Transit access drives transit voting

I've been trying to show this for years with maps of car-free households, but there was a great example recently that used voting patterns directly.

Last Tuesday was the date for party primaries in New York State. In many of the races the differences between candidates was relatively subtle, particularly on transportation, but there was a clear difference in one race, for the Democratic nomination to represent the Sixth Congressional District.

The only transit issues that the incumbent representative, Grace Meng, seems to care at all about are reopening the Elmhurst station on the Long Island Railroad, accommodations for people with disabilities, and preventing attacks on Asian-American passengers. These are all good positions, but Meng doesn't seem to want to do anything about further transit expansion. She has not taken a position on congestion pricing, bicycle or transit improvements, and she has taken credit for expanding polluting highways in her district. She did not take the time for an interview with livable streets activist Miser.

The other candidate, Chuck Park, who lost the primary by a respectable 43% to 57%, said in his interview that he supports the 34th Avenue/Paseo Park bicycle boulevard, and wants to redirect federal money from highways to transit and bicycle infrastructure.

Chuck Park's 43% was a great showing for a relative unknown who's never held elective office and had no endorsement from advocacy organizations or elected officials. Looking at the preliminary vote map, at least two people have observed that the electoral districts that Park won at were almost all near subway or Long Island Railroad stations. This was not the only factor: Park strongly criticized the Israeli government's actions in Gaza, and failed to win several electoral districts near subways where support for the Israeli government is strong, but the transit pattern is very clear.

I've been talking about this since 2008: we want transit expansion because it's good for our goals reducing carnage and pollution, improving efficiency, increasing access for all. We also want it because more transit means more people who value transit over roads, and will elect officials like Chuck Park who promise to expand transit and defund roads.

Now what if I told you that Congressional District 6 has some transit expansion plans, some of which I've been talking about since 2008? These are all railroads that still exist. Some are abandoned, others are used for freight only. Two of them used to have passenger service, and all three could move passengers again.

You've probably heard of the Interboro Express, once known as the TriboroRx, which would have stations at Grand and Eliot Avenues, right in the middle of parts of Maspeth and Middle Village that went for Meng.

Chuck Park supports the QueensLink, the reactivation of service on the Rockaway Beach Branch, which would have a Parkside station at Metropolitan Avenue in southern Forest Hills. It's not currently part of the proposal, but I think there should also be a station at Fleet Street, which is convenient to several large apartment buildings that don't have good transit.

Have you heard about the Lower Montauk proposal, which would add stations at the edge of the district in Maspeth, Ridgewood and Glendale? I wrote about it in 2015. Some of the election districts near those station sites went for Park, but with relatively low turnout.

I've gotten a lot of pushback from fellow "transit advocates" because some of those proposals wouldn't "attract enough riders" to justify the cost of restoring passenger service. I'd be interested to see how those numbers have changed with the recent "City of Yes" upzoning. But it's not just about bringing in fares, or some abstract ridership numbers. It's also about attracting voters.

All these transit proposals have also gotten some flak from NIMBYs in the area, some of whom don't bother to disguise their racism. They may point to this post to justify a fear that they'll be replaced or swamped by Korean, Bengali or yuppie Chuck Park voters. I would say in response that New York is a city fundamentally built on inclusion and welcoming, which is the heart of Park's platform. Better transit access is key to that.

Note what you don't see on the electoral district map: the bike and bus lanes. The district hosts one of the best bike paths in the city, the Motor Parkway, and the neighborhoods around it all went for Grace Meng. There are two Select Bus Service routes that run through the district, on Main Street and Woodhaven Boulevard, and most of the electoral districts around them went for Meng. These patterns are correlated with rail service, whether it's subway or Long Island Railroad.

I think Chuck Park tapped into a movement, and he or a candidate with a similar platform may well win in 2028. But if we want to make it easier for candidates with his priorities win in the Sixth District and in other parts of Queens and Long Island, we should look to expand transit more. Can we get the Interboro Express open by 2028? Can we get shovels in the ground for QueensLink?

Interestingly, I saw a comment on Reddit supporting this analysis of the election results, by one of the lead advocates for "the QueensWay," a bike and walking proposal that would preclude transit service on the QueensLink. He was so close to getting it. Maybe he'll come around...

Cities don't think

I listen to a few podcasts that cover issues of land use and transportation, and they tend to be heavy with urban planners. I also follow some urban planners on Twitter. I've recommended them regularly and I wouldn't follow them or listen to them if I didn't find their views valuable on the whole, but occasionally there are indications that the worldview shared by urban planners has some shortcomings. One thing I've picked up on lately is the omnipresent anthropomorphizing of cities.

I say urban planners here, but they're not the only ones who do it. I've noticed it to some degree from historians, political scientists, economists, as well as journalists and laypeople.

On these podcasts and in these tweets, cities aren't just places where people live, or organizations governing those people. Cities want things, or maybe they don't want them. In the words of the hosts and guests, cities can be happy about things, or dislike them. Most of all, cities think.

Now, there actually are theories that the complex systems of cities are not just similar to the complex systems underlying human thoughts and emotions, but functionally equivalent to them. Some people believe that cities actually do want and dislike and understand.

In general I don't think the people I listen to in these podcasts actually believe that cities can think or feel. I think sometimes they mean that the inhabitants of a city undertake a collective decision-making process and come to a consensus about a course of action. Sometimes they're referring to a scientific opinion poll. Sometimes they mean that the elected mayor or city council believes or feels a certain way.

Sometimes they just mean that a city transportation commissioner believes something, or a transit authority CEO feels something. Sometimes it's lower-level planners or bureaucrats. Sometimes it's a single politician, or just a particularly influential pundit or celebrity, or a group that holds a rally or sends its members to speak at a public meeting.

This is a very common kind of ambiguity, and normally it's not a problem. But problems can arise, particularly when it comes to collective decision making, collective responsibility and finality.

Urban planners - and historians, political scientists, economists, journalists and most laypeople - all know, at least on some level, that collective decision making is a messy process. The same people who will tweet "City X doesn't want a train," are the same ones who will tweet a screenshot of a mixed opinion poll from City Y on zoning height limits the next day. People who say "City Z chose mixed use" will also cover a referendum from City W on bus funding.

So why do people on these podcasts and blogs keep saying things like "City V doesn't want to fund transit?" Well, it's easier than remembering which person from City V said something negative about transit funding, whether that person was a citywide elected official, a civil servant, a local representative, a representative of a membership organization, a self-appointed "community leader" or just some random crank.

It's also easier than remembering how the speaker heard about how City X supposedly feels. Referendum? City Council vote? Press release? Public testimony? Facebook comment? Some taxi driver's rant?

There's also a universal tendency for people to anthropomorphize collectivities, substances and even abstract entities: water finds its level, nature abhors a vacuum, information wants to be free.

But this shorthand of attributing thoughts and feelings to cities runs a lot of risks. It can paper over all kinds of failures in collective decision making. It can misrepresent the thoughts and feelings of powerful elites as the desires of all residents. It can enable loud, privileged voices to pre-empt debate by proclaiming a consensus that does not exist, or by declaring a matter settled when it should be re-examined. It can even prompt a backlash against people in a given city, including people who were excluded from any kind of say in what their city was supposed to have felt or thought or believed.

