In my last post I observed that the city has changed the way it does snow removal, and that the politicians and the media have proclaimed themselves to be largely satisfied with the results. Well, I'm not satisfied, and I'm not annoyed any longer, I'm pissed. The city may have implemented its recommendations, and even "gone overboard," but that's not all they did. They changed their priorities as well.
The Prospect Park West bike lane, which has been the target of some politicians' rage, was left half-plowed for several days after the December snowstorm, and since the January 20th snowfall it still hasn't been completely plowed. Of course, this affects pedestrians who want to cross the bike lane too. The Second Avenue bike lane was not plowed quickly after last week's storm. Entitled motorists are still hampering snow removal.
The worst part, I first heard from a retweet by Stu Loeser, the Mayor's press secretary, of all places. "The worst part of the snow? You can't jaywalk," wrote Stephen Kamsler on Friday morning. I thought he was exaggerating and tweeted back, "You just don't have the right boots!"
When I went outside I discovered that Kamsler was actually understating things. Not only was it hard to jaywalk, but it was hard to just plain walk. At the corners, there is usually one path shoveled to cross the street east-west and one north-south. At my corner there are only east-west crosswalk paths, and no north-south ones - and it's still that way, on Sunday night.
That's the pattern all across the city. I've seen it all over Queens. Ben Kabak and BrooklynSpoke have noticed it in Brooklyn. Some guy in Astoria has pictures.
This is not a new pattern; it happens in Boston, Providence, Rye and Philadelphia, and our commenter Helen Bushnell reports a similar situation in Colorado.
The difference is that until last week, New York never had this problem. I honestly don't know how we did it. The sidewalks, as Alon points out, are the responsibility of the property owners, and the Sanitation website says the crosswalks are too. But how is it that they used to be pretty clear, and now they're not? It's just too much of a coincidence that this should be happening all over the city.
So what do the politicians have to say? Well, we got a tweet from Greenfield. One tweet, among lots of tweets about various streets in his district that were blocked for cars. What do the media say? Well, we have a story in the Queens Courier.
By and large, the difficulty we've had walking around been ignored, with a couple of exceptions that I'll explore in a future post. As you can see from the links I've posted, there have been more stories about blocked crosswalks in other cities.
Let me be clear about this: this issue is not particularly about me. I've got good boots, as you've probably heard, and I can walk right over those snowbanks. It's not a matter of life and death. It's about convenience, but more than that, it's about fairness, and about who counts.
Until December 28, we had a system where major routes were plowed first, and then more minor through routes, and then side routes. It didn't really matter whether they were for cars, bikes or pedestrians; the ones used by the more people were done before the ones used by less people.
Clearly, David Greenfield didn't like that, and neither did Steve Cuozzo or Marty Markowitz. In their view, drivers come first, and they wanted every street plowed before any bike lanes were plowed. People like Greg Mocker and Jimmy Van Bramer echoed that demand, although it's not entirely clear that they understood what they were asking for. Regardless, the city has gone along with it, and more. Now the streets are plowed long before the crosswalks are shoveled. Was that a suggestion from Greenfield? Will we ever know?
In the end, it doesn't really matter. Whether bikes come before cars or not, the important thing is that almost all New Yorkers are either pedestrians, wheelchair users, or stroller passengers. Pedestrians should come before bicycles or cars. Greenfield, Cuozzo and the rest need to hear it. They should clarify that they want the crosswalks clear as soon as the roads are. If they won't, then they are not speaking for all New Yorkers.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Kvetching about snow
So there was a big brouhaha over the city's response to the blizzard - and to some extent, the MTA's as well. Both organizations did make serious mistakes, and some people died needlessly, but for someone who can walk to shopping and take transit to work, and who can take a day or two off or work from home, it was not a big deal.
Even for someone who normally drives to Costco to shop, it wasn't that big a deal. If you drive to Costco, you buy in bulk and keep weeks' worth of food in your basement, right? And everyone knew there was a storm coming and had to stock up. But if you ran out of milk, even in the most Godforsaken part of Staten Island there are still delis within walking distance. And yet...
And yet, it was somehow a big deal to a lot of people. Whether it was the Times editorial board or that master of high dudgeon, Greg Mocker, the media angle was that this was not just an unparalleled disaster, but an injustice of the highest order.
