How we got hope back

When I first got into transit advocacy it was a lonely place. The dominant narrative here in New York was that the city was a money pit, a dirty hole of crime and corruption where funding went to die. The safe thing to do, for people and dollars, was to leave the city for the calm, quiet fields of the Hudson Valley and the rustic forests of the Catskills, where the Thruway, the Taconic and other scenic friendly roads would whisk you swiftly to your modern house surrounded by healthy Nature.

This narrative was bolstered by constant stories of wastefraudandabuse at the MTA and the fact that the Mayor and the Governor had promised to build the Second Avenue Subway decades ago, and nothing had opened. Even the 63rd Street Tunnel went nowhere in particular. Nothing else happened.

It was understood that the people of the East Side and the Bronx had been waiting for their subway since 1929. After that were the various proposals to extend the E and F trains in southeast Queens, and then maybe the 7 train. Any newer ideas had to get on line behind those.

The residents of various neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn met every proposal to expand service with dramatic complaints. Crime! Noise! Shadows! Nonwhite people! They were well-connected, with their champions including then-City Council Speaker Peter Vallone.

Transit advocates internalized this response. Transit discussion boards were focused on documenting existing conditions - and critiquing them, and reminiscing about past expansions. If someone proposed a new expansion, or advocated for an existing proposal, another poster would often remind them how long it had been since the last real expansion, the difficulties faced by recent proposals, and all the other proposals currently waiting in the queue.

A poster didn't even need to know actual details about how deep neighborhood opposition ran or why the city was in a budget crisis. Regurgitating the same handful of anecdotes was an easy way to win know-it-all points.

In this century the situation began to change. The F train was connected to the 63rd Street Tunnel and work began again on the Second Avenue Subway. Then the MTA began work on an extension to Hudson Yards that hadn't even been on any advocate's list of proposals before. But Mayor Bloomberg and his staff arranged for city financing, and all of a sudden the Hudson Yards line was being dug, ahead of the E and F extensions, ahead of Second Avenue Subway Phase II, and even ahead of Second Avenue Subway Phases III through XXIIII.

Bloomberg also began overruling NIMBYs. In 2004 he rolled out the first round of safety improvements on Queens Boulevard, the beginning of the end for the "Boulevard of Death," over the objections of business owners who claimed that every sidewalk extension would mean another empty storefront. He then appointed Janette Sadik-Khan as Transportation Commissioner, and backed her up when NIMBYs objected to the Prospect Park West bike lane.

In a few short years we learned that NIMBYs are not all-powerful, the order of subway expansions is not set in stone, and we are capable of finishing projects. In other words, we have reason to hope. A lot of the negativity was in our own heads.

Does that mean that the NIMBYs are now toothless, the state budget is bottomless, and we can build all the things? Of course not. But it does mean that we can hope, and plan, and propose new things.

If you follow my twitter feed, recently you may have noticed me getting angry at people for negativity. It's not that I think we should never criticize anyone else's proposals, or even just flat-out say no. There is a time and place for negativity, and the negative comments I was responding to were not made at the right time or place.

I didn't intend this to be a paean to Mayor Bloomberg, but for a number of reasons he was able to escape the cowardice and windshield perspective that limits New York City's political class so much. The man has lots of flaws, but his terms as mayor were a time of real progress for transit.

The reason I get so angry is because I remember the bad old days. I remember when transit nerds used to smack each other down for daring to suggest running passenger trains on the Bay Ridge Branch. I remember when we had no hope. I don't want to go back to that time.

What is the right time and place for negativity? That's a whole other post.

A way among the tube socks

I am not a Bicycle Advocate, and I don't believe that Bikeshare is Transit. But I'm now convinced that the combination of bike share and protected bike lanes has improved mobility for a lot of people. It has worked for me when I've traveled to DC and London, and at home here in New York. The cost has been relatively low, whether measured in terms of dollars, square feet of public space, or advocacy hours.

