is: the very first page of search results includes news stories from California, Texas, Washington state, Chicago, New Jersey and New York. (And that's just the first page!)

Washington D.C.'s vaunted Metro transit system is certainly not immune. It's staring down a $189 million budget gap. Barring an unprecedented grant from the federal government or an accounting gimmick that almost no one thinks is a good idea, there are only two ways the system can close that gap: through fare increases and/or service cuts.  Metro's proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 contains lots of that: fare hikes of up to 29 percent and reductions in services that could make transit in the nation's capital nearly unrecognizable.

(Houston - KUHF News Lab) In the next 30 years, Houston is expected to add 3.5 million people.  It's a planning challenge on all levels, especially transportation.  How will Houston bill ways to get to work that encourage people to reconsider roads?  That's the subject of a year-long study now underway, as city officials get ready for the newcomers.  KUHF's Wendy Siegle reports on what planners will be looking at and how the public is giving its input.

(San Francisco - KALW) In October 2009, a temporary device engineers made to hold the San Francisco Bay Bridge together broke.  Hundreds of pounds of metal fell onto the lanes of Interstate 80, and one of the busiest crossings in the Bay Area.  No one was injured, but it was terrifying for commuters to realize that the engineers whom they count on to keep the bridge safe had made a mistake.  KALW Transportation Reporter Nathanael Johnson looks into how the event happened, who was responsible, and what was being done to prevent future errors.  He's interviewed by KALW host Hana Baba:

Kathleen Horan, WNYC

(WNYC) -- The City of New York has revealed that it believes the majority of licensed taxi drivers have been involved in a scheme to overcharge passengers. More than 35,000 drivers are accused of charging in-town passengers an out-of-town rate.  But taxi drivers are crying foul, saying they've been tarred with too broad a brush.  WNYC's Kathleen Horan visited with the Big Apple's heralded "hacks."

NJ governor Chris Christie is trying to bridge a nearly $11 billion budget gap. He presented his 2011 budget last night (above).

As states struggle to close epic budget gaps, public transit systems are yet another item on ever-growing chopping lists. From New Jersey, where Governor Christie wants to pare $32.7 million from NJ Transit to Kansas City, Missouri, where officials are looking at cutting back transit service by one-third, to California, $20 billion deficit; don’t ask, state legislatures are making draconian decisions. In some cases, they're also trying to backpedal on previously allocated funds. And why not? Other essential public services are also being slashed, and funding a transit system is difficult in the best of financial times.

Since 1998, federal transportation funding has focused on capital projects, not operating expenses, especially for cities of over 200,000 people. This was ever so slightly relaxed last year, when a supplemental was passed that allowed up to 10 percent of stimulus funding to be used for operating expenses. (This may help some states for a brief period of time – until they go over the same “stimulus funding cliff” as many state education departments.) But with automakers’ waning political influence, as well as Henry Waxman, not John Dingell, in the driver’s seat of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and with a change in the Obama Administration’s funding criteria, is it time to reopen a dialog about a stable source of transit funding? 

(WNYC) New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is planning to cut back on the discounts that students receive to travel to and from school. Officials say those discounts are an education expense and should be covered entirely by the state and city. But a lot of other transit agencies around the country help out at least somewhat with school fares, and are continuing to despite their budget difficulties. The MBTA in the Boston area actually expanded the use of student passes until 11 p.m. last year. The idea was to turn today’s teenagers into tomorrow’s transit advocates. -- Matthew Schuerman, WNYC

Here's a chart on how other cities share the cost.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood at the 2010 National Bike Summit.  (Thanks: flickr user bikeportland (cc:by-nc-nd)

Okay, that isn’t exactly what he said.  But U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today issued what he’s calling “a major policy revision, a sea change.  People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”

The statement declares that “the DOT policy is to incorporate safe and convenient walking and bicycling facilities into transportation projects. Every transportation agency, including DOT, has the responsibility to improve conditions and opportunities for walking and bicycling and to integrate walking and bicycling into their transportation systems.”

It’s not immediately clear what the new policy statement will mean, practically, since most roads are controlled by state DOT’s.  And whether USDOT will use the power of the purse to force state planners to add bike lanes to say, the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York or Bay Bridge in San Francisco remains unclear.  

It's a truism that Chambers of Commerce - those tireless advocates for local businesses -  are nearly always opposed to raising taxes. So it was surprising to hear a Chamber president say this:

"There is no way possible to fund the solutions necessary to improve our transportation systems ... without finding new revenue sources. And 'revenue sources' are what other people call 'taxes.'"

That was Tony Howard, president of the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce. Loudoun is located in Northern Virginia, 45 miles from Washington D.C. In the past decade and a half, it's been transformed from rural horse country into a rapidly-expanding suburb.

But with that rapid expansion has come nightmarish traffic congestion. It's not uncommon for Loudounites to commute up to two hours each way in and out of the District. The traffic study group INRIX recently announced that commuters in the D.C. region experience the 3rd longest highway delays in the nation, up from 8th two years ago.

This affects the people who live in Loudoun, of course, but it also affects businesses located there. The daily traffic jams add a degree of difficulty to some of the most basic office functions: scheduling meetings, receiving shipments and - most acutely - hiring and retention. 

Among the projects picked for federal stimulus spending, Florida's Orlando-Tampa high-speed rail route was a curious place to put $1.25 billion. After all, it's Florida, and the 90-mile route runs through counties President Obama fought over tight margins of victory and defeat. So are the voters of Polk County, smack in between Orlando and Tampa, swayed by a stop on the federally-funded transit future? Transportation Nation's Collin Campbell went to find out and reports back for The Takeaway with John Hockenberry and Celeste Headlee.