City Council members thundered about the iniquity, and the loudest of them all was freshman David Greenfield, nicknamed "Kvetch" by Aaron Naparstek because of his ability to turn a stubbed toe into the Ultimate Showdown. I'm sure this guy is loving it: a few more Weather Emergencies and he'll be grandtweeting his way into Borough Hall in 2015.
I was mildly amused at first, but this kind of stuff has consequences. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but sometimes it's not actually the squeaky wheel that's the problem. You can look at making things more efficient, but beyond a certain point if you're demanding more in city services, you need to either raise revenue to pay for them, or cut something else. The snow response was slow in part because the city had cut the sanitation budget, and that was in part because tax revenues are down and expenses are up. But one thing you hardly ever hear people like Greenfield say is that they'd be willing to pay more taxes to have adequate services. The money should come from "eliminating waste, fraud and abuse." Or else it should come from cutting someone else's city services. And that's where I started to get annoyed.
First, Greenfield made a speech about the Ocean Parkway bike lane being cleared before - what? Clearly the car lanes on Ocean Parkway had been plowed, but some side streets had not. Then the Post's anti-bike-lane crusader Steve Cuozzo got in on the act, filing a column about the Broadway bike lanes in Manhattan. Other media piled on, until it became clear that this was about priorities.
Okay, so all that was back in December, a little more than a month ago. In that month, the City Council has held hearings, and the Mayor's office released a set of recommendations for improved snow response (PDF). There have been two significant snowfalls, Not only has no one died, but the wags at New York Magazine point out that the snow may actually have saved a man's life. The politicians and the media have largely proclaimed themselves satisfied with the results.
What about me: am I satisfied? Turns out I have a lot more to say on this topic than I planned. Stay tuned for the next installment. In the meantime, though, are your crosswalks clear? Please let me know in the comments.
Even for someone who normally drives to Costco to shop, it wasn't that big a deal. If you drive to Costco, you buy in bulk and keep weeks' worth of food in your basement, right? And everyone knew there was a storm coming and had to stock up. But if you ran out of milk, even in the most Godforsaken part of Staten Island there are still delis within walking distance. And yet...
And yet, it was somehow a big deal to a lot of people. Whether it was the Times editorial board or that master of high dudgeon, Greg Mocker, the media angle was that this was not just an unparalleled disaster, but an injustice of the highest order.
City Council members thundered about the iniquity, and the loudest of them all was freshman David Greenfield, nicknamed "Kvetch" by Aaron Naparstek because of his ability to turn a stubbed toe into the Ultimate Showdown. I'm sure this guy is loving it: a few more Weather Emergencies and he'll be grandtweeting his way into Borough Hall in 2015.
I was mildly amused at first, but this kind of stuff has consequences. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but sometimes it's not actually the squeaky wheel that's the problem. You can look at making things more efficient, but beyond a certain point if you're demanding more in city services, you need to either raise revenue to pay for them, or cut something else. The snow response was slow in part because the city had cut the sanitation budget, and that was in part because tax revenues are down and expenses are up. But one thing you hardly ever hear people like Greenfield say is that they'd be willing to pay more taxes to have adequate services. The money should come from "eliminating waste, fraud and abuse." Or else it should come from cutting someone else's city services. And that's where I started to get annoyed.
First, Greenfield made a speech about the Ocean Parkway bike lane being cleared before - what? Clearly the car lanes on Ocean Parkway had been plowed, but some side streets had not. Then the Post's anti-bike-lane crusader Steve Cuozzo got in on the act, filing a column about the Broadway bike lanes in Manhattan. Other media piled on, until it became clear that this was about priorities.
Okay, so all that was back in December, a little more than a month ago. In that month, the City Council has held hearings, and the Mayor's office released a set of recommendations for improved snow response (PDF). There have been two significant snowfalls, Not only has no one died, but the wags at New York Magazine point out that the snow may actually have saved a man's life. The politicians and the media have largely proclaimed themselves satisfied with the results.