Photo: Dave Nixen / Flickr

In my experience, bikeshare is not effective for getting people out of cars and taxis and decongesting our subways and sidewalks without that network of protected lanes and quiet side streets. I am a cautious rider, and I avoid streets where it feels like drivers have too much power or speed. Rather than fear for my life I will just walk or take the subway.

A few months ago I was on Irving Place and wanted to go to Soho. I figured I'd ride the relatively quiet Eighteenth Street to the Second Avenue protected bike lane. But when I got to Third Avenue I found my way blocked by a street fair.

I turned south for a few blocks on Third Avenue. I hate riding on big avenues without a bike lane; the drivers are either speeding or frustrated or both. It was also difficult to remember which streets went which way, but I think I avoided the pattern at Stuyvesant Square that sends you back west on Fifteenth Street, and headed east on Twelfth.

I was looking forward to getting onto Second Avenue. But when I got there I found the avenue completely filled by another street fair. These were not genuine community festivals, but the generic fairs that have become the norm here in New York City. My way was blocked by tube socks and mozzarepas. There wasn't even room on the sidewalk to walk my Citibike.

I doubled back and rode down Third Avenue again. I checked again a few blocks later and I was past the fair, but that was just luck; I didn't know until I'd gone all the way down the block.

For bikeshare to serve as a true transportation option, we don't just need a bike route network , but a reliable one. If any part of it is unavailable, the whole network is compromised, and people will be less likely to rely on it.

Of course it's not just bikes; the car network is disrupted. But drivers have lots of alternate routes: a driver whose way is blocked on Second Avenue would not be terribly inconvenienced by driving on Third. But for me, with Second Avenue blocked the nearest protected southbound avenue is Ninth Avenue/Hudson Street/Bleecker Street, meaning I would have to bike clear across the island and back.

This is also an issue for pedestrians. Walking a long city block out of the way is not always practical, leaving those of us trying to get somewhere mixing with the zeppole eaters.

As many have said, we need to reform these street fairs. We also need to convert more car lanes to bike lanes on the avenues. But in addition, we need to preserve some bike access through street fairs. If they can have fairs on sixty foot cross streets like Eighteenth, they can leave twelve feet of space on a 75-foot avenue like Second.

At a minimum, we should have some notification system for when the bike lane network is disrupted, whether by street fairs, construction or something else. A tweet on the Citibike feed would help.

Ten things Trottenberg and Bratton can do for transit

There have been a few posts about what the new administration of Mayor de Blasio can do for transit. Some have been focused on "bus rapid transit," because it's the fad of the decade and people don't want to think too hard about transit. Some rest entirely on him taking back control the MTA.

Following on my ten recommendations for pedestrians, here are ten recommendations for transit that don't require control of the MTA. Some of them can be done by the DOT, some by the NYPD, and some require cooperation between them, but none of them require action from the MTA or the State Legislature. They all have to do with buses, but unlike Select Bus Service, they don't require months of route planning to implement.

Transit entrepreneur Joel Azumah. Photo: John Taggart / Daily News.

1. Legalize private transit. The city Department of Transportation has the authority to allow private buses to operate on city streets, but for as long as I can remember they've only allowed three groups: (a) Buses like Academy that cross state lines, (b) Legacy streetcar companies that were finally taken over by the MTA in 2006, and (c) the gender-segregated Hasidic bus from Williamsburg to Borough Park. We need innovation in transit routing, and the MTA has consistently shown resistance to innovation. It's time to let private operators give it a try.


Fifth Avenue at Fourteenth Street, photographer unknown.

2. Restore two-way traffic flow. It makes no sense that I can get a downtown subway on Sixth Avenue, but not a downtown bus. A one-way pair may be a good idea on Eighth and Ninth Streets, but not on Sixth and Seventh Avenues. It would be good for pedestrians too.


Photo: Angus Grieve-Smith.

3. Reopen the Union Turnpike entrances for buses. Reader Angus Grieve-Smith commutes from Western Queens to Saint John's University, and realized that the Kew Gardens station has the facilities for a fare-free transfer from bus to subway.


