Big Funding Plan Offered in Hartford
Speaker of the
Connecticut House of Representatives James Amann is
aggressively pushing a $2.5N revenue plan to fund a
list of priority transportation capacity projects.
Corzine Team Looks to Fare Hike After Passing on Taxes,
Tolls
In conversations connected with Governor Corzine's
new plan to refinance New Jersey's transportation fund,
NJ Transit has mentioned several times that it will
soon seek fare increases.
Bill Strengthens NJ Fix-It First Principle
If passed
next week, New Jersey's Transportation Trust Fund legislation
will strengthen New Jersey's commitment to smart growth.
Tolls on CT's Table?
Other legislation pending in Hartford
directs the state transportation commissioner to prepare
a report by January, 2007 outlining a plan to levy
road tolls on Interstates 95, 91, 84, and 395.
Stadium Parking Problem Getting Through?
The NYC Council
postponed a meeting of its Sub-committee on Planning
and Concessions this week.
Brooklyn Unites for Better Transportation?
Brooklynites
need to press Mayor Bloomberg for transportation plans
in development-stressed Brooklyn, the Tri-State Transportation
Campaign told 200 attendees at a Park Slope Civic Council
forum last week.
City Preparing Big-Picture Plan?
NYC Deputy Mayor Daniel
Doctoroff has announced that the Bloomberg administration
is compiling a report on infrastructure needs to handle
the city's growing population.
Officials Demand North Brooklyn Plan
In February, the
Greenpoint Star reported on the latest efforts of the
Tri-State Transportation Campaign and elected officials
in northern Brooklyn's Greenpoint-Williamsburg to secure
a transportation study for the area, which is likely
to see a population increase of 20% or more in coming
years.
What's in a Lane?
On March 1st, Governor Pataki put
regulations in place allowing energy efficient cars
with only one occupant to use the high occupancy vehicle
lanes on the Long Island Expressway.
Federal Transit Commute Benefit - It Works
The latest
edition of TransitCenter's newsletter reported that
commuter benefits help reduce the number of people
who drive to work.
Big Funding Plan Offered in Hartford
Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives
James Amann is aggressively pushing a $2.5 billion
revenue plan to fund a list of priority transportation
capacity projects. Amann testified in favor of his
bill in the legislature’s joint Transportation
Committee Wednesday, echoing growing sentiment across
the state that “the people in this room have
to stand up and have the guts to do what’s needed” – raise
a lot of money for transportation projects. Amann’s
plan is premised on a 1-for-1 federal match, for a
$5 billion, 10-year package.
State funds would be raised through additional increases
in the petroleum gross receipts tax and general obligation
borrowing. A $1.3 billion financing plan for new rail
cars and other improvements to the Metro-North New
Haven Line proposed by Governor Jodi Rell and enacted
last year will raise the tax to 8.1% by 2016. (MTR
#490). Amann’s plan would increase it gradually
to 10.8% by 2016, almost double today’s rate
of 5.8%.
The priority projects are those identified several
years ago by the state’s Transportation Strategy
Board, and include some commuter rail and bus rapid
transit investments, but also extensive highway expansion
plans, including widening I-95 in eastern CT and building
a State Route 11 extension along a new alignment in
a relatively undeveloped area northwest of New London.
The funding package attracted broad support in the
state, with construction unions and business groups
rallying before the hearing.
Connecticut Fund for the Environment supported the
measure based on the strong presence of mass transit
in the project list. The $5 billion funding level,
if enacted, is insufficient to construct the entire
list, and environmentalists and smart growth advocates
are expected to push the transit elements in the mix
of projects. CFE’s statement stressed New Haven
to Springfield rail development and bus rapid transit
projects around Hartford, and urged stronger looks
at transportation-efficient planning and high-speed
toll applications.
The Tri-State Transportation Campaign testified that
Connecticut will never successfully chase traffic congestion
with new road capacity, and needs to change its overall
planning approach to minimize the generation of future
automobile trips. The Campaign summarized the NJ DOT’s
corridor plans that are formulated in cooperation with
municipalities.
Amann’s bill competes with new legislation
offered by Governor Rell and the State Senate. Rell’s
$344 million plan emphasizes transit projects, and
she says it can be accomplished with existing state
revenues. Senate President Donald Williams has crafted
a $1.86 billion program that includes transit ideas
for eastern Connecticut, an area the Strategy Board
has slated for massive highway capacity investments.