For the past several years I've been trying to avoid claiming that cities (or states or countries or peoples) want or think anything. Instead, I've taken the time to examine why I am tempted to make such a claim, whether there has been any collective decision made, who has actually made the decision and how democratic the process has been. And I talk about that.

This takes more time, but for me it's been invaluable to spend that time thinking about these issues. And I really can't think of anything better to spend my time on, as someone who cares about where public money goes and what government employees do, than contemplating how people come together (or not) to respond to challenges and set priorities for their governments.

I hope you'll join me! Next time you're tempted to say something like "City Y doesn't want new housing," please stop, take a minute and think about what you mean by that.

Transit should be controlled by transit riders

I was listening to City Council Speaker Corey Johnson on Ben Kabak's new podcast, promoting his proposal to transfer control of the New York City subways from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is controlled by the Governor, to a new board controlled by the Mayor (a post that Johnson plans to run for in 2021). Johnson's thoughtfulness and his desire for real solutions were refreshing in our political scene, and I appreciated his request for feedback on his proposal. And I have some!

In particular I was struck by Johnson's claim that a board that represents the diversity of the transit riding public would do a better job of serving that public. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm definitely not going to repeat the bullshit that a board needs people with technical or business expertise; that's what staff is for. The subways and buses should be managed in a way that benefits their riders, and riders deserve a say in how they're managed.

The thing is that the system doesn't just serve riders; it serves everyone who lives and works anywhere in the whole metro area. A bank executive who is driven to work isn't going to perform well if their employees can't get in on the train. An antiques merchant in Great Barrington is going to sell less if the weekend visitors from the city have less disposable income. Taxpayers need to know that our money is being spent well. Bondholders won't lend the MTA money unless they can make sure it won't default.

I wouldn't want the Kosciuszko or Tappan Zee bridge replacement projects to be managed by and for the exclusive benefit of drivers. In fact, the problem with these projects is that they actually are being managed by and for drivers. And you know, the problem with the MTA is that it is also being managed largely for drivers.

Johnson is right that the MTA is controlled by a group of people who don't ride transit, but he fingered the wrong group. The Governor clearly doesn't ride transit, but a lot of transit policy is not set by him, but by the State Legislature. As I've written in numerous posts, the State Assembly and Senate are almost completely dominated by drivers and people who are driven everywhere.

Under Johnson's proposal the State Legislature would have almost as much control as they do now, because under our constitution they are the only entity in the state with the power to tax. State laws also have the power to overrule city laws. Even if Johnson can persuade them to implement his plan, they can change it at any time.

To the extent the city government would have control, the City Council would have more power than this "BAT Board," because they have to pass the budget, and can pass certain laws constraining what the Mayor can do. The Council has gotten much better over just the past twelve years, thanks in part to Johnson's leadership, but as Streetsblog documented recently, they still cannot be counted on to reliably prioritize transit riders.

Today the MTA Board today is at worst a fig leaf covering the Governor's management and the Legislature's budget priorities, and at best an advisory panel. On top of that we have another panel, the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee, which is appointed by elected officials based on patronage, and elects representatives to the MTA Board who have no voting rights. Johnson's proposal does not give this "BAT Board" the power to tax, so the real power would remain with the power brokers in the State Legislature.

Having the State Legislature or the City Council control the transit system would not actually be a problem if we had a truly representative system. Even the State Legislature is dominated by representatives of districts with heavy transit ridership. Unfortunately, the system is corrupt and favors elite homeowners who drive. They also subscribe to an ideology of driving as emancipation, and make deals to favor "upstate" that ignore the sizable population of current and potential transit riders outside of New York City.

The focus some advocates place on the non-representativeness of the MTA Board, in particular on the predominance of white men, winds up distracting us from the non-representativeness of the State Legislature, where some of the loudest opposition to transit funding and fair pricing for road use comes from nonwhite and female legislators like Charles Barron, Kevin Parker, Toby Stavisky and Deborah Glick. Last week when first term Senator Jessica Ramos said not only that she doesn't have a driver's license but that "car culture is something that we need to start rethinking as a society as a whole," that statement was notable for how unusual and brave it was.

So yes, we should transfer control of New York City Transit's subways and buses back to the City government. But no, we should not create a whole new authority to run them, or a "mobility czar" to oversee buses, trains, ferries, bridges and streets. We should just make them all part of the Department of Transportation. If we need to borrow money for them, we should use the City's bonding ability.

And no, we should not create a whole new board with no real power. If people want to transfer the New York City Transit Riders Council from the MTA to the city, fine. We don't need another one.

Similarly, if for some reason the City can't borrow enough money using its own bonds, I could see us setting up a temporary authority to issue bonds. Those of you who have read The Power Broker know that the authorities that issued bonds to build projects like the Manhattan Bridge were set up to dissolve once they paid off the bonds. The genius idea that allowed Bob Moses to wield power for decades without ever winning an election was to insert a clause in the law that created the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority allowing it to issue new bonds. Removing that unjustified power from the Transit Authority is an essential step in restoring democratic control to our subway system.

The bottom line: municipal control is a good idea, but a new authority is not the way to do it. It should be done by direct executive power. Representation is a good idea, but an unelected board is not the way to do it. It should be done through our elected representatives to the City Council and State Legislature.

How carfree is your City Council district?

One of the most eye-opening things I saw during the 2007-2008 congestion pricing debate was a series of fact sheets produced by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and the Pratt Center for Community development for each City Council and state legislative district. Each sheet gave two figures in particular, tabulated from census results: the percentage of working adults in the district who commuted to work primarily by transit, and the percentage of households that had no cars.

I've made maps for the percentage of carfree households for the City Council and State Senate districts, based on the Tri-State/Pratt Center fact sheets. The figures are interesting in two ways: in general, these elected officials tend to promote transit or driving depending on how prevalent car ownership is in their districts, but some are particularly out of touch with the majority of their constituents. These are relevant to a wide range of transportation issues, beyond the question of whether to toll the East River bridges.

These maps were based on data from the 2000 census, and as the years go by they get less and less relevant to contemporary debates. I find myself wondering what effect recent trends have had on car ownership and commuting, but Tri-State has not released updated fact sheets.

The Census website does tabulate data based on state legislative districts. Charles Komanoff analyzed the data for Streetsblog in 2010, and he recently used it to call out Councilmember Daneek Miller for opposing bridge tolls. But because Komanoff didn't have data for City Council districts he used the figures for the 32nd Assembly District, which turns out to be a bad match.

In November, Tri-State criticized Senator Tony Avella for his part in the coalition. They also challenged Miller based on a "special tabulation" - but in both cases this was based on journey to work data, not car ownership.

To make this easier for anyone who is interested, I have written a small Python script that takes GeoJSON files created by the Department of City Planning, and produces a JSON file mapping census tracts to City Council districts. It uses the Shapely library to check whether a census tract is contained inside a council district. It works for either the 2000 or 2010 boundaries. For census tracts that overlap more than one council district, the script gives the proportion of the land area of the tract that overlaps with each district.

I also created two scripts that transform census tables using these tract2census files, one for table HCT 32 from the 2000 decennial census and the other for table B08141 produced by the American Community Survey since 2005. These scripts produce tables showing the total number of households in a district, the number with zero cars available, and the carfree households as a proportion of the total.