Photo: Detroit Photographing Company, 1903.

4. Allow buses on the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge was built for trains. Maybe it can't support trucks anymore. But can it really not support buses?


Photo: Jim Henderson / Wikipedia.

5. Make bus bulbs standard. Pedestrians get more sidewalk space. Bus riders aren't the ones getting out of the way. It's a win-win!


Image: Global Traffic Technologies.

6. Make signal priority for buses standard. Why should it only be for Select Bus routes? It's expensive to replace the equipment, but as equipment gets updated it should be set to favor buses.


Photo: Brad Aaron / Streetsblog.

7. No painted bus lanes that aren't 24/7. The red paint should mean something: Buses Only. It should not mean "For buses, except for turning cars and off hours and you know what? Let's just drive in it and see if they give me a ticket."



8. Establish a New Jersey to Brooklyn pilot bus. One solution to buses idling in Lower Manhattan is to send them out to Brooklyn. There are people who live in Brooklyn and work in New Jersey and vice versa. Maybe more if you make it easy to commute.


Photo: Charles Eckert / Newsday.

9. A 24/7 busway on the LIE. It would speed up the express buses and add bus capacity to and from Nassau County.


Photo: Paolo Mastrangelo / NYC The Blog.

10. Real fare inspection. The way the NYPD currently does fare inspection is fucking nuts. In Paris, fare inspectors board a bus just as it's pulling out of a stop, and check everyone's tickets as the bus is moving. In New York, fare inspectors pull up to the bus stop in an SUV and make the bus sit there while they check tickets. We shouldn't keep travelers waiting just because some NYPD people feel they're too good to be more than twenty feet from their own government vehicle.

Ten things Trottenberg can do for pedestrians

Back in 2009, when Janette Sadik-Khan had only been New York City Transportation Commissioner for a year, I offered five things that she could do to improve the pedestrian environment. She left office on January 1, and from what I can tell she only did one of the five things I asked: the hated Midtown pedestrian barricades put in under Giuliani's acting commissioner Richard Malchow, are gone. There was no fanfare, but I'm thinking about places where I knew there were barricades, like Sixth Avenue and Fiftieth Street, and they're gone.

I'm not complaining that Sadik-Khan only did one thing I asked. The things she did do for pedestrians - adding pedestrian space in plazas, calming streets with road diets and protected bike lanes - have made the city a much more pleasant place to walk. But I would like to see the other four things happen, and I have a few more. So here's the updated list, and I hope our new Commissioner Polly Trottenberg can make them happen.

Photo: Safer Skillman Avenue Coalition.

1. Make sidewalk extensions standard. They're documented to make streets safer for pedestrians. They should probably be on every corner. In 2002, Bloomberg and Commissioner Weinshall missed a golden opportunity: they spent $218 million to install curb cuts at corners throughout the city, bowing to years of sustained pressure from disability rights advocates. They could have installed extensions at many of those corners, but of course they didn't. Trottenberg could make up for that by setting a policy that in the future any corners that are rebuilt will be rebuilt with extensions by default. Those extensions should only be omitted if circumstances argue against them, not the other way around.


Photo: Mahima Hada / Flickr.

2. Summer Streets across the Manhattan Bridge. Summer Streets has proven to be wildly popular for six years running, rain or shine, and it's time to extend it. A large number of livable streets advocates live in Brooklyn and already travel to Manhattan for the event. We could make it easier for them to attend, and bring some tourist dollars and recreation to Brooklyn, by extending Summer Streets east on Canal Street, across the upper deck of the Manhattan Bridge and down Flatbush Avenue to Prospect Park. Trottenberg may need some help from the NYPD on this: I've heard that the policing costs are very expensive, but that the police staffing levels are very much overkill, and many of those cops could be replaced by event staff with no decrease in safety.