What about me: am I satisfied? Turns out I have a lot more to say on this topic than I planned. Stay tuned for the next installment. In the meantime, though, are your crosswalks clear? Please let me know in the comments.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Crappy snow removal does not a snowpocalypse make
When I said in my last post that the December 26-27 snowstorm wasn't all that bad, I didn't mean to suggest that it couldn't have been handled better. As I mentioned, some people died because emergency vehicles weren't able to get them to hospitals in time, and there were people stranded on trains for hours. From what I can tell, the city made two major mistakes, and the MTA made two major mistakes.
The first MTA mistake was not being adequately prepared far enough in advance, for example by suspending express service on underground lines so that trains could be stored on those tracks. The second was sending too many buses out without making sure that they would be able to move people around without getting stuck in the snow.
The first city mistake was not doing enough to prevent private drivers from blocking the roads. While I heard reports of streets blocked by buses and even the city's own cleanup vehicles, it sounds like there were many instances that happened like this: a private citizen decides to drive somewhere instead of walking or just staying home. Their car doesn't have snow tires, chains or four-wheel drive. They get it stuck in the snow in the middle of the street. They abandon the car and come back for it some time later. Meanwhile, the disabled car is blocking the street, sometimes for hours.
The city could have made it clear that there are harsh penalties for abandoning vehicles in the middle of the street, even in a snowstorm. Then they could have enforced those penalties. Instead, apparently, they allowed people to abandon their vehicles without any penalty, and sometimes even did them the favor of digging the cars out.
The second city mistake was described by Billy Wharton in the Bronx Examiner: "[Bloomberg] stated that the reason for the slow plow response was that the private plow owners were unresponsive to requests by the City. This point should not be cast aside as a mere attempt by Bloomberg to deflect blame. Whether we know it or not New Yorkers are now dependent on private companies in order to ensure clean streets. And for this Bloomberg is to blame."
According to Wharton, this was the result of a botched attempt to privatize the city's sanitation services. "Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty danced around this issue claiming, at first, that his Department had been too slow to reach out to private contractors. He later admitted that the pool of private companies willing to do business with the City had shrunk. There is just no money in it."
Hm, services cut and then replaced with a poorly structured privatization plan that doesn't provide enough compensation to the private service providers? Where have I heard that before? Oh yes, the livery van program.
Wharton is oversimplifying things by saying "privatization kills." It would be more accurate to say "incompetent privatization kills." A few days ago, Stephen Smith introduced us to the concept of cargo-cult urbanism, where people believe that by mimicking the superficial trappings of prosperous, efficient cities they can achieve that prosperity and efficiency themselves. Well, the livery van program and the sanitation program are some kind of faith-healing privatization. Like Christian Scientists who reject medical care and pray to their god for healing, the City stopped paying for transportation and sanitation services, and expected the private sector to step in. It doesn't work that way.
While Bloomberg is the Mayor and the buck stops with him, there's also a guy who's supposed to be a genius of privatization and efficiency, who has built his career on helping government to run leaner. His name is Stephen Goldsmith, and last year Bloomberg hired him as Deputy Mayor for Operations, overseeing the Department of Transportation, the Taxi and Limousine Commission, and yes, the Department of Sanitation. These privatization initiatives are what he was hired to do.
I was intrigued when Goldsmith came on board, and I would like to believe that he really does know a thing or two about privatization. I have to say I'm a little skeptical at this point, because it seems like faith healing to me. I hope Bloomberg is skeptical too.
But that's not why I'm seriously pissed about the political response to the storm. After all, the inconvenience was relatively minor. In the last post I told you that I would say why I'm pissed. I'm sorry, I just had to get this off my chest first. I'll get to that soon, but some of you have already figured it out.
The first MTA mistake was not being adequately prepared far enough in advance, for example by suspending express service on underground lines so that trains could be stored on those tracks. The second was sending too many buses out without making sure that they would be able to move people around without getting stuck in the snow.
The first city mistake was not doing enough to prevent private drivers from blocking the roads. While I heard reports of streets blocked by buses and even the city's own cleanup vehicles, it sounds like there were many instances that happened like this: a private citizen decides to drive somewhere instead of walking or just staying home. Their car doesn't have snow tires, chains or four-wheel drive. They get it stuck in the snow in the middle of the street. They abandon the car and come back for it some time later. Meanwhile, the disabled car is blocking the street, sometimes for hours.
