Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Topics

Topics

Sustainable Transportation for 2030


Transportation plays a central role in all three of the central challenges that Mayor Michael Bloomberg said face the city over the next quarter century, as he explained during a speech that outlined his plan for New York in 2030. New York City faces:

• the addition of a million more city residents (a projection that some dispute, according to the land use topic page by Tom Angotti) -- How will a million more New Yorkers move about the city without overtaxing the roads and subways?

• an aging infrastructure -- How will the aging infrastructure of roads, bridges and subways be brought to a state of good repair?

• environmental risks -- How can motor vehicle emissions be reduced to reach environmental sustainability goals?

As the city administration scurries to publish a detailed “sustainability” plan in March, it faces a challenge all its own: How can Bloomberg make his long-term plan have lasting impact when he has less than three years left in his term of office? Will the new sustainability plan be itself sustainable into the next mayor’s term?

BIG IDEAS, DIFFERENT CHALLENGES

The mayor and his chief aid working on the plan, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, are clearly attracted to big ideas. Doctoroff championed bringing the Olympics to New York long before he imagined being a City Hall insider. Bloomberg has successfully pushed for taking control of the city schools. Bloomberg also sought and achieved major rezoning on Manhattan’s far west side and the Brooklyn waterfront that will shape development of these areas for years after he leaves office.

There is no shortage of big ideas in transportation -- subway expansions…. congestion pricing in Manhattan …a freight rail tunnel connecting Brooklyn to the mainland United States. Getting big ideas implemented in transportation presents different challenges than in schools or zoning, however, with important implications for how to design a successful approach to transportation issues.

Possible Last-Minute Derailment

For one thing, to quote Yogi Berra, it’s not over ‘till it’s over. With control of the schools or rezoning, once the Legislature or City Council acts, the deed is done. Change may come slowly to the school system, but the mayor will be in control. Development may take many years on the west side, but the new zoning will continue to encourage it.

Big ideas in transportation, in contrast, can be derailed at the last minute. The Second Avenue subway will not be assured of construction until the financing is committed. If the mayor proposes congestion pricing, his successor could scuttle the scheme if it is not actually implemented by the end of Bloomberg’s term in 2009.

Vehement Defense Of Status Quo

Another big difference between zoning and transportation is the prominence of defenders of the status quo. The West Side rezoning, for example, affects relatively few residents or offices. With transportation, changes to the use of roads are most critical where there are the most users: in the Manhattan business district, for example, and on congested highways and roads throughout the city. There are plenty of people, some within the mayor’s own administration, who will vehemently defend maintaining the chaotic status quo.

Reliance On Other Levels Of Government

A final major difference is that the mayor controls only pieces of the transportation infrastructure. He does not control the subways, bus operations or state-owned highways. Yet his goal of reducing commute times, for example, necessitates close cooperation and coordination with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

THREE SUGGESTIONS

Given the nature of the challenges, how should the mayor proceed with the transportation components of his sustainability plan? Let me offer three big ideas: fix the skewed economic incentives to drive, implement targeted transit improvements throughout the city, and make more efficient use of the limited street space in congested areas.

Create Economic Disincentives To Drive

Transportation can very much benefit from the mayor and Doctoroff’s penchant for big ideas. Current economic incentives are skewed in favor of driving since motorists do not incur the cost of delay they create for others, and many do not even pay for the bridges or tunnels they traverse or the value of the real estate they park on. Too many motorists drive simply because it IS more comfortable and convenient, and they create real costs for the city’s economy and quality of life.

The economic signals need to fixed. That means congestion pricing for the Manhattan business district. Pricing should be applied as narrowly as possible, affecting only those motorists who by driving at the busiest times and places most contribute to slowing down everyone else. I’ve outlined a plan for peak period charges inbound to Manhattan in the morning peak period, outbound in the evening peak period, and for driving anywhere in the business district midday.