Photo: Dalton / Flickr

3. Widen Penn Station sidewalks. Sadik-Khan has done great things for pedestrians in Herald and Times Squares, but it's well-documented that there's a heavy crush of pedestrians around Penn Station during weekday rush hours. That's where pedestrian improvements are needed the most. If you ride a CitiBike up Eighth Avenue at rush hour you'll see tons of pedestrians walking in the bike lane and buffer zone. Why not take a lane or two out of Seventh and Eighth Avenues and make them available for pedestrians?


Photo: John Marshall Mantel / New York Times.

4. Loading zones on every block. I've made the case that the lack of dedicated loading zones makes the city much more dangerous. The city's culture of double-parking, where "everyone does" something that's illegal and dangerous, poisons the relationship between motorists and traffic enforcement agents. Rampant double-parking encourages negligent idling practices. It also pits motorists defending their "right" to double-park against pedestrians who want narrower streets to discourage speeding, and cyclists who want protected bike lanes. The DOT is constantly reconfiguring parking on blocks around the city. What if every time they did that they set aside a space or two that was only available for loading and unloading, maximum occupancy fifteen minutes?


When you play the game of parking, you win or you die. Photo: CampfireNYC2011 / Flickr.

5. Allocate street space for food trucks and carts. In Midtown where sidewalk space is already scarce, there is often a bad crush around food carts. The food carts and trucks used to operate out of the street, but NYPD "crackdowns" have forced them onto the sidewalk. This is nuts. If people are upset that these carts are parking for free, or for meter rates, then the DOT can set aside some spaces where food truck operators can pay market rates for the space.



6. Reexamine parking restrictions. One awful legacy from earlier administrations is parking restrictions that add a travel lane or two to a street, but make it dangerous and inhospitable for pedestrians. Trottenberg could order a citywide reexamination of these zones and eliminate those that are most dangerous and least warranted.



7. Restore crosswalks. Similarly, there are several street crossings that are missing one or more crosswalks. Parts of Seventh Avenue South feel like a highway instead of a boulevard because there are no crosswalks for streets like Leroy Street and Waverly Place. There are other intersections - the corner of Forty-Eighth and Northern here in Queens comes to mind - where there are crosswalks on only three sides. Trottenberg should have the DOT staff look at all intersections that don't have crosswalks at all sides, and see if restoring the crosswalks could make the intersections safer and more comfortable for pedestrians

.

Fifth Avenue at Fourteenth Street, photographer unknown.

8. Restore two-way flow. When Bloomberg hired Sadik-Khan, he told her that she could change the traffic flow on Fifth Avenue. This was supposedly a big joke, but I totally think Trottenberg should do it, and De Blasio should back her up. The city's avenues were converted to one-way for one reason only: to give the city's driving elite priority over its walking majority. If we no longer want to do that - if De Blasio wants to end that "tale of two cities" - then the single biggest change that will make our streets livable again is to eliminate all multi-lane one-way streets.


Photo: Eugène de Salignac.

9. Rebuild the Queensboro Bridge pedestrian paths. This is a big, expensive project, but it would be a lot cheaper than the hundreds of millions the DOT has spent making the Brooklyn Bridge and the Belt Parkway easier for drivers. Right now we have a sidepath that is bearable if you're on a bike, but once I walked it with my son and the noise was really unpleasant. Compare the Queensboro Bridge experience to that on the Brooklyn or Williamsburg Bridges and you see that the grade separation makes a huge difference. But this should only be done if the outer decks are both returned to exclusive transit use.



10. Cherish our Really Narrow Streets. Nathan Lewis argues that Really Narrow Streets privilege the pedestrian and create an opportunity for intense commerce that cannot be matched by any street wide enough to handle cars and pedestrians together. We've got some of those here, but we give cars priority and cover them in scaffolding. Trottenberg should take a look at some of Lewis's examples and see what we can do to make them places where New Yorkers want to be.

Any way you slice it

Now that the election is over and there's no chance of Joe Lhota being elected this year, I can talk about how much I hated Bill de Blasio's "tale of two cities" rhetoric. Don't get me wrong: I know that there is inequality in New York, and I think we should do something about it. Framing it as "two cities" is wrong and counterproductive. I hope it's over, and I hope it doesn't come back in 2017.