The city could have made it clear that there are harsh penalties for abandoning vehicles in the middle of the street, even in a snowstorm. Then they could have enforced those penalties. Instead, apparently, they allowed people to abandon their vehicles without any penalty, and sometimes even did them the favor of digging the cars out.
The second city mistake was described by Billy Wharton in the Bronx Examiner: "[Bloomberg] stated that the reason for the slow plow response was that the private plow owners were unresponsive to requests by the City. This point should not be cast aside as a mere attempt by Bloomberg to deflect blame. Whether we know it or not New Yorkers are now dependent on private companies in order to ensure clean streets. And for this Bloomberg is to blame."
According to Wharton, this was the result of a botched attempt to privatize the city's sanitation services. "Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty danced around this issue claiming, at first, that his Department had been too slow to reach out to private contractors. He later admitted that the pool of private companies willing to do business with the City had shrunk. There is just no money in it."
Hm, services cut and then replaced with a poorly structured privatization plan that doesn't provide enough compensation to the private service providers? Where have I heard that before? Oh yes, the livery van program.
Wharton is oversimplifying things by saying "privatization kills." It would be more accurate to say "incompetent privatization kills." A few days ago, Stephen Smith introduced us to the concept of cargo-cult urbanism, where people believe that by mimicking the superficial trappings of prosperous, efficient cities they can achieve that prosperity and efficiency themselves. Well, the livery van program and the sanitation program are some kind of faith-healing privatization. Like Christian Scientists who reject medical care and pray to their god for healing, the City stopped paying for transportation and sanitation services, and expected the private sector to step in. It doesn't work that way.
While Bloomberg is the Mayor and the buck stops with him, there's also a guy who's supposed to be a genius of privatization and efficiency, who has built his career on helping government to run leaner. His name is Stephen Goldsmith, and last year Bloomberg hired him as Deputy Mayor for Operations, overseeing the Department of Transportation, the Taxi and Limousine Commission, and yes, the Department of Sanitation. These privatization initiatives are what he was hired to do.
I was intrigued when Goldsmith came on board, and I would like to believe that he really does know a thing or two about privatization. I have to say I'm a little skeptical at this point, because it seems like faith healing to me. I hope Bloomberg is skeptical too.
But that's not why I'm seriously pissed about the political response to the storm. After all, the inconvenience was relatively minor. In the last post I told you that I would say why I'm pissed. I'm sorry, I just had to get this off my chest first. I'll get to that soon, but some of you have already figured it out.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Snow, politics and the media
So there's been a lot of snow lately. There was one big blizzard that started on Boxing Day and dumped more than a foot of snow on the city. From what I heard on the news and read in the papers, it was a complete disaster. Some streets were unplowed for days, nobody could get anywhere, and several people died. Then there was another storm last week, but that was smaller and the city cleared it up much quicker. This past Wednesday night there was another foot of snow, and so far everyone seems pretty happy with it.
Reading this kind of bullshit makes me feel like I'm living in an alternate universe. I had no real trouble with the first snowfall, because I didn't really go out much. It was the week after Christmas, I was on vacation! Where did I need to go? I went to the supermarket around the corner, and they had plenty of food. I went to the cafe a few blocks away and had a nice panini.
Sure there were huge mounds of snow everywhere, but I've got good boots. There was a dump truck stuck in the middle of my street for several hours, and it took three front-end loaders to pull it free, but people drove on the other streets. The street next to my kid's school was completely blocked with a big snowbank, but that made it a lot safer for the kids to cross. After a day or two, the sidewalks and crosswalks were shoveled, the trains and buses were running, and we could all get around the city.
Okay, so I was on vacation, but a guy I know in the neighborhood had no trouble either. He had one customer across the street, another two blocks away, and a third around the corner. That's the value of working locally. Some other neighbors worked from home via the internet, and others just got the day off. Nobody had to go into Manhattan, or anywhere else, on December 27, and not too many people really had to go in on the 28th either.
Now obviously some people needed to go to the hospital, couldn't get help and died. That's a real shame and a problem, and we shouldn't minimize it. People were stranded for hours on subway trains, really locked in without a chance to get off and walk somewhere, and that's not good at all. As far as I'm concerned, those were the only two serious problems that resulted from the government's handling of the snow situation, and what we needed to do was focus on how to avoid those problems in the future. But that wasn't the focus in the City Council or in the media.
