citymaus

“As Nicholas Dagen Bloom, a professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College, describes in his new book, The Great American Transit Disaster, US public transportation has lurched from one crisis to the next throughout the past century. 

“Americans ignored transit problems and created cities favorable to cars thanks to public policy choices rather than inevitability or secret conspiracies. The same mobility, planning, and social decisions are before Americans today as they face the challenges of meeting equity goals and a global climate crisis.”

“- In the book you wrote, “It's uncomfortable to admit it, but American political representatives have kneecapped mass transit.” So transit’s decline was not inevitable?

Correct. You didn’t have to build systems of parkways and highways that were so comprehensive that you sacrifice neighborhoods. You didn’t have to completely demolish your downtowns, create massive federal programs that paid for parking ramps and give tax breaks on downtown parking. These are political choices.

- In city after city, you tell a similar story about a decline in transit revenues leading to higher fares and poor service, which leads more people to leave, forcing still higher fares and worse service. Why was it so hard for the agencies to pull out of these downward spirals?

Remember that in the 1930s transit was still run by private companies, with a few exceptions like Boston, San Francisco and New York. So there was a hope even within the private companies that service could somehow reach a sustainable level.

“- What was the appeal of diesel buses compared to streetcars?

There were a few things going on. First, buses were a very advanced technology for their time. They have rubber wheels, they’re not dependent on the electrical wires and they provide a kind of flexibility of routing. They can theoretically run very fast, and they can run new routes, serving areas of lower density.

- Do they require less staffing too?

Yeah, absolutely. Transit went from two-man streetcars to one bus driver collecting fares. They also didn’t have to continue maintaining the streets after they shifted from streetcars to buses. There were all these talking points for the bus industry, and they were also used by public transit.

But I will say this: On the public policy side, a lot of the impetus was driven by the goal of getting the streetcars off the streets.

- Because they got in the way of car drivers?

Exactly. They were definitely seen as being in the way of cars and slowing down traffic.

“- In your acknowledgments, you wrote, “Let us all make sure transit agencies get the operating and capital funds that they need to thrive in the coming years.” Based on your read of history, do you have any suggestions for how agencies should go about securing that money?

I think always the compelling case for greater ridership is the aggravation of driving. (The aggravation factor must be very high for drivers to force them onto transit. Boston and San Francisco did that more than most places. ) For that reason, the most positive things might be rezonings, the multifamily boom, and the end of parking minimums. If we remove highways in certain areas, there’s an opportunity for transit to be competitive. But barring that, it’s very hard to know what an agency on its own can do because they’re now in survival mode.

At the end of the day, someone’s got to fund transit. Otherwise we can end up with almost nothing.”

read more: bloomberg, 27.04.23. 

“Traffic stops are by far the most common reason that police officers initiate contact with members of the public; they account for 84% of encounters, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. In fact, before cars, ordinary citizens rarely came in contact with law enforcement. As we rebuilt cities around the automobile, historians contend, drivers came to expect to be policed. And communities of color have paid the highest price. 

In Berkeley, Black drivers are six times as likely to be stopped as white drivers, and four times as likely to be searched. Stops for minor infractions––a broken taillight, speeding––are also more likely to turn deadly for Black and brown drivers, as the deaths of Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, and Daunte Wright illustrated.

All this enforcement isn’t making our streets safe: Despite growing police budgets, the United States has the highest number of traffic deaths per capita of all developed nations.

Darrell Owens––along with a coalition of racial-justice advocates, anti-car activists, and traffic-court public defenders––wants to change that. Designing better streets, they say, won’t just prevent traffic accidents. It will reduce the need for police enforcement, and its potential for violence, altogether. 