Transit security, 1775. Illustration by John McLenan, 1859.

As Matt Yglesias pointed out, “A Tale of Two Cities” is about two different cities — London and Paris. But de Blasio is not the first to use it to refer to the difference between the rich and the poor in a single city. The problem with "two cities" - the same problem that I had with "two New Yorks" when used by Freddy Ferrer and Bill Thompson - is that it's too vague. If you say there are two New Yorks, different people will draw the line between the two in different places.

In particular, some unscrupulous people will draw the line in sneaky places. From my point of view, the most important division in the city is between people who see themselves as drivers and people who see themselves as transit riders. But for the man who really revived the "two New Yorks" meme, Frank Macchiarola, the non-elite New York was that of the outer boroughs:

Outer borough New Yorkers have such low expectations of the city government that they have developed alternative ways of obtaining services. Their transportation “system,” for example, usually includes a private car; some outer borough New Yorkers have not been on a subway or a city bus in years. Even poor people in the outer boroughs avoid city buses by riding in liveries and vans that are often cheaper, cleaner, and more efficient. Outer borough New Yorkers often travel into Manhattan on private express bus lines, which are more expensive and often slower, but invariably safer, than the subways.

In 2008, Lew Fidler used Macchiarola's division to paint congestion pricing as a tool of the elite. Azi Paybarah thought Fidler got it from Ferrer, but it comes from the Manhattan Institute, where it forms part of the conservative strategy to drive a wedge between the working class and the left.

The beauty of this vagueness is that almost any way you slice them, the Two New Yorks are led by drivers, or maybe even the chauffeur-driven. Outer-borough vs. Manhattan? Drivers. Black vs. White? Think about how Al Sharpton and Floyd Flake get around. You'd think that rich vs. poor would wind up with the poor riding transit, as would white collar vs. blue collar, but the leaders of the poor and the blue collar workers always seem to be showing off their poverty by driving an old Buick or Hyundai.

Even in the city, we've got it in our heads that being a Leader - running an organization - requires a car. So whether the Leaders are running city agencies, neighborhood organizations, unions or religious institutions, they think they won't be taken seriously if they don't show up in a car. If they can't afford a car, their funders are willing to pay for one. Even for organizations based in Manhattan whose business doesn't require carrying around anything that won't fit in a wheelie briefcase.

Over and over again I've seen this pattern: Leaders who drive - no matter how radical their thinking, no matter how deep their ties to the working class and the oppressed - don't get transit. Over and over again, their idea of lifting up the Working Man is to give him cheap gas and a discount mortgage on a house with a garage. And we saw this same shit just two weeks ago with de Blasio and the pedestrian plazas:

I have profoundly mixed feelings on this issue. I’m a motorist myself, and I was often frustrated. And then I’ve also seen on the other hand that it does seem to have a positive impact on the tourist industry. So for me, the jury’s out on that particular question. I think it’s worth assessing what the impact has been on traffic, what the impact has been on surrounding businesses. I would keep an open mind.

We do need to talk about inequality in New York and the best way to fight it. As Ben Fried wrote today, transportation is a powerful tool to combat inequality. (But I don't think transit can create a classless society all by itself.) But the "Tale of Two Cities" thinking just short-circuits that.

De Blasio's victory speech last night was very conciliatory. I hope it's the last time he uses the "Tale of Two Cities" for a while, but I'm sure he'll be tempted to dust it off again soon. And when that happens, I hope someone he trusts will look at him and say, "Enough with that bullshit, Bill. Give me a way of thinking about inequality that doesn't end with both sides sitting down to talk - at a nice seafood place on Cross Bay Boulevard with plenty of parking."

Car dependence is overdetermined

I came across a word that I think helped me to put my finger on something that’s been unclear: "overdetermined." It's a Freudian term (he first used it for the content of dreams) that means that an effect has a number of causes, and you don’t need them all to get it. I realized that we've been having so much trouble ending car dependence because it is overdetermined.