The mayor has expressed worries that congestion pricing is too unpopular to get it approved. My research shows that a targeted plan, combined with other steps I’ll describe below, can win public support on the basis of being effective and fair and offering choices to motorists. Congestion pricing is a big idea which has been successful in London, Stockholm and Singapore. If tailored to New York’s needs, it can create a legacy for the mayor in transportation in New York.

The main problem with congestion pricing is the tendency to think that this one big idea is sufficient. New Yorkers are actually very sophisticated about the multifaceted nature of the traffic problem. They know that traffic congestion has many causes, and that it’s a citywide problem, so congestion pricing by itself is not enough.

Target Improvements Throughout The City

What else needs to be done? The key to making congestion pricing work is to bolster the public transportation system, especially in areas where many people use their cars. That means far better express bus service from outlying areas of the city. It means figuring out how to make the commuter railroads a meaningful part of the city’s transit system. It means adding options for drivers such as park and ride lots. And it means spreading pricing strategies outside Manhattan, in particular, through tolled express lanes on outer borough highways.

The growth of the city also means adding rail capacity to handle the additional riders. While the Second Avenue subway and #7 extension will add new track mileage to the system, cost makes system expansion an inherently limited approach. Through technology such as computer-based train control systems, however, the effective passenger capacity of existing lines can be enlarged by increasing the number of trains that can be operated through the system. The MTA is slowly implementing these new train control systems. Speeding up that implementation could expand capacity of overcrowded lines in a matter of years instead of decades.

All of this will take money, lots of money, and that’s where the second big idea comes in. The mayor will need to make a grand deal with the MTA and Port Authority on how the congestion fees are collected, who gets them, what it pays for and how the use of the money is guaranteed for the promised purposes. That grand deal would be another Bloomberg legacy.

In the most congested parts of the city from the Manhattan business district to downtown Brooklyn to Flushing, a complete package of transportation improvements should include giving priority to the most efficient uses of the public space. New York needs to accommodate growth not only underground, but also above ground. That means priority for buses, pedestrians and cyclists. The city Transportation Department declares in broad policy terms its support for new paradigms in looking at these issues, but in practice it is either slow to implement changes, or lets its historical mission of moving motor vehicles hold sway. The joint city/MTA project to implement five bus rapid transit lines, a noble effort, has been slowed by traffic engineers worried about the impact on traffic movement.

Finding the right balance is difficult, but studies aimed at finding that balance too easily lead to paralysis by analysis. The city has shown it knows a better way, as when it has implemented traffic plans for a limited period such as during the holiday season, and during the transit strike, or in a limited area such as the initial Midtown commercial parking Muni-meter program. The genius of these plans is that they are either temporary or limited in scope, so they do not undergo the time-consuming reviews to which more ambitious plans are subject.

Set In Motion Small But Efficient Steps

The mayor’s sustainability plan could expand this approach. Why not try some seemingly good ideas on a pilot basis? Measure the outcomes. Then decide whether and where to apply them permanently. Armed with real-life results, the required studies should go faster and be more credible.

A host of initiatives are amenable to this approach:

• Raise the price of metered parking to encourage turnover and expand the availability of on street parking.

• Try to make bus lanes actually exclusive to buses by installing “soft” barriers like bollards and truncated domes and “quick curbs.”

• Beef up enforcement of traffic rules like don’t-block-the-box and, for taxis, pick up and drop off only at the curb.

• Close Broadway to traffic on Sundays in the summer.

• Even restrict Broadway traffic throughout the week (my favorite idea is to alternate one-way northbound with one-way southbound operation, allowing local traffic but eliminating through traffic.)

The pilots could also lead into some of the bigger projects that are still on the drawing boards. Take, for example, the well-known bottlenecks on First and Second Avenues where the M15 bus idles away much of the day. Why wait for the end of a multi-year study of bus rapid transit to deal with this? Pilot a truly exclusive bus lane to speed the buses through that morass. Measure the results, make adjustments as necessary, and fold the changes into the bigger bus rapid transit program.