It is important to note that this algorithm introduces a potential source of inaccuracy by assigning the households to split census tracts on the basis of area. This assumes that the households are evenly distributed within each census tract, but that is not always the case. For example, a tract with 75% of its area in City Council District A and 25% in District B would have 75% of its households assigned to District A, but if there is a large apartment building in the District B part of the tract, it could contain over 50% of the households.

Interestingly, my results for the 2000 census seem a bit lower than Tri-State's for some districts, but about the same citywide. It's probably due to different assumptions about the data; if anyone has details about the methods they used, please let me know!

Neil Freeman suggested using QGIS for the visualization, and it made a nice pretty map. I've got more to say about these figures and their implications, and maybe get to work on Neil other suggestions, and add a legend to the map, but this is a good place to stop. I've posted the tables in a Google Sheet here.

The Fifth Borough?

On my post about Staten Island, chrismealy commented that we could trade it for Bergen Neck, the peninsula in New Jersey just north of it. This is actually something I've been thinking about for years.

I've called Hudson County "the fifth borough" because Staten Island is so unlike the other boroughs. There's no real good reason why the Arthur Kill is the boundary between New York and New Jersey, rather than the Narrows. It's just a historical accident.

Jersey City, Hoboken and Weehawken share more history with Manhattan than Staten Island, and better transportation links. Development patterns in Hoboken resemble those in Greenwich Village, and those in North Bergen resemble Astoria. From the map above, it looks like car ownership is higher in Hudson County, but that may be misleading. I can't get census data below the municipality level, and there's probably a big difference between car ownership in Journal Square versus Greenville.

Or we could even just let Staten Island secede without any new territory. You could argue that we should preserve the differences in transportation regulations between New Jersey and New York that have shown us that private transit can work in the US if you regulate it right. That's the kind of argument that Chuck Marohn has been making on StrongTowns, and it makes sense to me. We shouldn't say no to annexing Hudson County, but I don't think we need it.

New York without Staten Island means two or three less car-obsessed City Council members. It means one less car-loving state senator, and four less assemblymembers, and that may be the biggest reason that the legislature voted against it when Staten Island voted to secede in 1993.

Letting Staten Island secede would probably mean transferring the Verrazano Bridge to the Port Authority. That would mean less toll revenue for the subways, but also a lot less of our city and state transportation money going to Staten Island's roads and bridges.

Really, though, it's not worth the effort to kick Staten Island out of the city. If they want to go, we should let them. But if they want to be part of the city, I'm okay with that. I just wish they'd start acting - and voting - like it.

Who's fighting car dependence?

Earlier this month I talked about how car dependence is overdetermined, with at least seven more or less independent factors influencing it: identification, leadership, NIMBYism, corruption, the "Two New Yorks" lie, the power of drivers and rural bias. I wrote that any good campaign to reduce driving has to tackle at least two of them, and the more the better. Or we can work together to make sure that all the bases are covered. Here are some people working on these factors:

1. Non-drivers identify with drivers. People want to see themselves as empowered, autonomous citizens with freedom of movement. They need to see empowered, autonomous citizens with freedom of movement who aren't driving. Some bike organizations, like Transportation Alternatives, promote exemplary bike commuters. Blogs like Humans of New York and the Sartorialist celebrate the city's pedestrians. The Underground New York Public Library was a great project to show the erudition of ordinary New Yorkers on the subway, but it seems to have lost steam. Ben Kabak's Second Avenue Sagas helps keep the dream of good transit alive.


Marcia Kramer, windshield-perspective reporter. CBS2 via Streetsblog.

2. Key segments of the population drive at higher rates. Transportation Alternatives ran a site called uncivilservants.org for a while. Streetsblog has had great coverage of parking permits, and occasionally covers a news reporter or politician who suffers from windshield perspective. At this point I don't know of an organization that is making this a priority.

3. NIMBY arguments favor drivers. The main way to defuse NIMBY arguments is to remove parking requirements. Streetsblog has been covering this, too, and there's nationwide pressure from Donald Shoup and his followers, but there's no organization that's focused on taking parking requirements out of the zoning code in New York.

4. Corruption favors road capacity. New York is full of "goo-goo" groups who have been fighting corruption for over 120 years, and they tell us that any day they'll start making some headway. Reinvent Albany, with connections to Streetsblog and Transportation Alternatives, is probably the most promising. In the transportation area, Alon Levy, Drunk Engineer and a number of other railfans around the country have been putting the screws on inflated railroad costs. StrongTowns has been leading an amazing nationwide movement for efficiency in transportation and development, mostly roads. As far as I know, there is no local organization fighting transportation corruption.

5. The "two New Yorks" narrative favors drivers. Not enough people are working on this.

6. Drivers have more political power. The big heroes in this are StreetsPAC, the newly-formed campaign fund for pedestrians and cyclists. I personally know and respect nine of the fourteen board members, and the others by reputation.

7. Rural bias favors driving. Reinvent Albany is mostly focused on corruption, which is fine, but someone should tackle the conceptual side of things. Even Jim Kunstler, who detests sprawl, talks a lot about gardens and agriculture. The best bet for breaking the "upstate=rural/suburban" myth is Duncan Crary and his Small American City podcast. He's doing a great job, but he's just one guy.

As you can see, Streetsblog, Transportation Alternatives, Reinvent Albany and StreetsPAC are probably the strongest organizations in these areas, and they definitely deserve your support. But their efforts are a bit light in many of these factors, especially leadership, "two New Yorks" and rural bias.

Can we afford to ignore these three factors? Is there an organization or blog that I'm missing? Do you know of a city or region that has successfully overcome challenges like these?

Regardless of what everyone else is doing, I hope that you will take the time to think about all seven of these issues, and then blog, tweet, Instagram or otherwise generate content about each of them.

Staten Island and our goals

This summer I went to Staten Island for the first time in several years. There are some things I like about it, but I don't go there very often because it's hard to get there and I don't feel welcome when I do. I feel similarly about North Carolina, but it's harder to ignore Staten Island. With mayoral candidate Joe Lhota floating the idea of moving the Transportation Department headquarters there, the need to say something about the place is even more urgent. Ben Kabak said his piece this morning, and it got me thinking.

…and the trolleys. Map: New York Tribune, July 1912, via Bowery Boys.

I know there are lots of nice people who live on Staten Island, including some regular readers of this blog. There are many who want it to be a place where you can walk, bike and take transit, and some who are even working to make that happen. I'm glad you're out there and I salute you for your work. But your borough is a problem.

Even more than other suburbs, Staten Island affects those of us who live in the rest of the city. Its residents spend a lot of time driving through Brooklyn, Manhattan and even Queens. They constantly feel slighted by Manhattan politicians and demand that the city and state spend money there. They also demand lots of subsidized services, like low tolls on the Verrazano Bridge.

Most dangerously, as a large bloc of middle-class white voters, the South and West Shores of the island wield disproportionate influence, and use that to get some of their demands. They are an indispensable part of any center or right-wing political campaign, proving particularly valuable to Rudy Giuliani and Christine Quinn. Politicians frequently pander to the agenda of the island's car owners, and the island's representatives on the City Council and state legislature frequently work with representatives from the eastern Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens to oppose progressive transportation efforts.