Just a few weeks earlier, Owens had watched George Floyd being murdered in an intersection and had joined in the protests. The Berkeley City Council had since promised police reform. But Owens, who, at 6 foot 6, is known by one city-council member as the “youngest, tallest, and only Black” regular attendee of transportation-commission meetings, had been stewing on a more specific idea. His Twitter thread laid out his argument for transforming law enforcement by transforming city streets: “I prefer license plate cameras … and mailed tickets over: ‘ok make sure nobody does anything that justifies this cop pumping 4 rounds of lead into me.’” 

To his surprise, the City responded. A councilmember retweeted his thread. A month later, the City Council passed “BerkDOT,” a first-in-the-nation measure to shift traffic enforcement to unarmed Department of Transportation workers. 

In the summer of 2020, cities across America made similar commitments: to curtail the use of force, shrink police budgets, and fund fleets of civilian officers. But Berkeley was the first to target the traffic cop. By doing so, it is rethinking police power at its root. 

a speed feedback sign in stockholm that enters complaint drivers into a lottery. 

“In 1925’s Carroll v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the police could search automobiles—unlike homes and offices––without a warrant. This Prohibition-era “vehicle exception,” passed to counter an uptick in alcohol smuggling, gouged a hole in citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights. Suddenly, law enforcement had unprecedented entry into our private lives––all an officer needed was a missing license plate or a broken taillight.

Thus was born the pretextual stop.

Police enforce the law. But they can’t fix the street-level issues that cause people to break it. In 2020, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency examined the effects of speeding enforcement on driver behavior and found that once a visible officer leaves the scene, speeding violations recommence.

Narrow the road, protect bike lanes, and add medians, and drivers will slow down.”

read more: theatlantic, 15.10.21. 

Where do you think we are right now with bike infrastructure? What might it take to get to that tipping point?

“Part of it’s design, and part of it’s culture. On the design side, it really depends on what community you’re in. Some cities and towns have done a great job. Some are really leaning into this, but it’s going to take a while to get everything connected. If I’m not mistaken, D.C., for example, just completed 100 miles of bike lanes, and they’re going to keep expanding it. Of course, it’s not just about how many miles you have, it’s about how they all link with each other.

The culture side, I think, is making clear that this is something that with the right design, and the right conditions, anybody can do. We learned a saying on that trip that there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. And I think often Americans would say, Okay, you’re in a temperate climate, let’s say California, of course you’d bike to work, but not in a northern city. But if you can do it in Scandinavian winters, then you can do it anywhere. It’s just a matter of being prepared. And sometimes also in hot climates—you know, making sure employers are supportive [with] a place to change or shower for people who decide to bike to work.”

If you think about an ideal future scenario, what do you think would be the role for cars in cities?

“Cars are always going to be an important part of cities. But an ideal future is one where cars are serving people in cities rather than the other way around. It’s making sure that every mode of transportation revolves around human beings versus making everything revolve around cars. And that’s not really as much about cars as it is about roads and economics and all those things that push people into cars. You shouldn’t have to have a ton of metal with you everywhere you go, but in too many places, we don’t give people much of an alternative. And so I think a better future isn’t about a war against cars or being car-free. It’s about making sure that we do the thing that makes the most sense, and in a lot of dense urban areas, or in a lot of high traffic, commuting routes, or in a lot of areas, it just makes more sense to have other means of transportation.

There are places where if you were starting from scratch, cars wouldn’t make sense. But we push people into that. The future should be about good choices. And I think given the good choice, many people will choose something that is safer and more environmentally responsible than to be able to drive.” 

read more: fastco, 10.11.22. 

sfmta/muni: we put the Trans in Transportation.

a train tunnel under construction at the new central subway muni station platform at union square.

via “50-year-old traffic signals and floppy disks: here’s why muni wants another $400 million to fix sf transit.” sfchronicle, 30.05.2022.  and “here’s when sf muni’s central subway will open for service.” sfchronicle, 21.12.2021. 

union square, san francisco. in 1951 and 2022.

“The ‘Not Everyone Can Ride a Bike’ crowd would like you to totally ignore the millions more that can't drive a car due to legal or physical limitations.”