So the third big idea in the mayor’s sustainability plan should be to set in motion a series of smaller steps that will gain a momentum all their own. As New Yorkers see the benefits of these pilots, they will demand them for their own neighborhood. It’s a viral approach to transportation improvements that worked with bus rapid transit and high-tech traffic signals in Los Angeles. It’s also an approach that can make the mayor’s sustainability plan self-sustaining.

Bruce Schaller, who has been in charge of the transportation topic page since its inception in 1999, is head of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis about transportation. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University. 

Confronting the Congestion Crisis


By Gale Brewer

Two pedestrians were killed in my district on the same day last October, one by a city bus, the other by a truck. When I arrived at the scene, I was immediately struck by how the two intersections where these tragedies took place – Amsterdam and West 74th, and Broadway and West 73rd – exemplify the problem of traffic and congestion in our city. They are thronged with vehicles day and night, at levels that seem only to increase. One the one hand, some say this shows how New York is thriving; on the other, so much traffic causes inconvenience, harm to the economy and the environment and, on some days, death.

Eight in ten New Yorkers see traffic jams on city streets as a problem; half believe congestion is already unacceptable. More people are driving, and traffic in the central business district is higher than it was before 9/11, according to the Department of Transportation. Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall says that this is not a crisis, but rather a "challenge." I do believe traffic congestion is at crisis levels. To confront this, I have introduced legislation that would require city officials to set concrete goals for reducing its ill effects, and then measure how well they are doing to meet those goals.

THE COST OF CONGESTION

Increased congestion is a well-known drain on both citizens and economies. It is worse here than almost anywhere else in the country. According to the Census Bureau, New Yorkers endured the second-longest commute in the nation in 2006, and spent an average of one hundred hours a year just getting to work.

The Department of Transportation reports that, while more people are using private vehicles, there has also been a increase in the use of public transportation. This is good news. But public transportation is not immune to traffic congestion, despite city officials' attempts to improve bus lanes. As of October 2006, nine bus routes in Manhattan had average speeds below five miles per hour. The most laggard is the M14A, which crawls crosstown on 14th Street at 3.9 miles per hour – slower than most of New York’s fast-paced pedestrians.

But traffic congestion is not only about wasted time and lost productivity; congestion also degrades air quality. Motor vehicle emissions are the main contributor of hazardous air pollutants on an average day in Manhattan. Diesel emissions are known to be especially harmful, and there are many studies linking high concentrations of diesel-powered vehicles with increased respiratory disease, especially asthma. Recent studies have reported that areas of the Bronx with a high volume of diesel-powered trucks are experiencing almost epidemic levels of asthma, especially in children.

There is a way to ease such damage. A well-cited study from Atlanta reports that when the Atlanta Olympic Games prompted the city to reduce its auto use by 22.5 percent, asthma admissions to municipal hospitals simultaneously decreased by 41.6 percent, revealing the strong likelihood of a correlation between respiratory health and vehicle emissions.

The quality of social and cultural life in the city may also be threatened by traffic congestion. Transportation Alternatives, a non-profit group promoting biking and cycling in New York City, recently released a survey on " traffic's human toll," showing that residents in high-traffic neighborhoods, beset by unbearable noise, pollutants, and dangerous intersections, have a perception of their blocks that is more negative than residents of adjacent areas, and they also have fewer relationships with their neighbors, and spend less free time outdoors.

These conditions call for decisive action, but we must select carefully among many proposed solutions. That means getting a full picture of the issue at hand.

SETTING GOALS AND MEASURING PROGRESS

So what can be done to reduce congestion and the ills that it causes? First, we should initiate a well-publicized, open public debate on traffic congestion, and especially on its impacts on health, land use, housing, and economic development, and quality of life.

Reliable data will be critical to this informed discussion. City officials lack the basic information necessary to redress the current gridlock, much less plan for future growth, according to a recent report by transportation consultant (and Gotham Gazette columnist) Bruce Schaller. This information gap should be immediately addressed by wide public input, and studies and metrics of better design and implementation.