For some perspective, let's imagine that in the twenties, instead of building the Bayonne and Goethals bridges and the Outerbridge Crossing, the Port Authority had put in double-track high-level railroad connections, upgrading the Arthur Kill lift bridge and building a northbound connection to Bayonne and connecting to the Lehigh Valley line at Perth Amboy. Imagine if in the sixties, instead of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority building the Verrazano Bridge, the Board of Transportation had dug tunnels? Not a parochial local tunnel to Bay Ridge, but a connection between the Long Island Railroad and the national network, plus a high-speed tunnel under the harbor directly to Lower Manhattan? Imagine if they had extended the trolley network (see the map above) to cover the whole island?

You'd have a place that was easy to get to by train, but difficult by car. Instead we got the opposite: the most car-dominated of the five boroughs.

That time is past. The question is, what would help us fulfill our goals (see the top of the page)? What should we do about Staten Island?

"Why would they take the glass encasing off of a bus stop?"

I've written before about the Republican mayoral candidates' responses to a debate question about bus frequency, and their notions of accountability for transit. The Democratic candidates got their own bus question, too, which you can see at 1:50 on the video:

I want to know why the MTA, who's always crying for money, is putting all these steel benches by the bus stops, and taking out the glass encasing from the bus stop. If they have no money and they're constantly doing fare hikes, why would they take the glass encasing off of a bus stop where people can get wet, and invest money in new benches? It seems just a misuse of the money, and I want to know what mayor is going to take care of that.

Both the Republican and Democratic candidates seemed really amused by questions about transit. I'm not sure what they thought was so funny. It's possible that they might have been equally amused by a question about parking, but I wonder if there isn't something patronizing there. Maybe it's because the questions are so narrowly focused on parochial issues - and that in turn is probably because our elites have given up on meaningful subway expansion.

The candidates each followed a basic pattern: praise (perhaps patronizingly) the questioner, maybe make a joke, and then pivot to a topic that they had prepared for: control of the transit system. Ben Kabak has addressed this issue in response to proposals by Joe Lhota and Chris Quinn, but you know what's really funny? This is one part of transit that is in fact controlled by the City government.

Bus companies in the city, including the MTA and intercity buses under the State's crazy new rules, get to post a destination sign and a schedule if they want, and that's about it. The bus stops themselves are controlled by the City Department of Transportation, directly under the Mayor.

The bus shelters are "street furniture," covered under a contract with Cemusa along with newsstands, bike shelters and those automatic toilets that are always a few years in the future. Cemusa pays for all the "furniture" and gets to keep the money from selling ads on it. (Incidentally, this Cemusa contract is why the City couldn't use ad revenue to fund bike share the way Paris did.)

The benches are part of the DOT's CityBench program, separate from the Cemusa contract, to install a thousand benches around the city. It was proposed in Planyc 2.0, as a service to pedestrians and to give people more chances to socialize.

Chris Quinn promised to "go and find out why the MTA has seemingly moved away from the concept of keeping people dry." I can't find her report anywhere, but maybe she's still researching it. My guess is that the bus shelter was taken out because it didn't fit the "siting requirements," but there was still room for a bench. The removal of the shelter and the installation of the bench may have been coordinated, or they may not; the DOT is still a pretty opaque bureaucracy, and it's hard to tell how organized it is.

I don't expect mayoral candidates to know everything about city government, but I think it's kind of sad that you have three long-term members of the City Council and one former member of the Board of Estimate, including two people who have been elected to citywide office, and none of them had any clue that the office they're running for does have control over bus stops. (How do I know? I read Streetsblog.)

And that in turn makes me wonder: if any of them did have control over the entire public bus system, would they know what to do with it?

What I want from a mayor or city council member

After I laid out the ways that Christine Quinn has disappointed me as a transportation and livable streets advocate, I got a couple of emails from 2013 candidates asking for my support for their campaigns. I'm flattered to be asked at all, being some nameless guy who often defies political realities.

As a famous New Yorker once said: well, you know, we'd all love to see the plan. If you've reached out to me, I'll be happy to talk about your plan. But right off the bat I'll tell you and everyone else on the Web that some things are more likely to win me over than others. I've made some specific recommendations in earlier posts, but here I want to talk more in generalities, based on what's disappointed me in previous campaigns.



Now a lot of these have to do with transit, and I know that the Mayor and the City Council don't control the MTA. But they can accomplish some things. The #7 train extension to the Javits Center is a Bloomberg project. When the MTA cut bus routes, it was the City DOT that shut down Joel Azumah's replacement service, the Taxi and Limousine Commission that launched a clueless attempt at legal jitney service, and the NYPD that is keeping dollar vans out of the bus lanes.

• See transit as a system. Having a "transit plan," a "freight plan," a "livable streets plan" and a "transportation plan" - that's a recipe for chaos and cross-purposes. Transit is all about one thing: getting people and stuff from one place to another. During the next administration there will be billions of trips; the goal should be to make them all as safe, healthy and efficient as possible, without regard to mode.
• Get people out of their cars. As I've written before, my goals - that you see at the top of the page - all depend on getting people out of their cars. You can have the best transit plan in the world, but it's worth nothing if your road plan is more effective at encouraging people to drive. If you don't see that improving highways more than transit is regressive, you're not thinking clearly. If you think that you have to have "something for the drivers" in your transportation plan, but you leave no possibility for "the drivers" and their kids to accomplish their goals without driving, you've failed New York.
• Connect transit, walkability and land use. Transit works best when people can walk to it from where they are. Places work best when people can walk to them from transit. That means locating housing, jobs and shopping near transit; locating transit near housing, jobs and shopping; and making sure that the routes between them are safe and pleasant. Not like Edgewater.
• Inspire us. Who the fuck wants to ride an elevated busway over an ugly late-Bob Moses highway? Who wants to climb fifty steps to get into a station with underground platforms? Not me. What inspires me? New lines that actually go someplace I'd want to go. New or reopened stations where I want to go. Improved connections between lines.
• Give us real value. Why would people who happily fork over an extra two dollars care about saving $1.25 on an arbitrary subset of their trips? How many people really care about keeping the subway fare at $2.25, aside from it being a symbol of the government's commitment to transit riders? We'll pay more if we're getting more. That means getting where we want to go faster, more reliably and more comfortably.
• Get it passed and fund it. Yes, we want to be inspired, but we also want to know that at least some of what you promise is going to happen. How are you going to get your partners in city and state government to go along? Most importantly, where is the money going to come from? Anyone who says "the commuter tax" without a feasible plan to get the Legislature to pass a constitutionally valid commuter tax is full of shit.
• Foster innovation and adaptation. Do we really want to live in a city where it takes over a year to get a single bus route that runs every half hour? I don't. I want to live in a city that tries new things and rewards people who try new things on their own.
• Don't be afraid to say no - to unions, politicians, business owners, landowners, or even "the community." You can't give everything to everyone. If you try to, what you'll wind up doing is giving everything to the most threatening people and ignoring the weaker ones. That's no way to run a city. I'm not happy with everything Mike Bloomberg has done, but one of the things I've liked the most about him over the years is that he has a nose for bullshit. But this isn't like Andrew Cuomo or Chris Christie who cry poverty one minute and drop billions on superficial projects the next.
  