“Most of these adapted cycles are custom-built one-offs. The engineering that goes into them is almost as brilliant as the smiles they bring to their owners.“ 

related: some standard special bikes by van raam.  BORP adaptive cycling center in berkeley, california. 

muni is free citywide this weekend for lunar new year celebrations! sat 5am 19.02 to mon 5am 21.02.22. more info: sfmta, 17.02.22. 

chinese new year parade: 19.02, and chinatown street fair: 19-20.02.22. 

photos by val lupiz, cable car gripman at sf municipal railway

BART art by 0xEugene. 

muni & golden gate transit testing out van ness BRT.

“After decades of publicly funded right-of-ways given to private cars, it would be impossible to simply make transit more convenient than driving. That’s why most transit ridership in the United States is motivated by the hardship of owning, driving and parking cars in dense metro areas, not necessarily good transit. 

People marvel at transit outside of the United States without recognizing the many mechanisms that exist to discourage car ownership in those countries. To get a car in Japan for example, you have to prove to the local dealership or authorities that you have a parking space to put it in. To own a car in Paris means being able to find the already rare parking spaces, which are shrinking at a considerable rate, and are near universally metered. In most European cities, the streets are so small and so restricted to vehicular traffic that the only motorized vehicles you’ll see are taxis for tourists and mopeds. Gas prices are also much lower in the United States than global peers, thanks to low gas taxes—that don’t come close to paying for road improvements—and higher levels of fossil fuel extraction.

So yes, making driving harder is key to making transit more used. Traffic jams, high gas prices and parking fees are public transit’s ally. You just can’t really say that because nobody wants to hear: “traffic is good, actually.” But traffic is good, actually. Our problem in America, however, is that making driving harder doesn’t solve the problem for the working class suburbanites, many of whom can’t afford to live in the urban core and want to ride transit that largely doesn’t exist.

in paris, two-thirds of public transport users are women. nytimes/andrea mantovani 

“Paris’ war on cars, cycling and transit expansion cut car ownership in half in 20 years. But Paris has something that most American cities don’t have: a high frequency, regional train network. Even as Paris’ unaffordability pushes more of their working class communities into the suburbs, many of these suburbs are relatively dense and are located along high frequency commuter rail with local bus transit. This is unheard of in the single-family home fetishism of American suburbia.

CT 435 northbound on the bothell-everett highway, seattle. flickr/shaneinthecity

“Thus, mass freeway removal without supplemental transit would neither solve the emissions problem or help the American working class stuck in traffic. Meanwhile, the newest Census data shows that American suburbs are not only growing, but they’re diversifying at even faster rates with Black people and people of color migrating there. If we tear freeways down with incoming federal funds from the infrastructure bill—which I intend to advocate for—we need to use the opportunity to expand public transit to more affordable suburban communities as well.

transmilenio bus rapid transit (BRT), bogotá, columbia. flickr/tony_wasserman

“We can help the suburbs by commandeering freeway infrastructure for public transit rather than private cars (while demolishing low use freeway spurs). We can make bus-only lanes on the freeways by taking a lane from cars to establish a suburban bus network. These buses can quickly swoop people into the cities with swift 5-10 minute frequencies while drivers are stuck in traffic. Toronto is already leading the way on an efficient suburban bus network. We should also fund more Amtrak lines that are focused on connecting cities to suburbs and nearby metro areas.

The biggest challenge we’ll face is how to get Americans to support initiatives like these. Anything that takes space away from cars gets fierce opposition, even though after it’s implemented the same opponents end up loving it. The auto industry has done serious indoctrination of the public but that doesn’t mean it’s insurmountable.”

read more: darrellowens, 25.11.21. 

photo-enforced bus lane on olive transitway, seattle. 

“City governments should purchase an electronic bicycle for every resident over the age of 15 who wants one. They should also shut down a significant number of streets to be used only by bicycles and a small number of speed-regulated, municipal electric vehicles.