I was mildly amused at first to see reporters like Greg Mocker wailing about the streets that weren't plowed, and it was kind of fun to listen to that amateur cameraman hyperventilating as he watched a City tractor demolish a City-owned SUV that some bureaucrat had unnecessarily left parked on a Brooklyn Heights side street. But all that got old really quick, and I started feeling pretty annoyed hearing City Council members like David "Kvetch" Greenfield working themselves into a lather over which side street got plowed when.
Still, I was only annoyed. But then I started to get angry, and now I'm seriously pissed. I'll tell you why in my next post, but some of you may already know, because you're feeling the same way.
Reading this kind of bullshit makes me feel like I'm living in an alternate universe. I had no real trouble with the first snowfall, because I didn't really go out much. It was the week after Christmas, I was on vacation! Where did I need to go? I went to the supermarket around the corner, and they had plenty of food. I went to the cafe a few blocks away and had a nice panini.
Sure there were huge mounds of snow everywhere, but I've got good boots. There was a dump truck stuck in the middle of my street for several hours, and it took three front-end loaders to pull it free, but people drove on the other streets. The street next to my kid's school was completely blocked with a big snowbank, but that made it a lot safer for the kids to cross. After a day or two, the sidewalks and crosswalks were shoveled, the trains and buses were running, and we could all get around the city.
Okay, so I was on vacation, but a guy I know in the neighborhood had no trouble either. He had one customer across the street, another two blocks away, and a third around the corner. That's the value of working locally. Some other neighbors worked from home via the internet, and others just got the day off. Nobody had to go into Manhattan, or anywhere else, on December 27, and not too many people really had to go in on the 28th either.
Now obviously some people needed to go to the hospital, couldn't get help and died. That's a real shame and a problem, and we shouldn't minimize it. People were stranded for hours on subway trains, really locked in without a chance to get off and walk somewhere, and that's not good at all. As far as I'm concerned, those were the only two serious problems that resulted from the government's handling of the snow situation, and what we needed to do was focus on how to avoid those problems in the future. But that wasn't the focus in the City Council or in the media.
I was mildly amused at first to see reporters like Greg Mocker wailing about the streets that weren't plowed, and it was kind of fun to listen to that amateur cameraman hyperventilating as he watched a City tractor demolish a City-owned SUV that some bureaucrat had unnecessarily left parked on a Brooklyn Heights side street. But all that got old really quick, and I started feeling pretty annoyed hearing City Council members like David "Kvetch" Greenfield working themselves into a lather over which side street got plowed when.
Still, I was only annoyed. But then I started to get angry, and now I'm seriously pissed. I'll tell you why in my next post, but some of you may already know, because you're feeling the same way.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
From Staten Island to 34th Street
Commenter and occasional contributor George K has pointed out something that the Department of Transportation's bus planners seem to have missed: it's not just Manhattan and Queens. Thousands of commuters from Staten Island also ride buses that use the 34th Street bus lanes.
The total ridership for all branches of the X17 was 5680; I estimated that one third of that is the X17J. Atlantic Express did not publish any ridership figures like the MTA, but their 2006 filing in the National Transit Database (PDF) lists 693,076 unlinked trips for the year. George suggests that the X30, which brings 840 people to 42nd Street, could also use 34th Street, bringing the total number of trips to 7,202.
That means that Councilmember Ignizio from the South Shore has 2,846 34th Street bus trips from his district, almost as many as Dan Halloran does. Mitchell from the North Shore has 1,830, slightly less than Ulrich, and Oddo from the center has 1,682, a few more than Crowley. The grand total is over 42,200 bus trips using the bus lanes every day.
I've heard that some people in Queens are starting to contact their City Council members. If we can get the Staten Island delegation on board, it will be that much more of the city in favor of this project.
| Route | Daily Trips | Operator | Crossing | Major corridor | Neighborhood | Council district(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| X17J | 1893 | MTA | Lincoln Tunnel | Huguenot Avenue | Huguenot | 50, 51 |
| X22 | 1830 | MTA | Lincoln Tunnel | Forest Avenue | West New Brighton | 49 |
| X23/X24/AE7 | 1899 | Atlantic Express | Lincoln Tunnel | Woodrow Road | Woodrow | 51 |
| X31 | 740 | MTA | Brooklyn Battery Tunnel | Forest Hill Road | New Springville | 50 | Total | 6362 |
The total ridership for all branches of the X17 was 5680; I estimated that one third of that is the X17J. Atlantic Express did not publish any ridership figures like the MTA, but their 2006 filing in the National Transit Database (PDF) lists 693,076 unlinked trips for the year. George suggests that the X30, which brings 840 people to 42nd Street, could also use 34th Street, bringing the total number of trips to 7,202.