  Bloomberg can often tell the difference between someone who wants to make the world a better place and someone who wants to protect their unearned advantage. When he hears a sob story from somebody who was born on third base and thinks they hit a triple, often he'll listen politely, look them in the eye and tell them to take a hike. Having someone in City Hall who isn't constantly pandering is hugely refreshing.
• Do something about the NYPD. There are a lot of good cops out there, but the leadership sucks. As Streetsblog has documented extensively, under Ray Kelly, the department has let killer drivers off the hook, ignored dangerous driving, harassed cyclists, and hogged pedestrian and cyclist space. We need a mayor and a city council who will hold the NYPD accountable for protecting those of us who don't carry expensive multi-ton steel boxes around with us.

I'll support any proposal that fits with these principles. If you have enough proposals like that - or if your competitors are dismal enough - I may endorse you for Mayor, Public Advocate, Comptroller or City Council. I can't promise that it'll get you elected, or that you'll even get one more vote. At best, I hope you were leaning in this direction, and that this post helped to bring you clarity. It'd be even better if we had more than one candidate making proposals along these lines.

And if you go banging the "two New Yorks" drum, well don't you know that you can count me out.

Christine Quinn's disappointing record on transportation

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is running for mayor of New York. In theory I like the idea of the city's first lesbian mayor, and she seems like a nice person. She did get the council to pass congestion pricing in 2008. But overall her record on transportation has been negative, and there is no indication that she has any interest in taking a more progressive stand on the issue.

Photo: Steven Hirsch / Streetsblog

In addition to the contempt she has shown in writing, here are several actions Quinn has taken that show how low issues like pedestrian safety, fair access to jobs, clean air and water, resource conservation and protection, and prevention of global warming rank among her priorities. Thanks to Streetsblog for keeping an eye on her.

• Jimmy Vacca's Kvetch Committee. When Transportation Committee chair John Liu was elected comptroller in 2009, Quinn appointed Jimmy Vacca to chair the committee. Vacca represents a conservative part of the southeast Bronx where 62% of households have at least one car, and the neighborhood elite simply ignore the other 38%.
  
  Over the past three years Vacca has continued Liu's pattern of pandering to the city's wealthy car-drivers, flattering their fantasies that they're a disadvantaged, oppressed class and attacking anyone who gets in their way. When he has shown interest in pedestrian deaths, it has been temporary and fleeting, but he always seems to have time to dream up new giveaways to drivers. All this time, Quinn has stood with Vacca and even reiterated some of his kvetches.
  
  In part, this is clearly a political calculation. Quinn has seen transportation as an issue where there is no strong case for progressive action. With that gone, it is simply a political bargaining chip, to be traded to outer-borough power-brokers in exchange for their support.
• Four more years of Ray Kelly. Back in January the Post reported that Quinn is planning to reappoint Ray Kelly as Police Commissioner. Under Kelly's leadership, the NYPD has actively obstructed enforcement of laws protecting pedestrian safety, while harassing cyclists in Central Park.
• No taxi reform. Mayor Bloomberg made a heroic, if flawed, effort to increase the supply of taxis, especially in the "inner boroughs." He tried to get a bill passed in Albany because people seem to agree that the taxi lobby has bought the City Council, and thus it will never pass a bill that the medallion owners don't want.
• Limiting pedicabs. In 2007, Quinn shepherded a law through the City Council, over Bloomberg's veto, to drastically reduce the number of pedicabs in the city and their ability to cross bridges. It was widely speculated at the time that she did this as a favor for her friend and neighbor Emily Giske, who introduced Quinn to her future wife Kim Catullo. Giske is a registered lobbyist who was working for motor taxi companies at the time.
• No increase in transit funding. When the MTA was first established, the city and state governments both contributed to the subway and bus budget. Rudy Giuliani cut the city's contribution in the 1990s, as George Pataki was cutting the state's share. Bloomberg hasn't cut the city contribution as much as Giuliani did, but it has gone down. Yes, that's something to critique him for, but the City Council has never challenged him on it.

Remember these things when people ask you to support Quinn. I think we can do better.

Will transit riders be represented in the 113th Congress?

Bill Shuster, chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has named the majority-party members of the committee, who will join the Democratic members announced a few weeks ago. With Chuck Marohn, I'm skeptical about what role the Federal government can play in achieving our goals, so take this for what you think it's worth.

I looked over the list of Republican committee members, and I thought, "wow, these guys (all but two of them are men) are really from the middle of nowhere. How many of their constituents even ride transit?" So I looked up the American Community Survey figures from Table B08141 for the percentage of carfree households, and the percentage of households where the primary commute is by transit.

Unfortunately, the ACS only has figures for the pre-2010 districts, but I tried to find districts that matched the ones that actually elected these representatives.

Name	State	District	Hometown	Previous district	Carfree %	Transit %
Sam Graves	MO	6	Tarkio		5.95%	6.51%
Frank A.  LoBiondo	NJ	2	Ventnor City		5.05%	4.23%
Richard Hanna	NY	22	Barneveld	24	5.89%	3.83%
Patrick Meehan	PA	7	Drexel Hill		2.71%	3.78%
Lou Barletta	PA	11	Hazleton		3.18%	2.03%
Gary Miller	CA	42	Diamond Bar	44	1.58%	1.82%
Duncan Hunter	CA	50	Lakeside	52	1.81%	1.69%
Daniel Webster	FL	10	Winter Garden	8	2.59%	1.64%
Don Young	AK	1	Fort Yukon		5.72%	1.46%
Trey Radel	FL	19	Fort Meyers		1.88%	1.44%
Thomas Massie	KY	4	Garrison		2.19%	1.30%
Shelley Moore Capito	WV	2	Glen Dale		2.80%	1.28%
Blake Farenthold	TX	27	Corpus Christi		3.04%	1.14%
Andy Harris	MD	1	Cockeysville		1.63%	1.08%
Steve Daines	MT	1	Bozeman		1.98%	0.93%
Roger Williams	TX	25	Weatherford	17	2.25%	0.90%
Jeff Denham	CA	19	Merced		2.13%	0.88%
Steve Southerland	FL	2	Panama City		2.39%	0.84%
Scott Perry	PA	4	Carroll	19	1.99%	0.79%
Reid Ribble	WI	8	Sherwood		1.77%	0.72%
Tom Rice	SC	7	Myrtle Beach	1	2.79%	0.67%
Rodney Davis	IL	13	Taylorville	19	1.61%	0.66%
Larry Bucshon	IN	8	Newburgh		2.40%	0.56%
John L. Mica	FL	7	Winter Park		2.19%	0.56%
John J. Duncan, Jr.	TN	2	Knoxville		1.73%	0.43%
Thomas E. Petri	WI	6	Fond du Lac		1.72%	0.41%
Candice Miller	MI	10	Harrison		1.56%	0.39%
Bob Gibbs	OH	7	Washington	18	4.52%	0.34%
Mark Meadows	NC	11	Cashiers		2.20%	0.32%
Bill Shuster, Chairman	PA	9	Hollidaysburg		2.67%	0.31%
Markwayne Mullin	OK	2	Westville		1.99%	0.27%
Rick Crawford	AR	1	Jonesboro		2.43%	0.21%
Howard Coble	NC	6	Greensboro		1.67%	0.17%
Average					2.67%	1.32%