If everyone purely voted their interests regarding transportation, and transportation spending were proportional to population, we’d have no drivers in a few generations, because transit is so much cheaper than car infrastructure and subsidies. But car dependence persists, because there are a number of factors that skew the politics, and even if you can knock out one factor, the others often are strong enough to keep things skewed.

The current New York City mayoral campaign is an example of this. In a city where a majority of residents live without cars, and a vast majority commute by transit, even the most progressive candidate, Sal Albanese, finds it necessary to pander to drivers occasionally, and the other candidates go even further. Here are some of the factors that I’ve identified.

1. Non-drivers identify with drivers. Driving is often the only reasonable way to increase the comfort of your commute, and it’s associated around the world with higher social status. Most Americans want to increase their social status, and as a result most non-drivers spend a significant amount of time imagining themselves as drivers. Part-time drivers imagine themselves as full-time drivers. The result is that congestion pricing, which would have made things more difficult for a small minority of drivers, attracted widespread condemnation from people who imagined themselves driving to work in Manhattan any day now.

2. Key segments of the population drive at higher rates. Because the government controls the curb, parking has been used as a perk for politicians and bureaucrats to reward their allies. The result is that teachers, clergy, doctors and journalists get free parking, as do leaders of influential businesses and nonprofits, and the politicians themselves. These “thought leaders” paint the world in their own image, so that when we go to church or turn on the television, or when our kids are in the classroom, the picture is one of driving. People who drive get lots of respect and understanding from civil servants, police officers, firefighters and even transit operators, and people who don’t get lots of disrespect.

3. NIMBY arguments favor drivers. Ian Rasmussen has observed that "development" used to be seen as a good thing, but in the past sixty years or so has become a negative. A large part of that is that most people think of development as bringing lots of new cars. One fear is that these cars will clog the streets, but Paul Barter has also talked about the parking spillover bogeyman, where people fear that new residents, commuters and shoppers will take up all the parking and leave older residents, commuters and shoppers to fight for the existing spaces.

4. Corruption favors road capacity. When transit projects are corrupt, we get big ornamental stations that offer limited improvements in capacity or travel time and fail to attract more riders. When road projects are corrupt, we get roads that are too wide, inviting more people to drive. When transit run out of funding they get cut back or even abandoned. When road projects run out of funding the politicians scramble to take money from other projects, including transit projects.

5. The "two New Yorks" narrative favors drivers. Lots of people are getting screwed in New York: poor people, nonwhite people, disabled people, people who don’t speak English well, people who aren’t US citizens, people who don’t live in fancy neighborhoods, and people who don’t drive. Frank Macchiarola’s odious "two New Yorks" concept, which has recently been reanimated by Bill de Blasio, simplifies all that multidimensional, intersectional oppression into a single dimension: Manhattan versus the Outer Boroughs. The politicians of the Outer Boroughs, painted as the virtuous fighters for justice, tend to be wealthy white able-bodied English-speaking US citizens who live in fancy neighborhoods like Forest Hills, Riverdale and Midwood, or at least five out of those six criteria, and they almost all drive.

6. Drivers have more political power. In New York the situation is not quite as extreme as in the rest of the United States, but drivers still tend to be wealthier and better-connected, with more free time and a stronger belief in their own power. That means they tend to vote more and pay more campaign contributions, so a candidate may well win an election on pro-car votes in a district where drivers are a minority. This means that even if politicians, journalists and bureaucrats aren’t drivers, they have an incentive to pay attention to drivers. That attention often goes beyond simple respect to outright pandering.

7. Rural bias favors driving. Low population density doesn't cause driving, but they're correlated, and if a politician can pander to drivers in a district where 77% of households are car-free, a politician who represents a district with less than 10% car-free households can feel free to completely ignore non-drivers. That's exactly what happens with the New York State Senate majority, and of course the majority of the US senate. There are thousands of transit users living north of Bear Mountain, but whenever people talk about "fairness for Upstate" somehow it always winds up meaning more money for roads.
   