Williams is interested in a passenger rail line from
New London to Worcester, Massachusetts. It would provide
a link between the MBTA and CT’s Shore Line East
rail service. Most of the overlap between the various
funding schemes is in mass transit projects, which
may be hopeful.
Much of Connecticut’s focus on transportation
in recent years has created an odd institutional arrangement
whereby the Transportation Strategy Board (TSB) has
emerged as a policy-making body parallel to the Connecticut
Dept. of Transportation. The Strategy Board is increasingly
in control of capital funding for the projects it proposes – Amann’s
bill, for instance, creates a new Undersecretary for
Transit & Growth in the powerful executive Office
of Policy and Management and vests all of the new revenues
in the TSB. The position would direct the Transportation
Strategy Board and its capital budget, essentially
functioning as a second, independent transportation
commissioner. If the state wants to get transportation
right, it will soon need to merge these functions back
into a reformed ConnDOT and undertake a thorough look
at how that agency using existing state transportation
resources.
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Corzine Team Looks to Fare Hike After Passing on
Taxes, Tolls
In conversations connected with Governor Corzine’s
new plan to refinance New Jersey’s transportation
fund, NJ Transit has mentioned several times that it
will soon seek fare increases. But at recent legislative
hearings on the governor’s proposal, the Tri-State
Transportation Campaign and Regional Plan Association
testified that raising transit fares after refusing
to increase gas taxes, vehicle registration fees or
Turnpike tolls is bad policy.
“We find it ridiculous to raise fees on only
one sector of the traveling public, especially those
that cause less damage to the environment or, in the
case of bus riders, tend to have lower incomes than
their driving counterparts,” said the Campaign.
At a recent NJ Transit board meeting, the NJ Association
of Rail Passengers also warned Governor Corzine and
NJ Transit it would fight fare hikes until the state
has put its transportation finances on secure, long-term
footing.
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Bill Strengthens NJ Fix-It First Principle
If passed next week, New Jersey’s Transportation
Trust Fund legislation will strengthen New Jersey’s
commitment to smart growth.
The first draft of S. 1470, the Senate bill that
codifies Governor Corzine’s transportation refinancing
plan (MTR #521), contained language that would have
undercut the fix-it-first mandates put in place during
the Trust Fund reauthorization in 2000. The fix-it-first
mandate focused capital investment on existing roads
and bridges and reduced spending on new highway capacity.
Prior to a recent Senate committee advocates for
the NJ Environmental Federation, the Sierra Club and
the Coalition for Affordable Housing joined with the
Campaign to win stronger language codifying the fix-it-first
principle. Senate staff on both sides of the aisle
agreed to the change.
The legislation approved by the Senate Budget & Appropriations
Committee limits road expansion projects to 4% of NJ
DOT’s annual capital budget.
The Assembly Transportation Committee approved similar
legislation on Thursday. The full Senate will vote
on the bill Monday; the full Assembly will vote Thursday.
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Tolls on CT's Table?
Other legislation pending in Hartford directs the
state transportation commissioner to prepare a report
by January, 2007 outlining a plan to levy road tolls
on Interstates 95, 91, 84 and 395.
Legislators from Fairfield County backing the idea
want some of the money plowed back into the state transportation
system, and some devoted to increased local transportation
aid to help towns struggling to meet road budgets and
other local improvements. They also seem interested
in high-speed E-ZPass toll applications like those
operating in New Jersey and coming to the NY State
Thruway. There are still foes to tolling among lawmakers,
but House of Representatives Speaker James Amann is
no longer among them. He recently changed his mind
on the issue and vocally supports tolls to support
greater transportation capital spending, a position
he reiterated at Wednesday’s Transportation Committee
hearing.
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Stadium Parking Problems Getting Through?
The NYC City Council postponed a meeting of its Sub-committee
on Planning and Concessions this week. The Council
was supposed to hear the Bloomberg administration/NY
Yankees land use application for their Yankee Stadium
redevelopment project. Council member Maria del Carmen
Arroyo, representing the district containing the stadium,
told the NY Sun Thursday that the Bronx delegation “had
several questions neither the Parks Dept. nor the administration
could answer.” She told the paper that the city
had not provided information about how it will address
the problem of additional traffic attracted by added
parking capacity.