Now the Democrats:

Name	State	District	Hometown	Old District	Carfree %	Transit %
Jerrold Nadler	NY	10	New York	8	63.66%	53.97%
Eleanor Holmes Norton	DC	1	Washington		26.03%	38.02%
Michael E. Capuano	MA	7	Somerville	8	25.75%	34.30%
Albio Sires	NJ	8	West New York	13	26.16%	33.29%
Donna F. Edwards	MD	4	Fort Washington		5.77%	17.82%
Elijah E. Cummings	MD	7	Baltimore		10.86%	13.51%
Daniel Lipinski	IL	3	Western Springs		3.50%	10.92%
Sean Patrick Maloney	NY	18	Cold Spring	19	2.93%	7.47%
Dina Titus	NV	1	Las Vegas		5.73%	5.46%
Eddie Bernice Johnson	TX	30	Dallas		4.98%	4.53%
Grace F. Napolitano	CA	32	Norwalk	38	2.86%	4.36%
Timothy H. Bishop	NY	1	Southampton		2.12%	4.10%
Janice Hahn	CA	44	Los Angeles	36	3.20%	4.03%
Rick Larsen	WA	2	Lake Stevens		2.01%	2.73%
André Carson	IN	7	Indianapolis		3.66%	2.39%
Steve Cohen	TN	9	Memphis		4.73%	2.37%
Elizabeth Esty	CT	5	Cheshire		2.87%	2.07%
Peter A. DeFazio	OR	4	Springfield		2.95%	2.06%
Timothy J. Walz	MN	1	Mankato		1.96%	1.48%
Lois Frankel	FL	22	West Palm Beach		2.10%	1.20%
Cheri Bustos	IL	17	East Moline		2.82%	1.11%
John Garamendi	CA	3	Walnut Grove	10	1.69%	1.08%
Rick Nolan	MN	8	Crosby		2.04%	0.97%
Ann Kirkpatrick	AZ	1	Flagstaff		2.87%	0.57%
Nick J. Rahall, II, Ranking minority member	WV	3	Beckley	4	2.71%	0.47%
Michael H. Michaud	ME	2	East Millinocket		2.01%	0.38%
Corrine Brown	FL	5	Jacksonville	3	1.56%	0.28%
Average					8.13%	9.29%

So what do we take away from this? Well, a lot of Democrats do represent cities, and transit-commuting suburbs, in contrast to the Republicans. But does that translate to actual support for transit? Jerry Nadler is the only member who represents a district with a majority of carfree, transit-riding households, and I like him a lot, but I haven't heard of much that Holmes Norton, Capuano, Sires, Edwards, Cummings or Lipinski have done for transit riders. Sean Patrick Maloney is definitely one to watch: if he can get an FRA exemption for Metro-North, that would be huge.

In terms of transit-commuting population, the top twelve districts are all here in New York City, including the 14th, where I live. There are seven districts with more transit riders than Nadler's, and twelve with more riders than Holmes Norton. They're not directly represented on the committee. Meanwhile, Howard Coble's district is in fact the district with the absolute lowest percentage of transit riders.

Your Guide to New York State's Judicial Nomination Process

As I mentioned recently, there were two bizarre judicial rulings in the New York State Supreme Court setting back transportation reform. On August 18, State Supreme Court judge Arthur Engoron declared that the Five Borough Taxi Plan was unconstitutional, and on August 22, State Supreme Court judge Bruce Cozzens declared that a payroll tax that funds a significant chunk of the city's transit operations is unconstitutional. They both rested their opinions on a dubious principle of home rule.

The State Supreme Court - that sounds like a big deal, huh? Like New York's version of Justices Breyer and Roberts? Actually, as I learned in eighth grade, the Supreme Court is actually the state's lowest court, able to be overruled by the Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals, not to mention federal courts. But it's still significant. So where did these guys come from, anyway, and how did they get this kind of power?



Governing magazine has the answer, and it links to two editorials that are definitely worth a read. I sure didn't learn this stuff in eighth grade! It turns out that New York State has a hugely crappy, undemocratic system of electing judges. Sure, you can get nominated as an independent, but to get the nomination of the Democratic or Republican parties you don't run in the primary like you might for a legislative seat. You need to be chosen by a Judicial Nominating Convention.

Who votes in the nominating convention? Judicial Delegates. Who chooses the judicial delegates? In principle, you can vote for them in the primary, but in practice nobody bothers to collect the signatures to contest a judicial delegate election. The county party committee can nominate candidates for the primary without requiring signatures, and the party committee is controlled by the county chair. So in practice, the county chairs nominate the delegates and tell them who to nominate for judgeships, and the delegates do it.

Okay, so where do these County Chairs come from? They're elected by the county committee, which is made up of the party's State Committee members from that county. In theory, the State Committee members are elected in the primary elections, but just like the judicial delegates, it's very rare to collect petitions and run for the State Committee. Most people just get nominated by the County Chairs themselves. Once that happens, of course, they owe something to the chairs, so they keep re-electing them.

Now you might have noticed that in this system, the State Committee members and judicial convention delegates have effectively zero decision-making power. Their entire function is to obfuscate the system so that people can't tell what's going on, and give it a veneer of legitimacy. So why do they bother? What do they get out of it? Besides a chance for some kinky sex in an Albany motel, that is?

The most ambitious of these people are candidates for higher office. By attending the State Committee and the judicial nominating convention, they have a chance to prove their loyalty to their patrons. This marks their place in the hierarchy, and then when vacancies come up for elected positions, including judgeships, they may be chosen by the county or state chair to be the party's candidate and not have to collect petitions. The less ambitious people, or the ones marking time in between elected terms of office, are rewarded for their loyalty with powerful roles on the boards of government authorities, and sinecures at well-connected nonprofits and corporations.

The State Court of Appeals is actually nominated in a slightly cleaner way, by the state's Commission on Judicial Nomination, whose commissioners are nominated by the Governor, the Chief Judge and the majority and minority leaders of the two legislative chambers. Of course, how the legislative leaders get elected isn't exactly clean either, but it's a slight improvement.

So the next time you hear, "State Supreme Court Judge," remember that they're essentially appointed by the county party chairs. And the next time you hear about a scandal involving a county party chair, think about how many judges that chair has selected.

Expanding the constituency for transit and livable streets

I've talked before about why we need walkable, transit-oriented suburbs. One of the big reasons is the cycle: the easier it is to take transit throughout the region, the bigger the coalition for transit:



Right now there are relatively few solid transit advocates in the City Council and even fewer in the State Legislature. We definitely need to work to make them more representative, but we can also work to increase the number of people in each district that get around without cars.

I realized that my earlier map of City Council districts by car ownership is not well-suited to this task. I divided it up by quintiles, so that there were roughly ten of every color. But no matter how many people in a district get rid of their cars, as long as that district remains in the same position relative to the other districts, its color will not change.

