Fund public transit! Call your legislators and Gov. Patrick

For those of you with short attention spans for this sort of thing, I'm going to start with my call to action and then move into the essay portion of it.

Did you or someone you know get stuck in Tuesday night's transit nightmare as a result of the red line train derailment? Were you relying on the red line to get you home, or on one of the buses that got pulled off its regular route in order to scramble for the tens of thousands of people who normally get around on the red line? Did you, perhaps, miss your commuter rail train, which runs infrequently after prime hours, due to the delays all over the system? Or were you in a car, and found yourself mired in gridlock as people who normally commute by public transit fled to cabs and private vehicles?

However you feel about the MBTA, effective and reliable public transportation is essential to the daily functioning of the greater Boston metro area. You don't even have to use it for it to make your life better, because if the more than one million daily trips currently served by the MBTA switch to cars, you can believe your commute would not be improved. Our roads don't have the capacity to serve all those trips by car, and our land mass doesn't have the capacity to expand roads to serve them, even if we did want to become Los Angeles.

If public transit makes your life better, call your legislators and the Governor's office today to insist that they fund an effective and reliable public transit system. To find your legislators' information, click here and enter your information. You want to call or write to your Senate and Representative in General Court. Governor Patrick's contact information is at the bottom of this post.

When you call, say that you rely on public transit, and that you want better funding and/or debt relief for the MBTA.

Okay, now I'm going to get into some nitty gritty about the MBTA and its history and why, even if you think it's been mismanaged in the past, it needs more money going into the future:

Also, why do I care? How does this relate to pedestrian advocacy? A robust and reliable public transportation infrastructure supports and encourages the use of walking as a primary or secondary mode of transportation. As a dedicated walker who hopes never to have to own a car in order to function in my life, I'm deeply invested in seeing public transit work well for broad swaths of the population. In Boston and surrounding communities, as in many other cities across the country, this hope is threatened by significant disinvestment in public transit by state and local governments.

In general, the MBTA is pretty great. Oh, sure, I have some of the same complaints that many people do, including poor late night coverage, doubts about effective management, frustration at rising fares without improvements, and annoyance at poor communication with riders when things go wrong. Still, I'm able to use it as my primary mode of urban transportation for distances further than a couple of miles (which I typically walk.) The fact that I and others can rely on it that way often goes unremarked as we focus on our complaints, but it's worth remembering that part of the bad rap the MBTA gets is simply that we're all more likely to be vocal about complaints than compliments.

Why will more money make things better?

In the major transportation reorganization in the state this year, many of the issues people pointed to regarding mismanagement were addressed. Compensation rules are in line, now, with other state transportation departments, and upper management of the MBTA is being reorganized, as well, to improve the agency.

Since 2000, the MBTA has suffered increasing debts due to a change in funding structure. Prior to 2000, the state covered the difference between MBTA revenue and expenditures (and before you complain that public transit needs to pay its own way, I'd like you to show me any road in the state of Massachusetts that does the same -- and most of them are free!!). Starting in 2000, the MBTA started receiving money from sales taxes collected. Unfortunately, due to a slower economy than predicted and the increase in internet spending at that time, these revenues were lower than expected. Paired with Big Dig debt that was shifted to the MBTA, this made a bad situation worse.

Today, one third of every dollar the MBTA spends goes to debt service. This is an immense amount of money. Think what public transit could do with 30% more money! One long-term solution to the problem of funding the MBTA is to reduce their debt load so that money isn't going down the drain every day. But where will that money come from? Increased taxes, naturally. Governor Patrick tried this summer to increase the state gas tax, some of which revenues would have given the T an immense boost. He couldn't muster the political will to make that happen, however, so instead, tens of thousands of people yesterday paid with their time after a train derailment, just as people every day pay with their time when the green line is slow, or there's a switch problem at JFK or a bus doesn't come as scheduled.

I don't care about the MBTA as an agency, but I care a heck of a lot about public transit in the Boston area. It needs more money to work better now and to keep working in the future. Across the country, transportation infrastructure, including transit (like the MBTA), roads and bridges, is suffering deterioration and years of underfunding. Now is the time to change that pattern, and giving mass transit in Massachusetts a boost is part of the solution. Call your legislators and the governor today to encourage them to make forward thinking the bottom line.

Also, consider joining the T Rider's union to advocate for better public transit in the Boston metro area.

Boston, MA Massachusetts State House
Office of the Governor
Office of the Lt. Governor
Room 280
Boston, MA 02133

Phone: 617.725.4005
888.870.7770 (in state)
Fax: 617.727.9725
TTY: 617.727.3666

Santa should have cookies AND veggies if he's going to walk

I am utterly charmed by this analysis of Santa's energy expenditure while delivering presents.

According to our Holiday Calorie Calculator, if Santa had a cup of carrot and celery sticks at each household instead of cookies and milk, he would only consume 50 calories at each house and would only be eating 4.6 billion calories. Because he is burning off 13 billion calories by walking, he would actually lose all of his weight and disappear. A combination of veggies at most households and cookies or skim milk every few households would keep him in energy balance.

Travel lanes vs parking vs active transportation

Getting back to removing travel lanes, we need to become bolder in our thinking and stop believing there’s a level playing field out there. The cities that have high rates of walking and bicycling also have conditions where driving is difficult, expensive, even painful. We cannot continue to think we can add or create walking and bicycling infrastructure while maintaining mobility for drivers and hope to see anything more than a miniscule modal shift. Rare and expensive parking is part of the needed pain for drivers, but off-street parking should be reduced before on-street parking is threatened. We should be advocating for new traffic engineering rules such as “Never have more than two lanes of traffic in each direction.” “Never require a person to cross more than three travel lanes at once.”