That means that Councilmember Ignizio from the South Shore has 2,846 34th Street bus trips from his district, almost as many as Dan Halloran does. Mitchell from the North Shore has 1,830, slightly less than Ulrich, and Oddo from the center has 1,682, a few more than Crowley. The grand total is over 42,200 bus trips using the bus lanes every day.
I've heard that some people in Queens are starting to contact their City Council members. If we can get the Staten Island delegation on board, it will be that much more of the city in favor of this project.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Peak oil, climate change and transportation infrastructure
Here's an idea that's been slowly crystallizing in my mind. I've posted earlier stabs at this idea, but here's my current thinking about it. It's about what kind of transportation infrastructure we want knowing about global warming and peak oil.
I'm pretty sure most of you believe that global warming is real, but I know that not everyone accepts the idea of peak oil. I'd rather that you were right than me, but you have to wonder why we'd be mucking around with deepwater oil drilling, tar sands and hydrofracking if we didn't have an energy supply problem.
Wind, solar, hydroelectric and maybe nuclear energy will take up some of that slack, but global warming limits the usefulness of coal, tar sands, and other fossil fuels. In fifty of a hundred years it's likely that our ability to move large heavy objects will be significantly reduced.
It's clear that a lot of people are aware of the implications of peak oil and climate change for transportation of passengers and freight. It's not so clear that very many people have thought about the implications for manufacturing and construction.
First, think about all the infrastructure components that are made out of oil: plastic car, bus and train parts, synthetic fabrics. Well, they were once made with renewables like wool, wood and rattan, and abundant, recyclable minerals like metal and fiberglass, so that's not such a big deal. But roofs and roads are made with tar, which comes from petroleum and is in limited supply. Substitutes are a lot more expensive and not always as effective.
Then we get to the question of manufacturing. We will probably have enough energy to manufacture bicycles and horse carts, but will we have enough to make automobiles, buses, trucks, train cars and ships?
Finally, there's the facilities themselves. If we're having a hard time maintaining the roads, railroads and bridges we have now, how are we going to be able to maintain a larger system with a fraction of the energy?
Imagine that it's the year 2111, and your great-grandchildren are trying to run a decent transportation system. Think about the energy currently available for transportation operations and maintenance - moving all those cars, trucks, trains, boats and planes on all those roads and railroads to all those docks and airports. Now imagine that your great-grandchildren have to run the system with a tenth of the energy that we use now.
With a tenth of the energy available, which do you think they would want us to have left them: the Joel Kotkin "people's choice" system of sprawl and highways? The Aaron Renn "balanced" system with some rail lines and some highways? The Walter Hook "cheap mobility for all" system of crowded buses on asphalt?
I don't want any of those. I don't want my great-grandchildren to ride donkey carts over crumbling ten-lane interstates. I don't want them to have to spend valuable energy replacing concrete roadbeds over and over again for buses. I don't want them packed into aging buses. I want them to inherit the most efficient transportation system that humanity has ever devised: a network of compact, walkable and bikeable cities and towns connected by multiple, redundant rail lines. None of the three infrastructure plans I mentioned above will do this. The only thing that will is to pull as much money from road construction as possible and throw it into rebuilding our rail infrastructure. The President's proposal and the Mayor's research are promising; let's see how much further we can go.
We don't have much time before the oil runs out. In that time we need to put together a system that can be run and maintained on a fraction of the energy that we currently use. That's why we can't afford to indulge outdated fantasies of sprawl and the open road. That's why we can't afford to do it half-assed out of a phony sense of balance. That's why we can't afford to do it on the cheap out of ill-timed egalitarianism.