I wanted a system where we could see how a district is doing on an absolute scale. So here are the city council districts in terms of percentage of households without a car. I added the boroughs, townships and cities of Hudson County (which is like a fifth borough) for your edification:

Color	Range
Green	80-100%
Yellow	60-79%
Orange	40-59%
Red	20-39%
Purple	0-19%

You can see that the districts represented by Melissa Mark-Viverito, Rosie Mendez, Ydanis Rodriguez and Christine Quinn are the only ones with more than 80% of households car-free, and with the exception of Quinn, they have all fought hard for transit and livable streets.

The yellow districts cover the rest of Manhattan, the South Bronx and Brownstone Brooklyn. They have a range of representatives, from transit advocates like Letitia James to AWOL reps like Helen Foster, but none of them are anti-transit.

The orange districts cover Western Queens, the north Bronx and the denser parts of southern Brooklyn. Their Council representatives range from my own rep, Jimmy Van Bramer, who fights hard for transit, to the indifferent James Barron, to David "Kvetch" Greenfield who only cares about the car-driving half of his constituents. Union City, New Jersey is 40% carfree.

The red districts cover Southeast Queens, West New York, Guttenberg and Jersey City, Transportation Chair Jimmy Vacca's East Bronx district, Peter Koo's district in Flushing, Donna Rose's district on the North Shore of Staten Island, Elizabeth Crowley's Central Queens district, and Lew Fidler's southeast Brooklyn district. We have some big car kvetchers here.

The four purple districts are represented by two of the most anti-transit members of the Council: Dan Halloran and James Oddo. Mark Weprin is nowhere near as bad as his brother David, but he's not a big fighter for transit either.

This is why I want to get people in these districts to get rid of their cars. If the 36th District in Brooklyn were green (80% and up) it might be represented by a Quinn, but it's more likely to be represented by a Mark-Viverito. If the 44th in Brooklyn were yellow it might be represented by a James. It might also be represented by a Foster, but at least it would be less likely to elect Greenfield. If the 30th were orange it might still get a Greenfield, but it might also get a Van Bramer. If the 19th were red it might get a Gennaro or a Crowley.

So what would it take to move the 16th District from 71% to 80%? To move the 44th from 49% to 60%? To move the 30th from 319% to 40%? To move the 19th from 15% to 20%?

Why we need walkable, transit-oriented suburbs

You regularly hear transit and livable streets advocates talking in terms of an opposition between "urbanists" who want transit and walkability, and "suburbanites" who want car-oriented sprawl. I've said before that that division is way oversimplified: it is certainly true that cities tend to be more walkable and have better transit, while suburbs and rural areas tend to be more car oriented, but this division is not set in stone. There are walkability and transit advocates in the suburbs, in small cities and towns, and in the country, just as there are advocates for car-oriented development in the heart of the city.

It sucks to walk here. See how tiny the sidewalks are?

There is absolutely no sense in setting up the cities as walkable fortresses surrounded by sprawl. Even if we could persuade every city-dweller to go car-free and keep everyone else's cars out, we would still sometimes want to go out and get some fresh air in the mountains or by the beach. We should be able to do that by transit, on foot or by bike. If walkable, safe streets with convenient transit are good enough for us, they should be available to everyone else too. We also need all the allies we can get when we're fighting for walkability and transit; why write off the suburbanites and people who live in the country and small cities?

I would like you to imagine taking a trip by foot, or maybe by local bus, from New York City to Albany. This trip by foot would take you several days, so let's assume that there's a hotel to stay at wherever you need one. I've chosen Albany because it's completely in the State of New York, but you would see similar (but less rural) phenomena if you went to Philadelphia or New Haven.

You would find Manhattan and the Bronx to be very walkable, with convenient transit. In Westchester County it would vary depending on where you went, but you could find a comfortable route at least as far as White Plains or Ossining. North of there you would find walkable downtowns like Poughkeepsie and Rhinebeck, some of them even served by halfway decent buses, separated by increasingly long stretches of inhospitable sprawl and country, until you reached Albany.

Those walkable downtowns are where our natural allies live. Some of them don't own cars. Some keep the car in the driveway all the time. Some curse their cars every time they get behind the wheel. The people who live in between are the ones who tend to vote for sprawl boosters like Nan Hayworth.

Speaking of Westchester sprawl boosters, remember Richard Brodsky, the Assemblymember who managed to convince half the liberals in New York that congestion pricing was a tax on the poor? He was elected from Elmsford, a Westchester suburb that lost its train station in 1958. His district does include walkable villages like Dobbs Ferry and Pleasantville, but it would be significantly more transit-oriented if there were still regular train service to places like Elmsford and Ardsley.

Of course there's no guarantee that transit-riding voters will elect pro-transit representatives, as we see from people like Ruben Diaz and Hakeem Jeffries. But I think that if the Putnam Line had never been shut down - and if at least one of the Thruway, Saw Mill River or Sprain Brook highways hadn't been built - Brodsky would have been a bit less likely to oppose congestion pricing. There's no certainty there, just statistical likelihood, but that's why we have to keep working to build transit riding constituencies in the suburbs and all over the state.

The state budget's bogus parity

Every once in a while the debate over the New York State budget turns briefly to transportation, and we see where our leaders have their priorities. Back in January, Streetsblog reported that the Governor had allocated $150 million to the MTA Capital Plan for next year, 5.7% of the budget for that plan, while requiring the MTA to borrow six times as much. Even this paltry amount was blocked by the State Senate, until a budget deal was hashed out by the infamous "three men in a room": Governor Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Silver and Senate Majority Leader Skelos.

DeFrancisco, Libous and Skelos: making sure drivers get as much as possible.

State Senate Budget Committee chair John DeFrancisco made his priorities clear to Glenn Bain of the Daily News: "DeFrancisco also expressed concern that funding for upstate road and bridge projects were being treated fairly," wrote Bain. "We don’t have too many MTA trains going to Syracuse," DeFrancisco told him. When the deal was finally announced, Dana Rubenstein of Capital New York surmised that "what the Senate Republicans might have been holding out for, in this case, was more money for non-city road and bridge projects."

Republican Senators, in particular Tom Libous of Binghamton, the Deputy Majority Leader, were also concerned that there would be "parity" in road funding between upstate and downstate, and last week State leaders produced a "memorandum of understanding" that would send "$751 million to the upstate regions north and west of the Hudson Valley. ... the Hudson Valley, including Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Ulster and Dutchess counties, would get up to $158 million, Long Island would get up to $291 million, and New York City would get up to $415 million."

It's not clear what the actual basis is for the "parity" demanded by Libous and DeFrancisco. Are there the same number of drivers in the Hudson Valley as transit riders in New York City? As many drivers Upstate as in the City and the Island combined? Or is it based on land area, or taxes paid, or political contributions, or spiedie consumption? I don't have figures for those criteria, but let's take a look at the commuting population and how they get to work, from the 2005-2009 American Community Survey:

Region	Total commuting population	Drove alone, carpooled, taxi, bicycle or motorcycle to work	Public transportation to work
Upstate	3,029,501	2,841,155	11,399
Hudson Valley	1,003,833	797,964	122,356
Long Island	1,067,230	796,873	191,913
New York City	3,618,690	1,119,412	1,998,795
Total	8,719,254	5,555,404	2,324,463

Let's combine the public transit commuters from the Hudson Valley, the City and Long Island as the total constituency of the MTA. Some of them may only use their local county bus systems or even private buses like Red and Tan, but I'm guessing that most of the commuters from outside the city ride Metro-North or the Long Island Rail Road. We have to exclude Upstate transit commuters, because those transit agencies apparently got zero capital support from the State budget. You could say that people who walked to work benefited from State DOT money, but the state DOT spends so little of its money on pedestrian infrastructure it might as well be zero. True, everyone indirectly benefits from roads because they get things delivered by truck, but the enormous inefficiencies of truck freight would probably cancel out any indirect benefit.