   The "Senate problem" of disproportionate power given to rural voters is not confined to elected bodies. It's also present in nonprofit associations of bureaucrats, like AASHTO and GHSA, that have a one-state-one-vote policy, and organizations like the New York State Association of Counties, whose mission is to disenfranchise New York City Democrats (and combat complete streets). (Added September 12.)
   

So we’ve got at least six factors that skew the political system towards car dependence: identification, leadership, NIMBYism, corruption, the “Two New Yorks” lie, and the power of drivers. If we take out one of them, the others will keep money flowing to wasteful roads like the Kosciuszko Bridge. Any good campaign to reduce driving has to tackle at least two of them, and the more the better.

Or we can look for people fighting each of those factors and try to make sure that more than one of them succeeds at the same time. I know some good people. What about you?

"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?

MTA complaints: myth vs. reality

There's actually a lot to say about the few minutes that the mayoral candidates spent discussing transit at the 92nd Street Y forum last month. When the Republican mayoral candidates responded to Selig Alpern, there seemed to be a sense that you could actually complain to the MTA about something.

Joe Lhota and his phone. Photo: Dana Rubenstein / Capital NY

Lhota: "Had this 89-year-old gentleman called me when I was at the MTA, I would have done something. Because anybody can tell you that I returned every one of my phone calls, and I returned every one of the letters that was a concern of all of the riders of the system. And I consider riders to be customers, and in my world, a customer is always right. ...."

"Since I'm no longer employed I'm taking the bus a lot, often, and I too get peeved at the fact that I see all of these express buses going by, and I want to get on the locals. So I made it a point, and I called Tom Prendergast, literally, last week, and I said, 'What's going on? Why can't these buses stop more locally?' I did not realize how bad it is here on the Upper East Side.'"

Catsimatidis: "You know, It's management. If you do get complaints, as mayor, you have a 311 system. If you get complaints people have to address them. And if the limiteds are making too few stops, then you have to adjust the system. And it's pure and simple: adjust the system where the limiteds make more stops. And you just need qualified people to solve those kind of problems."

Some of you are already jumping up and down, shouting that the Mayor doesn't control the MTA, and of course that was the next thing that Lhota said. But it's worse than that. Let me tell you about my experience complaining to the MTA.

A few months ago I was waiting in the cold for 25 minutes with about 30 other people, for buses that were scheduled to run every 5-7 minutes. After a while I decided to spend my time making a formal complaint, so I pulled out my phone and dialed 311.

I knew that 311 was run by the city, but I figured they'd have some connection worked out by now. Not so much. After listening to minutes of bullshit about alternate side rules, I eventually talked to a 311 operator, who forwarded me to 511, which is the state transportation line. I think I was finally able to talk to someone, but I'm pretty sure I didn't get a tracking number, and I definitely haven't gotten a callback or an email.

Maybe Catsimatidis is right; all you need are qualified problem solvers to take the complaints and act on them. But it ain't happening. If Catsimatidis can make it happen, maybe he should run for Governor instead.

I sure as hell don't know Tom Prendergast's direct phone number, and I never knew Joe Lhota's. The Executive Director's contact information is not on the MTA's website. I don't know how easy it would be to leave Prendergast a voice mail by simply calling 511; if you try, let me know. If Alpern is like me, he doesn't have an easy way to call the head of the MTA.

It's not an accident that it's difficult to complain to the MTA. The third candidate, George McDonald, hit the nail on the head: "I believe that we have to have the Mayor accountable, because you all want to have somebody accountable. They create the MTA, and these kinds of agencies, for obfuscation. Who's responsible? Who do you complain to?" The system was designed by the master of public authorities, Bob Moses, to accumulate power while deflecting accountability.

This more than anything convinces me that Joe Lhota is unqualified to be mayor. This is real "let them eat cake" stuff. He ran the MTA for over a year, and apparently he's still clueless about how difficult it is to get a complaint heard, and to get answers. Somehow he thinks that we all have Tom Prendergast's direct line on our speed dials, and that we had his own before that. Lhota really seems to believe that everyone who had a complaint during his time on the job was able to get through to him without being discouraged on the way, so that anyone who didn't, well, it's their own damn fault.