The Biden administration’s Build Back Better Act includes a $4.1 billion tax break for e-bike purchases. It would let you save 30% via a refundable tax credit capped at $900. That may help with some e-bike adoption, but tax credits can feel a bit abstract, and even with the discount, e-bikes, which typically cost between $1,500 and $4,500, will still be out of the budgets of most Americans.

The Biden bill doesn’t go far enough. We need to get cars off the road quickly and as painlessly as possible, and widespread adoption of e-bikes would curtail a lot of the following problems:

Plus, it’s fun. You get some exercise, you can lug two small kids and a load of groceries up and down hills with minimal effort, and you can avoid the alienation that comes with sitting in your car.

twitter/johnamdor

“By the way, I am not envisioning a world without cars. People will still need to go on longer trips, disabled people will still need to get around, and goods will still need to be delivered. Cars will be channeled through a few routes in each city. In keeping with Schimmelpennink’s vision, transportation within the bicycles-only areas will be handled by a fleet of electronic taxis that will travel at speeds below 25mph. As for deliveries, many package deliveries in the United States can be handled by cargo e-bikes, which can transport hundreds of pounds at a time.

Shutting down some streets for bikes is key not only for safety, but also because the more inconvenient driving becomes, the more people will start to consider other options. Available to them is a free-of-charge mode of transportation that will often be faster than sitting in traffic and having to find a parking spot.

twitter/cecile_lecoq

“We need a few test cities. I propose my hometown, Berkeley, Calif., home to 121,000 residents; Iowa City; and Charleston, S.C. These are all places that have walkable areas but also a heavy dependence on cars. Three geographic areas will also give us more information on how weather will affect e-bike usage. I’ll focus on Berkeley, but if readers have other suggestions for test cities or if the residents of Iowa City or Charleston want to let me know why this definitely will or will not work there, please do.

Now, not everyone will opt into the program and not everyone is over the age of 15, but I want to think maximally, so let’s assume that 50,000 residents eventually decide to sign up for the free e-bike plan. The e-bike company Evelo reports that it costs $1,066.67 for it to manufacture one of its most popular models. This seems a bit high to me, but I want to err on the side of fiscal caution here.

That puts our e-bike-only bill for the city of Berkeley at just over $53 million, which may seem like a staggering amount of money, but is almost $25 million less than the city’s annual police budget. This could eventually be reduced, given the amount of time and resources police officers spend on traffic enforcement. That said, there will be sticker shock for this bill, but if local politicians think long-term, they will realize this program could eventually pay for itself. 

A report last year found that it would cost $328 million to fix Berkeley’s streets, an amount that would be drastically lowered in the future if there were simply fewer roads that allowed cars. Bikes do almost no damage to streets — some estimates say that it takes 17,059 bicycle trips to equal the damage caused by an average car.

Over time, savings on future road repairs alone could pay for a free e-bike plan in most cities and cover maintenance costs and the price of making roads more bike-friendly. When you factor in municipal budgets that could be reallocated, the cost concerns can be minimized.”

read more: nytimes, 22.11.21. 

“In Bakersfield, participants will receive free passes for Golden Empire Transit’s local bus lines and five free rides per day on Spin’s shared e-bikes and scooters. The participants will be recruited by and from the Dream Center, Kern County’s resource hub for current and former foster youth, many of whom are homeless, said Jayme Stuart, a child and family services coordinator.

Pandemic service cuts left holes in a public transit system that was already failing to reach key job centers, Stuart said. Many Dream Center youth who are employed often rely on Uber and Lyft to get to work, taking big chunks out of small paychecks. 

It’s one of several pilots in U.S. cities testing the concept of “universal basic mobility.” In Oakland, up to 500 residents will receive prepaid $300 debit cards for transit and shared mobility services later this month. Pittsburgh plans to launch a year-long study with a 50-person cohort next spring. Los Angeles is preparing a similar grant-funded program focused in south LA. 