Michael Ronkin

Active modes of transportation -- walking and biking (among other, less common forms like, say, rollerblading) -- are an important element of moving people from place to place in urban areas. Because urban space is so constrained, this is more true than in, for example, suburban or rural areas, though those spaces could also benefit from increased biking and walking, where possible. Of course, the density in urban areas also facilitates these choices: you have to have things worth walking or biking within a reasonable distance for that.

If you've been paying attention to this stuff, you're probably aware of the increasing focus on parking, and the way it spreads out human settlements while also making it easier for people to deal with their cars. Cheap or free parking has a lot to answer for in the eyes of new urbanists, smart growth proponents, and others who love the vitality of urban areas. Are cities for cars, or are they for people?

It made my day

A friend recently introduced me to the entertaining website It Made My Day. It has nothing to do with pedestrianism or urban planning; it's just funny little stories about things that made people happy.

So what does that have to do with WalkBoston? Well, I just read one that made my day:

I was in my backyard doing yard work when I heard my neighbor’s two children playing loudly. I realized they were playing cops, but instead of robbers, the offender had run a stop sign, driven in the carpool lane by herself, and changed lanes without signaling.

This just warms the cockles of my traffic-geeky heart.

Texting while driving

Today's Boston Globe reports that the Boston City council is developing a measure to ban texting while driving in the City of Boston.

This is great. As far as I can tell, no one doubts that texting and driving are incompatible activities, and, yet, many people combine them. I will admit that, although I very rarely drive, I have texted while driving.

I know it's unsafe, that it distracts me from the road, and that people like me are exactly the problem. I imagine that other people are in the same position. In the moment, I feel like, if I can just get the text sent, some important piece of information will have been exchanged and then I'll be back at my normal capacity for safe driving. It only takes a moment! This makes it feel more okay than drunk driving, even though studies indicate that it makes you a worse driver than someone who's slightly drunk. That, combined with the inevitable "but I'm a better driver than most people" belief leads to people texting while driving, even though they (we) know better.

As with so many choice is life, I think it's okay for people to make bad choices if the consequences land squarely on their own shoulders. Unfortunately, choices that make people less safe drivers frequently injure and kill people who are not involved in the decision-making process. Given that, I'm in support of policies that encourage people to make the right choice, and this is one of them. I hope the City council is right that this move will spur Massachusetts to finally adopt a similar policy state-wide.

Less texting while driving will make our roads safer for everyone, and that's better.

Six bills to keep an eye on at the federal level

Every six years, the federal transportation bill needs to be re-authorized. The current one is overdue to be reauthorized -- the vote on it was postponed from October to December 18. The following bills could move forward as their own pieces, or get bundled into the broader re-authorization. If any or all of them are of interest to you, it's absolutely worth a call to your legislators. For help finding your senators' and representative's contact information, click here.

Livable Communities Act (S. 1619 / H.R. 3734) – Gives local governments the tools to integrate their transportation, housing, economic development, energy and environment needs by authorizing $400 million in competitive planning grants and $3.75 billion over three years for implementation of sustainable development projects. The bill also creates an inter-departmental council responsible for coordinating sustainable development policies at Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency and others.

Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733) – Allocates 2.4% of the proceeds from auctioned emissions permits to fund clean transportation projects that help reduce carbon emissions. The Senate’s climate bill more than doubles the amount for clean transportation in the House version and substantially incorporates language from a separate marker bill known as CLEAN-TEA (S.575 / H.R. 1329).

Federal Assistance for Transit Operations (H.R. 2746) – Allow public transit agencies representing cities larger than 200,000 people to flex part of their capital transit funds for operating expenses, creating greater flexibility for use of federal dollars in urban areas.

Complete Streets (S.584 / H.R. 1443) – Ensures that all users of the transportation system, including pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, children, older individuals and individuals with disabilities are able to travel safely and conveniently on and across federally funded streets and highways.

Another goal included in the national transportation objectives bill is tripling transit use, cycling, and walking.

National Transportation Objectives (H.R. 2724) – Sets quantifiable national transportation objectives to ensure that federal transportation investments advance national purposes tied to health outcomes, improvements in the areas of energy efficiency, environmental protection, economic competitiveness, safety, safety, connectivity and equal access. This would be the first time the country has established a set of quantifiable national transportation objectives since the Eisenhower-era bill that appropriated money to build the interstate highway system. Some targets in the current version of the bill: reducing driving by 16% and reducing the average household’s combined housing and transportation costs by 25%, over a 20-year period.

Transportation Workforce Development Funding (H.R. 2444) – Requires that 0.5 percent of federal Surface Transportation Program and Highway Bridge funding go toward workforce development and job training. Dedicated funding for workforce development in transportation sector will greatly benefit communities that are currently left out of the labor force, especially low income communities and communities of color.

Transportation for America and the reauthorization of the transportation bill

You all probably already know about Transportation for America, the excellent transportation and lobbying organization that is bringing transportation interests to national planning, beyond the simple cars-and-highway message that has been so prevalent for the last several decades. If you don't, you may want to check them out.

One of the things you can do right off the bat there is send a note to friends and family to encourage them to support more comprehensive thinking in this year's reauthorization of the transportation bill.

Spread the word!