Of course, the reason the MTA doesn't really want to hear from ordinary riders is that its management doesn't actually think of us as customers who are always right. Its customers are the people who pay its bills: the Governor, the legislators, Congress, the real estate power players. Even though we riders actually pay the majority of the MTA budget through the farebox, our power is diffuse enough to ignore.

When is the MTA going to stop sending limiteds all day long?

Last night the 92nd Street Y hosted a debate for candidates for the Republican nomination for Mayor of New York. Members of the Y submitted questions to a camera crew on the sidewalk in front of the building, and the questions were then projected onto a screen behind the candidates. A lot of people seemed to be amused by a question posed by an Upper East Side resident, which you can see at 39:10 on the video.

My name is Selig Alpern. I've been living in Manhattan all my life. I am 89 years old. We have 4 to 5 limiteds flying down Lexington Avenue, and we have to wait 20 minutes for a local. From 10 o'clock in the morning to 4 o'clock in the afternoon there should be no limiteds. There should only be limiteds from 4 to 7 and 7 to 10 in the morning. When is the MTA going to stop sending limiteds all day long? They are not necessary from 10 in the morning to 4pm. It's a pet peeve of mine, and I wish it would be corrected.

Alpern was described as "ranting," "railing," "ornery," "upset," and "angry," but I think a lot of it was just him speaking loudly and clearly in order to be heard over the noise of Lexington Avenue. I thought his concern was valid, but his prescription was wrong, and then he undermined the whole thing and set himself up to be taken as a crank by calling it a "pet peeve." Transit frequency is not a pet peeve.

First of all, what does the MTA intend to do, as documented by the bus schedules? Looking at the noon hour, the M101 Limited is scheduled to pass Bloomingdale's at 12:08, 12:16, 12:24, 12:26, 12:32, 12:37, 12:47, 12:51 and 12:55 - nine buses an hour. The frequency is uneven, but the average headway is six minutes.

For the local buses, the M102 comes at 12:11, 12:31 and 12:51, and the M103 comes at 12:06, 12:21, 12:36 and 12:51. If you're not going below Eighth Street you can take either one, so I'll treat them as equivalent. That makes seven buses an hour, for an average frequency of eight minutes. One problem is that the headways are uneven, ranging from zero to fifteen minutes. If one of those buses is even a little bit late, it could lead to exactly the situation that Alpern complained about: being stuck for twenty minutes at a local stop watching one limited after another fly by.

We should definitely not eliminate midday limited service. How does it look for a Jewish guy from East 68th Street to tell the MTA to add ten minutes to every limited bus trip going from Harlem downtown? But it would be appropriate to tweak the schedule and run one or two buses on the local route instead of the limited route.

Better yet, who's to say that we have to get rid of buses on one route in order to add buses to another? Why not add more M102 and M103 buses without getting rid of M101s?

Some of this depends on the "loading guidelines." You don't want to run too many empty buses. That said, you could run regular buses instead of articulated ("bendy") buses if you want higher frequency.

Steve "BicyclesOnly" Vaccaro tweeted that he cared about, "What are candidate's position on BRT?" And that's an excellent question. Why aren't there bus lanes on Lexington Avenue?

Alpern's question highlighted a major problem in New York today: the despondent tone of so much of transit advocacy. Why do so many people think it's a zero-sum game, where we've given over Lexington Avenue to the cars, and Jews and Puerto Ricans have to fight each other over the scraps of bus service that crawl along wherever they can fit in?

The candidates' responses to that question, and the Democrats' responses to another transit question, were revealing. None of them mentioned "BRT," or even buzzwordless bus improvements. But George McDonald did say he looks forward to the Second Avenue Subway opening, and predicted that it would relieve crowding on the Lexington Avenue buses. No word if he would do anything as mayor to help get the rest of the line built, or even finish Phase 1, but at least it was hopeful and forward-looking.

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.