GIG carshare is an eligible use of the $300 debit card in oakland’s universal basic mobility pilot program. flickr/dianneyee

“Angela Sanguinetti, a research environmental psychologist at the University of California, Davis, is overseeing survey-based studies of the pilots in California. She’s interested in which modes participants chose for getting to different destinations, and how the programs affect their economic standing, quality of life and health.

“A lot of them start to feel defeated because they’re only working part-time to begin with,” she said. Between rent, bills and groceries, the financial pressure is enough to make a lot of them quit, she said, or simply not pursue other opportunities. The UC Davis study will help officials understand the role that transportation expenses play, Stuart says: “If we remove the transportation barriers, will they be more successful?” 

Among the Dream Center’s first recruits is 21-year-old Star Carrigan, who believes that having access to an e-bike will allow her to make the 12-mile commute from her home in east Bakersfield to an Aldi grocery store that advertises $18 hourly wages. That’s more than she’s making in her work for the county’s youth conservation corps, which requires her to get a ride or pay for a Lyft to remote destinations.

“Just biking there would be exhausting,” she said. “But the e-bike could help me cruise for a good distance.” 

Research has shown that steady transportation is closely tied to economic success in the US, and the idea of providing discounted access to multiple services beyond public transit for disadvantaged riders is something that’s been discussed in the field for years. The advent of mobility apps is now making it possible, said Michael Smart, an urban planning professor at Rutgers University.” 

read more: citylab, 11.11.21. 

BART map but in the style of the paris metro map, with stations translated into french. by twitter/kueller, 15.11.2021. 

“This year alone, we’ve suffered 30 traffic fatalities, just one less than the total for 2014. That’s not to say the streets haven’t changed. 

One approach that has been especially successful is the SFMTA’s Quick Build program: simple, reversible, and fast improvements (such as putting down plastic bollards and coats of paint) to address safety issues on city streets. In fact, such projects have increased reliability for Muni lines including the 19 Polk, the 38 Geary, and the T Third light rail, and decreased speeding on Taylor, Seventh, and Eighth streets, according to SFMTA spokesperson Erica Kato.

“SFMTA transportation director Jeffrey Tumlin tells The Frisc that the agency can complete a Quick Build project in six months that otherwise would take five to 10 years via the conventional planning process. 

What’s more, it’s not a huge commitment: “Because the Quick Build projects are so cheap and reversible, we can take any feedback and make adjustments,” he says. “If it really doesn’t work, then we can rip it out, no harm no foul, and it will have cost us less than the environmental documents on a bigger project.” 

In early 2019, Mayor London Breed directed the SFMTA to speed up traffic improvements. The agency rolled out Quick Build later that year, just months before COVID hit and sent the city into lockdown. Since then, San Francisco has introduced a slew of street changes that would have seemed impossible beforehand: Slow Streets, Shared Spaces, safe sleep sites, and more. SFMTA director Manny Yekutiel said in Monday’s board meeting that these changes prove the city can do the impossible in two years: “I don’t want us to need a tragedy to do something truly transformational to our city.”

The board unanimously adopted a resolution to endorse the updated Vision Zero strategy, which includes a commitment to 20 Quick Build projects per year on the High Injury Network.

crews painting the mission street bus lane in 2016. flickr/eviloars 

“The main reason Quick Build works is because the projects are not subject to the city’s typical plodding bureaucracy. As of February 2020, the city traffic engineer can unilaterally authorize Quick Builds. A public hearing is still required, but most community engagement takes place after the project is complete. 

“For almost all of our Quick Build projects, our intention is to tinker around until we get it right,” Tumlin says. “Then that becomes the blueprint for a later, much more expensive construction project that will involve concrete and curb work and streetscaping.””

read more: thefrisc, 04.11.2021. 

BART & muni pumpkins. 

by ethan mizzi & mack, respectively.