I have introduced New York’s “Traffic Information and Relief Bill” (Intro. 199), that if adopted by the City Council, would develop the metrics needed to set reasonable congestion relief targets. This way, city officials would have set goals in terms of congestion reduction, and clear ways to measure their performance in meeting these goals.

Under its terms, the Department of Transportation would adopt measurable goals in terms of commute time, pollution and noise reduction. They would constitute the core of annual performance measurements: the Department of Transportation would report twice a year to the mayor’s office and the City Council on its traffic relief efforts and achievements. The updates would also be readily accessible on New York City’s public website. The adoption of such good government practices for an urgent problem like congestion should be a standard practice of the city, an objective shared by Mayor Bloomberg in his PLANYC 2030 sustainability plan.

In addition to measuring progress on primary goals, collecting this information would give officials a better picture of the overall, helping us improve safety conditions for bikers and pedestrians by revealing weaknesses in traffic enforcement, or by telling us where to create protected bike lanes and adjust pedestrian crossing times.

CHANGES WE CAN BEGIN MAKING TODAY

Traffic relief must become a top priority for New York’s sustainability and development. We already know many incremental changes that could be started on immediately, forming part of a strategy for long-term traffic relief:

• Better street design is key, especially as the city’s senior citizens and the disabled are increasing; they will need improved street safety and access strategies.
• Larger, cleaner sidewalks with increased numbers of curb cuts are reasonable expectations for all our citizens, and have a direct impact on street safety.
• Encouraging office buildings to set aside space for bike parking, providing safe bike parking elsewhere, and creating and maintaining genuinely safe and dedicated bicycle lanes would doubtlessly foster bike riding.

Such measures should not be underestimated. While they will not alleviate the massive congestion that defines life at the city’s core, they are achievable now, cost little, and will involve citizens where they live and work. They are a simple and practical way to engage the public, to make congestion issues an everyday concern. They can show the way toward a long-term, more comprehensive approach to congestion and the city’s wellbeing.

Gale A. Brewer represents the Upper West Side in the City Council. Fabrice Aubert, a policy aide to the council member, assisted in writing this article.

Lessons From The Number 7 Train Extension


With the sale of $2 billion in bonds in December, the financing for construction of the West Side extension to the No. 7 subway line is in place, and construction will begin later this year. The project will extend the No. 7 line from Times Square to a new subway station near the Javits Center at Eleventh Avenue and West 34th Street. An intermediate station, at Tenth Avenue and West 41st Street, has been discussed but is not currently funded.

The Number 7 extension was once merely one item on a laundry list of possible transit improvements. Now it has leapt past such long-discussed mega projects as the Second Avenue Subway in the journey from planners’ dream to reality. What happened to bring this about? What are the lessons for getting other big transportation projects done?

One key to the No. 7 extension’s fast progress involved the financing. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, champions of the project, recognized early on that the 7 extension would go nowhere if it had to compete for funding with the Second Avenue subway, connection of the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal, airport rail access projects, a new tunnel from New Jersey, replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge and other mega projects. Thus, they developed a novel funding method. The bonds issued last month, and another set of bonds to be issued in several years, will be paid off using payments made to City Hall in lieu of taxes by new residential, retail and office development on the West Side, payments for development rights in the eastern part of Hudson rail yards themselves, and from other taxes collected from the area. Having its own funding source was immensely important to bringing the 7 extension along.

Is this funding approach transferable to other projects? The city’s budget director, Mark Page, was skeptical when he addressed this question at a Bond Buyer’s conference in December. Page cited the unique circumstances of the far West Side development – the combination of the need for office space, proximity to Midtown and public investment in the area – as casting doubt that this financing plan could become a model to be replicated elsewhere in the city.

Part Of A Larger Goal

Other projects are indeed unlikely to replicate this funding structure. Yet there is a larger point that bears attention. The 7 extension was seen as critical to a bigger plan that involved development of the far West Side and Javits Center expansion. One lesson is thus that it is easier to get transportation projects to move forward when they are linked to broader goals.