The Tri-State Campaign and parks and Bronx advocacy
organizations have criticized the stadium plan for
adding thousands of new parking spaces without a demonstrable
need for them. The city has justified the increase
as a way to prevent baseball fans from parking in neighborhoods,
and implausibly claims that a giant hike in parking
capacity will not attract a single new car trip.
But the plan has no mechanism to prevent continued
parking in the neighborhood, nor does it link the scale
of that problem with the nearly 75% increase in parking
the project seeks. The new stadium will have fewer
seats than the present one, and the Yankees set an
all-time American League attendance record last year
with their current transportation arrangements. Most
of the new parking garages will displace or degrade
scarce South Bronx parkland.
That the Bloomberg team could not answer basic questions
about this large feature of the project suggests a
shoddy approach to planning.
The city’s final environmental impact statement
for the new stadium lamely states that parking provision
and fan travel behavior are not related, because Shea
Stadium provides a huge amount of parking but sees
a greater share of patrons using mass transit than
does Yankee Stadium. However, the document provides
no information on Shea parking capacity or transit
share to back up the assertion, which flatly contradicts
information the Tri-State Campaign collected from NYC
Transit on stadium travel a year ago. The Bloomberg
administration has so far not responded to our request
for data to support the statement.
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Brooklyn Unites for Better Transportation?
Brooklynites need to press Mayor Bloomberg for transportation
plans in development-stressed Brooklyn, the Tri-State
Transportation Campaign told 200 attendees at a Park
Slope Civic Council forum last week. The forum was
meant to discuss what Brooklyn’s population and
development boom, with major projects like the Atlantic
Yards, and the rezoning of Williamsburg-Greenpoint
and Downtown Brooklyn will mean for the borough’s
already crowded roads, subways, buses, and sidewalks.
Project for Public Spaces’ Fred Kent and Karla
Quintero from Transportation Alternatives spoke about
the need to reclaim New York City streets for pedestrians,
and the large community costs of too much traffic.
Brooklyn’s population is projected to increase
by 11% to 2.8 million by 2030. The Campaign found that
since 1999, ridership at many Brooklyn subway stations
is growing at two-to-three times citywide averages.
And for every two trucks on the street today, a third
will be added by 2020. Traffic in general may increase
around 8% by 2025, on top of significant increases
in the past decade.
No government agency has plans to deal with the transportation
impacts of this development, and no overall transportation
planning currently takes place in New York City. How
can Brooklyn get the solutions it needs? Tri-State’s
Jon Orcutt suggested that community advocates cut through
the alphabet soup of agencies and blurred lines of
accountability by targeting Mayor Bloomberg — who
has made development a signature issue — and
demand that he focus city agencies and NYC Transit
on projects and planning principles to accommodate
Brooklyn’s growth. Staten Island leaders, for
example, made traffic problems a front page issue,
and the Mayor responded with a transportation task
force for the borough (MTR #519).
The city must also be forced to offer factual and
honest transportation analyses of development projects—recent
city studies for the West Side Stadium and Yankees
Stadium, for example, have been at best weak on transportation
impacts.
Potential steps to unclog Brooklyn’s roads
and transit could include Brooklyn subway projects
in the MTA’s next capital program (2009-2014),
bus rapid transit corridors, traffic calming to prohibit
trucks on certain residential streets, residential
parking permits, and zoning to limit parking construction
in denser, transit-rich areas.
None of these are likely unless Brooklyn civic and
elected leaders create a unified platform and push
the mayor. Hopefully, the Park Slope forum will mark
the starting point of a coalition unified to win transportation
investments for Brooklyn.
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City Preparing Big-Picture Plan?
NYC Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff has announced that
the Bloomberg administration is compiling a report
on infrastructure needs to handle the city’s
growing population. Little is known about the effort,
but city leaders have told the NY Times and other outlets
that transportation, sewer and energy infrastructure
needs will be addressed, and that the study will be
released this spring.
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Officials Demand North Brooklyn Plan
In February, the Greenpoint Star reported on the latest
efforts of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and
elected officials in northern Brooklyn’s Greenpoint-Williamsburg
to secure a transportation study for the area, which
is likely to see a population increase of 20% or more
in coming years.