I'm a pragmatist. I know that the roadbuilders and the pseudo-American Dreamers will fight my vision with everything they've got. And that's exactly why I don't want people like the Urbanophile and the ITDP giving them any ammunition. If you think there's a chance we could run out of oil, you shouldn't be supporting false balance or false economies. You should throw your weight behind building as much rail as we can, and building it to last.
I'm pretty sure most of you believe that global warming is real, but I know that not everyone accepts the idea of peak oil. I'd rather that you were right than me, but you have to wonder why we'd be mucking around with deepwater oil drilling, tar sands and hydrofracking if we didn't have an energy supply problem.
Wind, solar, hydroelectric and maybe nuclear energy will take up some of that slack, but global warming limits the usefulness of coal, tar sands, and other fossil fuels. In fifty of a hundred years it's likely that our ability to move large heavy objects will be significantly reduced.
It's clear that a lot of people are aware of the implications of peak oil and climate change for transportation of passengers and freight. It's not so clear that very many people have thought about the implications for manufacturing and construction.
First, think about all the infrastructure components that are made out of oil: plastic car, bus and train parts, synthetic fabrics. Well, they were once made with renewables like wool, wood and rattan, and abundant, recyclable minerals like metal and fiberglass, so that's not such a big deal. But roofs and roads are made with tar, which comes from petroleum and is in limited supply. Substitutes are a lot more expensive and not always as effective.
Then we get to the question of manufacturing. We will probably have enough energy to manufacture bicycles and horse carts, but will we have enough to make automobiles, buses, trucks, train cars and ships?
Finally, there's the facilities themselves. If we're having a hard time maintaining the roads, railroads and bridges we have now, how are we going to be able to maintain a larger system with a fraction of the energy?
Imagine that it's the year 2111, and your great-grandchildren are trying to run a decent transportation system. Think about the energy currently available for transportation operations and maintenance - moving all those cars, trucks, trains, boats and planes on all those roads and railroads to all those docks and airports. Now imagine that your great-grandchildren have to run the system with a tenth of the energy that we use now.
With a tenth of the energy available, which do you think they would want us to have left them: the Joel Kotkin "people's choice" system of sprawl and highways? The Aaron Renn "balanced" system with some rail lines and some highways? The Walter Hook "cheap mobility for all" system of crowded buses on asphalt?
I don't want any of those. I don't want my great-grandchildren to ride donkey carts over crumbling ten-lane interstates. I don't want them to have to spend valuable energy replacing concrete roadbeds over and over again for buses. I don't want them packed into aging buses. I want them to inherit the most efficient transportation system that humanity has ever devised: a network of compact, walkable and bikeable cities and towns connected by multiple, redundant rail lines. None of the three infrastructure plans I mentioned above will do this. The only thing that will is to pull as much money from road construction as possible and throw it into rebuilding our rail infrastructure. The President's proposal and the Mayor's research are promising; let's see how much further we can go.
We don't have much time before the oil runs out. In that time we need to put together a system that can be run and maintained on a fraction of the energy that we currently use. That's why we can't afford to indulge outdated fantasies of sprawl and the open road. That's why we can't afford to do it half-assed out of a phony sense of balance. That's why we can't afford to do it on the cheap out of ill-timed egalitarianism.
I'm a pragmatist. I know that the roadbuilders and the pseudo-American Dreamers will fight my vision with everything they've got. And that's exactly why I don't want people like the Urbanophile and the ITDP giving them any ammunition. If you think there's a chance we could run out of oil, you shouldn't be supporting false balance or false economies. You should throw your weight behind building as much rail as we can, and building it to last.
The chickens come home to roost
I think that's a nice evocative metaphor, even though it seems like you'd want the chickens coming home to roost. Then you get eggs! And you can cut off their fingers and fry them up. But I'll just assume that these are Chickens of Evil, because it's a bad thing when they come home to roost. Any farmers that can clarify this?
What the fuck am I talking about, you ask? Well, it's the latest round of bus service cuts announced by the MTA this morning. Ben at Second Avenue Sagas has a good summary, and also makes the point that these kinds of service cuts can lead to a death spiral, where more and more people get fed up waiting for the bus and drive to work instead, until there's nobody left to take the bus and the MTA cancels the route.