Constituency	Commuters	Percentage of commuters	Capital funding	Percentage of capital funding
Upstate car/bike commuters	2,841,155	36.1 %	$751,000,000	32.2 %
Hudson Valley car/bike commuters	797,964	10.1 %	$158,000,000	6.78 %
Long Island car/bike commuters	796,873	10.1 %	$291,000,000	12.5 %
New York City car/bike commuters	1,119,4125	14.2 %	$415,000,000	17.8 %
MTA riders	2,313,064	29.4 %	$150,000,000	6.44 %
Total	7,868,468		$1,765,000,000

You can see that something's off there. Needless to say, bicyclists are a tiny share of commuters, but none of the percentages match. Now what if we allocated it differently, based on population?

Constituency	Percentage of commuters	Capital funding approved	Capital funding by population	Favored by budget
Upstate car/bike commuters	36.1 %	$751,000,000	$637,308,123	$113,691,876.61
Hudson Valley car/bike commuters	10.1 %	$158,000,000	$178,993,733	($20,993,732.96)
Long Island car/bike commuters	10.1 %	$291,000,000	$178,749,007	$112,250,992.57
New York City car/bike commuters	14.2 %	$415,000,000	$251,098,712	$163,901,288.03
MTA riders	29.4 %	$150,000,000	$518,850,424	($368,850,424.25)
Total		$1,765,000,000

So there you have it. The Upstate drivers, led by Tom Libous and John DeFrancisco, and the Long Island drivers, led by Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Transportation Chair Charles Fuschillo, each got over $112 million more than they would if it were based on simple commuting numbers. City drivers, led by Republicans Marty Golden and Andrew Lanza and Independent Democrats Jeff Klein and Diane Savino, got $163 million more. A tiny bit of this ($20 million) came from Hudson Valley drivers, but the vast majority, $369 million, came from city transit riders.

There is no "parity" here, even for drivers. The formula is simple: the more powerful "legislators" get more money for their constituents, and every driver is worth as much as 4.5 transit riders.

Keep this in mind next time you hear Skelos, Fuschillo, Golden, Lanza, Klein and Savino complaining about MTA cuts. They may act like they care, but when the money's on the line they're not fighting for transit riders.

Why I care about transportation in the suburbs

If you read my posts you'll notice that I live in the city, but I talk a lot about transit and roads in suburban counties like Rockland and Bergen. You might be wondering: why do I bother? Why not just let them have their roads and parking lots, and focus on my own transit and sidewalks?

Sometimes I even ask myself that, but I actually do have a good reason, with several consequences. The fact is that we live on one planet, in one country, and in one region. Within that region, I live in one state with lots of suburbs in it. New York City is not hermetically sealed off from these suburbs. They affect our lives, in terms of carnage, pollution, resource consumption and socialization. And of course, they affect our lives politically.

Of the cars that drive through my neighborhood, polluting and killing, many come from Long Island. Many more would be on the Long Island Expressway if it weren't full of people driving in from Long Island. Many of the teachers, police officers, firefighters, merchants, doctors and bureaucrats who work in my neighborhood live on Long Island and drive in. Some live even further, in Staten Island, Westchester and Rockland.

The air and water pollution from suburban cars gets borne by wind and water currents and winds up in my lungs and on the beaches I go to. Every gallon of gas burned in one of those cars is one less gallon that will be available to my grandchildren for energy, for plastic or for fertilizer. Every ounce of steel and rubber is one more ounce that will not be accessible without energy-intensive recycling. And of course, when they want "parity" for their roads, it's our tax dollars that go to build them, and rebuild them, and widen them....

The suburbs also affect our lives culturally. In my neighborhood in Queens, the non-car-owning half of the population primarily looks to Manhattan and its streets, while the car-owning half mostly looks to Long Island and its malls. But there is a large middle chunk of the population that looks both ways: drivers who take the subway in to see a Broadway show and walkers who bum rides to Roosevelt Field and Costco. It's especially noticeable as a parent of a small child, because many other parents, and magazines like Queens Parent, orient their lives around car-dependent destinations like the Alley Pond Environmental Center and the Long Island Children's Museum.

Most importantly, they affect our political lives, which means that they exert control over the laws and budgets that affect transit and walking. The leaders of the fights against congestion pricing and the Ravitch plan were legislators from Westchester and Long Island, but also from eastern Queens, the northern Bronx, southern Brooklyn and Staten Island. Drivers from the fringes of the city have provided critical margins for Rudy Giuliani, Christine Quinn and George Pataki.

It's true that there are plenty of politicians in the City who drive and who pander to those who drive. But many of them are on their way out, and others are changing their tunes. We need to make sure that the suburbs change their tunes too. We can't let the suburbs do what they (or at least their leaders) want. Their decisions affect our money, our air, our water,our culture and our safety.

Mike Gianaris and Marge Markey and Joe Crowley will again stab straphangers in the back

Transportation Alternatives sent around a Media Round-Up to their members - and I am one - saying that the Daily News editorial on the latest MTA fare hike is a "must read." And wow! It certainly is a must read - as a great example of how not to hold anyone accountable for anything. This is the tale of the fare hike as told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

First, anyone who writes, "The MTA should" about anything that involves more than a million dollars is either clueless or lying. "The MTA" - presumably the MTA board and its Chair, Joe Lhota - don't have control over much more. It was the State Legislature, specifically Malcolm Smith and Sheldon Silver, who promised that any fare hike would be tied to service increases.

Second, anyone who writes, "Albany will" without mentioning specific legislators is either lazy or lying. Unless you have good evidence to the contrary, any time you read "Albany" in the paper, replace it with the names of your legislators. My legislators, Mike Gianaris and Marge Markey, have repeatedly insisted that drivers should never have to pay to maintain the bridges they drive on or the streets they park on at night, but they have shown no such tenacity when it comes to subway fares.

Third, since most State elections are not competitive, it's not the voters but the party leaders who decide on the candidates. The Queens Democratic machine has come down hard on anyone who even thinks about challenging incumbent legislators or their anointed successors, and worked with the Republicans to rig the election laws to make it much harder for anyone from another party to run. Party Chair Joe Crowley and the State Committee set it up so that last year I had no choice but to vote for Mike and Marge.

So it's not "Albany will," it's "Unless the MTA slashes expenses or the governor and Legislature come up with new funding, Mike Gianaris and Marge Markey and Joe Crowley will again stab straphangers in the back." Replace with your own legislators and party boss, and your state committee members if you know them, and remember it when they come asking for campaign contributions, and when they appear at the next bogus rally blaming "the MTA" for service cuts.