When the Campaign suggested a study to DOT Commissioner
Iris Weinshall a year ago, she dismissed it, noting
that the traffic mitigations in the city’s recent
rezoning action were enough. She also noted that L
line service – which has already reached crowding
levels projected for year 2011 – is outside DOT’s
purview (MTR # 510).
But elected officials representing the area – Congresswoman
Nydia Velázquez, State Senator Martin Malave
Dilan, Assemblyman Joe Lentol, and Council Members
Diana Reyna and David Yassky – wrote to Weinshall
last December, asking that she reconsider. They urged
the city DOT to take a big-picture look at transportation,
noting that the subway system’s ability to respond
to rapidly changing demographic conditions is limited,
which argues “strongly in favor of pro-active
forecasting of likely transit capacity needs, greater
city government involvement in the development of MTA
capital priorities and the likely street congestion
effects of growth that overwhelms current levels of
subway service. Unfortunately, your letter seems to
suggest waiting for problems to occur before thinking
about and planning to avoid them."
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What's in a Lane?
On March 1st, Governor Pataki put regulations in place
allowing energy efficient cars with only one-occupant
to use the high occupancy vehicle lanes on the Long
Island Expressway. The regulations will apply only
to cars that get 45 miles or more per gallon on highways,
excluding many hybrid SUVs. To use the lane, drivers
register for “Clean Pass” stickers with
the state Department of Motor Vehicles.
In New York City, City Council members are also reportedly
interested in legislation to allow hybrid-powered taxis
to use city bus lanes. It is unclear whether this would
apply to all city bus lanes, such as those on Madison
Ave., that already badly suffer from illegal taxi use.
Some Council members also sponsored a resolution in
2003 that asked the MTA and Port Authority to reduce
tolls for alt-fuel vehicles, but fortunately, the measure
was dropped.
Opening high occupancy lanes to new-technology cars
is often discussed but essentially represents a confusion
of anti-congestion and anti-pollution policies. It
poses a number of problems, especially in New York.
First, already spotty enforcement becomes more difficult—with
city taxis especially, it will be difficult to distinguish
efficient cabs from others, and on highways, small
CleanPass stickers will also be tough to make out.
The NY State transportation dept. in fact agrees. DOT
spokesperson Eileen Peters told Newsday in 2005 the
DOT would not consider hybrids in the L.I.E. HOV lane
because of the enforcement problem.
Second, if the pro-hybrid rules and other, stronger
factors like fuel prices succeed in building hybrids’ market
share, the lanes may fill with clean single-occupant
vehicles and bog down. In Virginia, where similar rules
were put in place, there is now pressure to repeal
them, because HOV lanes are now as congested as regular
travel lanes. In New York City, two-per-car vehicles
have bogged down lanes on the Gowanus and the L.I.E.
approach to the Midtown Tunnel to such an extent that
the rules are now three-per-car, as well as bus-only
at the Lincoln Tunnel and Staten Island Expressway.
In California, energy efficient cars are allowed
to drive in HOV lanes, but the state smartly put a
time limit on the rules, so it could reevaluate the
plans if market share for the cleaner vehicles expands
to the point that the priority lanes grind to a halt.
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Federal Transit Commute Benefit - It Works
The latest edition of TransitCenter’s newsletter
reported that commuter benefits help reduce the number
of people who drive to work. A new Transportation Research
Board report looked at 21 metropolitan areas, and found
that generally transit ridership increased after the
implementation of commuter benefit programs. The benefits
allow employees to buy transit passes with pre-tax,
gross earnings, potentially saving them hundreds in
tax dollars annually, and are known as TransitChek,
WageWorks, or MetroPool in the tri-state region.
Cities with a sizable existing transit riderships,
like New York and Philadelphia understandably saw lower
percentage increases. Still, worksites measured in
New York saw a 16% increase in transit use, and 14%
of transit benefit recipients were new to transit.
Cities with a small overall share of transit riders,
like Atlanta and Los Angeles saw some of the highest
increases, 126% and 72% respectively.
The study had some notable findings:
- Ten to forty percent of those who received the
benefit were new to transit;
- Most of the new transit riders previously commuted
to work alone in an automobile;
- The transit benefit led to an increase in frequency
of transit use among existing transit riders.
For more, see www.trb.org, Report 107.
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