A second lesson is that the benefits of accomplishing those goals – in this case, office, commercial and residential development of a declining industrial area – helping finance the transportation project itself. This is a critical point. Traditional sources of transportation funding are fuel-related taxes, motor vehicle fees, sales taxes, federal funds and voter-approved bonds. Using these sources, the beneficiary of the project pays, but so does everyone else.

What if the beneficiary were to pay? What if, for example, increased property taxes were used to finance a portion of the cost of the Second Avenue Subway? What if a similar arrangement were considered for downtown property that would benefit from direct rail access to JFK?

How would that work?

Funding Approaches

One approach is called tax increment financing (for more on TIFs, see this Independent Budget Office report). The problem with TIFs is defining the very generalized benefits from projects such as improved commuter rail access to the East Side. How do you identify and capture a portion of the flow of financial benefits?

Another approach to innovative financing involves various forms of public-private partnerships. One local example is the International Arrival Terminal at JFK Airport, where a private company invested $1.4 billion to construct a new passenger terminal in exchange for a 25-year concession. The private operator will collect user fees from the airlines using the terminal. Another rather spectacular example was a concession agreement for the Skyway Bridge in Chicago, which generated $1.83 billion for the City of Chicago. Officials in New Jersey are discussing such partnerships for the New Jersey Turnpike.

The State Transportation Department has pushed for “Transportation Development Partnerships,” which allow private investment in infrastructure projects although the public agency retains ownership. State Transportation Department staff have suggested that Transportation Development Partnerships could be used to build new highway lanes, replace the Tappan Zee Bridge or build new rail service. Such private-sector involvement is currently prohibited under state law, however.

Although the discussions do not explicitly make this point, under any private sector investment users of the facility will have to pay tolls or other charges in order for the private entity to recoup its investment.

Acting On Opportunities, Not Reacting To Problems

Another lesson from the 7 extension involves the merits of acting on opportunities. Local government tends to be reactive to problems. The far West Side development is an excellent example of government officials – in this case, fresh from the private sector – recognizing a huge opportunity for the city. This refreshing approach could be applied in other areas. Why, for example, ask whether traffic is bad enough to institute congestion pricing (discussed here last month)? Why not ask whether there isn’t a great opportunity to improve the quality of life in New York through less traffic, less noise, less pollution, greater safety, and greater funding for transportation improvements? Thinking in terms of opportunities frames the discussion around ways of making the city better and more attractive rather than bogging down in a debate over whether we can continue to tolerate long-standing problems.

The Need To Address Risk

A final lesson from the No. 7 extension is the need to address risk. City officials guaranteed payment on the bonds, using general fund revenues if necessary. One of the final decisions to be made was the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s agreement to pay for any cost overruns that exceed $100 million, an amount that City Hall agreed to pick up. The MTA has expressed confidence that it can manage the project within budget, although the Independent Budget Office’s deputy director, George Sweeting, testified before the City Council in October that “the likelihood of costs overruns are high”, considering that construction costs are increasing at 1 percent per month.

Whether the MTA should have accepted this risk is now a moot point. The need to bear – and ultimately to manage – financial risks, however, are an inherent part of any large construction project.

So in fact, the No. 7 extension does have some lessons for other projects, particularly those in desperate need of funding, such as airport rail access, a freight tunnel under the harbor, putting the Gowanus expressway replacement underground, or the Tappan Zee Bridge.

In his State of the State address, Governor Eliot Spitzer mentioned reform of the Wicks Law, which mandates cumbersome contracting procedures and is viewed as driving up costs. It remains to be seen whether the new governor puts more far-reaching changes such as private-public partnerships on his already bulging legislative agenda.

Bruce Schaller, who has been in charge of the transportation topic page since its inception in 1999, is head of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis about transportation. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University. 



Print Friendly and PDF

Editor's Choice


Gotham Gazette: New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
Gotham Gazette: 
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
Gotham Gazette: 
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Gotham Gazette: 
City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years