This is kind of a far-fetched scenario, but if you're worried about your bus losing funding, you should fight for bigger cuts to driving so that driving remains a worse option. That means no BQE widening, no Gowanus tunnel, no hundreds of millions to replace (and widen) the Kosciuszko Bridge or the Pulaski Skyway, no billions to replace (and widen) the Tappan Zee and Goethals bridges.
Some of the information about these cuts is a bit misleading, though. In the announcement that Ben links from his post, New York City Transit President Thomas Prendergast writes, "Forty of the 64 bus schedule changes represent reductions in service levels to more closely align service with customer demand and established guidelines for bus operation; and to concurrently improve reliability through running time modifications where needed."
Hm, more closely align service with established guidelines. That doesn't sound too bad. In comments on Ben's post, Alon Levy and BrooklynBus were very understanding of this. The problem is that these loading guidelines are not fixed. They were revised in 2004, to bring the goal up from 80% of seats full to 100%. The subway loading guidelines were increased during the last round of cuts a year ago, but the bus cuts used a different methodology. Since these guidelines aren't published anywhere, I have no idea what they're at now for buses, but they may be up over 100% of seats full.
The main problem with this dance is that it diffuses the target for opposition. If they cut the loading guidelines and cut bus service to match, then you'd be able to say, "Damn you, Marty Golden, you didn't support the Ravitch plan, and now my bus is being cut!" Instead you have to say, "Damn you, Hakeem Jeffries, you didn't support congestion pricing, and now they're raising the loading guidelines!" and then everyone gets this puzzled look and says, "so what"? And then when they cut the bus service, everyone says, "Well, they're just aligning it with established guidelines!"
The "established guidelines" are not fixed. They are a function of the transit system's funding levels, which is set by the budget. These cuts are the fault of the legislature just as much as any other cuts. The two-step dance obscures that information, and Jay Walder should end it as soon as possible. Publish the loading guidelines, and make it known when they are raised, and why. And for God's sake, find someone in the MTA headquarters who knows how to print a Word document to a PDF file!
What the fuck am I talking about, you ask? Well, it's the latest round of bus service cuts announced by the MTA this morning. Ben at Second Avenue Sagas has a good summary, and also makes the point that these kinds of service cuts can lead to a death spiral, where more and more people get fed up waiting for the bus and drive to work instead, until there's nobody left to take the bus and the MTA cancels the route.
This is kind of a far-fetched scenario, but if you're worried about your bus losing funding, you should fight for bigger cuts to driving so that driving remains a worse option. That means no BQE widening, no Gowanus tunnel, no hundreds of millions to replace (and widen) the Kosciuszko Bridge or the Pulaski Skyway, no billions to replace (and widen) the Tappan Zee and Goethals bridges.
Some of the information about these cuts is a bit misleading, though. In the announcement that Ben links from his post, New York City Transit President Thomas Prendergast writes, "Forty of the 64 bus schedule changes represent reductions in service levels to more closely align service with customer demand and established guidelines for bus operation; and to concurrently improve reliability through running time modifications where needed."
Hm, more closely align service with established guidelines. That doesn't sound too bad. In comments on Ben's post, Alon Levy and BrooklynBus were very understanding of this. The problem is that these loading guidelines are not fixed. They were revised in 2004, to bring the goal up from 80% of seats full to 100%. The subway loading guidelines were increased during the last round of cuts a year ago, but the bus cuts used a different methodology. Since these guidelines aren't published anywhere, I have no idea what they're at now for buses, but they may be up over 100% of seats full.
The main problem with this dance is that it diffuses the target for opposition. If they cut the loading guidelines and cut bus service to match, then you'd be able to say, "Damn you, Marty Golden, you didn't support the Ravitch plan, and now my bus is being cut!" Instead you have to say, "Damn you, Hakeem Jeffries, you didn't support congestion pricing, and now they're raising the loading guidelines!" and then everyone gets this puzzled look and says, "so what"? And then when they cut the bus service, everyone says, "Well, they're just aligning it with established guidelines!"
The "established guidelines" are not fixed. They are a function of the transit system's funding levels, which is set by the budget. These cuts are the fault of the legislature just as much as any other cuts. The two-step dance obscures that information, and Jay Walder should end it as soon as possible. Publish the loading guidelines, and make it known when they are raised, and why. And for God's sake, find someone in the MTA headquarters who knows how to print a Word document to a PDF file!
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